Not using islands?

[Bluesman 0]

I've read rumours that OFP2 might not use Islands. This is a bit interesting if true.

What I wonder is how it would be emulated. I mean, they can hardly make the entire Asian continent just to simulate Vietnam. In effect you would have to have an invisible wall somewhere. I know people sometimes complain about these invisible walls but how else would it be achieved?

Any thoughts on this?

BM

[The Frenchman 0]

I mean, they can hardly make the entire Asian continent just to simulate Vietnam.

Did you think before OFP that there can be a game with no boundries?

[Heatseeker 0]

This puzzles me also, i think the only way to achieve that would be use the same landscape over and over... or they could built some sort of custom terrain builder but would the result look good? Would we like not to become familiar with the terrain? I cant see how they could do that unless they replace the ocean with infinite empty terrain and that wouldnt look so good. I like Islands, they are big enough for me, i think they should focus a bit more on detail and gameplay .

[Guest]

The rumour was that it would be using "Terrain Streaming"...and that's about all that has been said on the issue.

[Bluesman 0]

I mean, they can hardly make the entire Asian continent just to simulate Vietnam.

Did you think before OFP that there can be a game with no boundries?

Yep. Elite Beyond the Frontier

BM

[Phleep 0]

I've read rumours that OFP2 might not use Islands. This is a bit interesting if true.

What I wonder is how it would be emulated. I mean, they can hardly make the entire Asian continent just to simulate Vietnam. In effect you would have to have an invisible wall somewhere. I know people sometimes complain about these invisible walls but how else would it be achieved?

Any thoughts on this?

BM

I would think for the campaigns and missions at least the limits on how far you can travel would be fuel/fatigue/enemy which are very good types of boundaries so you don't feel restricted but won't roam exceedingly far.

[El Savior 0]

Easy solution could be country's border. Soldiers are not allowed to cross the border and fight in other country. I'm looking forward to fight in mini-countries ie. Luxemburg

El Savior

[Bluesman 0]

Maybe nuke mines. That should everyone not to pass the borders

I personally don't mind invisible walls. I mean, I do not expect them to solve impossible problems.

Games like MS Train Sim and Auran Trainz can cover huge areas (and i mean huge) but the trade off is that they have less detail on areas not used by track.

BM

[Spy17 1]

An endless un textured or repeating landscape is possible too.

This would allow planes to fly outside the boundaries.

(this is the way most flightsims handel it)

[shadow 6]

The rumour was that it would be using "Terrain Streaming"...and that's about all that has been said on the issue.  

Is that the same as the Deltaforce-series uses?

[Cloney 0]

I liked the Island System actually.

[-TU--33ker 0]

It's the only practical solution to have logical limits in the maps. But I really wonder how BIS wants to set up the new environments without islands.

[ozanzac 0]

Whatever the case. Bigger maps= Bigger campaign = Bigger Realism = Bigger fun. Isn't that what we all want!

Can't wait, no matter what the outcome.

[Drill Sergeant 0]

Well No island no buying. I will not pucrchase a game that has these "Walls" I hate them and I find them extremly irritateing.

I like the big islands better. If we have to have these "Walls" you can forget about flying you'll smash into these walls than what happens ? You would simply keep augering into them and you wouldn't move. We can not loose our islands in my oppinon Islands are better than these miniature worlds.

[Commander-598 0]

I think they said in an interview, that there would be no real limit on map size...

[edc 0]

I wouldn't have a problem if they used islands, as long as they're much, much, much, larger than the ones now.

Other than walls, and islands, they could just make the whole world in one map. (by the time a mission loaded, OFP3 would be out ).

[quakergamer 0]

Well No island no buying. I will not pucrchase a game that has these "Walls" I hate them and I find them extremly irritateing.

I like the big islands better. If we have to have these "Walls" you can forget about flying you'll smash into these walls than what happens ? You would simply keep augering into them and you wouldn't move. We can not loose our islands in my oppinon Islands are better than these miniature worlds.

well for sure there wont be a "invisible wall" for planes because it would look stupid seeing planes stop in the air and explode. Maybe they will put warning zones where u get shot down if u pass it "?

[Mora2 0]

Ãsn´t American continent an Island??

Isnt Europe+Asia an island??

Isnt Africa an Island??

Islands are perfect !!!!      

Now getting serious...

First it was anounced that this game was gonna be in the 70´s conflicts...one step backward in my opinion. And now it maybe won´t bring islands....another step backwards...    

[Heatseeker 0]

I think the current islands (cept Nogova) are perfect, they have nice terrain, lotsa forests, nice display of buildings and bushes everywhere, then they decided to give us more and better and Nogova turned out bald and felt empty , now they want even bigger environments and i wonder if that will sacrifice more detail from the terrains , i know many like planes and jets and want to fly @ mach 2 but what about infantry? Or jungle in nam, can they create dense jungle in a endless map? with decent colision detection and cliping probs fixed? They should keep the size and improve quality, we dont need bigger for most aspects of the game (infantry, armor and helos), even BF1985 huge mission only uses what? less than half Nogova, hmmm .

[Drill Sergeant 0]

Well than I guess we still lose our oceans. No realistic VBSS or little islands in the middle of no where.

If it's only in the seventies I don't think it's worth buying either. What was happening in africa in the seventies?

Mabe the yomkipour (spelling) war. The Kontras and blah blah blah. All the US was involed in in the seventies in africa was covert ops helping people use stingers to shoot russian aircraft out of the sky. And a few embasy problems but not much more. So OFP2 is a Vietnam game now. What a let down. Modern Delta Force and NAVY SEALs opperating with high tech eqipment in Sigon in the Hippy Days. They had better leave the addon system oppen and send all the tools out with the game when you buy the cd. Vietnam is a good setting it's just not verry modern or easy to adapt modern themes to. But who knows mabe they'll change the theme.

And if the terrian is unlimited can we have huge map of Vietnam and parts of Cambodia an Laos? And mabe part of china? Than I would buy it and rate it #1 Vietnam game.

As for the shooting down and destrying plaers when they leave the mision area that's not exactly a good idea either.

[ethereal 0]

They could make the map huge- not infinite, just bloody massive, but big enough so that it seems that it goes on nearly forever... tho I don't know how they would cut down on loading times... and then they should have a big notice when u get to the end saying 'congratulations dickhead... uve reached the edge of the map. Feel proud?'

at the end of the day, it doesn't matter hugely... I mean, doesn't the gameplay etc matter more?

[-TU--33ker 0]

We shouldn't start with this "Vietnam and africa sucks" stuff.

I'm confident and think that BIS will give us a game that pleases everyone who likes the first OFP. we shouldn't criticese it now because we know absolutely nothing about how it will really be!

[iNeo 0]

I hope the streaming terrain means kind of the same thing as the water in OFP1, which is infinite. Replace the water with land and jungle or whatever, and it will never end. No lame invisible walls or shoot-downs.

Oh and how much of OFP1 was about the Cold War except the campaign? With addons you will be able to create whatever scene you want, just like today.

[SmokeyPhalanx 0]

As long as they give us some good soldiers models... that was one of the biggest irritating things from OFP... I only care about good soldier models...

[Dubble0zero 0]

Isn't streaming terrain just a way of making the computor load the new terrain and forgett the old one as you diskover new areas, in other words, the computor doesn't have to load the whole map when a mission starts...

And if that was sucsessfully implented, we can in theory have the whole world in the game, it will just take a lot of HDD space...