Map editor

[BUNNY 0]

Does anyone know what kind of map editor will there be for armed assault? The wrpedit wasn't exactly the most flexible one so I'm hoping there will be something else.

Sorry if this has been asked or mentioned before but there is too much to dig from in here.

[Callsign 128]

if you look on the community wiki it says we get visitor 4 so cant wait to make new arma islands!

bootneckofficer

[BUNNY 0]

Oh that! Thanks! Hmh, there seems to be no introduction of it :/ Guess I have to be patient...

[Pierrot 0]

How can you map editors import actual topography into the map for ArmA?

[wamingo 1]

Think you convert your topology data to a heightmap (photoshop eg) and import it in visitor which converts it to a mesh.. or something along those lines.

[Pierrot 0]

Think you convert your topology data to a heightmap (photoshop eg)

Thanks. You mean a bitmap file which is black-and-white?

Then how can you set 0 meter (the horizon) in the black-and-white bitmap file?

[BUNNY 0]

Maybe it is then gray, 50% black. I'm not sure.

[wamingo 1]

yeah a grayscale image. visitor will define how high/low pure black/white is, where the water level is and so.

[l etranger 5]

It seem there is also Editing option ingame, that allow you to setup vertex manually etc...

[Metal Heart 0]

It seem there is also Editing option ingame, that allow you to setup vertex manually etc...

Uh... What do you mean, like non-destructive editing of terrain data with the mission editor to alter the terrain for each mission invidually, manipulate terrain via scripting on-the-fly or that there's a built-in island editor?

I'd also really like to know what exactly made you think so because to me, all of that seems very unlikely.

[l etranger 5]

You can configure key for something called "bulldozer" wich allow many transformation like vertex manipulation (one key for each transformation).

For me it seem very likely, because how would they have done their multilevel city in slope without terrain glitch (you can see that the terrain is perfectly matched with buildings) ?

[Cannon Fodder 0]

That's a revelation! This is very important news for map and mission editors everywhere! Man, when people were given press copies to preview, why didn't we get crucial and genuinely ground breaking information like this?!

I definitely think it's time to provide a DECENT fan site, who have actually played the original game for more than 5 minutes, with the press demo so we get previews that don't tell us exactly the same irrelevant information every time and INSTEAD give us incredibly useful and exciting tidbits like this.

[Metal Heart 0]

I don't know, no matter how much I'd like to, going through the shots I can't come up with the same conclusions. There's some steep hills but they seem to be based on a large even-spaced grid just like OFP instead of free form. I would guess that the buildings are aligned to match the edges of this grid, not the other way around. Maybe I'm watching the wrong shots but whenever I see a building on a slope, it's either sinking into the ground or has a huge base in the model instead of having the land beneath it deformed to form the base.

Maybe the 'bulldozer' keys are just for some developement feature that will be disabled later or for accurately positioning objects in the mission editor? Bulldozer certainly does sound like it might have something to do with deforming though

[cobra@pulse 0]

Buldozer was the viewer for use with O2 and Visitor in OFP afaik

[Pierrot 0]

yeah a grayscale image. visitor will define how high/low pure black/white is, where the water level is and so.

I see.

Well I hear that a resolution of the Nogova map is 256x256 or 512x512. How large will ArmA support for the map? 1024x1024 or larger scale?

[Metal Heart 0]

It's not a resolution, it's the size (aka grid or the number of cells) of the map. 256 x 256 is the default size. Each cell is 50m x 50m so the default maps are 50m*256 = 12.8km per side. I think the maximum practical size for a map in OFP is 512x512 cells which is the size of Tonal. You can also use a smaller grid size but I guess it's just too heavy to be useful or causes some problems with the engine.

In ArmA there's this feature called terrain streaming which basicly means that you don't have to have all of the map in memory because it can be "streamed" when you move around so the map might not be limited to some arbitrary size at all.

[l etranger 5]

In ArmA there's this feature called terrain streaming which basicly means that you don't have to have all of the map in memory because it can be "streamed" when you move around so the map might not be limited to some arbitrary size at all.

If you play multiplayer, the server has to load the entire map data to not do any inaccurate computing.