Arabia-BETA

[loony 0]

bueh... IMHO ( !! ) this island is one big crap  

sad but true  

[olemissrebel 0]

I have no problem with you calling it shit, but at least say what you don't like about it, there's always room for improvement

[TwentyFourSeven 0]

I really like this map, those white buildings with the interior rooms for house searches are great.  

Cant think of much to improve apart from maybe a few more elevated peaks and a couple more river crossings with reeds in the water eh eh and a larger main large town.

good work on this, spacious with plenty of mission potential which is what maps are all about. thx

[zulu1 145]

Quote[/b] ]This is spoken like a typical consumer, I think that the credits are the only currency that will pay the addonmaker for all the work he invested in addons.  As soon an addon is released to public it is only polite to mention the used addons, instead of including them in the download without a word of mention in the thread nor in the readme.  I think that this kind of opinion shouldnt be considered critic on the map itself, but rather on how its presented.  

Not at all. I was trying to speak from an addon makers perspective who put many hours into providing stuff to the OFP public just to get shot down over incidential oversites. I could see if we had to pay for addons you could expect a more complete job done. Heck I've seen some that had such mismatches in weapons & ammo you needed to edit the configs just to get them to work, something a quick check by the maker would spot right away. Sure I'd love to see a readme file packed in the archive or in the PBO itself explaining what addons are required and crediting those addon makers.

I feel I'm getting way offtopic here. Just don't want to see good quality addons held back for fear of flamming by the public.

[loony 0]

I have no problem with you calling it shit, but at least say what you don't like about it, there's always room for improvement

So:

1. why the parkings are made with the roads?  

2. island is too big... make it smaller and add more details (plants, bases with Barracken etc.)

3. make more, bigger and detailed (? my english is bad :P) towns and cities

4. what about destroyed buildings? make one or two 'dead cities'

but somethings details are great

[olemissrebel 0]

Quote[/b] ]1. why the parkings are made with the roads?

2. island is too big... make it smaller and add more details (plants, bases with Barracken etc.)

3. make more, bigger and detailed (? my english is bad :P) towns and cities

4. what about destroyed buildings? make one or two 'dead cities'

1. Because I felt like it.

2. It's not that it's too big or too small. It's made using satellite images of an actual place; It's the way it is in real life.

3. The towns are big enough, as they are the general size, and cover the general area of the pictures that were used. As far as details go, if you read the first post, it's a BETA release. I'd say it's already a lot more detailed than most bogus islands out there. You can see the largest town isn't finished, more buidlings will be added here and there, but there's no sense in creating an insanely large town, it would just end up a lag fest.

4. If you'd actually taken the time to look around, you would have found some destroyed villages. It makes no sense to have a random totally destroyed town. Wars, mother nature, etc destroy towns, yet people usually build them back. If you want to see more destroyed towns, make your own map, so long as you don't edit my version.

[Kin Hil 0]

Thank you for this. I don't even mind the unfinished/empty locations, as I can add my own buildings and objects and it works good. I really like the checkpoints. Maybe on the future release you can militarize the area even more, add some bunkers etc.

[TYsiEK 0]

The whole island is perfect but too much roads. AI have big problems with moving through the city's. I tested it using FFUR 2006 mod. I didn't test it on original OFP:R. Original I mean mod free version.

[dr_chris 10]

This island is fantastic for MP with humans (AI driving goes a bit to poop with the amount of roads, but I love it the way it is) and the huge area combined with low FPS makes it ideal for convoys and long distance missions. It adds a lot more freedom to desert combat and allows for some brilliant firefights and other missions.

Absoloutely fantastic, great job.

[olemissrebel 0]

New Version will be available within the hour, check the first post then

[hitsqdzulu 0]

WOW ....This is one well thought out Island ....Thank you very much .....I have put it on Fraghaus server already ....It plays great ....come by and give it a try ....Thank again Olemissrebel

[m@ster 0]

New Version will be available within the hour, check the first post then

3:54 .....

Waiting

[olemissrebel 0]

Arabia Beta #2:

Download Link:

http://rapidshare.de/files/36290288/Arabia__BETA_2_.exe.html

Download Link # 2:

http://www.ofp-arma.cznhl.com/downloads/addons_islands.php

From the README:

Quote[/b] ]

Changes, et cetera:

-Northern Country-  A soviet funded dictatorship.  Brown buildings.  Soviet era military facilities.

-Southern Country- A small, yet wealthy democratic country funded by the United States. White buildings, a nice modern airport, and modern military

facilities reflect this countrys greater wealth.

-Many objects were replaced, and thousands of new ones added, mainly vegitation.

-All lights were replaced by those found in MAPFACTS excellent Baracken addon.

TO DO:

I might possibly make use of MAPFACTS oiladdon.  You can trust when they are added they will be in their proper, and true-to-life places, as per the

rest of the already placed objects.

All required addons are included.  My apologies for not including the original readme's, but if I'm ever going to finish this island, I honestly don't have time to re download ALL of the addons just to get their read mes.  After I'm finished, I will, until then, sorry.

[m@ster 0]

Best Desert Island !

Screenshots from ( BETA 1 ) !

Arabia ( beta 2 ) Download here ( 53.58 MB )

[olemissrebel 0]

Make sure and comment on what you think, check out the mine in the southernmost (middle) town on on the sea. It's to the bottom left of the town.

[Rikki Tikki Tavi 0]

Looks awesome, very realistic. It's obvious you put some thought into rather than just randomly placing towns, roads, and ruined buildings across an island.

[olemissrebel 0]

Roll Tide... and also, those screenshots up there are NOT of the most recent version.

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Nice stuff, Olemiss. Quite enjoyed blasting across your island in an MH6. Looks just like the real thing (well, as far as I know).

[noccie 0]

I really like this island, it feels like a real middle east map. Think this is mostly thanks to the straight, neverending roads into nowhere (Just like most desertcountries build them) and the large landmass (It was fun entereing the bridged island to the East ,thinking it was small . But finding out that it actually took quite some time to cross)

But i have some small remarks which could improve the island in the next version.

First the land is sometimes too flat. Both parts of the desert, the greener centre and the mountain plateau's feel like they were flattened by steamrollers till u could play biljart on them.

A little bit of elevation changes (just 0.5-1m) would make it feel much more natural and alive. There are parts on your island where this is done to great effect, so i know u can do it

(even if those parts look flat on a sattelite photo..they are never completely flat in real life)

Secondly the salt pans look wrong. The layout is done fine ,but the salt itself isnt right. The pans closest to the sea are usually full of seawater and pumped to the next basin when they are partly evaporated. This is repeated till it reaches the last basin where it is left to totally dry out. So the water in the 2nd and 3rd last basins usually is more of a white salty sludge and it wont dry in hills like on your map.

Here are 2 pics to illustrate how it usually looks:

http://i.photos.mwg.com/photos/i/f/f1105441227.jpg (this picture shows a partly dried out salt pan ..probably in the 2nd last or last basin)

http://www.btinternet.com/~roger.sleigh/images/full_size/saltpan.jpg

(this picture shows how the last pan looks when it is completely dried out, just before it gets "harvested")

I'm also not sure about the mine in the South. Is it really that shallow in real life? Think it would look nicer if it was a bit deeper, with 3 verry steep edges and a winding dirt road down to the bottom at the front.

Lastly the hangars u have used do create some lag when u get too close . This is mainly noticeable at the large compound in the center where my FPS went from 35 down to 12. (A64 3500+ /2gb ram/X1800XL)

I cant imagine having 30players and some AI in that zone without severe FPS and serverlag, but this has allready been covered in previous posts.

All in all a verry nice island and im sure the Final version will be even better

[olemissrebel 0]

You shouldn't have that much lag in that section, are you using DXDLL or another mod? I have a 512MB nvidia, 1.8 ghz centrino duo, and 1 GB ram, and I get no lag there. There's not much I can do about the salt, besides which bin it's in, as far as the winding road down the the mine goes, it's not big enough to do that, OFP terrain cells are too large.

[dr_chris 10]

Please don't make it too much more hilly. I was dead chuffed to find a map that wasn't covered in hills for once! People tend to add mountains/hills so that their maps look more technical, but it's nice to have some large, flat areas.

Desert areas can be VERY flat, more so than you would believe. I think the odd raised sand ridge/dune makes it good for combat, but the large open areas make it fantastic for desert engagements. In the larger open areas, you should have a minimum of 300-400metres of flat space that you can see that isn't covered in ridges that enemies can hide behind. Flat, open terrain is what makes desert fighting so difficult, and it's something I'd love to see in this sort of map.

[olemissrebel 0]

The terrain will not change at all, I am merely tweaking objects placement, deleting some, and addons others various places.

[dr_chris 10]

Fantastic. Very excited about getting this set up with some UKF missions!

[-HUNTER- 1]

The terrain will not change at all, I am merely tweaking objects placement, deleting some, and addons others various places.

I flew over the island a few times. Really really great for flying in missions themed iraq and such.

only little thing I noticed is that the bushes on both sides are copy pasted and only 2 different ones. Also they are all linear to each other.

But Im going to have lots of low level fun with jets here!

edit

or MP border patrol

[olemissrebel 0]

they arent copy pasted, i had originally put every type of BIS bush there, but replaced them with the only two there were in the DMA plant that even resembled something of the size. do you have any idea how long it would take me to place them all over again? i trust you like having a map it would never be released if i re did all of those bushes.