Maps and locations

[OIK 0]

Hi

Im sure this topic will be closed but before that i hope that i can receive some answeres or thoughts.

Why cant BIs use real maps or locations like Iraq(Fallujah),

Bagdhad (some parts of the city know for heavy insurgent resistance ) etc..

Sahrani dont tell me nothing , sorry for that but this is my opinion.

The game would be much more instresting if we fought in the same places that war goes on today.

[l etranger 5]

BIS must think it is morally better to not reproduce real conflicts. They want to be neutral.

[Redkid Joker 0]

It is alot harder to replicate conflicts than to make them up.

[codarl 1]

Game2 (BIS's next game) was first going to focus on the vietnam war. However, after Maruk (the mind behind OFP) had interviewed some veterans, he believed using real wars, were real people sufered traumas from, was impolite.

Personally, I dont care, if a conflict is well-thought up, it'l suck you in nontheless. plus, you'd rather play the role of germans in a WO3 scernario, then in WO2, because you know in WO2 they lost .

[crashdome 1]

The game would be much more instresting if we fought in the same places that war goes on today.

Why don't you just go join the military?

It is alot harder to replicate conflicts than to make them up.

What? How could it be harder when you have everything (possibly in great detail) right in front of you? I understand research is difficult, but to have a believable yet fictional story is golden.

[dmitri 0]

I'm relieved it isn't an actual setting. The game would date quickly and be forever associated with the conflict it attempted to recreate.

[j w 0]

If you're in the interest of replicating real-life war as we have today, I'd point you here

http://www.virtualbattlespace.com

JW

BTW: If you're military you can buy Bagdad Green Zone as map for VBS

<span id='ME'><center>J W keeps quiet about VBS</center></span>

[NeMeSiS 11]

Sahrani dont tell me nothing , sorry for that but this is my opinion.

You actually thought it was a real country?

[Redkid Joker 0]

What? How could it be harder when you have everything (possibly in great detail) right in front of you? I understand research is difficult, but to have a believable yet fictional story is golden.

If you plan to replicate a conflict and make it true to life, you need to have everything exactly as it was, and that is impossible.

[OIK 0]

Sahrani dont tell me nothing , sorry for that but this is my opinion.

You actually thought it was a real country?

Ofcourse not thats what im trying to say here.

I rate mostly real maps and real locations in games.

[Big Dawg KS 6]

If it feels real, that's all that matters to me.

[max power 21]

Let's first look at the physical demands of what you're asking. So you want an iraqi conflict. Iraq is a country in asia minor. It is the 58th largest country in the world, with an area of 438,317 kmË›. Baghdad alone has an area of 204.2 kmË›. Sarahni, the largest sandbox given to an fps to my knowledge, is 400 kmË›. Now, you could theoretically have a map that is Baghdad and the surrounding area, but the detail required to do so would probably not be playable. I say probably because I don't know, I don't know how ArmA runs. In OFP something like that would be unthinkable. Also, Iraq is not an island. What do you do when you get to the edge of the limits of ArmA's engine in terms of map size? Make a forcefield? In OFP it was just featureless water. I'm not even sure that you can have land at the outskirts of the map. Even if you could, it would not be possible to have neighbouring towns reachable from where you are. At least when they make the maps islands, there's an excuse why you can't drive to the next country!

[xnodunitx 0]

Agreed. Not to mention if reality places are made,they are usually done by the community and nothing will stop the community from continuing to do so unless they chose. I for one am rather glad BIS went ahead and made of a fictional conflict,usually when a war game comes out its simply a war of bartering off the current conflict in the real world,BIS did not do that.

[coderdfox 0]

One word....MODS

[BraTTy 0]

Not to mention one good reason they don't use a real land is because we want it realistic as possible.

People would be hammering the mistakes they made if they tried to replicate

People nitpick at such little things, imagine if they placed a tree in the wrong place, they would never hear the end of it

On the same note, small errors could ruin the whole thing

[wheres my rabbit ? 10]

yer and think of the problems of modelling invisible weapons of mass destruction...how would bis know what they looked like ??

[buddhiraja73 0]

I like the concept of a fictional place that BIS is using. It has a few major advantages. If the game were made on the Iraq conflict then the types of terrain available will be severely limited to desert and that type of cities and villages. If it were Vietnam then it will be jungles. Saharani is allowing BIS to give us temperate vegetation ( North Saharani ), tropical vegetation ( South Saharani ), mountains, deserts, two types of cities and villages for the north and the south, dense forests as well as lighter woods etc. Such variation is not easy to get in a 'real life conflict location'.

Also, a more interesting story is possible in a fictional place like Saharani rather than in a real life conflict.

[chipper 0]

Why can't BIS make my life easier?

[Shashman 0]

OFP and ArmA are your life. BIS is improving OFP with ArmA, BIS is improving your life... Go forth and spread the Gospel

[frederf 0]

You must listen to and repeat after me, Neo:

Iraq is make believe and Sahrani is real. Only when you realize this can you truly begin to understand the Matrix.

[crashdome 1]

What? How could it be harder when you have everything (possibly in great detail) right in front of you? I understand research is difficult, but to have a believable yet fictional story is golden.

If you plan to replicate a conflict and make it true to life, you need to have everything exactly as it was, and that is impossible.

I think that is over-thinking it. I've played many of games that recreated as close as possible a battle or small conflict. The only difficulty might be in the number of types of units. For example, if this was "Yet Another Nam" game, BIS would have made all the necessary units to recreate the battle/conflicts as needed. The only difficulty would have been looking at a detailed battle map and placing units accordingly and hoping balance comes out well enough that tweaking is minimal. No need to write any story... it is already written.

Now make up an island, a history, a culture - that is believeable.... THAT is truly difficult. On top of that, you still need to place units, ensure balance, etc..etc..

------

Actually, I eat my own words ... I was going to write further but I am now believing it is equally difficult. However, I still stand that as far as entertainment goes a fictional story/location/etc is by far more entertaining. Real war is never entertaining.

[mickuzy 0]

how bad would u feel if some guy from a war that u tried to represent came up and was like 'man i lost everything in that war and now your trying to show it as being fun, what the hell is the problem with u?'

[dmitri 0]

Introducing a real conflict would mean having to deal with the real world politics surrounding that conflict. This would detract from what ArmA is - a military sim.

[Adam192 0]

Quote[/b] ]If the game were made on the Iraq conflict then the types of terrain available will be severely limited to desert and that type of cities and villages.

Agreed.

It's neat that the game offers a variety of environemnts in a single setting. You couldn't do that with someplace like Iraq.

The whole thing would get sort of stale, very quickly .

[dm 9]

Why cant BIs use real maps or locations like Iraq(Fallujah),

Bagdhad (some parts of the city know for heavy insurgent resistance ) etc..

The simple reason is technological:

* Object count (Number of objects the engine can cope with)

* Object density (Number of objects per square meter the engine can cope with)

* Poly count (Ability to model every object to a high enough level of fidelity)

* Texture count (Number of textures the engine can load)

If you look at Sahrani, the object count and desnity is going to be 1/1000th that of the real world, at best. Game engines simply can not handle the object count and density to create entire areas of terrain the size of a small city, let alone a larg city or a whole country.

Sahrani dont tell me nothing , sorry for that but this is my opinion.

The game would be much more instresting if we fought in the same places that war goes on today.

Personally speaking, I think an island like Sahrani is better than any real world data. Just like Tonal, Sahrani was built from the ground up to contain more features and variety than a real world location.

Like people have already said, fighting over and over and over in a desert town environment gets a bit boreing after a while, fighting somewhere like Tonal or Sahrani is different because you have both desert and "green" (jugnle/woodland) environments to use.