the world in ARMA

[Col. Faulkner 0]

Proceedural worlds have been used for a long time, I can think of two examples over ten years old : "Starflight" (1986) and "Daggerfall" (1996). I think proceedural world generation will become more common again, given the increasing detail levels expected in games. It should be quicker to create an intelligent automated creation tool rather than manually placing objects given an certain world size and detail level. The problem is it requires smart programmers rather than object placing robots (us).

I used to play a RTS game called "Age of Empires" a few

years ago. It had a tool that allowed you to auto-generate

maps to play on. You could choose a basic theme and adjust

parameters for all sorts of things like elevation, water

coverage, tree cover etc.

[shinRaiden 0]

Not really possible or practical given this issue.

[deanosbeano 0]

Quote[/b] ]This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject.

i thought the header was quite a good start. just glad other makers of world mapping software never thought along those lines, there might not be any flight sims at all ,lol

[Hawke 0]

[...]If everyone in the community was to make their own bit of the world and all those bits they find interesting then it could be created in less than a year.[...]

had something similar in mind: merging some custom made islands into one file would be a first (and easy) step into the right direction. would be extremely cool if one could fly/drive from one island to another

[baddo 0]

Not really possible or practical given this issue.

Care to elaborate more?

If you mean that the game world would be too big for the floating point data types to simulate accurately. Do you know how does Armed Assault handle the size of the game world? What if it splits the game world into multiple simulation pieces to achieve better accuracy already?

[fasad 1]

I believe the basic problem is that a real time program can not efficiently make use of numbers of vastly different magnitudes. Consider that the earth's diameter is ~12,700,000 m, and a bullet is ~0.00556 m.

Failing all else, it is impossible to represent a spherical earth in ArmA, which uses a flat square grid to define terrain.

[jerryhopper 285]

the idea is fun. but the world is waaaay to big to achive.

what could be a nice alternative is parts of the world.

lets narrow it down....

Idea : We could slice up the worldmap.

The surface area of Earth is about 10 exponent 15  m2 ( this includes the oceans etc.)

(An exponent tells you how many times the base number is used as a factor. )

if sahrani is 400 km2, go figure how many maps would it take to cover the world?

thats about  : 250 000 000 000 000 maps

lets say that 75% of the world is covered in water, that leaves us. 62 500 000 000 000 maps needed in the size of sahrani. ( isnt that 62 biljon maps? )

note : i suck at math

[simba 0]

" 10 exponent 15 m2 " this seems to be a little too much

according to wikipedia : earth land area = 148 939 100 km2;

if sahrani is 400 km2;

we need 372 447,75 maps !

a more realistic project could cover let's say ... Luxembourg we would only need 6,466 maps to make it

and less than one map to make a campain "guba in Monaco"

a WW2 campain in ardennes would be more interesting tough.

[lt.chris 0]

lol id laugh to see how CTIS on a map of earth would be like on the attuide of the players, like this for example

"wheres the enemy base"

"its in some large allyway in new york USA"

"dang we gotta travel from china now, thats gonna take 15 hours to travel to there"

[baddo 0]

I believe the basic problem is that a real time program can not efficiently make use of numbers of vastly different magnitudes. Consider that the earth's diameter is ~12,700,000 m, and a bullet is ~0.00556 m.

That's why we should get an answer from the programmers of Armed Assault, what do they think would be a maximum world size in the game. Also there could be a system in place in the game which splits the game world into multiple simulation sections. I think we don't know that before we get answers from a BIS programmer. Also I think we are not talking about modeling the Earth on a 1:1 scale anymore as it is very clear that it is out of our reach, it would need to be scaled smaller.

the world is waaaay to big to achive

That's why I said make it on a smaller scale. We can have all the continents in the game if we scale them down to a reasonable size. Then put some major cities from all continents in and that would be fun enough. Like for example the continent of America could be fitted into a world equal to Sahrani (and extent it to fit the rest, maybe leaving out some ocean to make it smaller).

[charonos 0]

Let's talk about feasability.

I'm sure BIS did not make a world-map,

because they always stated that ArmA is primarily an infantry combat simulation. So transport times from one continent to the other would annoy most players, i mean who wants to watch himself getting transported in a ship for two weeks in front of his screen if he just wants action.

Only for planes this would make sense (as in FS2004), which is not the focus of ArmA.

Simplified real-world locations with so-called POIs (Points of Interest) as individual maps as mentioned before in this thread will probably be done by some island creators and i encourage that, could be exciting.

[EricM 0]

A 1/10th or 1/20th scale model could be nice for selected countries. Things are still "far" but its a matter of minutes rather than hours to get from one point to another.

[kegetys 2]

I believe the basic problem is that a real time program can not efficiently make use of numbers of vastly different magnitudes. Consider that the earth's diameter is ~12,700,000 m, and a bullet is ~0.00556 m.

That's why we should get an answer from the programmers of Armed Assault, what do they think would be a maximum world size in the game. Also there could be a system in place in the game which splits the game world into multiple simulation sections...

You can find out yourself that it doesn't work, simply setpos yourself in a helicopter to [10000000,0,50] for example an see how things go wrong due to the lack of accuracy. At that point there's some quite major problems visible, but smaller problems begin to appear much earlier. Every time you add one digit to the coordinates you lose one digit of accuracy from the other end.

Such a large map would not make much sense in an infantry game anyway in my opinion, most of it would need to be auto generated which would result in dull, repetetive and boring sceneries. I'd rather play in a smaller world with more realistic detail level.

[baddo 0]

...so it's one big simulation space then, not divided into multiple sections.

We could still have the world, or some continents, modeled on a smaller scale. What is an appropriate maximum size for a game world in Armed Assault, that is still unanswered.

[deanosbeano 0]

Quote[/b] ]You can find out yourself that it doesn't work, simply setpos yourself in a helicopter to [10000000,0,50] for example an see how things go wrong due to the lack of accuracy

at that co ord there is no problem (on normal settings) in either plane helo or as a man swimming, of course the map wont like it because of your postion in reffernce to the map, you will get lag spikes if you press m tho due to the cross trying to keep up with your position when you press m on a normal sahrani .

the problem would be if you went 100,000,000 not reccomended to try lol. hopefully this streaming terrain and bis`s step into perpetual gameplay all this will be possible oneday. like playing arma on google earth wouldnt it ?

to add to the big no no at the moment ,consider the mass map approach, kabul in afghanistan was imported to ofp that one single dem had 2 million + faces so the numbers will be extra ordinary

[dentist guba 0]

i guess for now we will have to make some kind of smaller version(e.g just making,say, a city). the idea i like the sound of is the compressed world map made up of miniturised continents. this would be similar to the way GTA maps are made.

the issues that would still have to be overcome for it to work:

1:it needs to be or seem 3D-you need to be able to move all the way around it seamlessly(i.e not get to an edge and then teleport to the other side obviously)

2:if it was 3D the curvature might cause a problem(horizon 50m away) but i suppose this could be sorted by just making it a flat map with code to make it stream as if it was a sphere.

this might also allow you to have space around this world (generated in a similar way to the sea) however, you would probably have to make code that makes the earth visible as a lower detailed object once you get to a certain height.

[dentist guba 0]

1:could someone give us a figure of how big it is possible to make a map in ARMA, this is the first thing we kneed to know.

2:if you are interested in helping with this(if you want to help with the scripting stuff or just want to make your own part of the earth (e.g your town), please make a post in this topic so we can get an idea of numbers. the main thing this needs is a good coder to make the world stream as if it is 3D(so you can go all the way around the earthin any direction.

[fasad 1]

Map size - I believe the engine is capable of displaying maps of arbitrary size, however I would expect that floating point precision will become a limiting factor with map edges in the order of x10^6 m (<1000km). With current map making processes it would take thousands of lifetimes worth of man-hours to complete a map that size.

Spherical landscape idea - not possible without buying BI or their engine. It would take months of re-coding to change the engine to a 3d world.

I think it's time to focus on how the engine works, then figure out the best way to get the effect you want given the resources at your disposal.

[dentist guba 0]

1:

Quote[/b] ]x10^6 m (<1000km)

10^6= 1000000 not 1000-which did you mean.

2:

Quote[/b] ]Spherical landscape idea - not possible without buying BI or their engine. It would take months of re-coding to change the engine to a 3d world

would it be possible for the game to teleport you back to the other side when you get to an edge(well, near an edge)-i believe this games map system works by having endless seas around the actual main map. so this could be left as it is and the edge of the world map could be calculated and somehow this "line" could teleport you to the corresponding position on the other side of the map. this would still need a good bit of coding but should be possible. the placement system uses co-ordinates right(x,y and z) so maybe, to move you to the right place it could just change one of the co-ordinates. e.g when you got to the east edge, it would only change the east/west co-ordinates-retaining the north/soth ones.

another thing, is it possible to edit the ARMA co-orinates/their effect on weather e.t.c to fit this mod. this is only a minor thing though.

[fasad 1]

1000000m = 1000km

Warping units from one edge of the world to to the other will be very easy to do. The poles would be a slightly harder, as you will also need to change the units heading (preferably without player units noticing). It's just a bit of maths.

other thing: I believe it is possible (definitely was in OFP) for different clients to have completely different time and weather settings. You could make it day in europe and night in hawaii, at the same time.

[dentist guba 0]

sorry, didnt realise you meant meters.

Quote[/b] ]other thing: I believe it is possible (definitely was in OFP) for different clients to have completely different time and weather settings. You could make it day in europe and night in hawaii, at the same time.

would it be possible to have this co-ordinate related so it could be pretty much exact. also, would it be possible to do the same thing for one person-e.g in single player could you see time of day different in different places-(i think BI's co-ordinate system already does this but the distance these co-ordinates would have to be changed somehow.

just to make it totally clear fasad-did you mean 1000x1000 or 1000 km^2 total area.

[EricM 0]

BIS claims that VBS2, based on same engine as Arma, can have maps of 100km*100km, which is for the mathematical challenged : 10000 km^2, hence 25 times the actual landmass of Armed Assault (400km^2).

I guess that's the theoretical limit of the engine.

If that's true then a 10th scale country makes sense (would be hell of a work though...)

Quote[/b] ]Real Virtuality 2" 3D engine. The VBS2 game engine has been entirely developed by Bohemia Interactive, and is capable of rendering large terrain areas (up to 100km x 100km) with an impressive level of detail.

[dentist guba 0]

and, for anyone who hasnt got ARMA(including myself) this space would be equal to 100X!! the area of Nogova /from west to east it would equal 10X Nogova.

As for the 10th scale countries they migt have to be something like 100th scale as a 10th scale world would probably take up about 3000km east-west.

this would still be huge but i'm guessing you could possibly generate the terrain to start with, then build on this. it also wouldnt be exactly to scale-if it was mount everest would probably be tiny but it would be a good representative of the world.

[dentist guba 0]

and, for anyone who hasnt got ARMA(including myself) this space would be equal to 100X!! the area of Nogova /from west to east it would equal 10X Nogova.

As for the 10th scale countries they migt have to be something like 100th scale as a 10th scale world would probably take up about 3000km east-west.

this would still be huge but i'm guessing you could possibly generate the terrain to start with, then build on this. it also wouldnt be exactly to scale-if it was mount everest would probably be tiny but it would be a good representative of the world.

[EricM 0]

Quote[/b] ]As for the 10th scale countries they migt have to be something like 100th scale as a 10th scale world would probably take up about 3000km east-west.

I meant "European Sized" countries, not Russia, Canada, Brazil or USA

France is roughly 550 000km^2 -

Great Britain about 210 000 km^2

Germany about 360 000 km^2

A 10th scale means you divide all length by 10, right ?, so that in effect the surface is divided by 100, so :

Mini-France : 5500 km^2

Mini-Great-Britain : 2100 km^2

Mini-Germany : 3600 km^2

At most, mini-France would be only half the size of the 10000 km^2 advertised in by BIS.

EDIT : Sorry, misread your post. Yes, if you wanted all the countries on ONE map for the whole world it should be 1/400th (Equator = 40 000 km - max map = 100 km)