Do you like Sahrani?

[dmarkwick 261]

I like the island. It encompasses most types of terrain you might be interested in (barring snow) and the area is huge enough so that any mission in any one terrain type can stay in more or less the same type of terrain.

The amount of detail is staggering, I don't know if this map is fully hand-crafted or whether they used some terrain generating algorithm (similar to Oblivion) then set down towns in the right places.

I suspect it might be a little of both, say a landmass generator, followed by some spray-on forests, vegetation & boulders, followed by placed buildings & roads. Not a bad effort at all.

If I had to critisise one area, it would be the high mountains in the north. IMO, they should either be lower, or craggier.

[Scrub 0]

If you look at the island as a series of zones to have diverse battles in, it rocks. If you look at it as a whole, not so much, but it still is awesome. I have had house to house, city to city, and massive open field tank battles that fit wonderfully in either the north or south. But the trouble comes when you try to have the north or south attack the other. Traveling from one to the other shows off the radical changes.

The island is beautiful - no doubt, and diverse and engaging. I simply think the problem arises when we expect it all to fit into our world.

[urbanwarrior 0]

sahrani is a great island, gives the best of both worlds, the airport in the north is a little basic but it can easily be modified with tarmac and better buildings. the mountainous regions are fun aswell if not very practical but they look great with the view distance cranked up, allthough i cant do this without suffering framerate slumps. one thing i really do want is winter on the north island, snow on the ground and trees would be great. the shape of the island is a bit crap though, there's only really one area to cross from north to south and thats corazol, if the island was a bit more parallel then cool big bridges could be used or causways, just an idea though, i'm sure islands or improved sahrani's will come soon after the tools are released

[opteryx 1562]

My biggest problem with Sahrani is the extreme contrast between the south and north in both architecture, topography and vegitation which seems unrealistic for such a small island.

My second annoyance is that there is no vast open landscapes with flat terrain, little to no objects/overgrowth/undergrowth etc. which would be awesome for turning up the view distance and having major armor and arial battles.

Other than that Sara is a pretty f**king nice island

[urbanwarrior 0]

My biggest problem with Sahrani is the extreme contrast between the south and north in both architecture, topography and vegitation which seems unrealistic for such a small island.

My second annoyance is that there is no vast open landscapes with flat terrain, little to no objects/overgrowth/undergrowth etc. which would be awesome for turning up the view distance and having major armor and arial battles.

Other than that Sara is a pretty f**king nice island  

i think the whole point of .sara was to give us multiple enviroments on one huge island, if it wasn't then they would have given us 2 or 3 islands like ofp. the storyline of an island at war is shaky at best anyway, i think the developers knew the selling point of their game would be the editor and so giving us the huge expanse and variable playing area that is on sahrani is quite deliberate, although some people have made some good points on the unbalanced nature of the island in terms of resources and facilites ( airports, ports) however i think that can be addressed quickly as i mentioned before with the landing strip in the north

[mr reality 0]

My biggest problem with Sahrani is the extreme contrast between the south and north in both architecture, topography and vegitation which seems unrealistic for such a small island.

Although there are many posts in here that i agree with, this one pretty much sums it up.

As others have already mentioned, the Mountains are nice to look at but offer next to no playability for mission creation and the larger towns are not good for anything other than MP. I think it was Ironsight who also mentioned the roads, i've seen some roads just end then there's a gap and the road starts again in a differant direction. Like others have said, there's something wrong but i can't figure it out.

What i don't understand is what somebody mentioned about BIS deliberatly making South Sharani and North Sharani complete opposites. BIS know that the modding community will make new islands so i can't figure out why BIS thought it was a good idea.

I would of much prefered Sharani to be all like the southern part because were getting the original islands when Cold war Rearmed is completed so that will satisfy my appetite for conifers.....

[Daniel 0]

Quote[/b] ]BIS know that the modding community will make new islands so i can't figure out why BIS thought it was a good idea.

So us modders already have both a woodland and desert catalogue at our disposal once the tools arrive.

[zee-ub00r-assi 0]

i think about 40% of the landscape of north sahrani are useless due to the high mountains and stuff ... of course , it looks realistic , but it just takes away too much space where there could be more towns , nice green fields and rolling hills , etc . .... maybe even a nice airport for the sla

[mr reality 0]

edit

I originally took [CAS]daniels post as sarcasm. My mistake...

[max power 21]

Nuts to your reality. Sarahni offers good variety in environments and I like it a lot. The textures when viewed from the air or the ground look quite stunning, and there is a lot of areas that are suitable for small ctf matches in my opinion. If this first island for ArmA could have been different, I'm not sure I would want it to be.

[MBot 0]

Another thing that I think really adds much to the character of the island is the fact that BIS has named geographic features like mountains, valleys, bays and forests. The names are well chosen and help to make Sahrani more lifelike. It just feels that Sahrani could actually be a small island somewhere in Latin America, the Caribbean or the middle Atlantic. Well done.

[Sosna 0]

The thing that annoys me most is some of the mountains. They make the terrain look almost cartoonish, like something I would expect to see in a fantasy game.

But otherwise it's a beautiful island, the terrain's up-close details look very realistic.

[Heatseeker 0]

I would rather have a large island (land mass) with an OPF style to it (with small towns, forests and farms) using art from the north and... an equally large dry map using desert and more barren terrain, bushlands and towns using the distinct architecture from the south.

As it is it feels like they couldnt decide wether to make an up to date OPF or a whole new game so they ended up wrapping diferent stuff together in a single island.

In OPF if someone wanted to make an "exotic" map they would need custom buildings, textures, vegetation and objects, in Arma its all in there .

[Dark_vityaz 0]

As Marek called his favourite island is Estrella,I totally agree with him.Such a lovely place. We couldn't see places like that,to say,in Everon or Nogova(though i like em and now).When map tool is out,i'd like Everon to join to Sahrani.

[berowe 0]

Now the but... my only real gripe is that there are too many steep bits.

This aspect of the island is what appeals to me most. I hate flat open areas where a single tank can control 5km2 of space just rotating around gunning things down. The hills and 'extreme' terrain features are exciting because they add to the tactical depth.

You complain that it restricts your maneuver options, but I think that is a huge plus. I hope that player made maps will be similar in this respect--

My only complaint are some of the northern mountains that seem to exist only to fill space that could be better filled with forests/cities/etc. It almost seems like they got bored with citybuilding and stuck the mountains in there.

[Daniel 0]

Quote[/b] ]I originally took [CAS]daniels post as sarcasm. My mistake...  

I can see why, seemed to make more sense when I typed it.  

I love the plateau to the east of North Sahrani, great flat and rocky combat area. And the farms to the south of the plateau. Would have been nice to see more useful and tactical areas like these to have engagements at, rather than the little villages separated by too-steep-for-combat gradients found on most of North Sahrani.

berowe

True, I hate large flat areas that a tank can easily control over infantry. But to me the steep areas are the other end of the extreme when used to that % of an island. What I love are flat-ish areas with good manouverability for vehicles, but also provides plenty of cover for infantry. Infantry fair better in real life because real life has a much more complex terrain model. Lots of hard cover over relativley flat areas in the form of rocks, small dips and ridges for troops to take cover and fire from.

[Guest Ti0n3r]

I like Sahrani, but not as much as I love Everon. That's probably cause of the ArmA campaign.

[bravo 6 0]

Sahrani is nice.. but not great in my opinion. Could be better.

Can't wait for more Islands.

[Greg147 0]

I personally hate Sahrani, but I can't even explain why. I used to look at the editor map of Everon or Malden and think 'I can make a mission there.' Anywhere on the map seemed a possibility, each and every farmhouse and valley, I could be walking through it on another mission, and a senario would form in my head, sometimes even a storyline for a whole campaign, just from seeing a single town or area.

But with Sahrani, I've got nothing. It's just a big island with not much to do. It may have huge cities, but whats the point when the AI still have troubles with simple waypoints etc? I look up a hill, and just know that I could be shot from a guy standing at the top, as theres almost no little ditches or random changes in contors. Theres no rivers like Nogova, nowhere near as many little military bases as Kolgujev, and, despite being bigger, it feels smaller than any of the OFP islands.

I prefer south sahrani to north, simply as north seems so dull and boring. At least the south has power cables, radio masts and other little details.

Sahrani just doesn't inspire me as much as the OFP islands.

[bravo 6 0]

Sahrani just doesn't inspire me as much as the OFP islands.

i agree.

lets pray for better islands in future.

!No disrespect for Sahrani creators.

[Heatseeker 0]

There are some nice places in the north (powercables too) but they are few and i always end up in a place that i wish was...diferent. More Farm land and forests is what i would like to find.

Sahrani would have been better if it was all lush or all dry but if that was the case we wouldnt have so much diferent material to use in future islands, from this perspective its great that Sahrani is how it is .

[ziiip 1]

I used to look at the editor map of Everon or Malden and think 'I can make a mission there.' Anywhere on the map seemed a possibility, each and every farmhouse and valley, I could be walking through it on another mission, and a senario would form in my head, sometimes even a storyline for a whole campaign, just from seeing a single town or area.

It' pretty much the reverse for me. The OFP islands were too small and they did not have insteresting landscaped, but Sahrani (more like Norther-Sahrani) is amazingly cool.

[Smokki 0]

I found Sahrani to be far better than OFP islands not to mention Nogova. Sure Everon is my all time favourite CTI map and Malden is nice too in many ways.

What I don't understand is why Nogova is great in any way? It was too big (regarding the use of space) and boring, had some realy stupid city design and some forests were just...well...boring. Nogova just seemed like randomly generated piece of nothing.

Thats why I like Sahrani. City design is realistic, forests are so cool looking I could go camping there. Everywhere I look I found something interesting. You should just take a offroad and drive around Sahrani to see how huge improvement it is   .

The difference between north and south Sahrani is a bit "rough" yes but I don't cares as long as it works.

[MamiyaOtaru 1]

Sahrani looks nice, but I do have issues with it.  As was mentioned, all the forests are on hillsides.  There are maybe one or two flatter areas with some woods (Pita, Hunapu), but mostly they are on slopes, which means ridiculous exaggerated slopes like one almost never sees in real life.  

exhibit A:

Full size (Pico de Perez looks ridiculous)

[opteryx 1562]

exhibit A:

Full size (Pico de Perez looks ridiculous)

Come visit Norway, nothing unusual about that

Now I would agree with that if that was grass hills made of earth it certainly looks weird, but notice there's a rock texture there which seems pretty realistic compared to the topography where I live, I think the lack of "jaggedness" in the terrain where there's rock textures is the main factor making it appear unrealistic.