Proper Urban Envirenments

[Gimpster 0]

Is anyone else alittle let down by the fact that few of the buildings in ArmA can be entered? I know I am. I was hoping that the New Island and Modern Sharani would feature less of the block like buildings we have now and more that can be entered. The Pics I have seen lead me to believe that this is not when we will be getting. Instead it looks like its more of the same old blocks that are dressed to look like a building but lack any form of tactical significants. Very sad in dead for an Infantry Combat Simulator.

[Sevan 0]

right now the AI doesn't have a good capability to use buildings. Even if all building were enterable they would not have the tactical change you want.

[xxbbcc 6]

I'd still be able to use it. And I guess MP people would be happy about it, too.

[Dynamax 0]

right now the AI doesn't have a good capability to use buildings. Even if all building were enterable they would not have the tactical change you want.

ha, many times i had enemy AI come up through a building to take me out.

they first send one guy, if i kill him they send in two and so on.

i was on the roof top of the factory building, the enemy AI came up the main stairwell and also used the catwalk and ladders to get to me.

i do agree that the AI isnt the best, but it sure does have its wow moments.

[volkov956 0]

I have also witness the AI go up in a Apartment BUilding, Climb the ladder then try and shoot me from the adjacent building. I was wathcing the AI during the whole thing from the adjacent building coulda shot him earlier but was interesting to watch.

[opteryx 1562]

Well I am in the process of making a huge city a' la the same size as VBS As Samawah, and I would would love it if any 3d modelers could release a building pack I could implement. There's very little variation in buildings to choose from, especially if you're going with a ME style map, but then again I'm not to sure how good the extra resources on buildings with interiors would be for big cities.

[troop 0]

Question:

Is it possible to create an unique (smaller?) island with, say

100-150 enterable buildings? (think desert town)

Would ArmA even be able to handle this amount of buildings

at all or would it totally crumble? Playable vs non-playable FPS?

Not sure, but is this an (power of) CPU thing, (power of) GFX-card

+ avaiable memory thing, or (ArmA-objects) limitations thing?

If not 100-150, what *is* the limit?

[opteryx 1562]

Terrain size is not an issue in ArmA unless you're utilizing a complex heightmap in conjunction with a high view distance, the resource hog is scene complexity.

-edit-

ArmA can handle several thousands of buildings at once on decent rig, so a few hundred enterable buildings shouldn't be an issue. This is of course not taking other objects into consideration.

[Balschoiw 0]

Hmmm...

speaking as someone who does not have an ultraequipped computer I would say that it indeed would be very ressource hungry to set up a city consisting of hundreds of houses. The fact that Arma streams the terrain does little here as the densitiy of textured objects would be very high in such an environment and therefore the program would be constantly loading textures whenever you move or change the direction you´re looking to. This is indeed very ressource consuming as the amount of data would be very high. I do already experience texture-loading delays in the Arma villages and towns at some point. The texture memory is filled up and the method implemented to clear the texture memory seems to be a bit flawed. It results in delays ( buildings look untextured for some moments). I guess this is a remain of the old OFP and Elite engine that are not that optimized to handle large amounts of texture data. It works up to a point, but if you have lots of movement going on you will at one point see a game-slowdown and delays in texture loading as the memory of the gfx card gets filled up.

Unless the texture loading and storage system in Arma gets a renovation I am sceptical about the ingame performance within towns with hundreds of buildings.

[Snake Man 407]

Gimpster started this topic mostly talking about houses where you can enter, but since the discussion moved into rather large cities and the topic title still gives some room: Proper Urban Envirenments.

While not proper really as the cities are incomplete, but to demonstrate the large size, why not test it yourself with PMC WRP Demo islands?

PMC WRP Demo islands

[troop 0]

@Balschoiw ^

Thats exactly why I asked. Thanks for the excellent

explanation of possible problems.

-

Right now, if you look around in the middle of an town, you

already can run into explained problems with texture loading

based on scene complexity/detail.

And that is with non-enterable buildings. If you now take into

consideration, just *how* much more details (windows/lookthrough/interiors! )

would have be to displayed at all times (turning) you would

imagine the problems present now already could only become (very much?) worse.

-

All I could think of to handle/counter this would be *very* dense

cities with very limited possible viewing range (so the machine

still would be able to (only) render the immediate surroundings

of the player;..but how about wider areas (where a much greater

deal of details would have be to displayed all time), let alone *flying*

over such city? Wouldnt this kill *every* machine?

-

Nevertheless;..I'd really love to play in an small town with

100-150 buildings..and if they were (also) AI-navigation friendly,

all the better. Just beginning to sweat thinking about it..

Edit: Snake Man; thanks! I will definetely try this one.

[alext223 0]

Yeah. It would be cool fun to go running around in a map like that. Would be nicer if it could run above 15fps and it would be fantastic if the AI could run through a building and take up a position in a window, all by themselves. And while still in group!

Who knows, this might be one of the many things we may find in "Game 2". Hurmph! Cough!........

[Col. Faulkner 0]

Who knows, this might be one of the many things we may find in "Game 2". Hurmph! Cough!........

"Game 20" more like! Hurmph! Cough!

[Heatseeker 0]

I agree about more enterable buildings, there are almost none to be found in south sahrani.

But i dont see the need to open every single one in a large city.

I dont even use the cities that much since they are only suitable for adversarial gameplay.. and i dont really care about mout/cqb, i didnt in OPF and i honestly dont in Arma.

The Sahrani large towns are demanding but there is more to them than just the buildings, there are many diferent objects, sidewalks, walls, signs and vegetation and the game has to load it all. Less cluttered layouts should play and perform better.

And no more 256 max objects crap out limitation! RIP OPFR .

[ArmaVidz 0]

I agree about more enterable buildings, there are almost none to be found in south sahrani.

But i dont see the need to open every single one in a large city.

I dont even use the cities that much since they are only suitable for adversarial gameplay.. and i dont really care about mout/cqb, i didnt in OPF and i honestly dont in Arma.

The Sahrani large towns are demanding but there is more to them than just the buildings, there are many diferent objects, sidewalks, walls, signs and vegetation and the game has to load it all. Less cluttered layouts should play and perform better.

And no more 256 max objects crap out limitation! .

As someone who has pimped their rig out for arma, I would greatly appreciate something like this.

Urban Combat will be a focus in the coming months. I for one, would love a hardcore city with lots of enterable buildings to stress my computer out hehe.

It would be especially nice to have open windows/doors/balcony's on all four sides of the building (or three sides w/e hehe).

[Commando84 0]

im would be intresting with sort of capture the island but have special areas in the city that needs to be captured, like a church , a cross roads, a power generator, police station, ect.. and then Ups script that is used on every troops that are not in guard mode holdng positions in buildings. or maybe 40 players or more could battle it out with cars, infantery and apc's and a transport helo or two