Frame rate hit caused by jungle

[Nicholas Bell 0]

Sidewalks

Seriously. I've been working for 2 weeks on sidewalks. There are a fair number of photos available on the net showing the locale. Real estate websites too. I was expecting dirt-poor, mud roads, etc. Not so. Even the poor sections of town have curbs and sidewalks. The way things are going I'm going to down-grade some areas, otherwise I'll be doing sidewalks for the next month.

For anyone contemplating doing "large" urban areas, keep in mind that sidewalks are not designed to represent all real life intersections! Anything except right angles is going to be a royal pain the rear to cobble together. Nor do they handle towns that are built on slopes - the sidewalk pieces do not follow the contour of their subgrade, instead apparently setting themselves at the lowest point in their shape. In areas where the elevation changes quickly this results in the sidewalk being below the surface of the ground in parts.

All this makes me appreciate more what Opteryx accomplished with his Sakakah map. I'm spending 1-2 hours a day on this. I can only imagine what he has put in (and continues to).

More information than you probably wanted. But there is it.

[icebreakr 3157]

Thank you, I admire your dedication. Just remember that players won't have much time to admire the sidewalks, just make villas and small settlements and we're ready to roll around Bluefields :P =)

[gL33k 0]

My map of Bluefields, Nicaragua although small (5 km x 5 km) and over half water, is 2/3rds covered with jungle (most of the rest is the built-up area of the city). I have been using the random object placement script with 50-75% density and it looks pretty good, even if not quite heavy enough for real jungle. I am using a combination of trees and bushes to create the effect.

Although it works fine roaming around on my own, just having a a few dozen men and 8 vehicles standing around chops the frame rate on my 3+ year old single-core P4 3.6 Ghz (2 Gb RAM with NVidia 7950 GT 512mb video with graphic options on High). Flying over it is great, except for the 10 FPS! The map is not much use if one cannot put forces on it and play it reasonably smooth.

Any fellow long-suffering map makers willing to take a look at my map in-game and make some suggestions? Maybe set up a quick mission around the airstrip in the south to Maybe it's just my system and it will be useable. I suppose I could decrease the plant density and the number of species, but then it would hardly qualify as jungle, IMO. Considering the amount of time I've put into learning how to do this it would seem a terrible waste to walk away from it, but maybe that's the best choice. Maybe this is why there is such a plethora of desert terrain islands/maps - the system can't handle much more... I love the idea of fighting on actual terrain (within system constraints) but desert is desert, and we have plenty of that already. I've got a 10 km x 10 km height map of actual terrain in Germany ready to go, but if I can't model forests properly, there's no point...

I would appreciate your advice. The pbo file is available here:Bluefields Map on FileFront

can i ask you where can i grab this random object placement script ?

[Nicholas Bell 0]

Quote[/b] ]an i ask you where can i grab this random object placement script ?

Script Central Thread

[-IC-Wedge 0]

Just to share a few things that i do myself whilst island creating.

I normally take about 20 mins when i start to prep my island as i call it. I then pick an area of my island which i have not touched and lay down one of every building in the Artificial section. Yes it sounds time consuming but to be honest it saves alot of time in the long run as you can se all the buildings without having to scour through the czech names.

When i built the IC Training Island i tride to create as denser feel as possible without killing the FPS too much. I found that rocks have a seriously smaller Poly count than trees (Duh) and that when you select it in the artificial object definitions you can randomise the size and rotation. This gave an excellent feel of density without having too much of an effect of FPS, those who have tried the island should vouch for that.

I also make templates of the Sidewalks then you can just copy and paste and make minor adjustments.

I started making a downloadable list of buildings and trees, i have the Plants.pbo and the Misc section of the Buildings.pbo too. finished and will post it up today if i can .... unfortunatly i have not finished the buildings as of yet.

Hope this helps someone :-)

Just my 2 cent

Wedge

Edit :-

Here ya go

Plants.Pbo Referance Pics

Buildings.Pbo Misc Referance Pics

[phaeden 0]

Wedge, thank you very much! This will make it much easier for everyone in the future.

[Nicholas Bell 0]

Wedge, these are excellent. You should really start your own thread so others will spot them. Buried in this thread they are a hidden gem.

[icebreakr 3157]

Nicholas: hows it going? Do you have any preview versions of Bluefields for us? *wink,wink*

[Nicholas Bell 0]

The short answer: No.

The long answer...

Some time last fall I read a comment (I think Planck wrote it) that V3 was not designed to recreate actual terrain (I'm paraphrasing here). I thought it an odd comment to make, given my limited knowledge of the engine at the time. It seemed like all the tools were there to be able to make really realistic maps - something I do "for real" for HPS Simulations for both their commercial and government products. Of course I understand that there limitations in any program, and in the case of attempting to reproduce the topography of Bluefields with actual datum, I've gone outside the capabilities of the engine.

Simply put, the program is not designed to reproduce an urban area built on steep slopes. At least not 2-3 square kilometers of tightly packed roads and structures. Roads, sidewalks, and structures require fairly flat or consistently mild sloped terrain to work. In the terrain I've built there are problems with roads and sidewalks disappearing under the surface, portions of buildings below grade, etc. I've also received an error message indicating "too many objects in grid", which results in bulldozer crashing.

So I've set this project aside while I consider what to do. In the meantime I've completed much more in a fraction of the time on the Schmalfelden, Germany map I have been working on concurrently. I do plan on working on the Bluefields project later, but at the moment the thought of basically having to totally redo the height map, roads, and objects for a large portion of the map is frankly quite depressing.

[opteryx 1562]

Yeah the engine is very limited in some areas which makes reproducing urban areas based real world data ultra frustrating.

By the way, could we perhaps see a picture of the sloped area on your map?

[icebreakr 3157]

IMHO Bluefields rocks even now without town. We would basically need a couple of bases, villages and voila - gamers would love it. Forest aka jungle is one of the best...

[-IC-Wedge 0]

I have to agree.....

There are not many objects created for this game that are designed with slopes in mind. The Only objects You will see in towns made by BIS that are based on slopes have only houses and a few variety of fences and walls (the ones that are given the KEEP HEIGHT parameter in o2). Non of the sidewalks are really any good. Although i could make some sidewalks to put in the game based on the same textures but able tofollow some undulations....although i still dont think this would solve the real issues. Buildings are not designed for slopes as the skew badly and look Shite.

Let me know about the sidewalks as i dont think it should be too much work, but i will only bother if people think it will be usefull.

[Nicholas Bell 0]

Sorry for the slow response. I was alway.

This sample shows the problem with sidewalk disappearing under the grade where the slope changes. The building is half buried on one end and hanging in the air on the other.

Terracing the grade so the buildings sit level is a no-go because of the problems with sidewalks and roads. And using the shortest pieces of sidewalk and road can solve -those- problem, but then increases the number of objects to a probative level.

Of course I can lower the overall height of the terrain and smooth out the slopes to eliminate these problems. But then it isn't as realistic as I had intended. I'll have to get over that.

[KKB 0]

May I ask what the desired effect should have been? I mean, how should a house behave on a slope?

(It may sound like an academic question, but it's not, I really want to know. Maybe a solution can be found, with the arma houses released as mlods now minor changes are easily done)

[phaeden 0]

Have you tried placing 'podesta' objects under the buildings?

I am sure you already know, but if you select an object in buldozer, you can alter its height by using the PageUp and PageDown keys. In this way, it might be relatively easy to place a row of podesta objects, then place the building on top of it. It would mean the your town is terraced, but at least you would still have what you're after....

Just a thought.

[Nicholas Bell 0]

Quote[/b] ]May I ask what the desired effect should have been? I mean, how should a house behave on a slope? (It may sound like an academic question, but it's not, I really want to know. Maybe a solution can be found, with the arma houses released as mlods now minor changes are easily done)

In short, the buildings do not have basements or deep enough foundations. The models do have extended foundations or watertables to allow for some change in grade, just not enough for the slopes on this map. I just didn't know enough or think this through before selecting this town to do - my bad. Here's an actual shot of a hill in Bluefields:

[Nicholas Bell 0]

Quote[/b] ]Have you tried placing 'podesta' objects under the buildings? I am sure you already know, but if you select an object in buldozer, you can alter its height by using the PageUp and PageDown keys. In this way, it might be relatively easy to place a row of podesta objects, then place the building on top of it. It would mean the your town is terraced, but at least you would still have what you're after....

I think that would be a perfectly good work around for a few buildings, but to do it for dozens or even a hundred or more structures would be a bit overwhelming. I was not aware of being able to adjust structure height while in Bulldozer. Unfortunately Pageup and Pagedown does not work for me (all it does is change the viewheight, even when an object is selected). Is there a specific condition necessary to make this work? It would be huge help.

I have manually adjusted podesta's by going back and forth between V3 and Bulldozer, changing the elevation height in the object properties. What a pain in the behind that is. Took me many hours to do the fishery dock:

[phaeden 0]

Oops, yes, I am sorry, I forgot to mention one crucial step:

Press and hold the mouse button.

So, I click to select the object then either continue to hold it or click it again to make sure I have the correct object. As I am holding down the mouse button, I use the PageUp or PageDown key to move the object vertically.

I actually ran across this by accident a few weeks ago and it DEFINATELY speeds up object placement. You can even adjust vertical position with a group of objects (stacking fences for example).

As for the big problem with houses having no basement areas, what you might be able to do is update the BIS buildings to include pillars. In this way, you could make one pillar object and place in on the first LOD or two. You wouldn't need to really add any fire/geo/etc Lods or adjust anything else within the object (except for maybe making the "bottom" of the house so that it is not invisible. Does this make sense?

[Chip360 0]

Can someone add the old version of this found here :

http://www.sendspace.com/file/z3dyxm

?

[Αplion 1122]

Can someone add the old version of this found here :

http://www.sendspace.com/file/z3dyxm

?

I'm getting this "Sorry, the file you requested is not available".

[Nicholas Bell 0]

Quote[/b] ]Press and hold the mouse button. So, I click to select the object then either continue to hold it or click it again to make sure I have the correct object. As I am holding down the mouse button, I use the PageUp or PageDown key to move the object vertically.

Thank you Phaedon! This is very nice. If you happen to stumble on any other neat key combos please let us know

Quote[/b] ]update the BIS buildings to include pillars. In this way, you could make one pillar object and place in on the first LOD or two.

Not sure I'm up to learning 3D modeling, though. Got enough trouble getting my head around V3. But a good idea nonetheless.

[Chip360 0]

Can someone add the old version of this found here :

http://www.sendspace.com/file/z3dyxm

?

I'm getting this "Sorry, the file you requested is not available".

Exactly, I'm wondering if anyone still has it... I think it was the one that came just after the forest areas were cleared up a bit (directly after the first)

Im not aware of any other versions of this map at this time, but im curious to beta test it, looks really promising.

[Nicholas Bell 0]

Here's the file: http://www.sendspace.com/file/yxe012

Please note that the reason I posted this initially was to get help on a specific problem. Not looking for beta testing at this time because it's absolutely no where near that - it's an incomplete mess, really. But feel free to have a peek if you are inclined.

[Chip360 0]

Here's the file: http://www.sendspace.com/file/yxe012

Please note that the reason I posted this initially was to get help on a specific problem.  Not looking for beta testing at this time because it's absolutely no where near that - it's an incomplete mess, really.  But feel free to have a peek if you are inclined.

Ah, I see, Hehe, Thanks : )

[Linker Split 0]

I'm working on a new complete jungle pack for my upcoming High Definition Tropic Island for ArmA (and ArmA2)...

what I'm focusing is using at least 5 LODS, then reduce the lag through the correct use of number of faces, points, and selections... seems there's less lag than the past