ACE Everon - BETA version -Read the details please

[the-f 0]

<span style='font-size:12pt;line-height:100%'>Welcome fellow soldiers !</span>

We proudly present you:

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#<span style='font-size:12pt;line-height:100%'> ACE Everon </span>#

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an ACE development production.

<span style='font-size:12pt;line-height:100%'>Announcement</span>

The ACE Mod team is proud to present ACE Everon island..

A converted version of the Operation Flashpoint Everon island.

The island vegetation was replaced with the OFP Resistance vegetation.

The Resistance objects have the best performance, still look good and

have almost zero LOD switching.

The island uses ArmA's satellite and mask texture technology.

This results in dynamic interaction of satellite, detail

textures and placement of clutters.

--- Do NOT host the rar version for copyright reasons! ---

Spread the word.

<span style='font-size:12pt;line-height:100%'><span style='color:red'>Download Link</span></span>

<span style='font-size:12pt;line-height:100%'>Change Summary</span>

~ Replaced some objects/buildings with an

   ArmA counterpart.

~ Replaced the forest squares with random

   created forests with different trees and bushes.

~ Changed the detailed textures.

~ Replaced the OFP CWC vegetaion with OFP Res vegetaion.

~ Added a Sat texture.

~ Added ArmA clutters (eg. grass)

<span style='font-size:12pt;line-height:100%'>Known bugs</span>

~ Autolanding on the north airport is not working.

~ At some grass areas there is a bug with the

  grass overlayer Forum Link

~ The borders of the SAT texture are incorrect.

  Some help would be nice!

~ Some error messages in the Arma.rpt eg.

  "Tree at 8765.000, 850.000 out of grid (z-axis) - 0.000 rounded to 2"

  "data3d\silnice10 75.p3d - Not all levels have On Surface set"

<span style='font-size:12pt;line-height:100%'>How to</span>

~ Place the modfolder, @ACE_Islands, into our Arma folder.

~ Add the modfolder to your ArmA shortcut.

<span style='font-size:12pt;line-height:100%'>Links</span>

ACE site

<span style='font-size:12pt;line-height:100%'>Credits</span>

<span style='color:darkred'>Phaeden (WGL/ACE Mod) for his awesome textures from samak hills.

Dschulle, Rom, Snake Man for their excellent WrpTool.

Sgt.Ace for the huge help with the SAT texture.

BIS for their nice Nogova vegetation and Everon island.</span>

So we wish you a lot of fun and a good time!

It would be nice of you to make some good

looking screenshots from the islands :P

Big

Big

Big

Big

Big

best regards

The-F

PS: Expect an ACE Island Pack in the next week.

     It contain some converted OFP islands.

[mattxr 9]

Awesome man, brings back the memories

[Peregrine 0]

Nice release f. This looks great.

[russin 0]

great work F you the man

[Soul Catcher 0]

sweeeet   , brings back loads of old memories   , really looking foward to the island pack and hoping that kolgujev might be one of them  

[1in1class 0]

vary nice job Love the map.

[The Susser 0]

ACE, FDF and MFCTI the future is looking bright. Awesome job lads, gonna fly through the vally south to St Pierre.

[icebreakr 3159]

Am I seeing this right, texture for this single map weights at 1GIG?!

[.kju 3245]

That's the price to pay for SAT texture technology.

The SAT one resolution lower looked a lot less good.

We may make a one texture version as well. So this one will only

weight around 50 MB I guess.

[dwringer 45]

I'm more amazed by the fact that a 1 gig texture rars down to 22 megabytes . . . I guess the arma engine kind of gyps us when it comes to compression eh

[Maddmatt 1]

I'm more amazed by the fact that a 1 gig texture rars down to 22 megabytes . . . I guess the arma engine kind of gyps us when it comes to compression eh

Textures need to be uncompressed for the game so that it can load them fast enough. Otherwise loading would take ages as they need to be extracted each time.

And it wouldn't be able to load them fast enough during gameplay when you move around the map.

At least that's my understanding of it.

Downloading addon islands for ArmA and ArmA 2 is gonna eat HDD space fast

[paragraphic l 2]

Is it a design choice to not make a detailed satelite map?

I think it's great you've managed to recreate OFP's Everon, but back then I could take for granted that the islands had only 4 or so textures which made it repetative and dull, and the roads where way to bright to fit the island.

But I think this island is allready to outdated. You guys didn't even placed roads on the Satelite map, so roads just dissapear.

All in all, I think this island either should've stayed in OFP or should've gotten a bigger make-over.

With that said, I still am eager to see the other islands

Hope you guys don't take this as a rant or something it's just some, hopefully constructive, critism.

Greets,

Para

[oldbear 390]

Front paged on Armed Assault.info.

[Guest Ti0n3r]

It does look really ugly and outdated, but I'll try some old OFP missions of mine on it anyway.

[Jester617 0]

We need a A10 fly over of this island on with MAXED out view distance on youtube ASAP

[william1 0]

no offence but i find more beautiful Sgt.Ace's Everon and is only 33 Mb size , anyway thanks for releasing

[Enixj7 0]

Yes I've got to agree, the texture detail is great but the choice of using the bushes from Res was a poor choice. Berhoff (sp) released an addon from Op:F that replaced the bushes with high res ones, that would of worked alot better. Alt could of reworked for better performance or released a arma bush version thats lowplants compat.

[the_shadow 0]

i have untextuired (white) roads, untextured fences (some of the atleast) and some untextured building types.

could anyone give a hint to what migt cause this?

[opteryx 1562]

That's the price to pay for SAT texture technology.

But then why not take advantage of that?

What I'm seeing is the same texture repeated over and over again which leaves a rather monotonous look. Why not compose a fake satellite image based on real imagery like Sahrani?

[Enixj7 0]

I noticed that as well.

[.kju 3245]

Thanks for the feedback so far!

The-f forgot to include a few important informations unfortunately.

This is a BETA version.

It means we intend to update it based on the feedback given

and foremost if people can help us fix the remaining bugs.

99% of the combat is ground, even infantry combat.

The textures were used that in mind.

So testing the look of the island from a plane is a BAD choice.

It won't look good from the perspective!

(90% of the people tend to do that though..)

Instead you need to explore it from the ground. Especially

you need to play some missions on the island.

The textures camouflage the correct soldier skin very well. So

its very though to spot infantry on those and therefore make

infantry combat a lot more interesting!

It is a gameplay island. This means the look is only secondary.

High FPS and very high viewdistance are FAR higher priority.

We played the version of Sgt. Ace in the IC league. Based from

the experience there we developed this new islands in less than

two weeks. It is meant to improve gameplay.

It serves as an alternative to Sgt. Ace nice Everon version and

as placeholder for the gorgeous future CWR version.

Compared to the version of Sgt. Ace this has these differences:

~ No missing vegetation or house/static objects

~ More clutter and (higher) grass

~ Different (ground) textures

~ Resistance vegetation - you can hide inside bushes. Less /

zero LOD switching

~ Random generated woods - especially very dense woods

~ Most likely better performance

Of course we could take months of hard work on that like CWR,

more precisly Plank (AFAIK), has done for Malden or instead

produce several islands in a few weeks. Both approaches are

fine. We use the later.

You could say its quantity over quality.

I'd say its gameplay over visuals.

[volkov956 0]

Gonna export this with CTI and see how it goes

[max power 21]

Quantity != gameplay.

[.kju 3245]

Lovely statement plaintiff1 - you might wanna explain that a bit.

[max power 21]

Designing islands in such a way that you can crank out 5 in a week doesn't enhance gameplay over an island where more time is spent on it. In fact, I think that the more pleasant experience comes from an island that's put together seemlessly, regardless of the ubersnazziness of the shaders you choose to use or how dense your clutter fields are. You're spending a lot of system resources on that island already but you're not using them very effectively. The satellite map is one giant image but it's more or less a 2m square tile repeated over and over and over again.. I'm not sure what the difference is there with not having a satellite map at all. Your grass layer is very different in terms of frequency (value, hue, and saturation) from your ground texture... which, again, is another seam between the grass and the ground. All of the big blocks of texture that meet at 90 degree angles are unnatural in the same way... as is the runway that appears out of nowhere. The very seemingly careless- and I'm not saying you guys were careless, only that it seems *very* rough around the edges with little attention payed to the look of the island regardless of the rendering complexity of it- way this island is presented makes for a diminished gameplay experience, not an enhanced one.