31st NORMANDY MOD - WW2 Â -BETA RELEASE

[sparks50 0]

Is that all going to be on one map?  If so, that's going to be humongous.  

It IS humongous

[rip31st 98]

Looking good

Few things what comes to my mind

- The Carpiquet airfield was just south of the town. Now it seems to be west of it, if the the village like blob on the map is Carpiquet.

- To model the US Cobra operation following towns would be nice to see: Avranches south of Granville, Mortain east of Avranches, south of Vire and some bigger nearby town like Brecey.

- More towns between Caen and Falaise (For modelling Op "Totalize" by Brits) and east of Caen (op. "Goodwood").  (Vimont, Potigny, May-sur-Orne, Troarn, subrurbs of Caen...). Benouville,Ranville,Ouistreham,... near the Pegasus bridge.

- It would be nice to see some small villages, hamlets and farms between the towns so that the terrain is more interesting. I saw some in the old version, but I hope we see more of them.

- This might be because of unzooming the map or maybe they are still just place holders, but some of the roads look too straight. Also I'm not saying I see the following in your map, but say just in case: What ever bend and curves a road makes, there is a reason for it - going round a hill, forest, swamp, river etc. If it makes a bend in an open field without a reason, it looks odd.

I hope that didn't sound just whining, because I really had to think to what was missing. It really looks good otherwise.  

-No plans for Avranches at the moment or anything south of Vire. - I have to budget objects.

-I can move the Carpiquet AF. You're right its SW of Caen, not W.

-More towns are to be added. Map is still WIP.

-"Villages" & "Hamlets" are not viewable on the map as seen above. There are quiet a few of them there.

-Roads are what they are.

-All forms of whining are acceptable. We take Visa-whiner, Mastercard-whiner, and Americanexpress-whiner.

[rip31st 98]

Ok so what happens when one of your buddies mentions famous places during WW2 and asks "So...how will you model that?"

Pointe du Hoc:

hmmmm...looks complicated...

According to the history books, the cliff is 100ft.  I  will modeled it accordingly.  Keep in mind this is just the rock on the point which itself is around 20m tall.  The cliffs will mate up with the land that you see in the background in one of the shots.  About 33m tall it will be.  

In this shot below you can see I've placed a base for the cliff models to set on.  I will lower this below the water line and make a narrow pedestal below it so boats can approach it without getting stuck or bumping into land prematurely.

And in this shot below you can see I'm standing on top of the point rock just to give you a idea of its size.  You can see in the background by where it says 115m from my weapons cursor on the right where the terrain will mate up with the cliffs.  Anything between the outer wall of the cliffs and and that point will be fair game for underground bunkers just like the real deal.

Might take a few pieces to get the entire deal done.  But I will make it happen.  Bunkers, gun emplacements, wire, bushrows, tall grass, and bomb craters etc....  Yes you will have ropes to climb up the cliff.

[Enigma85 2]

Nice,

the pointe du hoc will make for some interesting missions.

ROCK ON! (sorry couldn't resist)

i could work on some of the default arma signs change them to something a bit more 1940's era.

there are a few i've seen that would fit in.

[rip31st 98]

Nice,

the pointe du hoc will make for some interesting missions.

ROCK ON! (sorry couldn't resist)

i could work on some of the default arma signs change them to something a bit more 1940's era.

there are a few i've seen that would fit in.

Yeah, you prolly should! lol. Are you ready to make about 250 signs?

[Enigma85 2]

Nice,

the pointe du hoc will make for some interesting missions.

ROCK ON! (sorry couldn't resist)

i could work on some of the default arma signs change them to something a bit more 1940's era.

there are a few i've seen that would fit in.

Yeah, you prolly should! lol.  Are you ready to make about 250 signs?

nope lol

but looks like i might have to.

think it might be better to have custom signs as arma's ones look a bit too modern by the looks of it.

maybe a couple of older wooden signs.

i texture it with a standard wooden texture and some wear to it then add the 250 different names to it

adding the different names is pretty easy.

just give me a list and a couple of model and i'll get on it :P

[miles teg 1]

A bigger issue is regarding how effort you should spend on such areas of the map that may have very limited usage in missions. Keep in mind that the cliff areas can not be scaled in ArmA unless you developed some type of rope scaling script and animations, although their might be placed in in some areas perhaps some steep paths that go up through the cliffs. But then also all the cliffs would need a small beach area as well. All in all...its a bit tricky especially when you combine the stupid bug where all your men lose their weapons when they drop in the water...and if the embar/disembark memory point on the landing craft model is too far in front of the landing craft LOD, the guys will end up automatically on top of the cliffs.

Nevertheless, I hope that you can figure out some cool solutions or good compromises.

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

[cheritto 0]

Rip31st, ur insane but we like that !!  

U have a great challenge to make this map with such details.

An idea of road signs ww2 Sign

edit: and it seems that site has some interesting ww2 pictures

[Aqu 0]

Nice. That will perfect for a few Thelma and Louise stunts too

According to the photo there is hardly any flat space on top of the rock though.

Also if you want the bunkers to be destroyable they need to be separate objects. At least the parts which are on surface. Mmmm...thant you be nice actually. Think if you are in the bunker in some of the underground floors and somebody blows the top floor so that the exit is stuck  

[rip31st 98]

A bigger issue is regarding how effort you should spend on such areas of the map that may have very limited usage in missions.  Keep in mind that the cliff areas can not be scaled in ArmA unless you developed some type of rope scaling script and animations, although their might be placed in in some areas perhaps some steep paths that go up through the cliffs.  But then also all the cliffs would need a small beach area as well. All in all...its a bit tricky especially when you combine the stupid bug where all your men lose their weapons when they drop in the water...and if the embar/disembark memory point on the landing craft model is too far in front of the landing craft LOD, the guys will end up automatically on top of the cliffs.    

Nevertheless, I hope that you can figure out some cool solutions or good compromises.

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

Remember - The idea behind the map is versatility. 99% of all missions including warfare will not cover the entire map. Warfare itself once you dive into putting 40 towns with AI start heavily impacting servers given current technology. Servers can't handle all the AI and data from that style mission with more towns then that. So you have to pick and choose what towns you want to use.

The glory behind the map is you will have all these areas that you can make specific missions with. For example the pegasus bridge scenario. I think I listed several missions and scenarios I wanted to get around to eventually in the WIP thread. Other folks are making missions as well.

There is ONE mission in the planning phase we are looking at creating that is a campaign style PVP CTI mission that involves ALL the towns, VERY limited AI - Maybe one or two AI per player - Maybe even no AI at all. (AI is what kills servers). This mission is not based on history and focuses on PVP and gameplay. IT has a battle front line that gives you a known enemy location. In other words when you look at the map, you will know what towns you occupy and what the enemy has. Each town will have a limited amount of infantry and vehicles with attrition- in other words supply. You will have factories behind towns that can produce more supply with a time factor. Those factories can be bomded to slow the rate of production or to close production of supply at that factory completely until it's rebuilt with a time factor. Weapons will be earned rather then bought with funds. So you don't get all the good stuff from the start - You start with a rifle and earn/unlock the rest. You will be able to unlock perks for each weapon such as a steady aim, the ability to fire more accurately on the move by earning accessories such as a adding a handle, faster reload load times, adding a tripod for a crew served weapon. You will earn rewards for doing things such as kill streaks where you earn artillery strikes or special weapons. Artillery strikes will only occur if you stay alive during a sortie and will have a minimum distance factor. You will only be able to fire one volley so you can artillery spam the enemy. IF you kill enough within that artillery strike to get another, you are rewarded with another strike. Of course if you play with the minimum distance the enemy will find you quickly and end your kill streak. Then enemy will learn quickly not to spawn near the same point you are placing your artillery rounds. You will also get achievement rewards/rank for a certain amount of kills or captures or for completing missions within the campaign. Obviously playing more has the advantage. Rank will unlock higher level vehicles. Server rank/reward and player progress data will be offloaded to another server for tracking so if you rejoin the server later, you keep the same rank, perks and rewards. Each basic small town will have 5 or so captureable spawn points. Lager towns and cities will have more. There will also be mobile spawns and forward alpha areas between towns to shorten travel distance which can also be captured. Airfields will also be captureable and there will be a fair amount of them for pilots to use. It should turn out to be fairly popular. We will see.

On the map itself...

I'm putting time into areas of high usage. I know what you're saying and can appreciate that. Obviously the map improvements are just that - improvements. There are always areas on all large scale maps that don't get used and so we won't be focusing on those areas. I have a 4,000,000 object budget I have to deal with until ArmA2 is out. Right now I'm at 600,000 objects with no performance hit.

Cliffs will be easy to scale with built in hidden ladders. It's as simple as adding two memory points, one for up and one for down to the memory LOD. No scripting needed. If you look at the base of the rock, I've added a sizeable beach area. As with the cliffs I will do the same. Scripting is available to infantry that enter water so they keep their weapons - no worries there. The embark, disembark point is right where the ramp meets the hull of the landing craft and the way I'm building the beaches under the cliff will make it impossible for infantry to automatically end up ontop of the cliffs. I try to think out these scenarios prior to building these objects as we all know the wonderful world of ArmA limitations.

[furman 0]

Been a while since I have checked in, and things are looking really nice! Keep up the good work!

[rip31st 98]

Rip31st, ur insane but we like that !!  

U have a great challenge to make this map with such details.

An idea of road signs ww2 Sign

edit: and it seems that site has some interesting ww2 pictures

Are you Canadian Cheritto?

[rip31st 98]

Here's some more WIP pics from tonight of Pointe du Hoc:

Again...the real deal...

As compared to...

It will look a lot better when I'm done, the point and the rock will be much more pointy, probably won't be able to stand on the rock and probably won't be able to stand near the edge of the point without sliding off to your death.  I just put a semi flat surface so I could stand on it and see how it fits into the game world in perspective to where it will mate up with the flat land behind it.  I will also bring in the width a bit about half way up and taper it to the top to make it look more like the real thing.

At this point its nearly 85 foot drop.

It will be nice when it's done and I can get this sucker textured up and sitting on water.  Should prove very intersting to see how battles are played out here.

Here is a little vid I made of it so you can get an idea of the height:

Quick Youtube vid

[oldbear 390]

Your "Pointe du Hoc" looks great !

But I still ask for a smaller map, the Normandy peninsula is 10 times larger than whole Sahrani, crossing the Channel takes more than 12 mn from Southampton to Barfleur ...

Please, cut it along a Caen-Avranches line and reduce the Channel width if you want to represent England coast.

I must also make a special report, for having been shot down near Valognes, I had to land-crash in a ... vineyard ! No vineyard in Normandy, cider and Calvados are made from apples

[cheritto 0]

Quote[/b] ]Are you Canadian Cheritto?

No, i m french. I just found this site looking for ww2 road signs and i though it was interesting.

[rip31st 98]

Your "Pointe du Hoc" looks great !

But I still ask for a smaller map, the Normandy peninsula is 10 times larger than whole Sahrani, crossing the Channel takes more than 12 mn from Southampton to Barfleur ...

Please, cut it along a Caen-Avranches line and reduce the Channel width if you want to represent England coast.

I must also make a special report, for having been shot down near Valognes, I had to land-crash in a ... vineyard ! No vineyard in Normandy, cider and Calvados are made from apples  

Those aren't vineyards, those are smaller apple trees for Calvados. Don't you know there are 47 different types of special apple trees grown for Calvados! They aren't regular apples like the average Joe would think they are. Some of them look just like grapes! Sheesh!

If you like Sahrani's size, then use Sahrani for your missions. What will you do with yourself when BIS gives you a map larger then mine in the first quarter of 2009? lol

Still not going down to Avranches.

[Aqu 0]

"Dude, are you sure you are not going to Avranches?"

[rip31st 98]

Pointe du Hoc construction continues...

[oldbear 390]

I believe it's al right to play on a large map and I am not pleased by Sahrani to play Normandy missions, campaign or Warefare, so I am a true fan of your Normandy map.

What I was suggesting in my post was not to downsize it, but to have it centered on Normandy, I believe that featuring Dunkirk, Amiens and Paris is not very useful ... I do prefer a map featuring Brittany!

[beton 2]

Concerning a smaller map i am working on a map featuring Omaha Beach on its full length and about five Km of terrain behind the bluffs. Its still alpha yet as i am learning by doing and i am not shure which permissions ( for Bunkers e.g.) i need to have before i can make it public.

When its finished i would like to contribute it to 31st Normandy Mod if it is appreciated....

[archsceptic 21]

It might be an idea for anybody making Normandy maps to take a look at Opteryx's crops on his Avgani map, if you ask nicely he might let you use them. He's got them as a seperate PBO file.

Tanks always look their best when sitting in a field of tall crops - especially around 1944.

P.S. any luck with converting T-Roc's ofp tanks for ArmA???

[oldbear 390]

yes a tank is a interesting view when put in a wheat field ... but there are not such fields in the Normandy area, in the landing zones, a large part of the field are meadows, some surrounded by hedgerows some in the dried marshes along the rivers because it's a place dedicated to cows stock breeding. There are also many orchards, mainly apple orchards. Of course there are also small wheat fields ... but this is not a main feature of this district.

[rip31st 98]

UPDATE Regarding the map:

I appreciate the input. I can't downsize this map without entirely redoing it. Once you import a new terrain file, whether it's a .png graphic gradient, xyz or .dem file it wipes out the rest of the data when you try to re-import it after the terrain has been established. It's taken 2 months plus whatever time I've put into it recently...maybe a week. The beach areas are being redone along with map things.

Right now the bluff overlooking Omaha is at 88m height. That is not right. When I'm done with that area, there will be a new seawall I will model, and the terrain will be more realistic with whats really there. The color of the terrain will change. I will try to remove the grass from the tidal area. I will flatten it out quit a bit because my current terrain profile there is wrong. I have obtained a map where all the german defensive positions go wn59-74. I have a R667 bunker and plan to refine it and model the rest of the positions. The map contains a side profile of the beach and hill. I also have a map of how the beach obstacles were placed including the belgium gates all the wire and tank traps, etc.

I'm doing research on fields. I see wheat in a lot of Normandy photos. I beg to differ with old bear on that. The hard part is figuring out where they go. Apple trees are easy to add. I plan to model some vegetation. Tall grass, some bushes, some trees. I'm going to model some cool looking hegderows that contain debris and some areas that you might be able to poke a anti-tank weapon or possible maybe some areas where tanks can peer over a hedgerow.

I've added several towns so the proximity of towns are closer to eachother. I will continue to add towns to make gameplay more fun instead of so spread out.

The Terrain and map objects in place on the Cherbourg Pennisula in it's current modified state, the way I have redone it would provide awesome battles. I may consider releasing that soon with a updated warfare mission just to tide some folks over and provide some relief to the long distances.

I have a gentleman offering to make a smaller map that would cover the beaches well. I will talk to him soon.

[ArmaVidz 0]

Yeah. I say f*** it. If I have to upgrade my CPU, RAM or video to play a WWII Normandy map, so be it.

If it won't run at all - on the other hand...

[rip31st 98]

Yeah. I say f*** it. If I have to upgrade my CPU, RAM or video to play a WWII Normandy map, so be it.

If it won't run at all - on the other hand...

There is no performance hit as of yet.