Island Panthera v1.0

[icebreakr 3157]

Since BIS is still polishing out A2, its a great time to take a flight back to a new island Panthera in ArmA: Armed Assault ;)

ISLAND PANTHERA for ArmA

Version: v1.0 (July 2nd 2009)

1. INTRODUCTION

===============

"Many have dreams. IceBreakr's dreamt of an island that many ArmA players could enjoy, along with his team of dedicated mil-sim gamers. He put on his yellow working helmet, rolled up his sleeves and started building and building and building, until his dream become reality. It took, time, energy and a lot of dedication but after three months he has succeeded - its here: Island Panthera!"

2. AUTHOR

=========

IceBreakr is coming from Slovenia, Europe and he's been a level designer for other games/simulations for more than 10 years now. Right after the release of Czech version of ArmA: Armed Assault, game soon became his passion and he formed a strong Slovenian community of mil-sim gamers supporting him in organizing and creating multiplayer coop/PvP events. Lack of islands (mainly desert ones, too) made him switch to ArmA map making.

3. WHAT IS PANTHERA?

====================

Name Panthera itself comes from Slovenian history of "black panther" crest and the map itself is based on the real height data of Slovenia's Northwest part in Europe - named Gorenjska Region.

"Gora" in Slovenian means mountain and Gorenjska region (represented in Panthera) certainly lives up to its name being home to most of Slovenia’s biggest mountains, including the highest of them all – Triglav (three heads) standing at an impressive 2,865 metres. The Julian Alps and the beautiful Triglav National Park are the main features of the region – offering not just outstanding scenery, but a wealth of plant and animal life and an abundance of outdoor activities. It is also home to the unforgettable lakes Bled and Bohinj. It is almost impossible to decide which one you prefer – Serene Bohinj and its majestic mountain setting or fairytale Bled with its seventeenth century church on an island overlooked by a castle perched on a rocky outcrop.

4. FANTASY STORY TO GO ALONG WITH THE NEW ARMA ISLAND?

====================

Massive climate changes rocked the entire world and heavy ocean flooding left only numerous islands. Panthera is luckly one of them, but people didn't unite in this disaster - army is able to protect only major towns, villages form their own protection squads and neighbouring countries (in order to survive) invade the last island between newly formed sea. Armor is scarce, but four airports serve as an air bridge for more equipment and weapons...

5. INTERESTING FACTS

====================

* Gorenjska region is in fact NW part of Slovenia in Europe and of course in RL it isn't an island.

* due to heavy real-life vegetation and gameplay issues author' had to resize a sector of ~40x40 klicks (kilometers) down to 10km x 10km terrain, quite enough for a small infantry operation supported by light armor and choppers. Of course jets and heavy armor can be used too but it requires a lot of skill and tactics in such harsh terrain. Large mountains and deadly valleys can be tough even for the most experienced fighters. Roads are basically only way to travel around, but dense vegetation and many chokepoints can be fatal for a single vehicle or even an armoured convoy. Therefor recommended way of travel is tabbing aka on foot.

* first plan has been to create an entire Slovenia (of course resized to ArmA), but too many details were lost on mountain ranges. Slovenia is very similiar to other European countries with vast forests and rich vegetation.

* real-life counterpart towns in the area had to be resized to small villages, couple of them listed here: Radovljica, Bled, Jesenice, Mojstrana, Kranjska Gora, Kobarid, Tolmin, Bohinjska Bela, etc. Map now features over than 60 settlements/places, of course much smaller than real life counterpart.

* texture is based on 10240x10240 composite of various satellite images and photoshopped in couple of places.

* there are four airports present:

- Lesce (real one is cessna/soaring plane capable, but in-game runway is the sake of gameplay paved and much bigger, so fighters & transport planes can use it)

- Bovec (real one, small for mainly helicopter operations or for very very daring pilots)

- Arnoldstein (fake one, Arnoldstein doesn't have one in RL, but this one has been added for better gameplay and mission makers' ideas coming to life.

- Smugglers (another fake one, this one stands in the desert and locals use it for smuggling operations in and out of the island)

* Almost everything exists in the real World. Desert part on the SE is created from the scratch and therefor fake - Slovenia doesn't have deserts. Reason: better gameplay. ;)

* roads are based on real-life data and cover all sectors of the map.

* first try to explore the island by positioning your squad on Lesce Airport (center East part) and launch vehicle and air patrols from there.

6. INSTALLATION

===============

Unpack folder \@Panthera to your ArmA root folder and run game with -mod=@Panthera parameter. Island will appear in map list and is ready for use.

7. CREDITS & THANKS

===================

Created by: IceBreakr

Ideas: PeterGrozni

Objects & Configs: MAj Z. (Aljaz Tower), Sgt.Ace (Clutter & Plant configs)

Testing: SBP Team & Sgt.Ace

Special thanks: Kju, Flossy, Nicholas Bell and Bohemia Interactive for making of ArmA/ArmA 2

8. COPYRIGHT

============

Author: IceBreakr (ice AT icebreakr.com, MSN icebrejkr AT mail.com, ICQ 426428)

All rights reserved.

Author grants you, as the enduser, a personal right to download, install and play with the island. This right does NOT include the possibilities to reverse engineer or even abuse content of the island addon in your own addons, games, game content or missions (scripts). Author can not be made responsible for ANY damage that could occur from the use of the addon. This island addon is for entertainment purposes only. Any military or commercial use is strictly prohibited. You are not allowed to exploit content. You may only use the island addon in conjunction with the game "Armed Assault" (1st part!) by BIS in its original form. If you want to use island addon or parts of island addon in your own addons or new game, you have to get written permission from the author.

Please report any bugs, comments to the author in this topic, thank you!.

Oh right... where to get the file...

Exclusively first at Armaholic.com :)

Edited October 1, 2009 by IceBreakr

[This is Bosnia 10]

Svaka cast ice samo tako nastavi. now we can play some yugo (Slovenia) maps. Downloading....

[MarkJ112 0]

Downloading!!

Update: can't download it for some reason, gives me error message? It would be great if someone can upload the addon to filefront

Edited July 2, 2009 by MarkJ112

[MamiyaOtaru 1]

A month after I heard about this and started waiting for it, it comes out the day after I leave on vacation :D Looking forward to checking this out, even if the wait will be a little longer than I had supposed.

[madrussian 347]

I just spent the past hour wandering around the mountains, towns, and rivers of this complex and gorgeous landscape. What a breathtaking map you have created! Both in terms of beauty and the work you must have put into it.

Congratulations on this monumental achievement! :)

[icebreakr 3157]

Thank you, thats all it matters to me - to see that people enjoy the new map ;)

Can't wait to see couple of new missions for it :) I'll probably release a Coop mission pack for it under User missions in a week or so.

Edited July 3, 2009 by IceBreakr

[{G&L}ACF{SCOTDG} 10]

I was just messing about, but i got this to work in Arma 2 without changing any files lags a bit though :D

[karensman08 10]

IceBreakr,

Thanks!! This map is awesome. It was well worth the wait. I especially like the rivers. time to do some river insertions now.

[Nicholas Bell 0]

Congratulations on the release of your map, IceBreakr. Very nice, and you sure completed it in record time. You must have been working day and night! Good job lowering the elevations to create the rivers. And now you have a map that suites your needs :)

[icebreakr 3157]

Nick: you've been my inspiration ;)

... actually, I spend only few hours per day and I even had couple of non-working days ;) now I know almost all of the tricks so making new islands won't be much of a problem. I'll focus on the fantasy land now, since comparing to RL all the time is way too difficult, I even took more than 1500 shots with my digital camera and visited all the places featured in Panthera ;)

I also got first bugreports and I'll soon update the map to v1.1 and add couple of things left out. Oh, I'm also releasing a "teaser" movie so we can get more guys on this map with new missions. I would also love to see Domination, Evolution etc. adapted for it ...

[an_enlarged_stomach 1]

damn, this is arma heaven.

Sorry to hijack the thread, but I have a small question.

I have FFN AI mod, I am wondering if AI will still be able to navigate and find cover in custom made maps like this like they do in original Sharani.

THanks!!

[icebreakr 3157]

Sure, it should work. Only AI that has problems with Panthera are pilots, because they can't navigate the valleys with high speed and usually smack right into the mountains :)

[an_enlarged_stomach 1]

Thanks.

Dude, this reminds me of the dream I occasionally have of living in a swiss alps farmland.:rolleyes:

[karensman08 10]

IceBreakr,

Is there any way to get the AI to land at the Lesce airport?

Also, there seems to be a random airport north of the island in the middle of the water. This is where all the AIs are wanting to land, and end up crashing. Does this serve a purpose at all?

Once again, thank you for the awesome island. I am having a great time with it so far.

[icebreakr 3157]

Yeah, ILS system for one of the airports is still not in place. I would love if someone could help me out with the config so AI can land/takeoff from either Arnoldstein or Lesce.

[[aps]gnat 28]

Very simple to add an airport, all you have to do is (the hard bit) collect all the Coordinates from the map.

Example of adding runway to Nevada

class CfgPatches

{

class GNAT_nevada_desert

{

units[] = {};

requiredVersion = 0.1;

requiredAddons[] = {"nevada_desert"};

};

};

class CfgWorlds

{

class Intro;

class nevada_desert: Intro

{

class SecondaryAirports

{

class Main_m

{

ilsDirection[] = {0,0.08,-1};

ilsPosition[] = {5725,7700};

ilsTaxiIn[] = {5575,8629,5575,8510,5575,8390,5575,8271,5575,8152,5575,8033,5575,7913,5575,7794,5575,7675,5650,7675,5725,7575,5725,7605};

ilsTaxiOff[] = {5725,9270,5725,9300,5575,9225,5575,9106,5575,8987,5575,8867,5575,8748,5575,8629};

drawTaxiway = 0; //false

};

// more airports here

};

};

};

[icebreakr 3157]

Is there a wiki about this coordinates? Why do couple of rectangles for BIS need so many coordinates? :)

[zonker3210 1]

Perhaps this is just my video card and/or settings but...has anyone else noticed that certain areas of the map appear turquoise green-blue from a certain distance? From about 100 meters away the ground color in these areas looks really odd while, say, hovering in a helicopter or walking around. Once you get close enough, the ground looks perfectly fine. As I said, perhaps it's just something on my end rather than the terrain mod itself.

BTW, IceBreakr...this is a wonderful island. I'd been looking forward to its release for some time now. Great job!

Thanks!

- z

[icebreakr 3157]

zonker3210 thanks for reporting this. I'm already aware of that problem, it will be fixed in v1.1 and couple of guys sent me screenshots of certain areas that need to be fixed. Its a problem with satellite texture, but only cosmetical one.

Do we have any coop/pvp missions yet? :)

I'm putting together a small campaign for this Thursday.

[zonker3210 1]

@IceBreakr - thanks for the info. I'll keep an eye out for the updated version. In the meantime, I'm really enjoying the island and plan to put together a mission based on it.

I'd originally been working on a custom island based on the Korengal Valley area of Afghanistan. Then I saw the screenshots for this island and realized that, although it wasn't the arid desert that I was going for, you'd perfectly nailed the rugged terrain. I love the mix of steep mountains and valleys. Thanks for what is obviously a lot of effort!

[icebreakr 3157]

Here's a 5min presentation video for all the A2 fanboys lurking around Chernarus :)

[Macadam Cow 1]

This map amazed me, it is wonderfull, probably the best in it's category (big map)

Congrats for the awesome work done !

[savedbygrace 2]

Great I have to be the party pooper? Not really. The island is quite refreshing from the normally flat terrain maps we get from the community now. There are however a few things that seem to ruin the experience a bit.

The Roads

The roads are nice and curvy and that is all well and good but it may be a good idea to take some time to manually flatten roadsides so that the road rests on flat ground at all times perhaps as far out as allowing a meter or so on the edges for oversteers.

There are also lots of curves which spill into abrupt declines which cause vehicles to leave the ground often; smoothing the sharp abrupt hills out into smoother transitions would prevent this.

A few roads connect to each other by straight shots which causes the driver to stop, backup and jocky around to make the turn.

A few bridge connections seem to transition poorly.

Texture loading

While I don't have any problems with actual textures, your texture layer looks smeared and appears a bright green from 50 meters and beyond but as you approach within the 50 meter mark, it tempers out and begins to reveal its texture and color properly.

Structures

Some of your buildings and trees are in the road.

Overall, its a fantastic change from whats out there but the roads are almost un managable. I do like the many curves as it provides a close community feel but the many ridge bases and hill drops that affect its course make it difficult to enjoy a casual drive. I look forward to the next version.

[icebreakr 3157]

savedbygrace: thanks for your critics. With valuable feedback need version v1.1 is coming today or tommorow. Many bugs were fixed and I'll add couple of new villages too missing in v1.0.

[Sniper101st 10]

That looks very cool!! I will make big battles over there