Maybe in 5 years we'll have...

[gareththomasnz 13]

A random map & terrain generator

This would rock - so you just pick desert, woodland, urban etc and it random generates the maps and full terrain.

How feasible is this ?

[Pulverizer 0]

It's a relatively simple matter to generate bland and boring random terrain & cities. Video games have done it since the 80's. When will they have as interesting artistic features as hand-made maps is the real question, maybe in 25 years.

You can see BIS experimenting with some town generation in one of the OA interview videos:

Edited March 25, 2010 by Pulverizer

[[GLT] Legislator 32]

Basicly this technology already exists in ArmA II having the compositions. At least I guess those cities in the video are created the same way.

I'm eager to more real world terrain in real world scaling in a game some day.

[CarlGustaffa 3]

You would need something like world machine in order to generate good looking random terrain. Remember it has to be textured (assigned) as well. Imports of real world data gives you this for free. A simple fractal terrain generator is good enough for creating the edges of the world, but not for the world itself.

That we can have today. In 5 years, who knows...

[SteveJA 12]

If i remember rightly Far Cry 2 had a random terrian generator, well i say random they might have been pre-set but if they wer'nt then the quality was quite good, even if the maps were really small, something along these lines might be what your looking for.

[cjph 0]

I'm no map/level designer, but I would imagine a lot of thought goes through building and crafting them ? I believe the community is lucky to have the people and maps available in Arma2 - I am loving Domination on Duala as not being fully familiar (yet) with every town or feature.

In RL I often find myself thinking what a battle would be like in a specific environment, so maybe an easier way to build/modify maps would be another option - we could fight in each other's neighbourhoods.

[SteveJA 12]

In RL I often find myself thinking what a battle would be like in a specific environment, so maybe an easier way to build/modify maps would be another option - we could fight in each other's neighbourhoods.

Ha Ha i think of this all the time, i think i even had a dream that this happened. I think random citys would be increadibly hard as you'd have to check that buildings wer'nt merging or crossing road tectures and arn't at odd angles, let alone one that would let ai move through without problems.

[dmarkwick 259]

Perhaps one day we'll be able to identify an area in Google Earth, and some nifty image analysis software would be able to give a nice approximation of the area. Roads, buildings (height perhaps garnered from shadow analysis), walls fences and vegetation all approximated to give a reasonable gameworld. Spatter with random objects, AI, vehicles etc.

Future processing & rendering speeds could even analyse the "street view" feature to make it more faithful. Lets say 10 years ;)

[jw custom 51]

At 3 min in this video they talk about a random city generator:

[Aeneas2020 10]

It would be nice to have a simpler import system for terrain and a random map generator would be cool...you may want to have more descriptive thread titles in future though. It's annoying not knowing the discussion is going to be about before clicking on it.

[-=seany=- 5]

Actually this reminds me of some thing I had totally forgotten about. Didn't they (BIS) say at some point that on Chernarus, when you went off the map boundary you would get randomly generated foliage, rocks, trees etc? What ever happened to that?

Edited March 26, 2010 by -=seany=-

[USSRsniper 0]

It would be nice to have something like this in 5 years :) Engine which has the entire planet rather than an island.

http://outerra.com/

[[GLT] Legislator 32]

Omg this looks brilliant, especially regarding the technological aspects. Take this engine and put the BIS beauty on it and you've got a perfect game. Let's hope this engine will be used for a game some day.

[HyperU2 11]

Maybe in fifty years people will know better than to start cliffhanger thread titles. But I doubt it.

[*LK1* 10]

Maybe in fifty years people will know better than to start cliffhanger thread titles. But I doubt it.

:rolleyes:

[Lethn 10]

Worms 2 had a random terrain generator, no reason that Arma 2 shouldn't, it's just a matter of getting it organized and coded.

[dm 9]

Lol... random 2D "terrain" is a little different to procedurally generating 3D terrain with suitable surface textures, road networks, houses, other buildings and whatnot.

[Lethn 10]

"The management of the many is the same as the management of the few, it is just a matter of organization - Sun Tzu" :)