Spritz Island rev. 0.3.0

[shezan74 11]

Hi guys... i've worked hard in those last days and i've placed on my FTP the beta version of Spritz Island.

What i need is to have a bigger audience than myself to help me discover malfunctions and wrong island configurations.

Spritz Island is downloadable here.

Island was made with large using of World Tools and his features:

Mainly:

- Forest Generator for vegetation/rocks

- Fence Generator for fences and walls

- Script Generator for powerlines (tower/cable script has been made to make powerlines placement easier and faster) in fence placement.

Feedback appreciated, map is very small in size (25 mb) but is very big in size (10x10 km box)

Cities has been made only on the northern part of the island. More work will be made soon on airport (southwest) and other towns.

Ah... i'm aware of ILS wrong position on the map... it's still there waiting for a runway ;)

Edited June 14, 2010 by shezan74

[Walker001 0]

Sounds interesting... but download link is currently not working...

[shezan74 11]

Yes, this is because a link that starts with HTTP:\\ is better than a link that is starting only with TTP:\\ :)

Fixed, thank you :)

[katipo66 94]

Hey man i had a quick run around on the island, heres my 5 cents:

I see you have put a little bit of thought into the towns, nice.. maybe theres too many street lights for a small sleepy fishing village? the port with the statue was really laggy for me, just one unit, me running around.

It feels like the map needs to be broken up, roughed up a bit, maybe add some small farming houses/communities in the lowlands and more dense the forest up a little more in the highlands, currently the forest feels like golf course type forests if you get my meaning, the use of the logs seems over done and not natural for them to be sitting as they are on slopes, logic tells me they should be rolling down the hill... maybe more suited to a large timber yard area around a forest? or ready to be put on ships down at the port?

Also the rocks on the road didnt feel right, as that scenario happens with cliffs close by?

But over all the map feels good, just a bit empty... as theres no points of interest that entice me to move towards.

Hope that helps a bit, good work, thanks bro :D

[-martin- 10]

Excellent island and big too, looks like you put a lot of work in to it :smile:

But as Katipo66 said it looks too empty I have a few tips for you that will make the map better.

1) The trees are too randomly placed around the map, look at how trees grow in real like and the areas they grow in, for example it doesn't happen that you have 1 single tree growing somewhere and nothing around it, trees have seeds and over time smaller trees will ground around it and also some bushes so instead of placing just one tree place a smaller tree beside it and some bushes around it.

2) Make more farms, one of the most unrealistic things that even BIS did on Everon or Nogova is create a huge island with many towns and villages and make like 6 small fields, you can't expect that to feed the whole island for the whole year.

3) Make the mountains look more rocky on the satellite map, cover them with a rocky texture.

4) Clean up the towns a bit, put some wood beside houses, water pumps, trash canes etc...

But still its a nice island beta and lots of hard work went in to it, good luck with the project :smile: also people don't forget to post what you like/dont like on the island so he knows what kind of direction to work it. :cheers:

[shezan74 11]

Thank you guys :)

I'm working hard on characterizing the island and trying to have a good setup of bushes on it.

I'll take into big considerations your suggestions, and i'm making a "todo list" for my small project.

Next steps will be working on towns (for more characterization) and bushes on forest areas. The island is veeery big and i'm trying to work it as a "laboratory" for increasing my knowledges in specific areas of island making.

Thank you again, i'll keep you all informed of future main releases. I really appreciated your watch :)

[dimitri_harkov 10]

I like your island. It will become a nice playground for the community. :)

Many thanks for your great world tools by the way...

(any chance to add railroads to it? ... well a man may dream :))

Cheers,

D.

[shezan74 11]

Honestly placing railroads with World Tools will be a tricky game and was considered in my first work.

I've placed all powerlines in 3 minutes with worldtools (and spent some 25 minutes to remove trees from the powerline cables) all around the entire island, so railroads are easy to do.

Main problem is the space... the island is not very well conformed to be suitable for a complete railroad system, due his slopes and narrow valleys. I wonder for a new ArmA3 that will support tunnels :D

Thank you for trying the island. This means it's working and i'm not screwed up everything on my config files :D

I like your island. It will become a nice playground for the community. :)

Many thanks for your great world tools by the way...

(any chance to add railroads to it? ... well a man may dream :))

Cheers,

D.

[mr burns 131]

I especially liked the how you´ve put some thought into the design, such as the seamless radio tower network, or some logpiles around the towns which surely will provide excellent cover. The life raft on the crane was a good idea too.

Very nice island so far, keep it up and we´ll be seeing another keeper!

[[aps]gnat 28]

Nice work shezan74

My comments

- Agree with previous comments.

- For the size and number of objects, seemed lag for some reason. Is it because of some non standard objects like the frigate? Maybe not because the lag seems to be across the whole island. Maybe you have a really high mesh on the ground or the ground textures are set slightly in incorrect.

[shezan74 11]

Hi gnat, thank you for testing it.

Well, i've a 2048x2048 map/mesh behind the island so i don't think it's the problem.

Maybe a problem could be the clutter? It's nice (imho) but maybe a little bit hard to be played...

I will check performances with and without frigata in the harbour now :)

Thank you

[614hardcore 10]

i love it!

The harbor is a nice little addition, as well as the little village near it.

Like the rest of the people, i think you should put some farms onthere.

Good luck :)

[mikebart 1]

hey shezan, I just spent some time playing your terrain in the armory, I really like it, I noticed though that when I spawned in a town though that I'd fall a short distance before hitting the ground, not enough to cause damage though, but just thought you might like to know about it so you can fix it in config or something, I really like the rippled effect that you see on the terrain off in the distance its very effective, and its pretty cool that object placement was entirely done using your own tools.

im wondering if the performance issues are due to there being too many different tree types?, I recall hearing somebody say once that in a forest situation you should really have no more than 4 different tree types, but I guess then theres always the cross over to different forest types where you'd have more, I could be wrong on this.

Im not really a big fan of the dry grass you've used throughout most of the terrain, I think it could look good in small patches or mixed in with for example some of the dry grass from Utes, with more of a gravelly with small rocks texture underneath

sorry I forgot to record where this pic was taken but I think you have a really nice look going on here, its almost like it has a bit of Utes and a bit of Chenuraus combined, I like it and I think this is the look you should go for for the outskirts of the forest and then maybe a bit greener and lush in the deeper areas.

Anyway I hope these suggestions help, nice job, and looking forward to seeing the next update.

[shezan74 11]

Hi Mike :)

About performance issues i've reduced intensity of clutter and seems to be a little bit better. I don't think it's related to forest variations.

About dry grass there are plans to change it to something else, more "green", but i'm actually working on island characterization (roads, villages, powerlines) and i think i will make some experiments just before release.

Main goal for this island is to have a nice playground for PvP patrols. Due this "background choice" i've increased the number or rocks on the ground, to offer help to infantry troops, and i've reorganized the whole vegetation set.

using worldtools i've merged my mask with a 4 colour altitude map, and now all vegetation is correctly placed on correct ground type and has a small variation from yellow-red (sea altitude) to green only vegetation and bushes at higher altitudes.

I'm trying the map with some clan friends in patrol missions and seems the quantity of bushes and rocks, as seen from the ground, is nice.

After clutter revision i will post a new release for your opinions (really appreciated!)

by the way... your screenshot make me wonder what i did without seeing it! (all was placed by tools, and i don't have had so much time to explore the results on real Arma environment).

Thank you! great shot!