major_desync

I finally got around to trying this - but no joy. I didn't think it was an issue, since the terrain packed just fine on a previous version of pboproject and nothing shows up on the Eliteness lint checks. It's a weird one. Update: For anyone with this issue - switching to the subscription version of Mikero's tools fixes this. It appears to be due to the fact that the free version is now out of date and does not work reliably post-the Eden update to A3.

Has anyone else been having a problem with the latest version of Mikero's MakePbo or PboProject (dated 27/09/2015)? I'm getting a recurrent crash when trying to pbo up a terrain (one with legacy A2 objects; I had no issue with a terrain with only A3 objects). it happens right at the end at the MakePbo step, when MakePbo suddenly stops working and crashes. Binlog: Link to noisy output As you can see it appears to crash when dealing with the ground textures. I'm not sure why this is the case, as the textures are all A3 and pboed fine with older versions of PboProject. Anyway - any help, hints, comments, or tips are welcome! PS: In a possibly related note - Addon Builder completes a build, but produces a terrain with no ground textures. Did BIS change something with how it handles textures in the last update, because the textures were working in the past, but seem to be problematic now?

@RoF - thanks for the suggestion! I've just tried that, clearing the p:\temp completely, but it's producing the same crash at the MakePbo step.

@Ares - good to know! I'll always listen to ideas and requests - though I'll not guarantee acting on them. ;) Oh and - known issue: the fence and gates at Tidewater 4 are triplicated for some odd reason. I've fixed this in TB, but am running into a problem binarizing the terrain with the latest versions of PboProject (processes fails at the MakePbo stage). So any fixes and updates are delayed until that's sorted out.

@cosmo - do you have the Arma2 object libraries and .p3ds loaded onto your P: drive? If the object .p3ds are not there, they will not work properly in X-Cam (at least that is my experience with the pre-Arma3 objects in the All in Arma pack, and I assume there is no real difference with CUP). I dePBOed the .p3ds from the AIATP and added them in their native folder structure to a Ca folder on my Arma3 Tools folder (which is then carried into your P: drive when you activate DevP.

Just in time for the holidays - the first update to Gorgona in many months. Nothing major - just a few tweaks here and there (see the changelog below). Latest version is already on all mirrors. Happy holidays to you and yours wherever you are and whatever holidays you happen to celebrate. :cheers: Beta v1.4 Released Changelog: ADDED: A few minor cosmetic tweaks to road paths (near Gorgona Scalo) and to the pier at the harbour in Gorgona Scalo. ADDED : Short road segments to gated compounds to allow AI to path through gates better (hopefully). ADDED: any changes to objects introduced in the latest (post-Nexus) version of Mikero's Arma3p.

Cheers Echo! Glad you enjoyed it. Yes - there are scattered pickets on the islands around the main platforms. They need to be either killed or driven off. I did consider reducing the trigger radius to just include the platforms, but thought where was the fun in that? One of the features of Sugar Lake is brown-trousers-close-quarter encounters in the long grass. :devil: Personally, I found the combination of FLIR (especially if you've got a spotter team in a Littlebird or bring a Darter UAV to direct a hit team on the ground) and liberal use of grenades a good way to smoke the pickets. :D As to Isolda Fleet - it's a great thought, but unfortunately, I know nothing about porting A2 objects, and the author (Gnat) hasn't been active here in over a year (even if I did know how to port, I'd need his permission to use his stuff).

.rpts might help, but I'm no expert in the ins and outs of Arma 3's guts, so I'm gonna say that unless there's something really obvious, .rpts are likely only to be a small help. But better than nothing, right?

Hi Ares! Apologies - I meant to answer your post sooner. I do get CTDs with Sugar Lake active, but usually only with a lot of other mods switched on too (like the RHS's and ACE3). Generally if I just have SL, AiATP, MCC, and say X-Cam (or even the minimum mod load out - AiATP and SL), it's stable on my set up. When it does crash, the most common one I get is the "Access Violation" one. I don't know if that's your experience as well? So I'm not sure if it's a "you thing" or a "me thing". :) Are there any common features to the CTDs that you've noticed? Anything common that seems to trigger them? Are there any mods that seem to increase the rate of crashing? Might help see if there's an incompatibility?

Update: v1.1 is live on Steam, Armaholic and PW6 now. EDITED TO ADD: Beta v1.1 (16/11/15) FIXED: Error message on start-up: “Cannot Load Texture Ca\misc3\wf\data\black.pac†by removing several objects including tents from the DP camps. (Thank you Auss for the pro tip!) FIXED: Placement and height of a number of objects - including oil platforms, wood docks, powerlines etc. ADDED: More pier ladders to oil facilities and wooden piers to make it easier/possible to climb out of water. Also - to tempt you to dive into the murky(ish) waters of Sugar Lake, I knocked together a basic 4-player Coop mission for Sugar Lake called Operation Cottonmouth. It's built with a low barrier to entry - the only mods you need are Sugar Lake and either AiATP or CUP Terrains. It's also my first attempt at a published mission - so any bug reports or feedback are very welcome! ******** [Co4] Operation Cottonmouth Insurgents have seized control of several oil facilities near the town of Sugar Lake, and taken the workers hostage. Recapture the oil platforms and rescue the hostages. A basic multi-player mission to introduce the Sugar Lake terrain. Features: - vanilla A3 factions, units and vehicles (FIA and AAF) - Farook's Revive - Player and Vehicle Respawn - Access to Arsenal to customise player loadouts - Access to unarmed helos, unarmed amphibious vehicles, assault boats, and SDVs. Requires: - Sugar Lake terrain - All in Arma Terrain pack OR CUP Terrains Available now on Steam

Thank you! The two Calico platforms and Sugar Lake Alpha (don't have grid to hand, but it's on Sugar Lake Bayou) are the nearest to what you describe. I need to add some more ladders to SL Alpha to make it more accessible, as I was having issues getting aboard it yesterday. Heights - I have not mapped them in detail, but I've found that height values of 5.9-6.1 will get doods to sit nicely on the main level decks in most of the platforms (certainly the two Calicos). Another 1-2 metres gets doods on the raised decks of the oil rigs and values of about 10.5 will put doods on the elevated pipe walkways on Calico Alpha. I've been using MCC/Zeus to do some unit placement on these platforms and while its not 100% reliable, it'll get a lot of the doods placed, and you can tweak the rest in the 2d Editor (until Eden arrives and this all becomes moot hopefully).

@Tonto-: Thank you! Armaholic may not have cleared it yet. I'll take down the link until I get confirmation. Cheers for the feedback! Update: It's live now - fill your boots with all that lovely Armahol. :811:

Sugar Lake v1.0 is out and in the wild. Release thread here.

And now for something completely a little different… Sugar Lake Sugar Lake is a township in the [REDACTED] Delta, about 120 km south of [REDACTED]. It is a hub for oil exploration and extraction in the delta. Sugar Lake has extensive port facilities servicing a number of oil refineries and extraction facilities in the surrounding wetlands. These include the Sugar Lake Oil Field, which is owned and operated by Vrana Petrochemicals, a division of the multinational conglomerate Vrana Industries. The delta wetlands surrounding the port consists of a maze of bayous, channels, and watercourses of varying size, and low-lying islands covered with tall marsh grass and patches of woodland. Sugar Lake’s size, topography, ground cover, and locations make it perfect for amphibious operations involving boats, subs, and divers, and/or airmobile elements, as well as counterinsurgency search-and-destroy missions, or insurgency raids against military or industrial infrastructure. The various oil and port installations are suitable for MOUT, while the vegetation in the marshes is almost certain to produce close-quarters combat. This is not an ideal map for extensive armoured maneuvers, aside from convoys. However, Sugar Lake does offer a chance for amphibious vehicles to shine. Screenshots or it didn't happen... Sugar Lake by the numbers Terrain dimensions: 8.2 km x 8.2 km Terrain area: 67.1 sq. km (same area as Zargabad) Heightmap resolution: 4 m/pixel Elevation range: -15 m to +16 m Flat, low-lying river delta marsh terrain, with high marsh-grass and patches of woodland; many navigable bayous, bays, and channels. Approx 250,000 objects drawn from A1, A2, and A3; All in Arma Terrain Pack or CUP Terrains are required addons. 1 large low-density urban area surrounded by levees, and several small outlying settlements. 1 large industrial port facility, with a number of different compounds, including a PMC base, several shipping container yards, and oil storage plants. 1 air-base, with extensive hinterland and associated radar installation, military camp, and fuel storage facility, all surrounded by levees. 1 military camp with extensive docks, field hospital and airmobile facilities. A range of industrial facilities including several oil refineries and isolated outlying extraction rigs and installations. Vast majority of buildings enterable. Progress: After 8 months work, I’m close to what I’d consider an alpha. As with Gorgona, I’ll farm that out to a few mates for private testing. Assuming that goes well (and barring disasters and disruptive Arma updates), I’d like to release a public beta in early November, with bug fixes and tweaks thereafter until it’s done (I expect lots of nice object goodies to wash up from Tanoa when it releases). A special thanks to Silola for his outstanding X-Cam mod, with which most of the objects were or will be placed. It's fair to say that without X-Cam this terrain would have been built in multiples of the time and fractions of the quality.

@lumnuon: Looks like you have placed objects with X-cam for which you do not have an object library loaded in Terrain Builder. I get this all the time and here's how I fix it. Export your objects from X-Cam not as a single export but by individual object. Instead of CBF (which gives you one object export file with all objects), you want to pick CTF (Create Types of Files) (Silola added it in the last update). This will give you many, many individual object export files. Next you have to find which object or objects you don't have loaded in Terrain Builder. The really laborious way is to import each object export file individually into TB, saving your TB project after each successful import (and keeping careful track of what objects you have imported). A slightly less labourious way is (assuming you have loaded all the Arma3 object libraries) to import all the Arma 3 objects first (they'll end with _F), save and then move the object export files into another folder, to separate them from the remaining (pre-Arma3) object export files. Then take half of the remaining object export files and try to import them. If that works - great, save and move those object export files into the folder with the A3 object export files. Then take half of the remaining object export files and try to import them. If an import fails, DO NOT SAVE YOUR TB PROJECT. Instead, close without saving and open it again. Take half of the batch of object exports files that failed to import and try to import that. Repeat this process until you've isolated the problem object export files. Once you have all your problem files - go back to TB and import the object libraries that contain the problem objects. Once you have them, you should be able to import the remaining object export files without issue. I'm sure there's a better and less labour intensive way to do this, but that's what works for me.

I had a play around with some of these parameters, and I didn't have much luck in making the water less transparent. So, again - the effect I'm going for is muddy marsh water - so that objects in the water should be next to impossible to see from above water (very close to the river water in the picture at the top of the thread). Specifically - I adjusted minWaterOpacity upwards to a number of values ranging from 0.9 to 100, with no obvious or significant effect on how transparent the water is from above. Submerged objects were still pretty easy to see from above the water surface, even at depths up to 15 metres (depending on the size of the object). Adjusting underwaterOpacity did dial down the visibility of objects above water from underwater somewhat (but this isn't much use if anyone above water can easily see anyone below water). Shortening the waterOpacityFadeStart to within 5m and the FadeLength to 10m also seemed to have very little obvious effect. I didn't set the FadeStart to 0, and perhaps that might make a difference. So I'm not exactly sure what parameters you'd need to change to turn the limpid Mediterranean waters of vanilla A3 into turbid, murky, muddy marsh water. It'll be interesting to see if and how different the water in Tanoa will be.

@Uro - Perfect! Thank you!

On a related issue - does anyone know how to change the transparency of the water when you look at it from above - that is, if you are on shore looking into the water or flying over looking down? The effect I'm looking for is muddy, cloudy water (let's set aside colour for the moment). I've tried changing some of the parameters in the class Underwater section of the config - and they affect the visibility when you're in and under the water (specifically - the waterFogDistance Near and waterFogDistance numbers seem to have most effect - as they define your view distance underwater in metres). class Underwater { noWaterFog = -0.001; fullWaterFog = 0.001; deepWaterFog = 200; waterFogDistanceNear = 10; waterFogDistance = 40; waterColor[] = {0.04,0.16,0.22}; deepWaterColor[] = {0.0,0.001,0.009}; surfaceColor[] = {0.04,0.16,0.22}; deepSurfaceColor[] = {0.0,0.001,0.009}; }; However, these parameters have no effect on transparency looking into the water. So you can have the situation where people above the water can see farther than people in the water (which is not entirely realistic). The parameters in class SeaWaterShaderPars (see below) seem like they should affect the transparency, but I've tweaked them a bit and can't really see any change. Does anyone know what these parameters affect and/or what the range of each parameter is? Thank you in advance! class SeaWaterShaderPars { refractionMoveCoef = 0.03; minWaterOpacity = 0.0; waterOpacityDistCoef = 0.4; underwaterOpacity = 0.5; waterOpacityFadeStart = 60; waterOpacityFadeLength = 120;

Progress update: I'm happy to say that Sugar Lake is now in alpha. I've upgraded the trees and bushes to mix in some pre-A3 models, put in some scale randomisation, and have got some satisfyingly dense green hells (for not terrible FPS on Ultra). For example, how many CSAT troops do you see in this picture? Next steps - private alpha testing for a week or two. I also want to play with the water properties to make it more murky and marshy. But, barring something serious popping up in the alpha test or other disasters, Sugar Lake should be coming your way soon. Are you sure you spotted all the CSAT doods? :D

Ok - so I have a question for the thread - what is your ideal trade-off point between vegetation density (and the opportunities for butt-clenchingly terrifying close combat) and FPS? At what FPS do you say, "I'm out, this map is broken" - 20? 30? 40? 50? 60? I realize that opinions will vary a lot, and that my sample size here will be small, but interested even to get a straw poll.

I had an issue where the Fav list moved itself out of the field of view. This was Silola's solution: Not sure if that's your problem, but worth a shot.

Funny you should say that - I first got the idea for a marshland map on a boat out to Burano! I even eyeballed the satellite map of the Venetian lagoon, but opted for one based off an American location instead. An island town like Burano or Murano would make an amazing map - but would take quite a long time to put together (also I liked the idea of isolated industrial facilities in the middle of the marsh, which the other map gave me).

@devileyedelvis: Cheers - I'll add it to my photo reference sources. :)

Thank you all for your kind comments. I hope that the end product lives up to your expectations. @nikiforos: Well, that poses me a dilemma. Maybe just call in sick for a few days before you decide. :D @Jaaxxxxon and Evil Organ: I'm glad it does look a little like the SE US. That's what it's supposed to resemble (even if the terrain is actually in [REDACTED], a country that has road signs in kilometers, odd vegetation, and a really strange mix of building styles). ;) @Soolie: The game map looks a little bare at the moment, as I'm upgrading all the woodlands to X-Cam standards (a new vegetation mix including some appropriately marshy pre-A3 models, random scaling etc - blame Silola for raising the bar :P), but maybe a grab of the satellite map layer will do in the meantime?

Wow - loving the map and those amazing custom objects! Two questions - how big is the terrain, and have you considered releasing the custom objects as a separate pack ones you're done?