major_desync

And I thought all the killers were in the prison. :) That's a happy list of fixes for the next release (and you found the sea cave!). I'll do what I can to eliminate these, though rocks in Arma are are always an occupational hazard. Priorities: Obvious glitches like misplaced objects, ground clipping through floors (unless it makes sense like in ruined buildings). Killer terrain in places where players are likely to encounter it - like the first example there, which is right by the buildings at Calle Marina if I'm not mistaken. I wouldn't necessarily go looking for every single bit of killer terrain, because who has the time for that? Thanks again - this took a lot of time and effort and many Bothans died to bring us this information. :p

Keep those glitch reports coming, guys - it's always good to get fresh eyes on a project and I really appreciate that you take the time to report stuff. I'm fixing these as they come in and will release another "proof-read" version in a week or so.

Gotcha Granis - I've tried to realign that bend I don't know how many times. :) Will give it another go, as that is shonky (that's what you get when you let convicts do your roadbuilding, I guess). :p

@Granis: Thank you. It's great to hear people enjoying the map. It makes the hours struggling with TerrainBuilder and Buldozer worth while! :) Good catch on the tree bin - I read your post too late to get a fix in v1.1, but it's on the list for the next update. Roads - yeah, they're rough in places. I found it hard to smooth roads, so they're not always as well-built as they should be (the island authorities weren't kidding when they put up all those road signs and speed limits!). I'll get a road crew out to look at the problem area (the terrain cell size of the map allowing). ;P

Looks like there's something wrong with the p3ds in your A3 folder (or at least one in particular). The first thing I'd try (if you haven't already) is to reinstall your P: drive using Arma3p. This should grab you new p3ds and might fix this. A less satisfactory workaround is to remove the offending objects - but if you've as many ficus trees in your map as I have in mine, that's not really an option. :) You may find more about what's wrong in the binlogs btw.

You don't need the normals map - but my gut tells me that's not the cause of this error. A normals map gives you extra mask surfaces per texture tile, AFAIK. So if you want lots of different surfaces (and you probably will), it's good to have. That said - once you've got your map up and running, you can add in a normals map at any time. So there's no harm leaving it out at the start (though you need to watch how many surfaces your mask has, as you might have some texture issues if you've too many).

To be fair - I don't think Zonker is talking about getting into the base, but the problems that just one exit might cause the defenders. I had a look at some diagrams of typical base layouts and most have a secondary or emergency exit to allow a garrison to manoeuvre out against a force blockading the main exit without having to knock holes in their own walls. Now, when it comes to getting into walled compounds, I'm with you, 4 - I prefer to have intact walls (where they make sense) that you have to blow through, rather than lots of conveniently placed holes.

@Zonker: Base: You know - I had not considered that. I think it's an easy fix though - I've a spot in mind on the south side. Radome - I think that's how they work. In real life those domes are made from fibreglass.

Awesome resource! Thanks for sharing this.

Anticipation Intensifies. ;D

For what it's worth - those mountains don't look too strange to my eye. If it's a real location, maybe eyeball your elevation against the same view in Google Earth?

Short answer (also the long answer ;)): I didn't. I flagged it as a known issue in the release. It is an annoying bug, as it makes it difficult to accurately place triggers and units in the Editor, but I live in hope that Top Men are working on it.

Hi all, I've got my first terrain all the way to final binarization - but I'm failing to make that one last hurdle. I've looked everywhere, but can't seem to get a resolution, Perhaps some of the wise folk here might know what's up. So here's the facts: - config.cpp passes Eliteness LintCheck without errors. - the terrain packs fine unbinarized via Addon Builder; I can load it up and run it in game without any obvious issue. - however, when I binarize with Addon Builder, it packs, but the satmap textures are missing in game. But hey, Addon Builder, right? :p - in pboproject, I've also had a series of issues (2 resolved, 1 unresolved): 1: at first packing failed, due to lack of (I think) a RequiredAddons line in the config. Certainly when I added one (see config below), this issue went away. 2: Then I ran into an issue where only the configs packed and nothing else. This I fixed thanks to this post on the forums. 3: Now - the packing process proceeds halfway, then crashes at the Bis Binarise stage (it says "Bis Binarise failed Gorgona"), producing the outputs below. My best guess is that there's an issue with the inheritance from Stratis - since it looks to be not finding a bunch of CfgWorlds parameters (I think). However I have no idea how to fix this. So any help would be appreciated! By way of a bribe - here's some screenshots of the terrain itself: :) Config: Pboproject binlog (UPDATE WITH FULL BINLOG):

My advice would me - maybe start with a smaller test terrain - perhaps 4 x 4km, using a 1024 x 1024 grid and a 4m cell. Maybe use a quickly generated heightmap and texture from L3DT until you get your parameters right (especially the mask tile size). The first goal should be to get your textures working - you'll feel a lot better with a win under your belt. Once you have that, you can start experimenting with different grids and cell and mask size combos. This is trial and error in my experience, but grids in powers of 2 (512, 1024, 2048, 4096) seem to work, as do even numbered cell sizes - though that could be pure cargo cult* on my part, because I don't really understand why some combos work and others don't. (*: imitating something that worked before in the hope it'll work again without understanding why it worked)

It feels weird to write this - but love your hedgerows, man. :) The natural look you get from the blend of vegetation you're using is one of the things I find most impressive (not to mention the gorgeous object clutter, of course). Outstanding work!

@HellGhost - glad to see you've got it running, hope it is worth the effort! :) @Zonker - Ah - that brings up an intermittent problem I've seen with lighting. Nearly all the lights I put in (except a couple of the really bright globe lights in the village) are on by default. BUT - I've sometimes noticed the first time I've loaded up a editor preview only the lights in a radius of my placed player character are on and the rest are off (even the red navigation lights on the comm towers). Loading up the preview the second time seems to fix this and all lights come on across the island. I've noticed it also in actual missions - first load in, no lights, second load in, lights. No idea what's causing it though.

@HellGhost - fingers crossed! @Zonker - thank you! To be compared to Opteryx is high praise (I'm really looking forward to his new ME buildings pack). Lights, like object clutter, are one of those Goldilocks things - too much and too little isn't good, but it's hard to know when you have it just right. I'll look at the camp and radome again (I had more lights in both and took them out), but, having tested a night mission in the prison, having a mix of light and dark there is good, I think. ;) Helipad - I need to increase the size and change the colour of the keypoint text so these features are easier to spot. The helipad is in a clearing on a wooded ridge two-thirds of the way down the east coast. That's the location on the real island, which is a bit weird, but I think it adds some interesting options for missions. It'd be a kind of lonely posting for a sentry team. I've thought about adding another pad to the base, but I didn't want to clutter it too much to allow mission makers to change it as they like (off the top of my head, I think you can drop a helipad marker in Zeus). I'm gonna think about that more though. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to give feedback, and enjoy!

Yeah - the buildings thing is a known issue: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?180033-Building-now-showing-on-MAP/page4 There isn't a fix for it yet, but there might be sometime soon!

As a belated Christmas present, I thought I'd share a few sneaky pics showing the results of several months of wrestling with TerrainBuilder. This is babby's first Arma terrain, so I opted for something small and manageable - the small Italian prison island of Gorgona (which coincidentally is just 35 km north of Capraia). The terrain is just over 4km x 4km in total (16 sq km). Of that the land area of the island is about 6.5 sq. km (this is larger than the real island). The island is hilly and heavily forested, and so is best-suited for small unit infantry and stealth special ops play. There is no airfield, but there is a helipad and port. Some obvious scenarios would be "Escape from..", prison breaks, or all out air-sea assaults. Screenshots. Features include a port village and a number of compounds scattered around the island, such as, a prison, farms, a military base, a radome compound, a research station, a small junkyard, a cemetery, and a small castle. All buildings and vegetation are from A3, so there should be no issues with AI x-ray vision (any more than usual). Progress: The map is currently at what I'd consider alpha stage. I plan to do private alpha testing to look at FPS and gameplay, and if all goes well, release a public beta by the end of January. One question to the forum: I haven't currently added a lot of incidental object clutter and detail (crates, pallets, wood piles, furniture, that kind of stuff) as a lot of that can now be added by Zeus. So the question is - do you expect to see incidental clutter and flavour in a terrain, or do you prefer to add these kind of things yourself via Zeus as the scenario demands? Update: The island is actually bigger than I thought! :p I've updated this to the actual dimensions.

Thank you all for you kind comments! We should probably move this discussion over to the completed mods forum, but first a few replies: Object clutter - It is still a WIP, but I was not planning on too much more in the way of additions, unless there is a great demand for it (but I'm here to listen!). I'm in two minds about object clutter. You need it certainly, and it makes an amazing difference. But there might also be a point where there's too much object clutter, so that it gets in the way of mission makers. This is especially true when objects can be added in Zeus and/or MCC (and more so if BIS develop that 3D editor they're talking about). Now - I might still be in the "not enough clutter" box, but I wonder if it's better to have too little than too much. That said, I don't know the answer. :) Vanilla objects - this was one of the challenges I set myself: what interesting things can I do with just the A3 buildings? The villa maze was one of these - I hope it'll be a cool place for a bit of close-quarters battling. (BTW - BIS have done a really nice job using and combining vanilla buildings, if you take a close look at any of the towns in Altis and Stratis. There aren't that many different vanilla buildings but all the combinations that they manage to get out of them is pretty impressive.)

First – thank you all for your kind comments. Every hour of fun you get out of this map justifies every hour put into making it. Some replies: @Sonsalt6: Thank you for adding me! @Foxhound: Same to you. @killshot: ;D @Panimala: Fair point about the forests – I’ll think about spicing up the more isolated wooded areas with a few more ruins, and maybe a secondary com-mast compound, if appropriate. If all else fails though, I find an enemy fire-team or two spices up a stretch of forest plenty. ;P @HellGhost: Weird – haven’t seen that before. So it *might* be something in your set up. Have you tried going pure vanilla (no addons) and just activating @gorgona? It might also be something odd with the mod - for example, whatever is causing the crash on exit below. Thanks for the report - I'll see if it's something I can fix. @Sparfell_19: Crash on exit – I’ve noticed this too. I’m not sure what’s causing it, but will compare your RPT vs mine and see if anything obvious jumps out at me. Also – will add that to the known issues. Thanks for the report! On the research station – sometimes the real world is a little weird. ;) Yeah – it’s probably a water tank in reality, but reality is boring sometimes. ;P

Armaholic and Play With Six mirrors to follow...don't worry! ;)

Gorgona Beta now submitted to Armaholic for release. Release on Pw6 and Steam Workshop to follow... In the meantime - here's a raft of new screenshots to tide you over.

Progress report: I've been refining the Gorgona alpha over the last few weeks. Playtests on a dedicated server have gone well so far, delivering solid FPS and gameplay. (Arma3 Tools update not withstanding) I should be able to release a public beta next week. In the mean time - a couple of screen shots: A day at the beach in Gorgona. Miller's Crossing ;)

Have you looked in the output and binlog in pboproject? Those are the first places you should look when it doesn't work. Posting them here will help people figure out what's happening if the answer isn't obvious. pboproject doesn't tolerate errors in the configs the way Addon Builder does. That's why it's ultimately the better tool for binerization. In the absence of logs, I can only advise you to try: 1: downloading all the latest versions of Mikeros tools (the components that pboproject uses); - this sometimes makes a difference. 2: reinstalling your P: drive using Arma3P; - again, sometimes makes a difference. 3: use Eliteness to Lintcheck your config, layers, surfaces, clutter files; - this will detect any syntax errors in your configs that might stall out pboproject 4: check the requiredAddons line in your config. I had errors in this line that caused a crash during the Bis binerization step This is the requiredAddons from Stratis, which seems to work fine with pboproject for me - (note: I was only using A3 objects): requiredAddons[] = {"A3_Data_F","A3_Roads_F","A3_Structures_F","A3_Map_Data"};