Cedaie

Hey guys. I've just started work on a rather large undertaking of making the country of Australia for Arma. The size of the island is roughly 100km x 100km. One of the first maps to be started since PMC map size discovery. The idea has been inspired from hours of time playing CTI with friends. With a CTI wishlist involving week long games with JIP enabled. Large scale battles that can go on for hours. Image below showing South Australia & Tasmania & the comparison between South Sahrani Larger Size Here Myself and a few friends will be working on the design, it's a really rough concept at the moment as you can see from the image. The elevation is much too high obviously :P I've imported a quite accurate elevation data image, as I aim to portray Australia as accurately as I can with the exception of the scale difference. So for example, the City of Sydney should be roughly 8-15 times the size of Paraiso in Sahrani. Possibly more depending on the memory required to store such information. The biggest concern is the memory and fps the complete island will take up. So heres to hoping a patch is in the works to have islands this large running without concern. It could bring Arma to a new level of play. The idea and use for this map is extremely different to other maps. The idea is just for is it's sheer feeling of massive size. As a mere soldier you will NEED to have airlifts to get anywhere, this map will bring the feeling of a somewhat agoraphobia, where you're miles from anywhere, support is 20 minutes away and you gotta hold your own until then. Or those moments flying over landmass with no ocean in sight, deserted desolate moments looking down from the chopper, rarely seeing small towns and only more desert fly by. This is why I want to make this map. Get us a bit closer to realism. With the maps scale comes the scale of the missions created for it. Long, organised, tactical battles, some feelings of R&R and never actually knowing when the bombs will go off etc. If you want fast paced, small scale action, play Sahrani or America's Army, this map is not for you. However, if you are Australian and you insist on playing in your home country with faster play, I will include 6 other maps of individual states of Australia, to sooth your craving. New building and landmark models too, such as the world reknown Opera House, Ayers Rock, etc As it stands it's just myself working on this. But it's much too big for just myself to take on. So over the next couple of weeks I'll start looking around for anyone interested in helping with details specific to Australia. By the time O2arma is out. We should have a fair amount done for importing. New models such as Australian bred trees, like the gumtree and various wattle trees. Animals and wildlife like the ever popular and over-rated Kangaroos and Crocodiles Landmarks: Sydney Harbor bridge, Opera house. The Santos (now the Wespac) building in Adelaide & many more. So just letting you know whats in the works down in aussieland. Any ideas or suggestions for this are welcome. -Ceds

Well I chucked it into Franze's Super Hornet thread but I'll plug it here too. F/A-18 Hornet (C/D) Specifically I wouldn't have started this if it weren't for the RAAF on-going use of the C/D variants. I would also like to include a 'Blue Angels' texture variant if time is on my side. Currently weighing in at approx. 8000 polys, dispersing to where is needed and retaining as high quality as I can. I'm taking as long as needed to ensure it's as close to realism. I understand where Miles Teg is coming from, but you must realise that high quality addon-makers are perfectionists through and through (hence such quality). So expect some resistance when asking them to chuck a beta and not to mention the pressure and the occasional arrogance toward beta releases and their makers. Besides, I feel that the way BAS approached their addon releases for OFP was dead-on. There is no greater feeling than 'looking forward to' something. (ok debatable )

We could synchronize releases of the C/D and your E/F versions to allow some selection for everyone. I'm a little far off completion. coming up to texturing in a few days before the dread of config work.. But drop me a msg if you're interested. P.S I don't mean to advertise in your thread, I'm just suggesting a possible coordinated release :P

What do you mean by support materials? If you need a helping hand in texturing or scripting department gimme a yell I'd be happy to help out so you can get this baby released. -Ceds

mine is roughly 2 minutes for loading time running on a 3500+ 2048 ddr3

The Progressive loading in Arma is superb, it makes way for such projects as this. Australia will be as-close-to the real thing as possible. Northern Territory will have the vast expansive red desert, while to the east will be lush wildlife, Urban feelings of grandeur. If anyone has seen the latest GTA coming, they portray New York (called Liberty City) very well and gives that very dense, urban feel. That is what I want. It's a real push to test the extremes of the ARMA Engine, but if the popularity increases for bigger and bigger maps, so will the demand for more stability from the engine. (Looking your way Bohemia) I've always dreamed of OFP/ARMA at a larger scale, sure the original islands are overwhelming to begin with, but it should excel in this area, beyond belief, beyond expectation. No other game offers the sizes I'm thinking about and I think BIS should take advantage of that, adding support for 200 km x 200km PLUS islands. I believe if we can achieve maps of this size we will lose the ever slight but present arcade feeling to Arma and inject a new immersive play. Everyone just needs to buy more memory sticks is all :P

Much Appreciated if you can get me a DEM file I can work with :P

I'll be using the new Visitor tool when it's released. Wilbur is too unstable for maps of this size. Kegetys' Tools has a PBO extractor for you.

He's working on that. Apparently an Arma bug that needs a work-around.

can't give you that yet frogstar, still a whole lot of realistic considering to do, then form a dev team. maybe then I can give you an ETA. I'm merely letting you know whats in the works

They are bigger only because they are not proper islands, just square blocks of land. This map will be designed with ground combat in mind. Towns will be detailed and running smooth. Please keep in mind the actual idea and use for this map is extremely different to other maps. The idea this map is involved for is it's feeling of massive size. As a mere soldier you will NEED to have airlifts to get anywhere, this map will bring the feeling of a somewhat agoraphobia, where you're miles from anywhere, support is 20 minutes away and you gotta hold your own until then. Or those moments flying over landmass with no ocean in sight, deserted desolate moments looking down from the chopper, seeing small towns and more desert fly by. This is why I want to make this map. Get us a bit closer to realism. Just ask yourself, how does the army get around? Winching Vehicles C130 troop carriers Sure will be, I'd love to make them run in the opposite direction of approaching choppers & vehicles. or the occasional roadkill

lol thanks guys, good to see some enthusiasm in the project. I don't think it will take years to complete, when you think about it, australia is pretty deserted. for the most part. Which allows for more detail to put into the cities. I really want cities in this one, I never really saw a full on city in OFP, probably because of it's limitations etc. Oh and, Hi Cassie

He's Australian mate, we can do shit like that in a couple days...lol Damn Straight! lol Yeah, the map alone takes about 5 minutes to load for me, but when you think about it, their will be few maps for it anyway, save for big project missions such as CTI or a version of Evolution etc. Which you won't play all the time. Additionally this is exactly why I will split the map into 7 other 'state' maps for faster loading maps. Also they won't just fall off the edge at borderlines, I'll give them shores and the island feel.

It is a massive undertaking. I plan to have new building models. a 2048 x 2048 texture touched up from snapshots off Google Earth as for a DEM file, I had no luck finding one for Australia, so basically it was a crappy 600x800 colored elevation pic, touched up in photoshop, resized to 2048 and sharpened.

Geo-mod: object model 'destruction' if you will. Â The geo-mod was first implemented into the Red Faction series, where you simply shot at a pillar or a wall, it would create a hole in the general area specified to the model polygon positions. This idea revolutionised games like Red Faction and the up-coming Half-Life 2 etc.. In Flashpoint this implementation would add to the realism as you take out your foes through a wall or a tree, although complex bieng that flashpoint has island sized maps, the polygon count for a scene with geo-mod would be rather costly. Perhaps limiting what has the Geo-mod system could still keep to realism without killing the PC running it, such as limiting it to houses (with the exception that OFP2 will have interior support) and other miscellanious objects around the islands. Perhaps character Geo-mod is more optional (as seen in Soldier Of Fortune series), but with character geo-mod would come a hefty Mature Audience rating no doubt. My next idea, and an important one to see happen in OFP 2, is terrain displacement mapping, where the ground plains would deform to explosions and tank tracks etc.. So a soldier who throws a grenade on a flat plain, where the grenade lands would alter the black and white image map that makes up the bumps and hills on the island (white bieng a raise in terrain, black bieng a lower in terrain), the grenade explosion would turn that position to black creating a small crater on the island map. Another Idea I thought I'd add which has been suggested on this forum before, is the Ragdoll Character Physic system, in which character models when killed or hit by an explosion, are calculated by the CPU to make the model 'collapse' over correctly instead of a pre-animated sequence bieng played. (check Unreal Tourney 2003 or Raven shield) Ok, post your suggestions and comments as to these two ideas, please stay on topic so the devs are able to note down the comments, etc.. Cedaie Â

Sorry? I'm talking about Operation Flashpoint 2, which is still in development, meaning it could not be rated as of yet

Ok, Poll on. Remember, you can add your own Ideas that aren't covered. I've tried to specify my idea thoughts to specific poll options that don't branch off into others. Â For example, Underwater see-able is specific, does not branch into the specific ability to swim, etc.. This should be the Idea Generation Poll, I've just started with 10 (ten) that I thought would be good ideas for OFP, please post up more ideas, and I'll spring together another one keeping the most wanted ideas from this one and others that people added here in the thread. Keep this conversation clean and to the topic, this idea generation thread can help devs take down notes on your ideas for potential additions to the game Afterall, this is OFP2-Suggestions. Cedaie. PS: All the Ideas I have listed are revolutionary implementations that have been introduced by the latest technological advances in the latest games.

hmm, the only issue here is, Ragdoll is a part of Karma engine (Unreal tournament & raven shield engine etc..) Having this in a large scale game like OFP war style would either require using the Karma engine or applying the physics for the flashpoint engine eg, BIS having to make the physics themselves. This would also concern Soldier modellers out there who would have a whole new realm of Inverse Kinematics/Bone structure layout issues. With beauty always comes that one damn pimple that causes trouble!.. But on the fun and just play games! side of things, I think it would be one HELL of an upgrade for Flashpoint realism. Cheers

Nice model, Crits on the brightness of the scope, a WA scope is almost completely black, mebbe just turn the brightness down in the texture, everything else looks good. Nice Job!

I was browsing around in the my OFP CD, and I found island PDF's What are they used for, pure interest or...I mean wow, I've been looking around them, and I noticed its Vector graphics, this is really cool BIS!! wee, now I can plan my missions out in another way Â

anim8tor, ugh, dude! www.wings3d.com Free, and my no.1 moddeling program. Its unbeleiveably user friendly, and ANYTHING can be done in it.

anim8tor, ugh, dude! www.wings3d.com Free, and my no.1 moddeling program. Its unbeleiveably user friendly, and ANYTHING can be done in it.

that mission was messed up, I literally walked out and no one noticed me

2 more things buildings are shoot through-able holes and the such. to have way more than just 3 blood textures on a model

2 more things buildings are shoot through-able holes and the such. to have way more than just 3 blood textures on a model