Raunhofer

Best looking desert map so far. Well done.

Thanks, feedback is always welcome.

Attention! Christmas is near and first snowflakes are falling as I sit in a abandoned factory complex writing this forum post with my laptop. This complex has been abandoned for years after the huge Battle of Blaise End. After long days of hard work it is time to relax and open some presents which my friends have sent to me. I'll continue working after the holidays. Have a good Christmas folks! Oh! And I almost forgot! I uploaded few photos for you from the land of battlefields. Hope my camera will hold upcoming winter... Over and out! Note: Work in progress (heavily)

Grid 1024, cell 8m, satellite grid 48 is the best way to go. It works well and runs perfectly. In practice if you select your objects wisely it doesn't matter how much you have them. The most important thing is to recognize heavy-duty-objects from the light ones and try to use more less objects which have high GPU-usage. Just avoid too 'leafy'-plans :)

I'll try to stay in authentic looking scenery so ditches and elevated roads cannot be ignored. Caribou Frontier has mainly logging roads which rarely have elevated ground (at least not in here) but they do have lot of ditches which should have same end result as elevated ground has in the gameplay. Notice the ditch @ left. Thank you for giving feedback. Ideas are welcome. Near caribou frontier's secret US airbase. Unknown flying object.

Maybe, maybe :j:

Small status update ahead: I've been working with more dense forests and progressing well, even tho there's still lot to do. I have also focused part of my concentration on technicalities as I have huge amount of objects in small areas the optimization must be at high level. Small tweaks on objects and stuff can take a lot of time but they ensure good final product (I hope). At the moment I'm still at the same performance level as the Thirsk is, which is pretty good I believe. With all settings cranked up, one GTX580 can easily run it with 10km vd, max AA, max PP, 1920x1200 all at once. I even tested it out with no graphics card at all, just i5-2500K and its integrated graphics. The island was playable, low settings but still :) Another thing, textures, I've also been increasing the detail of existing textures and tried to have more better distant land textures. For an example here is a screenshot of middletdist texture with zoomed eyesight: Click here to enlarge That's all folks, Back to work >>>

The work is progressing slowly, but surely. At the moment I'm modeling and progressing with the actual design & plans. You know... everything must be perfect =) I'll post new pics when the time is right. STAND BY!

No need to worry. After many hours of playtesting AI seems to handle the island great.

Youtube film which I made some time ago. Uses FDFmod units and podagorsk. Fanmade trailer I would say :) And of course, thanks fdfmod team, once again!

We already have cold war rearmed -modification (CWR) and I believe we will see one for A2 too someday.

If arma-fans were to be asked, what is best about Bohemia Interactive, the answer would probably be the support towards their games. Fan requests are taken into account and bugs are repaired as fast and as skilled as possible. Of course nothing ever goes 100 % according to plan, but generally other game studios should look up to Bohemia Interactive. Numerous patches, new features and even new campaigns have made us happy by being free. Now the time has come for the first DLC. Price ain't too high, but the extent of content does not make everybody happy. Many could ask, what is the function of DLC, when the same stuff can be acquired within the newest patch (though with limited quality). Is this to be expected from the road ahead? We will get free low-quality stuff with free patches when the DLCs contain the actual goods? The reasons for DLCs are obvious. Game studios don't work without profit. Arma2 is a long-term game. Arma-game series will not continue with the same pace as e.g. Call of Duty -series, so the money spent on bugfixing is short at best. DLCs are a convenient way to fund patches and bugfixes. But what about the contents of DLCs? Could there be a better way to collect the cash other than creating a few new units and vehicles, which will in any case be released with a free patch with lower quality? In my honest opinion, Bohemia Interactive could make better use of DLCs by providing more extensive content, when the possible higher price wouldn't be a problem. But what would this content be? How about islands? We already have enough units to create diverse missions, but the scenery starts to repeat itself. For example, Takistan is a great island, but in reality it doesn't provide much content. The villages are all through similar and e.g. A&D missions are almost impossible on the island due to long distances and the shortage of cover (excluding A&D missions with vehicles only) Chernarus and Utes have been used thoroughly before the release of Operation Arrowhead. So how about you in BIS focused on creating diverse islands across the world instead of units, vehicles and campaigns? Different themes for every taste. Modding communities surely take care of creating the extra units, but high-quality islands (both large and smaller ones) take a huge amount of time to finish. For a few modders that is too much work to be done and since the quality of custom made islands is not as high as Chernarus/Utes/Takistan. On the other hand a small, skilled modding community could easily produce a BAF-like DLC in a relatively short time without asking money for it. I've myself worked with ARMA2 islands so I kinda know how much work there's behind it, but still, it would extend it's usable playing time. I would gladly pay ten/twenty euros or even more for a nice, medium or large sized island. An island provides much more possibilities and gaming content than adding extra units to the game. I believe this to be profitable for BIS's upcoming financing, unlike providing free stuff with low quality and asking money for the real, functioning stuff. Some small minority might even be driven mad by this kind of DLC-policy. Well of course this is just my view to things but just consider this if you plan to release more DLC's in the future.

You're absolutely right about fixing the problems that the game already has, but I believe there's a bigger problem background that prevents focusing only in fixing existing stuff. Money. DLCs are good way in funding the existing game, because even you don't buy the dlc, someone else will and that means more profit and more resources for bugfixing. Well of course, it is not free to make DLCs neither that's why it is important to create DLCs that as many as possible would want to have.

This is Japahto Island for ArmA2! UPDATED VERSION 1.01! Small but beautiful island from the northern side of earth. You may download it by using following mirror: Japahto Island - Download Mirror 1 (the package includes key files for server admins) This was a good way to test arma2's tools for me and at the same time more arma2 for you <object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BUonsSRCXE&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&hd=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BUonsSRCXE&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object> <object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdvYLKiiRO0&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&hd=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdvYLKiiRO0&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object> Hope you like it :) MISSIONS FOR JAPAHTO ISLAND **UPDATED 11.10.09** - Fixed a&d unfinished project - Added The Convoy 3 - Added The Insurgents http://koti.mbnet.fi/a3tech/JapahtoMissions.zip JAPAHTO ISLANDS' WALLPAPERS WALLPAPERS PREVIEW AND DOWNLOAD

Yes, that's a good idea. I'll see if I can do such of modification without having any new problems. Meanwhile with the 1.0 version, you can make the units near the shore, then zoom out and move the units to the black area.

:D nicely done. I bet there's going to be somekind of hotfix soon enought... edit: Oh... well, now it is fixed :)

Unfortunately opening the .ter file crashes my wilbur.

Ok, it seems that wilbur's features aren't the best possible way to do these heightmaps. As for example handling the 1024x1024 sized picture is damn buggy and sometimes you just have to re-start your wilbur and that causes the problem which we have been talking here already... I guess the same work can be done with normal image editing tools for example photoshop.

Ok, I understand your point, but when I import the .png back to the wilbur, the .png's highest point will be 65535, right? But what if I then want to add even more higher hill for example than there already is?

But what now when every of them does change it :) edit: I added youtube vid of the problem to the first post.

Yes, that's exactly what happens when I import the .png back to the wilbur. The highest spot of the pic will be 65536. And that leads us back to my question: How can I prevent that happening? ATM I can't edit the wilbur-made .pngs, because it will cause exactly that what Homer Johnston explained. Some of you already said that I should choose the correct min/max values when importing the file, but how should I do that? OR do you mean that I should manually change the color values of the .png? Edit: OOOR do you mean that I should make the .png file to contain its highest spot as a height of 65535 and the lowest 0 by purpose? I never thought this kind of solution, as it looks in wilbur's 3D view pretty awful, but I guess it might work, thanks to visitor's .pbl file. Please confirm, if that's the way it is meant to be done.

Thanks for answering. Makes my working with wilbur a lot of easier :) But: How can I change the min/max values, when importing? I can't find a way to import .png file. Open file works, but the heightmap will be ruined.

Your summer island is probably corrupted. By re-downloading Thirsk island the problem should go away. Use the 1st post's mirror 1.

Hi, I'm working with my first island with Visitor 3 for ARMA2. Now comes the part when I should start adding the roads. How it is done, in ARMA2? Do I need to place the road objects manually (very time consuming) or is there more easier way to do it? If there is, please, could you tell me how?