Robster

erm this might be a bit off-topic but could someone point me in the right direction to understand this thing of classes and inheritance C++ stuff... we are working on clafghan final release but still I can't feel confident on the config.cpp side of life... and anytime I look at those lines of code they make me feel a bit scary :( and as i can't grasp the basic structure or order of coding stuff, then i feel i'm always replicating the same mistakes over and over again... as you discuss above... It sounds like some dialect to me... ting tong nah tong ting

lol your first post was necroposting ... good luck! :)

erm @Jakerod: I have tried opening different pews of my own and then I have copied some objects from one to paste them in the other pew... it just doesn't work... whether it might be paste absolute or relative... am I missing something? @Mikero: That's really interesting... but importing templates would involve road networks present in certain pew file? I friend of mine send me a huge road network and I think I'm gonna have to import / export net in a slow rather painful process... is there some other method that you might know or suggest to us? Cheers comrades !!!! hahaha

BRAVO!!! IMHO this is a nearly perfect job atm Sidewalks, streets and custom roads job is just beautiful and I can't remember a better job so far... city looks clean and so detailed and getting rid of grass everywhere inside towns makes a tiny big difference... I loved all your attention when placing objects so nothing looks outplaced... big bridge was a bit off but that that can be quickly fixed adjusting abs heights or, maybe better, ground terrain... you might use "show absolute height" and "set abs heights" scripts to find out your corresponding heights and/or also made some terrain vertices with CTRL+RMB as needed to match that bridge part... Custom objects are beautiful and when I entered into train station I almost dropped my tears... really beautiful and well done... train paths and streets enviroment is carefully placed and it's a pleasure to look around your island... I haven't seen all unique features around in Taviana but what i've seen so far is simply impressive... I took some pics about some vegetation ... really minor details... considering your highest level of dedication, for sidewalks you could try an an additional layer of BIS cluttercutter p3d objects... another possible method to deal with clutter could be making a 10-20% second bigger roadway LOD at -1 m (relative) for sidewalks models with an additional memory LOD at ground touching level to avoid seeing sidewalk model or characters floating in the air... it might be a tricky working fix to avoid growing grass near asphalt or concrete zones... Your overall work is really lovely and encourages me to do better stuff aswell as it serves as an inspiration for map making... On the constructive side I can criticize that all mountains look all rounded shaped -a bit too much smooth tool on terrain design - and IMO it's a shame because your island deserves a better job on that aspect... can you imagine these beautiful constructions with erosion shaped sidehills as far medium landscape? It would be simply epic! Some forests have all their trees with a very similar size... which might be good to be hidden from aircrafts but also looks a bit unnatural... perhaps you could try some smaller surrounding trees at those forests or some spots or traces inside forests with some size variation... it's just a suggestion though... And a last one... as you did from first beta... there is a road that goes from higher to lower grounds and it's all straight... there are lot of real places where you can find that kind of design but IMO you could get a more interesting road trying some Z road... I mean, an straight road with some turns that allow a not so heavy slope for traffic... -homer johnston's road painter helps a lot for these purposes- ok, sorry I am asking too much for free but if I am complaining for an additional effort is only because you can afford it considering your outstanding work so far and your consistent overall results on getting a remarkable island... anyhow, thank you for all the high level of quality you have put in there and congratulations on your beta3 release comrades!!!! :D

lol Hey MM1! You're posting into A1 threads... anyways, you might consider to take a look into BIS textures (.paa files which can be saved as .tga files using BIS tex2view tool), so you can save some extra image files and only work on meshes... of course, this apply for generic stuff but I've been making some experiments with very good results on 41 KB total file size...

good to read about your advances and findings... for massive objects keep in mind that these kind of tests should also imply rvmats, cause use of rendering stages add some kind of stress onto GPU Saludeins alameins!!!!

lol no worries... today we were talking about those statics objects as buildings that may have a huge number of polygons... and he considered them as "hero objects" meaning a building that may have more details than needed but is going to be placed very few times -just like yours- so FPS shouldn't be seriously affected... I am pretty sure that your buildings may have around 4000 polys in first lod and still run flawlessly... also too many render stages might be fps killers... so, basically try to convert everything into tris and then you can evaluate chances to add more eye candy, little details, you know... keeping in balance with overall performance... where a lot of troops and mid hi poly vehicles will be walking or flying around EDIT: I DID EDIT ABOVE POST :P

nop. that's ok... if your building is, as Dual Joe said- a "hero object" remember that there is a p3d plugin for 401 and once you get used to it, then workflow gets pretty fast EDIT: It seems that your model has quads... and polys are reduced to tris, so total number of polys may be increased... concerning all those barriers... anyways this applies for first res LOD which should be the most heavy Lod... so, I guess it should be FPS friendly and if those barriers are thin enough you may consider to make them as triangled shape rather than squared shape, specially concerning those upper windows, because nobody will notice it seeing them from below (too far)... those are methods to save polys where they matter... saludines!

Those pics look good, nice job :D

Basically if you can run any map decently you should be able to make something like it with no problems at all, specially if you are planning to do it four times smaller, cheers!

Hi Joe Joe ;) How many polys do you have in 0 ResLOD ??? all those windmill sticks seem to be a lot... have you done some previous tests in-game? It's a beautiful work so far, Cheers

terrific job!!! congrats in advance :D

Since the public release of the enormous PMC Ulah-Yuryakh I went back to pay attention to the most ambitious part of editing terrains... the bigger ones... Traditionally, as a way to achieve a huge terrain, usually mappers have been using 2048 px height map increasing grid terrain which means that terrain resolution decreases... As example of terrain with 2048px heights maps we can name 29 Palms or Esbekistan, jut to name the most recently released ... all these terrains use a 10m grid with 20480 square meters area as a result ... whenever you need to go bigger you could increase grid: So if you want a 20m grid you could get an area of 40960 sq.mts. total, and so on... As that grid value can be increased at will, we have known about some maps with 100m grid, but at some point terrain begin to look a bit "flat" because ground's level of detail is getting lost somehow... for a better understanding you might be interested in reading about terrain grid and terrain LOD-ing For this very reason it would be interesting to keep a resonable level of detail at ground level as well as a achieving a huge terrain, and For further reference purposes, and just to stay on topic, I came here to report about known bugs in V3PE when dealing with 4096px height map as the most huge available... Many mappers have sadly known when trying to edit a map with 4096px height map, Visitor 3 gets stuck and basically you can't directly move objects located at 3/4 of total area... The most funny thing is that you can place objects wherever you want, but then you can't move them since selection tools doesn't work as expected, it seems to select objects, but it doesn't let you move as usual... But afaik there are some methods to struggle with it: FIRST METHOD: REPLICATION AND FURTHER EXPORT One way to deal with it is to replicate a terrain with same chosen size but using 2048px height map... i.e.: Terrain size = 40960 sq.mts. -> height map = 2048 px -> terrain grid = 20 m. Acting like that you could make your 40x40 map with 20 m.grid resolution, you edit everything as usual, place objects, etc, and then you could import/export the whole thing into your final terrain, as this: Terrain size = 40960 sq.mts. -> height map = 4096 px -> terrain grid = 10 m. Disadvantages in this approach are: 1- We can't see the very final result till it's finished... 2- We can't export custom size since import/export scripts for V3PE do not manage size values... 3- We can get outplaced objects in the Z - abs height (flying objects some cms above the ground) SECOND METHOD: PMC STYLE You can manage some sort of arrangement as a template to be ready to dispose of your objects importing them into Visitor 3... for these purposes you could use tools such as WorldTools For PMC Ulah-Yuryakh map Snake Man used his very own utility to spread a template of random objects... Disadvantages in this approach are quite similar to 1 and 2 stated above THIRD METHOD: THE BOAT INSIDE THE BOTTLE As we all can remember the craftman making a boat inside a bottle, we can edit a huge map wherever BI editing tool curently allow us, which means to afford editing process by pieces in non troublesome areas, and once a part is ready then you can move it where they should be placed, where it will be virtually blocked Additionally, you can use selection panel to redefine or "bind" your selection to some reference object that you can easily move, with one or more of those located at the "dark side of the moon" Acting like that, you can have some sort of control about what's happening in your terrain... you can still tweak vertices on the fly watching instant results and you will really know the meaning of patience... Of course, these methods can be combined just to rush things a bit and bringing custom details and close attention wherever it might be needed... such as an airstrip Personally, I do not have that huge amount of patience but I'm looking forward to new A3 tools to see what we can get, if any at all... and even get some wet dreams about some kind of online multi editor terrain tool... where everyone could edit, import, export and add their own stuff on common grounds... the whole earth naturally ;)

@Jake: That's exactly what I was trying to explain. Let's think about this 4096 map as four 2048 areas... But you can only move in your top left area... then pick any ref object on your working corner and then pick your deadzone objects -keep pressing CTRL to add more objects to your current selection-, then go to selection panel and choose add or redefine and then you can move your valid reference aswell as your other far distance objects... that's why I referred to making the boat inside the bottle, cause it reminds me moving things but keeping some distance at the same time... Just for the record, a FOURTH METHOD = PATCHWORK could be to work in those four 2048px height maps separately and then do the export into a bigger one... but that sounds more affordable using some utility to move stuff... maths shouldn't be a big problem since your coords are mereley duplicating their corresponding values in the x and/or y axis... We need a code sorcerer who understand how this stuff works... to get some tool just like a "map blender" or something like that... Anyways, what if we start a poll to call every available mapper to make an allstars community terrain? Something quick: 10 days and nothing more than 1 km per capita, just to get 5x5 map and explore feasibility of experiencing multi-editing, of course the only condition would be authoring some map, to be considered as a community mapper... and 25 guys focused in one common project ... nah! perhaps it's a bit too much EDIT: @Thromp: Many thanks for your tips and that terrain app.. I hadn't heard of it before... I will try to follow your explanations to see how it goes... so far it looks like a lot of automated stuff... which may be good to gather some draft or enviroment to begin with... EDIT2: Many thanks Raptor, perhaps this reading is not easy readable, but I'm glad to share my thoughts about doing better stuff!

If A3 provides a bit polished editing tools... I would like to do as I wanted initially... qué tal malaco? ready for A4? :annoy: hahahaha

I did a PBO and everything went fine... up to 1600 kms terrain with big TV towers spread all over around and everything working with no issues... ooops! Now I re-open V3PE and I can't select objects in troublesome areas... weird bug... I have red defaul artificial objects at right side of terrain, when I make a selection over them they get white borders as usual, but I can't take or move them... so, basically, once these objects are placed you can't move them again... hahahahahaha HOWEVER, this happens in my D test, I mean the final 40x40km at 10m grid terrain (4096 px heights) ... In my C test, which is 40x40km at 20m grid terrain (2048 px heights), I can move the same objects at the same relative coords (x,y) (!!!!) So, at this point, I can conclude that we can make a huge terrain as PMC demonstrated, but everything should be done in a C type terrain (at least for 3/4 of terrain) and then you should export objects into the final D type terrain... As you have to run an import/export objects script you will notice that size of objects will be affected by D type terrain template, which poses an additional constraint to use custom size against default size... so import/export process might be not as accurate as needed... that's our mapper life though... EDIT: Confirmed. In D type terrain I can move and select objects located at top left corner which is 1/4 of total terrain, so there are no excuses to edit that area -aprox. 20 sq.kms- So, I want my wilderness airport runway right now!!! :681: Saludines mis washas! EDIT2: I'm starting to think about a "road to Jalalabad" -Asadabad would fine anyways- since I always wanted a bigger Clafghan... f*ck yeah!

@Jake: yes, certainly what you said works as you say... And that's why this PMC terrain is so relevant because it fairly shows that A2 engine can effectively handle a 4096 px height map... so let's avoid off-topic matters EDIT: whooooaaaa!!!! Now I got it...:dancehead: you and B -who else?- are saying that keeping coords at same meters grid should do the trick... yeah... that's right... and it works... That's my clutch method: I mean, I've been translating terrains into a higher standard and it worked flawlessly... well, sometimes some abs height placed objects remain a bit in the air -in centimeters- but it's understandable since terrain becomes a bit fine tuned... I'm gonna make a test on a 10km terrain at 2.5 meters grid... I mean 2048px height at 5 meters grid ... that's a hell of a job anyhow... I mean, it could just take about a year to finish something like that properly... but a sandbox version -or wilderness, whatever- should be fine also... EDIT2: I made all possible tests and everything worked flawlessly... even more, I put objects all over the place in every possible corner in a terrain with same size as this PMC terrain (4096px at 10 m grid).... nothing wrong happened... atm I'm making a PBO -will take a while-... this is really intriguing me BTW... cause the last time I tried to place objects in a terrain with this size I did always get fatal errors and V3PE crashed... and other dudes were having same issues either... was it fixed and nobody noticed it yet ???... why does Snake say that his PMC terrain can not be edited in V3PE? Does it anything to do with current PC specs??? Now I have more available RAM ... but V3PE doesn't consume as much resources as A2 itself...

Many Thanks Man! SnakeMan! For me, nowadays magic lies in coding stuff... as only tweaking things at console level you could hope to get rid of current gaps found in official editing tools just like V3PE... it's seem to be "clear" enough that's how things work today... But do we have to know how to code our own command line utility to place some objects (randomly)? If you let me keep speculating out loud... I could start to think about x,y coords (randomly if you mind) and stuff... meh... but that remains pretty much the same I already said before... then, to deal with an engine readable database... just to merely put into my island the model I want/need, wherever I want/need -and since I allegedly can do according to official editing tools-, I should have to know how my source file -yes, pew file to keep it simple- is built... but that shouldn't matter to mapper dudes right? or should do? It's not lack of interest... but convenience instead... Thus, this PMC terrain release, as far as I am trying to currently know, serves to demonstrate that if you want to make a 4096x4096 px height terrain you should have to go deep into coding stuff... just to achieve what you are looking for... a tiny, simple, humble airstrip, just to say... lol So, I just can still await for any magician, wizard, a patch if you mind, or a working class hero... just like many of our brave comrades who dare to see their stuff posted as stickies into terrain editing thread... Many thanks for this release BTW... you give us hope somehow... you know...

Well, certainly all of us import stuff from another tools... cause V3PE isn't enough... Some years ago I've been told that engine could handle huge terrain sizes on VBS and it would be pretty much the same at A2 series ... this is the proof of concept regarding that A2 engine can handle 4096px heights that V3PE should manage, but can't :( It's relevant though that you can place an object where we haven't been able yet cause buggy tool has been provided Anyways, if we do not receive any answer on this matter I think is because we are not supposed to know it, I mean, we can't know it, we shouldn't ... So let's try some guessing... engine use some sort of table with objects data: coords, orientation, heights and sizes.... right? Let's suppose that some guys could know how to "access" that data where you can manage what's going on in there... basically if you could retrieve or handle this objects data base (a huge list)... just imagine something like a calc tool spreadsheet or any DB application... then, you could copy&paste your relevant info... I mean airstrips, roads, bla, bla...and "insert" them into your table... Something quite closer to open a pew file, made some arranges inside it, and then close it... does it sound familiar to you ??? Now the proper question is: Will we have to wait for a "working class hero" to provide us with that magic tool cause Visitor was meant to do it but won't ???? Saludillos!

erm I would like to know how can you place those trees without using V3PE ???? Anyways, a map so huge does not seem to fit without a couple of tiny simple airstrips... cause that size and this terrain is perfect for epic air ground battles... and without any airstrip, mission editors should have to place every air vehicle flying already ???? or they can also put airstrips with mission editor ???? So, why don't you reveal the huge map making recipe?

If you want to be prepared for ArmA3 underwater stuff you could get some real data reference over here

@maturin: I guess It's time to nail that config overcast issue Yes, that is fixed already ;) Besides towns located at valley expect some new mountainous villages aswell XD

erm gasoline is so expensive these days anyways!!! :p

Glad to see that after a couple of days (and up to 10 posts) you got it... Do not get worry about those blue points... they are just visual hints but nothing else... if you want to see them open your current p3d then go to geo lod and select mass inside your "named selection" panel ... if that windows is empty -which i doubt- then go to structure and find components to get them appearing... If you do not see named selection panel then ---->>>>> CTRL + L Saludos mi estimado padawan ! hahahaha

Comrade Green Beret: In order to get ALICE working properly... for every: class ACityC_* // * = your class name must be: type="CityCenter"; // you have "name" instead which is wrong And for the motherland sake!!!! Do not forget to comrade minimalashnikov !!!! hahahaha