cifordayzserver

I've gotten some more of the smd buildings integrated, added midrange textures to all the A1 islands, and have a fairly short list of fixes left to do. Haven't gotten much feedback from testers and may setup a Google+ page for it that anyone can access so I can get some more feedback before releasing.

I agree with this 100 percent. This option was also brought up, but IMO, that's about as confusing for outsiders as you can get. It's 99.9999pct going to be totally modular, with our links pointing to the "collections", so advanced users can select whichever one's they want, and others can just sync the whole collection. There was a LOT of debate about it among the team, so I figured I should put the poll up, but I made it clear there and here, I'm not going to have that be the deciding factor. For me, as stated above, there is no impact of releasing it modular, but releasing it all in one forces people's hands. I'm more for individual choice... further, the terrains deserve their own release space, for people to comment on them, for there to be an accurate and complete description of what the island was, is, and might be etc. This also leaves 3rd party terrains free from having to have other terrains as a requirement of their package. I honestly don't understand the desire for one package, I think it's motivated by old fears about how confusing addons have been traditionally, but with Steam and PWS both having collections, I think that point is one best left to the past. If you're an advanced user the modularity shouldn't freak you out or confuse you... if you're not, you should be using a launching aid like Steam or PWS, and it should then be fairly easy to just get the whole collection. I feel releasing it all as one is sticking to a pointless convention of laziness and fear of new player confusion, where as releasing modular is helping advance peoples knowledge of loading multiple addons in Arma and pushes the whole scene forward. The other thing it helps avoid, is people simply using the APL data to "create" their own mod from our source... which is totally allowed, but really pointless as the work is going to keep getting worked on, so it's best to make it as compatible with as many modders, mission makers, players, and server hosts' desires.

A request has been made within the team to discuss how the terrains are released. In the end, I will make the decision, but thought it would be good to gauge opinion. http://strawpoll.me/4952683 Vote away, I reserve the right to totally ignore the results.

The thing for SMD Sahrani is it was developed in another namespace, so including it as is requires including a bunch of duplicate buildings and objects. It will slowly transform to being near identical to smd Sahrani.

That is a totally accomplish-able goal, but honestly, it would run like crap. Chernarus is already laggy in cities, if you built the vegetation out a lot more, it would likely kill performance in the woods as well. I'm fairly sure you could do this with NeoArmagedeon's mapbuilder tool. Fabiano Chavez did the lighting/weather tweaks for AiA, and will continue work in CUP, there are other lighting addons out there that can modify how it looks, that are a bit out of scope for our project. The terrains are JUST terrains, I don't really plan on adding any level of customization, or scripting to change their default behavior, that is something that mission makers should do. The doors are open by default on all buildings so that AI can see in/out of them. If a mission maker wants to have them all closed, or random, that's something that can be done within his mission, but if we have functionality that conflicts, those same 3 possibilities are no longer available. ---------- Post added at 00:45 ---------- Previous post was at 00:12 ---------- So, what phronk was talking about is the fact that all the objects with doors, are opened by default in AiA, which is on purpose and will not be changed. We are literally NO WHERE NEAR every building being opened, even on Sahrani, where almost 2-3 years of focus has gone on the SMD project. So, to put it in a bit more realistic perspective, I'm going to add somewhere between 10-30 newly enter-able structures, there are many others that are just improved in some ways like shattering glass, and added door functionality. Then, there are buildings that have variants, like the aircraft hangars, or the air control towers... M1lkm8n has already done the Operation Arrowhead versions of those, I will take those as a base, and retexture them with the A2 textures, and make the variant models for use on other terrains. So, initial release, will have a few more buildings than AiA, the first update will have a fair amount more, but spread across different maps, the next update should include the variants, so all the terrains that have a variant of a building we've done, have the enter-able version. Once those are done, I can start working on some of the buildings that were donated, or finish off some of the one's I started. For example, last night M1lkm8n randomly asked me for the repair center building, which I had opened, and within a few minutes, the portions I wasn't happy with, were fixed, and he was getting to work on making custom window textures/rvmats for it. Here is a peak: http://puu.sh/j0KBq/82ade2b82d.jpg (247 kB) Yeah, LOTS of A1 and A2 buildings are still not enter-able. About the Chernarus houses, I'm not sure how "done" they are, so I will have to go through them. But I do have the source and intend on getting them in game if possible (pretty sure they were fairly complete).

They look a little weird at distance, but it's not dramatic. Ponds, for the record, look weird from the air in real life. I don't think the water is finished either. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets worked on a bit more before getting pushed to stable. Yes! Not sure why it wasn't there/loaded, but it's in there too. This is a copy/paste of AiA, so, it will be the same. I will check it out, and if I see anything obvious I will fix it, but I'm pretty focused on just getting a good starting base done and released so it's out there, and we can collect bug reports, and gauge what terrains are getting the most DL's/use so we can triage work moving forward.

Editing anything on the terrains other than Sahrani is something that will take trickery for now, I will discuss it with NeoArmageddeon. In the meantime, I've fixed a few of the glaring issues, but not all of them. I was able to find a version of the Panelaks that will work as a replacement. Imgur Album with some teaser pics: http://imgur.com/a/8tS5Z

Like Defunkt quoted, it's the compatibility configs, and data folders. Idea being, that as we upgrade the "natural and artificial objects" (vegetation, signs, buildgins, misc objects etc) to A3 standards, and therefore break them from their dependency on the A2 legacy data, we will eventually have an A3 standalone package that doesn't require the @CUP_Terrains_AiA compatibility pbos. ++++ I got ALMOST 100 percent done today... there are some last bits I want to fix with the buildings.pbo that I've already fixed for SMD_Sahrani, so I have to just move them back into the CA\buildings namespace and overwrite the ones used in AiA. They are legitimately broken right now in my build, so I have to fix those. I'm going to pack/upload a build for other CUP members and our testing group to check out. and start collecting some bug reports from them.

@CUP_Terrains = 5.63gb @CUP_Terrains_AiA = 0.97gb @CUP_Chernarus (largest terrain) = 328mb @CUP_Rahmadi (smallest terrain) = 25mb Everything all together is 8.53gb

Yes, we're allowed to publish our mods to Steam Workshop as the work is all BI source, and our own work, or work of other community authors who have provided permission. We have very strict rules and procedures for permissions. I don't know about all that. Honestly, in my opinion the only people who should be paying for playable content for Arma 3 are the players. I know that's not a popular opinion. but BI has already provided the platform, the tools, and in the case of CUP an ENORMOUS library of content to use for free. Short of an enormous library of fresh/new content, I don't see the motivation, or logic, in BI paying for people to re-work assets they might even have already done themselves and decided not to use... or of unknown quality/content. They could inadvertently pay for stolen models or IP infringing content. I for one (and this is not a statement from CUP by ANY means, it's my personal opinion) wish that Steam/BI would enable paid mods, and donations to modders through steam. I don't even mind the previous split that was experimented with by Steam/Bethesda. CUP would obviously never go behind a paywall, but it would be nice to have a central/easy place for players to donate or for modders to charge for their addons if they so wish. On an entirely less divisive note.... I had entirely forgotten about the model.cfg issues I had due to my use of PBOProject pro, it now checks for external references in model.cfgs, so I had to go through 104 of them and "fix" them. That's done, but needs some final tweaking. For the DBE (united sahrani) models, There is no source available to date, so, I will just include the pbo from AiA. I MAY end up doing the same with the few remaining files that are left to be gone though, but I have to check them all before releasing the package. The package I have now, is fairly complete. There are 11 of the pbo's from AiA I haven't gone through yet. They're all fairly simple, so it should go quick. I spent a good deal of time today on it, and hopefully will be able to truck through tomorrow. But my back has been really bad lately, and I can't set myself up for a bad week at work... so we'll see.

So, just to temper expectations... the initial release will be VERY similar, if not identical to the current AiA release, but with Evro's fixes, the fixed vegetation from ThreeDots, and maybe a few small objects/buildings I've done. Most of the "work" I'm doing is just tedium trying to get the working environment, and repo setup. I went back through and repacked/checked the terrains, renamed all the mod folders so they're the actual map names instead of the file names (sara.wrp = Sahrani, Desert = Rahmadi etc). I'm having a problem packing Sahrani Lite, and United Sahrani, both should be resolved after a little investigation/copy/pasting... but they're hung up for now. The last leg after that will be the data folders, which will be tedious, but I should have time this weekend to get through them if I don't find the time during the week. I'm kind of burning out from wanting to get it done, and then spending too much borrowed time on it... so I might just wait for the weekend to do more, but I doubt it lol. I also checked out the RC branch and can confirm the Pond fixes are included there. So, All going well, that should be in the stable branch by the time a release is ready, so that's sort of a free bonus for CUP. I also realized we haven't been too great about putting ourselves out there in terms of Social Media, so the group has all agreed it's something we should try to be better about. Join our Forums Like Us on FaceBook Follow us on Twitter Subscribe to our Channel on YouTube Join the community over at Google+

No 3rd party new buildings or objects are being included what so ever. Only existing BI structures will be opened/modified. I've just finished uploading all the terrains except of United Sahrani to the Repo. All the scenes have been split out from the data which I believe is the "proper" way to do it. I have to get through the United Sahrani objects, and the data packages. Going to try to do what I can during the week, but generally don't have many hours to spend on it during the week. This weekend I think is all clear.

The jbad buildings are mainly for Takistan, but many can be retextured to be used on other terrains. All the barracks, the firestation, and the mikitary house and atc all have oa variants. Its hard to coordinate putting the repo together. Threedots is chomping at the bit to do more, so he's started his own branch that we can merge back in once I have a working base established. I want to have a fairly clear version history. I do have the source, they use some models for the interior that need to be stripped out, which in some cases they might need more work. I also have some models opened already, mostly all the sheds on Chernarus. I'm working my way through all the islands right now and am almost done with that. Then there is just the few remaining data.pbos.

Sweet! Great Work!

1. Yes, Once we have a working environment, I'm going to integrate as many of the jbad buildings as possible, and then do tutorials for opening up buildings, and continue working on that myself as well. 2. Yes, The "popping" of ALL objects will be addressed. There is basically nothing in all of Arma that bothers me more than the shitty lod shifting. So, that will certainly be addressed. I'm going to do my best to integrate all of Evro's fixes. Apologies for no release yet, I was away this weekend. I spent some time on Thursday on it, but just haven't been able to get all the way through yet.

yeah, no that doesn't work for objects called from the .wrp file. IE anything on a terrain. The only way to change which object is being called by a terrain, is to provide a replacement model with the same name and config'd accordingly, or to change the called name in the .wrp Even for example if we config'd "Land_budova" to call the model "Jbad_Budova" that change will only register on budova's that are called in the editor as vehicles, not land_ classed one's called by the .wrp. Other painful shortfalls are the in-ability to use hidden selections for land_ classed models. So, the dumpsters for example, instead of having 1 model and 4 textures, you have to have 4 models with 4 textures.

No plans for a lite version, providing lower quality textures is sort of counter intuitive to the nature of the project. I haven't really discussed it much with M1lkm8n yet. When it comes to terrains, you can't have either or. A terrain built for jbad objects will need the jbad pbos, even though the buildings will be the same. I don't see that changing. Terrain makers can fairly quickly change their dependencies and how the objects are pathed though. We will likely publish a name mapping script for the conversion.

So, the pictures of Chernarus are stock A2 ponds, they automagically reflect the horizon and the sun. So there is no need to change anything, we MAY end up tuning them a bit, but really, they look amazing IMO. I've never been much of a fine tuner though. Fabiano Sanchez did a lot already to tweak how Chernarus looked for AiA which is carried over in this mod, and I believe he will continue the same work on the other terrains. There is NO fix involved on our end here. This is ALL BI dev's fixing engine side stuff, and changing how RVmats that are defined as water are interpreted. I'd assume DeanosBeano's and M1lkm8ns fixes at the very least pointed the dev's in the right direction. DboPonds I believe has some very natural looking flowing water rvmats? but I"m not entirely sure. I'll have to give it a closer look after release. I'm actually quite slow :-( This project is really just a copy/paste of AiA_terrainpack. It's taken me an embarrassingly long time to get the working directory set up and packing properly. Shouldn't be long now though. And Threedots has gotten a lot of REAL work done! This mod will work EXACTLY the same as AiA, and it will maintain backward compatibility for mission makers, IE, no one will have to change ANYTHING they've done with AiA in mind. This ensures that ANYONE who's ever worked on a terrain since A2 released, can "plug and play" their terrain in A3 with no changes on their end. For SMD Sahrani, I'm not 100 percent sure yet. I played a little with trying to bring the original data up to snuff, and it did not work out well. I'll most likely use SMD Sahrani as the default version. That's right, Right now just for testing I have it setup as follows: @CUP_Terrains - Natural and Artificial Objects (buildings, misc, signs, plants, structures) @CUP_Terrains_AiA - Compatibility Addons (data, languages, missions, sounds, ui, unit/weapon/vehicle "dummy" pbo's) @CUP_Afghan @CUP_Bohemia @CUP_Chernarus etc etc etc So... If you have an A2 community terrain like Namalsk, or Thirsk or Celle, you ONLY need @CUP_Terrains and @CUP_Terrains_AiA (*this is not a final naming convention) Right now, ThreeDots has already done all the work to all the roads, rocks, plants AND signs, so they are FULLY independent of the @CUP_Terrains_AiA portion of the package. Moving forward that will be the case for ALL the objects/buildings. So, eventually, if you have a terrain that has done all of it's A3 compatibility work, then all you will need is @CUP_Terrains. The great part about the whole thing, is that anyone right now, can just start working on a terrain with the existing A2 library, and just work away, and it will plug/play with our mod in A3, saving terrain artists a TON of work.

hehehe, whoops, i'm dumb, I just checked the size of the whole addon folder and I had junk in there... Revised numbers: 8.65gb = All Addons Split: 5.75gb = CUP_Terrains - Only Natural/Artificial Objects 966mb = CUP_Terrains_AiA - Compatibility configs and Data folders Maps: 50mb-500mb Have I mentioned how amazing water looks in Experimental???

I just took a look at splitting it further and these should be the final numbers: 12gb = Cup_Terrains - With everything AiA included IF I split out the natural/artificial objects from all the support pbo's: 11.2gb = Cup_Terrains 800mb = AiA Compatibility stuff/sound/missions etc Then the terrains are ~50mb-500mb each. 14.0gb for everything.

It will have all the islands. Sahrani is the only one I can edit/modify in terrain builder. Yes, there will be "CUP_Terrains" which is the core of it, and then each individual terrain. We might split it out further, so that there is CUP_Terrains_Core & CUP_Terrains_Legacy or something like that, so that folks who are not using any older A2 assets who do not need the compatibility pbo's or the language/missions etc don't have to DL that. I'm playing around with that now. The data folder proved fairly difficult to get packing, I got hung up on that and went to go rest my back and fell asleep. I might swing back now and try to get the other remaining pbo's packed so that Data is all that's left, but not sure.

Yeah, we're not too active on the public side of the forums, I barely have time to read the skype channel and then still get work done. I'll definitely try to be better about it. We could really use a promotional guy who's DL'ing playing with, and taking promo shots/vids of the work we're doing. It turns into a real overwhelming task modding these days and having to do all of that, set up websites, repo's, keeping up with the discussions, etc etc etc. So, for the immediate future, we don't have much control/ability to modify the terrains in terms of object placement, or texture blends, or xyz info. That all requires source files, which are only available for Sahrani right now. The bugs we'd be looking for are textures issues on models, items not functioning as intended, visual, or config errors. Honestly, I don't really foresee a lot of bug reports, as the package is fairly solid already in AiA. When/If we get source files we can address object placements, and move/replace some models that are currently used to make "composite structures". BI had a tendency of taking BuildingA an BuildingB, and smooshing them together to make BuildingC. So, we can't do a blanket replacement of BuildingA or BuildingB until we have source control and can replace BuildingC with a new placeholder, or new opened version. The main focus of the project for the near future is: 1. Add existing JBAD enterable buildings that can be replaced 1 for 1 across all maps 2. Update all buildings to A3 configs/model details 3. Open as many buildings that were previously closed as possible 4. Add functionality to previously existing objects to increase the realism of the terrains, gates, dumpsters, trashcans 5. Update all the terrain configs to fully exploit all the A3 lighting, weather, sound, and friction effects I'm going to work on getting the last remaining files pack-able today, then push it all to the repo. Should be do-able.

FINISHED with the Structures PBO's, they're all pack-able with PBOProject, and am going to push them to the repo. there are some config fixes, and some straggling pbo's I have to work through too, but it's a testable build at this point.

I've gotten Buildings, and Buildings2 DONE! Structures are the only major one's left, I should be able to get through them this weekend. Then I should have a testable build to collect some bug reports, and have some work to do on the individual terrain configs. But it's shaping up for a release FOR SURE in the next few weeks.

Wow, VERY productive day. I got everything I wanted to get done totally finished, AND got a chance to test all the renamed "dummy" pbo's. Everything is pushed to the repo. There are actually about 20 pbo's left, but only 5-8 of them should take any serious amount of time to finish. Then I'll just have to isolate any obvious issues and fix those, apply the fixes that have been done outside of AiA, and maybe update the terrains configs so that at least gun shots show properly on the ground. Then should be good for a push to Steam Workshop, PWS, and Armaholic.