cifordayzserver

Well, we actually share all our source with CUP and AiA, so, the SMD and Jbad Buildings are being integrated into all terrains. I will most likely make a standalone package, and a light package as was the case with A2 eventually, but for now, I'd prefer to focus on the actual terrain changes. Though the reopening of submissions for MANW gives me a good excuse to focus on the buildings and objects.

As mentioned, the best thing to do is to reduce the view distance so what is trying to draw can do it as well as possible. If you have high view distance the object count limit gets hit very quickly and the engine starts trying to occlude, and swap lods wherever it can. Modellers have a lot of control, it just takes TONS of patience, the LODs for many of the A2 buildings and objects were just done poorly. There are even cases where there is an entirely different building in a sublod of another building. We spent 100's of hours on Sahrani fixing those, and there are still quite a few that are still popping to some degree. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that the new renderer that they build into DayZ stops relying on that system of LOD switching, but who knows. If it does we'll likely see that change in a future update or version of Arma. You essentially do not want to lock the 1st lod anyway, as it would be horrific for performance to be fully drawing every object in a 3k radius around the player. You also CAN'T choose the 2nd or lower, because in many cases a building with windows, is now a building with windows drawn on, and you wouldn't see if there was a player or AI standing in that window, although they would see you.

Nope, you want that functionality in the gas stations for A2, in A3 it throws an error. I'm fairly sure the A2 build is REALLY solid right now. If anyone reports any bugs I'll address them, but for now, I'm solely focused on the A3 port and trying to get the ocean floor more realistic, and then start doing all the changes for a United Sahrani version. Then hopefully begin the changes I've had in mind since the beginning. However I still have a LOT of leg work to do to upgrade all the buildings to A3 fully.

That sounds like something in the mission or the mod. What mission/mod is it?

For me this is really weird, I had a legitimate problem uploading my content, so the SMD/Jbad Buildings submission is just some of the Jbad Buildings, however that was my own fault for delaying both work specifically for; and attempts to upload the content to; the contest. With a fresh 2 weeks I could go from having 13-20 SMD buildings and 100 Jbad buildings done to the entire packages of both and Sahrani A3 included... I could probably slap together some BI terrains with the buildings replaced by M1lkm8n and Mine. Maybe even a few missions. Where is; or I guess; Is there, a line? *aside: I've struggled to be motivated to work on anything for the contest, to the point that I only started work on SMD Sahrani A3 after the deadline passed. I'm sure that will be the case again, but if not, I at least will be at a SIGNIFICANT advantage having cranked out a ton of work after the deadline because I "felt like it". I'm sure it's pointless to mention, but I feel like all of this could have been avoided by having more reasonable monthly awards as was suggested at the beginning by many community members. I likely would have not only started work on A3 sooner, but also would have seen the fun in participating in the contests from time to time. Where as, the way it is structured now l am not only unmotivated to work on stuff for it, I'm less motivated to work on Arma 3 at all. 5k up for grabs by anyone every month, is a LOT more enticing than a 500k slice of pie in the sky to stare at every day for a year. If DayZ's success should have taught BI anything, it should have been that the community is not a very happy seeing drastic disparity in reward for work.

Wow! Thanks for the list!, I'll see what I can do with the bridges. Interesting plan for Corazol, I'll take a look around a bit and see what I think. My career is in Dry Cargo Shipping, so I'll be looking at it from a logistics angle, right now I'm struggling to see the sense it... although it would be cool for sure.

Yeah, I plan on tweaking the surface settings a lot, they're not where I want them to be now. I've been away so I haven't done anything since my initial addition of the seabed texture. I am going to work on adjusting the height map so the ocean is a LOT more interesting, and then do a better job of blending the seabed textures, then add some coral reefs. I'm debating on whether or not to "dredge" the two inlets to Corazol or not.

I'm going to look into it for sure, although the hope is that sharing/working with CUP might result in retextured versions of the A1 buildings. Yeah, that's bright alright, the ground is also pretty bright, I'm going to try to do a lot of work on lighting settings, hopefully fabiano sanchez can give me some pointers. I got the new ground textures for the oceans working!! Very excited for that. Although I was hoping for all the big coral structures, but I guess those are objects that need to be placed in TB. This is a VERY initial attempt... it's going to need a lot of blending/improvement, but I want to adjust the heightmap as well so that the oceans are a bit more interesting to explore. Then redo the ground texture blends in the ocean, then add the coral structures.

I'm working on getting the coral/seaweed clutter to work, once I get that sorted out, I will look closer at the roads/sidewalks/runways and bridges. Having SCUBA fully functioning is really important for me, I think it's such an amazing feature, and it makes the entire map worth exploring... I WILL be (and already have) be dropping easter eggs all over the terrain and under the sea!

So, I have also wondered a lot about this, and there is NO WAY, that the distance is directly related to the LOD numbers despite that being documented in the biki. I have edited many of the SMD buildings to attempt to change the LOD switching, and no matter what you change the numbers to in the model, they switch according to some sort of engine level computation as stated in that Biki link (It being under OFP doesn't make it obsolete, it makes it core info that hasn't changed since normally). The same info is documented on the VBS wiki: https://resources.bisimulations.com/w/index.php?title=Resolution_LOD_Samples Changing the LOD numbers doesn't negatively affect anything, I've played with changing them a ton, and it's never had any effect on how they work in game. I may reproduce the test in the link but from what I've heard, it's a complicated engine level system, the only thing for a modeller to do IMO, is to make sure all the LODS visually appear the same from the exterior, if they look the same, you don't get any visual popping, that's what we did with the SMD buildings and it works great. Adding more objects to a test mission causes more rapid switching to lower LODs. Adding or removing the number of LODs to choose from also doesn't seem to affect very much, although that would be something that would have to be stress tested to prove out.

Yeah unfortunately ALL those terraced structures are borderline impossible to make work with AI. I may just make some invisible objects that will sit over the top of them and give the AI workable paths, but that's a lot of planning, testing, and tweaking, it's low on my priority list. I REALLY wish that Arma would start using Navmesh like DayZ SA did... but I have no clue how complicated or expensive a decision that would be. Yeah, right now none of the roads, sidewalks, or airstrips make any noise (unless they're ground surfaces like Pita, Rahmadi, and Antigua). It will be fixed, not sure exactly what it is, I have shapefiles as provided by Ian Banks, I'm think they might just work when I switch to those. That will also help with the very minor lines that are visible on some of the roads. On the Airstrip, I tried a default A3 plane and it worked ok, I didn't taxi it though, just started it on the runway. It could be an issue with the roads, or it could be an issue with that C130. I'll try to have a look.

Thanks! I saw that door myself today. I will fix that, it's been noted. The Roof of the 4/8 story buildings will be redone, there are a few issues with those buildings. Thanks for the pics! I've also noted the destruction rubble showing up in the destructible 1 story building, and that the sidewalks and bridges do not react properly to headlights.

Not sure, but I'm guessing it's the surfaces. They interact very oddly with vehicles, 4x4's are barely slowed, cars can barely move. I will have to look into it. I just checked that area on my install and it's fine there, not sure what the problem you're having could be.

I'm not sure on lights, but I think those are built into AiA? I released a version last night: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?185924-SMD-Sahrani-A3-Bohemia-s-Sahrani-Terrain-as-ported-by-SMD

As stated by Günter Severloh, that is how the various layers are blended and mixed by the engine. I actually have a much larger radius set than is normal for the clutter, but it's still quite visible. I also think there might be some issues with our midtexture, but I'm not entirely sure. I plan on trying to improve it for sure. Yeah, AiA TP's default "Sahrani" will be this version, and the original BI version will be renamed but retained. Not sure when this will take place.

Noted, I'll check it out, I know there are a few buildings that might have issues, but I also think my GFX card is on it's way out, so I'm not sure when it's my computer, and when it's a real issue. There's no need to disable anything with the integrated version of SMD_Sahrani_A2 in AiA, ONLY the standalone version of SMD_Sahrani_A2 will conflict. kju renames and repaths everything when he integrates it into AiA. 1. I don't think it's a feasible, you would either need to loop it outside of the city, or gut a major section of the city. It would require an enormous bridge too, and just change the feel of the island too much IMO. If you have a vision for it, that I'm missing, feel free to elaborate, but I don't think I'm going to make any changes to the terrain that I don't feel are part of a natural progression. I do plan on changing the terrain a bit, but more in terms of adding the Queen's Gambit changes, building out some of the smaller towns, creating new ones, and unifying the island to better represent a United Sahrani that has developed over a period of years after the unification. The problem is it's a TON of work, and it's entirely separate from the work that needs to be done to fully upgrade it to A3, AND fully separate from the core goal of opening all the buildings. I'm a one man shop at this point, so progress will be scattered in focus, and slow. 2. Dozens of A1 and A2 buildings have already been made full enterable. On the doors, I've always thought they were very low? can you provide an example? Here is my plan of attack for the buildings as of right now. Step 1 - Finish porting all the existing buildings to A3 standards: - A3 materials (bullet penetration and impact info) - A3 Configs - A3 Physx Lods Step 2 - Finish opening more closed buildings. I will focus on the larger structures, there are 5-10 models that will make the cities 90pct enterable Step 3 - Learn how to retexture everything in a proper 3d software suite, or texturing program. The problem is these programs are both expensive and require a lot of learning. The CUP project is getting a lot of interest from folks, so I can probably offload that work there maybe? I know we recently got approached by a texture artist. I'm not a skilled modeller at all, I copy/paste and make tiny edits to existing buildings, all the freshly enterable buildings were done by M1lkm8n, and I am working on getting to a point where I can build a realistic looking interior and texture it, but again, there is a steep learning curve in every direction. The thing is, that a standalone version would be enormous, SMD_Sahrani_A2 was decent in size because it was only the parts of A1 that were missing from A2, Even many of the textures for our upgraded buildings are called from CA not from out package. SMD_Sahrani_A3 would need to be EVERY object and EVERY texture/rvmat etc. So, instead of 2gb it would be more like 5-7 at least... and then inevitably that exact same content will be shared/ported to AiA/CUP... so anyone who uses those, will have doubles of everything... and you're VERY close to the same size as a full TP, so IMO it makes very little sense to have a standalone A3 Sahrani. It might work out where I do all the work in the SMD namespace, and then share it, so that there can be a standalone version... but it gets complicated keeping exactly what's needed in Sahrani separate from the rest of A1 or A2, and I'd like to just get it all done so all the terrains can benefit... so it's easier to work in the cup/ca namespace. I also might start making similar SMD versions of other BI terrains... the placement issues make me nuts, and there are a bunch of our buildings that need one by one placement. ++++ Thanks for all the comments folks! Keep em coming, and please feel free to create an issue on the github if you find anything: https://github.com/SMDDevs/SMD_Sahrani_A3/issues **Edit** To be totally honest, this is a testament to Bohemia, and M1lkm8n more than anything. I was really amazed at how dramatic the effects of the A3 lighting was on Sahrani, I obviously love the terrain, but really thought that it would fall short in A3 and NEED upgrading... the shortcomings are very hard to spot, and all the work M1lkm8n did on fixing the LOD issues with the trees and buildings has paid dividends... it's so rewarding to see it all come alive in A3. I noticed that myself, the ground textures were given an overhaul for A3, and it's def a bit too bright on some of the textures in A3, I will play with the settings for it, and if that doesn't pan out I can modify the textures/mats. I'm not sure what you're saying or asking. However I know the C130 and other large aircraft don't "fit" inside the aircraft hangers, which are the standard size that BI made them. I actually was thinking of scaling those up massively for Sahrani as there is plenty of room for them on both airports, and it would be nice with the roll down doors.

Ok, so... I've spoken with kju, pretty sure this version will be the default Sahrani for AiA. I got the fuel stations sorted out, fixed a few errors the roads were causing, and think it's set for an initial release. I will get everything I have together signed and released here shortly I hope. Known bugs: - Running on roads makes no footstep noise. - Panelak apartments have alpha issues on the back side of the building - Gas Station throws an error when it gets destroyed - Dark interior on one of the smd_dum_olez_istan2_open buildings This is a VERY initial build, mainly focused on getting the A3 environment settings worked in, and fixing the terrain tiling issue. But hopefully with a build out I can get some more input on any bugs that are found... and meanwhile I can work on updating the objects to A3 standards/configs. Once it's all packed and UL'd I will create a thread in the released addons section so that I can take ownership of the thread.

Removed the music that got flagged, video should work for everyone now.

That is some bizarre alignment issue that there is no tool to fix in Arma... in VBS they have something that shows the level of the roadways on either side of the gap, and allow you to line up the road surface to that level in Bulldozer, however I'm fairly sure there is no such method for Arma. From what I understand it's a matter of tweaking it by TINY amounts (which is also next to impossible in buldozer/tb) check it in game, and then try again.... I'll be honest, I'm not up for that. I MIGHT be able to get it to work using A3 shapefiles for the roadways, which Ian Banks was kind enough to provide for Sahrani, so I THINK it might work once I implement that, but I'm not 100 percent sure. I'll see if there's anything I can do, but I don't think there is a good/known solution. For the initial release I want to keep the priorities clear, and just get rid of the gas station error. I'm working on getting a package together now.

I'm not having any problems with the bridges at all in game, what exactly is the problem? I'm going to update it with the A3 one's that M1lkm8n has done when I get them... but if that's not by tomorrow, I will pack up what's done after I edit the gas stations, and I play with the surface frictions a bit more... They act weird... but it's kind of realistic... it really depends on what people are used to/like. A2 had pretty crappy interactions with the surfaces and vehicles, you edited a vehicles ability to move on/off road, now it's on the surface, and drive characteristics of the vehicle interact with that (I think). Right now, I have it pretty close to what it's like in Stratis, but the sand acts like mud once you've stopped... and it's impossible to gain speed once you drop below a certain speed... I'm probably going to tone it back a bit so it's not crazy restrictive for 2wd vehicles. It's looking really good. Should have a build packed/signed/UL'd for tomorrow evening latest.

Not comprehensive or edited very well, just some video of some of the guns in action:

You just run it alongside AiATP, IE, it's dependant on AiA TP. So, it gets better... ALL those screenshots were before I got the lighting and weather config settings correct... it looks 30000x better now... I'm packing a build now that has a minor tweak to the underwater look since there are already deep parts of Sahrani, it starts to look weird when you can't see the surface or the ground in the ocean... I tweaked a few things and hope it looks a BIT better for now. Long term, I want to see if I can make it look REALLY nice... but it looks pretty darn amazing as is now. Album: http://imgur.com/a/Yb7d3#0 New Lighting Settings: New Weather: A3 Fog A3 Ocean w/SMD Sahrani Color Blend: I might try to throw together a quick cutscene for the intro scene, but I still have to fix/replace the gas station, and might do the bridges.. but I want to get this out so people can play it.. it's freaking AMAZING looking.

I'll throw together a quick vid of some of them in action in an hour or so.

Having tested a bit today, gotta say, this is AMAZING. The sounds are great, the weapons are looking fantastic, and functioning just like the A3 natives in terms of attachments. It's REALLY great. I'm going to take some screen shots in a bit! FANTASTIC work by all!

I'm discussing what needs to be changed for the bridges with M1lkm8n now. I've gotten the config almost all sorted out, I've got it at a point where it's totally releasable, but I'd like to get ALL the candy in... Fog, Clouds, Weather, all look AMAZING... Ground textures look REALLY good, and the ocean even looks pretty good: http://i.imgur.com/FEgwgkp.jpg (611 kB) http://i.imgur.com/rqPolPL.jpg (319 kB) http://i.imgur.com/KCNesic.jpg (336 kB)