[Map] Operation Khaldun (8 km) [Scrapped]

[[R-DEV]Jafar Ironclad]

Name: Operation Khaldun (working title)
Location: Inspired by 73 Easting, would likely be set in the open desert southwest of Baikonur.
Layers: Vehicle Warfare 64, 128 (Event usage only in initial release phase)
Factions: GB (w/ US aviation support) vs Russia (Tentative)
Asset layout: Mostly MBT's, with Anti-air, IFV, and ground attack jet support.

The map idea here is inspired by the Battle of 73 Easting; an important armor battle that took place across kilometers of featureless desert. My experimental concept here seeks largely to test out the idea of a large-area armor battle with light cavalry and CAS support, and therefore would be reserved only for event usage due to aesthetic penalties associated with an 8km map size. The map itself would likely be largely bereft of vegetation or massive terrain formations, and would take advantage of this performance boon by boosting vision range up to 2 or even 2.5 kilometers, with fog beginning at 1.5 kilometers.
I would also remove the crewman-only kit restriction with armored vehicles; given that you may only spawn as crewman and request officer and pilot kits, this wouldn't permit exploitation of the kit system, but would allow officers to dismount their tanks to direct close-air support.
In addition to the AAS routes system, each control point would spawn as a "flag bank" of two or more flags (much like the linked West-East City flags in the Muttrah 2 versions of old); these banks would be close together and would cap slightly faster than your average flag.

Thoughts?

[sharpie]

Wait, 8km?

[Acecombatzer0]

Is this Arma II or Battlefield 2? If it's Battlefield 2, you have to make some cutbacks if you want to make the map work.

The "kit" idea you made sounds like a game suggestion, and it cannot be only imlemented on your map.

As said by R-[DEV] Fuzzhead Dont post suggestions in this area. If you have an idea but dont plan on working on it, or just want to get feedback, post it in the Suggestions and Feedback section. This area is for Work In Progress stuff.

I think the BF2 engine can only limit to 1.5 km of draw distance, with at least 100M of fog.

Last but not least, 8km maps are impossible to be implemented in this mod. As a community member, I appreciate your commitment to offer assistance in Project Reality, but you have to make changes to make Operation Khaldun possible.

[ZondaX15]

8km maps are perfictly possible. The terrain just screws up a lot. If i recall, somone did make and 8km map for another mod. They just made a bunch of objects that act as terrain.

[Spartan463]

wow jafar, thats quiet an undertaking, good luck with your endeavour

[[R-DEV]Rudd]

Your terrain would have to be similar to the first version of Burning Sand's (then named Al Muthana) perfectly smoothed dunes, otherwise it'll surely morph so much that it won't be funny - especially with a long VD

I can send you the original terrain of Burning Sands if you like to see what I mean, you can adapt it to 8k

but tbh I do think its overreaching, though Jets would enjoy it

[Wakain]

a reference to our beloved though long-deceased brother Ibn Khaldun?

it's an interesting idea, though I'm not much of an armor fan myself. perhaps you can create a simple "crewman officer" kit (only difference would be soflam instead of binocs or something like that) to get around?
could be useful for the vehicle warfare layers as a whole.

[[R-DEV]Amok@ndy]

i guess you know that the editor doesnt support 8km, so you would have to do everything in photoshop and 3ds max and in notepad

[Jonny]

You will probably need a custom heightmap generator that takes a heightmap and the textures for it and produces a series of skinned meshes. The simplest way to do it is to generate the meshes in an obj file and then import that into max and have the staticmesh files spat back out, I have not yet looked at maxscripts but it might just be possible to have the obj file meshes run through max without having to type in anything at all.

This, of course, also frees you from having to worry about the BF2 terrain warping, the heightmap resolution or the extent of the map. You will probably be forced to produce a heavily overcast map or one with the sun directly overhead due to some problems with shadows.

A further restriction would be the difficulty of integrating the BF2 roads into the terrain, and other decorations that use that system. In a featureless desert, however, you could easily get away with roads blending into the sand.

[[R-DEV]Amok@ndy]

Originally Posted by Jonny

You will probably need a custom heightmap generator that takes a heightmap and the textures for it and produces a series of skinned meshes. The simplest way to do it is to generate the meshes in an obj file and then import that into max and have the staticmesh files spat back out, I have not yet looked at maxscripts but it might just be possible to have the obj file meshes run through max without having to type in anything at all.

This, of course, also frees you from having to worry about the BF2 terrain warping, the heightmap resolution or the extent of the map. You will probably be forced to produce a heavily overcast map or one with the sun directly overhead due to some problems with shadows.

if you are using objects as terrain you will get lod problems especially with huge VDs, also you would have to split up your terrain into many single objects