Falklands (Malvinas) Mini-Mod Announcement

Post by **Rhino** » 2012-04-02 10:58

Hey all,

As I'm sure many of you are away that today, the 2nd of April marks the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War and with it I wanted to do something to commemorate it.

As a result I've been cooking up a little something over the past few weeks while taking a bit of a break from my other tasks.

Before I go any further into this I would like to explain that this is currently only planned as a standalone mini-mod for PR:BF2, much like Project Normandy and is going to be using a lot of placeholders for its first release. One thing I hope is that after I release the first version that the community will take on the development of this mini-mod and refine it, replacing the place holders with the correct assets

This mini-mod is based as much as possible on the 1982 war between Britain and Argentinian over the Falkland (Malvina) Islands, taking into account historic factors and trying to replicate them in a way which gives fun and balanced gameplay while also working with the limitations of the BF2 engine and assets we have to hand.

Focusing on the map, I've been wanting to experiment with large scale maps for some time in BF2 and with this project I have finally had the excuse to able to do so, as the map is currently 16kms by 16kms (Kashan is 4kms by 4kms). This is achieved by ditching BF2's terrain, and making the terrain out of a staticmesh (aka, mesh terrain), which isn't without its problems however... The main thing however is that with this size of map, we can really portray the importance of the air campaign in the war to a degree not seen in PR before, as well as spreading out the ground combat a bit.

Since the map/mini-mod is very WIP I'm not going to give away too much at this point as a lot of this is very liable to change but here is the current mini-map + my basic plan and a few screenshots.

The white box around North East Falklands represents a 4km (Kashan) sized map so you can get an idea on the scale and the flags/troop movement arrows match those pretty closely to what happened in 1982.

For those of you who are not very knowledgeable about the 1982 Falklands War, I would recommend watching the following documentaries which will give you a basic insight to what you can expect from the map

[CENTER][YOUTUBEHD]7FNAoPtdIg0[/YOUTUBEHD]

[YOUTUBEHD]7GKFu7od5Rc[/YOUTUBEHD][/CENTER]

I do have one issue with the 16km size that is somewhat of a show stopper however, which is 3 errors that pop up, even in full screen mode telling you the map is too large. Although you can continue past these errors without any problems (although in full screen mode, you are unaware you get them and must alt+tab to see them). If I can't find a solution to solve or suppress these errors it may mean I have to opt for my backup plan, which is basically to make the map an 8km by 8km map which doesn't get the errors and then having the carrier/airbase outside the combat zone. Although this will mean that domes of death are not possible and navigation outside the combat zone will be very, very hard, with jets never finding there way back to the airbase. But I've still got my fingers cross that I might just be able to somehow solve these errors I've got, but I wont bore you guys with that stuff any more but just warning you guys that might be a factor

Keep your eyes peeled for any more news on this in the next few weeks

Cheers!

MCI · Post by **MCI** » 2012-04-02 11:30

Very nice project indeed, looking forward to it!

MikeDude · Post by **MikeDude** » 2012-04-02 11:36

This looks amazing!
Do you think this map can be played with 150+ players? And will it have a mode made for 150+ players, which means more trans verhicles basicly.

I love you Rhino!

SUGNAT · Post by **SUGNAT** » 2012-04-02 11:41

This looks epic....and I doubt there will be many trans vehicles due to the real life version of events.

SWIZZ=kettcar= · Post by **SWIZZ=kettcar=** » 2012-04-02 11:46

a road is not painted on terrain, a road is build. clip it to the terrain and lower ist 1 meter and it will look awesome

Post by **Rhino** » 2012-04-02 11:55

Cheers

mikeyboyz;bt7089 wrote:Do you think this map can be played with 150+ players? And will it have a mode made for 150+ players, which means more trans verhicles basicly.

Should be able to handle that amount of players, providing clients performance is up to it. I'm slightly worried about performance on the map, as while its totally fine for the moment (at least on my PC, but so is every map

), I have over 8k rocks on the map, all which will require lightmaps and once lightmapped, might have a few issues but not sure yet.

Although as Sugnat said, transport vehicles will be pretty lacking as they where in the real war.

SWIZZ=kettcar=;bt7091 wrote:a road is not painted on terrain, a road is build. clip it to the terrain and lower ist 1 meter and it will look awesome

I don't understand what you mean, you want me to lower the road 1m under the terrain?

The roads here are really not much different from the roads in other BF2 maps, although done in a totally different way, the outcome is pretty much the same (other than they don't fade out at a distance, other than extreme distances after I do the terrain lods they kinda will

). One thing I have considered is adding a normal map to the road but haven't crossed that bridge yet.

Kain888 · Post by **Kain888** » 2012-04-02 12:02

Astonishing. :O

Nice job and good luck with project.

Navo · Post by **Navo** » 2012-04-02 12:04

So the terrain is basically a pretty damn massive static? Who had the joy of texturing that?

WeeD-KilleR · Post by **WeeD-KilleR** » 2012-04-02 12:08

Not sure if still 1th April just in another timezone or serious. No must be real, there is no timezone where it's still 1th April except somewhere around the Jupiter.

Post by **Rhino** » 2012-04-02 12:09

Navo;bt7094 wrote:So the terrain is basically a pretty damn massive static? Who had the joy of texturing that?

Well, its actually a few massive statics, and I textured it, and texturing was tbh (at least colour texture was, detail textures where a bit trickery but found a decent way eventually), probably one of the simplest tasks about this, at least for me anyways hehe

Painted it with L3DT, using a custom climate I made and a few custom textures too, then baked the colour map from a standard heightmap onto my terrain with its optimized UVs and done

WeeD-KilleR;bt7095 wrote:Not sure if still 1th April just in another timezone or serious. No must be real, there is no timezone where it's still 1th April except somewhere around the Jupiter.

Argentina really should have invaded the day before as then everyone in No. 10 wouldn't have believed the news that the Falklands had just been invaded, thinking its an April Fools

Zemciugas · Post by **Zemciugas** » 2012-04-02 12:11

Damn. Looks to sunny though, make a dark overcast

Psyko · Post by **Psyko** » 2012-04-02 12:18

/Applause!!!!

Rhino, i know you were doing this, but i had no idea of the scale, well done dude!

One question though, how about view distance? And does this mean the terrain model has various LOD?

Again, hats off brother.

Daniel · Post by **Daniel** » 2012-04-02 12:18

Finally 4 sure not an april fools...

MikeDude · Post by **MikeDude** » 2012-04-02 13:05

Another question. If everything is static, does that mean that making the view distance bigger wont fuck up how smooth the map will run?

CanuckCommander · Post by **CanuckCommander** » 2012-04-02 13:18

Awesome. This reminds me of the late Combined Arms mod.

Since air combat is a huge part of this map, are you going to borrow some ideas from Combined Arms to make air battles more realistic?

For example, radar, BVR missiles and even carrier launches?

SWIZZ=kettcar= · Post by **SWIZZ=kettcar=** » 2012-04-02 13:31

i mean that you can lower or higher the roadspline from the terrain and clip the terrain on it. looks much more realistic.

Vista · Post by **Vista** » 2012-04-02 13:31

Can I download and play the Combined arms PR add-on?

Is it compatible with the current version of PR?

Kain888 · Post by **Kain888** » 2012-04-02 14:01

The only thing that saddens me is how unpopular are 4km2 maps so we probably won't see this a lot except some events.

Wakain · Post by **Wakain** » 2012-04-02 14:12

man, you gotta be sh*tting me (excuse the language, change it to purple bleeps as you see fit), but this is just too awesome.

Great initiative, looking forward to see the argentinian army and of course brits with L1a1 SLR's!

Kevokpo · Post by **Kevokpo** » 2012-04-02 14:33

Excelent Rhino! i was just wondering if instead of green grass, you could make some kind of mud, as the climate, was and is very wet, and all the grass became mud, but it?s all up to you. If there is anything I can help you with, just tell me, or tell alexandrei, he uses the editor very well and made a custom mod of the falklands himself!
Excellent work btw, keep it up

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