Hey all, turned out that the real battle for me Friday was against my desktop, so I didn't get to enjoy the night as much as I'd hoped. I ended up getting pretty p'd in the end, so I just had to eventually leave. I DID get to play a couple rounds each on the maps. Fun stuff, it really was. All of them were pretty darn cool. Their own little worlds. Thumbs way up for the designers!
Anyway, I was able to get some screenies of the short period of time I was there. If you made this map and are like me, having people in there is like the best reward for the countless hours. So here's a few shots of them.
Heh... Very cool! Wish everything would have been running better last night.. Last time we did this it was laggy, we go out and buy a huge freaking server and it does it again... We are currently looking into this issue... [Again]
Cool!, Much like your first screenshot. I had the oportunity to take a great one but I didn't realize it until i'd already left the area. In the same spot as the first, when the US took the tunnel and that was their oinly spawn I'd say there were about 7 guys posted behind boxes poised to take out any NVA that would try to enter. It looked very cool. I was slow on the draw last night or I would have got it.
Man, Those are some great shots. In defense of the first one, I wasn't trying to say cover me, but rather Follow Me. I hit the wrong damn key. Then, while in the tunnel, I was lining up my Type 56 to kill an incoming US invander and someone stepped in front of me, thus the Sorry post. Not one of my better moments recorded for everyone to see. :-)
I did like the great shot of Bubba's ass. 😉
The shot of Breaky putting down all those boobie traps is great. He loves them darn things. At least now his own teammates will have a warning before we step on them. :-)
We are glad you could make it. We hope you drop by more often.
I didn't have any problems because of the server or the maps. I had just reinstalled the game because it wasn't running at all and didn't upgrade PB. When I did go back and do it, I got the wrong files or something. I'd get kicked as soon as PB came up with a check. I'll have that fixed.
I didn't mean to include the one that shows connection problems. It was supposed to be part of a funny gif. When I got that message, the NVA guy who is in front of me, kept going through a running animation. I got about 20 screens of it so I could animate it later. Didn't have FRaps going or I would have gotten the whole thing 🙂
Anyway, I had a great time. Definitely a welcome change from the ho-hum of the standard maps. Thanks for letting me and my buds tag along (Akaiian, Hanknaan). We'll definitely be there next time and will stop in and out of your servers to see what's up.
Anyway, if anybody wants the uncompressed, 1024x768, version of any of those screens, just let me know and I'll email them to ya. It's kinda hard to tell what's going on in these ones.
We got to talk to Akaiian in TS. He was pretty cool. You guys should join us in our public channel. It's even more fun to listen to us grumble. :-)
I don't know if you guys have BF42, but we are planning on doing custom maps for BF42 this Friday. It's been a few months, but we can easily hold 40 people and it runs a heck of a lot smoother than BFV. Anyway, it's always a blast and we should have the map that Ghost in the Darkness is based on, called Ghost Front. It's an awesome ground pounder/tank battle map.
Akaiian told me that you guys really helped him get up and running with the map pack and all of that. I really appreciate that kindness to my friend. He was talkng you guys up in our other TS. Thank you all for that.
For some reason, I couldn't get my other friend to want to leave that other TS and join yours. I think he's a bit weird about new people or thinks that he's intruding. I apologize for not being in your TS, but if I had of left him alone in that other one, he would have logged off and left within seconds. Kinda lame, but it's old hat with that dude. Next time for sure.
I'll have to reinstall 1942 yet again and find my old CDKey and I'll definitely come out for that too. It's been a LONG time since I've played that game and I miss it 🙂
Anyway, those maps we played were really great. All of them. I so liked the dungeonous tunnels in Ghost in the Darkness. Then it opens up to the open jungle and enemies and things all over it. Good times, for sure. The other ones I mix up the names as I really did get dropped to DT a lot but they were sweet too. I'll have to actually go in SP style with nobody else and really explore before I can give a full blown review. The one with the really rolling, close hills was sweet as can be. Nice layout of terrain and trees. It felt like a combination of Everquest and Predator. It was "something EYE" that had the urban combat with the big tall buildings in it and the center fortress that you dirty US meanies sat on top of sniped us. That was a great map. Really awesome layout for infantry combat. I never did make it to the top.
Anyway, great times. I'll be here again the next time. Unsure if my own map will be done by then as it depends on whether they fix BCV anytime soon and if I can figure out how to raise the chopper ceiling to get the birds more than 7 feet above my main bases.
Definately good to have you guys around the other night. Tell your buddy that he is welcome to join our TS channel if he is on the server, he doesn't have to talk or anything if he doesn't want to. I think the map you are talking about was Operation Ebony Eyes that was done by Raze. That was definately a fun map, and also seemed to me to be one of the least problematic that night.
I saw your post on PBF about the flight ceiling messing with your map. I haven't had a chance yet to check out your newest version, but I will do that. Lets hope there is a work around, although it would certainly create some interesting dynamics for attacking the enemy bases - you would have to use the helos essentially for transport only.
It's actually true that it's an interesting element only being able to fly so high over the ground. It makes for requiring a little more skill and patience from the pilots. At first I was sort of happy about the idea. But then I realized that there's things that no longer make sense in the map. The worst thing is that I have AA emplacements that are now pointing to nothing. That and there's a helo wreckage that's speared on top of a temple that simply cannot be possible. This is at least until I get BCV back and working or decide to throw up a fresh install on a new drive or something to fix it. My ultimate nightmare also seems like my only option and that is to prefab the main bases, lower the terrain there and then pray it comes back intact. Each base having hundreds of individual elements certainly doesn/t make me feel better about this though.
Another thing the patch kinda ruined was a bit of a fun/stupid element I had put in. I made a ramp and a double jump for the jeeps that was freaking perfect. All you did was get in and hit the gas and it would play out without damage. You even did a 360 backflip and 180 spin (Misty) type move before perfectly landing into a sliding stop. It was brilliant, actually. Hilarious too. Now you just get in and dive off a cliff to your death. Oh well, all I need is to adjust for the new speed of the jeeps. It was easy to do the first time, so it won't be that bad to fix. Best part was that there was an initial drop that once airborne, no longer required a driver to play out to perfection. So you could switch to the MUTT and actually shoot around in all directions in mid-flip and still land sweetly. I gotta get it back to that and I'm happy again 🙂
I still have a few floaters here and there too. I guess I'm just really anxious to get the new BCV working with the new lightmapping and stuff. God, I hope it factors in the foliage.
Oh, and next time I am definitely staying in your TS channel.
I had forgotten about the AA guns on top of the buildings. There should be a command in the map editor that moves everything up or down X feet without f-ing up the map, but that is probably expecting too much.
I never saw that ramp - I will have to look for it on this newer version even though it will mean my certain death with the faster MUTTs.
Your heightmap is a 0-255 density greyscale image. I think you can just manipulate it in photoshop or something and make the whole thing ligher or darker to increase or decrease the height of the terrain across the board. If you do that then select all your objects as a single group and move then down together you should be OK. Dunno if that's too great of an idea or not. I know Cajunwolf does his heightmaps by painting them in Photoshop since you can use the blur and smear tools to make really nice looking land.
The ramp sounds way cool. All you have to say is Dukes of Hazzard and LoU will come running. He's been playing with the idea of doing something Dukish. I think this fits the bill nicely. 🙂
I'm a big fan of Ghost in the Darkness. I love the tunnel and the jungle is great. It's really intense and seems to get better every time we play it. Raze did that map too.
We are working on a way to test all the maps we have in development. Hopefully, we will have some more new maps for the event at the end of the month. We wanted to include Tranquility by [MoX] Rage, but ran into a snag. It will deffinately be up for the next one. If your map isn't ready, don't sweat it. We plan on doing this every month. It's a good way to break up the boredom that can set it playing the same few maps over and over. If you need help testing, we might be able to give each other a hand. We are playing with the idea of having a private map testing party. I think we could squeeze in another map. And if you like our other maps, you will dig what we have in the works. Every one of them are just as good as what we have released publicly. If your interested, let me know here or by PM (Atomm). BTW, what is the name of your map? I see Sarge has messed with it from PB, but I think I missed it.
Akaiian was really cool. We could tell he was worried about bugging us, but we are not like that. A lot of clan's can be real assholes just because. We tried to help each other out as much as possible. That's just the way we are. It works out really cool. Many members of the GRB contribute to the site, help with clan stuff or make maps. Without them, we wouldn't be where we are today. Of course, I am a bit biased too. 😉
I'm still going to go through those maps alone and check them out to the fullest. That way I'm not so worried about PB kicking me or heck, just getting killed before I check it all out.
I use heightmaps to create my maps aswell. It's been a practice of mine since I was doing early 3D crap in Lightwave. I would never have been able to pull off the terrain I have without starting with that, as it just got way too confusing. I had to export and reimport about 75 times until I found the roads to actually be at a drivable grade for all vehicles. The height scale was a huge factor and it was a HUGE pain in the arse. The problem was that they don't export all that well as the pixelation of the heightmap images actually translates into the map. I know you can smudge and blur, but you have to do that each export/import and unfortunately, my roadways required a heavy dose of smoothing and tweaking within BCV. The main reason was that the heightmap got the roads semi-correct, but always reimported at a slanted angle. So they were drivable in terms of heading from teh bottom to the top, but the limited reso of the greyscale image couldn't get them to be straight when measured across. My best bet is still to lower it manually at the mains, I think. I will select them all as one group, but I'd also like to test if the prefab has a limit on the number of objects or what. It shouldn't. Now that you mentioned this, I don't think I need a prefab at all. But it sure will be a pain to go and make sure I've gotten all the objects. I have one room with 20 or so straw baskets and there's stacks of palettes and all kinds of other unimportant props. Each main only took a day each, so it won't actually be catastrophic if I have to start them again.
If BCV isn't back by this weekend, I'm scrapping it and reinstalling on my new drive to work on the map. I've found I've been having more fun making maps than I have been playing the stock ones. As clumsy as BCV is, it gets to be second nature once you figure out how to select things correctly. Hehe.
Akaiian is a great guy. Hands down coolest dude I play with. I met him in EQ like 4 or 5 years ago and we've always been in the same clan or guild or whatever. Only guy I have never met in my life that I would trust 100% with my life. He was probaly uncomfortable that I wasn't in there. I made a mistake catering to my other friend and that won't happen again. I was in your TS for a brief moment until I discovered BFV wasn't loading at all. Took forever to reinstall and get everything back to where it was. I even forgot to backup all the custom maps and had to redownload all of them. Including my own 🙂
If you check out the ramp, just spawn US and head East. You'll see the jeep on the map. Don't even bother trying the scooter, that's to be taken out. You can either drive off the cliff and die or flip it and take a roadway that is going to end up being a rather hairy racetrack through the jungle. You CAN actually live through the ramp as-is, but you can't just jump in and go. If you pull forward and stop so that the front bumper lines up with the tree group that is sticking out, you can gas it and live. If that doesn't work, line up the rear bumper with that tree. I forget which it was cause I was so pissed, hehe. It's pretty touchy and you may have to steer a little. Before, you literally had to do nothing but hold up, go over the first drop and then get into any seat or what. I was working on an alternate jump for the NVA side, but left it out to release a BETA earlier. I may go and add another one.
The other thing that I'm still working is some of the battle damage craters have lips on them and I want to make sure that you can clear those at full speed. Kinda cool to jump a wrecked Huey.
It's really easy to set up. Just make a ramp that you "think" will work and park a jeep at the top. Every test, never touch anything other than gas and keep going back into BCV to tweak the terrain for more lift, less rotation, distance, landing ramp etc.... It's actually kinda intuitive. The only real advice I can give other than try and try again, is to make sure your lip is a smooth transition coverering at least 3 map grid squares. Otherwise, you'll slam into the terrain and take damage. If you get it right, you can the things to do triple backflips and all kinds of fun as hell stuff. I haven't even tried to make a ski-jump ramp with the absolute highest scale yet. That would be awesome, but no choppers could fly there 🙁
Hmmm. I think in Photoshop you can export your heightmap and expand it into a canvas double the size of the original. Then use your brightness settings and turn it down across the entire map. Just turn it down until your lowest point goes completely black (rock bottom) Then re-shrink it back onto the original size canvas, this *might* help the pixellation somewhat. That way you can uniformly lower your entire terrain map all at once. Seems like it might work.