Beta Map RO-Elnya_beta1 PUBLIC

[Slyk]

MinionWorkz presents: RO-Elnya_beta1
Public Release

MinionWorkz, an independent development team sponsored by After-Hourz.com, announces the release of a new map, "Elnya". Set in mid-July 1941 as Panzer Group 2 attempts to encircle the vital Russian city of Smolensk. The Wehrmacht forces are driving to cut the Smolensk-Elnya rail line nortwest of the town of Elyna where they begin to encounter stiff Russian resistance.

Beta 1: is now available to the RO Community. Special thanks to Butch and "The Wild Bunch" for putting up with me and being not only patient, but supportive over the last few days of testing and multiple uploads. I also want to thank Drecks for joining me in working to detail the map and provide some great advice on modifications. We will continue to optimize the map and enhance the atmosphere over the coming weeks as we work toward a final version.

Our primary objective remains to determine the level of performance across the 50-man servers. While running far better than "Berezina" or "TractorWorks", the map offers longer views, and less optmization options. Please provide feedback at After-Hourz.com or in this thread.

Credits:
Map: Slyk & Drecks
Models: Lex
Code: Teufelhund

New features:
Russian Zis-3 76mm AT/Artillery piece.

Known Issues:
- AT guns are new BETA versions. The 45mm is NOT the TWI release version. The 45mm_B is a testing version for submission to TWI for later release. Please report any issues.
- PzIV will be replaced with a StuG/short 75 variant
- KV1-S will be replaced with a KV1-41 variant
- UCs will be replaced with a Zis-5 truck
- BT7 riders. A bug remains where riders can not mount the BT under some circumstances. We are working on a fix and will issue it as soon as it is stable.

*wife distracted me...*
http://www.after-hourz.com/misc/slyk/elnya/RO-Elnya_beta1.rar

 

[Plattfuss]

Thx to the new team of "MinionWorkz", awesome work. We can

 

[Slyk]

I have a short list of changes:
- some terrain smoothing in a few areas
- big cut in round time... 30 minutes I believe instead of 40.

Other input welcome.

 

[Quietus]

I just hopped on an empty server that was running it and just spectated & roamed. Looks like another sweet one. Rural and Russian, good stuff! Those Zis-3s look excellent, didn't fire one yet though.

 

[ViViD]

As usual Slyk, another great map by the looks of this, you always amaze me by the neatness of your maps, as if someone did a spring clean before the battle <smile>

Good Work

 

[ButchCassidy]

Stunning map with some real nice features...I love the battle at the AT bunker it seems to get more intense every time as players begin to grapple with tactics on such a big battlefield.

I think it will only get better and better as players get to know the map.
In fact we are starting to see players joining whenever this map comes on so it's proving popular already.

Good work you Minions...lol

 

[=GG= Mr Moe]

I forgot to check, but is the village recappable by the Russians? Looks like there would be an awesome house to house fight there, not to mention give the Russian players hope to gain some ground back.

 

[Slyk]

Moe: we talked about that last night. I think for b2 I will make the village a recap zone. It will give an excuse for longer round time, but still should be cut a bit but I will leave that up to feedback to see what guys think.

I haven't had a chance to play with more than 20 players yet so the longest round was some 25 minutes.

What I would like to know specific feedback on:
- Performance and trouble areas
- Objective layout/cap sequence
- Vehicle counts
- Round duration

It is a 'clean' map more or less...how many FPS do you want anyway?
Always start clean and then dirty it up. Especially not knowing how upwards of 50 players and vehicles will make it act. Give me a map half this size with better occluding options and I might dirty it up..... nah...too much work... that's why I dragged Drecks into this one! haha He's done a great job. We are discussing additional 'stuff' but it is all based on performance and feedback so it you have ideas or issues, please post them.

 

[FlashPanHunter]

I haven't had a chance to play the map but from the editor it looks pretty cool.

Some comments on the visuals. The buildings look very nice and authentic, especially in the back of the map near the railway. The station itself is very nice too. There are a couple things on the map that don't quite look as good, for example there is one terrain texture that is very bright and saturated, seems very much out of place. I would also try to get a new water cubemap. The one in the map looks like the one from bond, and none of the faces line up together. In a more general sense, the map looks very similar to berezina, not a bad thing in itself, but it would be cool to see more variety.

I haven't actually played the map, but from overhead it didn't seem too 'clean' to me.

Some comments on the performance. The map seems to run pretty well, I stat rendered my way through the map and couldn't find any really bad spots. One place where it might slow down is near the grasses and in the trees, thats because the depth rendering, but from what parts I looked at, it seemed alright.

One other thing, I noticed there were some vegitation meshes that you had made. My guess is that the way you made these is by lining a bunch a single statics together and converting them all into a larger static mesh. This is a good idea in theory, but the engine handles it badly. Each mesh has a texture assigned to it, the material id, and when you combine them, the textures dont match up, rather each mesh you add into a larger one has its own material id. As a result, you have a vegitation mesh in the map with something like 160 material ids. That will eat you fps alive. 10 ids should probably be your maximum, so you might want to take another look at that mesh.

Sorry, rather a lot of cons crit there, but the map looks very nice with a couple of issues that jump right out. Look forward to playing it and the next betas.

 

[Slyk]

No need to apologize. Just what I want to hear.

I adjusted a few of the textures to change their colors a bit. The grassy one is a bit harsh and should be more brown. I will work on updating that. As for the similar look to Berezina... yes, I am lazy about creating X number of new houses etc. Drecks has helped customize a few as well. As we get more tweak time maybe we can diversify a bit more. Still lots to do to dirty it up once we have the performance room to do so.

I have no clue about dealing with water and settings. Every thing I experiment with goes horribly wrong and ends up worse than what I had to start with. It is something worth tinkering with now that the map is out there and I can work on tweaks more so than major work.

The vegetation meshes as noted...yep, I combined them by comparing polys of individuals vs groups. Not knowing the engine specifics, I was experimenting with one version over the other. If what you say is correct, I will go back and use individual models over the groupings. Is that true for mixed mesh or any groupings? I merged the garden like mesh into one big mesh, saving hundreds or even thousands of polys in some cases.

There are quite a few minor visuals to improve for the next beta and your feedback is a big help. I will revamp the stuff mentioned and work a bit more on some other things as well. Butch noted that CPU usage was about 22% which is better than Berezina.

Thanks, Flash, I appreciate your time to give me some input.

 

[Reservoir Dog]

Can't find any low FPS areas in this version. Well done. Improvements from test beta took care of everthing I saw as an issue. Changing the village objective to be recapable would be a great idea with a slight adjustment to spawns to compliment it. Along with more "war damage" to the map if you get thumbs up with everyone on performance. Good job Minionz.

 

[Quietus]

I see you used fluidsurface infos. I've never tried those myself so I don't know much about them. You can check out Orel-Enhanced-V4 to see how I tweaked the river. I made one static mesh with a konigsplatz shader, (not even cube map). If you want the faces to line up and not show seams you need to place the "cubes" (fluid surface/ static mesh) in perfect alignment (no "staircase" style)

 

[Britney Federline]

I thought the river looks quite pretty in its own way. Perhaps it doesn't look like a real river, but it has a beautiful blue color and interesting milkiness.

I liked the map--I can see how someone could say it looks like Berezina, but that's not really a knock on the design, I don't think. There's just a design language that is shared between the two (maybe next time, try a map of a factory hidden in a deep canyon for contrast?) The objectives seem closer together than on Berezina, about one sprint away from each other, and I think it could play well as an infantry-only map because of that.

One thing that I think would be great to add is something that may be impossible: can the artillery strikes be spread out over a 10x greater area? I think this map could benefit from having colossal barrages called in, rather than pinpoint strikes. I'd love to see an entire ridgeline or all of the AT trenches consumed in a wide and thin arty barrage. Maybe reduce the count of arty calls to one or two to compensate.

 

[Slyk]

Beta 2 changes so far:
- Main village is recappable.
- More eye candy and useful cover added across map.
- Modest terrain changes to smooth rough areas, provide minor rises or gullies for cover.
- Tweaking of some spawn locations to move them a bit closer to the next objective.
- Reduced saturation of yellow grass.

Considerations for Beta 2:
- Per Brit's suggestion, set wider arty dispersion for both teams.
- Arty strikes are 3 per team. Thinking about plus 1 for Germans.
- More transports. Still a victim of single-HT drivers running off to battle.
- Figuring out why triggers hate this map! I have a few cool ideas but triggers hate me recently.
- Reduce round time to 30 minutes from 40. I have seen it go the distance and end at 25, thoughts?

 

[=GG= Mr Moe]

I think you almost need a wait and see approach for lowering the time to less than 30 minutes. Making the village recappable may need to increase the time.

Side note: Must say I really love the foxholes on Hill 90. Saved me plenty of times when a tank goes to run me over.

 

[18Bravo]

This is a great map, played it a couple of nights ago on the meatgrinder server with about 10 people per side, would've been more, but I think the playercount died due to kaukasus as the map before it. I would say more good things about this, but I'm at a loss of words on just how good this map is. Been playing AHz battlefields since Call of Duty: United Offensive, and have not been let down on quality.

 

[Atomskytten]

Looks just like one of the old original maps from Close Combat III: The russian Front - Very nice Can't wait to try it out..

 

[Slyk]

That CC3 map was the inspiration for it, yes. There are some great maps in that series and bringing them into 3D life is a lot of fun. I have a few more planned; most others are merging two CC3 maps into one level. Elnya got a bit out of hand and should be smaller scale or bundled with another map for a larger area. This has been a learning experience for converting from 2D to 3D but I think it came out pretty well with some creative liberties taken.

 

[Slyk]

Found a few more issues after some tough rounds tonight.
- The Russian spawn at the AT bunker/trench is bugged in certain cap sequences for the Germans. Will be fixed.
- May add some reverse slope bunkers for the Russians to spawn under cover and closer to the bridge/hill90/hill100 objectives. Need to test the run times and effects without tipping the balance.
- A couple additional transports for the Russians in the rear areas, mainly a UC/truck for each tank location in case stubborn solo tankers run off.

 

[Basil]

Very nice map, I love these huge scale combined arms maps with trenches & stuff. I've played this a couple of times and found only two complainments.

First, there's a ramp leading to the AT-bunker trenches on the right (looking from the front from German perspective) where you'll have to jump to get on the ramp and down to the trench. Small thing but irritating if you have ran all the way and can't get to the bloody trenchworks because you can't jump due to exhaustion. I think generally maps should be desinged so that players don't ever have to jump because jumping is so damn difficult in the game.

Second, I think the AT gun in the AT-bunker is too easy to destroy. After all it takes only one shot, and that's pretty much the first thing I'll always do as a German tanker. This makes life way to easy for the Germans and isn't even realistic. If there's a way to make the gun more durable it would be great.