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Fix for vegetation that dont work as cover:

wake_up

Grizzled Veteran
Feb 12, 2008
215
81
MerKozy Land
Hi.
Did u ever notice that in RO some mappers uses things like bushes, grass,
or a cornfield for soldiers to take cover, but this often doesnt work ?

Its cause RO uses the old Unreal engine, its only possible to build a cornfield
by using flat surfaces with an cornfield texture on it.
So u cant hide in a cornfield, even when its build for the reason.

Cant there be a feature for mappers to set a box on a cornfield (same
proportions as the cornfield in XYZ) and mark it as "cover" or someting else.
Now all parts of soldiers that are in that box gets drawn partially invisible
by the engine ?
So its harder to locate soldiers in cornfields, only the parts outside would
be fully drawn, like the head when ure running.
Perhaps its useful to make soldiers in cornfields more invisivle to tank
crew men, or make proned soldiers nearly complete invisivle to tanks.

I think this feature woul be realistic and good for the gameplay cause the
mappers could decide to make fields to be used as cover and change their
maps gameplay - to the positive.
It helps to define the role of tanks and its the only way to build cover areas
without placing a lot of buildings or groundwaves.

thanks, JH
 
Are we talking cover or concealment? I cant recall the map at this moment but there was one wheat field (more like sorghum) that was dense and you were concealed up to the last meter before you assualted the mortar position. Very effective. Also not all corn/wheat fields offer the same concealment ( row spacing, season, and maturity).
 
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When I made Vidzeme I left my wheat/cornfields 'lit' (or maybe 'special lit' I forget) and it is pretty much impossible to see enemy troops through them. I think I got lucky because the terrain, wheat texture and player texture blended very well together. The point is if a mapper really wants wheatfields to conceal infantry well it's possible by changing the wheats lighting and underlying terrain to match the infantry uniforms.
 
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When I made Vidzeme I left my wheat/cornfields 'lit' (or maybe 'special lit' I forget) and it is pretty much impossible to see enemy troops through them. I think I got lucky because the terrain, wheat texture and player texture blended very well together. The point is if a mapper really wants wheatfields to conceal infantry well it's possible by changing the wheats lighting and underlying terrain to match the infantry uniforms.

I was just about to mention your map as an example of where the wheatfields work. Ogledow also has some good concealment also. The wheatfields are fine right now given the engine restrictions.

However isn't there something about view distance/draw distance where you can see people at longer ranges, because the game doesn't actually draw the blades of grass to save on performance? I'm not sure as my settings are usually maxed out.
 
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Disclaimer: I go on tangents. :/

I was just about to mention your map as an example of where the wheatfields work. Ogledow also has some good concealment also. The wheatfields are fine right now given the engine restrictions.

Frankly, the wheatfields in maps like Bondervo are partially my fault.. in the mod I did the technique (which I carried to Bondarevo) as part of a Tank-Only map.. and the idea/structure was really intended for that.. not for face-close Infantry, but rather long-range tank matches.

An easy to improve the look would be to:
- unlit, as suggested.. the way they are designed is not ideal for any real (vertex) lighting.
- put a Wheat like deco-layer inside the 'field grid'. Set it's values to be a good mix of where infantry would be approaching it. Trick is to not over-draw yourself to oblivion however, so you gotta balance it.


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On a personal thing.. I don't like hearing people say things like 'It's an engine limitation'.. push the engine.. it's capable of alot more then many ppl may think.. esp since H/W is alot move then it was way back when UE2 first came out... plus Ostfront is based on a modified version of the UE2.5.

Much of the way things are in Ostfront are just because it's what the devs (myself included at the time) came up with and that worked. Does it means it's the best way? heck no.. if you got a better idea, I encourage you to give it a try and push the engine.


However isn't there something about view distance/draw distance where you can see people at longer ranges, because the game doesn't actually draw the blades of grass to save on performance? I'm not sure as my settings are usually maxed out.

UE2.5/Ostfront doesn't have a 3d-to-2d LOD system. the only LODing that happens is on Skeletal meshes, and those are pretty much limited to Players and vehicles at this point. (I think there's something BSP does, but I'm not sure and don't know how it works...)


Aside from that, there is a DrawDistance setting that can be set per-map, as well as Fog distance.

The only thing that this could be is a Deco-Layer, which has draw-distance set per map. so you can set small pebble meshes to show up on your map, but only show the pebbles that are within a few meters of the player. To this end, they are a client-side only effect and should -NOT- be used as any sort of cover/concealment*.

* - There is a ForceDisplay setting add in Ostfront Decolayers that will force all clients to display a particular decolayer, but this should be used sparingly as turning off decolayers on lower end computers can drastically improve frames. This still will not provide any sort of cover (ie: only concealment) as decolayers do not collide (won't stop bullets), and bots can also see straight through them.
 
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