Thanks for all the feedback ppl!
I know its a huge map - I drove over it about 300 times during building
The map is set up for as long a range tank combat as possible. The fog distance is 65535 i think and static mesh cull distance is the same ~1060 meters. I think the engine draw limit is about 60000 UU?
The idea is that at the start of the map each side has a number of options as to how they attack, but as the game progresses, the options diminish due to the bridges being blown making flanking attacks difficult. There is one stone bridge each side that cant be blown- I might make it two if its too much of a choke point.
Defence of the hills with the anti-tank guns while the tanks attack will be important due to the size of the map- responding to counter-attacks on the hill will take too long if everyone is off criusing around in tanks. Using artillery to soften up hill areas or attack from the hills will make a difference.
Train-spotters out there might realise I havent given the IS2 to the Soviets beccause this map is set about 9 months too early in the war (6th June 1943). At this time the germans had the Panther and Tiger I tanks- Im not sure if the addition of a tiger or 2 will unbalance the map- the germans used them in the Battle of Kursk.
Im due to leave for China in three days for a four week holdiay so I finished the map to a playable level at this point so I could get it out as a beta. Ill finish it when I get Back in August. Hopefully it dosent have any major problems like bad network lag or summink.
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Its a beta at this point. There are some bugs that I know of :
- Bridges don't seem destroyable by all of the methods that I set up (HE,Artillery,Grenades)(I am going to take the grenades out- they shouldnt kill bridges!). Satchels work tho. arty works, but once youve killed one part of the bridge the other parts dont seem to want to blow. HE shells dont seem to do anything- Ive emptied a T34-85 of HE on them and they dont blow.
- WaterVolumes kill players, but not vehicles -not sure how to fix this.
- Fix the flying trees
Add some bird emiiters
- tweak postions/amounts of artillery triggers, resupply points, spawn points.
- tweak number and type of vehicles at each spawn
- add more APCs around map for transport of stranded tankers so they dont get sore legs
- tweak lighting- it seems to look like an overcast day as intended, but theres too much glare in the distance fog. EDIT: Is this a bloom setting?
- add more map furniture like more varied buildings, rocks, fences, bushes etc.
- maybe tweak map edges to a lower terrain resolution to save FPS- not sure of the tradeoff between running one TerrainInfo at full size vs two with one at a very reduced res. Problem is that the existing terrain is already scaled up quite a bit so another terrain scaled up even more will have texturing problems I think. Existing terrain is 512x512 with 512 grid size instead of default 64 (8x bigger).
- tweak hill area so it is targetable by artillery over more of its area so that attackers can use arty more effectively (make less flat area on top) (balance issue).
- make defending bridges easier if neccesary- emplacements/cover for defenders (balance issue)
- Tweak RO-Roleinfos by including RO-Tanker variations ( i need to script these). At the moment all the tank crews have satchels, but i want to limit this to about 3 without losing tank crew by including sappers.
- tweak RO-MineVolumes
- add version to filename til final. sorry bout that admins- I was trying to debug why the screenshots werent showing up in the selection screen - it was the .ucl file.
- fix the ugly water - not sure how to make the required material- I tried stealing it from all the different ROmaps- The Arad one seemed to work best. Originally I had about 28 FluidSurfaceInfos, but it ran like crap, so I replaced it with a single sheet.
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Thanks- hope you enjoy it.
