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bushlurker

Carraigdubh, County Leitrim. - A 5x5km Geotypical Irish Terrain

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This is one of the most detailed and most beautiful maps I've laid eyes on! The villages are just incredible! Very nice work!

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You've heard it before, but I'll say it again. Really great map man. One thing I question is the transparent grass on the little hills. Never seen it like that before. But incredible nap. Truly next level stuff. And see you are considering adding farms — awesome. Thanks very much for such an excellent map man. One if the best out there.

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Taking a good look on this tonight, as its been way too long since I've been to Ireland :)

Any possibility of including some archaeological sites in a future update? Leitrim is megalith tomb country, isn't it? With something like that on the map, It could present it as an example of virtual archaeology later this year (with proper crediting to you, of course).Please PM me if interested, Bushlurker.

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Taking a good look on this tonight, as its been way too long since I've been to Ireland :)

Any possibility of including some archaeological sites in a future update? Leitrim is megalith tomb country, isn't it? With something like that on the map, It could present it as an example of virtual archaeology later this year (with proper crediting to you, of course).Please PM me if interested, Bushlurker.

there isnt much historical stuff from the megalithic age up there to see, most of it would have been lost..tombs especially, i havnt heard or seen anything from that era

for archaeology artefacts the best era would be Celtic, ring forts etc.

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'Afternoon Gentlemen...

Once again I'd just like to thank everyone for their kind and positive comments, both here and elsewhere! I'm particularly delighted that people have generally picked up on the spirit in which this little terrain was intended... and, best of all, have had fun playing on it!

I grew up in an area on the outermost edge of Glasgow - little terraced and tenement-lined streets with pubs 'n corner shops just like Ballybrian - climbing over walls and in and out of peoples back-gardens, "playing sodjeys" :D

We knew every gap in the walls, every hole in the fences, every garden shed that could be usefully hidden behind, climbed on top of, or fallen off...

Techie stuff like javelins hadn't been invented, and our imagination didn't run to tanks or armour anyway... it was all about peeking round corners, windows, doorways - with a stick for a rifle and the backyard of the pub as an HQ...

When we got bored with "Urban Conflict" all we had to do was climb the last back wall in the street and from there on it was all just fields and hedgerows and drystane walls, cows and sheep - as far as our eyes could see, and our little legs could take us... before the big Dinnertime Ceasefire... ;)

Carraigdubh of course, is all about recreating that fun again... with bigger guns... (and longer legs) :)

Anyhow... let's see if I can cover a few points that have been raised....

a bush on the road in grid 038026

I've shepherded that stray bush gently to the side of the road where it'll be safe! Well spotted!

a few golf and romeo towers about the place ?

Towers, border checkpoints and the like are best left to missionmakers I think... I don't really want to "hardwire" specific "military" items into the landscape...

the NE corner of the map is a little sparse I think adding in some hedgerows and another Ballybrain sized town up there would be nice. Also the bushes with the white flowers you use on the hills render very strangely at range they turn into white blocks you might want to consider using a different bush model.

Good points, both!... Yes - I think there's room for 3 Ballybrian-sized towns... I've already started work on one down in the SW - at the "main road" T-junction south of the sawmills...

For the NE I think I might expand the existing village of Satnamarra slightly... it's on a main road T-junction too, so it's a good spot for a "last stop before the border" mini-town...

The "ghost gorse" bushes... Yeah, they're the only "stock" vegetation model - an OA bush...

Since I recoloured all the other stock A2 veg, I was able to iron out differences in colour at different LOD levels (well, mostly...), but that particular bush shades to a very pale tone at distance... to suit Takistan, of course... Shape-wise it suits quite well, but I think I'll recolour it along the lines of the other vegetation... I'll be able to fix that tone change, and maybe even add some typical little yellow gorse flowers in the close-up LOD...

Any possibility of including some archaeological sites in a future update? Leitrim is megalith tomb country, isn't it? With something like that on the map, It could present it as an example of virtual archaeology later this year

Landscape archaeology was actually my RL occupation for the last 10 years! (until my recent radical career change), and quite a lot of that time was spent modelling "virtual archaeology sites" in GIS programs and the like... that's basically what led me to terrain modelling in the first place...

Though my area of expertise is in the Eastern-Mediterranean Bronze Age, I've done my share of tramping around the various types of megalithic-era tombs and bronze/iron age earthworks typical of this whole region of Ireland - and Scotland too...

Slatts is fairly correct, though...

there isnt much historical stuff from the megalithic age up there to see, most of it would have been lost..tombs especially... ...for archaeology artefacts the best era would be Celtic, ring forts etc.

Leitrim is fairly poorly represented on the archaeological front, compared to other Countys... not that I'm an expert on the area, of course... There's a megalithic-era tomb or two, and some iron age(?) linear earthworks and the like... no impressive megaliths or stone circles really though...

Earthworks and ring-forts could be modelled fairly successfully I think, though it might take a smaller scale ground mesh than this 5 meter one to do them full justice... it's something to think about though... I might take a little tour around the heightmap - see if I can spot a slope or hill that might have seemed appropriate at the time...

As for actual little dolmen/tombs, token megaliths or basic stone circles, the more practical reason of appropriate models becomes an issue... my current model skills aren't really up to par as yet, so it might be a while before I can muster an appropriate rock or two...

Though my modelling skills are still non-existent, I've started to get the hang of some basic texturing... a little...

Carraigdubh_newcottage01.jpg

Once I iron out a few dodginesses here and there I'll apply this fairly typical mixed sandstone bricks texture to a selection of the existing buildings, plus maybe variants in a "whitewashed stone" texture too, for a bit of variety... oh, and grey slate roofs mostly too...

It'll make the objects pbo a little bigger, but I reckon it'll be worthwhile for the extra visual ambience...

More pictures to follow once I have some more progress worth reporting...

PS...

@twisted...

One thing I question is the transparent grass on the little hills. Never seen it like that before.

Me neither!

Any chance you could maybe post a picture? Unlike the trees & bushes, all the clutter is 100% standard Arma 2 - I haven't added any custom stuff, so either I've used them inappropriately somehow and not noticed yet, or maybe it's some external thing like AToC?

B

Edited by Bushlurker

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Great map Bushlurker ,live only a few miles leitrim

Regards padu

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Not much to add other than my praise. What a fantastic map! Excellent attention to detail.

I'm having fun thinking of the possibilities RE: SAS training/ops scenarios!

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Hey Bushlurker, United Operations just added your island to our server, and it is fantastic!

Here's a vid from a mission, the combined effect of night, fog, moonlight and hedgerows makes the setting amazing:

22SOA917LDw

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Hey Bushlurker, United Operations just added your island to our server, and it is fantastic!

Here's a vid from a mission, the combined effect of night, fog, moonlight and hedgerows makes the setting amazing:

I am not quite sure what the locals would have made of all those American fellas marching across their farms! I am sure they would have appreciated the singing though.

Hope you didn't kill any of their cows!

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I was working on a mission on another map when this came out. Who knows if it will get finished now. I immediately started working on this new map. It's breath taking. You get all your maps to be great works of art. Everything is as it would be in real life. I mean from the ground textures and where they fade into each other to the bushes and trees and placement. When I used to be a professional wrestler, one of the biggest things we had to learn was getting everything to make sense. This map, like your others, does that. You don't just find a texture for the ground and put bushes and trees everywhere; you spend time to detail exactly what kind of bushes and trees and underbrush makes sense with the ground textures.

One particular thing drives me crazy about other islands is that the where the water meets land it's often a good 5 foot drop or a really bad height difference. Like the beaches of lakes and oceans. If you walk towards the water about 10 feet away the ground starts to curve down to water level then about five feet the curve goes down at about a 60 degree level. Your's slowly blends into the water at a constant, smooth rate.

Ok enough praise. Since this is a beta i'm guessing you want some feedback. I have run into a huge problem that will ruin the map for AI where driving is concerned. Those little rock walls along the side of the roads are a nightmare. If you have more than one vehicle per group, the second car has a habit of being a terrible driver. If AI gets close to first car, he will slow down or stop, then back up then try to catch up again. Every single time this happened, the AI turns too hard (or worse, turn around) in order to get back to the position he wants to be at. That causes him to drive into the rock walls. And unlike other walls, they are low enough to be driven over, but too high to have all wheels touch the ground. So everytime i had a second AI car, he got stuck every single time. Travelling from the outskirts to the middle of the map, my AI got stuck at least 4 times.

No matter what type of mission you create, those walls will kill. Even if you get vehicles to drive cross country, they still need to cross the street here and there and will make for a terrible mission.

But the walls help make the map. Maybe you can lower them a little so that vehicles can drive over them but not get stuck. Even if you have a single AI car and tell them where to drive, they still tend to drive off the road.

One other suggestion I have is probably trivial. But liking realistic maps like I do, No one ever thinks about where cars would park. Even in bis maps cars have to park on the small streets. Some of the bigger buildings would realistically have up to 10 cars that need to park for people who would work in buildings. Your map makes parking on the street the only option, and AI are very bad drivers, so it causes issues.

Other than those 2 things, this is probably my favorite map. I'm trying to use your other maps too cause they look so good, but they are pretty open with no buildings or flat areas, etc. But I'll make it work for me.

Thanks for the great work!!

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When I used to be a professional wrestler, one of the biggest things we had to learn was getting everything to make sense.

Wait... dude, what? :D

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Struck a bit of a problem while wandering around on this excellent map. Frustrated that I couldn't get in and get some curry chips I unloaded a mag full of 7.62 into the chippy window. The whole storefront disappeared, likewise for all the others when similarly damaged. Other than that a trully excellent map, it's nice to be able to grab some cover in the small undulations.

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You can actually destroy most BIS buildings with 7.62. Some just have more hitpoints than others.

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"Oh Bushlur----ker the pipes, the pipes are calling....from glen to glen...." "all right that's enough now". OK, sorry. Sterling work here Bushlurker, the map, the terrain such as the hedgerows look as though this is in the UK or Irish countryside rather Eastern Europe. You've really made a map with character here. I can't wait to try it out!

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You can actually destroy most BIS buildings with 7.62. Some just have more hitpoints than others.

The problem is that the shop fronts disappear leaving a totally different building behind. Go try it and see what I mean.

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Hi again guys!

... and thanks once more for all the comments!...

Hmmm... one or two of the more obvious flaws in this Beta starting to show up.... :o

@BloodBane

Impressive nighttime navigation there! Liked the atmospherics too! It made me think a couple of extra ambient sounds might be nice... a nighttime owl, for example... I'll have to look in to that!

@JumpingHubert

That video is a lot better than the basic couple of photos I used as research material! ... You'll notice there's an awful lot of water in Leitrim! Big fishing country of course... and something I've gone easy on so far on this terrain...

Still - in the few scenes which weren't all lochs, it looks like I wasn't a million miles off!... I think I even spotted a wee stone wall or two :)

On the subject of lochs.... as you'd have seen from JumpingHuberts video post - theres a lot of them in Leitrim...

So far, there's only one little "experimental" lochan (small loch) on the terrain...

Most of you guys will be familiar with the inadequacies, and hazards!, of the BIS "pond object"...

The AI don't see it, don't recognise it as water, they'll walk right into it like it isn't there... However, AI, vehicle or whatever - if they're "in" beyond a certain depth then the appropriate "water reaction" takes place... AI swim (and lose their kit), smaller vehicles get swamped and eventually sometimes blow up, and amphibious vehicles float (I think.... boats do anyway...)...

If they recognised the damned thing as water - like the sea - it wouldn't be so bad... they'd recognise it as a barrier and try to skirt around if possible... not walk or drive right across....

Anyway - all of this basically means that terrainmakers generally avoid "ponds" if possible, and if necessary, use "sea" if they can....

That's not possible with some terrains, of course... such as this one...

The little lochan in the current version is a new experimental compromise...

It's been carefully sculpted (as Victim913 noticed! :D) so the deepest part is just fractionally LESS than the depth at which a foot soldiers "swimming animation" automatically kicks in... this means they don't go swimming, and they don't ever lose their kit! Good so far!

Better still, civilian vehicles and humvees are just low enough to get swamped... the occupants can get out and walk to shore, but the vehicle usually gets swamped and stuck... That's reasonably realistic too...

Larger vehicles and BMP's etc can usually make it no problem, so that's ok...

The biggest single drawback is that, of course... the AI don't actually "see" the water at all - they think it's just a bowl shaped depression in the ground, and since - within certain limits - I've eliminated their usual sole reaction (swimming), then for the AI, to all intents and purposes - it's not there...

This occasionally leads to the wierd anomaly of a wandering patrol walking across the loch, up to their shoulders in water, then - being alerted and going prone!... They don't seem to suffer any ill effects, or drown or anything.... they crawl about prone for ages underwater sometimes...

I haven't had an underwater prone AI shoot me yet, but I think they probably could...

So - if you're suddenly surprised by a bullet from nowhere as you wander past the lochan - it could be a prone AI shooting you from under 4 feet of water he can't see - but you can...

It's all just a cosmetic compromise... since there's been no major complaints as yet, I might expand on the idea and add a couple more little lochs here and there, since the real Leitrim has so many...

Anyway...

Those little rock walls along the side of the roads are a nightmare.

In more ways than one... if they weren't so integral to the overall ambience of the whole terrain I'd have ditched them by now!

I suspect the wall model itself has a flaw or two which isn't helping...

If you try walking along the road close in by the side of the wall, you'll notice yourself "stepping up into the air" at regular intervals, as if you were walking up and over some sort of invisible "bump"... I suspect this is because you are!

I think the "GeoLOD" (what the AI see and react to, and what players interact with) isn't exactly the same as the VisualLOD that we players actually see... There seems to be part of the wall model that's invisible, but which can be physically interacted with...

Since the AI effectively "see" the GeoLOD, they're seeing a slightly different wall - one with some sort of "bump" that sticks out towards the road a little...

I suspect that it's this that confuses the AI and causes them to swerve a lot to avoid...

Sadly I have no way of actually peeking inside the wall model, since it's a standard BIS model...

Currently, options include using a different and probably less "typical" wall, or having a go at making one, or even possibly asking BIS really really nicely for the .mlod version of this one... (unlikely, but not beyond the realms of possibility)...

Definitely an issue that needs to be addressed for the final version anyway...

Sinking Shops!!

Those of you who played Arma 1 might remember these shops from Sahrani... In Paraiso, I think they were embedded into the "embankment" model that skirted some of the bigger hills in the town...

Back then, I'm pretty sure the embankment - and the shops - were just configged to be "indestructable"... problem solved there...

In my setting, I've embedded the shops along the front of a suitable non-enterable "houseblock" model... In Scotland, and Ireland too, a lot of these little country town shops are converted downstairs houses, often with the shopkeeper living in the flat above, with a front door round the back, or occasionally in the front on the street... In the smaller villages the local shop/post office might actually be someone's front room, converted to a shop...

The basic houseblock building, with the shops embedded, looks OK actually... not too out of place, and it'll look a bit better still once I retexture that houseblock model with some "whitewashed stone" or something...

The current problem stems from the fact that, while the houseblock is a standard BIS model, configged as a building with a certain number of hitpoints, and a basic "ruins" model, the shops have no ruin model (they were originally indestructable), and aren't currently configged at all...

This means that currently, after a couple of shots, they collapse into the ground and disappear - leaving the original house front exposed...

I guess the easiest thing to do is to config the shops to be indestructable again, that way this issue won't arise... However, in the unlikely event that the houseblock itself was destroyed, they'd be left standing there on their own...

If I localise the houseblock model within my objects pack to retexture it, then I have control over its config too - I could just make both houseblock and associated shops indestructable... that way you could level the rest of the town, but they'd remain intact... and preserve the illusion they're intended to be used that way, and not just me cobbling two models together and hoping for the best... ;)

Anyhow... I think that's all the major beta flaws that've turned up so far... the AI driving is the main thing that requires a bit of thought... the house/shop combo, I'll reconfig and they'll serve the purpose... and... if anyone happens to be fooling around up by the lochan and sees cows grazing in the loch, or has any better ideas for a "pond compromise" then please let me know your thoughts...

Cheers & thanks again everyone!

B

Edited by Bushlurker

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Absolutely brilliant map... excellent work. My only suggestion is with regards to the rock walls by the roads and it's been mentioned a few times before. The AI cannot seem to figure it out even using ZoneKiller's AI driving scripts (from the BattleZone missions). I know it's realistic and accurate but it would prevent mission makers from using any kind of AI-driven vehicles. I left my machine running yesterday with Kremator's ports of the Battlezone missions (he posted it a few pages ago I think), and I came back to lots of AI gridlock at various points on the road.

Again... I cannot thank you enough for this map. Our group includes a guy living near Dublin and he swears this is the view from his back window :)

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The rock wall near the roads are indeed a real problem. Often the AI gets either stuck between them or they go off-road trying to reach their destination.

On the other hand, removing them would be a shame as they fit perfectly into the landscape. Maybe it would help already if they are moved away from the roads a little bit.

Edit:

Sander just told me gently that once again my missions are crap. :D

Below downloads contain fixed versions of Cleansweep and Return the Tractor:

Cleansweep v1.01 - Fixed the missing notes and briefing text.

Return the Tractor v1.01 - Removed cwr2_abel in the list of required addons.

There is another little problem with "Seargant Moore" where the briefing text is only shown when the mission is started but not in the briefing screen. No idea why it's like this there, will provide fixed version too once I found out.

Edited by W0lle

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This occasionally leads to the wierd anomaly of a wandering patrol walking across the loch, up to their shoulders in water, then - being alerted and going prone!... They don't seem to suffer any ill effects, or drown or anything.... they crawl about prone for ages underwater sometimes...

I haven't had an underwater prone AI shoot me yet, but I think they probably could...

Was anyone else's first thought "grenade fishing"? If only they would float to the surface afterwards....

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OK I know I said I had a mission a while back. Well here is the mission! It is simple and fun. You need to be about eight players or it will be very difficult. It has custom sounds.

It uses ACE and BAF. Enjoy!

Co@ 08 Angry People (BAF & ACE)

Simple mission. You are guarding a garage and waiting for the APC to get back...

Edited by Pellejones

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We will be looking to deploy to this location in a month or so. Looking forward to any updates.

Greets from RG.

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No one ever thinks about where cars would park. Even in bis maps cars have to park on the small streets.

Totally correct!!

I didn't think about it either, but you're absolutely correct.....

Apart from the realism angle - mucho importante in itself, there's also a few mission-types which like the occasional "flat open area" detectable in and around settlements.....

... a fast visitor/buldozer screengrab from the "New Town"....

FreeParking.jpg

... a bit more work to do there, but I get the idea....

I'll see if I can sneak a little area somewhere in or around the existing Ballybrian town too...

B

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