SMD_Sara_A2 Full Sahrani Map Port - Initial Release

Awesome, thanks for this!

B]New update v1.5.0 available at withSIX. Download now by clicking:[/b]

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New mod or update v1.5.0 available at withSIX. Download now by clicking:

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New mod or update v1.5.0 available at withSIX. Download now by clicking:

Has anyone played with the map in Arma3?, and would A3MP work for this if anyone knows, i've yet to try it.

Has anyone played with the map in Arma3?, and would A3MP work for this if anyone knows, i've yet to try it.

I have. Yeah, it works fine in A3MP. There's the small satmap mismatching that some A2 maps have in A3 but aside from that no major issues.

Awesome!, going to check it out, thanks.

Always loved this map since Arma1.

Sahrani in Arma3 tour

Project RACS are available here:

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=17950

new PRACS homepage at RKSL site is working, but with NO addons downloadable.

Yeah, honestly I'm not sure, I know alice "works" but there are certainly issues with how it's working, I don't get very many civilians at all if any in some cities.

The only person we ever had contributing scripts worked only on the DayZ side, so we never really were able to properly figure out why. I have a feeling it has to do with the building names maybe? But again I have literally ZERO idea how ALICE works, and even if I look, I'm not sure it will make any sense to me.

I might take some time to look, as I really want to create some fun MPmissions for the terrain, as I feel like it's just not getting the exposure it should... but I have ZERO experience with mission scripting so, that's probably not on the immediate horizon. As much as I'd love to get it done, I just don't think I have it in me to dive down another rabbit hole in Arma modding.

ANYONE willing to help or take a look is totally welcome to do so.

Thanks a ton to everyone for the positive comments, it's greatly appreciated.

*edit

I played with it a little bit, here's what I noticed.

1. Ambient Civilians (expansion) doesn't seem to do anything. In Chernarus or on ours

2. Ambient Civilians - does spawn about 60 civilians per town (I enabled debugging and hopped around a few cities a bit

3. Our civilian population lists per town could use some building up, but that will cause a problem for anyone using the "lite" version of the terrain. BUT that would cause conflicts for anyone using the lite package, as obviously I'd want to populate the list with our Sahrani Civilians. What I MIGHT be able to do is modify the module inside the assets pack, so it works properly if you have the units.

4. I believe the biggest problem is that some civilians seem to be getting dropped on or in buildings or objects that they can not path off of, or get stuck "inside"... not much I can do about that I don't think.

5. I THINK I could add some more params to the ALICE config to get it to work a bit better, but I'm not entirely sure, I'll look into it a bit.

Mate just had a quick play around in the new version and it is looking fine!. Seems to run alot smoother then the last version as well. Two thumbs up

I've managed to convert all the SMD Buildings for A3.

It's only a small step towards a full A3 Map conversion, but it's a start, and the buildings should be good for any terrain artists who want to use them.

I also created a "shared collection" for SMD_Sahrani_A2 with AiA/CBA_A3 for Play With Six users. It's linked in my sig.

I will be making an A3 specific lite package to get rid of a few errors and make a few improvements for A3 use.

Two thumbs up mate... Keep up the great work !!!

SJ

Nice! get it on Armaholic and I'll give you a bigger hug :239:

Welp... bad news/good news.

Bad News - I lost the source for the section count reduced buildings... all of it. I'll have to re-do all the work.

Good News - M1lkm8n was shown how to (by Rock-RKSL of RKSL Studios); and then showed me how to; reduce the section count to the MINIMUM possible.

So, when I go back through and do them all, I can now make sure they're fully optimized.

Once that's done, I'll re-add the physx lod for A3 and use Mikero's Move Folder to begin finalizing them for @CUP for use in A3.

All of these processes will be documented and shared via tutorials that I am creating in the Open Modders Group I created some time ago. I will be doing video versions of the tutorials that are narrated so they're easy to follow for anyone. I've already prepared and published 3 text tutorials which are also in the OMG Group here on the BI Forums

In A3 News

I've also gotten some planning and steps towards a proper A3 port for Sahrani in motion. Ian Banks will be donating his time and using his customized tool to convert the Sahrani A2 Roads to A3.

I should be able to get the rest of the artificial objects done fairly quickly so long as I retain a dependency on AiA_TP or A3MP for the textures.

In view of AiA_TP's release, I will be releasing a very cursory initial version of SMD_Sahrani_A3 that fixes the map tiling, as well as some other minor details... I'm shooting for before the end of the month.

Wait does that mean we will have to download a3mp which is 5.37gb in order to use this mod or use the buggy AIA? I was looking forward to this release :( Well, still am , dont get me wrong , just hope maybe down the line after its done make it standalone? Good luck

Wait does that mean we will have to download a3mp which is 5.37gb in order to use this mod or use the buggy AIA? I was looking forward to this release :( Well, still am , dont get me wrong , just hope maybe down the line after its done make it standalone? Good luck

Short/Near term, yes; the only way to use SMD Sahrani will be with AiA or A3mp.

The only reason we were able to have such a small standalone package for A2 was that Arma 2 already contains 70-80pct of the assets used in Sahrani.... our package was just the map data, and any missing buildings/objects/signs/trees/rocks etc...

SO, to make a standalone package for A3, we have to port ALL those A2 objects that were previously unneeded. On top of it, they all need the A3 model additions to be properly functioning.

At the point that I'm doing 60-80pct of the the Arma 2 buildings, trees, veg, and objects and the A1 stuff we need I might as well do ALL of them for @CUP.

Basically, it's just more logical to do all the work for the entire community to benefit from and then loop back and take what I need back out of it to do a standalone package for Sahrani... IF that's even a logical decision, as mentioned we might be talking about a VERY small difference in size. I'd guess that a standalone SMD_Sahrani_A3 package would be 4-5gb on it's own.

What I'm MORE likely to do at this point, work with AiA/CUP to create an addon that creates SMD versions of ALL the terrains... IE any map that calls a BI building that we've opened, calls our open version instead of the closed BI one... it will take some tweaking though as they don't just swap 1 for 1.

That way, once you have AiA_TP you have all the BI terrains with the option to have all the SMD enterable buildings on all of them.

I'm still discussing everything with the AiA/CUP guys to see what's the best route to go, but focusing only on Sahrani seems like a similar amount of work for far more narrow results.

+++

In other news, using the tips from Rock-RKSL I was able to take the panelak middle and top floor models from near 70 sections down to 20 or so. This SHOULD me drastic improvement in performance. I'm going to pack up a quick build and see if it makes a big difference, it SHOULD

Short/Near term, yes; the only way to use SMD Sahrani will be with AiA or A3mp.

The only reason we were able to have such a small standalone package for A2 was that Arma 2 already contains 70-80pct of the assets used in Sahrani.... our package was just the map data, and any missing buildings/objects/signs/trees/rocks etc...

SO, to make a standalone package for A3, we have to port ALL those A2 objects that were previously unneeded. On top of it, they all need the A3 model additions to be properly functioning.

At the point that I'm doing 60-80pct of the the Arma 2 buildings, trees, veg, and objects and the A1 stuff we need I might as well do ALL of them for @CUP.

Basically, it's just more logical to do all the work for the entire community to benefit from and then loop back and take what I need back out of it to do a standalone package for Sahrani... IF that's even a logical decision, as mentioned we might be talking about a VERY small difference in size. I'd guess that a standalone SMD_Sahrani_A3 package would be 4-5gb on it's own.

What I'm MORE likely to do at this point, work with AiA/CUP to create an addon that creates SMD versions of ALL the terrains... IE any map that calls a BI building that we've opened, calls our open version instead of the closed BI one... it will take some tweaking though as they don't just swap 1 for 1.

That way, once you have AiA_TP you have all the BI terrains with the option to have all the SMD enterable buildings on all of them.

I'm still discussing everything with the AiA/CUP guys to see what's the best route to go, but focusing only on Sahrani seems like a similar amount of work for far more narrow results.

+++

In other news, using the tips from Rock-RKSL I was able to take the panelak middle and top floor models from near 70 sections down to 20 or so. This SHOULD me drastic improvement in performance. I'm going to pack up a quick build and see if it makes a big difference, it SHOULD

Awesome, that does make sense,either way we get big file sizes , and my guess is A3MP will be used by lots of people in the future anyway to work with A3 ACE or any big mods that are still in the works. How will arma 3 AI mods work on sahrani i wonder?

I really enjoy the new enterable buildings, but the new Panelak looks weird. The old ones had balconies on the staircase, the new doesnt even have windows. First floor is now completely made of brick, which is strange - panelak is a commieblock and no comieblocks had first floor made of brick that way. I live in commieblock myself, and I must admit, the arma Panelak gave the feel of it, while the smd panelak doesn't. Also, elevators are never used in 4 floor commieblocks, especially in such a way. Also the new Panelak lacks furniture. I made a comparison picture. http://i.imgur.com/rPqJaHS.jpg (825 kB) I really hope, that version is temporary and unfinished and look forward for a new version, since sahrani is my favourite island, and you are really making it nicer. Thank you for that, but for now i'll use the 1.2 version.

I really enjoy the new enterable buildings, but the new Panelak looks weird. The old ones had balconies on the staircase, the new doesnt even have windows. First floor is now completely made of brick, which is strange - panelak is a commieblock and no comieblocks had first floor made of brick that way. I live in commieblock myself, and I must admit, the arma Panelak gave the feel of it, while the smd panelak doesn't. Also, elevators are never used in 4 floor commieblocks, especially in such a way. Also the new Panelak lacks furniture. I made a comparison picture. http://i.imgur.com/rPqJaHS.jpg (825 kB) I really hope, that version is temporary and unfinished and look forward for a new version, since sahrani is my favourite island, and you are really making it nicer. Thank you for that, but for now i'll use the 1.2 version.

Don't hold back lol!

The Panelak's are WIP... I'm likely going to entirely re-do them at some point, but to address your specific concerns:

1. Porches, I plan on making 2 versions, one with the porches, one without, but until (or possibly IF) I get the performance issues sorted out with the one that doesn't have them, it will be fairly dumb to add that many more verts/faces/sections to each floor. They were removed to reduce the impact of having the building fully enterable instead of only having 2 rooms. Also having windows in the stairways would also impact performance. That in fact is the cause of the lag spike when rounding the stairs in the 8 story panelak, it has the view lod open there so everything outside is being occluded on one side of the stairs but then being re-drawn when you round the stairs... so again, until the performance is optimized for a fully empty/closed 8 story, I don't feel like I'm working with a good "base" to add additional nuance.

2. Top floor, yea, that will be fixed, the plan is to eventually have a "skylight" over that hole that can be opened from the roof so you can shoot down into the top floor

3. Brick bottom floor - I'm not good enough at modelling or texturing to edit the buildings as a skilled modeller would... so I'm forced to sort of "cheat" things sometimes. The only way to get a hallway to the back for the elevator shaft is to raise the room portions of the building up, those textures are much for me to copy/paste below. so the bricks went up. I might make an elevator-less version of the 4 story.

4. Furniture - This again is due a general attempt to reduce the performance impact opening all the rooms has. I also have a few ideas for making the furniture layouts more dynamic floor to floor so that all the buildings end up looking different, but it will take a lot of experimenting.

5. Elevator - I might do an elevator-less version of the 4 story, but it will require a LOT more work due to the way I've made the buildings modular. Essentially the 4 and 8 story are both made of the same parts. The 2 story is just an individual building, so I would have to modularize the 2 story to do it how I want.

Long term, the buildings are likely to get entirely rebuilt, but right now my focus is on batch converting things for use in Arma 3.

I have gone through them a bit to fix some performance issues, so if the mood strikes me I might take them up again, but TBH modelling in arma (especially as a newb) is very grueling.

1. Porches, I plan on making 2 versions, one with the porches, one without, but until (or possibly IF) I get the performance issues sorted out with the one that doesn't have them, it will be fairly dumb to add that many more verts/faces/sections to each floor. They were removed to reduce the impact of having the building fully enterable instead of only having 2 rooms. Also having windows in the stairways would also impact performance. That in fact is the cause of the lag spike when rounding the stairs in the 8 story panelak, it has the view lod open there so everything outside is being occluded on one side of the stairs but then being re-drawn when you round the stairs... so again, until the performance is optimized for a fully empty/closed 8 story, I don't feel like I'm working with a good "base" to add additional nuance.

I think, 8 story panelak doesnt require porches, as the real ones. But small windows, even fake ones, as the existing one on the last floor would be great.

3. Brick bottom floor - I'm not good enough at modelling or texturing to edit the buildings as a skilled modeller would... so I'm forced to sort of "cheat" things sometimes. The only way to get a hallway to the back for the elevator shaft is to raise the room portions of the building up, those textures are much for me to copy/paste below. so the bricks went up. I might make an elevator-less version of the 4 story.

Maybe you just change the brick to fake windows? Make it 5/9 story panelaks? Also, the real commiblocks are usually 5/9 fllor, i saw 4 story only several times in my life, lol.

Furniture - This again is due a general attempt to reduce the performance impact opening all the rooms has. I also have a few ideas for making the furniture layouts more dynamic floor to floor so that all the buildings end up looking different, but it will take a lot of experimenting.

I like the way the new Panelaks in Chernarus Plus are made - and every floor has its unique furniture.

5. Elevator - I might do an elevator-less version of the 4 story, but it will require a LOT more work due to the way I've made the buildings modular. Essentially the 4 and 8 story are both made of the same parts. The 2 story is just an individual building, so I would have to modularize the 2 story to do it how I want.

Yes, I think non elevator version would be great.

Long term, the buildings are likely to get entirely rebuilt, but right now my focus is on batch converting things for use in Arma 3.

But your island is already working great on Arma 3, I didn't encounter any bugs or glitches.

Been working on some buildings again. Nothing major, just tinkering around a bit.

Got all the A2 sheds opened and finished, but they're not on Sahrani lol.

Still haven't gotten fully setup in an A3 working environment for CUP yet. So just kind of did these as a way to decompress:

The sheds/barn have both been fixed up quite a bit since the video, the sheds all have internal support structures so they look a bit more realistic, and the barn I removed the pre-shaded area of the one side of the barn that expected to be locked open.

Cool! Keep up the good work, looks great, love Sahrani and your port has made a big difference, looking forward to your next update!

Hello,

I use your amazing Map for ARMA 3 in MP and we have the issue, that the mid range textures are bugged, which is really annoying if you are flying or sniping from a Hill. Unfortunately the Terrain Builder crashes if I try to load the Map. In this Topic is a tutorial, how to fix it. Because of my noobieness you are my last hope to solve the problem ;).

Another Issue we have is, that the back roads are a lot less grippy. Where can I adjust that?

And the Last Problem ;) I have is this:

Greetings

Lupus

^yeah, so both those issues are known, and I've been super lazy about fixing either. I'll try to get those things fixed for the next update.

I know how to fix gas station, and am aware of the method of fixing the gridlines, but have not given that a go yet, I know it can be "fishy" but M1lkm8n and Bushlurker will surely sort me out if I can't figure it on my own.

Thank you for your reply. Nice to know, that you are going to fix it. No need to rush ;).

So, I got the barn I previously showed squared away all the open/close doors are working 100pct now. I did a few others as well, basically the same barn, but there are 2 models, sara_stodola and sara_stodola3, 3 was un-enterable version of the main one. I animated the door on the main one, then copied it as the 3 with the door closed by default i/o open by default.

I also decorated the Budova2 that I opened, and put the animated trash can in there. It still needs a few texture fixes, as do the doors on the repair center I opened. All of those are shown in this updated video:

I've entered the jbad buildings and whatever I can get done with the SMD buildings in the Make Arma Not War Contest, you votes/support would be greatly appreciated!

http://makearmanotwar.com/entry/C2mTc8olQm#.VE6vlvnF-rE​​

So far I've gotten 10-15 buildings done, I SHOULD be able to get the majority of them done by the deadline.