Hannover-Weserbergland-2022-Revision 1.0.0

Use this UUID to download this map from the package manager: 9f89ce20-c2a9-4162-a2f4-becb327a9fe1

I'm finally submitting my reworked version of the Hannover-Weserbergland map. This map contains a huge number of visual and operational fixes for a long running map, so it's somewhat hard to put everything into this one post. I will be updating the information occasionally so please check back from time to time. I've spent close to 8 months and about 1200 hours working on it. I've really reached a limit of the amount of time I can spend on it up to this point so I'm submitting it in a fairly close to finished state. What I would like is for everyone that uses this map to spend some time using it and then submit any problems that they find. Please read any other posts carefully to make sure that you are not resubmitting a prior persons post. Also, please try to be as descriptive as you possibly can on the problem that you find along with coordinates. I will not submit another revision for awhile as to keep the number of revisions as small as possible. I will be happy to revise it in the future, but I will collect all of the suggestions and notes about problems, put them together into one master list, and then focus on the most important changes. Feel free to post your list, comments or suggestions here.

There are many problems that exist in a lot of the older maps, and this one really isn't any different. Michael did the best he could at the time adding as many features as possible, but it's really a time consuming project when you dive into working on very large maps such as this one. You will absolutely find that there are areas where towns should be, but there are no buildings. There are also roads that were placed from many years ago when the original map was authored, but no buildings. There are also roads that lead to areas where it doesn't seem to make any sense, usually because they are not complete, again, this is because of when and how the original map was produced. There just simply is not enough time to fill in all the detail in such a large map and I tried to focus on the most important areas. I will absolutely consider extending roads and adding new tows or villages per request. But I wanted to get this version out in it's current state so that the community could have time to use, evaluate, and make suggestions.

I've also spent quite a few hours testing the map using different size areas and have found no problems with loading and frame rates. I was able to do a 22 x 22 km area including most of the Hannover city area and drove a M1 tank through it without any issues. I can not attest to how it will run in a multiplayer scenario. You'll will most likely want to do a test of any area you choose first before spending a lot of time placing units and finding out it has lag problems. Based on my testing though, there should not be any major problems. I would however suggest NOT using the entire East Hannover region as you primary mission focus. I would probably be better for performance reasons to use a section of it as a visual reference or starting point rather than as part of your entire battle plan. Extensive testing will help determine if and what is usable. Please keep in mind that the visual part of the work is only a tiny fraction of the actual goal of the work. The primary goal was to make the map have a functional ability that reflects the actual area without compromising performance.

Some of the important changes:

1. Added all of the Eastern Hannover area including the medical and hospital areas in the Southeast, most of the industrial areas and commercial areas. I also added a lot of the residential areas along with the parks and trees. The city is extremely complex and I tried to model the different structures as best as possible within the limitations of the models available. I also tried to use spacing that makes sense for the highly populated area without creating a loading problem. This also includes all of the roads that crisscross the area and bridges for road and rail lines. I made adjustments to as many of the existing roads as possible so that it reflects the actual locations or as close as possible.

2. I also added three new towns to the East, Hildesheim, Lehrte and Sehnde along with their respective main roads and rail lines.

3. Fixed the VW plant to reflect what it's appearance should be as close as possible using the current modeling. I also fixed a lot of the roadways around Garbsen. I also fixed the Flughafen airport along with the roads and rail lines around it.

4. I fixed the shape of the forests and types of trees around East Hannover and the routing of the Lein river so that it enters the canal along the lake properly.

5. Leveled a very small amount of the terrain, mostly around the VW plant in order to make the buildings look more consistent.

6. Went through the entire map, square KM by square KM, and spliced all roads and rail lines together while cleaning up and smoothing them out. Having continuous and smooth roads helps with path finding immensely. Also, keep in mind that rail lines just like any path on the map can be used for AI path finding. There's no reason to restrict your vehicles to roads only so cleaning up a lot of the broken paths helps a lot in mission design. I also fixed all of the locations of the rail lines so that they are as close to realistic as possible and fixed the junctions of the rail lines in the city areas so they are merged together at the proper points or as close to the actual points as possible. Moved all of the building structures, or as may as I could find off of the roads ( you may find one somewhere but I did a lot of careful looking).

7. Made sure that all bridges are consistent with the type of road surface so that they match and are all passable by AI during pathfinding or route snapping. This is another important aspect of mission building because it helps the mission designer create routes quicker and if the bridge is wrong, the path will be rerouted.

8. Completely redid the city of Rinteln so that the buildings were off of the roads. A lot of the buildings were placed in a hurry and never revised over the years, so many of the surplus structures were all over the city area. I also tried to make the roads as close as possible within some limitations. You'll notice that the Southern side of the river is slightly different that the real map.

9. Reworked the airports so that the runways use asphalt polygons to represent them instead of a bunch of roadways layered.