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Battle for Hünfeld Scenario


JohnO

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Will be close to Grafenwöhr 3 Day from sunday on.

I'll send you a PM...

That will be great, all this week is just setting up the computers and finishing up for the exercise which will be two weeks long. I just sent you a PM with my German phone number and where I'm staying .

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The question I have is about the buildings on the maps, during the drive from München to Grafenwöhr and passing through Regensburg. I was paying more attention to the roads, buildings, roadsigns, and vegetation's now all because of SBPro :)

Anyway, the question is why are the buildings on the maps are space so far apart instead of being place closer together as in real life? Looking at some examples, first screenshot which by the way is where my in-laws live :) here in Germany, second screenshot the way the buildings are shown on the maps.

Is it because of the way the designer place them on the map?

023.jpg

SBProPEcm2012-01-1503-09-34-36.jpg

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When the Haune Valley map was first made, there were only a few building types. Placing the buildings on sloped terrain causes terrain deformation, the closer the buildings, the more the deformation. Creating a model of the area that precisely recreated built-up areas was impossible. The intent in the way the built-up areas were represented on the map was to generally effect concealment, cover, line-of-sight, and movement restriction in a tactically realistic way without causing too many pathing and framerate issues. The aesthetics were secondary concerns.

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Anyway, the question is why are the buildings on the maps are space so far apart instead of being place closer together as in real life? Looking at some examples, first screenshot which by the way is where my in-laws live :) here in Germany, second screenshot the way the buildings are shown on the maps.

Is it because of the way the designer place them on the map?

In additon to GaryOwen's points, it also tends to cause havoc with Infantry pathing / AI.

Close knit random buildings (say in the Terrastan map) result in Squads milling around in circles as the AI tries (and usually/often fails) to find a route through the complex terrain.

More ordered suburbia still creates issues (which is unfortunate since clearing suburbs is primarily an infantry battle).

The dispersed pattern for buildings seems to be the best compromise to date.

On the "up" side it also means building a town is less time consuming than trying to realistically mirror actual street layouts.

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Close knit random buildings (say in the Terrastan map) result in Squads milling around in circles as the AI tries (and usually/often fails) to find a route through the complex terrain.

That shall become an issue of the past.

Another argument for "low density towns" was that until SB version 2.5 we didn't have any kind of engine optimization for urban terrain, resulting in substantial drops of frame rate. We could improve our engine performance by a factor of 10...15, which means that it would now be possible to increase the overall density of towns. Still, it's difficult to increase the density to an absolutely realistic level because even with the engine optimizations most towns in Germany still are too large to be handled without performance loss, and they are too close to each other that one can assume that each scene will only have to deal with just one village at a time.

Making a transition to DirectX 11 promises another improvement by factor two or three, but even that may not be sufficient for absolute realism in a country with a population density like Germany.

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I want the scenario to start with some of the vehicles destroyed and burning.

The other one I'm after is damaged buildings.

Only way I can think of getting them is a scripted arty (or maybe air - shorter duration) strike at H hr with small impact area (say 50x50) to ensure damaged / burning buildings afterwards. But then I need to somehow justify these "random" (as far as the player is concerned) unobserved strikes.

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The other one I'm after is damaged buildings.

Only way I can think of getting them is a scripted arty (or maybe air - shorter duration) strike at H hr with small impact area (say 50x50) to ensure damaged / burning buildings afterwards. But then I need to somehow justify these "random" (as far as the player is concerned) unobserved strikes.

I didn't think about that, good idea.

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Just ran a quick test.

Deployed a Coy of T-72 (3 x PLs of 3)

Selected all and went with "destroyed" damage.

All looked fine (i.e. not a scratch on them) in the Mission Editor when I viewed, but when I "tested" it they were all burning. :)

The other thing was if I gave it a defend order and orientated the vehicle and then destroyed it I can control where it faces, etc. (rather than trying to put the dead tk in the right place).

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...it's difficult to increase the density to an absolutely realistic level ...most towns in Germany still are too large to be handled without performance loss, and they are too close to each other that one can assume that each scene will only have to deal with just one village at a time.

I thought Daskal's solution in his "Thunder Run" scenario was a good compromise. He packed the main street so densely with buildings that they essentially formed a wall. Everything beyond that was barren desert. That way when you are in game it looks like a city because you never see past the first row or two of buildings.

Sure, it looks goofy on the map (unless you're way zoomed in) and it causes some movement restriction, but overall it provides that dense town feel without a loss in frame rates.

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Just ran a quick test.

Deployed a Coy of T-72 (3 x PLs of 3)

Selected all and went with "destroyed" damage.

All looked fine (i.e. not a scratch on them) in the Mission Editor when I viewed, but when I "tested" it they were all burning. :)

The other thing was if I gave it a defend order and orientated the vehicle and then destroyed it I can control where it faces, etc. (rather than trying to put the dead tk in the right place).

Great news, thanks Mark. What about the buildings, will we have to do an air strike as you mention before to destroyed or damaged buildings?

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There are a few textures in the download section for wrecks. Will look even better when burning using those. Ofcourse you have to use different units for the missions then as those textures will replace all.

There are also wreckage textures in the SB install but not used?

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The other one I'm after is damaged buildings.

Only way I can think of getting them is a scripted arty (or maybe air - shorter duration) strike at H hr with small impact area (say 50x50) to ensure damaged / burning buildings afterwards. But then I need to somehow justify these "random" (as far as the player is concerned) unobserved strikes.

Try to give the Buildings you want to damage a IED each, voila.

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