I would like to suggest putting Altis and Stratis on one single map.
I think due to the streaming engine, performance impact would hopefully be neglectable.
(I don't know though how your technique works with multiple Sat-Images, etc so sorry.)
I just like it, since it was Super-Awesome during ArmA1 already.
Play ArmA1 :-)
@b101uk: I have difficulty understanding what you are trying to point out, but I guess you are promoting the use of an aircraft carrier.
A carrier would definitely be nice to have, but I can come up with tons more mission scenario's and setups when both islands are together on the same map. I can't see why anyone would be against it really. Specially for airforce missions the extra island and a second huge airbase would be highly welcome to have! The only thing I think sucks about Altis without even have seen it in-game is the lack of a second large airbase on the opposite side (like Takistan) of the Island. Placing both island on the map would solve that problem + that it opens up tons of other scenario's and mission idea's.
An island vs an island opens up more and more interesting scenarios than a carrier vs an island.
Also, it's not about making Altis bigger, it's big enough. It's about better exploiting a strategic dimension that Arma has. The entirely separate, defensible island separated by a large expanse of water can make for new and interesting strategic scenarios.
You don't have to have so many players that the battles overflow Altis and move onto Stratis in order to make use of it, as again, it's not about size.
I support adding them together because as I understand it the performance hit will be insignificant, if not non-existent based on how the engine handles large terrain sizes.
Loading times could increase significantly in the editor, having to load the map a few hundred times could get really annoying if it takes any longer than it does now.
there long loading times anyway another 10 seconds wont hurt..
plus it would be cool if this was made id say its worth the extra wait
It would be obviously an awesome feature, but I suppose devs have already looked into this. They will have to decide if the performance loss worths a try.
Maybe it could be left as an option, to leave "three maps", Altis and Stratis; Altis and Stratis.
That way you could create missions in the map you prefer and make it so that it only renders what you need.
Also for people who don't know that Altis and Stratis are real places in Europe , Go on Google maps and copy and paste these Co-ordinates into the search of google maps : 39.533571,24.999794 and scroll out a bit and you'll see both map. The place is actually called Limnos.
no i am actually praising you ! :D that picture is awesome and is quite an awesomely accurate distance estimate
It's not estimated. It's the actual distance I found out with the ruler on Google Earth. :D And I think it should be reduced to about 20 km because the size of Stratis and Altis were decreased.
makes sence , Also there is enough ocean because i flew out with the Helicopter once up to 30km and there wasnt any "Invisible wall" or "World's black end" like in most games , It just kept going and going with ocean. And btw sorry if i may have sounded like i am insulting you , i didnt mean to
Would be awesome! Might make you check your fuel before taking off for the other island. And if/when you run out, players can appreciate the underwater environments in a whole new light as they drown 10km off the coast! Got my vote.
Yep ! Not only Fuelling but another great idea would be if servers like this could hold 100-200 players ! IT IS possible because i used to play a game on the ps3 called MAG which had 250 somthing players on 1 game and no lag. so it is possible (And no my internet isnt some micro fibre super internet). So it is possible, Because not only would jets be more imporatant but Pilots would have to be more experienced (which isnt a bad thing) and Newer "roleplay-like" players could be available such as Aviation Control (People who stay in the towers in the airport to give order to a Incoming plane to land or not , Cant have people on the runway or oether jets and blow up or damage the incoming landing jet)
I agree with @Catnaps, make three separate maps just in case people make a mission entirely based on one of the islands just to get a little extra less processing taking up. But yes this idea is fantastic and I really hope it comes to reality.
This would be probably one of the best things to happen to the game and it shouldn't effect performance at all, due to view distance can be modified!
This would add HUGE! HUGE HUGE!!! Support for Transports such as Water transports and air Transports, because one team can now set up a base on one island, and do a full scale assault onto the other island. And would be great for attack and hold missions.
This would also enable severs to support having more players on at a time, and could make larger scale battles, and would make artillery and MLRS with ICBM great advancements for support.
For A GREAT example, Look at the game by Novalogic, Joint Operations Typhoon Rising. They had massive map scales of huge battles and could support huge amounts of players with no lag, Same with planetside 1 (by SOE.) It would create a bigger amount of gameplay and could make PVP more exciting. People would have Island defend mode + island assault mode. and Domination would be, take over the other island.
Invade and Annex type game is about 40 players right now and sometimes you wait five minutes to get a chopper for pick up. I really like the idea but i dont think it will be usefull. With two islands in the same map and being Altis massive, the people will only play in the last one, the big one. Anyways i love the idea and people will choose.
Well, now that I think of it, the game lags not as hell, but more than hell with 40 players, so it's not possible to have large PvP island vs island battles.
It is in Beta ..... After all the amount of Lag spikes i used to have in Alpha dont happen that much as they used to . It has gotten better in Beta. So touch wood fingers crossed it gets better in final and the servers will be top notch. The best 2 servers i have encountered till now are "AHOYWORLD UK" and "Stratis life by ZombieClan" . They have minimum lag even on my wireless.
It would cause massive lag. The bigger the map, the more demanding the game is (assuming that there is no change to the resolution of the terrain textures).
I would have though it only renders as far as your View distance is set therefore it's demand should only change based on that setting not on the overall map size?
Yeah that was great having the small island incorporated into the large island map yet still having the small island as a second separate map
"If you ask me 3 maps. Stratis, Altis and Stratis + Altis."
This.
If it is possible BIS, then why the heck not right. It also opens up possibilities to a whole new load of mission scenario´s and new addons. Things like Coast guard/NAVY patrols, amphibian assaults, country versus country (TVT), 2 major airfields thus a lot more potential for airforce missions, etcetera.
having the two islands on the same map would also allow to improve the naval warfare, where destroyers, submarines, and aircraft carriers would play a strategic role for island protection.
+1
Always talking about this with a bunch of guys I play MP with.
Would indeed be worth a shot
For those of us DOM/I&A (possibly MSO amongst other MP missions) both editors and players
Mission loading client-side is more based on
... otherwise everyone will require a specific update (ver.) which includes all the content (PBOs) that will be accessed at such a high rate that Clients wouldn't notice a difference during loading unless their PC cant meet the requirements specified by BIS which becomes the player's responsibility.
... servers wouldn't be affected by this unless BIS doesn't work out the conflicting performance optimizations for Altis which they are working on if not already resolved for final release (wishful thinking)
regardless 4 of us spent a majority of the last 24hrs on a [DEV]MP I&A_Altis mission with 30+players and STILL enjoyed it very much even though its not optimized (under 20 fps for all)
... people complained about the lack of content, content copied to other factions, and grass draw-distance more than the FPS issue because we know BIS will figure it out
Totally enjoying boating over to the existing smaller rocks now. It'd be great being able to fly or sail over to Altis from Stratis...please add this.
Now after the final release I am really mission a second 'real' airport on Altis + that the location of the large airport is not ideal (center of the map). And the soft airstrips are useless for jets, so having Stratis on the same map with an extra usable airfield would help a lot.
1Stratis
2Altis
3Stratis + Altis?
Yes, it's a MUST.
Reasons:
BI, this could perfectly be a christmas gift. Upvoted +1
If you guys are REALLY interested, I managed to create a system that virtually connected Stratis and Altis together, the only catch is it relies on an extra loading screen during transition, and it could only be done through a custom campaign. But this was back in ArmA 3 Beta, last time I checked the coord's of A3 Altis, it was actually about 20km EAST of Stratis, not North like in real life, but this may have been fixed by now. If you guys are interested, I could restart working on that project and release it to you guys.
Would be great to have an update from one of the Devs, since the last post was a while ago. Realy looking forward to this suggestion.
Yep i been wondering the same... appears a majority of these tickets from release time have been long forgotten.
Think we need another Takistan equivalent map... those tyoe of maps are better optimized for MP and low-end PCs... maybe even 32bit engines too.
Considering they cant get Altis working I am very curious how adding Stratis would turn out
Any updates ???
Yes as in fully optimized on a mission level... both client and server-side.
Looking at things from a professional stand-point... sure Altis may work if you showcase it but it isnt a finished product.
It would be cool to have it and if someone doesnt have a good enough pc to have such a merged map then he still has altis as singel map as well as stratis
One map! I like it! Even the upcoming maps should be added there too.
Cache the whole map at game start and it will reduce the mission start and the editor starting time.
Or make a global map for map positions and you can travel between maps(thirdparty maps too). As you approach the Altis position then it will load Altis. If you fly to Stratis position then it will load Stratis. Etc.
https://www.google.hu/maps/@39.7433625,25.2250164,118073m/data=!3m1!1e3 Posted already, but still: We want it :)
Gotta remember. The ones whom have the money, are those that work hard for a living. And those with the money are those that buy the games. (Or give their money to their kids to buy the games.)
People working hard do not have all day (or hours) to travel within a virtual environment while on their free time, just to be able to play their first person shooter game! (I figure, 2-5 minutes at most from start to area of operations, before you sincerely start loosing people's interest.)
Great idea, but the idea has some significant drawbacks for the time being. Probably something definitely to implement alongside fixed wing transports.
(Reminds me of the full scale virtual invasion all the chopper pilots were planning for +30 minutes the other night! Yup. I disconnected because I had better things to do besides sit and quietly meditate.)
Sounds really interesting.
@rogerx The use of that map remains optional, so you can decide wheather you have the time you need to travel from Stratis to Altis or not. Besides, I'm sure mission builders would implement some sort of teleport or halo jump.
All in all, I don't see a real disadvantage, since more varity is always a good thing when it comes to maps.
kind regards
R3vo
@ rogerx:
It's not like anybody forced you to buy this game without giving you the chance to inform yourself on what you were getting into.
There's thousends of people making arma videos on youtube.
If you want to just go pew pew boom boom join a public domi (or whatever it is they run on public servers nowadays), halo jump by yourself and have fun playing on your own like the other 29 people connected, or even better change game because Arma is never going to be what you want. It's just how it is.
@rogerx:
Some people like to spend money on a ticket to stand and watch men run around a field while kicking a ball :-s
Everyone has different hobbies and interests and playing ARMA 3 on a large scale tactical way is one of my favourite hobbies.
Each to their own that's what I say :-)
Shrugs at the critical responses against the people who work for a living, coming home just to go "pew pew" and "boom boom". ;-)
Ditto FeralCircus.
'pew pew' and 'boom boom' are two of my favourite sounds...
Bigger the mission the better for me, I'll spend all day if I have to :-)
The giant map idea is great but due to ARMA 3 landscapes being perfectly flat with no planet curvature it wouldn't really work very well visually.
The horizon would be infinite like something out of Tron :-s
Well you know rogerx, you can't really go to an Italian restourant and complain they don't serve you chinese food.
If you want chinese you go to a chinese restaurant.
Same thing if you want a fast paced game and you don't like waiting you don't play arma but choose another one like cod or battlefield.
I don't mean to criticize your taste, Arma has always been a niche game for a reason, as feral said each to their own.
p.s. it might surprise you but you're not the only one who works for a living. Crazy, right?? :DDDDDDDD
Chairborne: So, I ordered Chinese at an Italian restaurant? I do not see how this is relevant to this Feature Request.
If you would have read my above comment, you would have easily understood some people do not like waiting an hour to have fun. Subtract one hour from your 12 hour daily work schedule and you'll likely find the majority will quickly loose interest within such games. I also do not see why you're being so critical towards somebody that has already voted for this bug long ago! The comment made above was only a reminder, most people likely do not want to be sitting on a virtual transport for an hour just to have fun. And a vast majority of transports never reach their destination.
I hate to be a necromancer and revive old tickets, since this one is dating from a long time ago, but considering that a performance impact is obvious and if we overlook it, it would only be a matter of importing Stratis, Altis, creating a mega-giantic watermap, and placing them both together, since they are all using vanilla resources, they wouldn't even be heavy in size, and since the game doesn't load up terrain out of visibility, it would not really affect performance either. This would only provide a map with 2 actual asphalt main airports and a big amount of terrain between them, making the idea that they are enemy airports more realistic, instead of having two short airstrips 1km of lenght each and having all kinds of jet take off and fight with a travel of less than 30 seconds.
Guys, when you read "reviewed" in feedback tracker and no comment or reaction at all from developer, consider as "BURIED".
reviewed + closed as duplicated, for several months gently means "in your dream".
The obvious, Stratis was the initial small map during Alpha while Altis was published later. During the implementation and release of the Altis map, the developers ran into significant memory or performance related problems.
My guess is, memory usage is increased with Altis due to memory being utilized to keep track of objects on the larger map. Also, as buildings are destroyed or modified, these details also likely reside within memory.
Probably one of the tasks on the agenda, allow users to create their own maps, if the tools are not already readily available within the ARMA 3 Tools package. (I believe I have already seen some user created custom maps.)
Creating your own map is a very hard challenge. I gave up. Tools are weird and undocumented. Some people succeeded with that but you need extra softwares as L3DT and others. This could be a very good news if it becomes possible to create map so easily as Arma's editor.
BI made choices about heavy environment (rabbits, bees, garbages, objects) vs FPS or wider maps.
Sure, did you try it? Did you try terrain processor, terrain builder or else?
If you can build a map with that, please write a tutorial! I'm able to wait one year more!
I am not a map builder. i just misunderstood what roger said. I have no idea about modding, but even then, as long as the map object and terrain themselves can be ripped from "Altis" and "Stratis", making a bigger watermass and placing both *SHOULD* (AFAIK) work with no problems. BIS could actually help, or support, or even do this themselves tho.
You're exactly correct when you're stating "should", but when data gets munched by the computer, sometimes you do not get what you expect. Like I stated previously, somehow every 3D model building has a wreck status to be remembered by the program, along with the damage status of all other objects, including each tree. (ie. Notice how Stratis is more heavily forested versus Altis?)
I tend to also agree, the tools are there, documentation of the language or functions are there, but we need people to glue the pieces together (or code with working scenarios), in order for people to more easily use the tools. But in order to do so, people have to roll their sleeves-up, get dirty and document how to readily apply the tools within well structured English. (ie. Use a public Wiki page) I've briefly tried some of the tools but was somewhat dumbfounded as it's like trying to put together store bought furniture without the instructions. (No pun intended Bohemia.) It also does not help to be very limited on time!
In some sense, a lot of the tools or language, are reminiscent of open source tools. Or maybe just very well generalized to the point that the tools appear so. Either way, doing so lowers the time spent trying to learn new tools.
I remember using Linux Mandrake and writing a lot of documentation for Linux tools, as well as Gentoo Linux. Now, the same thing has to be performed here, but the next generation will likely have to do so.
I am not worried about performance in a mix of both islands. I'm really not. After all, ArmA 3 still does 60 on med graphics with high visibility on a 4 years old low end rig like mine. Besides, i thought that ArmA 3 already had documented assets?
Why cut yourself short, when you can go to the Moon?
Cosmos Engine
http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=27261
Hope this idea isn't dead yet. I would love to take a Blackfish from Stratis for HALO insertion on Altis. It would add a lot more immersion than taking off from the same island