[Murph]

First of all, this is not meant as a criticism. I love the new maps that are being made and I'm grateful for all the work and talent that goes into them.
I've recently been reading a new book about the civilian experience in WWII called "the Bitter Road to Freedom".
In it the author describes the condition for example, of Normandy and particularly Calvados from just before until some months after the D-Day landings. It seems there was hardly a building undamaged, and in many cities such as Caen virtually every building was destroyed. The maps we have show mostly all buildings intact, which is nice for sightseeing, but to be truly historic should'nt most towns be shown as mostly or partly destroyed?
This is how much of Northern Europe looked by the summer of '44 is'nt it?
I'm not demanding anything here, just asking what people think?

[seaniebeag1983]

i think this comes down to the mission builders rather than the mapmakers

When building missions in the full mission builder you need to add destruction. the map will load with 0% destruction. in the view menu there is a destruction option where you can set the areas of destruction and the percentage

EDIT;

as an idea for a mod

You cant set destruction levels anywhere you want to use a destroy or protect ground objective target.
Does anyone know if it would be possible to make a mod that allows you to destroy some of the scenery in these areas.

Most people will still fill these areas up with enemy cars and fuel trucks to provide targets for aircraft so i dont see why we shouldnt be able to destroy the scenery around an area.

I just think it looks a bit silly when you plan to bomb an area of a city and the targets is undamaged while the rest of the city lies in ruins

[asheshouse]

This has been investigated a bit. Only two solutions have been found so far.

One is to make special objects which only have a destroyed state.

The other is to create a mission template from the final map, using the destruction brush as described above.

Within FMB Map Editor it is possible to destroy buildings but when you save the map file it reverts to its undestroyed state. Also the destruction tools available in Map Editor mode are very limited compared with Mission builder mode, so using the Map Template solution seems to be the best way at the moment.

The OOF WWI map is likely to incorporate permanently destroyed buildings near to the front line. Easyrider is working on this.

[EasyRider]

The Destruction Brush in Mission building FMB should always be used when building a mission in order to lend a hand to getting some atmoshpere,I see in sometimes in missions I fly it not being used by the mission builders at all.

I am going to implement some destroyed structures into the FMB on the WW1 OOF Map as Ashe has mentioned.Here is a pic of a typical airfield with some destruction,but remember in order for a lot of the towns and villages to look somewhat destroyed that this needs to be initiated through the FMB when building missions not maps.

The Fences and a few buildings,sandbags ete will be in the map in a destroyed state and will be available for mission builders to use once the map is released.

[Murph]

Those are very nice Easy- I wonder if retexturing some of the current buildings to show damage such as broken facades, smashed windows, burn marks, shell holes etc would help? I myself have no talent for this, I'm just putting the thought out there.
So, you're saying that the houses and other buildings are usually placed in the map by the mission builder? I thought most of the towns were "populated" by the map maker? Could a "retexturing" mod be created that would change the appearance of the cities in the current maps, such as we now have for changing landscape textures? Or am I asking for something that would just require too much work? I understand, if that's the case- you guys all do an amazing amount of stuff as it is.

[seaniebeag1983]

@Murph

Yes the towns and cities are generally populated by the mapmaker, but they must be destroyed by the mission builder. Because IL2 will load up the maps with zero destruction.

I'm sure it would be possible to retexture builidngs as you suggest, hopefully someone can shed more light on this for you. But this would mean changing the undestroyed texture for a building, meaning it would pemanently load up in this state for every mission.

Most mission builders use the changing destruction to add immersion. i.e. a mini campaign could consist of a recon mission over a completely undestroyed area, then a carpetbombing mission, then another recon mission to asses the success of the bombing.

@ EasyRider

Yeah some really great work, I like those sandbags and walls. Very cool.
One question, will the destroyed walls and sanbags have a collision box?? Well what Im really asking is if you place some field cannons behind them will they fire or do the walls block their line of sight?

[Murph]

I guess my point would be that most cities and towns in the areas where we fly missions after about May or June of '44 would already be destroyed or damaged and would remain so until after the war. But I see your point about mission builders wanting to start with intact building so they could track the effect of bombing missions.
Also I suppose that if you tried to permanently substitute skins for the buildings, then you would have destroyed buildings in areas that should not have been affected, such as small villages in England.
The default buildings in Jane's WWII Fighters, though looking a bit low tech by today's standards, still looked a lot more roughly handled and less clean and pristine than most of the ones in Il2.
Just a suggestion, not a demand.