With the size of these maps, populating cities, even sparsely, it can cause issues as we know, with the actors static, with loading times, with FPS drops etc... not to mention those maps which have 1 full scale city included, never mind multiple, it can cause a dramatic increase in build times.
So my question I put to you, community, is what would you like, or even tolerate...?
Do those of us who are making these maps keep to populating cities sparsely, or even not at all - leaving full population to the mission builders or even to the imagination?
Or do we go the full hog and populate them the best we can?
Aside from London, I'm only going to sparsely populate cities. Key structures like harbours, docks, main factories etc, my cities will be sparsely and generically populated. A mission builder can always add to a city if it's a target in their missions.
I think the most important thing is to consider what each map is designed for...what are the main targets ....
usually docks/harbours/factories/airfields......
maybe have as Maraz did with his Malta...a bare/medium and high versions
the map maker can decorate the places he thinks are the most important....and once that is released then others can decorate and get 'Official' status for their version from the map maker and have it available to all too
I would suggest an offline version (w/ populated cities) and an online version (sparse .. or just city tiles).
As an online mission maker I would only populate those cities important to the mission ... who cares about a city 100km away from the route and objective ?
However, for an offline campaign, I might want those cities populated if I'm giving the player total control over their ingress/egress routes, etc... offline missions can have much more "eye candy" and should be more immersive ... this means more objects etc.. to the map.
I agrre with "incubs"
:!:
This is a tough question and of course the answer depends on the specific map.
But:
Build time: if there's a team, surely that helps reducing the build time, I see there are many individual-author map projects here and very few teams projects, I find this unfortunate.
How densely populated should be maps: here players may have different oppinions so this is my (very)personal: populate at least DECENTLY a map, and by decently I mean each town or village populated at least at the level of detail found in AVERAGE il2 official maps. Again this is matter of taste, if I fly over a magnificently populated city on a map and then next over a spooky village on the same map, that detail is killing immersion to me.
If the map is very big and has a big density of villages and towns there are always solutions:
a)reduce size or/and number of towns, villages etc but still keep a decent look for the remaining ones by decently populating them.
b) release different versions with regions fully populated and rest of the map empty or scarcely populated.
Working with actors static: no real problem here because you can always work on separate regions of the map and add the regions at the end to the final map.
But still the important thing to many problems: map teams!
I think the best option is to do what the Malta map have. 3 versions of the map. High, with all cities populated, Medium (obvious), and light.
In a few years computaer will handle all the stuff and would be a shame to not have the maps properly populated. Just my thought.
) , still I am a proficient mission builder. I am sure there are lots of other in my position.