[kapteeni]

Fantastic work, ashes

Are you going to be making these autopop templates available?

That's probably a good idea.
Maybe we should establish a template library.
Each template relates to a specific ground texture.
The four templates I've now put together need a bit of final polishing before use.
--- and I'd rather like to see how they look, and affect performance, in the Northeast France map before releasing them to a library. It may be necessary to thin them out a bit. Don't know until I've trialled it properly.

Once again I am relying very much on extracting scenery blocks out of the Slovakia map and reassembling them in different arrangements.
This map is a tremendous resource for scenery. I keep finding things I didn't know were there.

+1

[skarden]

The thing that really hits me is that that factory complex REALLY looks like a factory complex. Great work indeed!

+1 excactly! fantastic work Asheshouse hock:

[asheshouse]

Before spending a lot of time fine tuning map_T I decided to run some trials with AutoPop.
Seemed to have some problems using multiple templates so just working with sk_DownCity for now.

Cropped the inBuildings.txt down to a small number of objects for the trial.
Only 250000 objects used to "create" actors.static
(now increased to 500000 objects)
Loading up ok.

Image below shows the east side of Rotterdam.
Final version of map_T will be edited to reduce built up area and introduce more texture variation.
In performance terms this runs poorly on my system when there are a lot of objects on screen, but when you turn the view away from the built up area normal performance returns.
I have an old graphics card, ATI 9200 128Mb, so performance may improve with a better card.
CPU is also low spec, Athlon 2GHx with 1024Mb Ram

I intend to reduce the spread of the built up area to more realistically reflect 1940's city size. Also to introduce sk_country_mount texture around the fringes of the cities which will reduce object count.

Haven't tried populating the whole map yet. That's likely to be another challenge.

[canonuk]

Looks fantastic

Your actors.static is going to be massive though if all your towns are this nicely populated!

[asheshouse]

Yes. :oops:

I need to first work out the maximum number of objects that can be loaded.
Don't know if anyone has done this already.
I'll just keep adding objects until it stops loading successfully.

============

Now up to 1000000 objects. actors.static is 8Mb

Loads in FMB Mission Editor in 35 sec.
Loads to game from mission briefing screen in 45 sec.
No significant loss of performance except over densely populated areas.
It takes a long time to "create" actors.static

Here's a few statistics for the templates

sk_country_mount - 2.56km2 - 10466 objects - 85KB/km2
sk_DownCity - 0.64km2 - 2175 objects - 175KB/km2
sk_MidCity - 0.64km2 - 1320 objects - 91KB/km2
sk_Factory - 2.56km2 - 14737 objects - 292KB/km2

So looks like I have to be generous with sk_MidCity and sk_country_mount in order to best manage memory usage.

[canonuk]

Asheshouse: Do you have a copy of the Slovakia actors.static you could send me?



EDIT: Ignore - extracted it

[asheshouse]

Progress update. I've been struggling with the object density problem.
map_T has been extensively edited to reduce built up areas, and to more accurately represent 1940 town sizes I guess. Following this some initial slimming of my building template for sk_country_mount has been done which has reduced the template to 75% of its previous size.
Re-populated the map.
Wow! actors.static has been created ok. File size now 10.7MB, but it loads and runs ok in the game.
Total object count is 1.3 million!!!
Here is a shot of the village of Krimpen, with the R. IJssel behind, looking west towards Rotterdam. The whole map now has this density of objects for all the villages and towns.
I now have to go back to map_T and edit in some sk_MidCity areas for dense town/city centres. The object count for this template is the same as sk_country_mount, so it should work ok.
I guess this represents progress of sorts, but still lots to do.

[Bee]

You are amazing!

[RAF_Magpie]

Lookin real nice dude - 1 question, that graphics glitch, on the buffalo, that wouldnt be caused by the huge amounts of objects...?

[asheshouse]

The graphics glitch is caused by the screen capture. It doesnt have the spinner missing when seen in game. The Buffalo really shouldn't be there at all. I'd rather have a nice Fokker D.XXI, but I just happened to have a Dutch skin for a Buffalo.

[asheshouse]

Following further trials I now have fully populated towns and cities with an object count of 1.8 million.
This runs ok for offline use. This is based on the use of sk_country_mount texture for all built up areas. I now need to spend time editing map_T in FMB Map Editor to insert centre of town textures in larger towns and cities. This uses sk_MidCity texture with a similar object density to sk_country_mount. Only once I've got that looking right will I paint in sk_Factory textures. These need to be kept limited because good looking factories have high object counts.

Might be worth trying to get my town templates reduced to 80% of the current size to get the object count back to 1.5 million, which will leave some space for later expansion

[modman]

Wow!... I realy like this map! It's great to see Krimpen aan den Ijssel because i lived there. Now i live in Rotterdam.
It will be great to fly over Rotterdam in Il-2! You made my wish come true! Many thanks!!!

[asheshouse]

Thanks Modman. Its always nice to hear from someone who knows the "terrain".

[Rus_Andrey]

asheshouse

Can you say (approximately) when will your map be finished? :roll:

[asheshouse]

Difficult question to answer Letchik.
The amount of time I can spend on map making varies from week to week.

Back in March I decided that I would concentrate on finishing one part of the map and then releasing it as a WIP while I worked on the rest. This is the area I intended to concentrate on.



I still think that is a good plan but as I started to populate the towns I have realised that I have to do this for the entire map in order to be sure that it will work ok, so I have got side tracked into template building and trialling different object densities all of which has taken a lot of time.

Now I have the whole map populated with sk_country_mount textures (villages), including using these textures for the cities as a temporary stage.

Now I have started editing map_T to put sk_MidCity textures into the city centres and large towns. This probably will not take very long, but each test build of the actors.static takes 3.5 hours. I will probably ignore Factory areas for the moment and then concentrate on finishing the Sedan area.

Sample images of these templates are shown earlier in the thread.

End of May would be a nice target now for a WIP issue which would have Sedan area pretty much completed, but things are quite busy so we will have to see how it goes.

Some things, like the ed_m01 map image will need a bit of artistic input, but this could be done later.