Originally Posted by [R-DEV]Rhino

After v0.8's release, [R-DEV]Dr Rank wanted me to make some new fields for Sangin and other maps. Well instead of just doing reskins for the old, flawed Overgrowth Fields I decided to look into new concepts due to flaws in the old fields, such as mappers are very limited in how they can use them since they are huge blocks, bad LODs and lots of other small issues like that.


Old PR Overgrowth Rice Field
[media]http://img384.imageshack.us/img384/1258/78665098ws6.jpg[/media]


I spent a few days working out a few basic concepts, came up with quite a few, many simply did not work out and had the same kinda flaws as the old fields.

Eventually one of my ideas did start to look a little promising, with the basic the concept of this idea was to make a basic small patch that you would then put loads of them together using the overgrowth tool to place them and then mix them with undergrowth for extra up close detail.

[media]http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/1952/50231034qm6.jpg[/media]

[media]http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/1966/screen142iw4.jpg[/media]

[media]http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/7316/screen143hf0.jpg[/media]

[media]http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/2623/screen144fe8.jpg[/media]

[media]http://img384.imageshack.us/img384/7734/screen146lc8.jpg[/media]

We got this into testing with a bunch of testers and found that these do indeed conceal players extremely well and we could also surprisingly not see any performance difference between the original qwai without them. Thou there is a small problem with this concept, is that it is very hard to setup these fields on your map as a mapper, thou you the player do not have to worry about that.

The main advantage of these new fields over the old ones from a mappers point of view is that you are not limited to square fields, like you can see above, the fields can be all kind of shapes and for the most part you can fill them with these new overgrowth fields. They also do not have to be placed on 100% flat terrain, they can get away with being placed on slight gradients and slopes thou if any extreme changes in terrain happens these can float like at the edge of the fields.

Due to the size of Qwai it would take a lot of time to clean up all the large fields that are in the map, so although I used the map for orignal ingame testing of these, Qwai will NOT have these fields in it for v0.85

Instead I'm piloting this concept on the new map, West Fallujah where I've made new "Wild Grass" fields for this map.

[media]http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/1378/76050432rm8.jpg[/media]

Some of you have already noticed these fields in the screens I've released on Fallujah in anouther Dev Journal on the map itself but encase you have not, here they are with some extras.


[media]http://www.gloryhoundz.com/prmm/users/rhino/fw/18.jpg[/media]

[media]http://www.gloryhoundz.com/prmm/users/rhino/fw/19.jpg[/media]


Providing everything goes well on Fallujah in v0.85 with these fields we will look at making many more types of these fields and putting them on many other maps where ever its feasibly possible, like Qwai, Al Basrah etc.

For future types of fields we are looking at many types and there [R-DEV]Pride has been also hard at work making some new field textures for this purpose. One of these that some of you had noticed one of my less scuttle hints has been my avatar that I put up for Remembrance Day (which I've not got round to changing yet) which has been poppy fields. Pride has made 6 types of poppy textures that I have setup ingame and we hope to use in some future Afghanistan and other themed maps

[media]http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/8505/59080392by8.jpg[/media]

We hope these fields will add a new dimension to realistic gameplay as well as making our maps look and feel more realistic. :mrgreen:

Once again I 'm amazed by what these guys do with the BF2 engine.