Friday 2010-10-29 Dev. update and Discussion

[fireflyerz]

Good greif, what a bloody mad house , gets worse every week....................

[Splitter]

I am curious...in the original post Oleg said that some structures are indestructible so as to comply with laws in those countries.

Are there really laws that prohibit such things in computer games?

I would think making those structures indestructible would fall more in line with good taste than illegal. Just curious.

Splitter

[swiss]

Originally Posted by Splitter

I am curious...in the original post Oleg said that some structures are indestructible so as to comply with laws in those countries.

Are there really laws that prohibit such things in computer games?

I would think making those structures indestructible would fall more in line with good taste than illegal. Just curious.

Splitter

In fact, I just heard today the Bristish gov. caused some trouble to a gamemaker(was it arma?) because you could pick the side of the taliban.
No sh*t, they had to remove it, and now you can pick the "opposing force" instead.

Cute, isn't it?

[=69.GIAP=TOOZ]

Firstly I loved seeing the cockpit in action and seeing all the dials jumping around, it really looks amazing!

And the screenshots are cool - but why can't I blow up them bloody germans in Buck House?

Anyway, I was looking at the London map and as I live in London just now I wanted to see where I live in comparison to what is shown in this screenie. So, I had the idea of getting a current map of London and trying to scale it so that it overlays reasonably accurately onto the SoW map posted.

I went to multimap and brought up London and chose the sattelite view as I figured the easiest way of aligning both maps was by using the Thames. So, I took a screenie, measured the height in pixels of the big curve just east of the Royal Vic Docks on both maps and adjusted the multimap screenie so it would fit roughly.

I then laid the multimap screenie on top of the SoW screenie and line em up and I found that I had done a reasonable job of scaling the curve in the river, but then I noticed that the further west you went the more out of sync the two maps were.

Now I know that the Thames has changed its course a little over the last 70-odd years but it wouldn't account for this amount of disparity. I also compared the locations of the royal parks and they were more or less the same size on each pic but were way off in alignment.

So, I wonder what was used to draw the map for the game? Did you use ordinance survey maps of the time, or aerial photographs from the time, or a combination?

Of course, the multimap pic could be wrong, and I could have mucked the scaling, but there just seems to be far too much of a difference between the two.

Anyway, what do you think: Here's my layered pic and I hope you can make out the course of both rivers for comparison:

[carl]

So everyone is equal now ! May the best win !
lol but oleg had a meeting with nvidia monday gone, so at least at first there driver/card combo could be the best

Originally Posted by carl

So everyone is equal now ! May the best win !
lol but oleg had a meeting with nvidia monday gone, so at least at first there driver/card combo could be the best

I agree with you on one thing : If you build a rig mainly for SOW and don't care too much about power consumption, nVidia would probably be the way to go for initial release...
I am not in a debate nVidia/ATI ...They both have good and bad in each of them...But nVIDIA should find a way to be more eco-friendly...

Salute !

[major_setback]

The lights in houses: Agreed that the blackout would mean they are not used much.

BUT if light can pass through the windows from inside, then surely burning buildings will look more real too, with flames seen through windows (or lights could be used together with flames)!!!

Like this:

[major_setback]

Originally Posted by =69.GIAP=TOOZ

Firstly I loved seeing the cockpit in action and seeing all the dials jumping around, it really looks amazing!

And the screenshots are cool - but why can't I blow up them bloody germans in Buck House?

Anyway, I was looking at the London map and as I live in London just now I wanted to see where I live in comparison to what is shown in this screenie. So, I had the idea of getting a current map of London and trying to scale it so that it overlays reasonably accurately onto the SoW map posted.

I went to multimap and brought up London and chose the sattelite view as I figured the easiest way of aligning both maps was by using the Thames. So, I took a screenie, measured the height in pixels of the big curve just east of the Royal Vic Docks on both maps and adjusted the multimap screenie so it would fit roughly.

I then laid the multimap screenie on top of the SoW screenie and line em up and I found that I had done a reasonable job of scaling the curve in the river, but then I noticed that the further west you went the more out of sync the two maps were.

Now I know that the Thames has changed its course a little over the last 70-odd years but it wouldn't account for this amount of disparity. I also compared the locations of the royal parks and they were more or less the same size on each pic but were way off in alignment.

So, I wonder what was used to draw the map for the game? Did you use ordinance survey maps of the time, or aerial photographs from the time, or a combination?

Of course, the multimap pic could be wrong, and I could have mucked the scaling, but there just seems to be far too much of a difference between the two.

Anyway, what do you think: Here's my layered pic and I hope you can make out the course of both rivers for comparison:

I opened London map from 'Google maps' in Photoshop Elements and layered it with the game map. I coloured the 'Google Thames' red, and showed it above the game map. I needed to rescale (keeping proportions correct) and rotate about 1 degree. They match very well. I didn't mark the airfields.

The gaps in the colour are where road and place-names were.

[AndyJWest]

Regarding =69.GIAP=TOOZ's query about the map, and major_setback's reply, it's worth remembering that there are several different ways of projecting the surface of a sphere (like the Earth) onto a flat surface (a map), but none of them are 'correct' - they all distort in one way or another. Over the area shown on Oleg's screenshot, this isn't likely to be that noticeable though, so I'd be inclined to suggest the satellite image was distorted. To complicate things further, there may be three different 'norths' to align the map on - Magnetic North, which has the unfortunate habit of wandering around, and currently resides somewhere in Canada, True North, or the direction towards the northern end of Earth's rotational axis, which fortunately only moves slowly (over millennia), and 'Grid North' which is a convenience for cartographers - an arbitrary datum that may match True North at some point on the map, but diverges as you move away, to simplify dealing with the problems of projection. Since Oleg has said he is modelling the Earth as a sphere, he's presumably figured out which projection to use on maps, and to make comparisons, you need to find another map using the same projection, datum etc.

[=69.GIAP=TOOZ]

Originally Posted by AndyJWest

Regarding =69.GIAP=TOOZ's query about the map, and major_setback's reply, it's worth remembering that there are several different ways of projecting the surface of a sphere (like the Earth) onto a flat surface (a map), but none of them are 'correct' - they all distort in one way or another.

I kind of thought about this myself after I'd finished my rather quick and slapdash job, as based on my pic the further away from the centre of the picture the more elongated the river becomes which on a satelite image would happen because of the curvature of the earth. Then looking at setback's attempt it shows a far better alignment, and I'm assuming he used the map setting rather than the satelite setting? Anyway, I was just curious, but the map still looks great (cept for the errant appearance of that reservoir...!).