Larger maps

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Soldier_Fortune

Actually the largest map we have is "Gulf of Finland"... but that region never was an operational scenery for the Allies.

That depends on your definition of "Allies" - there were a few Soviets fighting in that area, although they were mostly skirmishing with the Germans in the far eastern portion of the map, near the the mouth of the Neva river.

Originally Posted by Soldier_Fortune

This map covers from W of London to Berlin and Dresden, and from N of London to S of Paris, including Belgium, Netherland and S of Denmark. Its design is mainly focused on long range bombing and it has a lot of potential targets.

It's up to the modder to submit the map to TD for inclusion in the game. As long as the map meets the quality standards, there's nothing inherently wrong with having a "slimmed down" map of Northern or Western Europe at 1:1 scale.

Maps that would really work well for the B-24D would be those that mostly feature large stretches of ocean with bits of land at the edges. For example, the North Atlantic from Scotland/N. Ireland to the tip of Iceland, or the tip of Cornwall to the Northern end of the Bay of Biscay.

[Soldier_Fortune]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

...
Maps that would really work well for the B-24D would be those that mostly feature large stretches of ocean with bits of land at the edges. For example, the North Atlantic from Scotland/N. Ireland to the tip of Iceland, or the tip of Cornwall to the Northern end of the Bay of Biscay.

Why...?

AFAIK, the B-24s were used to close the North Atlantic gap against the U-Boote, and they were equiped with surface radars to spot them. (Not with bombs).

The only reason I can guess for not to do big land maps (about 1000 x 600 km) is a technical limitation: more land means more objects; and such maps may takes ages to upload in the FMB. And, when a player would try to play it, he could get a CTD. A big surface of water solves the problem because it is only a flat texture.

But the guy who has designed La_Chute, has solved that problem in a smart way: the most of the map is only texture: also cities and towns.
He placed objects only in few points, but he didn't populate the whole map to avoid instabilities.

At ground level or flying at very low altitude, the visual effect is like if a city is "painted on the floor". But if you are flying over 3000 m or higher, you will see the city with a realistic appearence. [Maskirovka...!!]

A mission designer only would need to place the relevant objects using the FMB, according to his mission script. For buildings, the mission designer only need to choose any which fits the "coloured shadow" of the ground texture among those of the Objects list.

As I told in my first post, La-Chute may be played smoothly with the highest graphic settings. I used many planes at the same time, and several of them were activated by triggers...

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Soldier_Fortune

AFAIK, the B-24s were used to close the North Atlantic gap against the U-Boote, and they were equiped with surface radars to spot them. (Not with bombs).

The Atlantic maps I proposed were just examples. The idea is that if you want a large map, it loads quicker and is easier on framerates if it's mostly filled with empty water.

Equally legitimate map choices might maps that includes a bit of Queensland, AUS and parts of the southern coast of New Guinea, Okinawa to the southern tip of Kyushu, or Tunisian coast from Tunis to Sfax then east to Malta and the southern coast of Sicily.

As for anti U-boat operations, the B-24s (and other long-range patrol craft - like the Sunderland and Wellington) were equipped with a combination of depth charges (and/or bombs, sometimes rockets), plus surface radar and occasionally weapons systems light Leigh lights.

Originally Posted by Soldier_Fortune

But the guy who has designed La_Chute, has solved that problem in a smart way: the most of the map is only texture: also cities and towns.

The problem is that, by official IL2 standard, that's "half a map." You can't just create city plates and forest textures and then not include cities and forests. I think that's an artifact of IL2's heritage as a low-altitude "mud moving" flight simulator.

It would require an executive decision on TD's part to allow maps that favor high altitude long-range bomber ops, but at the expense of having "empty" cities and no forests when you go down low.

Personally, I think that such maps would be a good idea, now that we've got planes like the Pe-8 and B-24D to play with.

If we ever get proper night fighter ops in the game, TD is going to have to think pretty hard about this issue, because for night fighter operations the important things are effects (lights, flames, flares, radar ops), loiter time (often over a large area) and traditional "eye candy" scenery just isn't as important.

The only other way around the map size issue would be for the game to somehow recognize when aircraft are moving off one map and automatically load up the map of the adjacent territory. But, that would require huge amounts of development work, plus all new maps of consistent shape and size.