New Civilian Vehicles ?

[Peter Cairns]

A question come request.

Are there any plans to add any new civilian vehicles with the up coming modules. A couple of trucks and articulated trailers would be good, and some agricultural stuff like a tractor would be nice.

Peter.

[the Fighting Seabee]

Yes. I have been thinking about how I would simulate civilian traffic.

Maybe I've been spending too much time in traffic.

[MikeyD]

I've seen a couple scenarios that have a few abandoned/destroyed cars littering a map. Only problem with that is you take a 'destroyed vehicle' points hit at scenario's end, which can be adjusted for with bonus points during scenario design.

Another problem I can se with using existing Syrian cars for traffic jams is it would necessarily be placed on a city map so alot of cars would really up the polygon count. There's only so much a poor graphics card can take!

[Childress]

The only pressing reason, IMO, to include civilian vehicles in a scenario, other than chrome, is that they provide usable cover. In fact, do they?

[YankeeDog]

Originally posted by Childress:

The only pressing reason, IMO, to include civilian vehicles in a scenario, other than chrome, is that they provide usable cover. In fact, do they?

As good or better than a light building or brick wall.

[bitchen frizzy]

Do they all have to be modeled as vehicles?

Stationary ones could be modeled as terrain features or doodads. Would that help with graphics and memory demand?

[vincere]

The scenario 'Around the Block' really benefits from the creative use of stationary vehicles. Parked vehicles would be a great addition to the Marine Module IMO.

Do flavour objects currently have any in-game ability to provide any cover?

[M1A1TC]

yes they do provide cover

[Sequoia]

Originally posted by bitchen frizzy:

Do they all have to be modeled as vehicles?

Stationary ones could be modeled as terrain features or doodads. Would that help with graphics and memory demand?

Good question. I'm curious too.

[missinginreality]

They'd still have a polgon count though even if they were doodads. Curvy surfaces like cars and tractors and things would be especially high. Boxes like shipping containers and sheds would be simple and not add to the count so much having only six faces but even a simple low res wheel would have to have at least 32 polys not even taking into account the bodywork so even if the static vehicles aren't moving or useable except as cover they'd still proportionally add to the poly count of the game.

Edit..PS and then there's the texture's ontop of that: again even static objects like doodads count to the load on the graphics card. The humble pick-up textures are around 4.5Mb uncompressed texture files so for each different vehicle that's another wad of texture memory being processed too.

Still, all that said it'd be great to have the option of adding in more static civilian vehicles, especially big things like trucks would make awesome cover and eye candy too.

[vincere]

M1A1TankCommander, ok thanks for that. So stationary cars as a flavour object would a) add a lot to the look of a battle and provide some on street cover.

[Paper Tiger]

I'd really love to see these added as flavour objects too. I tried adding them to the map as destroyed red vehicles and as already noted, they count against the Red players casualty points. They also don't appear in the map preview screen and only with deploy Red and actually running the situation.

I personally don't care about the polygon count. It's up to the designer to keep his map playable, that's his responsibility and not BFC's. For me, the more realistic the map looks, the greater the immersion factor.

[birdstrike]

I'd love to see more vehicles. Just to have them as stationary doodads would be great. This would also solve the "belongs to one side" issue we have now.

And it would also be nice, if we could use different textures on vehicles, like it works with infantry units. This way, not all pickups and taxis would look alike.

[Sequoia]

I'd like to see burnt out vehicles as well as abandoned ones. My feeling is the only vehicles that would be left behind as a invading force approached would be inoperable ones and those damaged by incoming arty etc.

[vincere]

Sequoia, I agree with a request for abandoned and burnt out vehicles, but not that all others would have left. There's enough Uncon scenarios to counter that, not to mention all kinds of mods.