Wish List for authentic Middle East towns

[LongLeftFlank]

I know BFC has got bigger fish to fry, but I've been dabbling with the map editor to try to work up some authentically shabby Middle Eastern townscapes. At some point, I'd love to see the following elements added to the pallette:

- An authentic Syrian townscape would intersperse the traditional-looking buildings portrayed in the game with the cheap, ugly generic fabricated cement slab structures that are everywhere in the Third world, particularly along roads. Except for balcony fronts (if present), the front walls on all levels of these buildings tend to be either louvered windows or flimsy partitions, providing little protection. The facade is usually the first thing to go when the building is damaged.

- Open-fronted ground floor shops, again the Third World norm, secured with steel gates when not open. There would typically be a garish billboard or sign above the entrance, as well as a narrow sidewalk and curb out front even when the street is unpaved

- Dilapidated tin-roof and cinderblock sheds, shacks and stalls, as well as metal shipping containers/truck trailers. Useless as cover but obstruct LOS. Could we possibly replace the shelters, ATMs and park bench doodads with these?

- Parked car doodads... any Syrian community will have at least as many rusty Fiats and Toyotas as it has buildings. Again, no real cover but obstructs LOS

- Patches of dense jungle or thicket: mix of banana trees, low palms and brush/grass. Very hard to move or see into. There's plenty of these thickets even in arid regions.

- Piles of scrap cement with rebar sticking out would be far more common in the Mideast than piles of scrap lumber.

Is anybody else out there working on authentic villages and towns? The maps I've seen so far all seem to me to have far too much space between buildings. Pre-20th century (pre-automobile) neighborhoods in particular would feature a maze of tiny streets and alleys.

[Cpl Steiner]

LongLeftFlank,

I agree with you that the urban environments in CM:SF are a little uninteresting at the moment. Some ideas of my own (inspired by "Call of Duty 4"):

1. Large storage baskets/urns (flavour objects) to represent market stall produce.

2. Brightly coloured fabric canopies as a type of inaccessible balcony. Example: canopy extending from second floor to shade shop-front from sun.

3. Steel Shutters at ground level for closed shop-fronts.

4. More junk flavour objects, such as rusty old cookers and discarded furniture.

5. Tables/stands containing shop merchandise (fake watches, fruit, leather goods etc).

6. Carts and cart wheels.

7. Ducts/pipes on the sides of buildings.

8. Satellite dishes/aerials on rooftops.

9. More civilian vehicle types (scooters, pedal bikes, mini-buses).

[LongLeftFlank]

Definitely satellite dishes. In Istanbul (Pera), I recall seeing an entire street filled with nothing but satellite dish businesses (I guess they had a medieval guild or something), including small street vendors in business suits (those Turks, always dressed to the nines) reconditioning used ones.

[Splinty]

Satellite dishes are everywhere in Baghdad and Mosul.

[kevinkins]

And what would be the hit on frame rates?

[Cpl Steiner]

Originally posted by Kevin Kinscherff:

And what would be the hit on frame rates?

This is an argument for saying we should go back to the 50-100 polygon "hamstertroopen" of CMx1 because it would give us a better frame rate. It is not a valid argument.

Even one or two rooftop satellite dishes or water tanks in a whole town would make the game look better than it does now - and at negligible cost in frame rate.

[M1A1TC]

I think most of the current maps are way too barren. I think in reality the cities are a lot greener, atleast by looking at the photos.

[British Tommy]

Give it time lads, I'm sure once the modders start working on the buildings etc things will improve

[geozero]

I'd like to see different size and shape buildings. Archways, columns, etc.

Everything is also about the same height. All 1-story buildings - same height.

Besides Call of Duty 4, take a look at some of the buildings in Company of Heros (even though these are Euro buildings, just look at the depth of detail, style, etc).

[LongLeftFlank]

With a little practice, I'm starting to get better at creating suitably crappy Third World cement tenements with open storefronts using the existing tools.

The trick seems to be to combine several small 4 story structures to create a single building. This gives you interior walls to work with, representing "rooms". To further subdivide the ground floors, you can also insert tall stone walls and posted balconies. One of the CTRL-click options lets you delete a wall altogether, although this creates some visual oddities.

The main things still missing are

(a) parked cars (you can model these as crudely as you like to save frames, the cityscapes just don't look right without them). Imagine how much more effective technicals would be in RT too, if they could "hide" among the doodads.

( Small cinderblock sheds (i.e. almost zero protection but concealment). Cinderblock is a ubiquitous building material.

© Turn those shelter doodads that look like gazebos into rusty corrugated roofed things we could use to represent awnings, market stalls, etc.

(d) Lose the park benches and ATMs. Give us piles of packing crates and cement rubbish (the latter could provide comparable cover to trees).

These things alone would add a huge amount of realism and "lived-in-ness" to the townscapes, and wouldn't seem hard to add. The framerate-impaired could simply reduce or remove them, like trees.

[LGMB]

parked cars

This and water/bridges and sewers are a must.

[LongLeftFlank]

Originally posted by LongLeftFlank:

One of the CTRL-click options lets you delete a wall altogether, although this creates some visual oddities.

Oops, upon playtesting, this "open wall" is basically treated by units as a solid building wall (though it appears as invisible to the player). So I'll repeat my plea for open shopfronts, with or without folding metal gates. The same feature could be used to represent damaged buildings with some or all of the facade blown away.

Note that the comparatively dimly lit -- and cluttered -- interiors of shopfronts would still be pretty hard to see into during daylight, although they wouldn't offer much cover to units in there once spotted.

[LongLeftFlank]

Shameless bump for my own thread here, but I have a couple more items:

a. Cement Jersey barriers and T-barriers

b. Laundry on lines -- good LOS obstructor

Also, I'm tackling a map of the much embattled Route Michigan, Ramadi. Some phenomenal footage of the destruction along this road here:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=YW7zzQBJr-g

Awesome soundtrack too.

[Khane]

Local restaurants, local food...