Bigger Maps

[21sec]

I think it's a must that when playing with modern armored fighting vehicles you need larger maps. That's the one thing that in my opinion is holding the CMSF series back. I know the infantry centric scenarios are great on the smaller maps, but perhaps you could at least give us an option for even larger maps.

I think up to about 8km x 8km would fit nicely with the scale. I just want to conduct a modern high speed armored thrust, and well, it's kind of tough do that right now.

[Boche]

i believe you can create 8x8 maps in the editor, although i might be wrong

[Erwin]

Possibly the problem may be that you have to borrow NSA computers to run it.

[Boche]

Possibly the problem may be that you have to borrow NSA computers to run it.

that too

you can always do what ive heard other people have done, make a big map then separate each section off into different missions, easier on the PC and you can simulate a push that takes more than 4 hours

[MikeyD]

If you're designing a scenario and need a big map I've found fighting from corner-to-corner instead of across the board gives you more playable area. If you measure a 2,000x2,000 map (as large as I'm willing to build, though other make larger maps) from corner to corner you've got about 2,800m. Fighting a combined arms battle, 2,800m is a lot of ground for infantry to have to cover. Especially considering the game represent "the tip of the spear" where you know there's an equivalent force directly in front of you.

[chaos49]

i like to know how u make a 8*8 map thanks.

all i can make is 4*4

[YankeeDog]

I'm pretty sure you can't make 8x8km maps in CMSF right now. If forget the exact upper limit on map size... 4x4km maybe?

As noted, the I suspect the reason for this probably has more to do with computing power than anything else. The computing power required for LOS checks goes up exponentially with the surface area of the map. Probably only the very best of today's home PCs would be able to run a game with a large number of units, on an 8x8km map.

A lesser issue is that there are additional modeling problems that come up with maps of this size. For example, at 8km, issues like Nap-of-the-Earth and atmospheric refraction start to become an important consideration in spotting and I don't think these are things the game currently deals with at all. Definitely not unsolvable problems, but probably not where BFC wants to put its development time considering everything else that could be improved or added to the game...

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see 8x8km maps and the option of doing fast-moving, long range armor fights. But there's enough other stuff that CMSF does well that I don't really miss them. You can't expect the game to do everything.

Cheers,

YD

[Field Marshal Blücher]

Yeah, the upper limit is 4x4, not 8x8.

[Alex]

Is it 4x4, not 4.8x4.8?

I played 3.8x2km, 2.4x2km, 2.8x2km maps (red-vs-blue campaign ), it's very interesting to fight...

[dan/california]

The technology to do LOS checks on a graphics processor, with many cores working in parallel is becoming available rapidly. So at some point in the future that bottleneck will go away, just probably not very soon for CMX2.

[hcrof]

Its 4 x 4, but trying to get a map that big to actually load is another problem; anything with some elevation changes and a couple of trees will crash to desktop at that size.

I lost so many maps that way

[Battlefront.com]

Over time we will be able to increase map size, but it's more of a function of what people have for computers more than anything else. It's not just LOS checks, it's keeping all the terrain data in RAM, AI decision making, number of polygons to draw, etc. If there was just one or two reasons for crushing the average PC's capabilities we would probably be able to fudge a work around or two. But it's a combo of things.

What we'll probably have to do is wait until single and dual core computers are out of the customer mix. Charles doesn't think that supporting dual cores will increase performance enough to make a practical difference vs. a single core. So we'll likely have to wait until quad cores are fairly standard before we can really increase map size.

Unfortunately most of the processes that really hammer a computer go up EXPONENTIALLY (or at least disproportionally) as map size increases. Which means doubling the map size doesn't mean needing 2x as many computing resources, it could mean needing 100x the computing resources. And of course it's dependent on what the map has on it for terrain, units, and combat.

Having said that, as slower clock speed, smaller RAM systems are dropped out of the customer mix we should be able to increase map size to some extent. But doubling the top end map to 8x8km? Not likely to happen any time soon.

Steve