forests

[fragger]

when i put a forest in, it hovers above the ground in areas, even though i put it to 'fit to ground'. it only looks realistic when its on exact flat land and not sloping land
plz help!

[Waterman]

Have you changed the flags to "Forest"? Go to the Flags tab, select the area of forest, then tick "Forest".

It has also been said that only certain types of forest pieces work, so maybe it the type your using...

Waterman.

[Kaliyuga]

 Yeah... I hate this problem too....  the forests are the absolute worst part about OFP maps.  

 That's why I made an effort to stay away from using them on my island

I mean none of the trees fall down when you run into them... explosions won't knock em over....   It's really pretty sad.   :-\

 I've heard that certain pieces work while others don't but I believe I've tried them all and I still have the same problems with some of the trees or bushes floating off the ground.....  :-\


Unless my forest is completely on flat ground it doesn't want to work properly

[pertti49]

Best way is to add trees one by one besauce forest obj are impossible to destroy thing how funny it will look if you try to drive tank over a tree and it whount fall down ;Dits lazy mans way to do map and the result sucks ps:use copy paste and one by one is fast added too
greetings:pertti49

[lis]

its just as quick to add a whole forrest using single trees rather than a forrest block, just by using ez macro, can do in just af ew seconds ;p

[Hit_Sqd_Maximus]

WRP buddy works great for adding forests now

do forests or having a lot of trees seperate effect the performance of the game any?

[lis]

wouldnt it run worse the more objects you add, because of the textures etc etc ?

[Kaliyuga]

 I have thousands of trees on my island and I haven't seen any bad effects from  using individual ones

but I do have a fairly decent computer...

I know that Malden and Nogova lag for some people.. and  Malden has around 100,000  plus objects on it  compared to Everon which weighs in at a respectable 30,000 (give or take)

[Hit_Sqd_Maximus]

From what wrp buddy tells me, I have around 18,000 objects with no buildings or roads. These are all trees..... should I cut down on the number of trees and add the forest object or will this be fine? I want it to be able to run farely well for people who have 256 megs of ram.

[Kaliyuga]

  I should think you'd be all right without removing things so fast... you can always finish it up and then get some people with lower-end machines to beta test it for you  and see if you get any lag..

 it would fairly easy to go back and remove objects at the end to reduce lag then to try and take it into account now perhaps and end up settling on the premade forest pieces.

 If you're around 18,000 I'll bet you'll be ok with just going ahead and placing those roads and buildings and such.    On my old computer I was able to play all the CwC islands without a problem except for Malden sometimes lagged.  I'm betting that as long as you steer clear of the 100,000 mark you won't get too much lag on low-end systems.


I've got about 12,000 or so on my island now, and predict to finish with about 18-20,000 objects

and with every object placed by my own hand  

[lis]

mouse actually ;p

[Hit_Sqd_Maximus]

I deleted a section of trees from my island and then added forest and the island gives me a really low framerate with the forest objects instead of a bunch of trees.  

[xero]

Is that in the game or in the preview? I no longer use the preview as it slows right down whenver I look at anything with more than a few faces whereas in game there's no slowdowns.

[Hit_Sqd_Maximus]

It was ingame

[xero]

Well it's either you're PC specs or the forest, try changing the forest first

[pertti49]

lagg is more in fact how much u have objects in small area not the how much u have in whole area your graphic-card only draws what there is in sight not the hidden part and what comes to ram its have to be big as hell that memory runs out and the lagg is then acting diffrenedly pic stilt and pc running a wile and then the game continue either if its card its tug all a time

[rom]

There are several benefits from using those forest patches instead of single trees.

First those forest patches add to realism and gameplay. You can't take a real tank and drive it through a forest with thick trees. The tank needs some speed to waste the trees and this only works if the trees are rather thin and the forest isn't dense. In RL forests are normally blocking tanks. So a whole forest where you just can drive through wouldn't be much realistic.
Normally you would set up an ambush between forests (where the enemy tanks have to move through), but with a forest where the enemy tanks can just drive through you can't do much tactical things.

Another thing is memory consumption. Since one forest patch is one big object it needs less memory than if you fill the same place with single trees. (I'm not talking about the memory of the graphics card or graphics performance but the main RAM or the PC.)
Maybe ppl with less RAM might experience more lag with forest made of single trees than with forest patches because memory needs to be swapped to HD.

Forest patches are also better for planes and choppers since they can oversee a larger area.
Now if the forest is made out of single trees and the maximum number of objects displayed on the screen is 256 (the limit in the OFP config) a much smaller area of forest is displayed.
Also tanks behind some forest might not be displayed because the single trees of the forest in the foreground allready use up the 256 object limit. With forest patches, a much bigger area can be filled with forest without using much objects.


So there ARE reasons why BIS used forest patches beside beeing too lazy to place all the single trees

(In fact, you can be even lazier and use only those rectangular shaped forest patches to place forest and then exchange them with the 2 triangular forest patches with the config. Just look into the original config for the BIS maps for examples.)

[lis]

i decided not to use the forrest blocks because when i flew over the forrest in a chopper, the blocks from above changed shape into little cross thingies, if you get what i mean.. and i dont really like the look of that ;p