Gaia Island Screens - long load time on 56k

[Phaeden]

Greetings all,

I am working on a massive island which I plan on releasing in mid-June.  It is currently in the Beta phase and is being reviewed by USMC-Warriors.  

To show you some of the island, I have taken some screen shots.  I hope you like them.

[Phaeden]

Sorry the pics are so large, but I wanted to show you the detail of the island.  Here are some more.

[desert_storm_dude]

good but it is going to lag bad

[Phaeden]

I have just begun the testing and those that have the island have said that overall it is smooth.  there are a few places, especially in the main town, that lag a little when first entering it.  I plan to modify it as I get reports from them.

[Leone]

Yep..it will lag for some people. But tough.....download another island then. Those of us who have higher end systems would actually like to make use of them occasionally  ;D

[esti_the_big]

aint lookin bad, but mybe make it a little bit less monoton in the ciy areas (I mean, don't use the same buildings too much, and if you do anyway, maybe put in some smaller other buildings such as little houses, and don't forget squares!

[Artak]

Whoa! The topic should be "do not open this thread with a slow connection"  :noo: ;D

Anyways.. the pictures look nice and all. Don't you think you're a bit 'repeating yourself' by placing so many exactly the same buildings in groups. I mean.. You've got like 30 pieaces of that same white house at the same spot.
And I'm also worried about the lag  

What's the estimated file size of this island?

[RED]

I tested the island on my humble 1Ghz pc with 256mb of ram (res: 1280X1034, viewdistance of 1500) and there was very little lag. As phaeden said, in the larger town areas you will encounter a couple of seconds with very poor frame rates, but after that you will have smooth playing.

RED

[SFG]

Yeah I tested it also, I have no slow down.

[Phaeden]

Regarding the repeating buildings that you can see - they will be switched in the final version.  I placed them in there just as place holders so I could judge the size of the town as well as place the roads.  Believe me, after working hundreds of hours on this island, I would not waste my time and yours by placing the same building over and over.  

Right now, the island is about 18 MB and the final will be very close to that (perhaps a little larger if I finish the custom land textures).  I am not sure of the exact size of the island, but I know that it takes a soldier 45 minutes to run from the southern border to the northern border.  It truly is a massive island.  I did not include a screen of the entire island, but it essentially fills the entire map - there are a few small "ports," but otherwise it is land almost to the edge of the map.

As for the long load time, I apologize for that, but I wanted to use pictures that were large enough so that you could see the amount of detail on the island.

Lag and latency is something that I have kept in mind as I created the island.  I know that there are a few (and just a few) areas that will cause a drop in FPS as the area loads, but I consider the momentary drop worth the size and detail of the town.  There are really on two or three areas on the map that you might experience this and if it is a problem for your computer, just don't go into that area.  As for latency while playing online, I am not sure how it will react, but I have based this island on my previous island (Phaeden's Island Beta), which I did play online and I believe that there will be very little latency as a result of the island.

To be honest, I am a little disappointed that this island has met with mostly negative responses.  I am not looking for kudos, but I have spent a ton of hours making this island for the OFP community and I would have expected at least a few "nice pictures" comments.  I hope that the OFP community is not resorting to a state where one looks a gift horse in the mouth.  I mean, it is free, it is large, it is realistic - what else do you want?

[Soldier8Boy]

Phaedan, most people just take a few pics and assume that is what the entire island is anyways. They also don't realise how different an island will look as it nears completion. I know from experience how many hours it takes just to do one of those towns with the tree covered forests behind it. I think it is looking great, I especially like the hills that you have covered with brush. The only thing I see is the similiar buildings, maybe just randomize them a bit, change a few to slightly different ones?

I know the island will be very good when it is done, just from looking at the amount of hours in each pic. Keep up the goodwork, and honestly remember that it's for fun more than for the comments from people. I've had the same negative responses on something before, aand by the time it was done most of those people changed their minds. Just keep it up. Looking good.

[Garcia]

Regarding the repeating buildings that you can see - they will be switched in the final version.  I placed them in there just as place holders so I could judge the size of the town as well as place the roads.  Believe me, after working hundreds of hours on this island, I would not waste my time and yours by placing the same building over and over.

Well, then the problem is solved, ain't it?   Almost al replys is that it's a bit to much repeating...but if you're gonna place other buildings were these are, then it won't be repeating...as long as you don't re-place all the buildings with one new type of building

Garcia

[Phaeden]

There seems to be some confusion regarding the buildings and FPS rates, so here is the clarification:

When first making the map, I placed one type of building to get the size and placement of the towns.  I did this as it is much faster than placing unique buildings.  You may also notice that some the buildings are all facing the same direction.  Both of this "problems" will be fixed in the final version.  There are a few villages that have the same buildings, but this is done to replicate tracked housing (such as in California).  These tracked housing areas only make up a very small percentage of the overall island.  Most of the towns are populated by unique buildings facing various directions.  In my opinion the towns look pretty realistic.

The other main concern that has been expressed is that of LAG.  I have placed the objects on the map so that they are far enough apart to keep FPS rates high while still giving the appearance of a dense area (both buildigns and trees).  If you look carefully on the pictures, you can see that the density of objects is relatively sparse compared to some of the other maps out there (especially the BIS maps).  This sparseness helps keep FPS rates low.  While there may be hundreds of objects on screen, most of them are at the reduced image quality so it does not hit the FPS too much.  I play on a 1.7 Ghz, Pentium 4, Windows XP, Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti 4600, with 512 RAM and experience very lag while playing at 1600x1200x32 with everything maxed and on (except object shadows).

[Commando]

Really nice island there m8!
Its just like you said, why only make boring low tech cities and boring old ofp 1 buildings when you got the res buildings!
And Is there anywhere i can get a beta version   I would like to know how my 1.2 gig computer would handle it I got a geforec 1 kind of card so..

And very nice pics, and keep up the good work