Map: The Western Front

[bitter moon]

S1llytanman Games - Me

This is a WW1 style map for arma reforger im developing, I started yesterday and am working to make a western front style trench warfare map, it's not a perfect start but it's something and it's a project I'm passionate about due to my love for ww1 and ww2 history.

If you have recommendations or any feedback please let me know, I'm still trying to work out the kwerks and kinks on this map so it's a bit rough right now.

https://reforger.armaplatform.com/workshop/6244457B73C7E7A4

Current additions:

• 3 barbed top trench lines

• one town

• a military barracks connected to the middle trench line for reinforcements

• craters from artillery strikes in No Mans Land

• Dead trees in No Mans land

Right now I have it so you run out of the trenches past the barbed wire,

I want to use blender after this project to try and make guns from the era for a more immersive ww1 experience.

[floral copper]

YES!! FINALLY. WWI!!!!

I already have a chemical warfare mod installed on my server, the Wehrmacht mod, the Turkish army mod (it adds the helmets that the British use), and the Mosin nagant (I use it because it's a bolt action and it has good animations.)

So this is going to be awesome once it's finished

[floral copper]

Could you make the ground muddy?

[bitter moon]

Yeah that's what I'm trying to figure out, the satmap is a pain because that makes the background textures and I may have to make my own sat map,

I'm also gonna try to raise the sea levels so I can do some water stuff.

I've got the ground a bit of a dead dirt type of thing right now so it's not dark and it's not alive but I will try to get that stuff muddy and the sat map changed

[floral copper]

Okay

[jovial bane]

Making your own satmap is actually preferred, you can do this using the painted ground textures.
Try placing lakes before using sea level for inland water.

[floral copper]

I see what you're doing with releasing it before November 11th

[bitter moon]

yeah, i plan on making an operation with the map maybe a series of operations based on the western front

[floral copper]

Nice

Is there going to be a GM mode?

[bitter moon]

yeah, i think i have a muddy texture of a satmap when I messed around with colors saturation and stuff, thank you for telling me about lakes, that helps alot. right now I'm just placing wood walls in the trenches and making them more trench like instead of dugouts

[bitter moon]

i added a gm mode i thought, is it having troubles loading it?

[floral copper]

The mod isn't up I don't think

[jovial jetty]

Great to see a WW1 map! im excited to see the progress and would love to experience a WW1 scenario

[flint glen]

Now this looks sick

[bitter moon]

im sending out an updated version of the map,

made it look more muddy with adding puddles to the trenches, making the german trenches more wood and prepared with also a bit of damage to them i didn't change the first trench since the germans never made it the allies did,

i also added water to the craters

the gm mode should be working as well, ill post screenshots of how it looks once i get in game

these are the screenshots of what i have now

its looking alot more like a no mans land environment

Btw, I have not tested it yet but I think the wood walls for the trenches are destructible

[flint glen]

I’m not an expert in trench making or warfare but from what I know:
-most if not all ww1 trenches had firing steps so would be just deeper than head height

-they had bunkers within them

-and I think the walls were a bit steeper

I get that this is a wip and it looks really awesome so far but just wanted to give a few pointers for more accuracy

Not sure how helpful these are but just wanted to put an image to what I’m talking about

[bitter moon]

Yeah, they did, I'm still trying to figure out how to implement that into it but for now you should be able to like the wall to do that.

[flint glen]

Cool

[bitter moon]

The german trenches were also better then the british and French trenches so yeah I'm trying to make it as historically accurate as I can while also making it playable still

[grave trellis]

dope stuff

[bitter moon]

I have just released an update adding more to the map, more roads and 2 military bases one of which has a damaged forest, I need to work on the terrain more and expand the town so its bigger and has ruined buildings but i think its good for now

i will be adding more forest's and possibly another town and or a mountain range for fighting like the Italian front in the alps

all depends on that my capabilities are

[floral copper]

This reminds me of a lyric form The End of The War To End Wars by Sabaton.
"November 11th settling the score. 15 to 20 million. Almost half of the dead civilian." It's a great song.

[bitter moon]

it is a great song

[flint glen]

So how big will this map be?

[bitter moon]

I'm planning on making it at least big enough for 2 towns, another trench line and stuff right now I added a dug out mountain type thing and added pine forests, as time goes on ill shave down the forests and add some more stuff, basically the forests are just there as a placeholder till i add more to the map

so i plan on makin it at least medium/largly sized but enough stuff that its not as repetitive as falujia

also i released an update

i added pine forests, expanded the town did some stuff that i took inspiration from all quiet on the western front, ad infinitum and a picture, added a few bodies to no mans land, for some reason the blood decals in the trenches dont show up but ill fix it

and I'm surprised i was able to add a body in barbed wire, i mean I'm happy.. poor soul but I've wanted to add something like that

[bitter moon]

i added a small second town to the map also clothed the dead bodies and the clothes may clip but thats the best i could do for it

[bitter moon]

I'm stupid the mod was private.. im making it public now

[bitter moon]

I changed the military site in the trenches to be a castle named chateau Verdun, not historically accurate but i couldn't find a manor so a ruined castle would do, I also added names to the trenches so trench one, two and three. the town is now named Verdun although its a dwarfed Verdun and i plan on slowly making it bigger as I go along. I also added the artilary as a prop for some visual effect, made a ruined house on fire and clothed the Bodies and added more of them into no mans land. im gonna try and do more tommorow if i get the time

anyone got any ideas what I should name the 2 military sites? ones for Germany ones for France

[frigid agate]

@tame plover show koko this

[bitter moon]

Just so people know, my progress may be slow due to schooling and work, I also have to study for a drivers test on the 21st of this month, I will do what I can within the time I have so I wont just stop making it till I'm finished with all that I will be making it when I'm most available while also maintaining my personal life and getting it all done 50/50

I just got home from work so imma be working on the arma projects I have till 12am tonight.

[floral copper]

It's still not there

[bitter moon]

That's odd... if it's not there then I don't know what's going on with it

[bitter moon]

Are you looking for the mod through the website? xbox in game workshop? or pc in game workshop?

[grave trellis]

I see it on the website

[bitter moon]

I'm going to install arma on my xbox and do some tests after I'm finished work tonight, it should be public since that's what its listed as

[floral copper]

Xbox

Nvm. I just found it

[bitter moon]

I added a little update naming the military sites

• Camp Jackson

• Lagerachse

[bitter moon]

So the bugs I've found are are,

• you can not open the map,

• you cant spawn groups of enemy's

You can spawn enemies individually but not in groups.

Imma try and figure out why the map isn't working first, then I'll try and fix the group spawns.

[fair current]

Do you have a map entity with the map data?

[bitter moon]

No, I do not yet, imma look into that

[fair current]

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_Reforger:2D_Map_Creation

[bitter moon]

Thank you

[fair current]

Np

[floral copper]

Also, the sky turns white when I try to put rain on in the weather, the AI doesn't follow commands, move, or even shoot, and vehicles don't move at all.

[bitter moon]

I just found that out, I'm not at my PC for the weekend so when I get back I'll figure it out.

I could have sworn I added all the proper AI behaviour entity's and settings but I guess it didn't work so imma figure that out on sunday

[jovial bane]

Probably save yourself a lot of head scratching if you follow these tutorials:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1viZSm7OquK8vhahskP0Bthy9uQufmz2PA01g1SHzFd0/edit#heading=h.2e4jejolrtwg
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19VrUpAId4UGjykBw1rTP375Q9l2udNIEHPhTzqEgrSc/edit#heading=h.whwy2bctj3ex

Combined they cover just about everything, including AI navmesh, stuck vehicles, etc.

[bitter moon]

Yeah that honestly helps, thank you.

[bitter moon]

I got the map working, now for the AI behavior

[bitter moon]

Hey, can you send me a picture of what you mean by the sky is white? When I put rain on its cloudy and rains normally

[bitter moon]

Patch update 1.19

• AI now spawn in groups, shoot each other and have behavior set up so they should act like AI just like in normal maps.

• The Map has been added so the map now opens and shows a functional map

• Vehicles now move on the terrain and no longer stay completely still

I'm Hopeful that this fixes the major issues regarding gameplay and immersion to the map.

[bitter moon]

Welp, I somehow managed to mess up the map, I cant open the file, when I do it doesn't load my map or anything when I load the .eproj file it's broken but the current update is not

When I make a new enfusion project arma tools crashes because of a .edds file that keeps loading when it shouldn't because I deleted it entirely. But now I have to figure out how to fix that then make a new map of the western front map or perhaps a different type of western front, or a different ww1 map entirely, all depends.

hopefully I can make it more better now that I have experience and know the proper basics of modding maps and I have mine as a representation of it

I have tried to recover my mod but all attempts at it have not worked... when I load the mod it doesn't even show the section "TheWesternFront" with the map, it just loads Arma Reforger as the main project

[bitter moon]

I got it fixed and I also fixed the white sky

Also the video is dark but it gets brighter.

[twin ivy]

Good to see your pushing through all the problems. You're making good progress at a good speed. Good work.

[floral copper]

Thank god

[storm meteor]

No man's land looks good. Can't wait to get shot and bleed out while I watch an artillery barrage kill everyone around me

[rugged kernel]

Are you guys that are working on this project going to be pushing out weapons, gear and clothing as well?

[frigid agate]

I think its one person
we have a project of our own called iron youth, but its been very slow