Chokar Projekt: A Baltic Sea Island

[half dragon]

Hey guys,
Decided to create a post about my upcoming Reforger custom map Kökar island (roughly pronounced Cho-Kar). This is a 12,8x12,8km map of the Kökar island, located in the Åland archipelago halfway between Finland and Sweden in the Baltic Sea.

This map was originally just a test of the new world tools for Arma Reforger when it came out, and then had a period of dormancy for 2 years while I had to attend to other projects. Recently I got into Reforger again and decided to update it from a tech test to a more release suitable standard. This is a very data driven map, continuing on techniques I learnt while making (unreleased) custom maps for Arma 2 and 3. It leverages the open data of the Finnish national land survey, and features a high-resolution heightfield and satmap, with data driven object placement. As such, the map is 90% done with regards to object placement, all residential houses, trees and such are placed and is fully gameplay ready even at this stage. What now remains is detailing, to add the little touches that makes it feel like a real place.

The map consists of the main island of Kökar, which is roughly 10km across, with a smattering of smaller islands surrounding it. The main island has a port, two larger settlements and cottages and houses spread all around. There are also some pretty large portions of uninhabited land with small forest between bare cliffs. It is fairly flat compared to something like Everon, and pretty dense in foilage, making for some almost jungle-like conditions outside of the populated areas. The small islands have a few summer cottages here and there but are largely uninhabited. The lack of boats in vanilla Reforger is a problem if you want to include island hopping, but luckily the BTR, BRDM and LAV are all amphibious.

I have ported Game master, conflict and the Everon Combat Ops mission to the map right now, and they play just fine, though I have not tested any large scale multiplayer yet.

Release date is TBD.

[half dragon]

A random shot from testing combat ops. This is the conditions at about 22:30, because of the high latitudes the nights are very brief

A view from the main settlement, Karlby

As you can see, the roads are custom made with the typical red granite based asphalt that is used on Åland. Ironically, the granite on Kökar itself is a grey/brown and was exported at times.

https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kökargranit#/media/Fil:Lönnrotinkatu_5,_Helsinki.jpg

here you can see pictures of the Kökar granite, and some examples of houses the have facades in the material.

[muted hinge]

This looks sick! I can't wait for it to release, is there an estimated release date?

[bright scaffold]

Cool! Nice to see more nordic maps

[half dragon]

Nah not right now - it probably won't be too long though. I just want to flesh it out a bit more first

Here is a satmap view - the yellow areas are where I have done the detailing. Im using this image to keep track of my work. It might seem quite unfinished but the population centers are really what needs doing - adding all the small touches to make it feel real. Everon is a great example of game worlds done right, hugely impressive. So big boots to fill

[muted hinge]

Awesome!

[opal atlas]

Looking good. Look forward to testing.

[rich basin]

Nice to see, that comes more scandinavian map maker 🙂 greetings from Tampere

[half dragon]

Added a bunch of small ponds and irrigation ponds. This some water at the bottom of the old granite quarry located in the southwest of the map

[pseudo crest]

This exactly what I like to see, real world locations

[half dragon]

Thanks, yeah it was a real hang-up for me for the longest time: the typical "open-world" microcosm game where the cities are 5 minutes walking distance from each other and there is a encounter behind every bend. Bohemias games have always been better in this regard, and Everon is IMHO the best so far.

[half dragon]

Some small updates

[opal atlas]

Nice

[half dragon]

As some of you might now, the real-life Åland islands are demilitarized since the Crimean war in the 19th century, however many places around the archipelago were fortified during WW1 and WW2. These fortifications were demolished after the respective wars, and the ruins of the forts remain around the SW of Kökar. I decided to re-imagine the area if the forts hadn't been demolished, adding a bit of detail around this area. Here you can see a gun position and observation post. I made these using what can be found in the vanilla game so the illusion is maybe not perfect but with a bit of detailing I hope to make this beliavable enough

[half dragon]

Adding a bit of local flavor to the Combat Ops mission conversion 🙂

[sullen elk]

Will the reskinned clothing overwrite base game clothes?

[half dragon]

No, I have made new clothes based on existing one, and have made new variants of all FIA soldiers (including groups) that uses this new equipment, so it will be optional to use them. It was a bit of a tangent, and now once it's more or less done I will continue developing the map

[sullen elk]

Will this be a seperate mod? With all due respect I don’t think I’d want to use it, I have my own cold war Finnish camouflages

[half dragon]

Looking good. Well the m62 uniforms will be bundled with the map, but it is purely up to the user if they want to use them. If you want to change the included scenarios to use your own uniforms that's fairly easy.

[half dragon]

Are these reskins of the basic soviet uniform btw`?

[sullen elk]

Bottom is the kzs pants top is the FIA jacket helmet is the soviet one

[half dragon]

Used the same pants, the US BDU jacket and the M1 steel helmet. Though arguably the soviet is more correct. The LBVs are a mishmash of Chicoms, US ALICE gear and soviet harness. I want to make a backstory of a local resistance supported by the FDF and using equipment from here and there, so not FDF regulars

[sullen elk]

Looks way better than mine, I wrote a sort of personal canon for FIA which is that it's an international organization initially formed to combat Soviet occupation in Eastern Europe after ww2, and as the cold war escalated it was largely supplied by Sweden and Finland and to some extent clandestine NATO assets

[half dragon]

Some screenshots from a play session

Combat Ops really scratches that Arma 3 Pilgrimage itch.. In this mission I started out in the eastern base camp in a drenching rain, heading south through the wilderness areas you can see in the first picture, making my way to assist an attack near the central lake of Oppsjön where I managed to outfight the enemy after a long firefight spent flanking the AI. The rain stopped as the sun was setting, and I made my way to Karlby to steal a boat. I landed on the wrong shore though and was quickly caught by several patrols that managed to kill me before I could retreat.

[opal atlas]

Nice

[thorn thorn]

Is this out yet?

[half dragon]

Not yet, there are a few things I want to polish and fix before release.. I'm aiming to release this summer tho, so it shouldn't be long before a public version is released

[half dragon]

I have been playing with the idea of hosting a public test of my map this weekend for anyone who is interested, to get some feedback of my map. Are there anyone who is interested in that? We could play through the Combat Ops mission i ported from Everon, it's good fun and gives a chance to see most of the island

[wraith iris]

a cool idea! i'd be down for a playtest : )

[sullen elk]

What time

[half dragon]

This weekend (friday, saturday or sunday, after 20:00 UTC+3)

[half dragon]

Let's try to find a time that works.. react 1️⃣ for Friday, 2️⃣ for Saturday or 3️⃣ for Sunday.

[half dragon]

Also, on Saturday there is a fair chance the start will be later at maybe 22:00 due to work related things.

[half dragon]

Since sunday is better for me and got the same amount of votes as Saturday, we'll do the preview session on Sunday, starting at approximately 20:00 utc+3

[opal atlas]

Could be a good idea for future reference to use a website like this one to copy and paste the code into discord so that the date/time is displayed in everyone's local time 🙂 https://hammertime.cyou/en-GB

[half dragon]

<t:1748797200:f>
Heh, that's pretty cool. Thanks @opal atlas

@sullen elk and @wraith iris I sent you a friend request, once you accept I'll add you to a group chat

[half dragon]

Anyone interested in a quick showcase/test session of my map in 45 minutes?

[half dragon]

I realize there was perhaps not enough warning time, we'll try a testing session on Tuesday (June 10th) around 2030 utc+3

[half dragon]

bad news, have to postpone todays testing session 😦

[wraith iris]

Happens, dw. Keep us updated, when you will do another : )

[half dragon]

Had some time to continue detailing Karlby, the main settlement

[half dragon]

More Karlby - one of my favorite places is this short bit of gravel road

[half dragon]

Back from my summer vacation - weather has been way too hot to be inside working on anything on the computer. But I will very soon make my map public for anyone to try!

[wraith iris]

welcome back : )

[half dragon]

https://reforger.armaplatform.com/workshop/597143D3108287CE-Chokarisland

Released! Still might be some rough edges here ande there but please check it out. LMK what you think!

[ocean lynx]

I bit flat, but i like the concept.

[half dragon]

Yeah just noticed that power line

It looks pretty flat when you do GM camera or fly above it, but there is a lot of micro terrain to make infantry fights more interesting

[half dragon]

Will upload a new update today:
0.1.18: Fixed most (all hopefully) of the power poles on road bugs.
Added some detailing around the lake of Oppsjön

[half dragon]

Pushed an update today.
0.1.19
Fixed the power lines for real this time
Added a few rickety wooden bridges between the main islands to lessen choke points
Changed the cameramanager to fix the FOV bug

[half dragon]

Detailing around Överboda and the road leading up to Harparnäs harbour. A lot of missing houses and structures were added

[half dragon]

Estholm will also get a lot of new buildings added

Also I wanted to give a shout-out to @maiden glen at INET who is running a 128 player Conflict server with this map, If you are curious about my map it's a great way to experience it. Just search for Chokar or INET in the server browser.

[half dragon]

Today I'm taking a look at making the beaches better around the island. Manually fixing up every bay to look nice is probably not doable in a reasonable timeframe so I've tried to device a data-driven method that looks at slope and height on the DEM to find spots suitable for rocky beaches, and then converts these selected pixels to vector data in QGIS.

[half dragon]

In total, over 4500 beach areas are added, they really add a lot to visual realism around the shores

[drifting breach]

Looks interesting, I'm excited to give this a try

[half dragon]

New version
0.1.20
Added over 4500 beaches with rocks and driftwood
Detailing around the village of Överboda, Estholmen, Ubbenholma, Karlby/Finnö and so on.
New asphalt texture that matches the color of the roads.
Power line fixes, again.

[tepid garnet]

I hate to ask this question, but has anyone tested this on console?

[ocean lynx]

we were playing this map on our server with console players. no issues reported

[tepid garnet]

I appreciate the response!

[valid ether]

Hey! Is it possible to load the map without GM, conflict or any other scenarios? Just the map itself. I’m asking because we play one life TVT games and to make a scenario we need just the world itself

[sullen elk]

@half dragon hey man navmesh broke

[half dragon]

Roger. I have had troubles uploading. I'll try to get a fix done 👍

[half dragon]

I have started a process to redo all the forests on the island, I was never satisfied with how I implemented the forests originally

So I went back to the LIDAR point clouds and did a new processing of them to get more fidelity

[sullen elk]

What about the ground? Will you make it more foresty rather than just grass?

[half dragon]

Something I'd like to do yeah, the maximum number of textures per tile is a problem though since most places I have maxed out 5/5

Here is a image of the new forests, the change is a bit subtle but it should be more conforming to reality

[wraith iris]

This looks cool! Gotta check it out.
Have you also added some dead trees, fallen trees and some debris?
I think this helps to make the woods more alive and diverse.

[ocean flicker]

love the map a lot of dead space in my opinion need maybe one major town in the top right and maybe a makehsift airfield but the map is solid love the terrain

[half dragon]

Yeah the constraints of reality makes it pretty empty. I am seriously considering making an "expanded" edition of the map that will have some light sci-fi or post-apocalypse vibes that would free me to add more diverse things to the map. Also autumn season.

[sullen elk]

Maybe just a little more urban would be nice

[half dragon]

The fall version didn't take too long to make actually

[half dragon]

Testing some ideas for the "expanded" version, including a quite drastically lowered sea level to make the lack of boats less of a problem. Inspired by HL2, though not specifically tied to that lore

Will feature more ruins

[sullen elk]

Looking forward to the next update

[half dragon]

It has been quite fun to do this new sci-fi or alternate universe version of the map, I have a lot of ideas for new points of interest and new ambience

[sullen elk]

Check out Simon Stålenhag (Swedish), might give you some ideas.

[half dragon]

Yeah I love him, even have a book by him on the bookshelf in my office. The sort of mundane desolation in his works is pretty similar to the vibe in HL2, a very difficult feeling to capture

[sullen elk]

I think what could capture that would be some of the industrial assets from Kolgujev

[sullen elk]

Love more detail on the town, will this also come to the summer version?

Also for the autumn version, how about making many of the buildings ruins? Maybe some artillery craters around strategic areas, vehicle wrecks along the roads - basically just making it look war-torn

[half dragon]

I have three versions: normal summer and fall, as well as the expanded, fall season, sci-fi inspired edition

Ruins are already part of the expanded version but there isn't enough variety of ruined houses to change all of them to ruins, or even all houses in one village

[half dragon]

Working on a new faction to complement the Expanded version of the island

The source of inspiration is probably pretty obvious but I wanted it to still have a cold war vibe. Uses Big Chungus weapons and the Project X-ray gas mask pack