Performance testing is going to be interesting. I'm a little worried about the quantity of trees. I've tried to be very careful with portals and map layout. Still, foliage is rather thick in some areas.

My plan is to test with a 16k fog range and see if the portals are holding up properly. Then, when we play with a max of a 10-12k culling fog range things should perform even better. (I hear rumors that snipers can only shoot 8000u in CoD, not sure if that applies to CoD:UO. In which case I'll go with a max fog of 8000u.)

We tested the sniping distance. A fellow clan member shot me at a range of 9500u, so the 8000u must have been a limit in the old vanilla CoD that was fixed at a later date. That means I'll be allowing fog ranges of up to 10k.

Now for some more picture spam:



This is the "south radio shack" and is one of the points that must be captured during CNQ play. I still need to add some boulders. The ruined tanks also need decals applied to the terrain underneath them.



This pak45 guards the SE Bridge. It's not heavily dug in, but it's going to be a nasty surprise due to the foliage around it.



Updated shot of the middle fields showing fixed fence lines.



Russian #2 base, looking east towards the russian spawn area at the far end. Again, there should probably be another boulder or three.



This bunker guards the middle of the Russian defensive line. It has a mortar on top and firing slits for portable MGs below.



A shot of the russian spawn house (looking south). There's a trench line that runs from underneath the spawn house over to the treeline between Russian #1 and Russian #2 bases. It serves as an escape route for infantry to get from their spawn to the treeline without getting shot.



Interior of the russian spawn house tunnel. That lamp is too bright and needs to be toned down.

Another bunker interior. This is the interior of the bunker with the mortar on top of it.

One design choice that I'm going to make is that the brown box in the corner is going to be my "satchel box". Anywhere that you see that particular box design will indicate that there is a satchel spawn there. That will give players clear indications of where to find satchels (and it's a simple brush that doesn't add hardly any tris).



A view from the top of the Russian #1 base towards where the germans will probably attack from.



A section of the north road that needs a lot of detail work.



Another shot of the bunker with the mortar on top. I'm fairly pleased with the alpha blending on top and the decals along the sides (where the snow meets the bunker wall).



The southeast bridge. I need to free up trees elsewhere on the map and add them back around this area.



View from the Russian pak45 that overlooks the middle of the map.



A hidden mortar position.



A nearly final version of the V2 rocket launch site.

Awsome, the roads especially look superb. How big is this map in all, it looks huge? Also where did you get that russian pak artillary model and does that and the mortars acually fire? that would be awsome.

Thanks, the roads are a real PITA some days. They're made out of patch mesh, 5 points across and 3 points long. Stretched and bent as needed. Unfortunately, this sometimes means the player can fall through the mesh if it's bent / reshaped too often. So I often have to redo sections of roads once I finalize their shape.

The Russian pak45, the German pak40 and the mortar are all part of the After-Hourz vehicle pack. As are the winter camo'd Jagdpanzer tank, the Russian KV1 (tan colored tank), the Russian BT7 (small medium green tank) and the Russian T34-76 (dark green tanks). You can get that zip file from the After-Hourz website (I'm not associated with them, just a big fan of their work).

If you want to see the tanks and weapons in use, go to a map running Barbarossa or Smolensk. (I recommend {MOB}'s servers.) The Barbarossa map only uses the mortar once, so you may want to look for a Smolensk CNQ game to see the mortar in use.

The mortar works fairly well as long as you keep in mind its limitations. The minimum range is 1500u and you can't hit anything closer then that. The maximum range is 4200u. The "sweet spot" is 2500u to 3500u away from the mortar position. Anything closer then 2500u forces the player to aim so far up that accuracy goes out the window and the player has to constantly pan up/down to check their targeting. The only way to change the range is to create a second copy of the mortar and change the underlying muzzle velocity.

The map's play area is slightly larger then the size of Barbarossa. Spawn to spawn distance is 23500u (Barbarossa is 21500-22000u). However, the map is wider then Barbarossa (which tops out around 16000u). Even though the map is wide (22000u at the widest point) it narrows down to 15000u in quite a few places and the ends are only around 12000u wide.

It follows the pattern of 3-4-3-4-3. As you move east-to-west across the map, there are 3 major avenues for vehicles leaving the spawn, which branch to 4 avenues before you reach the middle of the map where you have 3 basic avenues. Then you get to pick from 4 approaches before getting to the 3 passages leading out of the spawn. So there are plenty of funnels, bottlenecks and ambush locations.

In Base Assault, the distance from spawn is a closer match to Barbarossa then Smolensk. Here's the distances on Smolensk and Barbarossa (from the spawn area to the bases):

Smolensk

R2 - 6600
R1 - 7800
R3 - 12300

G2 - 5100
G1 - 8600
G3 - 9200

Barbarossa
- Barbarossa numbers are listed in pairs. There are two spawn locations for each side, so the range-to-spawn values are different depending on where you spawn.

R3 - 2500 to 3100
R1 - 6200 to 9400
R2 - 8700 to 9700

G2 - 2500 to 6100
G3 - 4100 to 6800
G1 - 7000 to 8300

Tuchola Forest:

R1 - 4900
R2 - 5000
R3 - 5200

G2 - 4600
G1 - 5100
G3 - 6500

...

I do have an overview map from a week or two ago that shows the overall design. Something similar will be used for the in-game map if I can get DDS files to work properly.

Tuchola Forest v044 Labeled Map

Sounds cool man, I wish I could play. Sadly I can't. My family installed something called wildblue satilite high speed kinda like direct way, and it has made my ping shoot up to around 700 even though I play smooth, I can't join any games because I get the error low ping only. They said I can't do anything about it because with satilite thats just the way it is because it has to bounce from the satlite back down to earth. I wish I could play though

We've been playing BEL on the map for a few hours each night all week. It was the easiest gametype to get working. Even though the terrain has huge gaping holes in places and not everything is in place yet, we've been having a good bit of fun. Spent too much time playing BEL this week and not enough mapping. (oops!)

BEL is working better then TDM was for testing out the map. TDM on a map this size is an exercise in frustration as neither side knows where to find the enemy. At least with BEL, the axis knows where the allied players are at and can hunt them down.

...

More pictures...

A Jagd tank sitting up on a hill, shelling the area around one of the russian bases.



Updated shot of the Russian's middle flank bunker, now surrounded by dragon's teeth tank obstacles. They're not perfect, but it still requires a good bit of finagling to get a tank or other vehicle past them.



More dragon's teeth



The north bridge with a few dragon's teeth on the far side.



Another shot of the middle of the map during a round where visibility was really horrid (very thick fog and light rain).

Pak45 position that overlooks the Russian #1 base.



Russian spawn area, this barn holds a pair of KV1s during Base Assault.



The north flank Russian base, parked in the middle of a field.



Ruined tank against a backdrop of bunkers.



Russian's middle base showing the trench position.

A darned foggy round (it's actually raining, once you pick a side and spawn in). Definitely not sniper weather during this round of play.



Another shot of the russian spawn area.



A russian tank scrape overlooking their southern base.



The southern radio shack (taken from the russian point of view).



One of the bridges down in the southern forest.

A more recent shot of the south forest area (and the bunker in the middle of the forest).



Another bridge in the south forest (there are 3 bridges on the south flank). The terrain needs to be dressed up with another bush or a few rocks.



A view of the farm area during a poor visibility round (complete with a light drizzle).



Another shot of the middle russian bunker and the dragon's teeth.



Another shot of the forest trails. Battles in the forest trails tend to be very CQB, especially of both teams are running instead of moving slow and listening.