Make Chernarus an Island??????????

[Parazight 1594]

"Geographical eyesore"

lol

I kind of like it.  The debug zone is like a big sign to people that are too stupid to be playing the game. It says, "Hey Dumbass! You don't even have 10 minutes worth of orienteering training. Please ask for a refund, you're too much of a moron to play this game!"

Edited July 19, 2016 by Parazight

[sneakydude 480]

I love the idea, and it will give us boating ideas. I would even go as far as adding in smaller islands. Not huge ones but tiny ones with enough space to hide that little base you always wanted.

 

[Parazight 1594]

18 hours ago, FlimFlamm said:

The only thing being mutilated is my immersion when I accidentally wander too close to the debug zone. This unnaturally straight line is not to be passed, or even approached or looked at; it is not a playable region. I hate having to constantly consider this when I look at the map or navigate near the debug zone.

So, as your toon sprinted for a good 2 kilometers towards the debug zone, you never lost immersion?  You never encountered impassable terrain at all, huh?  Really, the manicured wilderness of Chernarus doesn't represent real woodland areas at all.  Nowhere can you just flat out sprint at full speed, just having to strafe a tiny bit to dodge huge swaths of brush or downed trees.  There will never be a video game that accurately reflects how much work it is to actually navigate through unkept areas like the north tries to do. 

Aside, why change chernarus? Make a new map!  Variety is better. Amirite?

[FlimFlamm 509]

On 7/19/2016 at 1:04 PM, Parazight said:

So, as your toon sprinted for a good 2 kilometers towards the debug zone, you never lost immersion?  You never encountered impassable terrain at all, huh?  Really, the manicured wilderness of Chernarus doesn't represent real woodland areas at all.  Nowhere can you just flat out sprint at full speed, just having to strafe a tiny bit to dodge huge swaths of brush or downed trees.  There will never be a video game that accurately reflects how much work it is to actually navigate through unkept areas like the north tries to do. 

Aside, why change chernarus? Make a new map!  Variety is better. Amirite?

Alternate maps are going to make an appearance for sure with beta modding tools and sometime after 1.0 is released and the devs run out of work to do, so why focus so much on improving Chernarus?

Having more maps is good; I'm with you 100% there, but at the same time, having the absolute best possible default map can only be a good thing.

Having played DayZ basically since it was released as a mod for Arma 2, I have developed a love/hate relationship with Chernarus; my interest in the land stagnated. When they first started heavily modifying Chernarus (into Chernarus +) I felt indifferent, and I was screaming at the top of my [Caps Lock] on the forums about how we need to put Utes off the coast (I still would not mind hehe) and wanted the devs to instantly begin coding new maps... But now thatChernarus + is at where it is, I cannot get enough of it. The amount of improvement and addition they've achieved is massive and I find myself exploring new and modified areas with wide eyes just as I once did in my DayZ youth.

In short, more maps are valuable and desirable, but what is perhaps even more valuable and desirable is first and foremost having one very refined, and very large, standard map; making Chernarus expandable in 360 degrees seems like a great way to encourage a future of this. If we also desire and value "newness", then expanding Chernarus by whatever means would serve us just as well as making an entirely new map.

P.S, as far as realism and immersion goes, sprinting through a woodland forest at less than realistic speeds feels like nothing compared to emerging from said forest only to find and endless barren wasteland with no unique graphical features whatsoever. :D

Edited July 20, 2016 by FlimFlamm

[sneakydude 480]

Yes because many of us have done the cherno map for so long in arma 3 too.

After awhile it does get repetitive.

[FlimFlamm 509]

On 7/19/2016 at 11:39 AM, sneakydude said:

I love the idea, and it will give us boating ideas. I would even go as far as adding in smaller islands. Not huge ones but tiny ones with enough space to hide that little base you always wanted.

 

The inspiration for this thread came from thinking about boats and the ocean, and about how pointless/useless they are going to be...

It really would give boats immense utility, even if there are no massive islands. I would be OK with a couple more islands the size of skalitsky and a bunch of smaller islands to give players something to dream about.

I would also be interested in a small island that has an un-scaleble coast, requiring aircraft to get onto it. Islands have so much possibility...

[sneakydude 480]

I really enjoyed the boats in arma 3, the exile mod and epoch. The physics seemed to be ok for what it was.

If BI would give us whatever asset we wanted imported to dayz from Arma, etc.. i would be ok to rework another map.

I never did get finished the map i was working on for arma 3, epoch, waited for exile to finish and never went back.

[FlimFlamm 509]

On 7/19/2016 at 10:21 AM, bfisher said:

Or perhaps a giant "visible" barrier in the shape of a mountain?  The ceiling on the helicopters and aircraft doesn't need to be that high.

 

Well, sorta it does.

Call me a stickler, but aircraft tend to have maximum reachable altitudes. This altitude is stupidly high for large and powerful aircraft, so high that nobody is going to ever go up there for any justifiable reason, but for smaller aircraft, which can go "high" by ant standards, have highly varying maximum altitudes.

Here is a very crude approximation that shows the relative maximum altitude of a real world Little Bird Heli:

The max altitude it can reach is around 5km or 18000 feet (the green line) Thee grey plane represents the play area of Chernarus, 15km squared.

 

[BeefBacon 1185]

As I recall, the devs poo-pooed this idea. Not sure why. It's been suggested before.

On 18/07/2016 at 10:22 PM, FlimFlamm said:

You wash up/turn-up on shore (somehow) in Chernarus, a region in the Czech Republic

Chernarus is a fictional country, not a region of the Czech Republic. The Chernarus map is only a small part of the whole of Chernarus - a region called South Zagoria. The events of Arma 2 are canon in DayZ - US forces are deployed in Chernarus, where a civil war is ongoing, in opposition to the rebels and the Russian forces that back them. DayZ takes place some time after Arma 2, which is why we see all the burnt-out tanks, old crashed choppers, things like that. That being the case, Chernarus cannot be an island because it has already been established that it is a part of the mainland.

The edge of the map is ugly as sin. A mountain range would be a pretty elegant solution if not for the helicopters. Simply adding coastline around the map wouldn't really work anyway, unless you want to totally rip up the geography of half the map. Remember that the further inland you go, the higher above sea level you get. Putting a coastline at the top of the map would mean you'd either have to have one hell of a cliff face, or you'd have to lower the elevation of the entire north of the map - and that probably isn't ideal.

Somebody else has already made this point - it'd be better if there's a map made from scratch that is designed to be an island, rather than just putting water around Chernarus and calling it an island.

[FlimFlamm 509]

4 minutes ago, BeefBacon said:

As I recall, the devs poo-pooed this idea. Not sure why. It's been suggested before.

Chernarus is a fictional country, not a region of the Czech Republic. The Chernarus map is only a small part of the whole of Chernarus - a region called South Zagoria. The events of Arma 2 are canon in DayZ - US forces are deployed in Chernarus, where a civil war is ongoing, in opposition to the rebels and the Russian forces that back them. DayZ takes place some time after Arma 2, which is why we see all the burnt-out tanks, old crashed choppers, things like that. That being the case, Chernarus cannot be an island because it has already been established that it is a part of the mainland.

The edge of the map is ugly as sin. A mountain range would be a pretty elegant solution if not for the helicopters. Simply adding coastline around the map wouldn't really work anyway, unless you want to totally rip up the geography of half the map. Remember that the further inland you go, the higher above sea level you get. Putting a coastline at the top of the map would mean you'd either have to have one hell of a cliff face, or you'd have to lower the elevation of the entire north of the map - and that probably isn't ideal.

Somebody else has already made this point - it'd be better if there's a map made from scratch that is designed to be an island, rather than just putting water around Chernarus and calling it an island.

I've never heard of the Arma storyline being DayZ cannon. AFAIC unless it falls out of Rocket's (or now at this point, Hick's) mouth, then the lore is really up in the air.

This interpretation does make sense, but it does not necessitate that Chernarus be attached to a mainland. For me the written language everywhere is what makes me "believe" that I'm somewhere in the Czech republic, that's just me though.

Regarding chopping the map and altering what is currently within game bounds, I'm against that. What I proposed was expanding the game-play region and modifying only the terrain that is currently in debug territory (adapting it and slowly lowering elevation until a coast). It would make the map much bigger, at least 20% bigger, which for me is worth it alone regardless of canonical lore. In addition, playable waters in 360 degrees solves the debug zone eye sore problem entirely while adding 50% more playable ocean terrain, in addition to a possible steady stream of small and unique islands being added.

The lore argument is indeed weak when faced with the amount of benefit to playability that such a change would bring in the long run.

[BeefBacon 1185]

14 minutes ago, FlimFlamm said:

I've never heard of the Arma storyline being DayZ cannon. AFAIC unless it falls out of Rocket's (or now at this point, Hick's) mouth, then the lore is really up in the air.

This interpretation does make sense, but it does not necessitate that Chernarus be attached to a mainland. For me the written language everywhere is what makes me "believe" that I'm somewhere in the Czech republic, that's just me though.

Regarding chopping the map and altering what is currently within game bounds, I'm against that. What I proposed was expanding the game-play region and modifying only the terrain that is currently in debug territory (adapting it and slowly lowering elevation until a coast). It would make the map much bigger, at least 20% bigger, which for me is worth it alone regardless of canonical lore. In addition, playable waters in 360 degrees solves the debug zone eye sore problem entirely while adding 50% more playable ocean terrain, in addition to a possible steady stream of small and unique islands being added.

The lore argument is indeed weak when faced with the amount of benefit to playability that such a change would bring in the long run.

The devs have stated that they're not going to expand the map any further. I don't know why, but that's what they've said. It's possible that they'll change their minds - but it might be an engine limitation thing.

I'm not too fussed about the lore - I'm just pointing out that Chernarus is a fictional country and not a region of the Czech Republic, and that established lore dictates that Chernarus is part of the mainland. It's not especially important, I just waned to point that out.

It'd be nice if Chernarus was an island, sure. I certainly wouldn't be against it. However, I'd prefer it if they designed a brand new map that has been designed as an island from the ground up rather than, as I said, just slapping a coast around Chernarus.

Edited July 20, 2016 by BeefBacon

[FlimFlamm 509]

Still not sure which lore cannon you fired from :D

I'm only half with you about preferring a new map.

I want maps to supplement what Chernarus lacks, not to make it obsolete and create unnecessary division. It saddens me that the Devs don't plan to expand Chernarus but i'll never give up on our current marriage! We can make it work! We can change! THINK OF THE CHILDREN~!

[BeefBacon 1185]

2 minutes ago, FlimFlamm said:

Still not sure which lore cannon you fired from :D

I'm only half with you about preferring a new map.

I want maps to supplement what Chernarus lacks, not to make it obsolete and create unnecessary division. It saddens me that the Devs don't plan to expand Chernarus but i'll never give up on our current marriage! We can make it work! We can change! THINK OF THE CHILDREN~!

No, really. I'm pretty sure the devs have said it takes place in the Arma universe - an alternative timeline, of course. Besides that, it takes place in Chernarus - the fictional country in Arma 2. It'd be like setting a game in Cyrodiil and saying it's not in Tamriel, and Elder Scrolls? What are those?

As for the division thing - I can see where you're coming from. It's a legitimate concern, but maps will always offer different things. I've not played the DayZ mod, but I'm sure people still play Chernarus alongside... Taviana? Namalsk? They're all popular maps that offer different things - I doubt Chernarus will be rendered obsolete, not for a very long time, anyway.

[bfisher 561]

1 hour ago, FlimFlamm said:

Well, sorta it does.

Call me a stickler, but aircraft tend to have maximum reachable altitudes. This altitude is stupidly high for large and powerful aircraft, so high that nobody is going to ever go up there for any justifiable reason, but for smaller aircraft, which can go "high" by ant standards, have highly varying maximum altitudes.

Here is a very crude approximation that shows the relative maximum altitude of a real world Little Bird Heli:

The max altitude it can reach is around 5km or 18000 feet (the green line) Thee grey plane represents the play area of Chernarus, 15km squared.

 

It's a game.  They can program the ceiling to be whatever height they want.  There is no reason on earth to have the aircraft fly higher than 1000 or so feet.  You wouldn't be able to see anything on the ground smaller than a building and you would look like a dot to anyone who was on the ground.

 

[FlimFlamm 509]

7 minutes ago, bfisher said:

It's a game.  They can program the ceiling to be whatever height they want.  There is no reason on earth to have the aircraft fly higher than 1000 or so feet.  You wouldn't be able to see anything on the ground smaller than a building and you would look like a dot to anyone who was on the ground.

 

Actually, 1km is not nearly enough of max altitude.

Aircraft engines can often be heard for long distances, especially where there is little other noise pollution.

The first main reason to go very high is to be practically undetectable to people on the ground by sight or by sound.

Secondly, the sky is not always a friendly place.

Having many options of altitude to choose from means you can avoid running into other aircraft whose occupants might want to shoot at you. At least 4km is required for this to be feasible IMO (experience coming from extensive use of aircraft of all kinds from the mod).

That said, the skybox is basically unlimited, as is the debug zone and the ocean surrounding chernarus. You can basically just keep going out into it... For this reason the skybox in DayZ was actually always the defacto maximum altitude your aircraft could achieve.

Edited July 20, 2016 by FlimFlamm

[Troll_Hunter 54]

Just an example of some nice cliffs:

http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/6951717/783ad5d8/nederlander_met_speelgoed.html