Dragon Uprising

JStevens first clued me in to the possibility of adding terrain maps to Arma 3. Then I found this here
 
  IDEA; Why don't we create a new Dragon Rising w/ Arma 3 editor. Of course change name to something more appropriate. This time the dragons finished rising, hence the thread name. Dragon Ascended, or Ascended Dragon.
 
  We could recreate the entire thing w/ added bonuses such as Russians. More vehicles. I don't know if there are points for outside seating on the littlebird but if not could be modded. So on, so forth, ad hominem, etc., etc...
Maybe even recreate original OF.
Just a thought.

We coooouuuuld! but the community in the Arma forums are very up their own arse! They can slam me for that I don't care. They slam DR enough and couldn't give a **** about this game. Some of them may be ok but the major modders and map makers of that community are devotees as are some here.

Personally I don't want to be involved in the project if it gets underway. I'd rather play arma for my own whimsical amusement and work on projects I have in mind for DR. As limited as it is, there always seems to be something just around the corner that we end up finding to make our gem better. That devoteism is what brought us the EDx, New DB's, a New forum, modulation, I think you get my point.

No offence Animus, as it is a good idea, but DR, I reckon should be seperate from the Arma community forums imho.

Oh I definitely don't mean working with Arma community. I'm talking specifically about development among ourselves. As in KEEPING DR ALIVE. I take no offence from your statements, as I completely understand. I like history but it gives me a better glimpse into the future when being weighed with trends.
I was thinking along the lines of creating this from scratch, but JJ Stevens made a good point about making games with Arma tools. We were talking about original games but after that discussion I thought "Why not DR?". FUBU
Like I said just a thought.

Hey thats sounds like a good idea lets take the wind out of Arma 2,3 Sails and make this game shine and make the arma community regret what they have done to this game.

there are a few ARMA players that take things way to far - but I like the idea and have started to look at map generation as well - when you look at the MCC and MODUS addons they are like EDx on steroids (which is what happens when a studio opens up their SDK) - lets discuss this more!

What becomes even more realistic and works to grow from is adding the rest of the Aleutian Islands as the story board of maps

But see heres the problem CM never gave out there DEv Kit. So thats why it never grew bigger like it could have like Arma. Dont get me wrong Arma is cool and has a lot to bring to the table in the since the mission editor is a lot easier for for beginners in making a mission with little coding experience. The thing OFDR has going for it though is the graphics are much more realistic along with the animations. So the things that should be changed in this game are new weapons,New weapon sounds,new vehicle sounds,and more buildings,and new vehicles.

there is a Skira Island for ArmA 2 we could possibly get ported. That would be nice ... hehehe may have to call it Kirska Island or something







ArmAholic download for the A2 version
SkiraKirska Island

well now I can stop (for now) my port of the island - checking it out shortly - thanks for the heads up!

So what kind of mods will we be able to make if we dont have the sdk for this game....I would love to see this game grow to what it should have been these are important questions to asked.What will draw other player back to this game.

here is a BI continuation of that map attempt - some nice research material

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?111424-Skarikiska-Island-from-OFP-Sunken-Dragon/page5

as for the above question, the first step would be simply to recreate the island (oriented properly as KISKA) then to rebuild the villages/bases as the core recreation (ARMA gives us the capability to IMPORT models).

At that point we have our own KISKA (formally known as SKIRA) island, free of any copyright issues because it is a real island. The models would be community based or ideally recreations of those styled in DR.

From an aesthetic aspect, the predominant amount of work seems to be painting the landscape to be as rich as what DR provided - we will se if we can strike a balance of coverage and performance since the engine is built differently (though A3 seems to be building larger islands)

From a gameplay point of view, one of the things that DR excelled in was its infantry based combat and I think that is where a good portion of the ARMA community as a whole departs.

For those that have played ARMA - we know that a good amount of ARMA players are even bigger whiners than some of the DR players we used to have on our original board.

Simple fact is there will always be differences in how people chose to play their missions but it is fair to say it is the infantry gameplay and uncluttered interface that keeps us coming back to DR.

My opinion is that ARMA as a whole can very incumbering with all of the available options and commands available - DR simplified that with very mission specific controls and a limited amount of in field tech.

With ARMA as our engine, we can easily lose sight of what made DR so playable if we don't constrain what we do in a KISKA rebuild. I believe that if players want to recreate storming the beach of Normandy or get caught up in ALL the latest military tech that is a completely different game and there are other mods out there for that.

For me, DARMA deals with a small incursion force that is infiltrating an occupied island, working mostly covertly with limited amount of weapons and tech. Since ARMA now gives us civilians to walk around with, it provides the storyline to work with insurgents. As various defenses are brought down and enemy tech is procured we elevate our capability to overturn the island control in a very CIA/BlackOps way.

For conflicts that are more DRish, simple traditional ground warfare with the ability to call in support on objective centric missions but again with an added civilian population to be concerned about and not going too overboard with every ARMA add-on, missions are completed with available weapons not an armory or warehouse weapons cache (unless you secured one!).

Anyway this got longer than I expected - these are just my ideas - if we get this off the ground it will take more than ideas to complete it. Perhaps a good place to start is what would we want to save from DR game play and how can we make DR evolve since KISKA gives us a nice jump off point into the Aleutian Islands inventory of maps.

I got the map and played it in Arma this morning. Mixed feelings tbh about this map.

After reading the thread you posted JS, it seems there is still quite some work that needs doing on it. Notably terrain and vegetation.

As always the thought of mixing the two games together using a map of Skira has brought in some of the our game's better than your game ****.

Thats just summit we'd have to be ready for if they came over here a started that. As you may gather I'm very passionate about DR and play it ten times more than Arma2, OA and A3 alpha combined. So if any of those whinge bags vent here, instant ban will be given. Why should we let that come here if we don't go over there and slag of Arma, simple as that.

Anyway, as far as the island goes, how much have you managed to create already JS, just outta curiosity?? because maybe working from an image off google earth or where ever they come from, may add a different light to the project. One thing that has always got me about Skira is the lack of waterways, streams and the odd river are deffo needed I think to add that extra variety.

Thicker vegetation, denser woodland, higher peaks etc. With the ablitiy in A3 to have better optimization for the textures I think the terrain would look pretty awesome. In A3 at the moment the terrrain is awesome, ten times better than A2 etc, so with the tools available and the combination of ideas from our experience wealth of knowledge of the island we can possible fill this out and make it pretty cool.

Be nice to make this an exclusive to the KDRA community. But thats not gunna happen is it.

anyway, keep posting!

MD

The place to start is to keep it simple. The island: pretty much what Mdog said; We need to make it a replica but then add in little extras to beef it up. I'd like the buildings to look identicle as well. It should look exactly the same, as if we only came in and added to it. Additions such as some new waterways sounds like an awesome idea. I played around with a model of Kiska in Cry3 and decided to raise the water levels a few meters to see different changes in coasts and new bodies of water and it was interesting. Additions like weather and say snow on the highest peaks would be nice.

Gameplay: The best place to start would be duplicating the Main campaign. If you've noticed there's a natural progression across the island, but with gaps like they may have skipped missions to save space on disc maybe. Perhaps they made more and picked the best. Lets fill in those gaps. Furthermore we could populate the island, giving it an IW/SLT feel, if player wants that open world freedom to go off mission. Like JJS said we could easily add civilians to this mix deepening the immersion. I would like to see missions of PLA actually taking the island in the first place, with a small Russian security force having a Red Dawn experience all leading up to the arrival of the marines. And the arrival of other military branches as well. SEALs etc... and don't forget the drones
Interface: If possible, a recreation onscreen of things like command radial and other graphical overlays would be a plus.
Basically everything should look as identical as possible to our DR, but as if we had still been receiving DLs and updates and other such patches all this time. What would it look like now? Additional buildings, underground sites, aircraft carrier, moving RADAR ?

Audio: Would like to hear recreation of character voices in DR and complete what was not finished with Russian.

I'm with Mdog on the Fanboy issue. We should keep this in the family as much as possible at first. Obviously it would get out, but as far as this site goes we might need to make a warning sign for Fanboys to keep that kinda $#!T to themselves or......buhbye.
Imagine, after this is worked out, a new Island War, SLT, Dagger doing a mercenary RPG, or Mdogs Zombieland........sorry I started dreamin n stuff

I like the FANBOY WARNING SIGN!

That warning sign is absolute gold mate! love it! LMAO!


Question??

Who has the capability to work on this and devote the time needed to build the island. I talking about, terrain mapping, texture modeling, height mapping, (not sure if that's the same as terrain mapping??), expertise with using the Arma editing tools etc.

This is the big question really isn't it? who can put in the time and effort to create this map and bring it to life. Do you have the time, patience, experience to work on such a task? if so then put ya'self forward and get cracking.

I'm only asking this because I know I don't have the time and experience to work on such a project. I can give Ideas and stand guard for the fan-boys! WHICH I WILL! but physically working on it I'd be useless to productivity. Also I don't have the modding capabilities for A3 I only have the Alpha. Which is something to consider and could narrow things down for people who can actually help make this happen.

I'm making good headway with the zombie mod at the moment and I'd like to focus my brain energy into that. I'm willing to test it out and give feedback as you can imagine, that's about it really.

To the wider community I urge you to state your play on this if this project is to go ahead, basically CAN YOU HELP?

if so, what with?

if not, then let everyone know, please don't sit in silence just reading.

This would also give us all a good idea to what experience is floating around the community now that we have reorg'd ourselves.

trying not to sound too overbearing there, but it seems like this could be a promising venture if pulled off.

Cheers

MD

edit:

Notice your login pop up now guys!

Another idea is to not build a copy of the island but build the missions on a new one IE the campaign on a new island. This way no island is needed to be created but missions will still be the same. I agree that ArmA players are the biggest whiners and there is ABSOLUTELY no cohesion in the community as well. Reason you cant just join a server because they all have their own addons they want to use or they use 500 addons for 1 basic mission. I am in the KISS mode when it comes to ArmA Series

Question still bares guys is how are we going to make new soldiers and weapons and vehicles if we dont have a sdk for this game. CM didn't give out there sdk for this game because they wanted it to fail.

well the answer is you don't and can't hence the reason we are looking at another sim to continue

I agree the island first and then some basic model building of the unique structures of the original DR.

The reason we start with a recreate first is 1) we know the island 2) we know the basic storyline 3)we can do all the little things first that CM should have done - out of the box we get civilians, full weather and AI that can actually handle complex tasks.

KISKA also provides us a jump off point to adjoining islands that equally provide a diverse landscape to move around.

As for the Island recreate, I threw a hello out to Homer since he as an interest in the GIS and honestly he already started so much already. The main thing is we need to properly reorient the island and get it into an XYZ data format to bring into Vistor3.

After that we paint the terrain in and tweak -tweak -tweak.

Meanwhile, others can use something as simple as Sketchup to model many of the buildings and elements - when we build it, we own it.

We can figure out the other stuff as we go along - since I was one of the instigators of this, you already know my answer on helping.

How will we be able to get the arma map ported if its a different engine right and even then if is ported will some us be able to play it since arma 3 is big game in cpu and graphics...Currently I can run arma 2 oa and DR and sniper 2 ...with no prob

ARMA 2 AO will probably be where we start since the tools are stable - the map elevation is a greyscale bitmap which would only use as a representation of the actual DEM which is where they sourced the island

Sorry, getting into this thread late, and haven't read past the first post yet. HOWEVER I have 3 ARMA 3 Lite passes for anyone working on this who doesn't already have it.

gtaekwondo33 wrote:How will we be able to get the arma map ported if its a different engine right and even then if is ported will some us be able to play it since arma 3 is big game in cpu and graphics...Currently I can run arma 2 oa and DR and sniper 2 ...with no prob

if you can run A2 and DR and sniper 2 like me on low/medium settings you should be ok with A3, just ya trees will look like bubbles growing outta the ground like mine do. lol! I have all these games and more on my pc and I'm running them on low/medium settings after upgrading my gpu to a gt610.

John J. Stevens wrote:Meanwhile, others can use something as simple as Sketchup to model many
of the buildings and elements - when we build it, we own it.

is this what you mean John? Sketchup

HomerPepsi wrote: HOWEVER I have 3 ARMA 3 Lite passes for anyone working on this who doesn't already have it.

I have two to give away aswell if anyone wants to pm me and I'll hook you up with them.

gtaekwondo33, by the time the final A3 is released you may very well have a new computer. It's not coming out until fall most likely. The prices on computers are beginning to drop drastically. I just got a highend i7 for $800, and Bohemia said that A3 will run pretty well on an i5 upon release.
Their still working the kinks out when it comes to adding new maps on A3, so like John said map makers will need to use A2 for the time being. Practice makes perfect. As for myself, I'm honing my modelling skills as we speak, and would like to help out on props first then gradually move on to more intricate stuff.
Gotta go, my new 32" monitor just arrived

Lol my wife wont let me have another computer but a new xbox she will lol

I bought a new AMD A10 5800k and built it from the ground up. Total after everything.... 350.00 plus tax and it runs ArmA 3 no problem