Matrix Games Forums

What is taking so long?

We saw the shots of CM and thought wow, nice looking game. Wish we had grass like that.
So our programmer did some research and found that he could do it with very little cost to computing or FPS.
Then one of our artistic types, benpark, came up with some samples of grasses and flowers. They looked pretty good. You have seen some shots of it in other threads.
Then Erik wondered if we could spruce up the Kharkov maps. I took what we had and gave it a go.

But Erik said that this was May and that the snow had just ended and the ground was muddy. Probably no flowers and fields would be stubble.
So I took another shot at it. Meanwhile benpark and others discussed the black trees in Kharkov and he decided to give them a little spring green treatment.

The original Kharkov maps may not be as pretty as some other games today, but they will play well on slower systems.
I adjusted the height of the wheat and grasses, removed the flowers, added benpark's trees.

We are still working on how to use this, as a tag line in the xml, or added to the map maker.

Meanwhile we at looking at having it block or reduce LOS so that prone or kneeling infantry gain something from it. That should help with the flatter maps with open ground.

There's nothing like some good grass![8D]

NICE! [&o]

Great looking stuff.  I love the heavy duty lawn mower.

LOL good one. Have no fear, John Deer.

ORIGINAL: junk2drive

LOL good one. Have no fear, John Deer.

Little tractor humor [:D]
"NOTHING RUNS LIKE A DEER WHEN CHASED BY A KUBOTA"

Just watch out for the cats in the grass.........[:-]

Good Hunting.

MR

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian

Just watch out for the cats in the grass.........[:-]

Good Hunting.

MR

What about Tigers (Jagdtigers)and Panthers (Jagdpanthers) lurking in the grass?

I moved the underbrush out of the woods and put it in the light woods. For woods I picked a dead brush. Then I put a fall grass in both to give some transition.

A big improvement, Junk, well done. The ground itself still looks very smooth, compared to the rest. Isn't it possible to give it a more earthy, rude look?

Already mentioned in the SC thread, while great addition, the grass/underbrush yet looks too bright, when comparing with tree foliage and ground texture colors. Guess it´s yet Beta stage and we´ll see some adaptions soon. [8D]

Next week I´ll have a new Athlon II X2 250 and a GT 240 GFX. That finally should prepare me for PCO and CM:N as well. [:)]

I didn't want the black trees that we had before. I adjusted the saturation down a little since those pics. You will notice that in different lighting, the foliage will appear lighter and darker- the demo will be in fairly bright light. I think it's a good balance now, certainly more on the side of a natural landscape now.

Bear in mind that modifying any of this landscape is pretty easy as well.

ORIGINAL: vonRocko

There's nothing like some good grass![8D]

Yes I used to prefer the gold kind....from Acapulco [;)]

IMO, this is a lot like judging art in a flight-sim, which is to say that the only thing that really matters (in that case) are the aircraft.[:)]

If the AFV are good, then everything else will be as well.

Nice flora though, nonetheless. [8D]

That's the problem with artists they tend to overdo things that aren't necessary to sell the painting.

ORIGINAL: Prince of Eckmühl

IMO, this is a lot like judging art in a flight-sim, which is to say that the only thing that really matters (in that case) are the aircraft.[:)]

If the AFV are good, then everything else will be as well.

Nice flora though, nonetheless. [8D]

Hmmm, I'm not sure whether I agree with that. I think what they are doing right now is pretty essential for the whole game.

We pay attention to public comments here and other game sites. Some people want immersion, some just want good gameplay, some want awesome graphics.

We are trying to do all of that as best we can, staying within the system requirements that we have determined would best suit our customers.