Hi,
Thanks for your feedback.
I just want to explain some things about the lack of object density on this map.
Its a large 1024x2 sized map with planes, a map of this size uses double amount of system and video memory like a 512x2 sized map does (all normandy maps are 512x2 except totalize and cobra). A large heightfield/terrain, double size colormap, double size detailmaps, double size lightmaps needs more vegitation etc.
Thus a smaller map can load more objects and textures before you hit the roof, also keep in mind that the normandy and bulge textures are lot more higher resolution (looks nicer espcially on bigger monitors but uses more memory) than vanilla bf2 and the north africa release.
Here is where bf2's engines age really hurts what we can do.
- Its a 32bit application, meaning that it cannot allocate more than at the very most 1,5-2gb of memory to keep with backward compability of 32-bit operating systems. 64-bit systems manages more but these are not standard by a long shot. Meuse River still uses a total of 1.6gb of RAM on my windows 7 system. Same as totalize and cobra. The map must also be optimized to use at the most 500mb of video ram to keep system requierments within resonable limits. Last check i did it used 490mb of video ram.
bf2 uses only 1 cpu core, the number of objects (draw calls) in a level/scene have a huge impact on the cpu but not the gpu. Most people today have at least 2 core cpu's with quads becoming more and more common. We cannot use this extra processing power and it becomes a bottleneck to how complex levels we can make while still maintaining the performance. So you can choose between having many objects and low viewdistance and large viewdistance and fewer objects (to simplify it).
So this is in a sense a strictly gameplay decision, I wanted to make a big map with a town/city in the middle and planes, i have to sacrifice visual detail to get a higher viewdistance.
For russia we are optimizing our textures to make it use less memory (no detail sheets) and we also made lots of optimizations to the bulge/hurtegen maps compared to normandy.
About the map itself: It has lots of height variation and veritical gameplay making it differ quite a lot from both north africa and normandy. Its sort of in between, not so much cover and grass as normandy but not as open as north africa.
Vehicle layout for the Germans:
1x Panther Ausf. G
1x Jagdpanther
1x Hetzer
2x Panzer IV (+2 spawnable and reinforcements)
1x King Tiger
1x Jagdpanzer IV
sdkfz 251D on mainbases and spawns
1x Kubelwagen
1x Nebelwerfer
1x Mortar position
4x Flakvierilings (in mainbase and on outer flags, dug down)
1x Opel Blitz with Flak38
1x FW190 with bombs (only reinforcement when 1 team has all flags)
Vehicle layout for the US:
1x M36 Jackson
1x m24 Chaffe
2x Sherman M4A3 Condor (+2 spawnable and reinforcements)
1x Sherman M4A3E2 "Jumbo"
1x Rocket Willys jeep
1x M2A2 Howitzer
1x Mortar position
4x Anti air (in mainbase and on outer flags, dug down)
M3 Half tracks at spawns and main bases
1x M3 Half-track with AA
1x P51 with bombs (only reinforcement when 1 team has all flags)
