Nigelbland

Ok, it took me about 15-20mins to figuire this so I thought I might spare someone the bother.

Start a new mod or choose BF2 (I selected a new mod called erm BH2 - Bunny Hoppers 2) It took about a min or 2 to load up, you'll see the complier thing output its text at the bottom.

To create a terrain: Just under the File / Edit / View etc.. menu you'll see a list of editors. Mine defaulted to Object Editor. In the drop down choose Terrain editor. Woah, slowdown!

Now, next to that drop down box is a button/icon for "new document". Press this and you'll get the terrain menu popup box. Choose the size of your map and viola! (Yes I meant Viola :P )

Mine defaulted to the biggest size and it crashed when trying to generated it. Selecting the small size took about another min or so to create.

Now as far as I can work out. On the map you can use WSAD keys to move. Now with your mouse cursor OVER the map press space. This then takes you in to the map (so being Joey in Friends) move the mouse too look. Not so pretty looking at a giant yellow chess board is it. Press Space AGAIN and you go into what I think is EDIT mode. You should be able to move your cursor around the ground.

The Editor options on the side allows you to select if you want to decrease or increase the land. But being that your stuck in the map how do you get the windows cursor back, press ESCAPE. Get back in the map soldier! Press your RIGHT mouse button and the ground should go up or down depending on what you chose.

I made a nice Doughnut!

Thats about as far as I've figured, trying to texture is now, asking to select a layers...????

Turbo

When I get off work ill download it and try a few thing out. Thanks for the starting tips. Is their an option for 128 player maps I heard their was in the closed beta along with a hovercraft or something wierd like that. I also saw their was a option for conquest maps too. Any of that true?

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Nigelbland

Ok, I've just figured the texturing.

First things, you need to create a layer, this should be on the resources window on the left. If you don't have layer, (still in terrain editor) select the Texture button in the green icons on the top (its the one with the paint brush painting the piece of newly cut turf). Now click on the terrain map, you'll get an error, click ok and the layer option should be on the left.

Double click to expand and select layer 1, the next window(TWEAKBAR) should have more details appear for this layer for you to edit. Select "Detail Texture" and click on the box/entry space next to it, it will load a list of textures for you too choose. Do the same for the next one down, "Colour(Yes we are British) Texture". I also chose colour and material but don't think it matters at this stage.

Now on the right EDITOR window, make sure Texture 1 is selected under the TEXTURE heading. Now you can left and right click on the map to add your detail.

N.B.
To see the detail you have to zoom in close, so get in the map and use the mouse and WSAD to zoom in. I also had to select DETAIL TEXTURE MODE in the RENDER menu next to the view menu.

YAY, so you can change the detail, so what, it's still YELLOW, like that coldplay song.

In the editor on the right, called EDITOR. On the Texture section (Making sure Texture 1 is selected), just below the textures you'll see the heading PAINT MODE. Just above that you should have selected DETAIL MODE. Below the PAINT MODE heading you should be on DETAIL.

If you change DETAIL to COLOUR, it will now paint your landscape as the colour texture. If you select BOTH it will combine them. YES! YOU ARE ON THE WAY NOW.

N.B.
You can actaully make amendments on your map (texture, height etc..) without pressing space and going into the map, however using the Space bar way shows you the size and location of your paint brush on the map

Turbo

Ok I got I have the painting down now, do you know how to raise and lower the terrain?

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Nigelbland

To raise and lower the terrain.

With your newly created terrain, select the modify button(Blue up and down arrows above the green turf), which is the first of the green buttons (if you are in Terrain Editor mode)

In the Editor on the right, the General section allows you to select
BRUSH SIZE and STRENGTH, when ever I test I put things to the Xteme :P just so you can see the effects more apparent.

Below BRUSH STRENGTH you'll see to buttons next to each other i.e.
[RAISE] [LOWER]
If you select the left one the left mouse buttom becomes RAISE and if you select LOWER, the right mouse becomes LOWER.

N.B.
You may want to switch to Grid mode in the RENDER menu as the lighting on the ground was getting on my nerves as it was sometimes difficult to see what I was doing.

Put you mouse over the map and press the LEFT and RIGHT mouse buttons, and the flat terrain should start indenting and riasing depending on your clicks

Hope that all makes sense I would put pictures in but don't know how and I don't have any websapce to write a doc and host it, so the above will have to do for now.

Chow :P


P.s.
If you loose your map by going in to OBJECT MODE and your just getting sky, go into TERRAIN MODE and inthe CAMERA menu select TOP DOWN MODE and then back to NORMAL MODE, the press space on the map and tilt and swivel the camera to your desired positiong and press ESCAPE to get the windows cursor back.

Nigelbland

Figured how to put Objects into the map

Save your MOD now, I kept loosing my terrain!

Go into OBJECT MODE
In the resources window on the LEFT at the top is a small BLUE + sign.
Click this and go LOAD RESOURCE.

(Now if you created a new mod the window will not have much in, so drop the top drop down box and select BF2 and should get a list of resources)

Now select STATIC OBJECTS, and you should get a list of TYPES come up.
Lets choose............................COMMON, and then from that choose COM_OBJECTS.
Lets select BASKET HOOPS, and double click on the subsiquent .CON file. This will then take you back to the main screen.

N.B.
If the Basket hoop or what ever you selected isn't showing, double click on the FILE looking ICON in the resource tree on the left (Now because we opened a BF2 resource it will resides under the BF2 tree, not our MOD tree)

You should see the Basket hoop model in the main window, you can amend the properties here in the TWEAKBAR window. Nice, but you want it in the map.

You may want to save before progressing.

Now go to LEVEL EDITOR in the drop down list of editors.

In the LEVEL EDITOR you should see your well crafted PICASSO of landscapes (At least mine was all Phsycadelic colours with real world textures..yes you can paint with just colours and not texture colours tooo!!)

From the resource tree, click and drag the FILE ICON of the BASKET HOOPS and drop it on the map, and Violins, you should have your hoop, to play some Grenade ball with.


P.S.
Now if you want to delete and object, still in the LEVEL EDITOR. You'll see under your MOD TREE in the RESOURCE WINDOW. Under the name of your TERRAIN you created, an entry called OBEJCTS.

Expand this till you find your BASKET HOOPS, should have an entry like BASKET_HOOPS (4) or something.

Click on that and press delete, and so it goes!

Or if you want to move the ITEM, clicking on BASKET_HOOPS (4) should bring up the XYZ around the model in the map. Just click on it and move it around. EASY!

Nigelbland

Just found this
http://www.planetbattlefield.com/bf2/tweakin/tutorials/
Plenty of info there and pictures.

Zephyr

I suppose we'd better get a Battlefield 2 MOD/Editing Forum set up about now...

*COUGH* APOPHIS! *COUGH*

-Zephyr

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Nigelbland

Quick Tip:
If you want to increase the speed of moving round the map, use the scroll wheel on your mouse to do so, like hidden and dangerous!

Don't know about anyone else, but I'm finding it very fidily trying to compose a simple base, it would be nice to be able to have different brush shapes for ground mod and terrain painting

Another is, be sparing on at RANDOM terrain tool. I ended up with my carefully crafted landscape looking like grass. BEWARE!

Interestingly I found an MEC bunker and tunnels in the OBJECT files for BF2 which had Work in Progress written over them! Maybe theres more unfinished items for people to skin up.

Turbo

Your little guide is great man. I would have been beating my head against the monitor if it wasn't for you. Thanks, keep them coming if you can.

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Nigelbland

The more I'm playing with this the more I realise that using heightmaps to create the terrain is the way to go. The Terrain Editor in this is good, but its a little difficult to keep the complete picture in view and mind.

What I would say is make your heightmap in GIMP or Photoshop or MSPaint, save one copy to load into the game and then edit another copy by making a quick sketch where bases etc are going to be, print that out, and work from that. Will probably make it more productive and loading up the editor and pasting all object you can find into your map...only to end up deleting them and starting again.

I haven't done the importing heightmaps yet as I'm currently working on making roads, but here is a good starting point: http://www.planetbattlefield.com/bf2...ingheightmaps/

Vulcan

From mapping in CS, i can tell you heightmaps are the only way to go. Hand editing terrain will make you shoot yourself.

Is this still using battlecraft? If you guys need some custom textures or models made, let me know.

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Nigelbland

Making Roads,

Ok its still basic but it'll get you started.

You've got your terrain created. Great! Now go into the LEVEL EDITOR.

Along the ICONS along from the LEVEL EDITOR drop down box you'll see a BLACK ROAD ICON, select it.

Hold down the LEFT ALT key and start clicking on the map a points where you want the road to be.

N.B.
As far as I can tell no road is drawn between the FIRST and SECOND point and the PENULTIMATE and the FINAL POINT!

The dots should be joined up with a blue line that will curve to join the points. You've created your ROAD SPLINE.

Now you need to create a NEW TEMPLATE for the road. In the EDITOR window on the right, under the ROAD section you will see a button saying CREATE NEW TEMPLATE. Click that and give your name a road.

Now on the Left in the RESOURCE window you'll see the entry for ROAD TEMPLATES now has a + next to it. Double click and you'll see the name of your road template, with two other child entries for PRIMARY & SECONDARY TEXTURE LAYER.

PRIMARY LAYER, it the basic road markings. Also in the TWEAKBAR options you can select MIRROR which will created a dual carriage way effect.

SECONDARY LAYER, is a second texture to the road and also when I did this it affected the immediate surrounding ground texture too. BEWARE, this COULD take up a proportion of your map around the road, you have have to zoom into see the effects.

Anyway at least give the PRIMARY LAYER a texture by selecting it and in the TWEAKBAR, clicking the box next to texture to get a picture list of all roads to choose.

Now in the EDITOR on the right under the button CREATE NEW TEMPLATE there is a smaller section called ROAD. In that ROAD section you will see a CONNECT button, press it!

N.B.
It actually complains (after giving the ROAD a name) if you don't give the TEMPLATE a secondary texture so if you didn't do that. On the left RESOURCE window under ROAD TEMPLATES and the name of your template, select SECONDARY ROAD TEXTURE and in the TWEAKBAR, select the box corresponding to TEXTURE and pick your picture!

OK, back to the CONNECT button, press it! Give the road a name and click ok. You will now see the road drawn automatically before your eyes. IF it complains about no spline, double click on one of the points created on the road to select the whole spline and press it again.

You can actually now hold the LEFT ALT key down and keep clicking and it will keep drawing the road as you click! So you may want to re-think the first Clicking session we had at the beginning, and just start with 4 points.

WHY 4 POINTS?
Cause no road is drawn between the FIRST and SECOND point and the PENULTIMATE and the FINAL POINT!
e.g.
[1st point] NO ROAD DRAWN [2nd point] Road Drawn [Third Point] NO ROAD DRAWN [4th point]

No with the road spline points selected, I believe you SHOULD press APPLY SPLINE in the EDITOR window. But I can't figure out why, except it gives the message in the debug text box
[Geom] : TBM: Setting up ApplySpline to use texture size 2048
[Geom] : TBM: ApplySpline uses texture size 2048

Nigelbland

Next I'm trying to work out if theres an easy way of making walls join up, but heres a neat trick:

If you add a wall onto your terrain in the LEVEL EDITOR, you can double click on it to get the rotate menu.

N.B.
If you want to do it by hand, selecting the ROTATE ICON at the top row of ICONS. If you do do this I would SERIOUSLY recommend thinking of selecting ANCHOR under the ROTATION MODE in the right hand editor window. This will make it pivot on the corner rather than the middle.

I prefer to do things by numbers, so double click and type 90 in the X Axis rotation box. Prior to this you probably want to CTRL+C with object selected and mouse over, then CTRL+V to copy and paste a second copy. Now rotate one of the walls 90 degrees.

NOW THIS IS THE ANNOYING PART

Painstakingly match up the two ends to make a perfect corner

Snaping to grid doesn't help a great deal with the fine details but may be and idea just to get the ends on the same line. There may be a way like roads to do this automatically with a spline template.

Select the two parts using the HOLD CTRL method and clicking on the two walls. Right click on one of the walls with both selected and choose SAVE OBJECT BUNDLE. Give it a name, go on!

Now when ever you want that corner inserted, right click and under the OBJECT BUNDLES option select the name of the BUNDLE you created.

PROBABLY this is better and created for creating patches of vegitation etc..

Nigelbland

Turbosol16, thanks for the encouragement, I was starting to think I was posting to myself :P Though I do do that I think

Vulcan, yeah I agree with you about heightmaps. I'm assuming that Battlecraft is an old 3rd Party Battlefield editor. If thats the case, nope DICE has provided an all in one editor amazingly titled BF2Editor.

It seems so easy just to import your own textures, though I haven't found the option to import your own model. I can create the object for it but not link a model file to it.

When people starting creating more varied models and textures from other parts of the world then things will really happen. I would really like to re-create one of the countryside maps of CLOSE COMBAT 4(I think). With Headge rows(destructable with a tank of course) and open fields to run across.

The editor also gives control over most game attributes, so perhaps someone can make a small mod that alters just the damage taken when hit by a Jeep or something, so a small bump doesn't put you critically injured or worse!