munchkin

With all the talk about custom maps on Server 1 and the release of a new editor by EA, I thought it might be kinda cool to try and pool ideas for our own community-designed map. Basically, just share your thoughts on what attributes, setting and other special or unique things it could have, but keep in mind the restrictions of the game. Also, let's try and not use any objects or textures that have to be custom-made - if you've seen it on an official map, then we can put it in ours.

Just for starters, I believe that the map should:

- Be balanced.
- Be restrained in the number of CPs on offer.
- Still be large, with a variety of terrain and lots of space to maneuver (à la Sharqi)
- Avoid a Karkand-esque setting, unless it has something really special on offer.

I've got a mental picture of what could be an interesting island map, combining the beaches of Oman with the dense forest and vegetation of Songhua, remaining infantry focused.

I was also kicking around the idea of an urban map with F-35s. Only skilled pilots would be able to be effective, as the restrictions of city streets coupled with AA and the large hitbox of the plane would make bombing tough but enjoyable. Also, this would help avoid the complete devastation that unrestrained armour can cause. Might help to break things like the River Standoff as well..

NB. This isn't any kind of official TG/admin endorsed project. If we end up with a map, we'll submit it for evaluation by the powers that be, and then possible entry onto the servers.

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DrunkenSoul

i was just about to post something like this...if some people wanted to get together and come up with something...im down with helping create the map, you might want to create a quick pic in paint or something so people get a better idea and can give better suggestions

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|TG-1stMIP|DrunknSoul
1st Mechanized Infantry Platoon (C-Team)


[medic][conduct][combat][defense]
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munchkin

Cool - my ideas were more just a prompt to get others to roll out the good stuff. And hey, if anyone wants to draw or sketch something, go nuts. Don't ask me, though. My art skills will create something far far worse than JMJ's avatar.

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Shafik

I'd like to see a map offering battles in both woodland and urban terrain. Imagine a smaller Mashtuur with the woods from A.T.O.M around it. Make it totally infantry based. If we can get everyone walking, it would make for a much slower, tactic game, I think.

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kornkobcom

Anti-air points all over the place. So many that there's no way that they can keep them down. In clusters (postitionsso you cna't do a single bombing run and hit more than 1 or 2) so that a squad can jump on them and put a veritible flotilla of stingers out. Make the pilots actually fear the things, instead of being mildly annoyed.

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Kornkob

I want to move to Theory. Everything works in Theory.

Beatnik

A map with a mix of terrain like that would be cool. Have a kind of insurgency team vs. occupation team. The woods on the new Valhalla map are great as well.

If we could build in a choke point or two (like the bridges on the Valhalla map) that could provide for some interesting fights.

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Barracuda_Magoo

I started making a map that I thought would fit in well. 2 UCB's, small number of flags to prevent whack-a-mole, flags were symetrical in terms of assets for balance, king-of-the-hill to focus the action and (hopefully) require lots of coordination, urban with some open areas, mix of vehicles with plentiful AA. Unfortunately, I hit a brickwall when a stupid glitch popped up:

http://www.tacticalgamer.com/battlef...rd-glitch.html

I've got another idea for a map, but I'm fearful of wasting dozens of hours on another worthless cause. And I guarantee it wouldn't look very pretty

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wushuhero

once I can get this modelling thing down I would like to start modeling bigger buildings, new york anyone?


btw is it possible to mod custom things into a map without having to create a whole new mod?

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"The Taoist sage has no ambitions, therefore he can never fail. He who never fails always succeeds. And he who always succeeds is all- powerful." -- Lao Tzu

ingame name: Zuiquan1

TychoCelchuuu

If anyone needs help with modelling, I'm available to either teach you how or to model some stuff for you. I've been modelling for a few years now, although not for BF2.

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|TG-Irr|TychoCelchuuu

wushuhero

ya got any experiance with gmax, I suck

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"The Taoist sage has no ambitions, therefore he can never fail. He who never fails always succeeds. And he who always succeeds is all- powerful." -- Lao Tzu

ingame name: Zuiquan1

asch

I've made maps in the past and have yet to complete one for BF2. What I found is that a quality map will take a good 120 hours of work. You can probably complete them in 80 hours when you are pretty familiar with the tools.

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| My Maps

Fear the Frog! | Kill the Frog! | An Inconvenient Truth

Kilrogg

I have some experience with the BFeditor and here is what you will need to make a decent map:

1) If you want a 1024 size map, you need 2-3gigs of ram. This is not an option unless you want to finish your map in 2008. Imo 1024 maps are the only good ones, yes it's big and you don't want to use all of the 1024 size but it makes for a much more realistic map since you can make everything full-scale then decide where to place your combat area.

2) You will need a good rig as it gets extremely laggy after you place a lot of objects, the editor has no LoD system (where objects switch to a less detailed model as you get far away from them) and it displays all models and shadows at full detail and you cannot adjust the level of detail.

3) Making custom models (buildings etc) is pretty damn complicated for this game so you'll end up using the stock models.

4) Making a high quality map takes a good 100+ hours not including the time it'll take you to learn Terragen and how to make a convincing Heightmap, detailmap and colormap using Terragen. (Unless you want to build and paint the terrain by hand and add another 50 hours of work )

5) Everything in the editor looks bigger than it is in game. In the short experience I had making BF2 maps, my terrain features ended up smaller in game than in the editor, it's an illusion the smaller screen and different view in the editor creates. It's better to make your terrain features (like valleys, plateaus etc) slighty bigger than you think they are. If stuff ends up too big in game, it's easier to tone it down than make it bigger imo. I am not talking only about the height of hills and stuff, the actual distance between 2 things in the editor is smaller than it is in game since you don't always have a player-size reference.

I'm not trying to discourage anyone from making a BF2 map but simply telling you what you're getting into. It's not like the days of HL/Quake where making a map was a pretty straightforward and fast process. Now you have ambiant sounds, effects, triggers and a ton of other details to take into consideration when making a map and it lenghtens the development process quite a bit.

With that said, I would volunteer to make the map if I actually had 2-3gigs of ram and a better rig and wasn't currently trying to learn Hammer (Half-Life editor) and if the editor wasn't a crashing pos :|.

asch

I believe all of the stock BF2 maps were created with a size of 512, scale of 2.

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| My Maps

Fear the Frog! | Kill the Frog! | An Inconvenient Truth

Kilrogg

Most of them are 1024x2. Karkand and Mashtuur are 512, Sharqi is 1024 (the combat area is very small compared to the rest of the map, look at the thumbnail picture on the loading screen when you load Sharqi, the rest of the map is huge and unused.