Try to improve the vanilla BC42 ground textures aswell. They really add more spice to the map if you can get those pale looking BC-uglyness out of sight out of mind. :)

I sort-of did, I added a 25% visible dark-red layer, which makes the ground look much more like it's actually in the same place as that sky. I've also painted some dark-green over the mountains. But the only thing I can really do without the ground looking completely alien is making it darker, all other colours just don't seem to... fit in.
Although, I think I'll lower those sand-thingies in the sea and maybe colouring it with a texture, so it looks something like coral.

I do know what you mean, and that screenie doesn't really show it, but the land looks much better with that dark red oveertone :)

Passky im ready to send you what you need for making shadows with ed42, but you need the FH Samples for making lightmaps. Otherwise its pointless me sending you anything. You also need some software either photoshop 7+ or GIMP.

You need to download the fh_modding_tool_pack, it contains the samples you need. I cant give them to you they are 700 megs. So you will have to google search for it, not sure if its even available anywhere anymore actually. You also need the BC42 samples, thats for all the vanilla stuff. You can get that from planetbattlefield at the battlecraft download.

To make shadows on your map, you need to make a shadowworks folder for your map in the BF42 main folder. In it you will need to make folder with the name of your map.

Inside that make a folder named textures. In that folder, place your TGA textures each must be 3mb in size. (extract your DDS ground textures from your map and convert them to TGA for this).. You will need photoshop 7 or higher for this, or you can get GIMP (free photoshop type program). Install the DDs plugin. You need an RFA extractor for extracting your textures, there is one in the tool pack.

When you have this done ill send you what you need :)

I have Photoshop CS.2, but I'm omre familiar with Paintshop Pro. But I have a program called DDS Converter. Also, Irfanview can open dds files, not save them though.

Modding tool pack check, downloading now.

TGA's check. I converted the .tga's into C:\Games\Battlefield 1942\ShadowWork\Bf1942\levels\Guinea_Bay\textures, as that folder already existed (the orig ground textures from BC42 had some shadows done to them). I did delete every old file from there, since it had the old pre-ed42 textures.
EDIT: Although, they are sized at exactly 4mb's, not 3.
EDIT2: It seems DDS converter doesn't make the correct format .tga's. Irfanview does, but it doesn't have a batach convert option. Oh well, s, nex, s, next, s, next it is then :P



As for the rest of you, here's the new loading screen:
http://koti.mbnet.fi/pjvuorio/bf_map...ing_screen.jpg


And, oh noes! It's a mudslide!
http://koti.mbnet.fi/pjvuorio/bf_map...y/mudslide.jpg

Ok well you need to convert them to 3mb or shadows wont take. The shadow utility will run, but at the end it will do nothing, wasting hours of your time.

heres what you need to light the map;

IMPORTANT; Right click on the go file and edit with notepad; replace the map names in there with the name of your own map. Use underscores inbetween like this;

New_Guinea

If you left click the go file, the lighting process will begin right there.

also make sure the paths are correct in the go file. its set up with the default pathways, because i installed everything in its default location. so its works fine for me, So unless you installed stuff in custom locations, this shouldnt need changing.

Any problems or questions just post them here :)

*hopes you read this today* I place it in the ed42 folder? Or the dev folder with the various folders that have been extraced from the .rar's? Or in the BF1942 folder?

EDIT: nvm on that, I just put it anywhere it seems, as it's got all the paths listed in the .bat.

But, any idea how I could make the shadows really long, ie 3x longer than default? Do I need to "move" the sun somehow? As you can see from the loading screen, the sun is really low, so long shadows would look perfect :)

1) in ed42 press L where you want the sun to be, just put it sliightly above the sun on Guinea, Ive been using that sky box a few times and the shadows get almost too long, so if you have lots of vegetation the entire map can be shadowed... save ed 42

2) look in the map's init.con, that one that ed42 makes when you save, the new light direction value is there, copy it!

3) put back the real init.con file that I hope you saved somewhere, paste the light direction value in this init.con; only one place for it here; in water setting...

4) paste the light direction into 4 other places:

-SkyandSun.con (1 place)
-TerrainLightmap.con (only one place, the second one on this file should be 0/1/0
-ObjectLightmaps.con (2 places)

Now look in Init/Terrain.con, here you can set these values at the bottom:

Terrain.ShadowAmbient 62/47/79
Terrain.ShadowBorderFadeTime 0.25
Terrain.ShadowSamplingCullY 15

Now that's really dark shadows, the lower those first values are; the darker the shadows it seems, perhaps RBS knows more exact how they work; I would perhaps add 30 to each value... just look in CounterAttack, the shadows are too dark there IMO....

This is one place where BC actually is OK, since BC has a Windows pre-view on colors-window, you can set which color you want on the shadows, save the map in BC, open the map in WinRFA - dont unpack the map - just copy the values from WinRFA, from Init/Terrain.con, paste into your unpacked Ed42 map's Init/Terrain.con

You need also a TerrainPalette.pal file and a good Detail.dds file, then you need to set the color of the fog, this you do by samling the lowest part of the sky's .dds file in PS, you will get 3 values, for Red, Green, Blue.. divide each value by 255 and you will get whats needed for the maps init.con line at:
renderer.fogColorVec

Do all this and you're one step further away from the vanilla BC ugliness..

And oh BTW; make sure your TerrainLigthtmap.con says this in the top:

GeometryTemplate.setActive patchGeometry
rem *** 4.0 is 4 pixels per meter.
GeometryTemplate.shadowPrecision 4.000000

1) This is fantastic to know. I tried to edit them manually and the water turned pink :D
2-4) I'll do these.

I have a feeling Terrain.ShadowAmbient 62/47/79 are R/G/B values, but unlike the fog, they are not in percentages... RGB = 0 = Black, RGB = 255 = white, IIRC.

I'll report back if I have any problems, but it's a great day outside, time to cycle to the closest Lidl & get some dirt-cheap Ice Tea ;)

Ok, how long is it supposed to take? I left my PC to calculate them for the night, 9h later it had gotten to a whopping 42%, whith still 630mins to go...

I'll just let our 2nd PC count them for the next 2 days, as I'm the only one at home atm.

Welcome to mapping, one map of mine took 3 days to render.