Paasky's Mappack
 

Five custom maps for the FH mod for BF1942.
Maps included:

• Desert Blitz 1942, a small action-packed desert map focusing on drive-by's. With Co-op support!
• Flooded Valley 1944, a medium sized map on a flooded valley somewhere in the Ukraine focusing on heavy tanks.
• Gembloux Gap 1940, a large map in Belgium, where the German Blitzkrieg was halted for a few days. Think Prokhorovka merged with Counterattack.
• Lebanon 1941, a large map from Southern Lebanon. The Australians attack the Vichy French defended hills of Lebanon. That's right, the Axis are French!
• Saaremaa 1944, a medium map focusing on the Soviet invasion of Saaremaa, a large island off the Estoanian Coast. This has been included in the TDP Mappack #2, but has gone through many fixes & improvements.

Download link:
PaaskysMappack_beta1.rar - FileFront.com
Extract into ...\Battlefield 1942\Mods\FH\Archives\bf1942\levels

Loading screens:
http://koti.mbnet.fi/pjvuorio/bf_map...sert_blitz.jpg
http://koti.mbnet.fi/pjvuorio/bf_map...ded_valley.jpg
http://koti.mbnet.fi/pjvuorio/bf_map...mbloux_gap.jpg
http://koti.mbnet.fi/pjvuorio/bf_map...ing_screen.jpg
http://koti.mbnet.fi/pjvuorio/bf_map...s/saaremaa.jpg

Movies: (both used older versions)
YouTube - Lebanon, 1941
YouTube - Desert Blitz

First Beta, suggestions are welcome. If anyone wants to use them just post here ;)
Note that Desert Blitz has Coop support, so give it a whirl :p

DLin for sho.

Great, downloading. Can You get some serverowner to run the mappack maybe? Also, maybe You should post this in announcements or General Yib-Yab (Off Topic) so that more users would notice. Cheers!

i must say they are great :)

deathfromabove has got TS & BF servers which I'm sure he'll let use. The problem is how to get more than 5 or 6 to play... And I'm not sure if having 2 different threads would be that wise.

I was also thinking of making a small FHSW compatible patch, seeing that FHSW is teh pwn.

HOLY S...!An estonian map!!!1

Im downloading this for sure!

YouTube - Saaremaa Guess where I'm from ;)

You people tell me there's an edit button, yet I can't find it anywhere? Just quote, multiquote & reply.

Also, anyone know of any links where to get help on how to make proper shadows for the maps?

You can only edit for 30 mins after its posted. =D

Wow, these look great. Nice job!

What a coincidence.Im going to Saaremaa on Tuesday.

Anyhoo, ive got only one question about the Saaremaa map: Does the map have the "Saaremaa Viina" music in it?It would be perfect if it had one.

I'm assuming it's a commercial tune? We don't have Saaremaa Vodka commercials here, so I wouldn't know. I tried to add sounds into the Lebanon Map (call to prayer in the mosque) but it crashed the game... :(

ooo must dl. and yes, i will let you use my servers, as soon as this god**** bit torrent finished downloading, 4 hours down, 8 hours to go...woopie:bawl:

What exactly is your netspeed? Cause it really should be close to 5mb, atleast, to host a proper server.

another link for download please? :)


thanks

Why? The current one works fine, for me atlest.

PaaskysMappack_beta1.rar - FileFront.com

doesnt work for me :(

idk, you tell me

Open your router's webpage, login, and it should tell you the netspeed on the first page, or in some place called Connection Status. Or with words similiar to those two. Mine is a puny 512/1024, ie 50kbs upload & 100kps download.

http://koti.mbnet.fi/pjvuorio/bf_map...ing_screen.jpg
http://koti.mbnet.fi/pjvuorio/bf_map...eenShot119.jpg

http://koti.mbnet.fi/pjvuorio/bf_map...eenShot120.jpg
http://koti.mbnet.fi/pjvuorio/bf_map...eenShot121.jpg
http://koti.mbnet.fi/pjvuorio/bf_map...eenShot122.jpg
http://koti.mbnet.fi/pjvuorio/bf_map...eenShot123.jpg
http://koti.mbnet.fi/pjvuorio/bf_map...eenShot124.jpg
http://koti.mbnet.fi/pjvuorio/bf_map...eenShot125.jpg

Semi-real map, I took the big western bay in Papua-New Guinea, and did the terrain from memory.

Mainbases are cappable, but take 40secs & the zone is small & open. Bleed requires Main + Main or Main + 2 flags.
Both sides also have a destroyer & carrier.

Guinea_Bay.rar - FileFront.com

Shadows? Lightmaps? Proper ground textures? If those critical touches wouldnt be severly missing... :-/

Yeah, I know. I have no idea how to create shadows or lightmaps, and no-one will tell me how,l or even give links to any sort of tutorials :( I haven't yet done the textures, hence it's a WIP.

More frapsing:
YouTube - Guinea Bay
I know, the sunglare isn't in the right direction. I tried moving the sun direction, but that made the water go pink & the ground look very srange. Also, any idea how the soldier & vehicle shadows could be made longer?

I'm 90% certain that there must be lightmapping tutorials etc in this mapping forum from when I was asking for help with Cretan Village - search back a few years...

Ill post you some instructions and the tools you need tomorrow on how to do lighting in ed42. Im just not feeling well today. Its not complicated.

Is anyone else as disgusted at those little tiky huts as I am which appear in great numbers on every pacific map?

The Map self isn't bad :)
For the Lightmap, it give a tool, which you can do it easy.

A question to your Video @ Youtube.
What's the first song called? It's from Borat, isn't it? :p

You made Cretan Village?


OMFG I LOVE YOU....in a non-homo kind of way, of course....=p

Just say admire.:D We won't shun you as much then.

Admire it is, then.


(I knew you'd be the first to pay attention to my post somehow)

Cola, seeing as it is the Beach, I think a few of those fit in nicely. And it's really hard to find something specific from the thousands of objects just by their names.

Thanks Badseed. I have to say this isn't the best-looking map I've done, mainly because I did it in a relatively short time. But getting shadows for Lebanon & Saaremaa will make those two look much better. And Desert Blitz is just a fun small map, even with the idiot bots.

Playalain: Yes it is. Mahalageasca from Stereophonic Musical Listenings That Have Been Origin in Moving Film "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan"

I've been doing some fixing. Map now has medic & ammoboxes, green water, the sun is properly positioned, axis airfield has been modified, and the carriers are now subs.

Compare Before:
http://koti.mbnet.fi/pjvuorio/bf_map...eenShot121.jpg

to After:
http://koti.mbnet.fi/pjvuorio/bf_map...eenShot145.jpg

Still to do are shadows to the map, and trying to get the object & player shadows to be longer. Does anyone have any idea how to do either of these?

Once I get those done I'll upload the new version.

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.

That's a pretty whopping speed compared to more modern real-time shadow rendering :lol:

Oh well, it's good to have two semi-modern PC's in the house.

We have a problem... It got them ready, finally, and the shadows for the terrain look wunderbar. It's just that there's not a single shadow for a tree or building (!!!) :rolleyes: :(

And you merged them, right? (the .tga with the light.tga)

If it took so long, then the objects must have been in, otherwise the map would shadow in 5minutes...

Try starting the shadow process with BC and do only one grid, see if it works better...

Merged the what with the what now? I just looked at the new .tga's in the shadowwork folder. Something else I should do?

Okay...

I found the _lgt versions, which have beautiful black & white shadows.
I just let bc42 merge the shadows, and found two very slight problems.
1) The shadows are looking towards the sun. Naturally this would look strange ingame. But that's nothing, because
2) They're completely red!


I thought I had f-d up the shadowcolor in my map, so here's what I did:
1) made a new medium-sized map in bc42
2) saved it,
3) extracted it
4) added my textures into it
5) packed it
6) put the textures & new _lgt.tga's into the level folder (new correctly named folder ofcourse) in the shadowworks folder
7) opened the map in bc42
8) set the shadowcolor to a proper slightly red gray
9) created shadows (lowest quality, no heigthdata for the map)
10) replaced the new _lgt.tga's with my proper _lgt.tga's
11) merged lightmaps

And they're still covered with a bright red overtone:
http://koti.mbnet.fi/pjvuorio/bf_map_stuff/Tx04x03.jpg
The sun is located in the bottom right corner compared to this image.



I'm about to call it quits for shadows alltogether, someone please give me true & working step-by-step instructions. No need to use noob-lingo, but just what to click, or what setting to set, or what?


EDIT: Come to think of it, is there some fancy way to merge them in Photo- or Paintshop? Open the etxture.tga, create a new shadowcoloured layer, and use the _lgt.tga's as the alpha channel for that layer. That would mean just regenerating the shadows with the proper sun (ie completely other way around)

I have that problem too, I use Photoshop to manually merge the lightmaps (add the Tx00x00_lgt as another layer over the standard texture, set it to Multiply, opacity around 70%). Takes a while for large-ish maps though.


EDIT: Don't worry about the shadows being the wrong way round, just spin the skybox around 180 degrees to match the shadows.

yes as Russian says..

1) go into Init/SkyandSun.con and rotate the sun 180 degrees
2) Put a TerrainPalette.pal into your maps Textures folders... I suggest take a .pal file from a map that has similar environent as your map.

You can't merge shadows because the tga's of your maps have an alpha layer ---> 4 Mb's. You need to save them without alpha layers ----> 3 Mb's, then run the merge with the bat's and it will do automatically.

It's red because you have not TerrainPalette.pal, just add one and will be ok.

Nope, the tga's are 3mb's. I saved them all with Irfanview and they're fine now.


I don't want to rotate the skybox, then that gorgeous sunset would be behind the mountains. Also, I have no clue how to change the water-sun-effect-thingy. Last time I tried, as I said, the water turned pink. I fixed that by rotating the sun -90.

I thought I copied the terrainpalette from battle isle, but maybe I didn't put it in the proper place(s)?

Textures folder in your map with the Tx--x--.dds's