Outlawz

You need all 7 kits on SP/coop, otherwise you CTD, bots don't know they can spawn only with 4 I suggest using a separate init for SP like Project Reality mod does and just fill in the remaining slots in that init (ie. copy the first three kits so you got 7)

Not really, I checked the mesh in ShaderWrapper

Even if you got the skybox/dome to rotate, have a sky texture that has all four daytimes on it, so the rotating sky gives the impression of changing daytime, how would you change the light settings mid-game?

Glad you figured out it, but I'm surprised Rhino missed it. I mean hellooo...

Yeah, but that's because the skybox is dome shaped, this one is a box?

Hmm no, I tried with this part from sky.con Where would I add that template line btw? That's because it is a box Here's the UV map.

The original skybox is actually diamond shaped, but only the top part is UVd, which is why the bottom of the texture needs to be a solid color/gradient, cos the bottom of the texture gets stretched to the bottom half of the skybox. Oh and I haven't found a way to do this map-side, somehow can't get maps to load the skybox from the custom client.zip instead of default, it loads the sky texture, but the dome is either loaded from BF2, or isn't loaded at all.

Result from today's summer morning boredom. I wondered if the BF2 skybox can be changed and after seeing that it's actually a simple .staticmesh object, I got an evil grin on my face. About an hour and couple of CTDs later this is what came out I can do a small tut or description on how to do this, if anyone's interested, will also see if it's possible to attach it to a custom map instead of a mod.

In this tutorial I'll show you how to (re)create the editor files for a map, in cases where there's no way to gain access to the original ones or if you had them, but lost them. If you don't know what "editor files" are; these are the files located inside your map's Editor folder, putting it simply. From here they can be edited via BFEditor and saved in an uncompressed format, from where later on you'll compile the compressed files when you save. In case your files get corrupted, you can resave from here where you'll always have working files. Not all files edited with BFEditor (and indirectly, by you) are located here, like Staticobjects.con, Sky.con... those are in the main folder, can be read and do not need to be recreated in anyway, and some files are saved from bfeditor's rawdata folder, like lowdetail textures and undergrowth. You'll need: Notepad BFEditor Photoshop CS3 (or higher) XVI32 Hex editor or a hex editor of your choice, but you'll have to figure some stuff out yourself then Photoshop Action - SalvageColorDetail DDS plugin for Photoshop - unless you already have it a map without its editor files Preparations I'm going to pick Gulf of Oman from Battlefield 2 for this tutorial. You can pick any map or mod, process is the same. To be on the safe side I'm going to create a temporary mod for this tutorial and copy the map to there, so I can still play BF2. If you're already using a copy of your mod intended for editing, then you can skip this and do it there. Now before we begin, install the PS action SalvageColorDetail to Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS3\Presets\Actions. Extract your map's client and server .zips. Before you continue, go into the above directory, right-click on your maps' folder and untick 'Read only', in case the map's files have this enabled, in my case they do since DiCE made everything read only in their maps. Go back to your map folder and create a new folder called Editor (Caps doesn't matter). We're all set to begin. Salvaging the ground textures We'll start with probably the most important aspect of editor files, the ground textures. Color, detail and lowdetail maps are already here, but they aren't in proper format and/or size to be edited. Copy your colormaps, detailmaps and lowdetailmaps folders in your map directory to your Editor folder. Open up Photoshop CS3. We'll begin with the colormaps. These do not need to be resized, only resaved. Select all the files inside the folder and drag&drop them into Photoshop. Give it a few moments for all the files to be loaded. On the bottom right of your PS interface there should be an Actions tab, where you might already see your SalvageColorDetail action set. If you do not see this tab, press F9. Now go to File>Automate>Batch, and select the SalvageColorDetail action set and under actions, saveColor, leave the source at Opened Files. and let it rip. If you observe the Actions tab, you'll see Photoshop working on your opened files, which will get duplicated only inside Photoshop, don't worry it doesn't double the actual files. Now, go to File>Close All or Alt+Ctrl+W, so you get rid of the opened files. We continue with detail and lowdetailmaps. Both of these need to be resized and resaved to same size and format and as you guessed by now, the action set does the dirty work here. Again, drag&drop files from both lowdetail and detailmaps folders into Photoshop, go to File>Automate>Batch. Using the same SalvageColorDetail set, this time change the action from saveColor to ResizeSave_DetailLowdetail and let it rip, then once done, close Photoshop. You now have ground textures you can work with. Setting up Ground Properties Load up your mod and map in BFEditor. You now have nicely looking textures on your map, but you're missing the lowdetail texture and detail textures. Actually, you're only missing the latter, the lowdetail texture is already here, just needs to be regenerated. Minimize the editor window, open up the hex editor and your map's main folder and drag&drop the terraindata.raw file into the hex editor. First four lines are the load lines for ground textures and ground lightmaps, the lower six are the detail textures. Follow the line til you get to the texture name and then switch to BFEditor, go to terrainEditor>Texture. Under the first layer's detail texture select the respective texture. . In my case the texture is detail_rock04_dark. Select a material, in my case the appropriate one would be 'rock'. Look around your map to find where the texture is used, though first layers are always sloped areas. Now generate lowdetailmaps. Since the texture is already here, as said, simply select a type (1 or 2) and click on generate LowDetailMaps. Repeat this for the remaining layers. You can now close the hex editor. If you did everything correctly, your map should look something like this in the Detail mode now. Save your map. You now have working ground textures with detail and lowdetail textures. From here you can freely edit the terrain and paint new areas. Setting up Lightmap settings In case you want to relightmap the map, you'll need to start off with some lightmap settings. You can tweak these later, but first lets get them set up. In BFeditor go to Light>Preset and pick a lightmap preset. Note that this also changes the sky settings on your map, which we'll fix right away, but first lets save the lightmap settings. In the Tweak bar, right-click on LightmapsSettings(Objectmode) and click Save Object mode then click the Switch to Terrain mode and save the terrain mode. Now to fix the sky settings. Go again to Light>Preset, but scroll down below the lightmap settings and select your map's name, this will reset back to your map's sky settings. You now have lightmaps settings you can tweak and use to lightmap the map. Setting up your GamePlayObjects Still in the editor, switch to levelEditor (if you aren't already there) and under Layers in the rightside tab, start creating new layers for gamemodes and sizes. Save and close the editor. Go to your map's Editor folder and open the GPO.con. Its currently empty with some default lines, which you'll delete. Keep the file open and go to the main folder>Gamemodes, then to each separate gamemode and size; let's start with gpm_cq and 64. Open that GPO and scroll down to the bottom, where you should see what layer the combat zone and everything else is on. My intended layer for gpm_cq is layer 2, so in this case no need to change this, however you will most likely need to change the layer, so here's how to do it. Press Ctrl+H to open Find&Replace function and under Find write the layer that's currently used in the file ie. 'layer 4', note the spacing. Under Replace with write the layer you want it to be on ie. 'layer 2' then Replace All and give it a few moments to replace all the strings. Now press Ctrl+A to select everything and paste it into your empty Editor GPO. No need to save the file you just edited. Repeat the above for all other GPOs, once done close and save the Editor GPO. You now have all the existing GPOs in one place to edit. Setting up StrategicAreas This is optional, if you plan to renavmesh the map or mess with control point placement or naming or you combined the SP/Coop GPOs etc. I'd advise not to do this and set up new Strategic Areas, otherwise your editor will crash while loading your map due an illegal CP error. If you still want to do it, it's very simple. Go to a SP gamemode directory (SP1, SP2, SP3 or gpm_coop) and game size, next to the GPO should be an AI folder. Copy that and paste it into the Editor folder, then open it and inside it open the Strategic Areas file and change the layer with Find&Replace to match your SP GPO layer. If you have several SAs, copy paste them into the Editor one, same as with the GPO basically. Note about Roads You can't recreate roads, since you need the spline.con data which you can't get from anywhere in the map's files, the roads are saved as compiled meshes. However, the roads are baked onto the colormap which should give you an excellent guideline to lay down new ones from scratch. This is pretty much it, post any questions you might have below. As trivia, the Photoshop action sets are very easy to create, I actually pondered including how to do those into this tutorial, but rather kept it game related and avoid extra confusion. Here's the link to the PS tutorial on action sets. http://www.coremediadesign.co.uk/learn_web_design/free_web_design_tutorials/tutorial/photoshop_batch_automate_function.html

So we basically redownloaded the whole core game with that patch? Also, is this the reason why BF games have patches that create more bugs than fix or is it just the latest trend with Bad Company series?

Start reading that tut please.... http://bf2.e-plaza.de/page2.htm

New version uploaded, link updated, fixed the mentioned hole, a floating MG and a lav25 that spawned for MEC.

I've stuck my nose into this, has anyone tried setting the camera to switch from 3rd person to the sight once you sight in a weapon? I tried with adding a camera to a weapon but it doesn't work because the camera needs to be parented to a PCO or projectile.

It's actually a port rather than made from scratch, I got the detail and colortextures across and the layout is pretty much the same. I obviously had to get rid of all xpack stuff, including the parking garage and the warlord palace and replaced the objects with their BF2 counterparts or similar ones. I did a small ruined area in place of the palace. I also redid the roads. Relightmapped and renavmeshed respectively, this took me less than a day ( I started it yesterday afternoon) Since its a 512x2 map and relatively small, I didn't bother with smaller sizes, so it's only available in CQ/COOP 64p. Download link below and while you're waiting, enjoy the pics install/uninstall in Battlefield 2/mods/bf2/levels as always. Download (24 Mb) http://www.filefront.com/16999231/warlord_aftermath_1.1.zip Pics http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g214/privateLoL/screen842.jpg http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g214/privateLoL/screen841.jpg http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g214/privateLoL/screen840.jpg http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g214/privateLoL/screen839.jpg http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g214/privateLoL/screen838-1.jpg http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g214/privateLoL/screen836.jpg http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g214/privateLoL/screen835.jpg http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g214/privateLoL/screen834.jpg http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g214/privateLoL/screen832.jpg

Never mind, I just fixed it, the lowdetailtexture had too many mipmaps

I've got a weird shadow appearing on detail mode in BF editor. It starts popping up very soon and if I zoom out to the whole map, it turns black. I haven't seen the map in game yet, but I had this before, apparently it's something with lowdetailmaps. Any ideas?

bumpy, is there a torrent available as I have bad experiences with direct downloads getting interrupted or corrupted on my part

Add some more launch tubes to that quad Eryx and it's going to become a MRLS

I think there's a limit of how much polys per object BF2 can handle, so you'd be better off with several individual objects than one, especially if the objects are detailed like you describe here. Copy pasting like nuts will probably pay off better

What, that you can change max terrain height or that doing that probably fixes this?

Found a possible fix- set your terrain height (under level settings, tweakbar) above the default. I was working on a map and changed that setting, then applied a road just to try my luck and the terrain didn't disappear and the terrain adjusted to the road correctly. I tried the same on another map and while terrain did disappear again, what was interesting that the memory error strings in the debug multiplied, from the usual four or two there were like a dozen. I saved&closed the map and got a bfeditor crash after it closed, but when I reloaded the editor and the map, the terrain was there aligned to the road.

Could you add a progress bar to the Archive Watcher? I used it today and after it packed all the stuff into the .zips, it kept cycling in between "updating objects_client" and "updating objects_server" forever then finally crashed on me, dunno if its something on my side.

Any tips on how you did it or was it just luck?

I couldn't find anything with search, so here goes. I've got a BF2 map, that works on cq, but crashes on coop after I load the map and select a spawn to spawn in on the Caps menu, no error in windowed mode. Any ideas?

Set your server player limit lower, the reason why you're only allowed to have 32 bots is because your server is set to 32 players (32+32=64)