F.a.q.

[-R|F-Glitch]

This is a place for answering and asking questions. If you have a question, post it. If you have an answer answer it like in tutorial form, and make sure you supply a title that relates to the question. Some examples are below.

Download the Editor
ftp://largedownloads.ea.com/pub/misc...etup_aug02.exe



Can you make singleplayer maps or play sinpleplayer with custom maps?
Making Roads
Blocky Texture at a distance
Making a Custom Sky
Generating Lightmaps
How to make Water
How to rename your map
Loading Screen and Minimap
Undergrowth
Fire and Smoke Bug
Woodland Skin for US
Commander Assets
Surrounding Terrain
60% Load Bug
Loading Music
Creating Selectable Spawnpoints
Putting objects together, the easy way, carrier, damn, etc.
Two ways to copy/clone an object
Waterfall Bug
Copying an Pasting Object(s) to new map or same
Objects disappearing when zooming in
Making good looking textures

[-R|F-Glitch]

How to make roads.

How to make roads:

1. Open the BF2 Editor
2. Create a new Mod "Don't worry you can always copy and paste your level into this mods folder."
3. Go to Mod in the top bar then to mod manager, select everything on the left except for roads, click ok. If you need anything like buildings for your map all you will have to do is hit the plus sign on the resource tree and go to load resource. "This is if you don't get those folders"
4. Go to level editor, click the road tool, right click, create new spline, make three other nodes by holding down alt and left clicking.
5. Click 'Create New Template' come up with a name.
6. Go to your resource tree, select your template, click primary texture and selcect your texture, do the same for secondary texture.
7 Click connect.
8.You can move around the nodes anywhere you want them, but I would suggest having them already where you want them, you need 4 or more nodes to have a complete road. When you are done making your road, click build final road, if you want to work on it again, click build ghost road.
9. If you want to test out your map just go to the levels folder for your mod and copy and paste that into the levels folder for BF2.
10. I'm da man. If this doesn't help PM me.

Some roads may show up double, I yet to find an answer for this, but I will look into it further. If you want a single lane road, select the roads with one tire track or one side for now.

[=DNC=BongSquad]

I want to make some relatively straight-forward modfications: like placing a some more of those explosive barrels in Karkand. Will clients who connect to that server have to download the mod ahead of time?

I hope not. It would be nice to have it all server based. If not, how big would this mod be? A python file weighing in at 50kB? Or a massive map file that's 100MB?

[-R|F-Glitch]

I want to make some relatively straight-forward modfications: like placing a some more of those explosive barrels in Karkand. Will clients who connect to that server have to download the mod ahead of time?

I hope not. It would be nice to have it all server based. If not, how big would this mod be? A python file weighing in at 50kB? Or a massive map file that's 100MB?

Yes if you are making or modding a map a person will have to download it ahead of time before joining the server. Filesize tends to run around 20 MB.

[-R|F-Glitch]

Getting rid of blocky texture.

How to get rid of blocky textures that are in the distance:

Ok you have blocky texture in the distance when you are playing your map, it may look like this: http://www.apohq.net/tbf2/screen108.jpg . This is an easy fix.

Step one: Open up the editor and open up your map, select terrain editor, and then select the texture tool.


Step two: Go to the right side of the editor where you will find the place where you select the textures you want to use. Scroll down and click the Set Low Detail Texture button.


Step three: A box should pop up with a list of one item select this one item and press OK. Your problem should be fixed.


Don't worry about what that low detail texture looks like, it will work. Also when you are first making your map don't set your scale to 4.

[DaSniper]

Making a Custom Sky

BF2 Mapping Tutorial – Adding a custom sky to your map

By: DaSniper

This tutorial will tell you how to add a custom sky to your map. It is not going to tell you how to make custom skies, and that’s final. The process is very long and I do not feel like typing that up tonight.

First to start off once you have a custom sky made and in .dds (texture format) right click and go to properties. Check the Read Only checkbox and then press ok and copy and paste that sky file into your server.zip and client.zip.

For this tutorial I shall use test_sky.dds as the file for the sky. (test_sky can be changed to what ever you want it to be. However once you copy and paste into the editor that is final.)

So I got test_sky.dds file set as read only and copy and pasted into my server.zip and client.zip.

Step two is to go into your server.zip Copy and Paste sky.con file to a folder outside of the zip folder and open it with notepad or textpad. (Which ever you use)

Find the line that says

Skydome.skyTexture

Now you might think this is well DUH that’s where the sky texture goes. Well as of just 2 minutes ago the sky textures were only in the common_client.zip file that is 124MB!! I don’t think mappers or even modders want to have to send that file to everyone for every map they make.

Well we are going to change that.

Behind that line

Skydome.skyTexture

Type in

Levels\mapname\test_sky

(map name is whatever the name of the folder your map resides in…(which should be your map name) and the test_sky of course changes to whatever you have it set to, as I stated before was your choice.)

WARNING DO NOT PUT “.dds” AT THE END OF IT!!!

Once you finish typing that in save the file and copy and paste it back into the server.zip file.

YOUR DONE!

Test it out to be sure. If it does not work be sure to read over this tutorial again to make sure you did not forget or mess up on something.

Special Thanks to Silent -DA- for his time in waiting for me to finish getting this to work and for being my first outside tester to make sure it works.

Check out his map at http://www.team-da.com/Maps/Living_Hell.zip one of the first maps to have custom skies!

[-R|F-Glitch]

Generating Lightmaps

How to generate Lightmaps:

Step one: Open up your map in the level or terrain editor. Go to the top and select Ligh, select sun/flare direction, and pick one of the options to set your sun. Make sure that the camera is preset to what you will be choosing as an option.


Step two: Go to Compile-->Lightmaps-->Generate Lightmaps. A box should popup.


Step three:
Select everything in the first row. Then select Primary and Secondary in the second row. Also, select ignore asserts and for best quality and no lines on your map select the final resolution. The generating process may take awhile.
**WARNING** Ignore what is selected in the picture. **WARNING**


Step four: This is a good thing to do, go to compile-->Make Ground Hemi..

[DaSniper]

How to make water... water like.

How to make water look like water.

1. Open the BF2 Editor
2. Load into the mod that has your map. This is usually "bf2".
3. Load up your map.
4. Go into your Tweaker Bar on the left side of the editor and press the + next to Water Settings.
5. In the water settings there are a few things to change.
a. Sea level
b. Water Scroll
c. Water Animation Speed
d. All the water colors.
6. Sea Level - Sea level determines the height of the water. At Default it is set to -10000.... Thats like having water at the core of the earth :P. So first thng to do is to find the right height. I recommend just changing it a few times to find the best suitable level. A level I like to use alot is 20-50. However if you have a very high terrain you may want to increase it more.
7. Water scroll - Water scroll determines the direction the water is going in. You will have to test this out. It gives you a x and y axis. So use your geometry.
8. Water Animation Speed - NOW THIS IS THE BIG THING! This determines that your water actually moves. Right now at default water moves so fast you can't even see it moving. The bases of this is the lower the number the faster the water moves. So if you want really fast water. 10-40 If you want slower water 50-Up.
9. Water Colors - Now these are up to you. I usually recommend a greenish blue or just plain blue for water unless you are making something like mars.

10. Specular Light and Power - This has to do with that nice big line you get of light seperation. By changing these settings it can really make the water look better.

Now For those people who want to see reflections in their map this has to do with Envmaps. Envmaps have to be copied or made for reflections of mountains the sky or any of that stuff to be included. Now for some reason ive been making maps but the Compile Envmaps is not working.
So the only way to get this to work is to copy it from a map that is similar. The envmaps can be found in the client.zip under water and envmaps.

The water reflections will not show up on the editor. It will show up ingame though. (Requires high graphics for good water reflection.)


If there is anything I missed I will update this post.

[flatliner684]

question

When you get close to an object in the editor, it disapears. Is there anyway to stop that from happening? . its really anoying if you want to try and place a ladder on a building or something.

[=DNC=BongSquad]

Yes if you are making or modding a map a person will have to download it ahead of time before joining the server. Filesize tends to run around 20 MB.

Thanks for your help. I need a little more detail: What did you mean by the 'it'? Is it one singular map file or is it a mod file? I thought the karkand map would be bigger than 20 MB.

[Trevfirestorm]

Yes if you are making or modding a map a person will have to download it ahead of time before joining the server. Filesize tends to run around 20 MB.

have you tested this though.... i know in bf'42 we were able to do tons of server side modding and it looks like it should be possible in this game also... however i have not tested this yet

[HicRic]

When you get close to an object in the editor, it disapears. Is there anyway to stop that from happening? . its really anoying if you want to try and place a ladder on a building or something.

You're probably moving too close to the building and moving into it. The obviously means you won't see it any more. try scrolling the mouse wheel so you have a low speed % and then zooming toward the building.

[-R|F-Glitch]

have you tested this though.... i know in bf'42 we were able to do tons of server side modding and it looks like it should be possible in this game also... however i have not tested this yet

No I havn't tested it, but it is my best educated guess that people would have to download the map to be able to play on it.

[Deesies]

How do I rename a map?

[DaSniper]

How do I rename a map?

To change your map name. You have to manually open about 10 different files and change the name of the map inside each one on about 45 lines and then change the name of some files in the info folder and all that.

Heightdata.con
Init.con
sky.con
Terrain.con

And in the info folder
the .desc filename has to be changed to the name that you want the map name too and so does the title inside.