Adventures of a mapping newb

[frostcat]

Hi



I have decided to check out the editor the last day. So I have started and started fiddling with the terrain editor, which is great fun, reminds me of Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. Until I have started to texture the landscape. I have followed the official tutorial (which was a bit confusing). When I set the render mode to detail texture the painting works buteverything has a bright yellow tint. When switching to "texture" the textures are not there. When I hit "merge" they do appear. Why is it like this? Is it normal for a AMD 2400+ 1024MB GF6200 256MB to slow down when painting? Then I have placed control points and 4 spawns for each side and a vehicle spawn as advertised in the official tutorial.

They say I can start the map now and see how it looks. k, I exit the editor and load the map on a local server. When loading there is no minimap and the game just crashes to desktop while loading without any error message.

I have also set the water level to have a nice ocean. However I have not changed any setting except height which make the water appear pitch black in editor.

I would also like to ask what the workflow for a bf2 map is like?

ATM I have the following conception of it:


1. Make Terrain
2. Paint Terrain
3. Place Spawns, CPs, static objects
4. ?

btw is there a way to "preview" lighting and shadows in the editor? I have seen the compile thingy but I am not sure how and when to use it.

[CrimsonBlaze]

Re: Adventures of a mapping newb

You need to set the low detail texture

All computers will lag when painting on the textures, its actually doing alot of work...

You should copy the water folder and water.con file from a map you like and you should then have realistic looking water (and can still alter it alot via the tweaker bar)

The way I do my maps is:
1. Actually create map
2. Place down a base texture so things are easier to see
3. Make a nice landscape
4. Retexture where needed
5. just place a few spawns, object spawers and cp's and test until its the way I want it (like able to get up slopes easily)
6. Repeat steps 3-5 until perfect
7. remove spawns and cp's
8. Add static objects where needed
9. Add all spawns, cp's object spawners for each layer
10. Test and fix
11. add undergrowth and overgrowth
12. Test and remove parts or unvergrowth and overgrowth (like trees in buildings and grass appearing through the floor of buildings)
13. test, fix, test, fix, test, fix, test, fix test
14. change game settings (ticket bleed etc..) and generate lightmaps
15. Test once again, if alls good then release

No preview im afraid, you have to generate the lightmaps and then you'll have your shadows, a very time consuming process.


For you error, in the graphics settings turn terrain to medium. If that doesnt work delete the overgrowth related files from the map directory if you havent placed overgrowth. If that doesnt work either then you will need to give us info, do this by rightclicking on the shortcut to the bf2 exe and click properties then on the end of the target box change +fullscreen 1 to +fullscreen 0, this will make it in windowed mode and when the game crashes it will show you the error - copy this down and post it in the forum.

[[6th]Hoovie]

Re: Adventures of a mapping newb

ok.. well if you have p4 3.2 ghz prossor 2gsram 300gb hard drive and x800 it wont lag....

i would suggest NOT to deleted the overgrowth files! when you do need them it will be a pain. im guessing that your just missing a few textors or maybe set terrian to medium.

do the windowed mode and tell us the error (thats if you get 1)

[CrimsonBlaze]

Re: Adventures of a mapping newb

The editor saves overgrowth files even when there is no overgrowth which can create a crash. Hence why I said delete them.
What do you mean it will be a pain when you need them? After you put overgrowth on the map click save all, save overgrowth and voila there's overgrowth...

[Karate hand]

Re: Adventures of a mapping newb

hi m8, you mite like to check the 3 videos, out there on gotfrag.com ill put in link for you http://bfeditor.gotfrag.com/forums/
then go in the tututial section and search for video files, the 3 videos are very basic, however they do help, also search in forums too, and save the info you find into a file folder you can acces when you in editor, to read
ps the key is re read the info like 3 to 4 times and then some more,

[maranello]

Re: Adventures of a mapping newb

ok.. well if you have p4 3.2 ghz prossor 2gsram 300gb hard drive and x800 it wont lag....

i would suggest NOT to deleted the overgrowth files! when you do need them it will be a pain. im guessing that your just missing a few textors or maybe set terrian to medium.

do the windowed mode and tell us the error (thats if you get 1)

Hahah...I have P4 3.0 ghz, 4 GB of DDR2 667 Mhz (just upgraded from 2, because 2 wasn't enough), GeForce 7800 GT 256 MB Pci Express Overclocked 445/1070 (stock 400/1000). and it still lags. There is no way that editor will not lag. I have 4 gb ram, i can't get any more and they are 4 X 1024 MB and 667 mhz (highest except RDRAM). my video card is also the second fastest video card in the world atm after 7800 GTX. and it still lags like hell.

Processor speed doesn't matter too much in editor as it is mostly dependent on RAM and video GPU and video ram. It wouldn't make a difference at all if i had 3.2 or 3.4 or 3.8. It would make a little difference if i have a FX 57 with 2 CPUs but thats too much. CPUs are actually not that important in graphic and gaming applications. CPUs are more effective in mathematical calculations. Such as compiling large projects, or debugging programs, or watching a DVD, or defraging your harddrive. Graphical applications uses 90% of their workforce from GPU and RAM (your graphics card's CPU) and the rest depends on harddrive and CPU. If you were talking about 3ds max or Maya and animations and such, i would agree, but for BF2 editor CPU definetly doesn't matter that much.

I mean come on, even the hardware i have right now is WAY too much for a game. Just my 4 GB DDR2 RAM costs around $400 with $400 video card it makes $800. I could buy a HP laptop with that money. I understand the gaming and other computer industries are developing and you have to upgrade to catch up but BF2 is way too much man. It has memory leaks and many other things. Here is what i mean by memory leak. This term is used so much, and i am sure 90% of the people here actually don't know what it is. Instead of computer terms, here is its explanation with daily terms:

Let's say you have a process, by process i mean like painting your terrain. You click texture tool and select texture and color and you start painting. The minute you click on your terrain to paint your map, there are maybe 50 different code portions in the background (program kernel is responsible for such actions, main engine that controls which code gets executed) that are being executed. BUT the problem is, there are processes that shouldn't be executed with that particular thing but they still do. That's very poor programming practice. And most of those processes never end actually. Some of them are infinite loops, some of them are endless binary trees and they keep building up and building up and they slow down your computer enormously.

If you work on a fully loaded 1024 x 1024 scale 2 map, by fully loaded i mean it has over 50,000 objects and you are moving around the map and you want to change a tiny bitty detail like let's say a mounted gun that is floating on the air, your computer uses over 1.8 GB of RAM and that is just so much. I have never seen in my life a program (and i am a programmer) that uses that much memory. We have programs that implement artificial intelligence and we use them to program robots (we have a robot soccer league hehe) and even they don't use that much memory and that is tremendous amount of process i am talking about here.

However, the way BF2 engine is built is very different than other games. I am sure you guys know that Half life 2 has much better graphics than BF2 does. Here is why. When you render graphics in Half life 2 engine, you render a room, or a small portion of a map, maybe 5-10 meter square, in Battlefield however, you render over 1000 objects usually and you render over 200 or sometimes 500 meter square land. It's amazingly huge. That's the way the game is built and there is really not much to do about it. So BF2 using 800 MB to 1 GB RAM for high graphics is very normal, but for Editor, its abnormal and must be fixed.

They say Dice Canada is going to fix it, well i don't think they will do so in the following months. Maybe a patch will be released next summer, so i am not very positive and optimistic about the whole editor thing.

[frostcat]

Re: Adventures of a mapping newb

thx for the infos


The deleting undergrowth fixed the crash and water is now looking like I want. However I have run into a few other problems. The map now always crashes after finished loading ("join game" appears for a split secodn then it crashes to desktop). Switching to windowed does not show any crash report. I think it may possibly be something about the objects I placed. Anyway I have ditched the map and started a new 1.


My next question is:

I have copied the water settings from sharqi and the water is nicely transparent at the shore. How can I get terrain that is 1m underwater appear on the minimap. If I hit show minimap the water is always solid. On the sharqi minimap the terrain below the waterlvl is visible


And...

If I compile the lightmaps to check out how the unfinished map looks and then change the terrain without recompiling the lighting will it cause any issues?


I would also like to know if there is a way to build towns efficiently? I mean how can I align sidewalks to streets to houses? Trying this by hand actually scares me

[CrimsonBlaze]

Re: Adventures of a mapping newb

1. I'd like to know this, land which is something like less than half a metre above water is also generated as water... was very annoying when I was working on a swampy map

2. There would be any issues resulting in crashes but if you make dramatic changes to the landscape then there may be shadows where there should be any or none where there should be as the lightmaps are still based from the old landscape.

3. Your gonna have to place the object and then manually type the co-ords in the tweaker bar, just zoom in close to where they should connect and change the numbers slightly. Just do this until it looks like they are connected.

[frostcat]

Re: Adventures of a mapping newb

For the placement of things I have discovered the snap tool which actually solves the concerns for town building.


For the water shining through I had to fix things myself

(any suggestions welcome - check full view)