[Map] Al Harithah (2km) [WIP]

[H.sta]

very nice work, keep it up

some very clever solutions there

[Amok@ndy]

Originally Posted by JonnyC

thats the problem if you play Sandbox in the editor ! i see some glitches yet this will be a big problem on your map

but nice details
keep it up

[Jonny]

There is a photo of the facility on panoramio, with the caption 'pulp and papermill'.

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/3264130.jpg
The photo is from 1977, but its not likely to have changed its function sinse then.

It most likely contains one or more of these:
Fourdrinier machine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
and it would be a good idea for you have some idea of the process if you are going to model a factory that does it. Note: no cooling towers are used.

It seems that most of the process is in the great big long building to the SE of the oil containers. The 'forest' of pylons to the west of that building could be used to step electricity up or down and act as a capacitor or inductor.

Keeping most of the pipes above ground is a good idea, they are easier to inspect and maintain and are cheaper to install. Always keep the process in mind when adding pipes though, there are plenty of warehouses with no need for piping leading to them.

[A_Grounded_Pilot]

Originally Posted by Jonny

These:

Are NOT colling towers. They are huge oil containers.
The shadows you see in the second from the left are due to it being open at the top, as its being maintained.

Slight nitpick - I believe those are probably floating roof style tanks. The roof floats on top of the product, which eliminates any enclosed empty space in the tank. This prevents the buildup of the extremely volatile vapors that would otherwise form in the air space above the oil, reducing the likelihood of an explosion. The second one from the left is just nearly empty, so the roof is floating very low inside the tank.

And JonnyC - listen to Jonny. Attention to detail like his makes or breaks a map for me. It's looking good, keep working on it.

[JonnyC]

Actually I'm not sure how long i have been working on it i think I'm closing in on ~5-6 weeks.

You´d expect it to glitch more for the amount of bastardized statics I'm using ^^; right now the only thing I cant fix is the stupid cement block thats on the valves, its going through the walkways in 2 places (you notice one in the vid).
I will make a frame to cover up the pipes/ends without proper entry points that lead into the buildings, btw... i was sure there used to be a static thats just the ring/endcap of the water pipes but i cant find it for my life.

ATM I cant decide if i should keep going with the city or start on replacing the cooling towers/reworking a bit of the place, i think i will go with the towers first, and change a bit of the layout.

I was thinking about the housing block thats close to the industry compound to be realistic the map will be very static heavy and i don´t think i can afford a 2nd city because i can barely use any of the vanilla city buildings, they are to high for such small towns.
On the video you can see i put warehouses in front of the cooling towers and left the office buildings in limbo, maybe i should place the office buildings where the 2nd housing block should be and ignore it for the sake of performance. It looks pretty boring in the pic anyways just like 100 small huts (are those even huts?) in tights blocks.


Right now i cant really check the map ingame because my custom statics are not showing up, i guess i need to put them into the server and client.rar , can you just add them into the archive or do you have to pack the whole thing up for them to run ?

The pipeline rig is not high enough for lots of my stuff and i was wondering if i could just open the original one and make em longer or do i have to remake one from scratch because its not allowed to modify the bf2 models ?
Same goes for the waterpipe rig its not even close to what i need in hight.

Will tpaint mess up the image colormap if I run it now because I'm getting black detail maps or if I should just wait until I can get rid of the colormap anyways and ignore the black terrain ?

@Jonny
Nice post I will look into that.
I'm used to modeling small stuff so its a long shot but some custom machinery is defiantly a very good idea.
For now i will keep the walkways as a placeholder if the map turns out to have nice gameplay it can be refined.
I still need to knock out some flavor and deco statics like rubble piles and the stuff I mentioned earlier that should help me to get used to the workflow before I start on something big like a factory.
I need to learn how to get buildings ingame eventually because i wanna build a city map badly but the vanilla buildings are way to restrictive.


Right now I'm working in this order (more or less)
1. get all landmarks down
2. finish the city
3. get the terrain 90% done
4. deco and flavour statics
5. get the terrain done
6. texture
7. more custom statics

[fuzzhead]

Great looking map so far

And as always, Johnny with the keen eye, hehe nice feedback. You can be prety blunt with feedback sometimes but overall I think very good attention to details.

[*APG* <=130192=>]

Haha! Very nice.
I had a practical training in a chemical plant and your map looks very detailed and have this "factory-feeling" :P

[Jonny]

Originally Posted by JonnyC

I was thinking about the housing block thats close to the industry compound to be realistic the map will be very static heavy and i don´t think i can afford a 2nd city because i can barely use any of the vanilla city buildings, they are to high for such small towns.
On the video you can see i put warehouses in front of the cooling towers and left the office buildings in limbo, maybe i should place the office buildings where the 2nd housing block should be and ignore it for the sake of performance. It looks pretty boring in the pic anyways just like 100 small huts (are those even huts?) in tights blocks.

The housing blocks there are pretty much free statics, you have a selection to choose from that cover a large area with relatively few statics. The two different urban area layouts, however, will be far more costly. They are sufficiently different for it to be worth adding both IMO, one area is dominated by a grid-like street plan and 2 storey housing units with small gardens, while the other is far more of a random layout and is dominated by single storey housing with fewer gardens. They will lead to different tactics being used on the same map, so its a good idea to add both. Look carefully at the shadows they cast to figure out the height of each building.

The best building sets to use for both are the afghan series statics, any versions with different skins can easily be re-textured to fit in seamlessly.

FAR TOO MANY PEOPLE IGNORE THE FOLLOWING ADVICE. IT HAS NEVER BEEN GOOD FOR THEM TO DO SO.
At this stage, performance is the last thing you want to worry about. To get the map to look as good as it can you need to break it before you finish it. Add so much detail that you can no longer run it, only then can you make a good decision about what details are most important.

Originally Posted by JonnyC

Right now i cant really check the map ingame because my custom statics are not showing up, i guess i need to put them into the server and client.rar , can you just add them into the archive or do you have to pack the whole thing up for them to run ?

I recently helped someone else with this problem, here is the PM I sent:

Originally Posted by Jonny

I think the most likely cause is that you are mapping in pr_edit and testing in pr. You will need to use a custom object folder to get the buildings to be loaded in the PR mod folder.

The simplest way to make this is probably to zip up the whole objects folder, and then remove the parts that are already in other object folders, leaving your buildings and the folder structure that contains them.

Thats not the quickest way, however. I use a batch file to zip them all up for me:

rem clean work area
rmdir /s/q staticobjects

rem COPY OBJECTS FROM STATICS FOLDER

rem statics
xcopy ..\staticobjects\pr\chinese\apt_const staticobjects\pr\chinese\apt_const /i/s/r
xcopy ..\staticobjects\pr\new_misc\barrier staticobjects\pr\new_misc\barrier /i/s/r
xcopy ..\staticobjects\pr\citybuildings\housingblock_1_topfloor_v2 staticobjects\pr\citybuildings\housingblock_1_topfloor_v2 /i/s/r
xcopy ..\staticobjects\pr\citybuildings\housingblock_2_topfloor_v3 staticobjects\pr\citybuildings\housingblock_2_topfloor_v3 /i/s/r

rem MAKE ZIP FOLDER

rem compress
del planm_objects.zip
"C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" a planm_objects.zip staticobjects

rem cleanup
rmdir /s/q staticobjects

Which I find is a lot easier to make small adjustments to the statics.

Now you need to get it to load properly. For this you will need to edit some of the files for your map.
You need to add a folder called clientarchives.con and add a line similar to fileManager.mountArchive levels\island1\planm_objects.zip Objects, but with the path to your objects folder, rather than ours. Its best if the object folder is inside your maps folder, so when you upload the map later you dont forget the objects that go with it.
Now for the init.con file, when you open it up you will see there are 2 large blocks of things that it runs. Right at the top of both of those blocks you have to add the line run clientarchives.con.

rem *** Generated by BF2Editor ***
if v_arg1 == BF2Editor

run clientarchives.con
run Heightdata.con
LevelSettings.InitWorld
run Terrain.con BF2Editor
run StaticObjects.con BF2Editor
run Sounds.con
run Sky.con BF2Editor
run Editor/GamePlayObjects.con host
UndergrowthEditable.create
Undergrowth.load Levels\Island1\
run Overgrowth/Overgrowth.con
Overgrowth.editorEnable 1
run AmbientObjects.con BF2Editor
run Water.con
run TriggerableTemplates.con BF2Editor

else

run clientarchives.con
run Heightdata.con
run Terrain.con v_arg2
run Sky.con v_arg2
run CompiledRoads.con
run Sounds.con
run tmp.con v_arg1
Undergrowth.load Levels\Island1\
run Overgrowth/Overgrowth.con
run Overgrowth/OvergrowthCollision.con
run AmbientObjects.con
run Water.con
run TriggerableTemplates.con

endIf

rem ------------------------------- LevelSettings -------------------------------
rem -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

So long as all the paths are correct, and the object folder is put together correctly, the objects should now show up in game.

Originally Posted by JonnyC

The pipeline rig is not high enough for lots of my stuff and i was wondering if i could just open the original one and make em longer or do i have to remake one from scratch because its not allowed to modify the bf2 models ?
Same goes for the waterpipe rig its not even close to what i need in hight.

You are not allowed to modify the BF2 models. To make them higher you would need to model extensions or re-make the whole thing.

They should not be too short for you anyway, pipe lines should be relatively close to the ground so they can easily be inspected and repaired. If you take one across a road then the simplest method is to put it underground until its on the other side, or keep it at the same height it was before if you could get a lorry under it already.

Originally Posted by JonnyC

Will tpaint mess up the image colormap if I run it now because I'm getting black detail maps or if I should just wait until I can get rid of the colormap anyways and ignore the black terrain ?

It will screw up the colourmap. You can put it back by making a copy of it first and pasting that back into the colourmap folders after you move all the tpaint generated stuff into the correct places. Make sure you remember that you need to overwrite the files in the editor folder to get the modified detail and colour maps to show up in the editor.

Alternatively you could add the colourmap to tpaints data folder and edit the gradients so that the image colourmap is regenerated when you run tpaint.

Originally Posted by JonnyC

@Jonny
Nice post I will look into that.
I'm used to modeling small stuff so its a long shot but some custom machinery is defiantly a very good idea.
For now i will keep the walkways as a placeholder if the map turns out to have nice gameplay it can be refined.
I still need to knock out some flavor and deco statics like rubble piles and the stuff I mentioned earlier that should help me to get used to the workflow before I start on something big like a factory.
I need to learn how to get buildings ingame eventually because i wanna build a city map badly but the vanilla buildings are way to restrictive.

If you are going to do rubble piles, see if you can get them to pass for this one:
http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/415EE...0090033230.jpg
As it can be used in another community map and will help keep the DL size down if both end up in PR.

Getting a building in-game is the same as with any other static. If you can get those little walkways to work then you will have no problem with any buildings. The one thing that becomes more important would be anchor positions if you split the building up.

Originally Posted by JonnyC

Right now I'm working in this order (more or less)
1. get all landmarks down
2. finish the city
3. get the terrain 90% done
4. deco and flavour statics
5. get the terrain done
6. texture
7. more custom statics

Dont try to work in any particular order. You are likely to get bored if you do, and then the map will never be finished. Work on whatever you feel like working on at the time, it will all have to be done eventually anyway so you might as well enjoy doing it.

@ grounded pilot:
I never knew they did that, we could really do with having some of those for PR.

@ fuzz:
Just trying to get my point across, and get more good quality maps to kill people on. Bluntness is nothing compared to what you lot get from people who dont like the gameplay, anyway.

[JonnyC]

Haha! Very nice.
I had a practical training in a chemical plant and your map looks very detailed and have this "factory-feeling" :P

Me too, don´t tell me it was Schering haha


Thanks again for the feedback guys.

@ Jonny
Nah your not blunt, must be the name but i like your point of view.

About the housing block, right now I'm trying to concentrate my destroyables on the compounds in the first town so you can breach walls to flank buildings but that could be a nice contrast because your pretty much trapped in there.
It looks like i would have to build most of those houses with the north/afghan walls too, do you think the game can handle that? I don´t mind going nuts with statics.

If you are going to do rubble piles, see if you can get them to pass for this one:
Ministry of Defence | Error | Page not found (Error 404)
As it can be used in another community map and will help keep the DL size down if both end up in PR.

Yea those are nice i saw the pic in the other thread too, ill keep it in mind.

Dont try to work in any particular order. You are likely to get bored if you do, and then the map will never be finished. Work on whatever you feel like working on at the time, it will all have to be done eventually anyway so you might as well enjoy doing it.

Its just my normal pattern sure you end up jumping around sometimes but in general that works pretty good for me. I only released one of my maps (Requiem) but i have a ton that i ditched over the years because i was busy mapping for another game. (but that died now)

Thanks for the help i will try to run the map like that so i can finally check if the walkways look right.

Edit: oh yea i nearly forgot again... is it possible to use the wrecks of the destroyable village buildings and walls, i was thinking about having a few destroyed compounds.

[=(DK)=stoffen_tacticalsup]

It is quite obvious Jonny knows his buisness, I meant no offense. I just mean that it is your map and you should do the things you feel comfortable with. That ofc includes listning the excellent advise Jonny offers.

The point was that we (the players) are very subtle in our demands and we dont expect everything to be perfect. That (ofc) doesnt make it worse if it is

The map looks stunning and realistic and that is what matters to most.