The Tutorial/Tool List for PR Mapping (For Beginners & Up)

[40mmrain]

i've become rather obsessed with the idea of a korengal 2.0, as many players have shown a liking to the atmosphere, and general environment of korengal, and I share it. I also feel as if my knowledge of how to properly balance maps in PR is adequate to make maps.

I've written about why I feel as if the current korengal map is simply not up to standard. I plan to study the current map, and read extensively on the real battles, and environment of the korengal.

How long would an estimate be for going from someone who has simply never tried to map, to a full 2x2km finished product?

I'm busy, but if I find myself interested in my own work, I'll be putting a lot of time into it. I don't expect to be done a few weeks, but for mappers out there, how long was it for you to actually know what you were doing?

[sylent/shooter]

My map has been in the making for 3 years... xD

[rodrigoma]

i've become rather obsessed with the idea of a korengal 2.0, as many players have shown a liking to the atmosphere, and general environment of korengal, and I share it. I also feel as if my knowledge of how to properly balance maps in PR is adequate to make maps.

I've written about why I feel as if the current korengal map is simply not up to standard. I plan to study the current map, and read extensively on the real battles, and environment of the korengal.

How long would an estimate be for going from someone who has simply never tried to map, to a full 2x2km finished product?

I'm busy, but if I find myself interested in my own work, I'll be putting a lot of time into it. I don't expect to be done a few weeks, but for mappers out there, how long was it for you to actually know what you were doing?

it really, depends how much time you got avaible and how much of that time you want to spend mapping. As starting from scratch though you will have to be ready to learn new things and keep going even when things are getting confusing (and they will)

[40mmrain]

Right, got an estimate in hours?

[Psyrus]

Right, got an estimate in hours?

[From someone with no mapping experience at all, just lots of forum trolling]

I've read multiple times on the forums from devs is that you can expect, particularly as a new mapper, to take around a year to get a map going that is up to scratch for PR. This is with a presumed 'normal' amount of time dedicated each week (working around school/work). I'd estimate easily 100+ hours.

One thing to look out for though, that I've seen far too many times...

Once you make some headway, start getting some external backups going on the map files, as I think I've seen ~3 different promising projects get scrapped because the 'HDD died' or the 'computer is having some problems' - a product of the process taking so long... there's a higher chance of something failing in the meantime.

[VapoMan]

It can really depend on what your doing and your circumstances on how long it will take to make a map.

Battle of Ia Drang took about 2 months to complete as I had a solid plan and I was working on it for a few hours each day. The first couple weeks was just planning, simple drawings of the map's layout, I drew quite a few (important, as the first plan was not used in the final design) and scrutinised them to find what layout would make the most sense historically and would work game play wise too. I got most of the terrain done in the first month, the second month was adding details and mostly GPO work.

It helped that it was a fairly small and simple map, but the main reason it was finished so quickly was the planning at the beginning. Its easy to waste a lot of time fluffing around when you don't have a set plan or goal.
If its your first map though it will take much longer as most of the time is just spent on learning with a lot of trial and error.

[rodrigoma]

im looking at this and I think we are discouraging anyone thats going to try mapping XD
but I agree with vapoman, you should plan ahead as it will save you alot of time, (although I dont do it, and suffer the consequences XD)
one thing to take into consideration is not only the total hours you are going to take but if you have an idea of how things work and how you want your map to be you can draw out the base (OG,UG, terrain, textures, roads etc) in not alot of time using some tools and then you can pick up on the editor wen you have the time and go on building your points of interest one by one.
for example, in brecourt I had to do everything at once and o spreading out the map finishing off on every area after I was done, it took me alot of time, with Vung ro I managed to do it much faster although its a larger map because I laid the groundwork and then worked individually on the points of interest.

[Blondey]

How do i make teams for PR? Like, for the Team 1 and Team 2 thing. Because someone told me it's different to what you have to do in normal BF2? Is there a different way than the level settings?

[Rabbit]

How do i make teams for PR? Like, for the Team 1 and Team 2 thing. Because someone told me it's different to what you have to do in normal BF2? Is there a different way than the level settings?

https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f354-c ... lines.html

Go into your .init and manually change it, it will need constant updating, if it doesn't look like this exactly


run ../../Factions/faction_init.con 1 "gb"
run ../../Factions/faction_init.con 2 "ch"

and breaks down into the normal bf2 way of viewing it kits wont work properly. IE some you get from a crate will be invisible and missing sounds.

[Blondey]

https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f354-c ... lines.html

Go into your .init and manually change it, it will need constant updating, if it doesn't look like this exactly


run ../../Factions/faction_init.con 1 "gb"
run ../../Factions/faction_init.con 2 "ch"

and breaks down into the normal bf2 way of viewing it kits wont work properly. IE some you get from a crate will be invisible and missing sounds.

Thanks for the answer mate Another question though Where is my init.con files?

[Rabbit]

Thanks for the answer mate Another question though Where is my init.con files?

In your map folder. It should NOT be in another folder, it should be a notepad file floating in your main map file.

pr_edit>levels>mylevel

[Blondey]

In your map folder. It should NOT be in another folder, it should be a notepad file floating in your main map file.

pr_edit>levels>mylevel

Okay, thank you very much!

[Ason]

Everything in the tutorial seems great, only problem is i got to point #1 Envmaps in Moderate tutorial and in that tutorial it says i should already know how to and have created lightmaps for my map before starting that tutorial. The problem is Lightmaps is #9 in Moderate Tutorial. And i can't find a lightmap tutorial which isnt 5+ years old. I found one but when he tells me what parameters to use for the lightmaps there are missing parameters etc. Anybody knows what my next step should be?
I tried following this tutorial
Lightmap Tutorial For Beginners - Official BF Editor Forums
But he doesn't got for example: "GIFillIntensity" in his list of parameters(or whatever they are called).
Is it really important to first generate lightmaps then starting on Envmaps or can i follow the steps in the PR guide even if the guy on the envmaps tutorial contradicts the steps in this this tutorial?(btw i don't know what Envmaps is atm). somebody please help me out what to learn next

[AFsoccer]

I tried following this tutorial
Lightmap Tutorial For Beginners - Official BF Editor Forums
But he doesn't got for example: "GIFillIntensity" in his list of parameters(or whatever they are called).

Actually, he does but it's called "skyWhite" instead of GIFillIntensity. So the value he used was 0.3. I'm not sure why vBF2 named it one thing in the editor and another thing in the text file, but they are the same.

Is it really important to first generate lightmaps then starting on Envmaps or can i follow the steps in the PR guide even if the guy on the envmaps tutorial contradicts the steps in this this tutorial?(btw i don't know what Envmaps is atm). somebody please help me out what to learn next

The EnvMap controls the reflections on your map. So reflections on scopes, reflections of water and puddles, etc. There is a separate tutorial for it here. But to answer your question, it's best to do your EnvMap after your terrain lightmap... BUT only if you're doing your final versions. If you are just trying to get your basic look created, lightmap the terrain as it is now and tweak how it want it to look. Not having all the shadows in the right place won't make a difference for the draft WIP EnvMap. Then follow the EnvMap tutorial and it will create a more representative result because it uses the terrain color to create it. Now you can move on to tweaking your water color.

Then when you are done with the map, you'll have to re-do the terrain lightmaps anyway, so it's a good time to re-do the EnvMap(s) too.

[Ason]

Alright thanks for the quick response! So you are basically saying i should keep following the steps as you guys have made them in this thread? And one more question, could you explain what would happen if i do envmaps before lightmapping on a final version of a map ? why is it better to do lightmapping before ?

[Mineral]

cause they will look better And and in the end lightmaps change to look of a map drastically. Env maps are nothing more then little images stored in your map files which are used to make these reflections. So you want to make these at the end so they reflect how you map looks then, not how it looks now.


an example of a ENV map.

[Ason]

Thanks for the explanation man!

[Rhino]

an example of a ENV map.

No that's just 1 of 6 sides of an ENV (Cube) map

Cube mapping - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is how one from Muttrah looks with all the sides:


EDIT: or how it looks with all the sides correctly placed:

[The_Turkish_Moose]

When I try to run my map, It crashes, Why?

[CTRifle]

Many different reasons mate, you need to tell us around what percent or better yet, give us a screen of the actual error.

Run whatever mod/game the level is with in windowed mode, then load up your map and a error should pop up before it crashes and tell you what the problem is