Close Support Bridges (CSB) Placement

[Rhino]

In this tutorial I will show you how to place Close Support Bridges (CSB) correctly in your map. Although this process is really incredibly simple and most advanced mappers will probably not learn a lot from it I'm still making this tutorial so I do not have to answer every single person individual question on what's the right way to put them in there map

This tutorial will cover the British BR90 series of CSBs thou if any other types are made in the future this tutorial should explain the same steps of putting them in as well.

I also would recommending reading though my Highlight Post on these CSBs before going though this tutorial: https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f196-p ... s-csb.html



CSB Section Types

First lets review all the different sections of the BR90 CSBs we can place.

In total we have 8 different sections which are all located in the "\objects\common\deployable_csb" folder.

Please note to the names of each section since I will be referring to each different type by the name it has in that picture throughout this tutorial.

There are 3 main different type of sections we have here. The No. 10 Section(22m long), the No. 10 with Trestle Attachment Section (18m long) and the No. 11 Section (15m long). Each type then has some variation of itself where it just the bridge itself, has a Single Dirt Support (SDS) on one end and then we also have the Double Dirt Support (DDS) where the section has dirt supports on both ends. This set should pretty much give you everything you need to work with and I will go into a little bit later on how you should use each one.



Real Life Usage of CSBs

Before we get into how you place these on your maps I believe it is important you understand how these bridges are used in real life so you can try and reflect that ingame with keeping your bridges as realistic as possible.

What it says on the Royal Engineers site is pretty short and sweet:

Close support Bridging (CSB) assets are mechanically launched bridges that enable gap crossing in the combat zone, with crews protected by armour.

More Info on them here: Close Support Bridging (CSB) - British Army Website

That's basically a quick summary of what they are so to go into more detail, lets first review the types of vehicles that deploy these bridges in r/l.

Even thou I'm sure you have read in my highlight post I'm still going to go over this just encase you haven't and encase I've missed anything in it that you need to know for this.

In real life CSBs are deployed by a specialist bridge laying vehicle, such as an Armoured Vehicle Launched Bridge (AVLB) such as the TITAN and the M60A1, but CSB can also be deployed via a Tank Bridge Transporter (TBT) which is pretty much a Truck that can carry and deploy CSB.

More on the TITAN:
TITAN Armoured Vehicle Launcher Bridge - British Army Website
Titan - British Army Website

More on AVLBs:
Armoured vehicle-launched bridge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tank Bridge Transporter (TBT):

The Tank Bridge Transporter (TBT) has the same cross-country performance as a tank even when fully loaded. It can carry 1 x No 10 Bridge or 1x No 11 Bridge or 2 x No 12 Bridges. It can drop of and load bridges independently, but it cannot recover them.

Ingame as you probably know we are not using any of these specialized vehicles but instead going to be using our logi trucks, for reasons why please refer to my Highlight Post: https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f196-p ... s-csb.html


On to the actual ways these things are deployed, thanks to UK_Force I can supply you with a few slides of this presentation on how they work
Although these bits you do not have to 100% match while placing our bridges its worth keeping these things in mind and trying to match them as close as possible

This slide here shows you the basic overlap and setup with also taking into account the space needed for the AVLB/TBT.

Bank Height differences, something you will need to consider when placing your bridges.

Combination Bridging examples, note that combination bridging here dosen't always require a trestle in many situations although I wouldn't bridge like this much over water, only over ditches etc where there is little or no water at the bottom

Trestle Combination Bridging examples, note the rotation on the trestle is always flat with the surface. With our Trestle we have them locked at a 4deg angle which you can not change unfortunately but you can get away with a few degs rotation on top, just don't rotate it too much otherwise the trestle will look stupid with it not being 90degs to the ground. I would also overlap your bridges a little more than they have in the example above since they are pretty close to the edge.

Overbridging example, note here the CSB is being laid only to reinforce the bridge while tanks drive over it to spread the wait so the bridge dosen't collapse under the wait of the tank. Unfortunately we can't simulate this ingame but it isn't so unrealistic for them to be deployed on bridges that haven't been destroyed. You can also build them on bridges that have been destroyed like so: http://realitymodfiles.com/rhino/promo/csb/csb_04.jpg
Also you may notice the wedges in the bridges, we dont have these as it would make even more versions of the bridges and since they add very little we didn't feel it was worth adding them for performance reasons.


Some Real Life Examples:

I dont have many r/l examples of where these bridges are used, most of the examples I have are just from training sessions on the Bovington grounds etc but here are a few anyways

(click to enlarge)

Anyways now after reading though that you should be a qualified Army Engineer,,,,, or perhaps not. But you should know enough to place these on maps now



Setting up the Editor

Before going anywhere you should setup the editor so that the CSBs and other deployable objects are not black in the editor which is due to making them not glow on our thermals.

For starters download this .rar: http://realitymodfiles.com/rhino/editor ... -11-10.rar

Navigate to your "\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2\bf2editor\Shaders" folder and backup your old "RaShaderBM.fx" file.

Then open up the .rar you just downloaded above using winrar and extract the "RaShaderBM.fx" file into your "\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2\bf2editor\Shaders" folder.

After doing that you need to go into your "\Documents\Battlefield 2\cache" folder and delete all the folders in there.

Now after restarting the editor your CSBs and deployables should no longer be black making it easier to place them on your maps



Placing the CSBs

Placing these CSBs is pretty simple, its really like placing any other staticobject on your map and like any other static on your map, its saved into your maps Staticobjects.con file, although its most likley possible to save them into another .con file like I did with my Overgrowth Fields tut thou untested this and the Python code might not be able to find them if you do that but you will have to try it out if you want to keep your CSBs separate from your main statics in your map.

NOTE: First of all before thinking about deploying any bridges anywhere its best that we render both Overgrowth and Undergrowth objects. Last thing we want to do is spend ages lining up a bridge just to find we have stuck it in the middle of a tree.



Single Section Bridging

So lets keep things simple and start off with a single length of No. 10 bridge to cross a smallish gap over a river, like this one here on Al Basrah:

First of all I like to measure up the length of river so I know what I'm dealing with and so I can place the right type(s) of section(s) first time round rather than place a No 10 DDS then to find out its too large for one No10 bridge to span so end up having to delete it then placing a No 10 Trestle section and a No 11 section.
So click the Measure tool in the top left, left of the road tool:

And then click once on one side of the river where you think your bridge is going to start and a second time on the other side of the river where you think your bridge is going to end and you should get a yellow line between the two points. Once you have that line hit the "Enter" key to get the distance.
Tip: You can have more than just two points to measure between if you want to measure something else.

As we can see that span is 23m wide which is easily enough to span with a No 10 bridge when you also account for the dirt supports and also I over shot a little on the measuring

So if we drag and drop the No 10 DDS CSB located in "\objects\common\deployable_csb" onto the map like a normal static and move it into position. NOTE: it needs to be the DDS version since both ends are meeting a bank each and not only do the signify to the player where they can deploy a CSB but also help crate a nice level foundation for the bridge without having to modify the terrain etc. I also like to place objects in Grid with Texture Mode since you can see much more easily how the object meets up with the terrain and if its floating etc.

Note: The Bridge will look complete in the editor but ingame it will start off in its "Wreck" form, ie, only the dirt supports will be there.


Now to test our bridge is all working well here's a quick tip on how you can do that which most people don't know about
First drag and drop a vehicle into your map like a staticobject (not place it as a GPO) and place it somewhere near your CSB.

With the vehicle selected, in the command bar which I have located in the top right, thou default location is bottom left, Type in the Command:
camera.OnVehicleMode.(leave the last box blank)
Like so:

And with with last box selected which you have left blank, hit enter and you will enter the selected vehicle like you where driving it

Hit space bar then just use WASD as normal to move about and mouse to look around etc, thou dont fire any weapon as you will most likley crash the editor.

The ride quality wont be as good in the editor as it is ingame but you can basically see if your bridge is working well or not. To exit the vehicle go to Camera in the top and go Camera>Normal Mode and you will then go back to your normal free cam.

Once your happy your bridge is working well delete the vehicle and move onto placing the next bridge. You dont need to test every bridge to see if you can drive over it, but I would test the first one or two and any that are placed in an odd spot to check they can easily be driven over.


Next I'm going to place a CSB here where the banks are different heights etc. It is unlikely a player will want to place a CSB here as you dont have to make much of a detor to find a way around but its still worth putting one here just encase they do.

Again I'm going to measure the distance with the measuring tool:

Although this gap is 17m wide I'm still going to see if a 15m long No. 11 CSB section can cross it since it isn't that much larger than it and you need to take into account things like the dirt supports again and as you can see it spans it quite nicely

Note that I've also taken care to keep the bridge from clipping though that bush there etc.

Now again since this bridge is placed at an odd angle and has a pretty awkward path to it I'm going to test driving a vehicle over it in the editor. I'm not going to go over the steps for it again etc but still its important to do it.

Combination Bridging

If you have a gap like this which is too wide for one single section of CSB to cross you need to piece multiple sections together in order to cross it. You can either do this with either just placing one section down at an angle and then placing anouther or by using the trestle attachment. Please review the Combination Bridging and Trestle Combination Bridging examples in the Real Life Examples section.

So lets cross this 30m gap here which is just a bit too wide for one single section to cross, first with just normal combination bridging without any Trestles.

Now normally I would use a Trestle attachment for crossing a river like this and would only really use the normal combination bridging in ditches etc but you can if you really want do it either way and a little variation always helps here and there

As such first I'm going to place a No. 10 section going down into the river at an angle like so:

http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/6683/0 ... 123141.jpg

Water off:

Then I'm going to finish it off by placing a SDS No. 11 bridge on top of it that will meet the other side. Note I'm using a SDS version because I do not want the side that is going ontop of the other CSB section to have a dirt support and only the side that is meeting the other side of the river to have one.

Tip: I'm going to easily align the No11 bridge with the No10 bridge by copying the transformation (x,y,z coordinates) off of the No 10 bridge and then pasting them onto the No11 bridge using the options in the right click ment. First select the No10 bridge, right click on the main view, at the bottom of the right click menu you should see a "Copy Transformation" button, click that, then select the No11 bridge, right click on the main screen and click on the "Paste Transformation" button and it will meet it dead on, then just move it away across the correct axis and rotate it into the position you want

Water On:

All looks good but as before going to do a quick test on these to make sure they have been placed well

The barrel of the gun dose hit on the centre bits of the tracks as its going up in its default location but all the gunner needs to do is aim up or left/right/back to stop that from happening and really the barrel shouldn't really have a col1 mesh anyways so nothing major to worry about

You maybe also might want to check that players can easily walk over each bit etc in the editor (via going to camera in the top and clicking on "Solider") thou if they are well placed right onto each other there shouldn't be any issues.

Trestle Combination Bridging

Again if you have a wide gap that you need to bridge that you can't span with one single section of CSB and you need to combine multiple sections in order to span it, you may want to consider using the Trestle attachments on the No. 10 bridges to support the bridge in the middle of a river etc. So I'm going to use combination bridging with the trestles to span this 30m gap here to show you how its done

First I'm going to slap down and position a No 10 Trestle SDS section, note I'm using the SDS section because one side of the bridge is going to meet the bank. Also you shouldn't rotate any Trestle sections of bridges since they are set to a 4deg rotation where the trestle itself is pointing strait down, thou if you need to rotate them for w/e reason please try to not rotate to much to the point you can see the trestle isn't pointing strait down.

And then I'm going to slap a No. 11 SDS section on the end to finish it off:

Now for placing multiple trestles together its really quite simple. Lets say that you wanted to place a bridge over this 60m stretch of river, then you would need quite a few sections to do it in.

Also before we get started I would like to point out this river is in fact exceptionally deep but even so we are not going to worry about that as in real life these CSBs can only be placed in a certain depth of water before they become useless BUT saying that there are many other types of bridges out there that can bridge deep water but take a bit longer to setup and as such we are still going to allow these bridges to bridge unrealistic deep water to simulate these other types of bridge being used there.

So anyways like before I'm going to start off with a No. 10 Trestle SDS section like so:

Then place some No. 10 Trestles without any dirt supports which you can paste the other sections transformation on them then move them along the Z axis until they are sitting nicely on the section before it
Also a small tip, if your placing multiple sections along the same axis, hold the "Ctrl" key and drag the object to clone it and move it from its original potion across that axis.

Then just need to finish it off and I'm going to finish this bridge off with a normal No. 10 SDS section.

I could have probably finished this off with a No. 11 SDS section pretty well but it still works fine with a No. 10


Also anouther thing on the Trestles, when placing a trestle in water make sure the dirt support for the trestle is well under the water surface and not just under it or even worse, sticking out over the top of the water surface since both will look really bad. Also keep in mind the water ingame will be transparent in shallow areas even if it isn't in the editor.

Overbridging

Overbridging is basically placing a CSB over a bridge where either the bridge is too weak to support a military vehicles weight (nothing we need to worry about) or when a bridge has a big hole in it and you need to bridge that gap in the bridge (what we will mostly be doing).

In PR we can only really do overbridging on flat bridges which luckily for us most of our bridges are and also luckily again, most of them when destroyed just leave a big hole.

For my first example I'm going to take this bridge here which is pretty simple and only has one dest section in it.

First thing we want to do is see how the bridge looks when its destroyed in the editor. To do this, select the dest section of the bridge (note, you can also do this with any dest object) and in the Tweaker Bar scroll down to the Geometry Component and you will see a field called SubGeometry with a 0 (default) next to it.

Change the 0 to a 1 and you will then see the wreck model of that bridge section

Also please note that changing the the SubGeometry field will not effect anything ingame. Even if you save your staticobjects.con with it set to 1 your bridge will not start off as a wreck and will stay intact. This field is only good for viewing your object in wreck form in the level editor.

Anyways now our bridge is in wreck form we can now slap a CSB on top of it. Grab a No. 10 brdige without any dirt supports since if we have any dirt supports on this one, they will stick though the bottom of the bridge and just look simply rubbish
Line the bridge up to where you want it on the bridge and check its not floating (very easy to do) and then you should be pretty much done here

Now that one was pretty easy but that bridge only had one destroyable section in it which tbh in BF2 bridges is pretty uncommon because most of them are pretty long and have lots of destroyable sections like these two bridges, which I've set to show the wreck models on all sections.

Now this would be pretty simple except for with most bridge sections in BF2, they dont really match up too well with the realistic sizes of the CSBs and as such, makes it a little bit complicated to place them when you need to consider that any or every section can be destroyed.

Let me quickly show you what I mean. If I place a No10 CSB on top of one of the bridge holes, we can see that the bridge section is much longer than the hole and there isn't really enough room to place anouther section right after it.

If we place a No11 section there we will see that its kinda just a tiny bit too short.

As such the best way to do this is to have No11 bridges right on the side where the section is just slightly shorter and can support the bridge a little more like so.

And then repeat that for the other sections like so:

Now since that each bridge is side by side there isn't really any point in placing CSBs on both since there is really no need as you only need one bridge there intact to be able to cross the river.


There is anouther way to do overbridging with multiple destroyable sections which is to use No10 sections and then overlap them so the middle No10 bridge sits on top of the ends of some No10 bridges but if you go down this rout you pretty much need to have all the bridge sections deployed in order for it to work correctly which is kinda pointless if only one section of the bridge is destroyed ingame, as I will quickly demonstrate on the other bridge next to it quickly what I mean.

But as we can see if we just wanted to bridge a damaged centre section, without the before and after section with it the centre section is pretty much useless and also looks retarded

As such it's not a good idea to go down that rout



Things to keep in mind when placing your CSBs

Now you know how to place your CSBs and pretty much where you can place them, there is also a few other points to take into account before waking these things all over a map which are pretty important.


Maximum amount of CSBs on a Map.

This is probably the most important thing here because you do not want to place too many bridges on your map because each bridge you place is a destructible object, which also counts as a networkable object which if you have over 1024 networkable objects on a dedicated server then the server will simply crash and burn. Networkable objects isn't a problem for local games but since this is mostly a multiplayer game its a big thing to take into account

There is no strict limit as such as to how many of these bridges you can place on your map but we do recommend having under 300 destructible objects on your map, leaving 724 networkables for other things like PCO objects etc. You can stray over the 300 dest object limit if you dare but if your map dose end up having problems with it networkable limit later on, don't be surprised if we ask you to remove a load of dest objects from your map.

You can find out how many dest objects your map has by checking the "Level Info" tool window at the bottom.

As you can see Al Basrah has currently 477 dest objects even before I've placed all my CSBs so I have very little to work with before actually running into problems so I'm going to have to place all my bridges in areas that really need them.


Minimum Distance between each Bridging Location.

Another thing to keep in mind when slapping down your CSBs is the distance between each bridge location.

On one hand you do not want a single CSB location to be right next to each other, there is in most situations no point and isn't good for your networkable count and if too close, when deploying your CSB your just as likley to deploy the bridge to the left of the bridge your trying to deploy.

On the other hand you dont want the space between each pre-defined CSB location to be too far apart since that dosen't give the player enough flexibility to where they can deploy each bridge and as such, makes potential bridging locations too predictable and dosen't give all the freedom to the player which they might want.

So you want to find a happy medium between the two and how close you place your CSB locations together is really up to you but try and find the best spot in ever 50m, 100m or so and just have one rather than have two bridges in that area.
I would recommend placing your bridges of a minimum of at least 100m apart on every map unless a unique location requires otherwise.
Also if your map dosen't have that many networkables to play with you may want to compensate for that a bit by spacing out your CSBs a little more and making your bridges as few sections as possible.


Z-Fighting on the Dirt Supports

When placing your CSBs, dont place your dirt supports slap up aginst the terrain like so as you will have a lot of z-fighting issues with them and the terrain, epically from a distance.

Instead its much better to place your dirt supports a little bit above the terrain to avoid any z-fighting that might occur otherwise.

Floating Sections

What I mean by this is not floaters where a CSB has been badly placed but more with a bridge that is made with multiple sections, you can get floating sections in the bridge if one of the sections is blown up or if the bridge is deployed from the opposite side of the river you intended it to be deployed from.

To explain what I mean here's a quick bridge I deployed earlier in this tut and if I "blow up" one of the middle sections, you get this:

Or if the bridge is deployed from the opposite end first you get this kinda effect:

Which looks a little retarded BUT there is really not much we can do to stop this from happening and at the end of the day there isn't really any better way of doing it than this with keeping these bridges realistic so as such we believe that this small thing is worth it for the bridges to be in

Just when deploying a bridge keep in mind what side of the river its most likley going to be deployed from first and also if both factions are going to be bridging the river on a conventional forces vs conventional forces map alternate the starting sides for the bridge as well but on Al Basrah since the insurgents dont get CSBs I've put all the CSBs starting on the side the British are most likley to start bridging from as its pretty unlikely that a logi truck is first going to cross the river and then decide they want to place a CSB on that river


Using the Anchors

As you will probably notice in this tut most of my ealier screenshots dont actually have the CSB's pivot in the anchor position and that's because the god damn editor deleted my anchors and I kept on forgetting to add them back on but have finally done it again hehe.
But anyways more to the point, the anchors on the bridge sections are there to help you with placing and rotating your bridge sections into position although in reality the pivot of the object is still in the centre of the object.

How to use them is pretty simple when just moving the object about but it will help you snap the object onto the terrain and objects, but the main reason why I've added the Anchors is so you can easily rotate your bridge from one end and not from the centre

To do this, first move your bridge into around abouts the correct position for your start location with the pivot being on the start location your want like so, note that the other end of my bridge here is dug in a bit into the river bank on the other side of the river and as such needs rotating into the correct place.

Now if I switch to the rotate mode we actually start off rotating off the objects pivot (not anchor) in the very centre of the object which is kinda bad here because if we rotate it here we dig in the side we want to keep in place while also lifting the side we want to lift which is not quite what we want since then we have to move the bridge into position again after rotating.

But, if you hold down the shift key in the rotation mode before you rotate, you will notice that the rotation gizmo moves to the anchor position at the end of the bridge.

And if we rotate the object round the anchor, you will notice that we can keep pretty much one end in the right position while only making the other end go into the position we want which means you have to mess around less with getting the right position and rotation for your object

Final Thoughts

I believe that pretty much covers everything on CSBs now and anything else I've missed you can probably work out for yourself or post below/crate a new topic if you have any problems.

I hope you have found this tutorial useful and to see well placed CSBs on everyone's maps.


Cheers!

[Sniper77shot]

Hey thanks looks good.

[Rhino]

Hey thanks looks good.

Thanks for the useful constructive comment and btw, why dose your sig have a paper clip? The Paper Clip wasn't invented until the 1950s


Anyways on topic, I'm seriously busy at the moment and will be for some time yet so I dunno when I will be able to finish this tut excatly although you guys have most of what you need to work out anything else ontop of this tbh but will finish it as soon as I have some time.

[Sniperdog]

btw, why does your sig have a paper clip? The Paper Clip wasn't invented until the 1950s

Owned.

Rhino the tutorial looks great provided the intro doesn't scare people away before they get to the actual Editor related stuff. (It was spoken like a true engineer if I do say so myself)

I might suggest posting the limits of the system though specifically in river depth, overall length or # of segments used on a single bridge, and the kind of limits on angle you have to adhere to for placing the combination bridges (If those will even be placed in game at all)

Other then that keep up the good work and hopefully we'll see the rest of the tut soon.

[Rhino]

Good Point SD, need to mention depth limits, which for us there are not going to be any real although there are in r/l which I'll explain in the tut later once I get a chance to finish it

[Rhino]

Tutorial is now finalized

[Rhino]

Updated a little with some r/l ref pics

[ComradeChaos]

Wait, is this in-game already? I cant find these in my editor directory.

[sylent/shooter]

I believe he's just giving us the tutorial for the 0.92 release which means IT"S CLOSE AS HELL

[Rhino]

Wait, is this in-game already? I cant find these in my editor directory.

nope.

I believe he's just giving us the tutorial for the 0.92 release which means IT"S CLOSE AS HELL

Was more so the other devs/cons can place them so I didn't have to do them all and posting it here so when .95 dose come out this tutorial is already here for you guys

[Amok@ndy]

its a really good tutorial

you need:
-some practise
-some pictures of reallife CSBs to make the ingame ones look real

well done Rhino

[sylent/shooter]

Was more so the other devs/cons can place them so I didn't have to do them all and posting it here so when .95 dose come out this tutorial is already here for you guys

good ol' rhino always one step ahead

[TeRR0R]

Very nice tutorial. And I learned some more Editor secrets!

Any chance to get the CSB objects so mappers can already find good CSB locations and layouts?

[Rhino]

No sorry, you have the dimensions of the CSBs in the tut so you can work off them for now but you dont really need them until .95

[Rhino]

Updated OP with the shader + instructions on how to stop the CSBs and deployables from being black in the editor.

Rhino;1379387']Setting up the Editor

Before going anywhere you should setup the editor so that the CSBs and other deployable objects are not black in the editor which is due to making them not glow on our thermals.

For starters download this .rar: http://realitymodfiles.com/rhino/editor ... -11-10.rar

Navigate to your "\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2\bf2editor\Shaders" folder and backup your old "RaShaderBM.fx" file.

Then open up the .rar you just downloaded above using winrar and extract the "RaShaderBM.fx" file into your "\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2\bf2editor\Shaders" folder.

After doing that you need to go into your "\Documents\Battlefield 2\cache" folder and delete all the folders in there.

Now after restarting the editor your CSBs and deployables should no longer be black making it easier to place them on your maps

[AFsoccer]

Thanks Rhino. This was always a subtle pain and no matter how many times I reset my shaders, it never worked. Now I can see why. LOL

[3===SPECTER===3]

Rhino somebody needs to take all your tuts that are scattered throughout these forums and compile them into a Rhino's tuts website or something they're so comprehensive and useful and I always find myself stumbling across another one