Project Reality Forums

Hi guys,

I recently modified Lashkar Valley for a campaign battle and we stumbled upon a weird issue. Somehow the terrain got extremly hostile to all vehicles. Driving with a HMWV up the road, no bumps or whatever, you just took damage by moving. Once we took a BMP3 from the northern hills to the lake in the eastern hills, all by driving carefully on the road, even with reduced speed. Once we got up there, our turret got stuck and soon after we flamed up.
Now, THAT is something I never encountered before. Does anyone have any guesses what caused this? My personal guess is the fiddling with the terrain I did, but I still don't understand why and how this behavior arises.
The "fiddling" I did merely was some heightmap-sculpting in order to create a flat area for helipads in the northern hills. I also had to change the overgrowth to clear the pads. Of course this forced me to regenerate the terraindata.raw and the primary heightmap but I did this with no apparent fault on my end, following the "recreating map files" tutorial to the letter and taking care to choose the correct materials for each layer. The "damage-taking" wasn't material-depending anyway, just the moving over ground of any type caused damage itself.

If you think it helps understand the issue, I can provide the patchfile we used via PN. You surely understand I won't do this publicly.

Any help would be appreciated so I can avoid this issue in future moddings.

Well the best way to check if it actually is material or not is to load up the map in the editor, go Render>Material mode.

I'd recheck your materials and recompile them to start with.

zeee problem is the heightmapparimary.mat (I'm assuming you are using a new foldername)

you need to open it in a hex editor like this Free Hex Editor Binary File Editing Software for Windows

and change the folder name listed from lashkar_valley to whatever your new folder is

otherwise the terrain doesnt actually know what materials it has, and you'll take damage from it

I encountered the same issue on my first ever modding attempt on Op_barracuda when I turned it in to a darker british map for fun.

simply use the LevelRenamer of Bergekiller

Actually the level was not renamed and the paths are correct (yes, even checked in Hex). No need to rename as our project uses a separate minimod. This minimod levels folder is filled with simple server.zip files that only contain a clientarchives and serverarchives.con, telling them to load the default PR files for the level. Any additional changes we make thus save a lot of filespace. The files I altered where the terraindata.raw and the two HeightmapPrimary (plus Overgrowth, GPO and obviously init.con).

I'll go and recheck the material settings, thanks for the advice so far.