Project Reality Forums

Map name: Grozny
Location: Grozny, The Chechen Republic/Ichkeria
Size: 2km
Factions: Modified Russian Army vs Militia (Modified = Different weapons etc.)
Gameplay type: AAS , Heavy Vehicles including one AH for Russia


WIP minimap:

2. You will not be able to make a full city map in a 4km map. Its too big and it won't even be playable. 2km is even pushing it a bit... If you take a look at other pr maps that have cities look at how they are done, muttrah for example has a lot of dead space because of the ocean.

To make buildings look destroyed you might want to consider doing textures for them but to be honest that's quite advanced. Also try putting vines on the buildings. Unfortunately you can't edit the static meshes themselves although you can use other statics to make it look war torn

another method is to add bomb craters manually in the terrain and paint them black..

[R-CON]sylent/shooter wrote:2. You will not be able to make a full city map in a 4km map. Its too big and it won't even be playable. 2km is even pushing it a bit... If you take a look at other pr maps that have cities look at how they are done, muttrah for example has a lot of dead space because of the ocean.

To make buildings look destroyed you might want to consider doing textures for them but to be honest that's quite advanced. Also try putting vines on the buildings. Unfortunately you can't edit the static meshes themselves although you can use other statics to make it look war torn

another method is to add bomb craters manually in the terrain and paint them black..

Alright, I know I can't change the buildings themselves so I was looking for the advice you gave me If somebody got more advice that would be greatly appriciated

I suggest looking at dragon fly. This map tries to simulate a similar concept. But yeah, as sylent says, making a full 2k city will probably be impossible to run But yeah, if you look at dragon fly, then you can clearly see you can visualize a (small)city in the middle with a surrounding river and Forest.

You can try to achieve a similar look for your city and surrounding area.

anther suggestion is to use the debree detail and color textures and make piles of them. With random debree objects sticking threw. Make them block entrenches to buildings occasionally and add smoke and fire effects to archive a destroyed city look. And craters.

I recommend getting a scale 2km-2km image from google earth or whatever, getting the Heightmap if it's important and start. I like the mix with the forest crop fields and city in your image, you could get and area that incorporates those 3 things, And as Mineral said look at dragon fly or better IMO Iron ridge that has the abandoned feel to it.

Alright, I'll have a look at that map

I'm thinking of maybe just making the city in a smaller scale, like getting the main streets correct and the key locations of the city and then making the city a little bit smaller than it really is(making the suburbs smaller for example), so i can get some of the outskirts field in the map aswell, cuz they are pretty charasteristic of the grozny area. Do you think that is a good idea?

[R-CON]rodrigoma wrote:I recommend getting a scale 2km-2km image from google earth or whatever, getting the Heightmap if it's important and start. I like the mix with the forest crop fields and city in your image, you could get and area that incorporates those 3 things, And as Mineral said look at dragon fly or better IMO Iron ridge that has the abandoned feel to it.

Do you know if it's possible to set the image lenghts on google earths? the problem i'm getting is i can zoom but either its too much zoomed out, or too much zoomed in...

I suggest using the following tool:
Google Maps Downloader

this allows you to fill in the two coordinates of your map(top left corner and bottom right if I remember correctly) and downloads then all map images from google for you in this rectangle/square. (the free version of the tool only allows for a certain level of max zoom detail). then a second option of the tool will then combine all these images to one big map image. This image you can then use Tpaint for to use it as a colormap for map.

This way you will have the high detail of the google satellite images to work with.

GP_MineralWouter wrote:I suggest using the following tool:
Google Maps Downloader

this allows you to fill in the two coordinates of your map(top left corner and bottom right if I remember correctly) and downloads then all map images from google for you in this rectangle/square. (the free version of the tool only allows for a certain level of max zoom detail). then a second option of the tool will then combine all these images to one big map image. This image you can then use Tpaint for to use it as a colormap for map.

This way you will have the high detail of the google satellite images to work with.

Ahaa nice, so you mean i can have the map picture as the ground in my map ? that way i can place the buildings first and then paint the terrain right ??

exactly It's handy for laying down roads and certain parts of the city. If you use it together with a heightmap then it will be even better. some tutorials, but a bit more difficult can be read here:
https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f189-modding-tutorials/69889-tutorial-how-make-awsome-maps-dem-geo2-img-heavy.html

GP_MineralWouter wrote:exactly It's handy for laying down roads and certain parts of the city. If you use it together with a heightmap then it will be even better. some tutorials, but a bit more difficult can be read here:
https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f189-modding-tutorials/69889-tutorial-how-make-awsome-maps-dem-geo2-img-heavy.html

That's awesome thanks alot my friend

if you need a height-map I can get it for you, tell me the coordinates

[R-CON]rodrigoma wrote:if you need a height-map I can get it for you, tell me the coordinates

Alright thanks man, at the moment I'm not exactly sure of which area of the city I will be using yet, but I will try to contact you when i know
The things I need most help with is that which requires photoshop, I don't have photoshop and it would be really nice to know i won't have to learn photoshop aswell xd
And i guess you need photoshop to make heightmaps right? I just quickly read through the tutorial which Mineral wouter told me about.

If you use features that the bf2 editor offers and stick to those, then you probably won't need photoshop. However things such as tpaint and costum heightmaps do require a small knowledge of Photoshop or a similar program. However it's not that hard to aquire and learn the basics of ps.

I think you should look into getting some non-enterable soviet era apartment buildings, having them will result in much better experience of the map in general, they will make the map less demanding for PCs, and they will result in better gameplay, as people will not be able to hide so easily.


Non-enterable statics are also rather easy to make, a good task for a novice modeler to take up

I've also had this idea and started to do something like that, but i'm too lazy
I have a few destroyed buildings specially made from grozny photos, like http://img594.imageshack.us/img594/8486/92470845.jpg presidential palace, but it needs UVs and proper export into game. If anyone interested i can give away these.

think you should look into getting some non-enterable soviet era apartment buildings

I actually hate non-enterable buildings, it makes it so much less realistic... But I am thinking of having mostly non enterables at the outskirts and enterable in the centre of the map or at key locations, this actually leads me to another question,
does anybody know if there are any buildings with basements? The chechens managed to slaughter russias armored vehicles by firing from top and bottom of buildings where the tanks could not aim. Does anybody know if i myself can build some kind of basement or underground bunkers? I know there is the Hospital in Fallujah with the basement, but that's about it, and it doesn't have any basement windows...
But I could do without the basements, it's just one of my smaller concerns right now.

I've also had this idea and started to do something like that, but i'm too lazy
I have a few destroyed buildings specially made from grozny photos, like http://img594.imageshack.us/img594/8486/92470845.jpg presidential palace, but it needs UVs and proper export into game. If anyone interested i can give away these.

That is really awesome, i would love to use it in my map if it ever gets finished

You can place normal building and blurry it in the ground. Dig a hole in the ground and place building inside.

Moszeusz6Pl wrote:You can place normal building and blurry it in the ground. Dig a hole in the ground and place building inside.

Alright thanks man, i'll try that

The BF2 system doesn't actually have the ability to make correct tunnels... if you've modded for BFV then you'll know what I'm talking about... Anyways, like mentioned above, dig a hole and place things above it and inside it's really not hard to do... take a look at Fallujah and you'll see what we mean.

In regards to performance issues. If we could make a map that has all enterables then we would, however it's not possible in the engine and for computers to handle. That being said, I know it seems like it'll offset the amount of enterables in the main city if you put non-enterables on the oustide of the city, however it won't work like that. Because of the fact that the enterables are all in the same area they are all being rendered at the same time. It will basically be unplayable if you do that. You need to mix in the majority of the town with non-enterables because cities and towns are generally heavier on the computer because of the close proximity of the statics.

In the current engine and system which doesn't allow for more than 2GB of RAM being used we have to make concessions and this is one of them. If you are going to argue that Silent Eagle has a purely enterable village then yes it does. However if you've played it on lower end PC's there is a significant FPS drop, even on good PC's.

The enterables is one thing to consider.

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Also do not use russian_apt3 (the yellow one) in apartment blocks as it has lod issues and isn't very optimized. Doing so will make areas of lag for your players