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This map is no longer in development. It's 2015 now and I would rather work on making stuff for SQUAD in UE4 than playing with this weird engine. Sorry, guys!

Name: Phu Nguoi (placeholder; will change if I can get input from a Vietnamese speaker)
Location: Vietnam
Size: 2km
Factions: NVA vs USMC / NVA vs US Army
Game Play Type: Infantry and Light Vehicles
Concept Mini-map:

Screenshots:


link to small album of screenshots
Download: (not available yet)

Hi guys, I really enjoy PR's Vietnam mode and I decided to try making a map for it. It's still in very early development.

This is my first time using the BF2 editor. And unfortunately I decided to start in 2014, a time when basically all documentation for this engine is full of dead links and dead images, so I will be trying to scrape together all the info I can from incomplete tutorials on the net and also from the PR community.

This map is not based on any particular battle in the Vietnam War. If I had to give a vague scenario, then it would be during the early years of actual US deployment into Vietnam, when the Americans were not yet accustomed to the NVA's hit-and-run tactics. This map would be depicting a case where the Americans have caught the bait of the NVA and followed them rather far into the jungle and away from the support of their aircraft and armour.

The map takes place along the side of a river, during the beginning of a rainy season in Vietnam. The water level is rising, and there are very many shallow pools of mud dispersed all across the map. Ideally, I want the entire map to be wet and muddy so that vehicles have a very difficult time moving around unless they are on the dirt roads. I'm trying to go for a similar feel to Hill 488 and Charlie's Point. It's very important to me that the foliage is extremely dense. And for this reason, I have decided that there should be no aircraft on this map, so that the infantry are able to effectively hide in the foliage.

Arc_Shielder has already given me a lot of tips on designing the map to PR standards. He pointed out that my concept lakes POIs, which is true, so I'm trying to think of map features that are appropriate for a very "backwoods" kind of map.

Currently, I have a dockside village and also a rice farming village. I think I will add a giant smoking wreckage of some sort. And maybe a few bunkers and trenches in the jungle, though I'm not sure how realistic it would be to have trenches built so close to groundwater...

Thanks for reading!

Nice work so far! Interesting lightning settings too! Keep up the effort!

The sky and lighting are just placeholders I copy-pasted from Charlie's Point. Sorry to disappoint you all LOL. I'm thinking that I will photoshop an early dawn sky and make the map dark but not quite night-time.

One thing though, Undergrowth cannot be that high unfortunately for gameplay reasons. It will not render further away and people will try to hide in it while at range they are totally visible.

[R-DEV]Mineral wrote:One thing though, Undergrowth cannot be that high unfortunately for gameplay reasons. It will not render further away and people will try to hide in it while at range they are totally visible.

Heh, that must suck. Seeing a guy crawling all stealthy like across an open field.

I was worried that the high grass would be an issue.

But what if I did something similar to Charlie's Point? It is map where the grass is tall enough to hide in. But it has an undergrowth viewdist of only 166.

If I made grass that was only as tall as the grass as Charlie's Point but with a undergrowth viewdist > 220, would that meet the standards of PR? Would this put an unreasonable strain on lower end PCs?

charlys point is not really a map that is up to PR Standards so i would rather use other maps as references

Hmm, in that case I think I will have to completely change my undergrowth and undergrowth materials. It's a waste of drawcalls to have the super tall jungle trees which don't provide much concealment for the infantry. Thank you for telling me about this.

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This question got lost in the Newbie Questions thread. Am I mistaken in thinking that RandomScale is used to adjust the size of overgrowth objects?

For Undergrowth, that RandomScale field adjusts the size of the undergrowth geometry, and it reflects the changes in real-time without generating anything or having to restart the editor.
But for Overgrowth, it doesn't change the size of the overgrowth. And when I save and restart the editor, it's always back to 1/1. Am I doing something wrong? Or is it just not possible to make trees bigger or smaller?

it does not affect OG Objects, it works for UG but not for OG

Thanks Amokandy.

So now that I know UG is not a viable way to give concealment to infantry, I revamped the foliage. The willow trees and almond trees should provide better concealment for infantry without wasting drawcalls like the tall jungle trees. Just though I'd put up a pic in case anybody's curious what will replace the jungle trees.


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There are two problems that have been bothering me for a few weeks now:

1.) Where the hell is the directory containing the .dds files for all the different sky textures? According to the BF2 editor, there are somewhere in .../common/textures/sky/, but I can't find such a path in /pr_edit/.

2.) The old "maps" for the different "material types" are persisting no matter how many times I re-paint the terrain. So for example, if a player walks on where a muddy road used to be, a squelching sound will be made even though the road isn't there anymore. And if I try to paint new roads on, they do not take on the "muddy" material type that I have assigned to it. (I am doing my roads Ia Drang style; that is, not with splines. I think painting them on makes them look more fitting for the jungle.) Can someone explain to me how the "material types" system works? Is each material tied to each detailmap? Or is it like the colourmaps, where any number of material types can be painted anywhere on the terrain? How am I meant to edit the placement of these material types?

The sky files are in your common_client.zip (located in the "content" directory). You should be able to select them in the editor, right? Or are you looking into introducing a new one?

Regarding your under-/overgrowth, make sure to check your map in-game after a while. Having too many jungle stuff introduces frame drops and such .

The old "maps" for the different "material types" are persisting no matter how many times I re-paint the terrain. So for example, if a player walks on where a muddy road used to be, a squelching sound will be made even though the road isn't there anymore. And if I try to paint new roads on, they do not take on the "muddy" material type that I have assigned to it. (I am doing my roads Ia Drang style; that is, not with splines. I think painting them on makes them look more fitting for the jungle.) Can someone explain to me how the "material types" system works? Is each material tied to each detailmap? Or is it like the colourmaps, where any number of material types can be painted anywhere on the terrain? How am I meant to edit the placement of these material types?

I don't know but it looks like you didn't generate low detail? After you paint you need to click "set low detail type" and then choose the one in the list and then press generate. (they are located in the bar to the right) This might fix the material problem.

I also think materials are tied to the layer, so if you have grass material/sound on layer 1 you will hear grass on all areas with layer 1 painted, no matter what color or detail.
I'm not 100% sure though.

as Ason says, material types are dependent on which of your 6 detailtextures has been assigned to that area with the material set in the tweakbar per detailtexture.

When you add or remove roads, you need to save and recompile colortextures and detailtextures for the game to understand that the material has changed due to a road.

Thanks for explaining the material type system, guys.

[R-DEV]AfterDune wrote:The sky files are in your common_client.zip (located in the "content" directory). You should be able to select them in the editor, right? Or are you looking into introducing a new one?

Yes, I want to photoshop my own sky texture and put it in my map.

I assume you're working in a "pr_edit" environment. In that case, simply make your sky and put it inside common_client.zip .

Oh, so that's how it works. Thanks Dune.

I'm going to have to ask a favour now, because my editor always crashes if I open Hill 488... Can someone open up Hill 488 in their editor and then tell me: what is the name of this tree, and where is it located?
I think I've gone through literally every single vegitation object under /objects/ and I still can't find this tree.

thats because you should not use this object as its quite bad quality and performance.
so we removed it and would not like to see it on a new map.

you'd be better using the ones from xiangshan

to find what you are looking for, open the staticobjects.con

the top of the file lists every static in the map and it's file location, the OG are listed last on that list