Mapping - General
Setup FH2/bf2editor
FH2 mapping guide
FH2 mapping standards

Mapping - Texturing
Texture system in bf2
Terragen skies
Terragen texturing

Mapping - Heightmaps
World Machine
Geocontrol and bf2hmt

Mapping - Lightmapping
Simple lightmap setup

Mapping - Downloads
Sky settings bf2
Water settings bf2
Lowdetailtextures/settings bf2

3D modelling/texturing
Skinning the Daimler Dingo

Coding

FH2 mapping standards

by Lobo

It's important we discuss about some standards for our FH2 maps, there are some important issues in the hands of mappers that can change drastically the gameplay and philosophy of the mod.

This is my opinion based in the feedback of players about our FH1 maps in these four years, the feedback of servers administrators, and in my experiences playing the mod. This is important and everybody can have a diferent opinion, so let's discuss it freely and the potential controversies will be decided with polls.

1. Soldier spawns:
In my opinion EVERY soldier spawns must be inside buildings, structures or trenches. Reason: spawns in open air kill totally the atmosphere and inmersion, and are the main cause of spawnraping. Spread also the spawns, so nobody can spawnrape them easily. This was a common fault of vanilla maps, in our custom maps we didn't fall so usually in this obvious mistake, but sometimes we were lazy. Please, take care with this, is very easy to make this right with small effort.

Our players also have requested frecuently that those spawns are not inside the cap radius of the control point, and I agree totally with this request. This is what happens usually: a tank attack a flag, kill some guys, in the next spawn they appear as AT class right into the cap area around the tank and destroy it, or a riflemen attack the flag, the enemies spawn as smgers around him in the next spawn wave.

Perfect scenario: the spawns are placed inside buildings, at certain distance of the flag, the atmosphere is not ruined and the attackers have chances to efectively cap the flag they deserved.
*See pic attached

2. Control points names:
For atmosphere, is way more cool to attack a position called Wadi al Kebir than to attack Small Village North. I know sometimes is hard to find real names for the positions but just try it.

Including "dummy" in your control point name will have it ignored for the purposes of calculating ticket bleed.

3. Vehicles spawns:
the same, vehicles spawning in open air kill the atmosphere, try to spawn them in cammonets, structures or simply in not well seen places. Ergo: don't place a vehicle spawn in the middle of the main street.

4. Locked vehicles:
I know this will be a very controversial one, but for me this is VERY IMPORTANT, so let's discuss.

I think we must lock ALL airplanes and tanks, reasons: atmosphere, inmersion, realism, avoid umbalancing of maps because a noob decided his virtual life worths more than his team so he bails his tiger in the worst moment, and worst place posible. This also discourages the main tactic of basecampers, to use their cheap tactics in enemy uncapables.

Small vehicles, like cars, trucks, etc, can logically be manned by enemies so they can and must be unlocked.

The way bf2 locking works means the following vehicles MUST now by locked on all maps in which they appear:

All tanks and planes

+ sdkfz222

Marmon herrington

Dorchesters (german and british)

5. Uncapables:
there is two kind of servers in the BF world, pro and anti basecamping. In BF2 we have commander assets, so this must be in mind, maybe those commander assets must be placed out of uncapables to avoid admining nightmares for antibasecamping servers (as reference: wolfgaming has 1 grid rule around uncapables). The antibasecamping servers have always requested us the generous usage of Antibasecamping code in our maps to help their admining work. I would be not so radical in this, but just consider ABC code as a posible option for your maps. I am a big fan of ABC but I think is against the philosophy of fluid frontlines in desert campaign, so I will not use it in my desert maps, for future campaigns I will use when I think is important for the map gameplay.

6. Class limits:
Maybe we will get class limits in menu, or with spawnable kits in terrain. In 0.7 we have some maps with AT's and smg's limited, and they work perfect, so don't be afraid to use class limits if you think this is the best for your map. In this case I suggest to design wisely your control points, with avalaible kits in the terrain to help in the defence against armour. With this a squad with the bad luck of not have AT soldiers will be not pinned down in the defence of a CP by an enemy tank.

6a. Classes:
The 7th kit should be an NCO class. This is non-negotiable!
And 3rd rifleman, 3rd slot is the default one

Assault and support with kit limits, AT rifles at mapper will

7. Roadkillers:
this is a nightmare of the BF franchise, dudes with his gaming life devoted to kill enemies using fast cars...well, it's very funny but this is FH, a realism mod, not GTA: Vice City , and a joke done thousand times is not fun animore. So my suggestion is take care placing kubels and jeeps, more than one or two is leading to roadkilling, use trucks more as main transportation devices.
Of course there are exceptions to this: the SAS were dudes with beards over jeeps, so ok, some more jeeps can be needed.

8. Commander radios:
All maps must have at least one commander radio (vehicles BritCommRadio and GerCommRadio -- these are interchangable and just for visual variation). They can be placed anywhere you like

9. tmp.con:

Your map should have a tmp.con (make it if it doesn't exist). in this, write:

code:

run ../../objects/Common/StandardSpawners.con

If your map has planes, also write:

code:

physics.airDensityZeroAtHeight 3000

You should also write your wind settings here.

Ex:

run ClientArchives.con

run ../../objects/Common/CommonSpawners.con

windmanager.globalWindSpeed 1

windmanager.globalWinddirection 1/0/1

physics.airDensityZeroAtHeight 3000

10. standard minimaps
Standard hi-res minimaps

1. Generate a minimap using the editor. this gives you a 2048x2048 minimap, saved as a 8888 DDS. it should be 16MB.
   2. Sharpen as desired.
   3. Resize to 1024x1024
   4. Save as DXT1 with 2 mipmaps to commanderMap.dds and ingameMap.dds.
   5. Resize to 128x128.
   6. Save as DXT1 with no mipmaps to commanderMicromap.dds
   
   512x512 is really useless for use as an actual map. 1024x1024 is much better, and the addition of mipmaps doesn't make performance worse for low-settings players.

11. Airfields

Planes that must take land to reload, if is used the airfields must be wisely designed, so the planes can take land and reload not crashing with planes taking off

Lobo has attached this image: