Why I am posting this I don't know but it is for anyone who is new to modding or who wants to get started here are my tips.


1) START SMALL (Don't go trying to make the biggest battle ever start with like maybe like a small forest or mountain and slowly work up) I don't suggest trying indoor levels first because thay are extremely hard to make and the planning is ridiculous.

2) SMALL AREAS (If you don't want to start with my first tip here is the second. BF2 and BF1 aren'tt made for large scale battles. There are not enough vehicles or troops. CHOKE POINTS are key have like 4-5 in your level and it will be great.

3) TERRAIN (make your terrain look real blend height and textures so it looks like it possibly could be real. I 've seen so many maps without any texture or terrain editing or not enough and they aren't good. I do it so much it takes maybe 3-4 hours before I'm done.

4) SIDES (everyone loves new sides but that should not be your first priority. If you are new try and make your first 2-3 maps and then experiment with sides. I personnaly don't like crazily edited sides, maybe edit skins or troopers a little but most of the crazily edited sides maps have little to no replay value and are only fun for about 5-6 minutes.

5) LOCALIZING (Pandemic is really lazy ALWAYS LOCALIZE it makes your level much more interesting and realistic if you don't know how find out)

6) MAKE IT REALISTIC (in a real battle you would have to take cover not just run around mass killing so strategically place cover areas and sniper spots so ppl can actually feel like they are in battle. The combat style like sniping, cover and using vehicles I didn't mean making the sides realistic like in ROTE, I meant the unit movement (ie planning)

7) BE CREATIVE ( Try something you've never seen before (lava in ice map, green water in a desert, purple terrain, Star Wars has many alien planets so just be creative.

8 ) WATER (Water will turn an ok map into a very good map it makes it realistic and fun becasue of all the effects it produces.

9) TESTING (make sure your map works and properly back it up I have had about 8-10 of my maps gone because I didn't back them up) Also after minor changes munge just to see if it works)

10) BE PROUD (If you like your work 99% of the time so will a lot of other ppl. )

I hope these helped a lot of ppl


YaNkFaN 1950

I take issue with number six. It doesn't necessarily have to be realistic. Star Wars is fantasy. I like the SWBF2 style Pandemic had versus the realism that is popular in Schizo's Salecumi and Majin's RotE maps. Just personal preference on my part. I don't think that people should strive for that kind of realism. Not totally unrealistic, but realistic sw combat really isn't that fun, imo.

I'm with Alpha on the realism issue. To many people try to make a map 'realistic' and then gameplay goes all to heck. 1000+ reinforcements, huge maps, poorly balanced weapons, etc.

I think he means realisitic in terms of gameplay

But yeah, making it close to the movies has just gone a little too far I think

Realism is not a bad thing, even for Star Wars. The reason why so many "realistic" maps suck in terms of gameplay is that the Zero engine really isn't meant to portray realistic battles. It's more meant for hectic shoot-em-ups (which isn't a bad thing).

I would add to number 9. After every minor change, you should munge and test your map. The more changes you make between tests, the greater the risk of something not working and finding that bug is extremely harder.

Even better would be to put the map under some type of version control system like CVS or SVN (it lets you go back to or view any state of your map, sort of like an advanced undo), but I would expect that to be too advanced for some (it can be extremely helpful, I have all my modded lvls on CVS).

hehehe...

My first map goes against pretty much every 1st map rule... it had a huge 512 x 512 terrain, cap ship with hanger, frigates, star fighters, water, foliage, 14 cps, vehicles and every single thing in each side was customized. Definentley not something id sugest to 1st timer .

AMEN to number 9. In fact, that would be number 1 in my book. Too often folks make lots of changes only to experience a crash or an obstacle that can't be overcome. Change>Munge>Change>Munge is the way to go. It actually fine-tunes your map easier as you get to see small obstacles and fix them early before they become big ones.

heh, when I first started I just played with what color the grass was in ZE for hours at a time lmao.

t551t551 wrote: The reason why so many "realistic" maps suck in terms of gameplay is that the Zero engine really isn't meant to portray realistic battles. It's more meant for hectic shoot-em-ups (which isn't a bad thing).

Yea, too bad I discovered that way too late .

could this be a sticky or not (everything you need to know) and also I have edited it using the opinions stated above.

Here's another tidbit that'd probably fit with #1: don't try to do complicated scripting right away. It's very tempting, but definately not recommended without at least some basic knowledge of how code works, because it's easy to become lost.

I kind of dispute number two, because it's basically the original intention behind the series to have large battles where you're just another soldier (I'll refrain from explaining further for now), and the map can be made to have a fair amount of bots and vehicles. These are low by default, because you have to keep in mind they were attempting to market the games as widely as possible, so people with lower end systems had to be accounted for and accomodated. Anyway, I think small areas are good to have, but a mapper should not be afraid of having open areas as well, since it's really a matter of the modder's intentions behind it all, and, ultimately, their choice. So long as the modder isn't using the default flat terrain with little on it and saying it was intended, for example, it should be ok.

As for realism, it seems there are many views of what is "realistic", so that should be kept in mind. I'd say realism is not really good or bad, but it definately depends on the execution. One must remember to try to balance realism with playability, because, without that balance, the mod can become very unfun.

I definately agree with testing changes constantly. It makes debugging so much easier, and it'd cut down on the "I FUBARed my map and don't know which of the million alterations did it! HELP!" threads. I've already learned this the hard way. If anyone is wondering why, it's because games can be sensitive to even the most minor of mistakes and take it badly, depending what you're dealing with. So, the easier it is to remember what you changed before munging, the better.

In defense of number 2 the SBF and SBF2 game engine isn't equiped to handle massive battles like in the movies. It's just not possible. There are too many units and too many effects for the engine to work and it would take a really goo dmachine to have it able to work. Many ppl make a 512 by 512 grid and say this is a planet with maybe 200 troops each and it isn't fun. In order for SBF and SBF2 to be fun you need to scale down the maps and the battle sizes

I see. I'm getting hung up on semantics, then. I agree that the engine isn't really made to really make battles with that kind of realism without a very powerful machine. The amount of troops should be somewhat proportional to the size of the map. I think that'd be a better way of putting it than discouraging large maps or numerous bots entirely.

I am not discouraging more bots most of my maps have around 128 bots each side I think that is enough. But my example is my MYGEETO map it has too many units and too little space and the framerate is low so that is an exampl eof what ppl should not do. Definately make the unti count proportional to the map size bu tif the map is too big it will sting because you will need thousands of objs to make it fun and the frame rate will be down.