Undoubtedly
some of you will read this and realise that there are vast gaps
in my knowledge, especially where using high-end paint programmes…
I’m largely self-taught and impatient… if you spot anywhere
I’m doing things the hard way please tell me. This is just
an overview of the map making procedure.
Where
to start?
I guess first you need an idea. For many people this means a map
or photo, although for a first map my advice would be to start from
scratch. It is easier. When you start with your own concept you
aren’t forced to choose between reality and concept. Maybe
put something down on paper or even plan your map with your paint
programme, it all depends on how you want to work.
Step one. Decide
on your map size. CC maps come in ratios of 120 pixels. You set
this size when creating the new image in your paint programme. CC3
maps can range in size up to 2880x2880 pixel maps (roughly 650 metres
game scale). Examples of this size are Ukraine, Belarus and Gumrak.
CC5 maps are able to be created up to a size of 3600x3600 pixels.
Unless the map is a multiple of 120 pixels it won’t work in
3C for coding and certainly won’t work in the game. Don’t
waste your time, get it right first time. A good starting size is
1800x1200, not too large, not too small
Step two. Design
your map. Personally I seldom make plans in advance unless I’m
doing the map for someone else. I get a mental overview and go from
there. Examples, Statefarm79 I started with the river as I wanted
to use freed deploy to set the Soviet deployment zone in the north.
Katapaa was the lakes, I wanted a narrow isthmus where I could channel
Soviet armour against light Finnish forces. And one of my favourite
maps, CauMt5 wanted steep hills in a zigzag to make it tank unfriendly.
That’s why patches of the hills are coded with courtyard,
tanks can’t go there.
Some things seem right, you’ll know as you do them.
Some people
apparently start thinking about terrain features with the roads.
I prefer to begin with the streams or rivers, just like nature.
Once the watercourses are in place you know where the hills are
going and if you’ve taken any notice of your surroundings
in REAL LIFE you’ll guess where to put the roads, bridges
and villages as human nature follows real nature. The principle
design feature of my maps (especially the early ones) was to jumble
up the LOS to give the poor AI half a chance.
Step three.
Base terrain image. Essentially you have a number of options here,
grass, cc5 grass, dry summer grass, mud or snow. I’ve made
a few attempts at creating new terrain types but I feel they don’t
fit aesthetically into scenarios or campaigns when suddenly one
map has different colours.
Obtaining your basic terrain is easy, put an existing .BGM file
into a folder with the cc2tga .exe and click on the .exe. In seconds
you have generated a targa (or .tga) file that your paint programme
can recognise. Once you’ve created a few .tga’s you’ve
got all the stock you need for wholesale map creation. You have
streams, roads, hills, buildings and so forth.
To create the
base image I have used two options. The first and easiest is to
define a pattern i.e. marque off a rectangular section and fill
your map with it. (In photoshop it’s edit, define pattern,
on an existing map then edit, fill on yours…) The downside
is that this option can cause problems as it can leave a tile effect
across your map unless the marqued off section is reasonably uniform.
There is probably some way around this tile effect but I don’t
know it… yet.
The other option is get a tga of an existing map with large areas
of bare terrain (Moscow2, Kursk3 embank and so on) and copy an irregular
patch (with a 5 pixel feathered edge) and paste. Okay it’s
slow but it gives diversity to your map. This is how all of my early
maps were created.
Step four. So
you’ve got a plain, it’s green, or brown or snow, there
are zero terrain features and it’ll be no fun to play on.
Next step for me is rivers. Easiest way is simply cut out river
sections off existing maps. Use a 3-5 pixel feather to give a soft
edge and paste them onto yours. You can stretch them, shrink them,
rotate them and do what you want. Just remember a water course is
generally lower than the surrounding terrain so shading comes into
play. Shadow on the left, light on the right… easy! The slightly
harder way was to create a river is to get a mud-like texture and
fill a river course with a 2-3 pixel feather edge. Then make a smaller
marqued off area with a 10-12 pix feather and fill it with “water”.
This way where the water is semi-transparent it appears shallow.
Easy!!
|
|
|
bare
terrain |
stream
bed |
river |
Step five Hills.
Like everything there are several construction options. The simplest
is to cut existing hills from other maps. Again marque it off with
a healthy feathered edge 12-15 copy and paste. Remember the rules
about shadow when rotating, don’t expand too far or the pixels
turn to crap and so on, basically just common sense. The other method
I use is doing the shadow side first, marque off with a 25 pix feather
to give a nice soft edge, drop in a new layer (photoshop) paint
it black and reduce the opacity to 20-30%. .
Then
lighten the sunward side
…and
viola!! A hill!
Or you can use
the grey scale method but I’ve never got my head around that…
And it seems you’re expected to plan things out in advance…
like Hell!!!
Cool so far.
All you’ve needed is a paint programme and the cc2tga freeware
programme. No DOS, no nothing… How easy is that?
Next are other
hills, buildings and roads. Exactly the same techniques apply. Cut
and paste. Use feathering. Blah, blah, blah. The only handy thing
I’ve discovered for hasty village creation is this little
sneaky thing.
Paste
a building from another map, copy its shadow too regardless of colour.
This building was cut from the Rostov map, the shadow is dark brown
and doesn’t work with the green.
mark off the shadow and fill it solid black cut it, then paste it
back and reduce the layer opacity to 35%.
Then when something is pasted or filled underneath it is affected
by the shadow. This way I can drop a building a minute onto a new
map. Fast eh? And lets face it, once you come to grips with your
paint programme you can change the colour, size and so forth. This
only downside with this method is that you can’t rotate the
building as it screws up where the shadow falls.
Step Six. You
also need trees, again several ways. You can copy sections of woods
from other maps, don’t rotate them, shadows falling towards
the sun just look stupid. One of the best resources is the tree
shadows pack by GS Marcks. It’s a .psd with about 30 tree
shadows, copy and paste: repeatedly.
If you want to create a forest a shortcut is to create and small
psd (say 200x200 pix), fill it with trees, turn off the background
and go copy merged. This gives you a 200x200 pix block of trees
that you can stamp over your map by pasting repeatedly. Then just
add some extra trees to randomise the look.
Common… all together now… EASY!!!
Another option is to create your own shadows. I’ve found whereas
building shadows look best at 35% opacity, trees shadows generally
need a little more darkness, 40-50%, sometimes more.
Okay there’s
plenty of other things you can do but essentially now you have your
very own map.
When you save
it save as a 16bit .tga. (Go save as, find the tga format and after
a while the programme will prompt you with three choices 16, 24
and 32 bit).
Time to unzip
and open the amazing programme called 3C.
Open
it and using the file menu, load the tga.
the menu currently reading ALL gives major groups, say trees or
wooden buildings, the menu beneath it gives subgroups, say conifers
or big trees wooden walls or wooden doors. You “paint”
these elements over your map slowly obscuring your masterpiece with
swarthes of flat colour. Once the entire map is coloured (every
square, in fact use the fill unfilled under edit to ensure that
every square is full) it’s time to do the elevation i.e. make
the hills and hollows.
Easy,
click on Elevation and you map will reappear. Set the height and
start coding. I warn you hills are almost as hard work as city buildings.
I code using the large brush, just slop it on, no one will ever
know.
Actually a good
way to see how 3C works is open the program, load one of the original
.bgm files from your maps folder, open the same map’s txt
file and you will get a complete overview. Once again every single
square in the map must be coded for elevation; otherwise…
fzzzipppt!!!!!
Okay, everything
is almost ready. Save the txt file to the same place as your tga.
Go to import/export menu and save the bgm, mmm and ovm files the
same way. This takes a few seconds each.
The bgm is the map you play on, the ovm is the larger map you see
in the senerio editor and the mmm is the small one at the lower
left corner of your screen as you play. Now comes the time consuming
one, the LOS file (defining where your troops can see and shoot
once they’re fighting), this generally takes about 30 mins
for a reasonable sized map. It’ll pay not to do anything else
while this is happening… I went on line while generating the
LOS for Statefarm79 and it took 4 hrs. It’s a mistake you
only make once.
Often now I
play the map to test it. Then add a few more buildings and trees
to confuse the LOS a little further. Of course this means back to
3C but if you’re going to do it, do it right and it’s
just a matter of reloading the tag and txt files and editing the
differences, then resaving everything.
Step
last. The rfm files. These are the tiles that let your troops enter
buildings. Open your tga again using the paint program and start
filling in the buildings with interiors.
becomes
and
then this
through copying
and pasting or filling. “Hollow out” every building
and save the map as a 16bit tga with something that identifies it
as an interior file. DON’T JUST SAVE OVER TOP AS THAT MEANS
LOTS MORE WORK REDOING YOUR EXTERIOR MAP AGAIN!!! AND OF COURSE
I HAVE NEVER BEEN STUPID ENOUGH TO DO THIS…
;-(
Unzip then open
Groof2. Open the interior map .tga first, after 20-30 seconds it’ll
prompt to open the exterior tga. The images will be one on top of
the other, you can swap between them if you want. Then just marque
out each roof and when you’ve finished save the resulting
rfm file to your new map’s folder.
At this stage
you should have 8 files, 2 tgas (now worthless) a bgm, mmm, ovm,
rfm, txt and a LOS file. Copy them to your closecombat 3 map folder
and start fighting.
CC5 maps are essentially the same, just a little harder to slot
into the game but using the search function at www.militarygameronline.com
and asking the right questions should bring up what you need to
know.
Told you it
was easy
Any questions
to
southern_land@hotmail.com
Okay
guys, one more time EASY!!!
EASY
EASY
Resources
the texture files created by Gds_Starfury
The tree schadow pack by GS Marcks is invaluable
The cc2tga exe
3C
` Groof2 (don’t use Groof as the second version is a lot more
stable)
I think all
of these are available from JimmyD’s site
Now go forth
and be fruitful my children
