It depends on how you define talent, we dont want people who can make nice panaromas that are unplayable. We had far to much of that in our previous releases sadly. The focus of the designer is to create a good experience for the players, if it can be done from a "real" scanario even better. This position is for work on the russian 1944 campaign for now but of course we wont stay with that forever.

Your job as the designer is to layout the overall design of the map. Planning out distances, how the map is going to play from a fixed point (combined arms, tank map, infantry map, city map)

*Work on the playable areas heightmap to give nice flanking positions, ridges, roads, chokepoints.
* Use statics to provide cover (boxes, sandbags, wrecks, craters)
*Make good flag areas with team spawns so that the fights are always over the flags and not some random defined area, you plan out how the fights for each flag is going to take place.
* Make sure that main bases cannot be baseraped easily
*Adjust the map with feedback from testing (this is the most important part since no matter how well you plan your map, hardcore gamers always tend to find loopholes in your design   )
* Make sure all paths and roads are logical and smooth (apply spline etc)
* Make sure your design works from performance constrains laid out by the engine/content.

What you need in technical skills:
Working with heightmaps in bf2editor (the common tools, plattform tool, apply spline)
Level editor in bf2  (placing statics, measure tool, road tool)
Being able to paint in editor to create masks for the artists to use (mask out areas with gravel, dirt fields etc)
Make basic Overgrowth needed for gameplay.

But most important: Youre fanatical about creating a good and solid experince for the players,

Art skills: lighting, texturing, statics, undergrowth, effects, sounds and advanced heightmaps are made by the artists/sound guys. What is good is if you can communicate visual concepts of lighting, statics, terrain to artists trough drawings or photos but not necessary. Thats also why strong teamplay and communication skills are necessary.

If you have previous experience from mapping another mod or tournaments thats ideal.

Its the size of the surrounding terrain (not playable). Use the default values or lowest possible size, raising the surr terrain scale can severly decrease performance.

Thanks everyone

You can use the terrain, the heightmap, anything else is more or less unusable on bf2 engine without major reworking.

The terrain must be upscaled in photoshop since bf42 uses x4 scale and bf2 x2 scale.

512x4 = 2kmx2km in bf42
1024x2 = 2kmx2km in bf2

Also maybe the Devs can introduce themselfs. We dont really know you guys!

Hi My name is Fenring in the dev team, and I have been working since early 2008 in the dev team with one long break of 6 months. I work as a Store Manager for a computer shop in daytime. I learned mapping for bf2 because i wanted FH2 to be released faster, it was a nightmare learning everything new during the first six months but I prevailed during the period where most aspiring mappers quit. Especially since the bf2editor workflow is not as easy and well documented as for example Unreal and Sandbox.

I have made 3 released maps for Forgotten Hope 2:

Gazala
Operation Luttich
Operation Totalize (With help of Toddel and Dice)

I have also done:
Terrain work on Giarabub
Level art on Fall of tobruk
Terrain and some terrain textures on Olympus
Level art on Crete
Terrain and textures on a NDA normandy map

I'am Currently working on 3 different maps for new theatres, these are currently under NDA, but what I can tell is that one of these new theatres (not the one for next patch) will be heavily vehicle oriented compared to normandy which was more infantry / small combined arms (this was needed since Africa was a tank shock).

How do you work together - does Toddel tell Dev A. to make a Sherman and Dev.B to make Panther- Or are they working on everything the can find and put it together- if it is needed or not?

We usally start out a new theatre/time period with Taranov our vehicle researcher telling which was the most common vehicles during this time period, the artists make new vehicles, weapons and some common statics (simple houses, fences). Our Coders get the finished vehicles ingame with lods, collisions, correct armour speed etc so that the mappers can start working on their creations and make the first basic versions of the maps. After hand special statics are added to the maps and new ones made where needed. Nowadays we only do special vehicles and statics when a map that uses them is 100% certain to make it (based on past very painfull experiences).

Devs I think quite a lot of people would like to see how you work:
How is a map done -

Usually the first steps of making a map is the research.

Basicly you have two things to research

-What do you want to represent historically/graphicly (area, vehicle load outs, weather, atmosphere)
- What do you want the map to play like (plane/tank map, combined arms, infantry map, close quarters)

After this stage I usally begin to sketch out the basic terrain of the map, in most cases i make the surrounding terrain first since at most 3/4 of the map will be used for gameplay. The surrounding terrain is like a skybox texture/simple gameplay feature, its there to 1. look good, 2. orient the players where they can and where they cant go.

Then you start the much more detailed work in the gameplay area, you make a rough sketch where you want flags to be, terrain elevations, roads/paths. This often has to be changed many times during the development of the map and the testing sessions, areas can be raised and lowered to give more cover, a village can be totally rearranged or shrunken, spawns moved, vehicles changed, the spawning times of vehicles highered or lowered. Flags moved. I often load up the map and use a stop watch to measure the time it takes to move to a flag or objective by foot or vehicle so that the map has a good tempo and intensity, Roads should always guide players to objectives, dead ends is a nono!

We run the map for several test sessions, a map can go trough up to ten-twenty versions before its considered gameplay finished, after the testing an artist, level designer or another level designer can finish the map final art look. Sometimes several designers work on the gameplay as well. Often the maps are also changed after their intial public release.

This was not our workflow for the first north africa releases and unfortunately this made things take a lot of more time than necessary, but from the normandy release and onwards we have improved a lot in this aspect.

Where you take your sources from?

Internet
Taranov
Local Library
Osprey

etc etc

Thanks

Youre welcome

Can you post modfied exes for both 32 and 64-bit here so me and other ppl can test this?

Any links or refs to this problem, any benchmarks that show i affects bf2? I have never heard about it. Any links that show you how to do this?

As Natty said, basicly no one around here knows bf1942 modding anymore and that especially applies to coding. Most of the current FH2 devs have never modded bf1942. Next insults against a moderator or dev is an instant ban.

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