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Publishing your coop mission

Page history last edited by davros123 15 years, 3 months ago

Page Contents


 


Naming your mission

IMHO, I would leave the map name in there so people know what map they are playing - just as was done with the various "dam" coop missions. People have certain maps the like so, by all means add to the name, but suggest you leave it as was done for dam. I also strongly recommend you have a version number on your maps. If it's the first release, and there are likely to be changes you'll make, so call it v1 otherwise confusion will reign when you release an update - ie. people will not know what version/release of the mission they are playing and it will cause issues.

Perhaps something like urban_conflict_<yourname>_v1

 

You can do this by updating the mission name in the world_info.xml with the version numbers (I use something like ...._v2 and ...._v3 etc.). The game checks this name and will not allow a v2 to be played with a v3 named map, but if you do not change the name, you can get all sorts of issues with people playing diff. versions and no one knowing!

ie... world_info.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<world_info name="urban_conflict_dav_v2" mission_time="day">

 

 

Creating a personalised mission loading screen

 

Creating your own personalised "load screen" is the final touch to making a modded mission yours.

In order to create your load screen you will need a programme such as PaintNet ( free ) which can read and save .dds files.  Paint.net can be downloaded by following the "preperation for making a GRAW2 coop mission link on the sidebar.  You'll also need a programme that allows you to take in game screenshots (I use xfire, it's also free or you can use FRAPS).

 

So to work..................

 

Firstly from within your mission take a screenshot of an area or something that you would like to see as your load screen and save to desktop (or somewhere of your choice)  and exit your mission.

 

Open up your screenshot in PaintNet (or other similar programme that can save in .dds format).  Create a canvas size of 2048x 2048.  Ensure that your image is at the top of the canvas and is sized at 2048 x 1080 pixels.

Modify it to your liking ...... add your name, add another layer, etc etc... then save as "whatever you want.dds"

 

Copy or move your saved image to your mission folder ie ... data/levels/custom_levelsyour mission/whatever you want.dds

 

Using start explore .. locate your mission folder and open up your world_info.xml file which should look something like this:

 

<world_info name="urban_conflict_legacy_v2" mission_time="day">

 <world path="xml/world.xml">

 </world>

 <mission_script path="mission.xml">

 </mission_script>

 <environments path="environments.xml" environment="cloudfast"/>

 <massunits path="massunit.bin"/>

 <sound>

  <soundbank name="ambience_military_war_sound" type="ambient"/>

 </sound>

 <texture_scope path="texture_scope.xml"/>

 <texture name="loading" texture="/data/levels/custom_levels/coop_urban_conflict_legacy_v2/graw2-head" uv_rect="0,0,2048,1080" width="2048" height="2048"/>

 <texture name="minimap" texture="/data/levels/custom_levels/coop_urban_conflict_legacy_v2/minimap" uv_rect="0,0,512,321" width="512" height="512"/>

 <graph name="coarse" path="ai_coarse.gph"/>

 <graph name="main" path="ai.gph"/>

 <border name="minimap" min_x="-11390.723" min_y="-14967.936" max_x="19527.416" max_y="4442.9468"/>

 <world_info path="/data/levels/common/coop_settings.xml" type="coop">

 </world_info>

</world_info>

 

Locate the line that begins <texture name="loading" and after custom_levels/  insert the name of your mission (in this case coop_urban_conflict_legacy_v2)

followed by a forward slash / and the name of your load screen (in this case graw2-head.dds)

 

Save your world_info.xml file and run your mission ...... your personalised load screen should now be visible whilst loading.

For positioning you may have to "jiggle" your screen around in PaintNet (or similar) to get it to align properly with the Graw2 window.

 

Sociability

With non-GRIN maps (ie. custom maps made by modders) there is the issue of sociability - ie the ability of the mission to act nicely with other missions/maps. Regardless of the naming in the world_info.xml, the map will not run with other maps based upon the urban_conflict map without changes. This is because of a flaw in the way GRIN coded the loading of the bundles. When GRAW finds two maps/missions with the same xml's on the same paths, it CTD's.

In the case of urban_conflict, the issue is the textures (I think it's called Industrial). As both bundles will have the same textures, regardless of the names of the mission, the game will CTD if you have two bundles in custom_levels based upon the urban_conflict map.

So, the solution is to change the path names in one of the bundles. Using urban_conflict as an example, I have created the following video to show what you need to change. Like all things GRAW, it's fairly straight forward...once you get the idea :)


Sociability - making your custom mission run with other versions from davros on Vimeo.

 

Publishing your coop mission

Bundeling your mission

 

NOTE: FOR VISTA USERS

Due to issues regarding "ownership" and "permissions" of files and folders within Vista, Vista users will need to do the following

before proceeding with the Bundeling instructions below.

1) Go to start, explore C:\Users\<your user name>\AppData\Local\GRAW2\data\levels\custom_levels\<your mission>\xml

(this is where all your saved files reside when saving in the editor) in here you will find a quantity of files in the format world_n.xml

(where n is a number). The file world.xml is your most current saved world file. Right click on this file and click COPY.

 

2) Now go back to where your GRAW 2 is installed, ie C:\Program Files\UBISOFT\Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2\ and

open folders data\levels\custom_levels\<your mission>\xml  now right click your mouse button and PASTE the copied world.xml into this folder.

Vista will ask if you wish to overwrite the existing file or make a copy ...... OVERWRITE THE EXISTING FILE

 

3) In this folder now should be two files unit_list.xml and world.xml 

4) Exit explorer and continue with the instructions given below.

 

To start with, create a new folder. I usually put this underneath where I installed GRAW2.

Name this folder bundler. ie. C:\Program Files\UBISOFT\bundler

 

Inside this folder (eg C:\Program Files\UBISOFT\bundler) place the following:

  1. bundler.exe from C:\Program Files\Ubisoft\Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2\public_tools\bundler
  2. a new empty folder named <your mission name>. For example if you were bundleing coop_urban_conflict mission, you'd have C:\Program Files\UBISOFT\bundler\coop_urban_conflict
  3. Inside the <your mission name> folder, create a folder named data (this is where the files you want to bundle will go). ie. "coop_urban_conflict/data"
  4. Inside the data folder, put the files you want to bundle (ie. take a copy of the files from under C:\Program Files\UBISOFT\data - exclusing folders like settings and movies)
  5. Check the file in your data folders and remove any .xmb's. These are not required and may override the .xml you have changed.

 

Take care to just copy over the folders that you need..ie. not Sound or Movies or Settings. It will likely look something like this

 

 

To make it easier to bundle your missions, we will use a batch file.

Download the following file, make_bundle.bat into the C:\Program Files\UBISOFT\bundler folder

 

Now when you click on this batch file it will ask you for the name of the folder you want to bundle (ie. coop_urban_conflict) and create the bundle. When it's done, you'll see a new bundle file appear in the folder.  You can now distribute this to others to try out your new mission. I suggest you compress it with WinRAR first to reduce the size and perhaps include a text file describing the mission and any instructions.

 

For those that are interested, the make_bundle.bat file contains the following lines...

@ECHO OFF
ECHO Enter the name of the folder you want to bundle
@ECHO OFF
set /p fname=(ie. coop_urban_conflict):
ECHO Compiling dsf files to .dxe
@bundler.exe compile-scripts %fname%
ECHO Building bundle file to %fname%.bundle
@bundler.exe quick-bundle -r %fname% %fname% -D %fname%.bundle
ECHO Done!
@Pause

 

Uploading your mission bundle to a fileshare

Be sure to compress your .bundle (and any other files) with winRAR before uploading them. Do not password protect your files.

Instructions on loading your bundle (RAR file) to filefront

Be sure to include comments about the mission on filefront so people know what it is all about and who made it.

Post a message in the mission modding forum at ghostrecon.net with a link to the bundle on filefront - be sure to include a descriptoin of the mission, and any special instructions. Rocky will also add it to the downloads section.

For information on how to link to your file, see here How do I make my files public? Where can I link users to my file?

 

If you want to restrict access to your files on filefront (ie. a beta release or you discover an error) see here How to password protect your files

 

Comments (2)

AJ said

at 3:21 am on Dec 28, 2008

Just what files must be renamed when naming a mission besides the line in the world_info.xml file? AJ59

Bogie said

at 4:40 am on Jan 10, 2009

You should also document your revisions in the mission.xml file. I've noticed that if you need to bundle texture files, that it is sometimes good to rename the mission name directory so as not to conflict with other versions of the same map. In this case, you would need to update your "texture_scope.xml" to reflect these new directory names.

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