This guide to level creation is intended for the novice user. Of course, there are probably some tips and tricks in here that could benefit even an experienced user of Battlecraft.

NOTE - to make tips easier to spot, all tips and tricks will be italicized and off to the right side:

Like so.

I have done my best to be completely consistent in my use of terminology; all tools will be referred to using their tooltip name, and all tools referred to will be in Bold. I am not going to be explaining exactly how to use tools in this guide; for a complete explanation of all tools and their functions, read the Battlecraft 1942 User’s Manual.

§ NB: Control-L is the shortcut key to test your level. I advise you to frequently use this while creating your map, as the appearance of things in Battlecraft 1942 is slightly different than in Battlefield itself.

Step One: Starting A New Level

When Battlecraft 1942 starts you will be presented with a screen asking you to choose a mod or create a new one. You can either choose one of the two default Mods: DesertCombat and GCMOD, or create a new mod named BF1942, which will allow you to access the original levels (as well as providing more functionality—see below) or name it something else entirely. Note that in order to use the shadow generators and/or use the Test This Level feature, the level you are working on will have to be in the BF1942 Levels folder—the default of which is:

C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 1942\Mods\bf1942\Archives\bf1942\levels

Since it is possible to make mistakes in level creation that will interfere with the running of Battlefield 1942, it is suggested that you make a backup copy of your Battlefield installation.

If you choose to create a new mod, you will be presented with an “Edit Mod Settings” screen. If you are working with a default Battlefield 1942 installation, just hit OK. If you have it installed to a non-default location, modify the “Game Path” setting to point to the directory where the BF1942.exe is located.

The “object list” setting is only for working with a mod with non-standard vehicles, such as Desert Combat. More detailed instructions on how to configure Battlecraft 1942 to work with mods such as Desert Combat are available in another document.

The “Edit Mod Settings” Screen

The first thing to do when creating a new level is to determine the rough schematics of the level: how big you want it, whether there will be water or not, which theater to set it in, and which game rules will apply. These are the only variables that cannot be changed after the level is created, so take some time to think about exactly what you want before choosing them.

The “New Level” Screen

It’s important to note that “Use Water In This Map” starts off unchecked by default. So, if you want rivers, lakes, etc. in the map, you must check “Use Water In This Map” here; you will not be able to change this once the map is created.

After setting up your level in this screen, you will either go straight to your newly created level or, if you chose Random Map Generation (above), you will be taken to the Random Map Generation menu. This can be done as often as you want while making a level by clicking on “Tools” and selecting “Random Terrain Generator” from the drop down menu.

Accessing the Random Terrain Generator tool from the menu

Choosing “Cancel” From The Random Map Generation Menu Doesn’t Cancel the level creation, it just cancels the random terrain. So, a new, flat map is created with all the other settings in place.

Step Two: Learning the Camera and Movement In Battlecraft 1942

The Three Camera Views and Moving the Camera

When Battlecraft 1942 first opens a level or creates a new level, the camera defaults to Camera Fly Mode. There are two other camera modes; Camera On Terrain Mode, which snaps the camera horizontal with the surface of the map, and Camera Top-Down Mode, which provides a bird’s-eye view of the map. The keyboard shortcuts for these modes are O, for Camera on Terrain Mode; I, for Camera Fly Mode; and P, for Top Down Mode. To move the camera around, use the arrow keys or W-forward, A-left, S-back, D- right. In order to rotate the camera, hold down the right mouse button and move the mouse. In order to zoom in and out when in Camera Top-Down Mode, hold down the right mouse button and move the mouse up and down.

Step Three: Terrain Modification.

Now that you’ve got a level to play around with, it’s time to get the terrain looking the way you want it to. Now, of course you’ll want to make little tweaks later, especially to make the terrain fit more exactly with buildings and other objects that you put down. It’s a good idea to roughly map out your level’s terrain before you begin adding anything else to it.

Introduction to the tools and their uses:

In general we have found that for the beginning of a map, using the Point Manipulation Tool in conjunction with the Smoothing Tool is the best way to create hills and valleys. The Flatten Tool is the best way to create level areas for bases, but is also the best way to create rivers and roads. The Raising Tool and Carving (lowering) Tool, while not as effective or precise as the Point Manipulation Tool, can be a good way of making realistic-looking hills. Finally, the Road Tool is also a good tool for, er, creating roads—though only if the terrain isn’t too steep to start. In case you just can’t take the time to read the manual because you’re so gosh-darned excited about making a level, here’s a brief overview.

Accessing The Tools

The terrain editing tools are always available through the keyboard shortcuts. Using any of these tool shortcuts will also change Battlecraft 1942 into Terrain Mapper mode. The shortcuts are detailed at the end of this section. Once in Terrain Mapper mode, the shortcut icons for all the tools are available.

The Terrain Mapper and associated shortcut icons

Reading from left to right, these buttons the Point Manipulation Tool, the Point Auto-Smoothing toggle, the size modifier for the auto-smoothing, Carve (Lower) Terrain, Raise Terrain, Smoothing Tool, Flatten Tool, Road tool, and tool size modifier. The slider bar on the right is the intensity modifier, which modifies how quickly terrain within the area of effect is affected by the tool.

Quickly creating playable terrain:

The Point Manipulation Tool is one of the trickier tools to master, but quite useful. Basically, you click on various points (the intersections of the gridlines in wireframe view) and adjust their height by either pressing plus and minus or by holding the shift key and moving the mouse up and down. Holding down the CTRL key allows you to “paint” control points wherever you drag the mouse—useful for when you want to cover a large area quickly. After you do this to roughly map out high and low terrain, you should switch to the Smoothing Tool (keyboard shortcut “B”) to smooth out desired areas.

The Flattening Tool should then be used to create level areas for buildings, bases, and vehicles. To use it (keyboard shortcut N), place the mouse on a piece of terrain at the height you wish to make a level area. Press control and click on terrain with the desired height.(the square will turn dark blue while ctrl is held.) Afterwards, wherever you click will be leveled to that selected height. This is also a good way of creating roads.

Keep in mind the following:

Unsmoothed terrain causes problems in-game—it may cause soldiers and vehicles passing over it to take damage, as well as causing problems for soldiers attempting to crouch or go prone on it.
The Wireframe or Textured Wireframe View is the best views to use when modifying terrain. Use J and L, respectively, to get to these views.
You can use the numbers 1-9 to change the size of any of the terrain modification tools.
You can change the intensity (the speed at which the tool operates) with Shift + 1-0
The following shortcuts change which tool is being used: C – carve. V-raise. B- smooth. N—Flatten. M—road tool. X—toggle auto-smoothing.
You can “ undo” an action by pressing ctrl+Z. This will work in all Mapper Modes except Surface Map Painter. There is No “Redo”

Step Four: Placing Objects

The Object Cache

The first step in placing objects is to add the objects to your object cache—this is a list of objects in the level tree that represents all the types of objects currently placed in the level, as well as all the types of objects that you have added during your current session. The object browser is the tool you use in order to add objects to the cache.

So once “add new object” is double-clicked on the level tree (as shown to the left), the object browser opens.

The Object Browser

As you can see, the Object Browser contains a list of all the peaceable objects in Battlecraft 1942. When an object is selected, it gets added to the list of cached objects. The list in the object browser is filterable—if you enter in “afr” in the filter, only objects whose names contain the whole phrase “afr” in their names will be displayed in the list. Likewise, if the “structures” button is clicked, only structures will be shown in the list.

Example of a Cached Object

So after an object has been selected in the Object Browser and “OK” has been clicked, the object is then added to the cached objects list, as shown above.

Placing Objects From The Cache

Once you have objects in your cache, placing them on the map is simple. You just click on the specific object and drag it onto where you want to place it on the map. The icon of the mouse will change to a stylized house as this goes on. Once the object is placed on the map, it is also added to the Static Objects list in the level tree. In addition, it will be permanently added to the Cached Objects list—if you cache objects but don’t place them, they will be cleared when you open or create a new level.

Manipulating Objects Once They’re Placed

Battlecraft 1942 contains a very large number of tools to allow you to modify objects once they’ve been placed. As well as being able to move objects, they can also be rotated along all three axes, raised and lowered, and snapped to the ground. Refer to the appropriate section in the manual, 8.G, to learn how to use these thoroughly—or just read the brief summaries below and poke around with them. The main thing to remember is that, like the terrain manipulation tools, moving the mouse up and down while holding shift is normally the default method for manipulation.

The Object Modification Tools

From left to right starting from the white arrow icon, these tools are the Selection Tool (spacebar to deselect all, hold down control to select multiple objects) Translation Tool (to move objects—click on this, then click on where you want the object to go) Raise/Lower Object (remember that if you have Snap Objects To Ground enabled, you will not be able to lower anything into the ground) Rotate X, Rotate Y, Rotate Z, Nudge Tool, Snap Objects To Ground Toggle, Lock Selected Object, Unlock Selected Object, Lock All Objects, and Unlock All Objects.

Snap All Objects To Ground (Tools > Snap All Objects to Ground) is a useful tool to use if you have significantly changed the terrain in your level after having put objects down. However, be careful with it—if you’ve spent a long time adjusting the positions of your bunkers to be half-buried in sand, using “Snap Objects to Ground” will ruin them.
You can move, rotate, etc. multiple objects at the same time. Use CTRL+click in order to select multiple objects, and then whatever tool you select will affect all the objects you have selected.
Press spacebar to clear all selected objects.
The Nudge tool is the best option when trying to move objects small distances, and the Translation tool is better when moving objects larger distances.

Copying and Pasting Objects

Once objects are placed, they can be copied and pasted. This is the easiest way to create forests, large-scale cities, etc. In order to use copy and paste, simply hold down the control key while clicking multiple objects. Once you’ve got all of the desired objects selected, either select “copy” from the menu or hit keyboard shortcut CTRL+C. Then press CTRL+V and click where you want to place the objects.

Step Five: Placing Control Points and Soldier Spawn Points

Control Points

Any new Battlecraft 1942 map starts out with two main bases (un-capturable bases); One for each side. In order to place control points, you must drag from “Drag new control point” to the map, just like dragging an object from Cached Objects to the map. Once you’ve done this, a new control point will be placed on the map. Control points start out with default values—for modifying values, refer to section 9.D of the Guide. The one value you probably will want to change is “area value”—see the tip below. In order to bring up the Edit Control Point screen, double-click the control point, either in the viewer or in the Level Tree. See the Tip below for how to set area value to enable ticket bleed.

Ø The most important thing to remember is that Area Value governs ticket bleed on maps (where when one side holds certain control points, the other team begins to lose tickets steadily). In order for this to work correctly, the total Area Value of the points controlled by one team must equal or exceed 100.

Ø Also very important: You can’t have more than 7 control points in any map. 8 or more control points will make Battlefield 1942 unable to launch.

Ø The new control points will automatically be assigned to the base that it is closest to (Axis or Allied) unless otherwise changed in the Edit Control Point screen.

Soldier Spawn Points

In order to place soldier spawn points, you must drag from “Drag new soldier spawn” to the map, just like dragging an object from Cached Objects to the map. A new soldier spawn will appear, and automatically be attached to the closest spawn point. The soldier spawn has values that can be modified, just like a control point. To modify the values of the soldier spawn, refer to section 9.E of the Guide. In order to bring up the Edit Soldier Spawn menu, just like with control points, double-click on the spawn point, either in the viewer or in the Level Tree. You can put as many soldier spawns as you want on your level, up to 1048. Spawn points can be manipulated just like objects—rotated, lifted up or down, moved, etc. NOTE: Soldier spawns will automatically be assigned to the control point closest to it.

There’s one little important binary value in the soldier spawn edit screen. And that’s “SpawnAsParaTrooper”. If you raise the soldier spawn off the ground, conventional wisdom dictates that you put a “1” in this field so that the soldiers spawning in the air will auto-deploy their parachutes. However, if you want to leave it up to the soldiers to do so—I personally prefer to pull my ‘chute when I’m an inch away from the ground—then leave it at 0, and soldiers will spawn in the air, falling.

Step Six: Creating Object Spawn Templates and Using Them

Unlike placing static objects, control points, etc, object spawns require that a template for the spawn point be created before the actual spawn point. This, however, is also one of the more fun and powerful tools in Battlecraft 1942.

Creating an Object Spawn Template:

For detailed information about the various modifiable aspects of spawn points, refer to the Guide, section 9.f. However, if you just want to create some quick object spawns for your level, here’s how:

Step 1: Click “Add Template” from the level tree, under Object Spawns. This will bring up the Edit Object Spawn Template.

The only really important values here, if you’re in a hurry, are “team 1 object” and “team 2 object”. This determines what vehicle spawns when a certain team owns the spawn point. So, if team 1 is the Germans and Team 2 is the US, and you want to make a light tank spawn template, change “team 1 object” to PanzerIV and “team 2 object” to Sherman. After the template has been created, you can use it to create as many object spawns as you want—just drag it from the level tree and drop it on the map.

The other thing you have to decide about your object spawn is whether or not a control point will govern it. In other words, do you want the objects to just spawn all the time, or to spawn only when a certain control point is held? If you want to associate the spawn point with a control point, you have to change the OsID value in the edit Object Spawn menu. (In order to access the Edit Object Spawn Menu, simply double-click on either the object spawn point itself or the listing for the individual object spawn in the Level Tree) Once in the Edit Object Spawn Menu, the OsID is a dropdown menu—just change the OsID to the name of the control point you want to associate the spawn point with. NOTE: If this value isn’t changed, the object will be assigned to the control point closest to it.

Step Seven: Painting Your Terrain

Now that you’ve got your objects, spawn points, etc in place and the terrain how you want it, it’s time for the final steps for your level. For detailed information on this, go to section 8.F in the Guide. To just go ahead and paint on the material, switch to the Material Mapper by pressing the shortcut button on the toolbar.

The Material Mapper

After that, pick your terrain type from the drop-down menu (the one reading “default” here) change your brush size with the number next to the paintbrush, and paint away. Switch between surface views of your materials by clicking the little orange scroll to the right of the drop-down material chooser.

§ You can also “paint” the desired texture over the texture placed in the Material Mapper Mode by going into the Surface Map Painter Mode. This will not place different texture, just alter the way the texture looks by making the texture darker, or lighter, or changing the color, etc. For more on this, refer to section 8.H in the Guide.

Generating Surface Maps

Okay, so you’ve got everything on your level like you want it: Now you should generate your surface maps. To do that, click on Surface Map Assignments, the grid-like shortcut button in the middle of the toolbar. Choose “default” and press okay, or select (by clicking on) only those squares you wish to be have the terrain rendered on. Then go to Tools > Generate Surface Maps and press okay. This process will take awhile.

Generate Terrain Shadows

In order to generate Terrain Shadows, you use a tool found in the same drop-down menu as Generate Surface Maps. Select Tools > Generate Terrain Shadows, select “Select all” and press okay, or select just the squares you want shadows generated on. After this process is finished, select “okay” to the question “Do you want to merge terrain lightmaps?”

Generating Object Lightmaps

In order to do this, make sure that you have the files from the “samples” folder unzipped and in a new folder named “StandardMesh” in the Battlefield 1942 root directory. Then, select Tools > Generate Object Lightmaps. This process will take longer the more objects you have in the level.

Step Eight: Finishing Up

Your map is now ready to go. Save it, distribute it to your friends. Make sure they have it in their BF1942 Levels directory. Serve it up (making sure Content Check is OFF) on a dedicated server with content checking off, and play your little hearts out.

This Tutorial does not cover all of the functionality of Battlecraft 1942. For a complete overview of all available functions, please refer to the Battlecraft 1942 Users’ Guide