09.06.2009, 08:02
The following is a repost from page ten of Maraz's Malta map thread. A recent PM mentioned that the link was down, so I thought I'd post it here for clarity:
A while back, after reading some excellent books on the battle for Malta, I made some small personalisations to my install of 6S.Maraz's groundbreaking map.
It has some texture swapping to free up some slots to introduce customised textures to each major airfield on Malta - with a representation of the extensive bomb damage that the installations suffered in 1942. Army personel were quick to fill in craters, even as enemy aircraft were still overhead. Lucky for us! As it is impossible to model deep craters in Il-2. :p
What you will see are the marks left by bomb blasts, showing the dust from exposed bedrock and the stains of the lighter dust and debris still lying on the surface around the filled in craters.
I also took the liberty of giving the airstrip and taxi ways a painted-on texture, to blend them in with the surroundng landscape. Maraz's ground plates are still there, and I went to a lot of trouble to preserve his plate and object placement. This will ensure that the map is compatible with any missions and campaigns already created, and also ansure that it stays true to the overall look that Maraz planned when he created this little gem.
You may find that fps are slightly improved. Malta has a lot of detail packed into a tiny area, so it will always be demanding on any system. I did find however that Valletta and a few of the smaller towns had qute a few objects in collision or hidden inside one another (this is probably due to the early
versions of auto-pop that may have been used). This tends to impact greatly on any map, so I removed or shifted these items wherever I found them. It gave me an extra 20fps over the harbour, which is handy when you're trying to land a Hurri amid a dozen Me109's! It seems that invisible ground plates also have their own fps hit (see default Burma map for example) so I selectively thinned out the number of these around the emergency landing grounds and dispersal areas such as Safi strip. This also gave back another few frames per second when looking in that direction.
Later if I can figure out how to add more texture slots to a given map (just need to figure out how to edit/save a damned hashed file) I'd like to have many more craters seen spreading out into adjoining fields and town areas across the island. The place must have been covered in stray bomb blasts.
For this to work, you'll need LAL_RONE's excellent Hangar 2 mod, available here: (The link is inoperative)
Once installed, you should find that this will work just fine with UI 1.1 you will also have access to a host of new objects for your missions and campigns. Just be sure to install part 1+2 to get all the goodies. You won't regret it!
*********************************************************************************
To install this version of Maraz's Malta map, put the Malta_Bombed folder in your Mods folder and add the following to your All.ini in the Maps folder:
Malta_42 Malta_42/fiv_load_high.ini
That aught to do it
Thanks 6S.Maraz for providing such a great map. The first all-new one that Il-2 ever saw!
A download link is here: http://www.filefront.com/14646993/Malta_Bombed.rar
![[Image: grab0004-5.jpg]](http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/dd119/Feathered_IV/grab0004-5.jpg)
(The link is inoperative)
A while back, after reading some excellent books on the battle for Malta, I made some small personalisations to my install of 6S.Maraz's groundbreaking map.
It has some texture swapping to free up some slots to introduce customised textures to each major airfield on Malta - with a representation of the extensive bomb damage that the installations suffered in 1942. Army personel were quick to fill in craters, even as enemy aircraft were still overhead. Lucky for us! As it is impossible to model deep craters in Il-2. :p
What you will see are the marks left by bomb blasts, showing the dust from exposed bedrock and the stains of the lighter dust and debris still lying on the surface around the filled in craters.
I also took the liberty of giving the airstrip and taxi ways a painted-on texture, to blend them in with the surroundng landscape. Maraz's ground plates are still there, and I went to a lot of trouble to preserve his plate and object placement. This will ensure that the map is compatible with any missions and campaigns already created, and also ansure that it stays true to the overall look that Maraz planned when he created this little gem.
You may find that fps are slightly improved. Malta has a lot of detail packed into a tiny area, so it will always be demanding on any system. I did find however that Valletta and a few of the smaller towns had qute a few objects in collision or hidden inside one another (this is probably due to the early
versions of auto-pop that may have been used). This tends to impact greatly on any map, so I removed or shifted these items wherever I found them. It gave me an extra 20fps over the harbour, which is handy when you're trying to land a Hurri amid a dozen Me109's! It seems that invisible ground plates also have their own fps hit (see default Burma map for example) so I selectively thinned out the number of these around the emergency landing grounds and dispersal areas such as Safi strip. This also gave back another few frames per second when looking in that direction.
Later if I can figure out how to add more texture slots to a given map (just need to figure out how to edit/save a damned hashed file) I'd like to have many more craters seen spreading out into adjoining fields and town areas across the island. The place must have been covered in stray bomb blasts.
For this to work, you'll need LAL_RONE's excellent Hangar 2 mod, available here: (The link is inoperative)
Once installed, you should find that this will work just fine with UI 1.1 you will also have access to a host of new objects for your missions and campigns. Just be sure to install part 1+2 to get all the goodies. You won't regret it!
*********************************************************************************
To install this version of Maraz's Malta map, put the Malta_Bombed folder in your Mods folder and add the following to your All.ini in the Maps folder:
Malta_42 Malta_42/fiv_load_high.ini
That aught to do it
Thanks 6S.Maraz for providing such a great map. The first all-new one that Il-2 ever saw!
A download link is here: http://www.filefront.com/14646993/Malta_Bombed.rar
(The link is inoperative)