I need help on how to begin making MM2 maps.

[Luchs]

Hello, MM2x community, I am new here (well, to the forum at least) and for the longest time I have been on and off wanting to make my own cities for Midtown Madness 2 but I've never known how to even get far in any project because I simply don't know where to start or how and where to model basic things like square buildings or what programs to use exactly. I realize this probably takes a lot of time and effort and I realize I am only a beginner at this (gotta start somewhere :/ ), but if anybody could offer some help, that would be great.

I think my main problem is not knowing how to start modeling terrain and buildings and how to match it to scale with Midtown Madness 2 vehicles/pedestrians. I have Zmodeler2, although I have no clue how to start using it . Is there a different tool I should be using besides that in the first place? Preferably a free program? I've seen several modeling tutorials but many of them don't help me out much.

Any help on this is welcome � � � . And I might have more questions with the more input I get, but for now, thank you everybody who took the time to read this and anyone who can offer some much desired information.

Luchs

[zoot]

Hi! Okay, first. Don't use Zmodeler. Use Blender instead.



If you end up going to use more tutorials, find one from 2018 as to stay up to date, Blender has become more user friendly, and it will be even more in the next 2.8 version. Right now, just use the latest 2.79 version.

Clicking here you'll find a tutorial for MM2 City Toolkit and city creation. It's not too challenging. Good luck. Tell us your progress here and ask questions in this thread. We are happy to help!

[Jeremiahjobling]

MM2 City Toolkit  was one program modders in the community used to make their own cities if I remember correctly. As well as PDSL viewer, which would let you study how the default MM2 cities London and San Francisco were designed  

There may have been other software but they've probably escaped my memory if so.

[Luchs]

Thanks for your input, mates. I sure hope Blender 2.79 works well on my 20 year old computer with Windows 7.
I have the City Toolkit and I've read that you're supposed to make the city and import it into the toolkit to add midtown madness 2 objects and textures to it, am I right?

Does PDSL Viewer work similarly? Do you take the file of SF or London and import it to the viewer to view the city structurally?
Thanks again.

Luchs

[zoot]

Use MM2CityToolkit.. the other one is ancient..

[Jaume33]

Thanks for help!

[Luchs]

Hello. Okay, so I've made a small little area in blender composing of a flat plane and two blocks that were scaled to look like sidewalks.
I tried to load it up on MM2 city toolkit, however it said that "the 3DS file contains unrecognized objects, work with that file is impossible". What I did was I exported the small map save that I made from blender to the "mycity" folder in MM2 toolkit, then tried to import the file through: Advanced --> Import 3DS/ASE.

Is there something anyone might know of that I'm doing wrong? Am I missing a step?
Thanks a lot.

Luchs

[zoot]

Yes, name the objects correctly in Blender. For just a ground, just use "PH1_"

[Luchs]

[quote="carking1996";p="110825"]Yes, name the objects correctly in Blender. For just a ground, just use "PH1_"[/quote]

Alright, I tried that, but it still says that it doesn't recognize these objects.
I've put an image of my cheap blender map as an attachment (sorry, still trying to figure out how to use some things) (and sorry for the bad photo job)
I just feel like I'm missing something. Maybe because it's a little hard keeping up with forum tutorials from around 2003-9.
Edit: The image looks weird, but if you click on it, it should be fine.

Luchs

[Luchs]

Okay, never mind, I fixed it, it was just a capitalization type-o  :lol:  :lol:  :oops:

So, I Exported it to MM2CT and opened the 3DS/ASE thing and everything worked out and blah blah blah, however I didn't do something write because I can't seem to play the map on MM2. What I did was I clicked "Make city and AR archive", which I suppose means that you take everything you've made and shoved it into a folder in Midtown Madness 2 file location. Well that's what I did, but I still can't play the map. I'm clearly missing something. Any ideas?

P.S. I'm a complete newbie to all of this PSDL and INST stuff and so on... I'm not good at computer programming stuff at all, so any information on what I should do is 100% welcome. Sorry for being so bad at this.  :lol:

[zoot]

Does it work ingame but you can't see it? If so, it's not scaled properly, it's too tiny. Make it larger!

[Luchs]

[quote="carking1996";p="110831"]Does it work ingame but you can't see it? If so, it's not scaled properly, it's too tiny. Make it larger![/quote]

No, there was no new map to play in my city selection . I think the problem is that I'm not doing the whole "make a city and AR archive" correctly.

Luchs

[zoot]

[quote="Luchs";p="110832"][quote="carking1996";p="110831"]Does it work ingame but you can't see it? If so, it's not scaled properly, it's too tiny. Make it larger![/quote]

No, there was no new map to play in my city selection . I think the problem is that I'm not doing the whole "make a city and AR archive" correctly.

Luchs[/quote]
Send me your ar it made and I'll check it out for you.

[Luchs]

Okay, so I'm confused on what to do still...I keep missing something or keep doing something wrong.
Could you explain to me the whole process from exporting the map (which folder to export it to, geometry, city, etc.?) all the way to actually playing the map? The tutorial I have by Maxoff is helpful but it's a little vague at this point.
Thanks.

Luchs

[zoot]

Okay, so the file you sent me doesn't contain anything you need for the city. I don't see any PSDL, info file, anything. Are you importing the 3Ds into mm2ct properly like in the tutorial?