Info and how to play them without textures conflicts
The Classic Madness and the Shader Mod 2 are some of the best mods for MM2. They are the best mods for Midtown Madness 2 for package quality, quantity of game modifications and interest. They're also also ones of the most downloaded and followed when they were work in progress.
This guide wants to let know that both the mods can be played without bad texture conlicts between them and to give more informations about these great mods.
Classic Madness
About it
The Classic Madness, started about the year 2004 and released at the end of the year 2007, has been made by the best team of creations for MM2 sine 2002, the Polish team HQTM-Team. It gives an old style look to the whole game with cars, cities and so on setted to the years period ranging from 1940 to 1970.
This team decided to make this great mod in any its aspects to make a challenge for themself, but it, because of making problems and too much time taken, becamed their curse, as they has said. Because of this, the HQTM-Team ended and decided to stop their works for any game after released this mod. Since this mod has made lots of problems for this team, this is why it isn't complete. In fact, the two new cities, some features of the new cars and some bugs of the various mods included on it, needs to be completed and fixed; any way the HQTM-Team has announced to release a patch to fix the segnalated bugs on their website forum. The .ar cities file isn't looked because wants give the possibility to the MM2 community to end it how they wants.
Features
Give a look to all the features of the Classic Madness mod. This mod is the only mod that makes do many changes to MM2: it replaces all the 20 player cars with new very good models, it changes all traffic cars of both MM2 cities, it adds two new very good cities with the typical look of the whole mod, it's a great snow mod that replace the rain weather, it's a textures mod and an object mod for SF, it's an MM2 CD player mod (press key 2 while gameplaying to switch it's displaying) and it changes pretty all the game menu.
Shader Mod 2
About it
The Shader Mod 2, started about the year 2005 by and ended in the year 2007, is a mod made by the Brazilian team MM2 Brasil (MM2BR) and is a part of the MM2 Brasil team project called A New Tex Mod. This project wants to give a more realistic look to the MM2 game graphic with new textures, new nice effects (like the reflections in the water) and quite new graphic features. This one could be available in the next Shader Mod of this project, the Shader Mod version 3.
This project has been started and is based from the Shader Mod beta versions by Oil_Drip and the MM2 Environmental Mod by Midtown Madness Special website team and Bkdi; the first version vas the beta 0.7. So, the MM2BR team decided to use this great mod idea improving it.
The Shader Mod 2 is available in two versions, Lite and Gold; the first one was available since about the year 2006, in the meanwhile of making the definitive Gold version. The first one wants to be more indicated for less powerful systems and it regards mainly only changes about city textures, but not all of them; in fact the streets textures aren't changed. Instead the second version is the definitive one: it changes more textures, it change the SF sidewalks with a new texture, it adds a reflection effect in SF and change the game loading screen and the graphic option menu screen. It wants to give the same graphic quality of the recent games, in particulat Midtown Madness 3, emulating the effects of the shader model 3.0 and HDR graphic filters.
The Shader Mod 3 will come out with other new great features, like change some menu screens, change HUD, and try to add a sun and a moon. There aren't other infos about it.
Features
Give a look to all the features of the Shader Mod 2 Gold mod. This mod sure is the best texture mod for MM2: it replaces lots of textures used for the game cities SF and London. It changes mainly grass, streets, sidewalk, water, concrete and skies textures. I don't have checked if it improve some in-game car texture. It adds also a reflection effect in the SF Museum of Fine Arts pool; it's made making a reverse copy of the object.
The guide
And now, the guide to play MM2 with these two mods without any texture problem and also with the Shader Mod 2 fog mod. This guide won't interest any edit about the Shader Mod 2 .ar file.
1. Download the Classic Madness from here and the Shader Mod 2 Gold from here. Save them where you want.
2. Extract the !cm_core.ar file from the first archive and the file !!sm2.ar file from the second archive in your main MM2 directory; usually it's C:\Programmi\Microsoft Games\Midtown Madness 2\. The !cm_core.ar file is the real Classsic Madness mod; the !cm_cities.ar file is the file which add the two new cities Forsaken Vale and Pleasentville and the !cm_changes.ar file is the file that, if edited, allows to change the tuning of the new 20 cars that comes with the mod. The mm2lang.dll file is similar to the default one, but this last change the "Raining" write with "Snowing" in the city choose menu in the weather menu.
3. To avoid the textures conflicts, especially with the CM snow one, rename the Shader Mod 2 Gold file from !!sm2 to !sm2. In this way, the game will read first the textures of the Classic Madness and then the new one tht the CM doesn't change that there are in the SM2 .ar file.
4. Launch the game and enjoy the new changes to the game. Attention: don't keep too .ar files, especially cars and other mods, or the game will crash or while first game loading or while car choosing.
Renaming the Shader Mod 2 Gold .ar file, you'll enjoy all the Classic Madness changes with the most important features of the Shader Mod 2, like the water reflections in the SF pool, the new skies and the new fog mod. You'll keep all the Classic Madness textures, like the new car reflections, all the new snow mod textures and the new grass texture.
These pictures will show all the conditions that are possible to create with these two mods.
Only Classic Madness mod
Figure 1. SF with morning time and cloudy wheater
