Zveroboy's Aleppo Buildings Texture Pack + Bonus Urban Map

[Zveroboy1]

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  DESCRIPTION
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This is a modification pack designed for the Battlefront game Combat Mission Shock Force 2 which replaces the textures of buildings and walls.

This pack draws its inspiration from the Syrian city of Aleppo. While it is probably suitable for any area in the Middle East, it is specifically based on pictures of Aleppo and the surrounding region and tries to capture the particular architecture, building materials and colour palette of this city.

Almost all the textures are twice the size of the default textures, except building interiors, floors and minor details.

It includes twelve new buildings; eight that replace the default ones and an extra four as a bonus. These four extra buildings shouldn't appear in any existing scenarios. They are designed to be used by scenario designers or map makers in their future projects and will require the players to also have them installed in their mod folder to be visible. Otherwise they will just be replaced by the game with a random building texture.

The four extra buildings are :

building n°9 : an affluent residential house cleaner and less derelict looking than the rest.

building n°10 : a school or an official or governmental building.

building n°11 : an extra sandy coloured house that doubles up as a mosque.

building n°12 : an additional dirty white greyish building.

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   MODTAGS
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There are two modtags:

[aleppomosque]
This modtag modifies the building n°11 to make it look like a Syrian mosque.

[alepposhop]
This tag replaces the facades of four of the single storey buildings with shopfronts or garage doors. It only replaces single storey buildings and doesn't affect multi-storey buildings at all.

It is best used to represent bazaars or small shops placed in between taller buildings.

Indeed, since the shopfront texture will show on all sides of the buildings it is preferable to place normal buildings adjacent to the left and right of the shop(s) to get a better visual effect.

The other downside of this modtag is that you automatically get four less single storey buildings to use for normal purposes but I felt it was worth including because it adds a nice touch to towns and cities if used right.

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 INSTALLATION
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Extract the mod in your Documents/Battlefront/Combat Mission/Shock Force 2/User Data/Mods. If there isn't already a folder named 'Mods' just create one.

For Steam users, extract the mod in your Shock Force 2/Data/Z folder.

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   OPTIONS
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There are two sets of options :

One for the colour of the mosque dome, please consult the separate readme located in the 'details and others' folder.

One used to add or remove propaganda posters and flags on the facade of some buildings and shops to add a bit of local flavour. There are three options available : Syria, Iraq or generic. There is a readme included inside the 'Building Options' folder for details.

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   CREDITS
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I took the liberty of adding a slightly desaturated version of Pete Wenman's rural wall, included in the SF2 Squalor mod, to make it blend in a bit better with the rest of the mod. I hope he doesn't mind.

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DOWNLOAD

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https://www.dropbox.com/s/ep5yue290qn9jfw/Zveroboy's Aleppo Buildings Pack.rar?dl=0

Zveroboy
July 2021

[Zveroboy1]

Some more pictures :

[Zveroboy1]

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The Map : New Aleppo District

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Located just to the west of Aleppo proper in Syria, it is a dense residential area built in the 80's.

Map size : 1200 X 900 m

This is just a raw map, no setup zones, objectives or anything. Probably requires some cropping to make it suitable for a scenario or a PBEM.

Install :

Extract in my documents/Battlefront/Shock Force 2/Game Files/Scenario

Download :

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1xg16nl6esiays5/SYR - New Aleppo District.rar?dl=0

[Erwin]

Very very impressive Zveroboy1.  Along with some of the other mods this will make CMSF look significantly better.

[MOS:96B2P]

20 hours ago, Zveroboy1 said:

It includes twelve new buildings; eight that replace the default ones and an extra four as a bonus. These four extra buildings shouldn't appear in any existing scenarios. They are designed to be used by scenario designers or map makers in their future projects and will require the players to also have them installed in their mod folder to be visible. Otherwise they will just be replaced by the game with a random building texture.  

+1  Very nice.  Thank you. 

[Splinty]

Really nice mod! It captures the look of Baghdad in 2007. Which I'm sure applies to most of urban Syria as well.

[Zveroboy1]

Thanks, glad you guys like the mod.

And yes it works just fine for Iraq, or even for places like Jordan or Lebanon. The only thing really missing for Iraq though would be buildings with these types of yellow bricks. They're everywhere it seems.

To be honest I have been thinking of making another pack designed specifically for Iraq because there are actually a few differences in the architecture and buildings of both countries when you look closely and I am curious to know if I would be able to highlight them. But since I have spent close to 3 months working on this mod and the map, it is probably not going to happen right away. I need to let the motivation and creativity tanks refill.

Edited August 4, 2021 by Zveroboy1

[JM Stuff]

Grandiose, impressive size, this is a real labyrinth thank you to share it !

 

JM

[Zveroboy1]

Yes the areas in between blocks of buildings are super maze like.

I thought long and hard about how to best represent them in the editor. Not sure I took the right decision but from looking at satellite images and photos it soon became obvious to me that first it wasn't simply regular back alleys and that there shouldn't be unobstructed lines of fires across them.

And secondly that vehicles had no way of getting there. So with that out of the way, the next decision was about infantry movement. I didn't really like the notion of making it so infantry could cross laterally and from buildings to buildings parallel to the roads unhindered everywhere. That didn't seem right. Then again not being able to cross anywhere wasn't going to work either because even though it is not easy to tell with these pictures, it is an area that is often accessible with gates as shown in the second photo.

So in the end I opted more something that's not uniform everywhere and which is a bit messy and chaotic which I think might be about right for an urban setting. But yes it means that if you want to avoid streets and go from building to building you have to get down to ground level with the camera and check for doors and gaps in walls etc.

Anyway this is probably not particularly interesting to anyone except me lol but maybe people might like seeing what the place actually looks like before they turn it to rubble.

Edited August 7, 2021 by Zveroboy1

[G. Smiley]

Fantastic stuff!

[Erwin]

Very interesting.  Thanks.

[Zveroboy1]

So I had been planning on making this post for a while but I haven't really had time to do it properly until now. I wanted to showcase some examples of how I tried to incorporate real architectural elements into the mod to make it as true to life as possible. All the photos below are from Syria.

First all of I wanted to talk a bit about mosques. Some of you probably saw the in game picture of the mosque with a greyish silvery looking dome and might have asked yourself "but Zveroboy aren't the domes of mosques all colourful with flashy teals, greens or gold?" And of course you would be right, some are just like that. But actually in Syria in particular plenty of mosques have this silvery or greyish looking dome as you can see in the photos below. But I included two alternative dome textures that you can use if you don't like the default colour.

The first picture is actually located in New Aleppo, just 100 m to the west of the area I mapped, alongside that large avenue in the southern part of the map.

Aleppo mosque details :

A school I based an extra building on :

A roll down door :

Balcony and facade details :

Window :

Doors :

(Almost all the door textures are based on real Syrian doors)

That's all.

Edited August 20, 2021 by Zveroboy1

[Erwin]

Looks xnt!

 

[MOS:96B2P]

18 hours ago, Zveroboy1 said:

So I had been planning on making this post for a while but I haven't really had time to do it properly until now. I wanted to showcase some examples of how I tried to incorporate real architectural elements into the mod to make it as true to life as possible. All the photos below are from Syria.

First all of I wanted to talk a bit about mosques. Some of you probably saw the in game picture of the mosque with a greyish silvery looking dome and might have asked yourself "but Zveroboy aren't the domes of mosques all colourful with flashy teals, greens or gold?" And of course you would be right, some are just like that. But actually in Syria in particular plenty of mosques have this silvery or greyish looking dome as you can see in the photos below. But I included two alternative dome textures that you can use if you don't like the default colour.

The first picture is actually located in New Aleppo, just 100 m to the west of the area I mapped, alongside that large avenue in the southern part of the map.

Aleppo mosque details :

A school I based an extra building on :

A roll down door :

Balcony and facade details :

Window :

Doors :

(Almost all the door textures are based on real Syrian doors)

That's all.

+1  Great looking mod. 

[Erwin]

Very impressed with what you have been able to do with CM2 to match the graphics in the pics! 

I found a bunch of pics I took in the ME some years ago of various cities, mosques etc.  It's hard to tell which country one is in as the buildings all look the same (delapidated).  But, if you need any more inspiration would be happy to send some pics your way.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Cracking looking map. 

[Zveroboy1]

@Erwin Thanks but I have lots of pictures really, that's not an issue. With google earth, google image, flickr and the like, it is fairly easy to find what you are looking for even if sometimes you have to sift through lots of touristy pictures. I have tons of photos of Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. Hopefully that's what I'll do for my next project : an Iraq mod pack. Yeah I like dilapidated and run down buildings too actually.

@Sgt.Squarehead Cheers. I thought of you (not in a homo erotic way) when making the map. I know you love playing insurgents so I made sure there were tons of sneaky spots so you can go all cheeki breeki.

[Erwin]

5 minutes ago, Zveroboy1 said:

I have lots of pictures really, that's not an issue. With google earth, google image, flickr and the like, it is fairly easy to find what you are looking fo

Good job.  Looking forward to using the mods.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Just installed these and tried them out on 'Bishr' (massive map with a chunk of city in the corner).....I'll need to swap a few skins around in the editor, but these will really help to establish the contrast that I want in different areas of the city. 

I've also just checked them out in my usual Ramadi variant ('Urban Hell'), that one looks astounding out of the box (all credit to the mighty @LongLeftFlank I just borrowed a bit).....Your mods might have been made especially for it:

[Zveroboy1]

Yeah it looks pretty good here. I am glad people are using the mod, I put a lot of effort into it.

What's the building that looks like it is on stilts in the centre of the picture just to the right of that mosque dome?

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Ramadi's famous water tower:

[Zveroboy1]

Ah nice, that's a good way to represent it.

[LongLeftFlank]

Yeah, great stuff @Zveroboy1  and thanks to Sarge² for flagging this one for me. If I ever get back to my own mod project, I will definitely loot this one shamelessly (with due credit). Especially those garage doors with signs overhead, beautiful!

... One thing I struggled with in Ramadi was how 'cinderblocky/bricky' larger buildings should be, as opposed to private houses which are largely mudbrick (given the Euphrates nearby). Unlike Aleppo or Homs or Mosul, Ramadi also doesn't have much of a medieval 'rabbit warren' Old Town district left either.

Poor folks generally leave their exterior walls unfinished, but folks with more means will usually try to plaster and whitewash the facades, at least on the front. Of course, that needs to be maintained.....

Poured cement slab or pillars with thin curtain walls tends to take over from brick in most large developing world structures taller than 4 stories after about, say, 1980. You'd still see brick or even cinder going higher but those walls wouldn't be load bearing, just keeping out the elements. But there are always exceptions, and corner cutting....

So other than for looks, what I did was to make most of my hi-rises clusters of smaller buildings with interior doors, rather than the single large footprint tiles. Tactically, this means they won't pancake as easily under HE fire, or only parts do, which is what you'd expect with a building where walls aren't the primary load bearing element. Also lets you do funky looks like recessed balconies.

....Also, is Aleppo very seismic? I'm pretty sure the answer is yes, given that Antioch and Beirut are. Po' folks gonna build anyway with whatever's cheap and trust to Allah, but any kind of major public edifice will need cement and rebar pillars, or else very solid walls indeed!

Anyway, great job mate!

Edited September 4, 2021 by LongLeftFlank

[Sgt.Squarehead]

3 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

So other than for looks, what I did was to make most of my hi-rises clusters of smaller buildings with interior doors, rather than the single large footprint tiles. Tactically, this means they won't pancake as easily under HE fire, or only parts do, which is what you'd expect with a building where walls aren't the primary load bearing element. Also lets you do funky looks like recessed balconies.

Your work in Ramadi set the 'Gold Standard' for MOUT maps.....How you did what you did astounds me! 

[Zveroboy1]

 

7 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Yeah, great stuff @Zveroboy1  and thanks to Sarge² for flagging this one for me. If I ever get back to my own mod project, I will definitely loot this one shamelessly (with due credit). Especially those garage doors with signs overhead, beautiful!

Sure go ahead. It might not be useful for your project but in the texture pack there is an option to replace Syrian propaganda posters and Syrian flags painted on facades with Iraqi ones.

7 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

One thing I struggled with in Ramadi was how 'cinderblocky/bricky' larger buildings should be, as opposed to private houses which are largely mudbrick (given the Euphrates nearby). Unlike Aleppo or Homs or Mosul, Ramadi also doesn't have much of a medieval 'rabbit warren' Old Town district left either.

Yeah Iraqi and Syrian towns they share several architectural elements but as you pointed out they also have significant differences. Building materials are not the same. Aleppo in particular I think was famous for its stone quarries which is why so many houses are built with these beige/white limestone blocks. There are plenty of cinder blocks too in Syria but however you don't see that ubiquitous yellow brick like in Iraq.

If I ever make this Iraqi texture mod, I'll probably make some sort of a mix with some of the Syrian buildings I have here plus some of my Afghan mud houses and entirely new buildings in order to get the right blend.

7 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

So other than for looks, what I did was to make most of my hi-rises clusters of smaller buildings with interior doors, rather than the single large footprint tiles. Tactically, this means they won't pancake as easily under HE fire, or only parts do, which is what you'd expect with a building where walls aren't the primary load bearing element. Also lets you do funky looks like recessed balconies.

Right yes, I used that technique for the New Aleppo map but it was mostly to get the right footprint. I have to admit I didn't think of that. But having buildings be more resistant, that's a nice touch though.

Would you mind sharing a picture or a screenshot of these recessed balconies? I am curious to see how it looks like.

I am afraid I don't know how seismic it is this area, but yeah it might be.