Emergency 5 Modding Tutorials From Freelancer & KillerConsti

Chapter 1 Introduction

What you will need

Blender 3.3.1 ( avaliable on steam )

OGRE Exporter

.SVN File System
https://emergency-forum.de/filebase/index.php?entry/2444-svn-hilfsdatei-em5-em2016/

I'm Freelancer, one of the developers of the Essex Mod, I've been working on Em5 since April 2022, it's been a great journey so far and I've learnt a lot, I couldn't of leant any of this knowledge without the Bieberfelde Team and there amazing support and patience I'm not claiming to know everything about emergency 5 because I don't I'm still learning as I go. However I'd like to share everything I've leant and try and make a complete English guide on how to make a mod for Em5 (Both video and text) Hopefully this will encourage more modders to make the jump to Em5, because in my opinion it is superior to Em4. This Chapter is a brief introduction to modding Em5 and covering what you will need and preparing the workspace.

1.0 Brief understanding of what the difference between Em4/Em5
Em4 is really old forget everything you know about it because it don't apply to Em5. Em5 uses new game techniques and modern standards, which short term can be a pain if your not familiar with them but long term it is a lot better and easier in my opinion.
-Many more textures map are supported in Em5
We need 6 textures to make up a vehicle, Diffuse map ( Colour ) Specular and Gloss maps ( how shiny/metallic something is ) Normal Maps ( adds extra detail without using polygons ) Emissive Maps ( generate light, for example rear headlights,headlights,blinkers) Ambient occlusion map (generates shading on the model) If your not familiar with some of these maps I suggest you look on google for more info
For scripts out there, I've heard Em5 is a lot easier to write plugins for using the c++ language brining lots of new possibilities Emergency Ludenscheid is a good example of this as they have a lot of gameplaying enhancing scripts.
Em5 models can be more detailed around 13-15K is a good pinpoint for models but some models can be more detailed, there is a max import limit of 27000K per mesh ( we can join mesh's together in the editor to go over that max limit if need )

1.1 Lets take a look at what we need to get started.
I'm going to assume your using blender, I'm using the latest version 3.3.1 Emergency 4's model format was .v30 if I remember correctly but in Em5 we use .MESH files. To export .MESH Files we need the OGRE Exporter for blender wich can be downloaded here

Installing OGRE Exporter
There are tutorials on how to install in the link but I'll copy and paste this text here

1. Copy the io_ogre folder into the $BLENDER_DIR/scripts/addons folder.
2. 2. Enable the addon in Blender: Edit menu > Preferences > Add-ons. Search for 'ogre' and click the box up the top left.
3. 3. Configure the plugin prior to the first run.
4. 4. Set the correct path to OGRETOOLS_XML_CONVERTER PLEASE NOTE To Find the XML Converter + Mesh Upgrader you will need the OGRE SDK With can be downloaded here MSVC SDK is the one you will want to download https://www.ogre3d.org/download/sdk/sdk-ogre
5. 5. for Ogre (v1): path should point to OgreXMLConverter.exe. This can be found in the Ogre SDK
6. 6. for OgreNext (v2): path should point to OgreMeshTool.exe. This can be found in the OgreNext SDK
7. 7. OPTIONAL Set MESH_PREVIEWER to a path pointed to ogre-meshviewer.bat. This can be found in OGRECave/ogre-meshviewer
8. 8. Make sure that USER_MATERIALS isn't set to a directory like "C:\". The addon scans this path recursively and will crash when it hits a path it doesn't have permissions for.

If everything is set up correctly go to edit > preferences > Search OGRE it should look something like this.

That is everything done the regarding OGRE plugin

.SVN File System
Next we are going to create a folder on our desktop or anywhere else you like. Lets call this folder "workfiles" Next you will need to download the .svn file system

.svn – Google Drive

once downloaded simply drag the .svn folder into the workfiles folder. You will not see the .svn folder in the workfiles folder once you've copied and pasted it becuase it is an invisible file.
This essnetially makes our workfiles folder act as a dropbox for our future models and is where we will find most the files that make up our project.
Here is in examlpe of my workfiles folder with the Essex Mod.

Preparing + Understanding The Basic's Of The World Builder
I strongly recommend you watch this video, I know it's in German but there are English subtitles available he will teach you the very basic's of using the editor and more importantly he will set up hotkeys and config the editor, I've copied there layout + hotkeys so it will make it simpler down the line.

Video Tutorial World Builder 2014 - Part 1: Basics

English subtitles available

www.youtube.com

It the Next Chapter we'll take a look at a model in blender and what we need to do to prepare it. If you need support with any of the above please leave a message.

Thanks
Freelancer

Chapter 2 Model Preparation/Export Using The BMW 5 Series As An Example

First lets make a new folder in our workfiles folder called bmw_5_series. now when I come to export the bmw 5 series I'm going to export the model file as bmw_5_series.MESH, but before we do that we need to do some prep work in blender. But we export our 6 textures for our model in .tif format in the workfiles>bmw_5_series we can name them like this

• bmw_5_series_c.tif (this is our colour map)
• bmw_5_series_s.tif (this is our spec map)
• bmw_5_series_g.tif (this is our gloss map)
• bmw_5_series_n.tif (this is our normal map)
• bmw_5_series_e.tif (this is our emissive map)
• bmw_5_series_ao.tif (this is our ambinent occlusion map)

PLEAE NOTE: It's important to use all LOWERCASE and _ for spaces as the Emergency game dosen't like it otherwise and won't work.

Let's go back into blender ( see video )

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