Beiträge von Freelancer

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

So guys it is that time of year again, another year is nearly done and a new one on the horizon. The Essex mod team would like to wish everyone a very merry Christmas and a happy new year

we also wish to thank everyone for the continued support and interest everyone shows towards this project, it's always encouraging to receive positive feedback and is great for the teams moral.

We spend countless hours working on this mod all for free, with our aim to make the best/most immersive UK mod ever for the Emergence series. As each month goes past we get a little closer towards a release

I'd like to think we will be able to release something within the next 12 months with or without a custom map.

It's now time for our latest dev update I have prepared a large collection of photos showcasing the last few weeks work which includes a lot of new map assets which populate an area on the map called the Cedar Park Trading Estate, here local residents + builders will be able spend their money at various D.I.Y stores, there is also a telecoms site which will have some custom vans/trucks but are unable to feature in this update. Next Cedar park is a road called Bentall's Close which features a new build block of flats, decorating center and a builders merchants.

Trying out light animations (again)

www.youtube.com

I hope you guys enjoy these pictures as you'll see pretty much all the objects are built from scratch specifically designed for Emergency 5 I'm sure you'll appreciate the amount of time, effort and research that has gone into it. If you'd like to support this project you can donate to the team here https://ko-fi.com/essexmodteam

Well guys that is it from us, we will be back in 2024 with another productive year planned

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Essex Mod Development Team

After a huge amount of work and £25 in Cab blueprints myself and Fishboe have built this Scania for Emergency 5 Essex mod

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 )

More Videos

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

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Hi all,

Welcome to the Essex mod page for Emergency 5. Essex is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Greater London to the south and south-west. The county town is Chelmsford, which is one of two cities in the county with the other being Southend-on-Sea which was granted city status on the 1st March 2022.

Essex mod aims to be the first UK mod for emergency 5, and build a good foundation for other potential UK mods in the future, we are still in early stages of development and plan to build lots of new custom models which include vehicles from various UK Emergency/public services, new civilian traffic and of course a whole new Uk environment for a new map.

What can we expect to see in the mod?

Custom high quality models

New scripts

Custom emergency service buildings

New Map ( not in the initial release )

UK Environmental assets/buildings ( slower progress )

The Team

Freelancer - Lead Developer/ 3D Artist

KillerConsti- Lead Developer/Coder

Fishboe - Lead Developer/ 3D Artist

Fig - Environmental 3D Artist

XxOJLxX-2D Artist

Lennard-Coder

E.Raw-Research

Currie-Research

Images/Media

We Are Recruiting!

If you feel you can contribute to the Development of this mod and help us get closer to a release we would like to hear from you

Official Media

Essex Mod Discord Join the discussion + more frequent updates https://discord.gg/qzYX4Cvxnm

Essex Mod YouTube Channel (NEW!) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL7Ya7mU6l1d07Oj6DgKpcg

ko-fi - You can now support us for all the hard work we put into this project. We're also taking commissions, if you'd like to see a specific model included into the mod.

Buy Essex Mod Team a Coffee. ko-fi.com/essexmodteam

Become a supporter of Essex Mod Team today! ❤️ Ko-fi lets you support the creators you love with no fees on donations.

ko-fi.com

That's all for now and we hope that you are looking forward to the first UK mod for Emergency 5! Stay tuned on this forum and Discord for more updates

Looking forward to your feedback

Essex Mod Development team