452 replies to this topic

[Forensics]

The car looks great!
Now the model's nearly done.

[Kookas]

Birmingham is in the West Midlands, so I know all this already

If you have anything to correct about the following, please do not hesitate to point it out, before I end up making something that shouldn't even be in the mod. Thanks!

POSSIBLE VEHICLES OF WMM

--- Police Vehicles ---

Vauxhall Astra - marked, blue grille lights, headlight wig-wags, blue rotating lights on top - by far the most common patrol car of the West Midlands Police.

Vauxhall Vectra - marked, blue grille lights, headlight wig-wags, blue rotating lights on top - these are probably dispatched specifically.

Ford Transit Community Police - light grey/silver and marked, blue grille lights, two sets of blue rotating lights on top - this is for community-related police stuff.

Ford Transit Riot Police - marked, blue grille lights, two sets of rotating lights on top protected by a wire frame, with another frame to pull down over the windscreen.

Armoured Land Rover ARV - lightly marked, blue grille lights, no lights on top - a black heavily modified, armoured Land Rover Defender 110 used by armed police.

BMW X5 - marked, blue grille lights, an all-blue low-profile lightbar on top, headlight wig-wags.

BMW M5 - dark grey, unmarked, blue grille lights, headlight wig-wags.

Volvo S60 ARV - marked, blue grille lights, all-blue low-profile lightbar on top, headlight wig-wags.

Range Rover Sport ARV - marked, blue grille lights, all blue low-profile lightbar on top.

LDV Maxus - light grey/silver and marked, blue grille lights, two sets of blue rotating lights on top.

Renault Espace - marked, blue grille lights, headlight wig-wags, blue rotating lights on top.

--- Emergency Medical Vehicles ---

Honda CR-V Rapid Response Vehicle - blue dashboard lights, all blue low-profile lightbar on top, blue lights on front bumper, headlight wig-wags.

Volvo V70 Rapid Response Vehicle - blue grille lights, all blue low-profile lightbar on top, blue dashboard lights, headlight wig-wags.

Vauxhall Movano - blue lights on all sides at the top and in the grille, headlight wig-wags.

Renault Master - blue rotating lights built into the corners of the roof of the ambulance, grille lights, and headlight wig-wags.

--- West Midlands Fire Service ---

Various Scanias, Volvos and Dennis firetrucks ..

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Yes, that is alot of cars, but keep in mind that some won't make it in. Also, to keep you from having to browse through a huge list of police cars in-game before finding the right one, I might use the system of having a dispatch control room, like in the Florian Hamburg mod.

[Forensics]

Sounds great!

As well as using Volvo's as traffic cars west Midlands police use them as ARV's.

[randomperson139]

I'm not from the West Midlands, But are you sure they use Aurmoured Land Rovers as ARVs. As far as I know ARVs are normally Volvos and BMWs. Also they probably use a Volvo V70 as a traffic car and general patrol car.

[Kookas]

I'm not from the West Midlands, But are you sure they use Aurmoured Land Rovers as ARVs. As far as I know ARVs are normally Volvos and BMWs. Also they probably use a Volvo V70 as a traffic car and general patrol car.

Yes. According to UK Emergency, there is a black armoured Land Rover that is used as an ARV. They say it is used in Staffordshire, however, a video of such a Land Rover and its armed squad in action in Quinton, Birmingham, can be found on YouTube:



It is, of course, not their only ARV, and it is likely that only one exists in the WMP fleet.

Thanks for the information about the other ARVs, I will add those then, too. But never have I ever seen a police V70. I think Yorkshire Police have them, but not West Mids. I doubt we even have them in the fleet.

[Forensics]

I'm not from the West Midlands, But are you sure they use Aurmoured Land Rovers as ARVs. As far as I know ARVs are normally Volvos and BMWs. Also they probably use a Volvo V70 as a traffic car and general patrol car.

Some police services use Land rovers as ARV's.
I don't think they use Volvo's as normal panda cars. Just traffic and ARV.

Where is the mod based on, Birmingham? I can sent them a freedom of information request, asking what vehicles are currently in service if you like.

[Kookas]

Some police services use Land rovers as ARV's.
I don't think they use Volvo's as normal panda cars. Just traffic and ARV.

Where is the mod based on, Birmingham? I can sent them a freedom of information request, asking what vehicles are currently in service if you like.

Yeah that would be cool if you could do that, thanks.

Some more possible cars I saw today: A Skoda Octavia marked police car - low profile lightbar, all-blues but a couple of reds on the back. Same with a BMW M5.

Also, anyone willing to join the project is welcome, I need someone who can script, and someone who can map. I'm not very good with that.

[Kookas]

It's in-game but it has terrible smoothing issues, so I'm going to remake it from scratch again.

[Wkboy714]

That model does look good.
What kind of area do you want the map to be? Country or city, realistic or made up?

[Kookas]

What kind of area do you want the map to be? Country or city, realistic or made up?

I'm not too sure .. maybe the map could be set where it's mostly city, but there's a section of countryside with a bit of river? Maybe the map could be set at the corner of a city, where the city then ends and it becomes a bit more rural (although the transition is normally gradual, but it could be different).

Updated Vectra pics in original post.

[Kookas]

Hello, I have a little question.. I've UV Mapped the Vectra in Blender and generated its texture from there too, with Ambient Occlusion .. in Zmodeler, I have it all set up right (with the UV Mapper and everything) except for one thing - no texture. How do I load the texture? I found a button called Texture Browser, but this doesn't seem to sort my problem at all :\

[Tian318]

Hello, I have a little question.. I've UV Mapped the Vectra in Blender and generated its texture from there too, with Ambient Occlusion .. in Zmodeler, I have it all set up right (with the UV Mapper and everything) except for one thing - no texture. How do I load the texture? I found a button called Texture Browser, but this doesn't seem to sort my problem at all :\

press "E"

and a material editor will come up
make a new material, load your skin/uv-map into it.
in object mode(hotkey "4")
right click the name or the model it self.
Go to properties.
Under polygons you can set a skin/uv-map.
Then press the assign to selected button.

and start skinning your model

[Kookas]

Thanks, it worked! But now I have another problem .. in-game, dark blotches appear on the car -.- No such problems are visible in Zmodeler or Blender but they just pop up here, it's very annoying. The normals are fine. How can I fix this? If it's some sort of smoothing error then I am going to just use low-poly boxes with textures on... to me, it looks like shadows are being cast onto the model :| .. if so, I really hope you can turn that off.

[Tian318]

Thanks, it worked! But now I have another problem .. in-game, dark blotches appear on the car -.- No such problems are visible in Zmodeler or Blender but they just pop up here, it's very annoying. The normals are fine. How can I fix this? If it's some sort of smoothing error then I am going to just use low-poly boxes with textures on... to me, it looks like shadows are being cast onto the model :| .. if so, I really hope you can turn that off.

Looks like a reflection of the normal lights to me.

Go into Z modeler.
switch to top view.
go in to object mode(hotkey "4")
Press "Surface->Normals->Calculate"
go to the center-top of the car.
And press once with your left mouse button
you see the lighting change.
save it, export it.
load it into the editor and you should see a difference.

If not, go back into Z modeler.
and look for darker area's on the car(where they should be according to the editor).
go in to polygons mode(hotkey "1")
Press "Surface->Normals->Calculate"
And click on the polygons that still remain faulty.

EDIT: and you can turn reflections off in the edit of the prototype.
You should see 2 options for that.
Receive shadows, and shadows/create shadows(or something like that).
I don't know witch one of the two you need, but you can try that out.

Edited by Tian318, 14 February 2010 - 07:20 PM.

[Kookas]

I feel like spamming smilies now thank you very much, the first method worked! Now I know how to counter all these problems, I can get on with the project! I'm not far away from getting the first police car in-game, and this Vectra can be part of traffic.



Police Vectra work:

[Kookas]

The images in the original post slowly change over time because I update those pics every 20 minutes or so .. only very significant changes deserve a whole post

[randomperson139]

The vectra in the first post looks great

[Forensics]

Very nice job on the car!

[Kookas]

To save other modders some work, just a tiny bit of info I found out - the font used on the side at the bottom of some British cop cars which says "POLICE" is BankGothic MD BT.

Also, the police car's ready to go in-game now.