Last Month the Japanese try to retrive this mod a little bit more. They played in the at 2pm CET. At the moment the gametracker,com Server Monitorring is off. Hope soon they turn it on. The ranking seems to work.
I can't help you with making the texture, but i can tell you that generating surface maps makes the color of the texture change to the type of terrain you set in BC.. i never touch that, lol
Although, for the lava thing, i would take a picture, such as.. umm.. hmm.. this one... and just make it the texture.