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Vehicle rips

Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2013 10:50 pm
by Vilespring
I need a rip-out of five (5) vehicles from the BattleGroup 42 mod. The vehicles must be converted so that they can be added to vanilla bf1942 and work, like fixing weapon icons. But if you can, have it keep all of the fancy weapon icons. I would prefer all RFA files packed with the vehicles and vanilla bf1942 "things". These are the vehicles I need a rip-out of;

Matilda MK.2 medium tank
Tiger 2 heavy tank (King Tiger)
Maus super-heavy tank
Churchill heavy tank (normal variant)
Pershing medium tank


thank you if you accept.

Re: Vehicle rips

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2013 2:20 am
by Senshi
If you wanna use the models in a mod you intend to redistribute, remember that you need permission from the original author of each model&texture.

Else: "Ripping" vehicles is not really difficult: Just grab everything that belongs to said vehicle and put it into your vanilla stuff. The only thing you'll have to rework are the MatIDs on the collision mesh as those definitely won't match up.

A vehicle usually consists of:
Objects.rfa\Vehicles\x\y\
x=Land/Air/Sea
y=Vehicle name (copy the entire folder)

Standardmesh.rfa:
Pick all the .sm&.rs files that are needed by the object. You can find those out easily by opening the object's geometries.con and looking for the path/filenames there.

Texture.rfa
Get all the textures needed for your object. You can easily find those out by opening all the vehicle's "*.rs" files from the standardmesh folder and looking up the textures referenced there.

Sound.rfa
Bit trickier to find out, skim through all the object's *.con files and look for sound references.

That's it!

Re: Vehicle rips

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2013 3:42 am
by Vilespring
I have a problem, I currently have just the forgotten hope mod, the battlegroup 42 isn't on my laptop for 3 reasons;
1. My computer got a virus attack, had to wipe ( :( )
2. It is very big
3. it lags A LOT on my poor laptop.

maybe I can rip from forgotten hope, but I liked the BG 42 Matilda MK2 texture more. Or a nice soul could attach some RFAs...

This is for my own fun, not thinking of a mass release. If it comes to that, I will make my own stuff. Need to get 3ds max first.....

so, for now, I'm using forgotten hope tanks. how do you open, .rs files?

EDIT: never mind, used notepad. Well, I just put bf1942 sound into the FH sound so the bf1942 sounds aren't replaced. yes, there are *lots* of unused sounds, but it preserves sanity.

Re: Vehicle rips

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2013 5:01 am
by Vilespring
I'm moving this topic to the modding discussion, since I have started it on my own. I have some odd bugs.

Re: Vehicle rips

Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 6:37 pm
by BotHunter
I will rip the stuff for you if you can get the permission from the owner!

Re: Vehicle rips

Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2013 7:51 pm
by Senshi
Most modders don't care if you rip their stuff for personal use. It only becomes a problem if you want to redistribute a "new" mod that has their content in it, without their approval.

Re: Vehicle rips

Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2013 4:58 pm
by Sarge31FR
Ripping any content out of BG42, be it for personal use or for a new mod, is forbidden.

This content was made solely for BG42, and every single developer made it clear that NONE of their content is to be used outside of BG42, with one exception:
A while ago, BG42 and FHSW made a trade agreement, under which content from both mods can be traded on an object-per-object base. All of the traded content
has to remain in BG42 or FHSW, and may NOT be given away to third parties.

Additionally, where's the sense in ripping vehicles from mods, if you can just play these mods the way they are ? And WHY do you want to create a mod of your own, if you don't even know
the basic skills ? I spend hundreds of hours working on BG42, and i don't want to see my work or that of my team members being "ripped" out of it just for personal fun. And don't forget that
some of the content was made by people we no longer have contact with. So even we couldn't ask them for permission, therefore their contributions will stay inside BG42 and nowhere else.

Re: Vehicle rips

Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2013 6:35 pm
by Swaffy
Sarge31FR wrote:Additionally, where's the sense in ripping vehicles from mods, if you can just play these mods the way they are?
Sorry, I used the Battlegroup '42 K98 and No4 3D models in my mod. I am using them with iron sights animations, which is something BG'42 doesn't have. I've looked for other models for these weapons that are well-made (regarding shape and texturing quality) but have had no luck. The only other models of these two weapons I saw that were well-made were the models made for FH2 (BF2) but I don't want to rip anything from there. I asked someone who is a member (or admin) of the BG'42 forum and he basically gave me permission - either way, I feel like I shouldn't be using the models. My problem is that I just can't stand looking at the base game's models, they make me cringe.

This is a good example of a high-quality model:
http://www.twmod.org/content/202-dev-bl ... SO2-6Ue3AE

The only other good models (outside of games) would cost $50 and up. No way.

Re: Vehicle rips

Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2013 11:32 pm
by Senshi
The reason why most mod and even game devs hav their license say "use for personal use, but no redistribution at all" is that there's absolutely no way of verifying what you are doing on your local computer anyway. Why cause small-time-dabblers or wanna-learners to feel bad for looking at/using stuff locally when you as the dev cannot detect it anyway. If he redistributes it as part of a "new" mod or media (video, images, etc.), the entire thing is completely different, of course. I don't feel bad to admit that I myself have "ripped" various vehicles and effects from different mods apart in order to understand how they achieved certain unique things, in order to recreate them on my own. A small handful of objects I even used just for fun in my personal installation of vanilla, when I just wanted to test unique vehicles in my environment.

But yes, in the end it is entirely up to the creator of the content to say how it should/can be used. This is why the Creative Commons project was established, to allow standardized, human-readable license configurations that are applicable to absolutely every combination of usage rights. And luckily, many mod and content creators choose a fairly relaxed approach to their license rights and allow you to use their stuff as long as they are PROPERLY credited (there are specific rules on how to credit people properly and prominently enough as well).

It's copyright in its most basic, but also most important form, I think: Content of all kind, even if "free" and small, still is fully owned by its creator and he alone gets to decide what others can do with it.

Re: Vehicle rips

Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2013 10:01 am
by Sarge31FR
Now, i hope that nobody feels offended by what i wrote, i only passed on what those devs told me. As someone who has a lot of responsibility for a giant project like BG42, i need to keep everybody satisfied, most of all the devs who created the models, textures, sounds etc. When they asked me to not allow the usage of their content in ANY other way than in BG42, i promised them to do so, and i keep my promises. As a mod/game team, you always have to consider that devs will jump off the train if you don't accept their point of view regarding the usage of their content, it's already hard enough to find really good devs and even harder to keep them aboard.

Senshi is right of course, nobody can control what you're doing on your local machine, and actually i don't care if somebody takes a look at my code work, but i also have to keep an eye on all the other content. In the past, it happened that some "mod team" simply ripped content from several other mods, including whole vehicles, guns, static objects etc. and then presented the result as a "new" mod which "they" made. And that, of course, without even asking the mod teams who created the content in the first place. But luckily, the community and every decent mod website rejected such mods and banned them from their download sections.

So, if you want to learn about coding, and adding new vehicles etc. to your own, personal mod which will NOT be redistributed in ANY way, just go ahead. And by any i also mean friends, colleagues and so on. Just your own PC.