Changes:
- High-res buttons, logos, mouse cursor, menu frames, in-game frames, radio command graphics, health/ammo/heat bar graphics, and some high-res mini-map graphics.
- Menu renders at 1080p, and has a new background for the Esc menu. New menu background movie contains 720p clips from "Apocalypse: The Second World War".
- Background music for main menu from London Philharmonic Orchestra.
- All intro movies can be skipped. They're 720p, although playback renders at 1080p.
- Bold font replaced. Can't really do much here to get sharper curves, as the fonts come from bitmaps and it seems you can't control the font scaling.
The mod currently uses the Merciless Creations mod as a base, but I'm sure it can be altered for vanilla BF1942 too. I've included a download link here to the fully patched Merciless mod, as the installers provided on the site weren't exactly friendly.
I've included the Adobe Illustrator file I worked with in case it helps someone expand the mod, or do their own work -- everything else was done directly in Photoshop.
Screenshot comparison
(The 800x600 screenshots only look good because they haven't been stretched/scaled. Not really indicative of what the game looks like on a modern system, unless you run your monitor at 1:1 scaling)
Comparison 1
Comparison 2
Comparison 3
Comparison 4
Comparison 5
Comparison 6
Download
UI mod (141MB)
Merciless Creations mod fully patched (671MB)
Adobe Illustrator file (613KB)
Full blurb below.
Code: Select all
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Requirements:
# Battlefield 1942 (tested on Origin build)
# Merciless Creations mod (http://www.mercilesscreations.net/mc/)
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New UI elements for a 1080p display.
Everyone's always updating textures, models and sounds, but it seems UI elements are nearly always overlooked. Here's a proof of concept that anyone can use how they see fit.
I recommend you play the game with FxAA turned on through your graphics driver control panel.
Tank Combat 2 Icon by Exhumed, CC Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives. http://www.iconarchive.com/show/mega-games-pack-25-icons-by-3xhumed/Tank-Combat-2-icon.html
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Known problems (if anyone knows how to fix, would be greatly appreciated)
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I can't control the scaling of fonts used in the game. This prevents putting nicer fonts in.
Whenever a level ends, the mod unloads. I don't know why.
The included .exe likely have version mismatch problems with online servers. You can use the Origin .exe to bypass this, but you'll lose the high-res main-menu and video playback.
Load screens are still the original low resolution versions.
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Hey, the movies aren't skippable!
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That's because you need to boot BF with the mod. Create a shortcut to the .exe, and add "+game 'MC1942'" to the end of the target, without the quotation marks. Launch by the shortcut, and all should be sweet.
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New things
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All intro movies can be skipped.
720p EA, DICE and legal movies at intro, renders at 1080p.
Menu renders at 1080p.
Background music for menu from London Philharmonic Orchestra.
1080p background image for the esc menu.
Bold font replaced. Can't really do much here to get sharper curves, as the fonts come from bitmaps and it seems you can't control the font scaling.
New menu background movie at 720p, clips from "Apocalypse: The Second World War".
High res buttons.
High res logos.
Mouse cursor replaced.
High res menu frames, and in-game frames.
High res radio command graphics.
High res health/ammo/heat bars.
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Executable
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The executable is taken from Widescreen gaming forum (http://www.wsgf.org/), and hex edited so the menu and movies render in 1080p. Here's how it was done.
The mmenu and movies in BF1942 usually render at 800x600. In hex, this is 0320 0258. This is stored in the executable byte-shifted twice to the left, so we're looking for an entry of 20 03, followed not too far after by 58 02.
We then want to replace this with the byte-shifted code for 1920x1080 -- that is, 80 07 38 04.
To make the menus render at 1080p, at offset 002B1140 this was changed:
C7 41 30 20 03 00 00 C7 41 34 58 02 00 00 C7 41
To:
C7 41 30 80 07 00 00 C7 41 34 38 04 00 00 C7 41
To make the movies play back in 1080p, at offset 002B0280 this was changed:
30 20 03 00 00 C7 40 34 58 02 00 00 C7 40 38 20
To:
30 80 07 00 00 C7 40 34 38 04 00 00 C7 40 38 20
It isn't easy to do this to the Origin executable, as it's in a wrapper that makes finding the resolution entry impossible.