Battlefield Heroes mod for BF1942...

[DACV]

Apache are those statics in bfheroes different than bf2 as it looks like all the staics have the correct textures and look.

[Apache Thunder]

99% of all the statics in BFH use only the color map channel (UV channel 1) and the only object I found that used the detail/bumpmap UV channels was the shipwreck. (so as a result the shipwreck doesn't quite look the same in BF1942). Hence why they look correct when ported to BF42. About as far as I got with BF2 statics was researching a way of creating atlas maps of both UV channels and somehow merging them to one texture. (one idea was to trick the lightmap rendering process into creating a chl 1 lightmap that would encompass both uv channel detail on the single lightmap channel which could in theory be used as the color map/texture) But this would be very time consuming process and I had to move on to other things at the time as I had not figured out the process of doing it yet.

My job at Wal-Mart pretty much eats up all my time now. BFH stuff ports quickly compared to BF2, but so far it's taking maybe 3 times as long to port maps then it used to be. I haven't worked much in vehicle coding in a good few months now.

Ahh almost forgot, as a result of a sick day, I had some extra time to complete this:



There's a lot of other things adding up in my life, so to let you all know that my modding will soon come to a close. I don't know when but it could be a few months to the end of the year before I end up moving on to other things and officially retiring from it. I will soon move out of my parents house and will be living on my own and will also try and gain some semblance of a social life beyond the computer. Hell, I'm turning 24 on Thursday. I've been stuck doing the same thing for like 5/6 years...dam I've spent way too much time on this game. God how the time flew by.

All good things must come to an end at some point. I guess the BF modding I've done was just a way of keeping my self busy as most of the time I was unemployed and overall closed off from the world. It started off with small things and looked at DesertCombat and clearly recall my dream that I could build mods on a scale that could perhaps rival DesertCombat. Well I've seen that come and pass and now this old game is getting tired. Barring a miracle discovery on hacking the game engine to do more advanced things, I've pretty much run out of things to do with this game. BFH mod is basically just in maintenance mode at this point. I have no plans on adding any major new features beyond updating the map list at this point.

We'll see where EA takes things I guess. I will be trying out that BF3 game when it comes out. Don't think I will ever try to mod it. The modern games have gotten too complex for me to keep up with.

[Senshi]

The stuff you have contributed over the years to the BF42 modding community was incredible and very valuable, and not the least the patience and will to help plenty of newcomers or comrade modders with resolving their problems. This is the kind of behavior that fuels such a strong community.

The BF42Heroes mod is a major accomplishment in itself, not to forget the millions of other tiny tweaks you offered to the community and other community mods.

Regarding your close on the modding BF42 scene, I feel you, really. What kept modding alive for me over the last year was my minor involvement in BG42 and most importantly my involvement in modding for the campaign project of WGP (see sig). The moment we have passed from BF42 to BF2 my modding for BF42 pretty instantly dropped to zero. Currently I'm high and active with BF2 PR for our campaign (man, what luxury it is to mod BF2 in comparison to old BF42 ), but I don't think that'll hold forever as well. Once the last BF2 players fall to the next-gen games I fear I'll be done as well. Considering BF3 uses the Frostbite Engine again I strongly doubt there will be any modding possibilities and tools released at all, so another loss of potential. Then again I thought the very same about the Bad Company series...great engine, lots of possibilities, sadly the vanilla gameplay is far from my preference (way too arcadish and ...fast...). I still believe with the release of some modding tools, even if unrefined, crude and complex to use (that was the apology the devs gave for not releasing any mod tools...). Modders have more than often shown in the past that they can achieve plenty of stuff never imagined possible by the original developers. BF42 and BF2 are two of the best examples: Large mod communites revolving around altered gameplay or scenarios. Wonderful. Even if Bad Company and BF3 and their next-gen looks will make the creation of mods more difficult and time-consuming I still believe at least the "big" teams(=PR and FH) would be able to show off quite a bit. And I'd love to contribute in that case. But alas...
It's been a good time.

[DACV]

Thanks for the reply Apache.
sorry to have bothered you.

I understand what you and Senshi are saying.
For me I too have not been really modding for awhile now too ,I only got into the bf2 porting since you contacted me way back.
Thanks for the help with that and I feel I have paid you for your services with the componants I have sent you in the past.

I do not like to leave things unfinished so I will continue to play with my bfv mod.
But like you stated as I get time.
Unfortunately for me I am much older than most of you modders and have much less experience.
I did not grow up with computers I only got into to them just before bf1942 came out and I only started modding it really much after playing it.
Even then it was only playing with the ai.

Not to mention I have always had at least one fulltime job plus family dogs and life that get in the way.
To be honest I am amazed I got anything acomplished at all.

Hopefully when you get older and your life gets busier you will have people help you in things like this.
ltr

[Darkstef]

Hi Apache,
1st, very nice work! when I play to your mod I thought it's bf:h... you are the best!
2nd, where can I find the code for your destructible wheels? I want to convert that for tank (destructible tracks, gun, turret...)
3rd, can I take one of your sky for a FH map?

[Apache Thunder]

The skydome meshes and textures were made by the team that made Battlefield Heroes (like most of the content in this mod as it's a conversion mod after all).

I'm afraid I'm not really in a position to say yes or no. But your free to use what every you want. Just don't expect the official stamp of approval from EA.

I'm not sure if I left the code in for the destructible wheels. I later discovered during singleplayer testing that killing a child object like a wheel will kill the occupents of the vehicle (the rest of the vehicle was left unharmed however). Since I could not find a fix for this and determined this as a game engine limitation, I scrapped further work on it and either removed it or remmed it out.

EDIT:

After checking the code, I did leave it in. But it's remmed out via the beginrem endRem code. Just take what's in that remmed out area as a guideline for coding your destructible child objects. (you'll find it on the spring objects in the Physics.con file for each jeep)

[Darkstef]

Thx for you answer.

And if I can take every I want, thx too! now my map is better than ever!

http://screenshot.xfire.com/s/116807996-4.jpg

Oh and my team has a server with mario kart mod and bfh42. Best mod ever!
ip is 178.32.28.177:14567

[Apache Thunder]

Sure no problem. Also, you may want to use the fog color settings I have set up for the maps I made that use this skydome as the color is in tune with the horizon color and will blend better.

[Swaffy]

Question:

How did you get that custom reticule [ObjectTemplate.setCrossHairType CHTIcon] to work in-game? I've wanted to have many different reticules for my different HandWeapons, but could never get them to work. I also want the image of the reticule to be larger than the original image seen in vanilla BF1942.

[Apache Thunder]

I didn't use that code. I modified the ingame meme file from the Menu.rfa file to refer to a new texture instead. (also increased it's size so the crosshair would have the proper resolution/size in respect to the rest of the hud. The original crosshair was only 20 by 20 pixels or something. Also note that all the handweapons still use the same cross-hair. Just not the one from vanilla BF42. ]


As for the vehicles, they use a mesh to display the crosshair as many other mods do as well.

EDIT:

Got done doing a re-render of Riverside Rush Nights with color light sources and DDS format lightmaps. Here's some before and after shots: (click to enlarge)

Before: After:

Before: After:

Before: After:

Much better yes? I plan to redo those with less bright settings on the lightsources. They are a bit too bright with current settings, but overall it came out very good. But overall this shows the big benefit of using DDS lightmaps. It allows full color in the textures and as a result you can have lightsources with different colors. This allows for more control over the lighting colors that more advanced games like BF2 offers and makes the map look much better. If it wasn't for the limited terrain quality, one could mistake the map for a BF2 map if done good.

The statics were rendered at twice the resolution as before. Large statics use 1024x1024, medium statics use 512x512, and small statics use 256x256.

I also redid the clouds. The map (and probably all the other rain maps) will now use a new skybox that has an animated BIK texture. I made scrolling clouds with a fog border on it so it will blend with the horizon. The skybox itself is simply a large flat plane and so far it looks just as good if not better then the cloud plane on a rotational bundle that I had used earlier. I made the animation in GIMP by the way.

Once I do a final re-render of the lightmaps with adjusted brightness settings for the light sources, I will post a video showing the final result. I plan on redoing Victory Village with new lightmaps as well.