Battlefield Heroes mod for BF1942...

[HJGF]

GJ man cant wait for it

[Apache Thunder]

Hey managed to get my own site and forums for the mod:

http://bfh42.ucoz.com

A user who created a modding site for the real BFheroes game was kind enough to give me a site and forums for my mod.

[Iced Earth]

nice! and if you don't host locally, please upload to filefront!! You don't have to register like you do on fileshack or whatever the hell other site it is.

[Apache Thunder]

I was given FTP access to the file host for BattlefieldSinglePlayer forums. So hosting is not an issue anymore.

[Apache Thunder]

Coming soon to v1.8:



I have ported the Soccer Ball widget recently introduced to BFheroes. I plan to include this in v1.8 when it comes out.

[Apache Thunder]

New lighting for night maps:




I finally managed to make a whole new custom Pallete.pal file for the lightmaps for the statics. What I did was to create a new gradient in Gimp (free equivalent of Photoshop). I used black as the starting color and the terrain sun color as defined in the real map as the base color it uses in the gradient. So it fades from black on one side of the image to a light bluish color like the map does with the real game. I then saved that as a indexed 256 color BMP. Then used IrfanView to export the palette. The resulting pallete file is not a version compatible with the game, so I used another app called PaletteMaker to open and resave as a RIFF format Palette.

Voila! I got me some bluish tinted statics just at the level as it appears in the real game!

I then applied a 40% color tint to the leaf/undergrowth textures and a 20% tint to the detail texture to make the terrain match up with the lighting. Then applied some lighting changes to the init.con file of the map and that is the result.

Opinions? I think it looks closer to the game, but need some opinions on it as I have not made a final decision on if to include this in v1.8 on all the night maps. I also made a day map version of the palette.pal file taken from the light settings from a day map in the real game and plan to alter how the day maps are lighted too.

As far as I can tell very little to no mods actually have custom Palette files for the lightmaps. (they all just used some from exiting vanilla maps as far as I can tell)

The process to make a custom palette file is a bit complicated though as I couldn't find a app dedicated to exporting the palettes from BMP files. So I had to involve two apps plus Gimp to make a new palette file.

[Iced Earth]

Looks pretty good to me...i like both lighting effects, just going by the SSes you've posted.

I haven't played heroes...so I will leave it to you whether you want to use the new pallet or not! IMO both look fine.

[Apache Thunder]

Here's something to compare to. It's a video someone took from the map in the real BFheroes game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bpi_Wdir_U

Also note the lack of added light sources. Only my mod features that! Lazy ass EA didn't even regenerate the lightmaps. They simply had the level use the day map ones with a different color range. Mine would look just like theirs has I just dropped in a new palette with the day lightmaps. But I added in lightsources and did all the lightmapping in 3DSMax.

[Apache Thunder]

New video is up:



It shows off new effects I coded. I copied the textures from BFheroes, but the effects I coded mostly from scratch. (since the effect system in BFHeroes is not coded in a way that can be "copied and pasted" into BF1942. )


I managed to also get the exhaust effects to only activate when there is a driver in the vehicle.

Shown at the end of the video is my WIP of the water fall effects I am working on for Buccaneer Bay. Note the impact effect and the ambient sound. It's not something that is present in BFHeroes. The impact effect is also something I coded my self.

As you can see I'm getting better with effect coding.

[Jeronimo]

You're already better than anyone I know with anything there is in BF42 modding, so how would that surprise me?

Looks all very very nice!