Re: Battlefield Heroes mod for BF1942...
Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2017 7:16 am
Yeah I might have forgotten to update the init.con of the mod so the old version string is shown in the custom games menu.
As for Avatar Star, the maps I ported from that game have been there since 5.1 I believe? Don't recall exactly when I added them. Avatar Star was a Chinease game that was pretty much a rip off of Battlefield Heroes but an infantry only game. (no vehicles were ever added to the game and the maps weren't designed for vehicles). Only early builds of the game used assets from BFH. But as the game devs worked on it further, it began to diverge and have it's own unique assets and didn't really look like a direct ripoff anymore. The game was kinda fun though they took the micro-transactions to the extreme with that game. I played that game for a little while early on before it got crazy with microtransactions really starting to ruin the balance of the game. It unfortunately died awhile back just like with how Battlefield Heroes got shutdown. I think though Avatar Star was shut down before Battlefield Heroes was so it didn't last anywhere near as long.
I liked the map designs and discovered that the game engine is horribly unoptimized. It didn't use lod meshes for lowering detail of meshes that are far away, rendered all geometries that weren't in camera view and had no culling to speak of so far away stuff was rendered as well.
This made it very easy to rip the model from ram while the game was running (I forget the name of the program I used to do this) and reconstructed it as a level in Battlefield 1942.
The last bug I fixed in this mod was a hidden bug that people might not have noticed yet. If you use the mini rc tank, there is a small chance a bot could steal your body while you are out driving the tank. This had the funny effect of the bot and you controlling the same soldier. If you didn't interfere, the bot could take your body anywhere it wanted. Not sure what happens if the bot tries to enter a vehicle or use weapons. Only seen it happen on small infantry maps.
While interesting, I had to quash that bug by removing the entry point object on the soldiers (why EA put entry points on soldiers is beyond me, there is never a time when your not in a soldier. They don't act like vehicles and you can't exit them (not without crashing the game anyways).
The game would crash if the soldier the bot and you were occupying died. Also, if a human player got near a soldier who had used a minitank they'd be able to enter it too. However unlike bots, the game crashes the moment a human player attempts to enter an unoccupied soldier object. Not sure why bots can do that but humans can't. Perhaps camera/UI related. Very early builds of the game like the singleplayer demo for example won't crash and you can enter a soldier object and run around with it. Crashes still occured though if you died in it or if the soldier you left behind died. (round ending also caused a crash I think?)
I wonder if this bug impacts PCOs that fires remotely operated projectiles. Like that one anti aircraft missle launcher from DesertCombat. I don't recall attempting to enter that vehicle while another player was controlling a rocket. Perhaps something would have happened. That was not something I ever tested.
Anyways, the entry point being removed resolved that issue.
As for Avatar Star, the maps I ported from that game have been there since 5.1 I believe? Don't recall exactly when I added them. Avatar Star was a Chinease game that was pretty much a rip off of Battlefield Heroes but an infantry only game. (no vehicles were ever added to the game and the maps weren't designed for vehicles). Only early builds of the game used assets from BFH. But as the game devs worked on it further, it began to diverge and have it's own unique assets and didn't really look like a direct ripoff anymore. The game was kinda fun though they took the micro-transactions to the extreme with that game. I played that game for a little while early on before it got crazy with microtransactions really starting to ruin the balance of the game. It unfortunately died awhile back just like with how Battlefield Heroes got shutdown. I think though Avatar Star was shut down before Battlefield Heroes was so it didn't last anywhere near as long.
I liked the map designs and discovered that the game engine is horribly unoptimized. It didn't use lod meshes for lowering detail of meshes that are far away, rendered all geometries that weren't in camera view and had no culling to speak of so far away stuff was rendered as well.
This made it very easy to rip the model from ram while the game was running (I forget the name of the program I used to do this) and reconstructed it as a level in Battlefield 1942.
The last bug I fixed in this mod was a hidden bug that people might not have noticed yet. If you use the mini rc tank, there is a small chance a bot could steal your body while you are out driving the tank. This had the funny effect of the bot and you controlling the same soldier. If you didn't interfere, the bot could take your body anywhere it wanted. Not sure what happens if the bot tries to enter a vehicle or use weapons. Only seen it happen on small infantry maps.
While interesting, I had to quash that bug by removing the entry point object on the soldiers (why EA put entry points on soldiers is beyond me, there is never a time when your not in a soldier. They don't act like vehicles and you can't exit them (not without crashing the game anyways).
The game would crash if the soldier the bot and you were occupying died. Also, if a human player got near a soldier who had used a minitank they'd be able to enter it too. However unlike bots, the game crashes the moment a human player attempts to enter an unoccupied soldier object. Not sure why bots can do that but humans can't. Perhaps camera/UI related. Very early builds of the game like the singleplayer demo for example won't crash and you can enter a soldier object and run around with it. Crashes still occured though if you died in it or if the soldier you left behind died. (round ending also caused a crash I think?)
I wonder if this bug impacts PCOs that fires remotely operated projectiles. Like that one anti aircraft missle launcher from DesertCombat. I don't recall attempting to enter that vehicle while another player was controlling a rocket. Perhaps something would have happened. That was not something I ever tested.
Anyways, the entry point being removed resolved that issue.