1.3 Modding

[Monkey Shine]

Sorry to be such a noob but i have tried long and hard to mod 1.3.6.2 and have still cant import my custom models into the game.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

[MrTwosheds]

What modeling program are you using?
If you tell us what you are doing we can tell you where your going wrong, If you don't tell us anything, we can only guess.

[Monkey Shine]

Alright. Lets say i wanted to change the colour of spstab. However there is no odf files for any of the weapons.

[MrTwosheds]

Yes there are. Sure your looking in the right place?
All the original odf's are in data.pak.
All those changed in 1.3 are in patch13.pak

[Monkey Shine]

Wow i feel like an idiot. Still one problem you can probably fix. I can't edit and save the files in the pack archive without unpacking the whole thing. is there a proper way to do this. thanks

[MrTwosheds]

You extract the files you want, with a button at the top of pak explorer, do whatever you want to them and then put them in the addon folder to use them. You do not change, alter or re save the bz2 pak files in any way. You might want to pack your alterations up in a pak file of your own at some point for distribution, but bz2 will find and use them if they are in the Battlezone2/addon directory.

[Monkey Shine]

Thanks, that really cleared things up for me about 1.3. Just one more thing. It says that i have duplicate localize odf files but i cant seem to get rid of either of them without messing up the game.

[Zero Angel]

Wow i feel like an idiot. Still one problem you can probably fix. I can't edit and save the files in the pack archive without unpacking the whole thing. is there a proper way to do this. thanks

Yup, although saving any modified file with the same filename as an original file might cause 'bad assets' errors when attempting to join online games and you will be unable to play with people who have different assets than you do.

If you want to 'play around' with ODFs in a 'sandboxed' environment, there is a program that I maintain called the 'TVEditor'. Basically you can modify any assets you want and if you save them in your Battlezone II/TVEditor/Custom folder, you can experiment with them in the editor without risking bad assets in public games.

http://bz2maps.us/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=3916

I am thinking of making an update to the TVEditor which will allow you to use those custom assets in the non-editor mode -- as a way for mod developers to quickly test assets with each other without having to set up a .cfg file and folder and create their own shortcut.

[Zero Angel]

If you have duplicate localize.odf files, then remove the newer one. Or to be extra safe, simply rename it 'localize-backup.odf' or something to that effect.

[Monkey Shine]

Thanks for the tips. To prevent bad assets i usually just make another install of Battlezone and play around with that. i tried renaming the newer localize but it just freezes at the loading dll screen.

[Zax]

You likely messed with the one in the PAK and overwrote it somehow. Only way to fix that is to grab one off the CD.

[Monkey Shine]

The problem is that the new localize file is linked to the pak files that i just extracted. The old one is linked to the assets in the game. Is there any way to merge them?

[Monkey Shine]

nvm. turned out that i was extracting the 1.2 pack files instead of 1.3. that was messing me up. thanks for all they help