Ahh the memories!!!

[SquareEyes]

Hello, again, old gang!

Been a long time since have visited BZ2, & all its good & true followers, but here I am, it feels good... Feels like I'm home!

Yeah so I guess I was just missing the majestic old girl & wondering how she & all her friends, old & new, were doing & how they might have grown. Admittedly I have been gone along time, out philandering about with all sorts of other games n peeps & that's been fun & all... but BZ2's magnetism is just too strong.

So I poked around my old favourites folder & the interwebs & after a few dead links, a little cursing to hide the rising panic, I discovered to my delight & great relief, these forums... & they look good... They look strong! Incognito I poked around & found a couple of new builds of 1.3 & loaded up onto an old install I had on an old external hard drive & fired her up.

Started out unable to join any games, because of my dirty install presumably, but started a game of my favourite game type, MPI, Instant Chill (Oh man am I rusty, can't even remember how to fly up walls ). Pretty soon after was joined by, The Wild Beast, who was very helpful "good people" (thanks mate) & turned out to be the legendary Natty Bumppo's youngster, who suggested installing the latest patch (obviously hadn't dug deep enough) to maximise player join ability. So it was great to get such a warm reception, & meet & be helped by the BZ2 next generation, & via him say hi to Natty who was "Bioshock" gamming (if I recall) on another rig. Also to learn his baby, G66, was still operational to some extent?

After up grading to the latest install I was very quickly joined by, Commando, & soon after, Red Devil, on MPI Instant Dunes, who had difficulty joining my still dirty install but managed it somehow. Thanks to them too for sticking around & going to the trouble of joining me for a very enjoyable game (bar a few sync issues, possibly my dirty install???) & filled me in on some of the highs... Legendary GSH & Ultraken still working on BZ1 & 2, & the lows... Sad loss of other legends, Fallen BZ2 warriors such as, Slaor & Time Virus RIP, since my disappearance.

So I must say I am impressed... Very impressed, The forum & the old girl are both looking very good, very healthy. Especially now on a rig that can handle her "before her time" full figured nature. So I will definitely be trying to catch up & get some games in & even though I'm still not much of a techie, try to help if I can over the coming days, weeks & months... Well that is if I can overcome my first dilemma which brings me to... Trying to install the old girl on a wizz bang new 64bit system with all the bells n whistles running windows 7 (missing XP big time, tried to install in a partition but was an utter failure). Thanks to Commando's suggestion I got the BZ2 installer operational manually & all seemed fine until 67% where the hard drive couldn't chew its way past the, smtex.pak, where it greedily crunched away to no avail only to return upon probing the dreaded "Program not responding" forcing me shut it down. Tried a few things & some further attempts all to no avail, 67% smtex.pak death! Should I start a new thread for this subject???

Any links, advice, suggestions much appreciated... Minor abuse & threats taken on board, or not, on a case by case basis.

Thanks in advance!

[Red Devil]

it's so good to see you back again, SquareEyes

for those of you unfamiliar with him, SquareEyes is the one who made the Reptilian Realm, Drought, X-Bones, Cerebrus, and War Goddess maps for FE and G66, plus the ISDF Destroyer and Ghoul, back in the day.

i and others am running BZ2 1.3 on 64-bit Windows 7, so i know it works.

order of install should be:

1. Install BZ2 from CD or using previous 1.2 install. (you can then copy that folder off to a safe place for later)
2. BZ2_v1_3_6_4_PublicBeta_english - answer yes to all prompts.
3. unzip 1.3.6.4c over that, replacing all files and merging all folders

here is Nathan's web page for BZ2, where you can download the latest public patch and important modding files: http://www.matesfamily.org/bz2/

Please, if you can, ask Natty to come back to us here; we miss him.


pretty sure smtex.pak isn't used any more. this is what your stock bzone.cfg should look like:

Code: Select all

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//
// Copyright 1997-98 Activision Studios, Strategy Group
//
// Battlezone II - Core System Configuration File
//

// Configure game file system
ConfigureFileSystem()
{
	// Appends a relative path to MyDocs\My Games\Battlezone II. This must
	// appear before anything using it, directly or indirectly.
	//	AppendToMyDocs("pb6");

	// Setup base data
	ConfigureStream("base")
	{
		// Look in "addon" first
		AddDirRecurse("@rootdir\addon");
		// Maps13 folder -- has all stock IA, MP maps. Done so MODs
		// can choose to not show these maps fairly easily. Note: only
		// the .bzn/.inf for the maps live in maps13. All of the rest
		// of the map files (.trn, .sky, .ter, etc) still live in
		// patch13.pak.
		AddDirRecurse("@rootdir\maps13");

		// Look at pakfiles next
		AddPack("@rootdir\patch13.pak");
		AddPack("@rootdir\data.pak");

		// Bumps are in patch13.pak, starting with b72
		//		AddPack("@rootdir\bumps.pak");

		// Look in "data" last, and only last.
		AddDirRecurse("@rootdir\data");
	}

	// Make it active
	SetActiveStream("base");

	// Optional, for mods -- the ability to put pilots, savegames &
	// editor saves in other directories. Commented out to simply
	// demonstrate how to do it. You can use '@rootdir' or
	// '@mydocsdir' as shortcuts to either the (1) the directory
	// bzone.exe resides in, or (2) {$MyDocs}\My Games\Battlezone II ,
	// respectively. (If AppendToMyDocs is used, that's tacked on to
	// (2) above)

	//	SetPilotsDirectory("pilots");
	//	SetSavesDirectory("saved");
	//  SetEditorDirectory("@mydocsdir\EditorSaves");
}

[Red Devil]

forgot to mention that, yes, G66 is alive and well. see this thread for a list of mods:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6

[Zero Angel]

Hi square eyes, I remember you back from the old Planet Battlezone days. Man how time flies. And your maps still tend to get played a whole lot on G66, they are classics.

Yeah, dirty installs tend not to fare so well. I've had some bad asset issues in trying the public beta from a dirty install (that contained an older version of bz2), fixed by hunting down a backup of the Battlezone II disc (in an ISO file) because I'm a person who bought BZ2 three times and still lose my disc!

Red Devil has taken over on Natty's work and has implemented some new stuff that's only possible in 1.3. You might like it.

[Iron_Maiden]

Always good to see old players returning, hope to see you in a game eventually.

[Dataanti]

I'm gonna try to make a return as well. I haven't had much time since I found an owner, but things happened and i ran away (long story... but so far hasn't ended badly )so for the past year i have been just playing other games... i also got a job to so that takes time. But then i seen the disk hanging on my wall and i decided to try and play it again... But just in case this moment ever came, I already had it up to date and installed... in fact so far I have never owned a computer without this game being installed on it.

The memories from this game i would not trade with anything. It lead my life to where it is now by introducing me to the internet via multiplayer... I still remember that one night I made a game wondering if multiplayer would work cause i had never seen a match in it before (this was stock off the disk). Axe joined the game since he seen it on 1.2 i guess and introduced me to the forums, the patch its self and all of you guys... well not all cause some of you are new. That must have been around 10 years ago now.... maybe a little more. The only thing i would do differently is that I would have tried harder to not make GSH upset. But in a way I should be thankful, it pushed me a little (a lot cause I was dramatic and young) out of the community and made me branch out to other games, although I still played BZ2 frequently, I started playing halo and a few others. Anyways that eventually lead me to meet people in the correct order resulting in meeting the right people both in real life and on the internet that eventually lead me to meet the 3 loves of my life.... So... that was good

But now things are a little sour between my ex (she has moved on and I haven't) and my owner (I fell in love and couldn't stand seeing her with another (however this is just a temporary runaway....)) and my... 'sister' (I'm into a lot of stuff >_>) is working so our time lines don't really come together often, I now have plenty of time to enjoy games some more, and get back into some old ones

All I need to do now is remember how to install addons and other junk

[Red Spot]

To stay in the spirit of the OP:

Hi & welcome back!

[Roscoe]

Nice to see you again Square Eyes (AcneVulgaris here... lost my forum password and had to reinvent myself).

Cool to see that your fine work is still being enjoyed!

[General BlackDragon]

Total Oblivion Ominous?

[Ded10c]

Nice to see you again Square Eyes (AcneVulgaris here... lost my forum password and had to reinvent myself).

Cool to see that your fine work is still being enjoyed!

And so a great mystery was suddenly solved.

[Roscoe]

Damn... I am no longer an international man of mystery.

[MrTwosheds]

Well Ill be...I wondered why I've been having to clean the mirrors so much

[Nielk1]

Ah, nice to see the old names around again.

[DarkCobra262]

Welcome back, I myself used to play BZ2 a long time ago as well, albeit not as often as I played other games, I agree, there is something about BZ2 which is so awesome. (Just b/c, I used to go by the name "Cobra01" but I doubt anyone would recognize that)

[SquareEyes]

Whow baby!!! What a blast from the past... was about 13/14 years ago I started playing BZ2, goes to show how good it is to keep people interested for so many years. So good to know my maps are still being played.

Thanks Again Red Devil for the kind intro, info & the warm welcome. Look forward to seeing, as Zero Angel suggests, your contributations to G66. I had forgotten about Goddess map... or more likely blocked it out Haha... Plays really well if I recall, but the theme was severely misguided.

Thanks Zero Angel for the info. Gave up on my old disk & DL'd an ISO file, as suggested, off an Internet "friend" , seems good... Hope its clean as I will try to use it as my base & load all 1.3 builds/mods up onto copies of it.

Ahh Roscoe AKA AcneVulgaris... Glad to know your still about, & is a great honour indeed that my return to the fold has flushed you from the woodwork, even if only with a less painfully infected name.

Nielk1 & Irom_Maiden... so true, it is good to see all the old names & old players return again.

General BlackDragon... Total Oblivion Ominous? Indeed!!!

Dataanti its good to see... well its just good to see you... keepin it real!

Thanks Red Spot!

Hope to see you all in the "BATTLEZONE" II... REAL SOON!!!

Now, where did I put that... thing!!!