Battlezone II Remodeled 1.0.8 released 2/21/17

[Nielk1]

AHadley, I don't think there's any reasonable way to say that the Dark Planet has data-banks to contain the information about Core in the first place, but there is an alternative. It might be that whatever alchimated the original Core also had the information about it spread through the wormhole link. That would explain the relics you have to deal with on the Pluto missions. This would not specificly be a purposeful action but an incidental one. It could also be information that came back into Sol via the Cthonians using the wormhole, as they clearly have ruins on Mire. Ofc, there's no reason for the Cthonians to leave the Mire system if they were the ones who performed the alchimization, but I have some ideas on how to explain all that in the extended universe of Heracles Brigade projects. (The HB universe consists of BZ1, TRO, RotBD (with tweaks), BZ2, FE, FS1, FS2, Uler (with some large adjustments) and possibly QF but not QF2 or any other mods. The HB projects of note are the Rise of the Black Dogs Redux, the Return of the Old Gods, and a BZ2 project that we hope to kick into gear as the BZ98R projects wind down.)

For an entire planet to emit that much energy, even if it was just the visible spectrum, it would have to be destroyed. Core was destroyed at the end of the ISDF campaign, though it was already dying. It seems logical that the computer was critical to keeping the planet stable for some reason. We had interestingly never considered the mechanism of the destruction of Core, simply that it happened. I proposed the idea of a type of implicit dialysis for the Scions via Core, but maybe the true source of the stability was the Core Computer? Of course, this makes less sense when combined with FE where the Core Computer is explicitly stated to have been moved from Core to Dark Core and subsequently lost in the Night of Infamy only to return as the Cerberi Mother God. That whole course of events in FE presents 2 questions: Why did Core not explode when the Computer Core was removed, and why did Dark Core not come with a computer given that the alchimating created all the large computer like structures? It's possible that a controlled removal of the Computer Core is non destructive even when the planet is in dire straights, but if the Computer Core is removed while it is performing a critical action such as power management the planet vaporizes into energy, at least partially in the visible spectrum. Perhaps the Computer Core was prefabricating the planet to try to save it. If the Computer Core alone was needed for the Scions to survive, it would not need a home planet to sit in, nor would moving it to a new planet make it work better, further more the Scions would have no reason to return to Core after Dark Core is rendered into Ruined Core in FE's backstory as it would be pointless. This supposes that the Computer Core needs to be important, but not the deciding factor in the stability of Core and the Scions.

Another question is the origin of the power crystals and alchimators: If the Scions made them or the Cthonians, or if it predates both. Also, Bane quite explicitly has a civilization that ended due to nuclear war+winter, quite different from Mire which appears to be some form of primitive structures made with aluminum (according to concept art) and Rend which has ruins of unknown origin with their own unique imagery. This all implies that the Mire system was either entirely controlled by the Cthonians, the Cthonians controlled Mire and were part of the original Alchimator project, or the Cthonians simply briefly squatted on Mire and the Alchimators had already been created and used by this time. I best like this latter option and it does partially jive with the original concept art and design of BZ2 involving the ISDF, Furies (Scions), and Aliens. However, given that those concepts did not come to be I feel this could be 1 race with 2 or more subfactions, or 2 or more races. The most notable element is that Bane has to under go a nuclear event that triggers a nuclear winter. Nuclear reactors cannot do this, they can't explode in that way, nor can anything else other than a weapon or a classical Orion Project propulsion nuke cluster. The only reason for an Orion Project style event would be the impending doom of the planet, so it doesn't make a good cause of said doom as it would be the escape of it, and as to a greater doom the planet still exists. Also, it is noted, at least in concept art and such materials, that the Bane ruins are biometal. This leaves only a nuclear war to explain the state of Bane, meaning at least 2 factions were fighting. As for Mire and Rend, they can be occupied be either more members of that race or by other races. Bane might be this system's Icarus, however with the stability and density of Mire I have to wonder why such a race would not simply resettle there. It is highly possible that an alien race still exists to be found in the universe, if not 3. Additionally, further fanon has expanded the Bane ruins into a set of AI weapons and there were even plans for a mini-faction used by the AI in MPI maps (I still have GreenHeart's walker model designed for this as well as my factory and tunnel set models). This fanon, while obviously not canon, when combined with the extra-canon materials of the concept art, create a universe where while the race from Bane are of an unknown status, their machines still exist and sit dormant. Of course, if we use the HB universe which is informed by ideas from Avatar, AHadley, and myself, they could have easily died off in the battle with a Biometaloid that they only defeated in the end by Alchimating.

For your reference, the HB universe plans to explain much more of the Cthonian world (we are expanding greatly on your original concept of the Ularians) as well as show multiple Core type planets exist and their reason for existing. You don't need to go along with any of that, but I thought it might at least poke your brain with some ideas. You can always ask any of us what we're planning and we could trade ideas or even help each other were our skills are best suited. (I find your models ugly as sin, but I'm not going to prevent that from allowing us to work together in any situation that could be advantageous; though I understand you are one of those 'work alone' types. I'd love to see the Uler done again in your current model style as I do feel it fits there, though if so done I'd prefer you kept the baked or bump map based specular effects to a minimal.)

[coxxon]

[quote="Ded10c"]Of those questions, ...quote]
There’s little to nothing in your post that contradicts what I did in my background story explanations for dangling plot points in Remodeled, with the acknowledged exception of reviving Core rather than the Dark Planet. So, we’re in agreement in many places. A lot of what I did was to attempt to answer some of the questions you propose in your post, and mine.

Also, for clarification, I was trying to get the BZII story to work on its own within the game, and not be something that later, or pre-existing mods were supposed to answer outside of the core BZII SP experience.

Additionally, I don’t consider FE to be cannon, it’s still just a mod. Therefore, I didn’t feel beholden to “fix” BZII’s inherently contradictory canonical campaign endings or make other info in Remodeled be specifically consistent with FE. I wasn’t trying to overrun FE, but I wasn’t specifically trying to include it either.

See my response to Nielk1 for more on the destruction of Core issue.

[coxxon]

Nielk1 - “For an entire planet to emit that much energy, even if it was just the visible spectrum, it would have to be destroyed. Core was destroyed at the end of the ISDF campaign, though it was already dying.”

This one hits several things Nielk1 mentions in his previous post. BTW – the following about Core is not solely aimed at Nielk1, but is an expansion on it that also covers some of my process/guidelines of how I came up with what I did in the SP for BZII Remodeled – since these posts are in its thread.
...
In the real world, I would tend to agree with you, but we have to include the fictional BZ universe we’re talking about so …

Go check out the ending cinematic for the ISDF campaign (youtube is the easiest).

A relatively, slow moving mass of light?, energy?, plasma?, bio-metal goo?, that has a white(ish) lit appearance, rises out of the pit where the computer core falls, and slowly expands outward as the Sabre tank flees. I don’t think this was in slowmo b/c the Sabre tank and dropship seem to be moving at their real speed. The scene eventually moves to an exterior view of the planet.

Note the already visible, big honkin’ cones of light/energy coming out of Core. These can also be seen in the load screen for the two SP Core missions. I removed the light cones, and added faint rings in BZII Remodeled. So, through some BZ hand-wavium process, Core has the ability to project significant amounts of visible light into space, even in a decaying or dying state.

The mass of … stuff … begins to come out of the planet and spreads very slowly across it, compared to the speed that light or energy moves in reality. The mass seems to cover 10-20% of the planet before the scene changes to the ISDF carrier. The white fade from one scene to the next is an artistic choice, not an actual representation of the same mass spreading across the planet.

What we don’t see:
1 – The mass fully covering the planet.
2 – An explosion of any type.
3 - What the nature of the destruction of Core entailed.

Conversely, go view the BZ1 ending cinematic (again, youTube is good for this). Achilles is clearly blown apart in its literal, physical destruction. Nothing like that can be unequivocally said of Core.

BZII Remodeled takes that canonical information, and adds that Core’s destruction, in whatever form it took, was something that could be repaired through the use of the alchemators, and allowed for some type of survivability and/or rejuvenation of the Scions.

I don’t see this as a problem, b/c (a) it’s a mod, and (b) BZII already has a plethora of unrealistic, unanswered and debatable questions, and (c) a set of canonical, highly contradictory endings. I don’t see a third one, that tries to combine the first two endings, as a big issue – for a mod.
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Err uh, did you mean “explicit analysis” rather than “implicit dialysis”? Even the knowledge god of Google couldn’t give me a direct hit for that one.
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Baked assets – I don’t know of anything in my mods or BZII itself that uses, or requires a baking process for its asset creation. Maybe xsi to msh?
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Bumpmaps – The problem is not my bumps, it’s how BZII renders them. Has there ever been a BZII mod that effectively uses BZII’s bumpmaps, or a time when the BZII game rendered its own bumpmaps in an attractive way? But they are an option in the game, so I do them now in my mods.

Specular highlights – I never denied that my original spec-high could be too shiny or glossy in places. But with v1.0.8 of the Remodeled mod, as I noted in the post for it, the spec-highs were redone. My spec-high literally copies the SI_Material settings from the mainbody piece of the ivtank00.xsi (6 lines of numerical settings) that was provided to us in the xsi package from over a decade ago. I haven’t checked since I don’t recall any changes to the Sabre tank xsi being noted over the years, but I would assume that the mod asset package GSH provides also contains this exact same file.

And if the issue is that I used them too much, again I’ve never denied that there are some places I should have left them off, but I also maintain that BZII should have used them more than just the vehicles. I put them on the buildings, in addition to other things, b/c (a) they’re built out of the same bio-metal that the vehicles with spec-high are, and (b) b/c after all these years, I was/am sick and tired of looking at the same dark, blurry, flat, poorly lit models, so I tried my hand at doing something more about it than what stock/1.3 presently does.

But really at this point, if one has an issue with my bumpmaps or specular highlights on my mod(s), go find one of the orig devs and complain to them b/c all I’m doing is mirroring what they did. And as I’ve written far too many times, if one doesn’t like either of them, turn them off in the graphics settings. For the record, I’ve always run BZII’s spec-high, and I almost never turn on its bumpmaps, except for mod development.
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(Doesn’t?) plays well with others – I’m not inherently a work alone person. I’ve had many years of real-world experience working with others to complete projects far more important than any video game mod. I had many things that I wanted to see done in Remodeled, and have things I want to see done in my upcoming mods. Rather than try to hold regular meetings with other team members, and always either be explaining, or justifying, the things I have made or want to make, OR trying to convince them to make changes to their work that I want, it’s just been far simpler and efficient to work on my own for the mods I’ve conceived. It’s also far less stressful than trying to work with others in a formal team, where the things I want to do – in my mod(s) - may not be in line with what others in that team would want to do, or would allow to be done.
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Uler – This is a change from things I’ve written about it previously: Leave Uler out of the HB/FE universe. I started that mod before I ever even heard of the FE Community Project (which for a time, I was a part of), and I completed it before FE was released. I don’t want it retconned or shoehorned into someone else’s idea of an overall BZII narrative. This was one of the reasons I worked to get it done before FE in the first place. If Uler is to get a redo or retcon, (beyond the one that worked to make it compatible with 1.3), which again, I’m not in favor at this time, I want the final call on what those changes are at this point.

[Ded10c]

Battlezone II's endings are indeed contradictory, but does that mean it needs fixing? Multiple contradictory endings isn't something hugely unusual in games, after all, and is not something that necessarily requires a sequel for explanation.

N1 does mean dialysis - this is a metaphor of sorts for the way Core allows the Scions to survive.

As to leaving the Uler narrative out of the HB universe; it may be too late for that, I'm afraid. The Uler themselves aren't so involved, but the Ularians and the Aegian Project are an integral part of it.

[Red Devil]

what's the H-B project?

[coxxon]

Battlezone II's endings are indeed contradictory, but does that mean it needs fixing? ...

Multiple contradictory endings are something more typically found in, and work better with RPGs. I’ve played plenty of FPS, RTSs, and sims, which I consider BZ to be a combo of, and multiple, often contradictory endings are seldom an enhancement or work well in those. The “need” I write of mainly concerned visuals. As the project progressed though, I also added in my *opinion* of what could be done to remove the contradictory endings and resolve them into a single story. The choice in ISDF14 and the resulting branches always felt more like a gimmick rather than a well thought gameplay mechanic or narrative structure.

“and is not something that necessarily requires a sequel for explanation.”
– yet mods, sequels of a sort, have gone on to give their version of explanations or expansion on things from the original BZII SP. My mod simply gave those explanations (of whatever) as a part of the original (modified) story, rather than adding those explanations into a wholly new story-based mod.

Analysis of dialysis – oohh my kidneys.

Yeah, once a mod has been out, certainly for as long as Uler has been, it does become more of an open season on it. Though to be more specific on what I wrote before, I don’t want the setup/ideas/narrative/story/missions/look/ending of the Uler mod itself, to be changed so that its forced into a different overall BZII narrative/timeline.

Granted, if the Uler connection stays mainly with the Ularians, I’m not going to be nearly as touchy or against someone else filling them out more, since they were not a physical presence in the original mod – just have the courtesy not to contradict or override what I’ve already done with the Uler race.

[Ded10c]

what's the H-B project?

Anything put out or managed by the Heracles Brigade. Battle Grounds, Rise of the Black Dogs and Fall and Return of the Old Gods, amongst other things.

-snip-

I agree that BZ2's multiple endings felt unnecessary, though I think in my eyes at least that's because of the incomplete abortion that is the ISDF campaign. Maybe if it had been rounded off the way it had been intended there wouldn't be a problem - but that goes just as much for the entire game. That said, I don't think any mods tie up the loose ends those three missions leave behind because so far they all branch off from the Scion ending.

I went back and played through Uler some years ago, and it's actually surprisingly compatible with the more significant narrative mods. There are no glaring incompatibilities with Forgotten Enemies or Fleshstorm, which given that it was developed completely independently is remarkable.

I hope you'll like what we've done with the Ularians. A lot of the stuff we're doing with them is still under wraps, but there's a small part of it here.

[coxxon]

...

I think we tend to agree more than not on the campaign’s issues, or at least, that it has issues.
Since this is all modding, I was using Remodelled as a platform for my expression of an alternative way of handling it/them.

On the Uler, Ularian thing, again, I’m not against others using them, or filling stuff in for them, as long as it doesn’t contradict the mod itself directly. Again, if that mod is to get a significant, art/story update, I have the right to do that. But, if modders want to do stuff around it, then I’m generally okay with that, just keep the Ularians’ Egyptian connection, and that they went their own way from the Olympians and Hadeans, (which lead them to the Uler). If the HB/HB Universe/FE projects can do that, then I’m fine with their/your efforts.

Mainly, Neilk1 wrote something about major changes, and that was the main thing that bothered/scared me – and granted the changes he spoke of may not actually conflict with my mod itself … I hope.

As for the mod not being overly conflictual with other stuff, yup that was deliberate, since it was one of the first, I guess, the first released, full new race and story-based campaign for BZII, I didn’t want to try upend BZII, especially since the community at large had final gotten its hands on all the tools to create their own continuations/stories in the BZII world.

I’ll try to check out the links you gave, but with so much of my BZ time being taken up with other stuff, I probably won’t be able to give it my full attention. For ex, I spent most of my BZ time this weekend trying to get a power generator to shoot a proper looking arc/lightening bolt – ultimately without success.

[Nielk1]

Mainly, Neilk1 wrote something about major changes, and that was the main thing that bothered/scared me – and granted the changes he spoke of may not actually conflict with my mod itself … I hope.

Putting words in my mouth! I said "large adjustments", that's totally not scary! It actually have nothing to do with the Uler themselves or the story-line in the missions themselves but rather a universal glue issue that is number 2 on the below list and a mechanical issue that is number 1. It would probably be wise if next time you had such a knee-jerk reaction you took the calm approach and asked for clarification as I am extremely flexible.

Here's what's wrong with Uler Mod that needs correcting:

1. The factional asymmetry was destroyed. You made all the factions equal, such as giving the Scions an APC. The factions should remain distinct and along their original intended design. This would mean the Scions should be like the stock Scions with the addition of the command tank and the ISDF should be like the stock ISDF with the addition of the command tank (suggesting a different model that isn't cut and paste pieces of course). Mods normally get around this by sandboxing their changes to a sub-faction of the EDF such as the Black Dogs or Raven Claw, though at the time you did this no such sandboxing existed. Story reasons can be established why this tech tree does not extend to the rest of the universe after the fact but the nature of the change and how it subverts the very basis of BZ2's faction design is, at least to my eyes, quite troubling and hurts the overall game design of the mod.
2. The storyline needs a minor adjustment in its background to explain how the Hadeans can be the first contact and occur after the Uler. This is as easy as making the events secret. It's clear that Uler would have to take place pre-Night of Infamy and thus the ISDF would not yet be reduced to the EDF. It's very possible the events were buried and then forgotten even more with the mothball of the fleet.
3. There are a few mission elements that are poorly thought out. This does not refer to plot events but rather mechanisms of plot device/objective. The one that bothers me the most, specifically the one I remember, is the portal/wormhole/whatever thing that from what I can tell somehow allows you to be picked up as if it was a dustoff site. A simple justification for why a drop ship can land here, or it being a wormhole or portal with a bit more background (like how the BZ2 wormhole had spacecraft use it or the FE portals were site to site) would make more sense.

#1 is I believe a result of your rush to get the mod out and lack of time to do balance testing. It's really easy to balance the races if you use BZ1 style parity.
#2 Is the element that would be the HB retcon. it's simply there to fix the cohesion with the main universe. For example, there might be a small group of ISDF that are left there, or maybe they are cut off for some reason and forgotten until they appear again in the future.
#3 is just the niggle that drives me up a wall. It reminds me of how BZ1 had arbitrary dust-off sites. The truth is though in BZ1 this made some sense given the Newtonian nature of all space travel and the need to safe landing sites and injection burns. Beta BZ2 images show that BZ2 also works under such rules but dropships negate such caveats with their ability to fly under full control.

You should know, and Ded10c is well aware from attempts to do combat with me on retconning parts of FE, that I will fight to preserve as much of the original content as possible. On that note, Ded10c, Facility is still not a Core. I will fight you on this.

[Ded10c]

fite me. (ง'̀-'́)ง

[Nielk1]

౿('-'౿)

[coxxon]

I said "large adjustments", that's totally not scary!

Yes, yes it is! Especially when one's work is on the receiving end of those potentially "large adjustments." You need to consider more what you're writing from the POV of others.

On your numbered points:
1 – It’s mod, and as such, at the time I was wanting to try different things (as I still do all these years later), such as command tanks and scion apcs. I didn’t see any need to have to make those new things “fit” into an overall, permanent, or official idea of what the races had to be.

2 – For me the simplest way to use the Ularians would not to be to refer to the Uler mod directly, or at least its timeline. If the new HB mod takes place during the present/future, and based off an FE timeline, you can just make reference to the fact that the old ISDF had encountered the Uler previously, without having to give details of that encounter.

3 – On the wormhole projector thing, I don’t recall having it being able to directly act as a dropzone/dustoff site (though it does seem to act as that in the cutscene of the Dark Planet mission where it is introduced BTW). Mainly that carriers or dropships came through the wormhole and went to their ultimate destinations. But again, with all the loose play of space and physics in BZII (and BZ1), I don’t really remember mine being that inconsistent.
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Overall, your recent posts, as I take them collectively, seem to be trying to create some sort of semi- “official” timeline or narrative for BZ2. That’s fine as independent mod work, but you shouldn’t be trying to force fit or retcon other people’s work into it for hyper-consistency. Whatever you (or HB collectively) come up with is always going to have its detractors. Don’t make that worse by implying that others should change their work to fit your ideas.

Also, I don’t remember paying money for, or seeing official Activision or Pandemic logos or blessing as being a part of FE, and as such it’s still just a mod. As a mod, it doesn’t have to be taken as “the official continuation” of BZII that everything else must follow.

[Nielk1]

It's not about retconning other ppl's work, it's about including other ppl's work in a super-work, at least in part. Sometimes the way the works are constructed this isn't possible without saying "in this universe that happened differently" even though that is a sub-optimal action. (Actually that sounds a lot like retconning doesn't it? Well that sucks. )

[Ded10c]

Overall, your recent posts, as I take them collectively, seem to be trying to create some sort of semi- “official” timeline or narrative for BZ2. That’s fine as independent mod work, but you shouldn’t be trying to force fit or retcon other people’s work into it for hyper-consistency. Whatever you (or HB collectively) come up with is always going to have its detractors. Don’t make that worse by implying that others should change their work to fit your ideas.

Also, I don’t remember paying money for, or seeing official Activision or Pandemic logos or blessing as being a part of FE, and as such it’s still just a mod. As a mod, it doesn’t have to be taken as “the official continuation” of BZII that everything else must follow.

An overarching timeline is something I've been working on for over a decade. Now I by no means try to force modders to make their work fit to it, but I do openly offer to help others to ensure their work fits with whichever other works they want it to, and as a writer for video games in general. Uler is no exception to that.

We're by no means pretending FE to be an official continuation, but we also can't ignore its significance. Almost every large mod to date follows on from it - though not all of them. In fact, not counting Uler, the only large mod that springs to mind that doesn't follow on from FE is one of Nielk1's projects.

[Nielk1]

(Sadly a dead project that had most of it's ideas cannibalized by the newer FE timeline stuff.)