BZ2-HD Power Plant

[bigbadbogie]

I'm trying to decide whether to completely make the HD Mod, and with it practically remake BZ2.

What'yall think?

http://www.moddb.com/mods/battlezone-ii-hd-mod

[Killerstrike]

looks good

add some paint maybe some red in there hehehe

i would highly recommend work on the walkers first cause there suppose to be the best units ( story wise BZ 1 )

[Nielk1]

I am going to tell you the truth.

I find it horribly ugly.

When I think of HD BZ2 I think of the stuff Jayden has done for the AED units. Stuff like this:


It is a variation of the missile scout but it is pretty easy to see this extrapolated to an unmodified missile scout.

Interestingly, BZ2's models are pretty much in the right place already when it comes to RTS models. Maybe a little low for FPS but remember that the hybrid has some sacrifices for volume.

[Red Devil]

way too shiny

[MrTwosheds]

Its not orange enough!
High detail terrain?

[bigbadbogie]

Thanks KS. I'll be remaking all of the units and buildings for both the ISDF and Scions.

And when I think of *HD*, I think of 'brand new model which only resembles the original'. You don't like it, use the original - or CP2's. BZ2-HD isn't like BZC. I'm not trying to remain obsessively faithful to the original. I'm making it my own style. As long as I like the way it looks, it's good. And I do.

It's less shiny in-game. That's just a 3dsmax render.

I'm not sure about making the ISDF orange this time around. That was one of the principle complaints against BZ2.

[General BlackDragon]

No, definitely not orange. I'd say a default of dark gray, with proper team color mapping for optional team color assignment, if someone wants orange, or blue, or red.

And the pgen pic does look good, for an untextured model. Once it's got some proper material / color variation on it, it should look pretty good.

And, for the record, I'd love a HD version of all the BZ1 models. But it's ALL or NOTHING, so, alas...

[Ded10c]

For reference, orange was chosen deliberately; with as much environmental variety as they have, they found a lot of colours (brown, gray, green, etc.) made things difficult to see under a certain situation. Orange was chosen as a throw-back to the UN/NATO, and they felt it gave the ISDF a regal feel. Brown and green, frankly, is boring. Blue might work well.

[Red Devil]

...and you know this from personal experience on the dev team or are you not crediting your source to appear omniscient or are you just making this up?

[Nielk1]

...and you know this from personal experience on the dev team or are you not crediting your source to appear omniscient or are you just making this up?

Well, unlike you, we actually know a lot about what we deal with. We've talked to former devs other than GSH and Ken and Luckyfoot even did a few interviews. They almost went with blue and white for the UN color scheme but it was deemed too boring. This original choice is present in the early development textures but was dropped by the time they got to beta. Though IIRC they went for Orange because the UN scheme wasn't good enough, less so as a harken back.

[MrTwosheds]

Orange is iconic for the ISDF in BZ2! The Scions are blue.
Smaller grid size terrain would be highly desirable to match the HD models. Just have to use smaller maps, people like small maps.

[bigbadbogie]

At the moment I think that GBD's right - teamColour skins could determine the unit colour and dark grey/silver should be the default. Maybe I'll try to orange up the texture a bit first and see how it looks. On the original Power Plant, only the top section was orange.

An HD version of BZ1 models may come later, but BZ2 first.

I'm not sure about altering the maps' grid sizes. I was hoping to keep the maps as they are but with new HD textures and props. Changing that might make the map-work 50x as complicated. I think that the only real reason to alter maps' grid sizes is to provide good lighting, but it needs to be a grid size of 1.0 or less before the terrain lighting even begins to resemble realistic. That would mean tiny maps, and would be very awkward. What we need is a new lighting system in BZ2 - but that's another story .

[MrTwosheds]

Yes it would be a lot of work, you would have to replace all terrain type props and remake all the maps and missions. I was only thinking about going to grid size 4 just to make the terrain look much better too.

[Red Devil]

from the first isdf mission, Shabayev, when first talking to Major Manson, she says she is of the orange squad. the first squad out of the dropship was red squad (Red1).

me, i think i'd like to be in the squad with the same color as the terrain...

[Ded10c]

...and you know this from personal experience on the dev team or are you not crediting your source to appear omniscient or are you just making this up?

I'm a wiki manager. There is quite obviously a source, which I will edit in once I find it. I have a bookmark folder full of the things (30+) and I'm not about to sort through them while I'm at my girlfriend's house in the wrong end of the country.

from the first isdf mission, Shabayev, when first talking to Major Manson, she says she is of the orange squad. the first squad out of the dropship was red squad (Red1).

me, i think i'd like to be in the squad with the same color as the terrain...

Shabayev is of Second Fleed Orange, Miller is 2nd Red Squad and Manson is 2nd Blue. Green squad appear briefly during the last Pluto mission. As with most narrative elements in games, this was decided much later and the fact that the ISDF's default color was orange was established much earlier in development.

The problem with being in the squad that's the colour of the terrain is that you still have tracts of gunmetal across your ships and you're in pastel colours anyway. That'd be only good as camouflage on Toon World (and by the way; in a game like this, camouflage is to be actively *avoided*).