Battlezone II Remodeled 1.0.8 released 2/21/17

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coxxon
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Battlezone II Remodeled 1.0.8 released 2/21/17

Post by coxxon »

EDIT: v 1.0.8 NOW AVAILABLE 2/21/17
BATTLEZONE II REMODELED

http://www.moddb.com/mods/battlezone-ii-remodeled

My attempt to do for the game's models and textures what the 1.3 series of patches has done for the game code.

Featuring
- 400 rebuilt and modified msh models with smoother surfaces and better detail (added ~50 mod models from pb1365 for v105)
- 1100 new and modified, higher-resolution textures
- Unified campaign story that eliminates the contradictory endings
- Many buildings with animations and effects
- Various redone weapon effects
- Chunk crash explosions and dust trails similar to BZ(1998)
- Numerous odf changes to take advantage of updated features
- Revised campaign briefings and debriefings bringing more depth and clarity to the story
- Many prop models now support specular highlights and bumpmaps
- Other goodies for modders - see mod readme

Go get it now! :D
Last edited by coxxon on Tue Feb 21, 2017 10:28 pm, edited 9 times in total.
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Re: Battlezone II Remodeled - Available Now!

Post by mase »

The shortcut created on the desktop by the installer does not include the custom folder you specified for installation but the default folder in program files.

Also the cfg is placed into the coxxon folder not into bz2s root folder where bz2 could find it.

The cfg points to:

Code: Select all

AddPack("@rootdir\BZIIRemodeled.pak"); //the Battlezone II Remodeled pak file
but it needs to point to

AddPack("@rootdir\Coxxon\BZII Remodeled\BZIIRemodeled.pak"); //the Battlezone II Remodeled pak file
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Re: Battlezone II Remodeled - Available Now!

Post by mase »

The animation for the stronghold seems way over the top, the thing that comes out is bigger then the stronghold itself ;-)
Personally I'd just remove it.

The arc stream that comes out of the gs seems way to strong makes it impossible to kill the lung by moving your ship under it.

The kiln exposes a commander that is at the panel to enemy fire from ships, there should be a wall of some kind.

The solar flare seems a little bit big ;-)

I believe isdf plasma should be yellow like the original.

The constructor/builder and mauler walking animations are a little too fast for my taste.

The blue blinking thingies from the matriarch I don't really like, maybe remove the blinking effect.

The range of assault blast on the walker is too short, should be 250 m.

Some of the weapon characteristics have changed, like the FAF shotrate. I'd leave all weapon characteristics as is.

Other than that looks good ;-)
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Re: Battlezone II Remodeled - Available Now!

Post by Red Devil »

i get the same, but just move the .pak and the startup .cfg files to the root of your install and add -config BZIIRemodeled.cfg to your shortcut and you're good to go.

just played the first sp mission using 1.3.7.0 and it was beeee-uuuu-ti-ful. :-)

nice job, coxxon :-)
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Re: Battlezone II Remodeled - Available Now!

Post by coxxon »

mase wrote:The shortcut created on the desktop by the installer does not include the custom folder you specified for installation but the default folder in program files. Also the cfg is placed into the coxxon folder not into bz2s root folder where bz2 could find it.
The cfg points to:

Code: Select all

AddPack("@rootdir\BZIIRemodeled.pak"); //the Battlezone II Remodeled pak file
but it needs to point to AddPack("@rootdir\Coxxon\BZII Remodeled\BZIIRemodeled.pak"); //the Battlezone II Remodeled pak file
RedDevil wrote:i get the same, but just move the .pak and the startup .cfg files to the root of your install and add -config BZIIRemodeled.cfg to your shortcut and you're good to go.
Hmm … on the Coxxon folder issue, I had set up the installer to not even make a Coxxon folder shortcut, which is all it ever was meant to be, not an actual folder. I had had a Startmenu shortcut setup at one time, but removed it (I thought) from the installer. It was just supposed to make a desktop shortcut – that points only to the bzone.exe. So I’m not sure how it’s getting there.

Just use the desktop shortcut, make sure that BZIIRemodeled.cfg (don’t edit this file) and BZIIRemodeled.pak is in your main Battlezone folder, and get rid of the “Coxxon” folder stuff.

I’ll go back and take a look at the installer. It may be using an older version, cuz it really shouldn’t be doing any sort of Coxxon folder thing.
I will try to fix this problem and add a new upload of the zip file, though it may be a couple of days before it gets on moddb.
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Re: Battlezone II Remodeled - Available Now!

Post by coxxon »

mase wrote:The animation for the stronghold ... Other than that looks good ;-)
Thanks for looking it over so quickly. I’ve tried to explain my reasoning to your points below. Hope this helps.

* Stronghold - it's a big sci-fi exhaust stack pumping out fiery plasma smoke from producing weapons of war – kill, kill, kill muwahahhaha. Plus all the scion buildings are generally bigger than the ISDF ones, so it's supposed to be big. ;) BTW, the collision__hc is still the same size as the original stronghold.

* Gun Spire modified arc stream - Uh, good, that was the point, to keep a player from driving up under it and single handedly taking out a gun spire or its lung. You can still take out the lung with a group of tanks. Besides, gspires are expensive, they should be hard to kill.

* Kiln - How much time is a player spending standing inside a kiln/forge? This seems like a one in a hundred games nitpicking. Plus, even in the orig version, one could drive their whole tank inside it.

* Solar flare – It’s supposed to be big. It has a much larger effect radius and damage rate (against N and L armor) – so that it can actually be useful to use. For balance it also has a much higher ammo consumption rate from the player’s vehicle. And while I’m not totally enamored with the visual effect, I want it to be big. If a player drives right through it, they should get heavily damaged – hopefully destroyed. Thus, reminding us all to avoid huge balls of fire while driving down the road.

* ISDF Plasma – Actually the original plasmas were green (gtower and plasma). Literally from this game’s original release, I thought this was incredibly inconsistent with other ISDF weaponry appearance and looked more like a Scion weapon (green ion, and blue arcs). Plus I’ve also always associated green weapons fire with aliens or bad guys (thanks, Star Wars Imperial weapons fire.) So I went and made it yellow and red like regular fire. Those shots also have a shell model at their tip now. I consider them to be “plasma-propelled-projectiles” rather than energy weapons –though I did not adjust any of their properties in the odfs. Also, I modified the blast cannon to be yellow like its original BZ(1998) counterpart. So, now the ISDF only has the blast and laser appearing as straight up energy weapons, while everything else is solid projectile based. Thus also trying to contrast them with the Scion weapons which are more energy based in appearance.

* The cons/build - anim only appears to run faster. It’s the same number of frames as the original. This illusion? Is likely because the units actually move faster (modified odf), and I wanted to avoid the taking one step animation, but moving twice the distance “sliding” appearance that the original walking animations had for a number of units. On the Mauler, that one gave me fits. I tried reworking the running animation a number of times, but for some reason the game doesn’t want to use it properly. But since the maulers move so fast, I didn’t want to slow it down too much, as I wanted to avoid the above mentioned sliding look that some things had/have.

* Matriarch – That’s an exhaust effect, like how the new lung shell opens up. It’s supposed to pulse – lots of raw energy being generated by the structure. Plus I wanted some animation for the structure and not have it be so static – and it’s better than the flapping chicken wings my first version had.

* Blast range was deliberately shortened. The walker is NOT supposed to be a long range attack. That’s what the Bulldog is for. The walker is a medium range attack – its engage range, even in the patches, is still only 150m. But when ivwalk got changed to attack at weapon’s range, that’s when it became a long-range attacker because of the blast cannon’s original long range. I believe this was either missed in the changes, or a not so great idea. Either way, I shortened the range of the blast cannon to match up with internal engage range of the ivwalk odf. No more sitting back, if you’re gonna go with Attilas, get’em in the fight like they’re supposed to be, and let the Bulldogs do the long-range work (as the original game intended).

* FAF missile – nope, no change to its odf, in terms of performance. What is different, only on the Thunderbolt, is that the model and odf now uses two rocket hp’s. AND with the unaltered missile odf set up to alternate fire (again not my doing), it will alternate fire. This does seems to cause it to fire a bit faster (noted I thought, in the mod readme file), but the vehicle still has the same ammo amount. If a player goes wild with FAF, they’re going to run out of ammo real fast, and with not every shot guaranteed to hit, this seems like a fair inherent balance.

So thar ya go, thems my reseasoning of why I did some of them thar things I did.
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Re: Battlezone II Remodeled - Available Now!

Post by coxxon »

Red Devil wrote:just played the first sp mission using 1.3.7.0 and it was beeee-uuuu-ti-ful. :-) nice job, coxxon :-)
Thanks. Glad you liked it. :)
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Re: Battlezone II Remodeled - Available Now!

Post by General BlackDragon »

Chunk crash explosions and dust trails similar to BZ(1998)
You might want to check out PB7's new Crash XSI feature:

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- Work on bugzilla #793 -- added ODF properties for overriding the
default crash geometry. Like the other chunks, the crash geometry can
be set from [GameObjectClass] or [CraftClass] sections. If not set,
the game object uses the normal mesh for the crash. [Ken]

[GameObjectClass]
crashName = "..."
crashScale = 1.0

[CraftClass]
crashName = "..."
crashScale = 1.0

- GameObjectClass chunk geometry supports scaling like the CraftClass
version does. [Ken]

[GameObjectClass]
ChunkScale<#> = 1.0
SeparateChunkScale<#> = 1.0
This lets you specify the model for the "crash" xsi, which is normally the geometryName that falls to the ground with DmgEffect4 coming from it.

As for points:

- Kiln: I loved driving my tank inside. Every enter-able building, except for scion recy, has insides. :(

- Solar Flare: The purpose of solar flare is to distract heat seeking missiles like hornet and FAF. It's an anti-missile countermeasure, like chaff/flare. It's not really supposed to be used against ships.

-Constructors: there is an animRate odf parameter, if u didn't update that, blah. Just make sure the walking matches the speed. Also, super fast walking (i.e. SF mod) looks dumb. IF you want faster constructors, I would recommending making hover constructors :D (please! <3)

-Blast range should be 250m. You can adjust the aiRange or walker's engageRange and set it to use EngageRange instead of WeaponRange.

-FAF Thunderbolt: ISDF Scouts should only have 1 rocket HP, in front center hole? Using ShotAlternate appears to double the fire rate for linked weapons, tho it is the same "DPS" as firing both at once, so it's purely cosmetic. If u wanted to make the ISDF Scout fire a single FAF out of two holes, you'd need to double the FAF fire rate to compensate, but that would effect other units that pick it up with only 1 rocket HP.
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Re: Battlezone II Remodeled - Available Now!

Post by Juggernaut »

After moving and reconfiguring your CFG and shortcut (as mAse mentioned), I was able to see the glory of your models and textures. Nice work! I do have a request though, can you make this backward compatible with stock like your 1st texture pack? I just tested with Red Devil and he got bad assets upon joining using stock 1.3.7.
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Re: Battlezone II Remodeled - Available Now!

Post by General BlackDragon »

Sorry, not possible. MODELS are asset checked, Only Textures, UI, INFs, and Sounds and locally independant, anything else will cause Bad Assets.

That's why his Texture pack is separate. :)

Code: Select all

- fsburncoxp - Padishah Burns as a prop character
- fsburncoxu - Padishah Burns as a user character
- fsjohncoxp - Scion John Cooke (no helmet) as a prop character
- fsjohncoxu - Scion John Cooke (no helmet) as a user character
- fsshabcoxp - Scion Yelena Shabayev (no helmet) as a prop character
- fsshabcoxu - Scion Yelena Shabayev (no helmet) as a user character
- isjohncoxp - John Cooke (no helmet) as a prop character
- isjohncoxu - John Cooke (no helmet) as a user character
- isshabcoxp - Yelena Shabayev (no helmet) as a prop character
- isshabcoxu - Yelena Shabayev (no helmet) as a user character
- ismanscoxp - Major Manson (helmeted) as a prop character
- ismanscoxu - Major Manson (helmeted) as a playable character
Aww, no Braddock?
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Re: Battlezone II Remodeled - Available Now!

Post by General BlackDragon »

Bugs:

All your models have too much "shinyness" value. :-/

Your ammo/repair pod models needs it's hp_com_1 for info reticle location. Check other powerups too? Also if they're supposed to have the bright colored panels on the side, you might want to check the modder data for PB7, I fixed the ammo/repair models for this version.

ISDF Scout top Fin Reverse animations are messed up. Sometimes when switching states they flip around the wrong way and go through the ship.

The dust under the ships doesn't spawn on the ground, it stays at the location of the emitter hp. You should be using simulateBase = "sim_dust"

You should make the collision mesh for the "unstable terrain" noticed on ISDF01 match it's collapsed form, OR: more sophisticated, use the DLL to swap out a non-collapsed form, for a form with the collapse animation and matching collision mesh. IT always bugged me how the ground goes bye bye, but you're still sitting on top of it.

The friendlies still attack the enemy turret too soon. Make sure it's PerceivedTeam is correct?
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Re: Battlezone II Remodeled - Available Now!

Post by coxxon »

Juggernaut wrote:After moving and reconfiguring your CFG and shortcut (as mAse mentioned)
reconfiguring!!!!! Don't alter the contents of the cfg file.
Just put it and the .pak file in the base main Battlezone II folder. Run the mod with the Desktop shortcut the installer should have made. Now that said, it might be a good idea to doublecheck the desktop shortcut's Target properties I set it up with this path: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Battlezone II\bzone.exe" -nointro -config BZIIRemodeled.cfg

Make sure the above "Target" and "Start in:" paths in the shortcut are set to the bzone.exe file you want to run the mod from.
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Re: Battlezone II Remodeled - Available Now!

Post by coxxon »

um ... double post
Last edited by coxxon on Sat Nov 21, 2015 8:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Battlezone II Remodeled - Available Now!

Post by Red Devil »

boy, we have hostiles is a lot harder now due to, what appears to be, faster (but beautiful) tugs?
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Re: Battlezone II Remodeled - Available Now!

Post by General BlackDragon »

The Service Truck FX's "particle.tga" render needs the following:

BottomInteractsWithTerrain = false

It's getting squished due to being close to ground. Also, the effect is somewhat blinding when im in first person in my scout. :-/



Also, your ISDF pilot's walking animations look unnatural. Can't quite pin point it, but they do. Maybe the lack of waist / rifle bob.


As to the shinyness I mentioned earlier, I noticed it on the Dropship and also on the Pilots. Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

Image

In the XSI, under SI_Material section, the 2nd line control shinyness. I believe this ranges from 0-255, though who knows. Threed has a setting of 0 - 200, but I am not actually sure what the range is.

Code: Select all

0.700000;0.700000;0.700000;1.000000;;
0.000000; // Shinyness Value.
0.700000;0.700000;0.700000;;
0.000000;0.000000;0.000000;;
0.000000;
0.000000;0.000000;0.000000;;
Some things should be shiny, but some should not. You may even make separate pieces of "shiny" armor, which exist ontop of softer "padding" like in the ISDF Pilot suit.
Last edited by General BlackDragon on Sat Nov 21, 2015 8:47 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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