Battlezone II Remodeled 1.0.8 released 2/21/17

[coxxon]

It seems a lot of those variations in gtows and rocket towers were using the same model, just renamed, so that's what I did. But there are just so darned many of them that they all ran together, and I believe there are like 3 or 4 that I missed.

The heavy warrior and phantom seem to be working properly, hopefully you found the same.

I had to add the hp_cannon_4, and since I had that I put in 1 and 2 as well. I generally prefer to edit the actual model, rather than change this sort of thing in the xsi file, especially if something is being added that wasn't in a stock version. The max model is what's important and needs to be protected/modified long term. The xsi's are more easily "rebuildable" by exporting new ones and therefore kind of disposable.

[coxxon]

Also, in case folks might have missed it b/c of the same weirdness with the board the other day that Commando noted.

To repeat:

BATTLEZONE II REMODELED
v108 NOW AVAILABLE 2/21/17
Go to below url and login
http://www.moddb.com/mods/battlezone-ii-remodeled

See announcement post above for more details.

[Red Devil]

we played using your mod last night and worked fine.

only thing i had a problem with was my arc shot sounds not playing well for me, but it worked fine for everyone else, so i'm figurin' it's on my end.

[coxxon]

hmm, I only modified garc_a.odf, and that was just the speed that the arc moves to a target, not the sound file used.
I wonder if it might be b/c of the new 3d sound setup?
I still get some weird sounds occasionally with the new 3d audio setup in 1372.

[Progressor]

An ancient problem that exists in SP campaign, mission "Get Help": When you reach the ISDF base, the ISDF tanks go to attack the incoming Scions. If you snipe out the Warrior and get into it, the game gets stuck speaking "Attack my target" in a loop. Even if you get out of the Warrior and destroy it, the mission never ends.

If you do the same trick with the Sentry, it works as expected, i.e. mission ends after all incoming Scion ships are destroyed.

[General BlackDragon]

Mm. Warrior must not be getting checked for IsAlive and/or is getting constantly ordered to Attack something, mission script is not aware of it being the player or not.

[Progressor]

Here is the saved game after it gets stuck: https://www.dropbox.com/s/s6sposgq6rbz3y0/33.sav?dl=0
and log: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bx1ou7h3vg4em ... 8.log?dl=0

[Progressor]

And another SP problem with "Fanning the Fire": After everything is complete and I am following Elena to the secret entrance, when I enter that entrance -- mission fails.

Saved game: https://www.dropbox.com/s/q90bti01us7qecq/11.sav?dl=0
Log: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ajkn4driwsmjo ... 5.log?dl=0

[Ded10c]

And another SP problem with "Fanning the Fire": After everything is complete and I am following Elena to the secret entrance, when I enter that entrance -- mission fails.

Coxxonn modified the campaign so all of the singleplayer missions are part of the same mission flow; there's no campaign split in this mod. You are expected to follow Braddock's instructions and destroy Core to kill all the Scions, then defect to the Scions and transform the Dark Planet into a new Core using the wormhole generators on the planet you've... just destroyed. It doesn't really work as a story but it does what it set out to do.

[General BlackDragon]

That makes no sense

[coxxon]

And another SP problem with "Fanning the Fire": After everything is complete and I am following Elena to the secret entrance, when I enter that entrance -- mission fails.

That is correct for the mission - which is different than the stock campaign. You should be getting a new/rewritten fail debriefing if you go with Shab. I didn't want to make too many extensive changes to that mission, so I left in the cinematic where Shab goes into the entrance, since the original programmers went to the trouble of making it.
The mission only" succeeds" if you *try* to kill Shab. Removing the "choice" in this mission was the only way to link the two contradictory branching endings together.

[coxxon]

Coxxonn modified the campaign so all of the singleplayer missions are part of the same mission flow; there's no campaign split in this mod. You are expected to follow Braddock's instructions and destroy Core to kill all the Scions, then defect to the Scions and transform the Dark Planet into a new Core using the wormhole generators on the planet you've... just destroyed. It doesn't really work as a story but it does what it set out to do.

Uh, not quite.

The stock cutscene gives you a big flash of light, but technically doesn't show the planet Core blow up. Second, it never made sense in the stock campaign that destroying a single computer(?) would ruin, much less blow up an entire planet; so what constitutes "destroyed" is an open question.

In BZ2Rmdl, the Scions, after losing Core, redirect their efforts from using the alchmaetors [sp] on the Dark Planet (intending to fire them through the wormhole passage from the Mire star-system(?)), to using them to revive Core itself. Leaving the end of my version of the campaign being that both Braddock and the New Regime stopped, and the Scions still back in the Mire star-system, and not in a position to do their forced bio-metal convergence thing to Earth, which never made much sense anyway.

What makes worse story sense from the stock game, is that the much smaller force of Scions (unless they were cloning themselves by the millions, and birthing millions of babies) would attempt to move their homeworld to the Dark Planet.

That would be like the UK deciding to fight a war with China by first moving their entire population to Taiwan.

[Ded10c]

Core's destruction might not be explicitly shown, but it as heavily implied as it can be without that being the case. It's also heavily implied that the Scions are choosing to migrating from Core now, after 15 years, because Core can no longer support them - it is outright stated that they "cannot survive long alone" and "need a new home". In that case, why did they not simply alchemate it before?

Quite what the "forced bio-metal convergence thing" is is unclear, but it's likely Burns was speaking metaphorically and was referring to enlightenment in the typical sense and that the writers didn't realise "bio-luminescence" has an actual scientific meaning.

Your last point doesn't make much sense, purely because we simply don't know how many Scions there are and we barely have any information to base a best-guess on. We could be talking fewer than 200, we could be talking thousands.

[coxxon]

Well a lot of things in the original story were unclear. Why did they leave the Dark Planet in the first place to go to Core? What were they supposed to be dying from? How is being on Core, or going back to the Dark Planet going to cure or support them? Why aren’t they living on Mire, or Bane, or Rend? And yeah, why not use the alchemaetor’s on Core, or one of the other planets in that star system? Why were the power crystals for those machines all separated from them?

On convergence, one man’s philosophical enlightenment can be another’s mental subjugation. Even a benign goal can be considered a potentially hostile action from another’s POV.

Also, whether it was 200, 200,000, or heck, 2 billion, it didn’t make any sense that they would move to the Dark Planet when they knew that Braddock was still in some position of power and could lead a hostile military force against them. They have for some unknown reason, a sick and dying population that would be tiny compared to the population of Earth and the military force it could potentially muster against an “alien” invasion. It makes no strategic or tactical sense to move that population next to a likely enemy. It’s a case of the old saying “from the frying pan into the fire.” At best, it would seem to be a desperate action on the Scions’ part.

Or, more realistically, “it was in the script,” so that’s the story we got.

[Ded10c]

Of those questions, most of the ones that need to be answered for the story to function are already answered. The rest are just filling - important filling, granted, but not part of the main plot structure.

When the Scions first arrived on the Dark Planet in 1979 they were in full retreat following defeat at the hands of the ISDF and needed somewhere to hide. They could have left for any number of reasons; we know it was unable to sustain them, we know Braddock discovered the Dark Planet at some point during that fifteen years, and it's highly likely the Dark Planet's memory banks held some record of Core's existence. We know Core was able to sustain them, which is why they lived there rather than elsewhere in the system. The alchemators on Mire, Bane and Rend are the only ones known to exist - and there's not much opportunity for alchemators to exist in what we know of the rest of the system, which to our knowledge consists of two stars, the massive gas giant orbited by Rend, and Bane's tiny moon Barak.

It is strongly implied that Braddock and the Scions were actually working co-operatively prior to the opening cinematic of Battlezone II; that's why there were ISDF forces on the Dark Planet before Secret Ops' "initial" landing. The co-operation, or maybe perhaps mutual indifference, was only broken because Braddock needed to cover his arse; he shot down Voyager II to prevent it discovering Cerberus Base and threw the Scions under the bus by using one of their missiles to do it. The attack on Cerberus Base that followed was presumably a pre-emptive strike to prevent the forces there attacking the Scions before they were able to retreat.

What was killing them and why was Core the only thing able to save them? It remains a mystery, though I have a functional theory and I'm sure others do as well.

Why were the power cores separated? Well, why were the alchemators there in the first place? What is the deal with the entire Core system in general - where did the populace go, how did Core come to be, how does it relate to the Dark Planet? The answers to these questions were probably being saved for Combat Commander II.