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Topics - Idren

#1
Hey all, I've been thinking about SWBF modding lately, and was wondering about if making a map with falling meteors or something - where if players got hit they would die. 

That got me thinking about things like having an animated train moving around a map and you could walk on the tracks and stuff, but when the train came by if you got hit you would die. 

I was thinking about death regions for these various scenarios, and thought it would be interesting if we could animate death regions (or other regions for that matter).

I'm sure some kind of animated object with certain ODF properties could do the same task, but I'm curious if anyone has ever animated or tried to animate a region? (or an object created to act as a region perhaps)
#2
SWBF1 Modding / ZeroEdit source? Or alternative?
October 16, 2017, 02:52:15 PM
I wasn't sure where to really put this post - but does anyone have any clue about whether or not the source for ZeroEdit has ever been/could ever be released? Or if anyone's tried building an alternative (from scratch perhaps)? 

I know that the original game devs had a different (better) version of ZeroEdit.

The version that we have currently is riddled with bugs and has issues on a lot of systems...

Anyways, just a thought - it'd be great to have a more stable editor.
#3
SWBF1 Modding / Altering AI Pathing/Barriers mid-game
October 02, 2017, 02:22:34 PM
So I'm curious to know if anyone has experimented with altering the paths AI take mid-game.
With working on my Maz's Castle map I'd love to be able to have the castle be destructable, but then have the AI be able to walk all through the debris and such.

However, to my knowledge, you can't tie the AI's pathing/barriers to objects.  Has anyone done any experimenting with this concept before?

Currently I determine AI paths with Hubs / Barriers around objects - is there another way to do this from the objects themselves? Like in the ODF or something?

ex:
Before Destruction:

           ------------------
           | ######## |
           | ######## |
           | ######## |
AI ------  ######## --------->
              ########
              #BUILDING#
              ########
              ########

After Destruction:

        ########
        #####    #
        ##           #
AI -------------------------------->
        #####    #
        ##           #
        ########
        #BUILDING#
        #DEST####
        ########

I'm really hoping this isn't impossible (though i'm fairly certain it is atm) - it would open up so many cool possibilities for maps.

Also open to any theories on how to achieve this and I'll try them out at some point!
#4
SWBF1 Modding / [WIP] Maz Kanata's Castle
September 30, 2017, 05:41:10 PM
Hey everybody! :wave: I've decided to undertake making a map for Maz's Castle from Episode 7. I thought there was just an absence of mods/maps for Episode 7 content.

Planned Features:
1. Custom textures/loadouts for the 2 sides (resistance/first order): I've got a decent re-skin of a stormtrooper that (to me) matches the original game's art style pretty well. There's also a re-skin of the rebel pilot to give him a red jumpsuit and a black helmet to match the Ep7 pilots.

2. Custom common.lvl: This will be a dc:loaded common.lvl so it should work fine as just a standalone mod without having to alter your own game's common.lvl (this is mainly for the First Order's holo insignia)

3. The map layout will be featuring Maz's Castle exterior, the forest Rey runs into, Kylo Ren's landed shuttle, some TIE f/o flyers, some stormtrooper dropships, and various ship landing pads like where the falcon lands in the film.

4. An updated Bowcaster ODF that's more like the scene where Han takes Chewbacca's bowcaster and blasts some troopers (sending a couple of them into the air upon impact)

5. I'm hoping to make the castle itself destroyable, and also take my first plunge into creating an AnimatedBuilding like the Technounion ships so that I could have the tallest tower collapse and destroy Maz's statue like in the film.

6. I'd like to have one of the bases be near that big yellow ship that Finn almost leaves on with the pirates, (meaning I'll have to model that ship as well)

7. Clone Wars support is planned, but I don't plan on making any alterations to the map really as my main focus is definitely on the Ep7 content.

Anyways, here's an image of my progress on the castle! (with a comparison of a screenshot from the film) Sorry my rendered image turned out to be a lot smaller/poorer quality than I was anticipating upon upload.

[spoiler][/spoiler]
[spoiler][/spoiler]

My other hope is that someone has already made a T70 X-Wing that's available for use in mods so that I don't have to figure out making my own (I'm not familiar with making flyers) - let me know if there's one floating around out there! :)

Wish me luck!
#5
Hey all,

I'm curious about getting started on a project writing an .msh importer/exporter plugin for 3ds Max (the modeling/animating program I'm familiar with) Does anyone have any sort of links/files that might give me a head-start in doing this?  I'd much appreciate any useful info/breakdowns of how a .msh object is constructed under the hood and stuff.  Ideally I'd love to be able to be able to export animations as well but that might be out of my league atm.  I'm still learning maxscript stuff.

Thanks for any and all help!   :tu:
#6
Just curious - but has anyone made SWBFII's award guns for SWBF?

And if so, were they able to limit them so that only the player could use them and not the AI? I'm not sure how that would be done in SWBF - having different weapon sets for the player for each class kind of thing.

I'd be interested in knowing if anyone's figured this out or attempted giving weapons to a unit that were only accessible to the player.
#7
Hey everybody,

I'm working on getting my first custom unit mesh into BF1, and I'm running into a few issues.  I've read several tutorials, and thought I'd give it a go.
This has been my process so far:
1. Import the stock imp_inf_shocktrooper.msh into XSI.
2. Delete the backpack object
3. Delete the 2 ammo packs on the hips.
4. Select the shoulder ammo pack w/the parent bone "ribcage".
5. Select the POLYGONS and move/rotate them around so as not to move the object's pivot point.
6. Duplicate the ammo pack 2 times and move the polys into place.
7. Delete the polys from the shadowvolume that were around the backpack.
8. Hide everything but the visible objects
9. Middle click the DummyRoot
10. Export the .msh to overwrite the old imp_inf_shocktrooper.msh

Then I munge/run SPTest, and it gets into the game fine (I did the above process with the lowres model as well), but in-game, the model keeps switching back and forth between hi-res and low-res.  I've checked around and know that this can be an issue when using too many polygons in your hi-res model, but if anything, the new model has LESS polys than the original because I removed the backpack.

Oh one more thing that might be causing the issue: I wanted to use a new texture (but I'm really bad with the XSI material editor functionality) so I duplicated the original TGA, renamed it from "imp_inf_stormtrooper.tga" to "imp_inf_stormtroope2.tga", edited with gimp, exported with RLE compression UNCHECKED, opened the .msh files in a text editor, and did find/replace on all the corresponding .tga files to match the new stormtroope2 one.

I'm attaching an image of the model/hierarchy in XSI (it's a minimal poly First Order trooper I'm working on for a map in that era.)

Am I doing something wrong? - I'm most wary about how I'm doing the .tga switching, as I'm not applying it to the mesh in XSI itself...

Thanks for the help! :)
#8
In attempting to figure out how to allow for vehicles to spawn outside a base's control region, I've figured out (using the stock Bespin: Platforms map), that for any CP, the CAPTURE region is the region that defines where units must stand to both take AND keep a base - and the CONTROL region is the region that defines the "area" that the base controls - i.e. where the vehicles can spawn and not explode if left alone.  So if you need vehicles to spawn over a large area, just make that control region huge - and you don't have to worry about that base being really hard to capture.

In the various tutorials on adding bases/vehicles and the regions concerning them, it is (unintentionally) made to seem like the control region is for where units need to stand in order to keep a base under their control.

I'm fairly certain that probably everybody already knows about this, and it's only new to me :slap: but if not, then I'm glad to have helped somebody out! :)
#9
Released Assets / Idren's SWBF1 Sky Compilation
February 26, 2017, 04:22:28 PM
I decided to make an Easy-To-Use Sky Compilation to help people to be able to add skies to their worlds with more ease.  I tried my hand at modding SWBF1 back in 2006, and could never get a sky to work! So this is for all the people who are VERY new to modding SWBF, and need an extra helping hand with getting skies up and running.  I hope people find this useful! :wave:

Name: Idren's Sky Compilation
Contents: .SKY, .MSH, .TGA, .ODF files
Compatible with: SWBF1 (idk anything about swbf2 modding so if it works, let me know and I'll update this!)  :)
Download Size: 9MB
How long it took me: 6 hours

Description:
     1) A compilation of all the SWBF1 stock skies.  Each sky has its own folder that contains an easy installation guide, and all files needed to put the sky into your map.  This includes a normalized ModID.sky file that adds the sky to your world without having to do much .sky file editing (you'll have to change the lowres terrain section to match the terrain you're using - or just stick with the standard geonosis one.)
     2) This also has a separate folder of Dome Objects (death star, ion cannon, cloud city, mountain ranges, clouds, etc.) each with an easy to follow installation guide.
     3) A simplified / more explicit tutorial for adding Sky Dome Flyers (capital ships, etc.) to your world.

Credits:
     Psych0fred for the sky tutorial (also included)
     LucasArts & Pandemic for the assets
     Idren (me) for the compilation, etc.
     
#10
I'm starting to get the feeling I'm starting too many new topics...?

I'm working on a single map with a custom imperial Side. I've been trying to get the icons/holograms for all the imperial stuff to change using a custom common.lvl file.  I've gotten it to work for bases but it's not working for all the rest of the instances where the hologram of the imperial icon (the .msh) is used: spawn screen, victory/defeat screen, and the player stats/awards screens.

This is also the case with the .tga imperial icon.  I think the only place it shows up is right after you select the map it shows up next to the rebel icon.

I've been able to get all of this to work by swapping out the game's common.lvl with my own, but I want to be able to do it without changing the icons for every map in the game.

Also, when running SPTest I'm getting a lot of messages like this:

     Message Severity: 2
     D:\src\FRONTLINE_PC\FrontLine\Source\FLEffect.cpp(180)
     FLEffect::Read: duplicate effect class name (7f7fc4c9)!

for effects/objects/collision meshes etc.  I'm assuming this is because I've got duplicates of what's in the game's common.lvl in my common.lvl - what's the best way around this?

Thanks so much everybody for all the continued help you've been giving!
#11
Hi,

I downloaded "Sereja's Millenium Falcon" to see if I was able to get it into a map as a flyer (it's awesome by the way!)  :cheer: And I was able to get it into the game, but when switching gunner positions, it crashes the game.  SPTest gives me this error on the crash:

     Message Severity: 3
     D:\src\FRONTLINE_PC\FrontLine\Platform\PC\pcFirstPerson.cpp(60)
     FirstPerson::LoadLVLFile: Could not open FPM\all\imptiftr.lvl

and I think it's related to some more errors that show up earlier when loading the map:

     Message Severity: 2
     D:\src\FRONTLINE_PC\FrontLine\Source\Weapon.cpp(1410)
     Weapon 'weapons.all.weap.fly_falcon_cannon2' is not localized for stats page

     Message Severity: 2
     D:\src\FRONTLINE_PC\FrontLine\Source\Weapon.cpp(1410)
     Weapon 'weapons.all.weap.fly_falcon_cannon' is not localized for stats page

     Message Severity: 3
     D:\src\FRONTLINE_PC\FrontLine\Source\EntityFlyer.cpp(2881)
     Flyer "all_fly_falcon" weapon 2 "all_weap_fly_xwing_ptorpedo2" not found

It's only crashing when switching gunner positions IF there are ai units on board. (I think)
If I spawn quick, grab the falcon, and take off flying Solo, switching positions doesn't lead to a crash.  However, I think when an AI unit either gets in first, OR if they get in and then  the AI has to fly when you switch positions it's crashing the game.

I thought maybe it was an issue with there being no first-person option, but I've tested every gunner position and cockpit view in 1st person and it doesn't crash - so I'm not too sure what's going on.

Thanks for any and all help!
#12
Has anyone figured a way to make a chrome-like texture for SWBF1?

I thought I saw one of sereja's models (a Naboo Starfighter in a WIP somewhere) that had a chrome looking underside, I'd love to be able to add some chrome (or a nice fake chrome) to the game - a re-skin / model for a captain phasma troop would be pretty cool.  ;)
#13
SWBF1 Modding / ZeroEdit Runtime Error! crash on startup
February 14, 2017, 12:55:53 PM
To begin, I've already looked through every topic brought up by the search: "ZeroEditor"
The Error:
____________________________________________________________
|"Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library                                                 |
| ```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````|
|     Runtime Error!                                                                              |
|                                                                                                        |
|     Program: C:\LucasArts\BFBuilder\DataTat4\zeroeditor.exe               |
|     (also tried at "C:\BFBuilder\DataTat4\zeroeditor.exe)                       |
|                                                                                                       |
|     This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an       |
|     unusual way.                                                                              |
|     Please contact the application's support team for more information. |
|                                                                     _______________       |
|                                                                    |         OK           |       |
|                                                                    |______________|       |
|___________________________________________________________|

I'm running Windows 10 Home edition, (OS Build 14393.693)
No graphics card - just integrated graphics w/an intel i7 processor

My attempts to fix so far:
1) ZeroEditor.exe has permission to Modify, Read & execute, Read, Write.
2) ZeroEditor.exe has the box checked to "Run this program as an administrator"
3) It's the Updated version of ZeroEditor (the Jan 2005 one) and has the boundary fix installed.

4) I have also tried to run it in compatibility mode for: Windows XP (Service Pack 2), Windows XP (Service Pack 3), and even Windows 98/ Windows Me

5) my config.ini file has the "handleException = 1" line (I've switched it back and forth between 1 and 0 for every configuration attempt).

6) I downloaded the 3DAnalyzer and forced SoftwareTnL.

7) Reboot

Things I haven't done: (that apparently can cause crashes)
1) Modified anything to do with Sky
2) Done anything with Boundaries

Order of Events:
This morning, I was able to use ZeroEditor just fine! I haven't done any editing (or even touching) of boundaries yet even though I have the fix installed, just moved a couple objects around and raised some terrain.  All was working fine and I moved on to some (imported) SIDE edits. I did a bunch of localization stuff - renaming sides, all the first/last names for the rebels, renaming alliance/imperial troop types & weapons (all works fine),  I messed around with some of my ODFs (all_weap_inf_rifle, all_weap_inf_bowcaster, imp_weap_inf_rifle) and their respective ords. Then I cleaned/munged, started up SPTest to check out my edits (repeat odf/sptests several times) then decided to grab some camera shots of the level in SPTest.  Realized my SPTest was never putting out a log - so I gave it "Read & execute, Read, and Write" permissions. - then created my camera shots, put them in my .lua files, ran SPTest again and everything went well.
     (I also tried using the common.lvl builder in there at some point but couldn't get a specific edit working (not sure where to put the common.lvl file after creating it) (I also have an edited msh (com_icon_imperial) in the DataTat4\Common\MSHs folder - but ZE was still working after that edit.))

Then I decided to go into ZeroEditor again to start doing some AI Planning, and now I'm getting the Runtime Error every time I start up.

I've tried running ZeroEditor for all my maps, and it's the same thing every time.
I've even restarted the computer to just reset everything, and still no luck.

I'm not sure what happened to cause it to crash/stop working (one thing I remember that this morning, ZE had the little "administrator" icon on it, and now it doesn't - even though it's set to run as administrator.)

I'm really hoping someone knows what I can do/try to get this working.  I find it odd that it has been working fine the past week or so, and just midday today stopped being able to start.

Any ideas? (Thanks for reading)

::EDIT:: It's FIXED!!  :cheer: All I did was go back into ZeroEditor.exe's properties then compatibility - set it to not run in compatibility mode for anything, and set it to NOT be run as an administrator.  Then tried running it by Right-Clicking on it and then running it as an administrator... I have no idea why that worked (especially since it wasn't working that way before.  But I'm glad it's working atm!

Sorry for such a quick post/self-fix - but maybe it'll be helpful to somebody.
#14
Hi,

I'm working on my first mod in a while, and I'm hoping for some help figuring out how to make edits to a side.  Specifically I'm trying to re-skin / make various edits to the IMP side (renames, retextures, etc.) but only for my new map/world - and not for the entire game. (I don't want to overwrite the game's standard setup.)

I've been searching / reading tons of topics that are somewhat related to this on the site, but I haven't been able to find a tutorial / someone else's question regarding this specific portion.

I'm still a newbie when it comes to anything outside of ZeroEdit.

Thanks in advance!
#15
Welcome Center / Hi all!
February 07, 2017, 09:10:49 PM
Hey everybody!
I've been playing BF1 and 2 since their respective releases - and loved working with BFBuilder back when it was first getting going and when filefront was still up and running.  I've recently been wanting to get back into modding/map-making and discovered this place! I'm THRILLED :cheer: that there's still an active community for this stuff!  My mods in the past mostly consisted of just level building - though I could never change the sky to be anything but Geonosis, and I could never do much of anything but use ZeroEdit to build maps.

Now, I'm a Computer Science student and I've finished up a 3D Modeling/Animation minor - and I'm looking to get back into the modding scene with some more skills! :)

- bboettcher