Question on how to swap heroes in the Conversion Pack mod

[gameragodzilla]

So I have the Conversion Pack installed on my copy of Battlefront 2 and it's great. It's nice to see a whole slew of new heroes to play around with. However, my favorite Star Wars character is Kyle Katarn and he's only useable in one map for Conquest, that being Yavin 4 Arena as far as I know. I did later install the Battlefront Extreme mod which adds him to the Kamino and Mustafar maps, but having all these different mods (Conversion Pack, Extreme, Dark Times 1, Zero) installed can easily hit the 500 mission limit as well as making the menu a bit messy. The Era section on some maps can have the options go out of the box, for example.

So I was hoping to be able to tweak some of the other maps to add Katarn in Conquest mode (the mode I prefer playing) and then be able to uninstall Battlefront Extreme (not that it's bad, I just want to clean up my game a bit).

Unfortunately, it seems to my understanding browsing that the only way to properly mod map files is the LUA files, which I can't find for the Conversion Pack. I tried just Hex editing the mission.lvl file directly, but that crashes the game. I tried adding Katarn into the base game's maps using the LUA files provided by the mod tools, but that also doesn't work. I'm at a loss here because the files for this particular hero is part of a mod and I have no idea how to mod him into other maps.

This is my first post here, so I'm not exactly sure where to put this topic, but I would like some help. I tried everything I could think of, tried Googling everything to see what I was doing wrong, but I have no idea what I'm doing.

If any of you guys could help, it'd be very appreciated. Thanks.

[Led]

You will need to make a custom mission LUA for the map you want the character to appear in.  You will need to know the name of the unit that you want to use--and by that I mean the name as specified in the source map mission LUA.  You probably need the names of all other units called in the source map too.

In your custom LUA, you will need to put in these names and --here is the very important part-- call in the custom SIDE.lvl file (where SIDE stands in the for actual name of the file) so that your mission can read the units.

This is a fair bit of work to do.  There is also a possibility that you will get the original modder mad at you for using their sides on another map.  You may also find that there are other items in the source mission LUA that you don't know about.

If you go to www.Gametoast.com, they have a lot of experienced SWBF2 modders that could help you if you approached them in the right way.

[gameragodzilla]

Thanks for the reply. I'll try to head to Gametoast and see if they can help me. I know about the LUA names, as I know for a fact that Kyle Katarn in the conversion pack is called all_hero_kyle_katarn_outcast or all_hero_kyle_katarn_mots depending on which costume I use. Now I think part of the reason hex editing failed and causes a crash is because the name is far too long, so I can't replace names as easily. The custom SIDE stuff, I never thought about.

I'll just try and ask the Gametoast guys, I suppose. This is way more complicated than I originally anticipated. Thanks anyways for the help.

[Led]

Well, instead of hex editing the units into a another map, you could also try hexediting the new map name into the mod's mission.lvl file.

You are right though, that you must have exactly the same number of characters in a replacement string when you hex edit.

[gameragodzilla]

Wouldn't that still require the original LUA files to create a new map to begin with? I did try using the files that came with the original Battlefront 2 and tried adding Katarn into Kamino and Mustafar, but that crashes the game.

If that's totally off-base, I apologize. I've just started getting beyond simple installation and usage.

[Led]

Wouldn't that still require the original LUA files to create a new map to begin with? I did try using the files that came with the original Battlefront 2 and tried adding Katarn into Kamino and Mustafar, but that crashes the game.

If that's totally off-base, I apologize. I've just started getting beyond simple installation and usage.

I was referring to hexediting. 

In any event, LUA files for stock maps are included with the mod tools download for SWBF2.

http://www.swbfgamers.com/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=436

[gameragodzilla]

Ah, I see. I did already try using the stock maps, and while I figured out how to change stock heroes on stock maps, trying to add Conversion Pack characters has proven much more difficult. I did create an account and post a topic on GameToast, so I'm waiting for a moderator to approve it, and then get some of the people who worked on it to help me out, if they can.

Thanks for the help, though.