Star Wars Battlefront Uprising [Official Production Thread]

[Giftheck]

EDIT 01/11/2015: As of today, this mod has moved beyond theory and into early production.

I must stress that at the moment, this is just an idea. I have very little tangible and want to finish Expanded first. I have started a new mod document for this though and am quite far along with the theory.

That being said, I want to make a new mod once I'm finished with Expanded. It will be titled Star Wars Battlefront Uprising. It will take longer to make, not because of the units, but because I intend to make a custom campaign. At the moment, I'm throwing around ideas for the campaign's storyline, but I have an idea on how a more traditional campaign may be done in SWBF. Ginev's ideas for campaign-style maps in SWBF are what I will be basing mine off, but I also have an idea to make it a little like the campaign for Elite Squadron (IE you don't play as clones, you're essentially the only one on your 'team', clones would essentially spawn as native allies). Much like Ginev's maps, it would essentially be a 'straight line' of command posts that you capture and use as checkpoints (here is where it differs from Elite Squadron due to technical limitations: you get spawn tickets to allow you to change classes a limited number of times as you can't change classes at command posts)

The title isn't entirely a coincidence. The mod has some small inspirations from the mobile game Star Wars Uprising.

As I said, at the moment, this idea of a mod is just an idea.

[Giftheck]

I've started working on new unit models for this mod. Nothing much, but you should recognise some of these:











Some of these are difficult to see at first glance, but I've made the Clone Trooper helmets more detailed. You do see a MEC Trooper there too but it's not a 100% faithful remake as it uses my Purge Trooper body as a base and much like the Purge Trooper you see here I wanted to do my own spin on it.

[Unit 33]

I had forgotten about the MEC trooper. I remember 90% of online players back in the day used that body painted fluorescent pink. It was very silly.

Great work so far!

[Giftheck]

Thanks

So far, this mod is pretty much just a lot of theory. But I'm happy with what I'm coming up with so far. I decided the campaign story will be a retelling of the story of Elite Squadron written in a way that fits the new continuity.

I want to port the Elite Squadron maps too, as well as some new maps based on their idea. And I'm very tempted to try out seeing if seamless space-to-ground works in SWBF. Obviously some things won't work IE we can't have Ion Cannons.

[Giftheck]

I'm actually liking the idea of this mod a lot more than Expanded. I'm very, very tempted to abandon Expanded and focus on this. So far, I have what I want from the classes sorted out and I'm in the process of writing the map descriptions for the Campaign. This mod will also include maps ported from Elite Squadron, such as Coruscant, Kashyyyk, Dantooine and Tatooine, and a unique campaign mode.

[Ginev]

Lol Gistech.It seems we have the same ideas.Before 2 months i starded my own big project and i have plans of making what Free Radical made.I also have some sort of Ground to space transition.Have you seen my pre alpha test map in youtube?If not here is the link:

[Giftheck]

Yeah, I did see that the ideas are similar. I'm not 100% sure if seamless space-to-ground can be done in SWBF1 though, but my idea isn't so much a remake of Battlefront III (not really possible in the SWBF1 engine) but a reimagining of it designed to fit to the restrictions of the first game's engine, and the story (minimal though it has to be) is retold to fit into the new continuity.

It's interesting that Free Radical believed nobody could replicate the seamless space-to-ground tech they came up with, when a 10-year-old engine clearly can do it, maybe even the first game's engine.

[Gold Man]

Yeah, I did see that the ideas are similar. I'm not 100% sure if seamless space-to-ground can be done in SWBF1 though, but my idea isn't so much a remake of Battlefront III (not really possible in the SWBF1 engine) but a reimagining of it designed to fit to the restrictions of the first game's engine, and the story (minimal though it has to be) is retold to fit into the new continuity.

It's interesting that Free Radical believed nobody could replicate the seamless space-to-ground tech they came up with, when a 10-year-old engine clearly can do it, maybe even the first game's engine.

I'd think ground-to-space would work, however wouldn't the map have to have a massive skybox to hold the ships beyond/within maximum viewing distance of a player on the ground? Or is it more so the transition of the atmosphere from a sunny Tatooine to a dark, star-covered space that makes it difficult?

Naturally I would've thought making such a map would already be possible if you had a large skybox, however I'm guessing there's alot more work underlying this for SWBF1, no?

[Giftheck]

I'm not 100% sure. Large skyboxes would be no problem. The way it looks like these work is the skybox mesh that is to be placed in the map goes over the land portion and the space skybox is defined in the .sky file.

ATM, I'm trying to clean up the Dantooine map from Elite Squadron: I've successfully ripped the meshes but the UVs are all messed up.

[Giftheck]

Okay, so here's what to expect from the classes in this mod. I have five set classes. Owing to the way I have things set up, there won't be any aerial classes (no Dark/Jump Trooper or Jet Trooper) and there won't be a Droideka unit either.

-SOLDIER: Is armed with a Blaster Rifle and Thermal Detonators. Average health. Units: Clone Trooper (REP), Battle Droid (CIS), Stormtrooper (IMP), Rebel Soldier (ALL)
-ENGINEER: Is armed with Light Rifle, Fusion Cutter, Detpacks, Health/Ammo Packs. Less-than-average health. Units: Clone Engineer (REP), Droid Engineer (CIS), Imperial Engineer (IMP), Rebel Engineer (ALL)
-SNIPER: Is armed with Sniper Rifle, Commando Pistol, Recon Droid. Low health. Units: Clone Assassin (REP), Droid Assassin (CIS), Navy Commando (IMP), Rebel Marksman (ALL)
-ASSAULT: Is armed with Missile Launcher, Electrostaff or Force Pike dependant on faction, Shotgun Mines. Higher-than-average health. Units: Assault Trooper (REP), IG Magnaguard (CIS), Heavy Trooper (IMP), Rebel Vanguard (ALL)
-BRUTE: Their armaments are different to the main classes but they all have Tri Shot blasters. High health. Units: MEC Trooper (REP), Super Battle Droid (CIS), Purge Trooper (IMP), Wookie Warrior (ALL).

The unfinished design document reaches about 15 pages thus far.

This mod's design is also meant to be more modular than previous mods I have made, which means I can make the side files smaller as I won't need to include, say, the same MEC Trooper every single time I create a side.

[Ginev]

Just a little side question.I know that Battlefront 1 and 2 zero editors can make the terrain go to -327 to +327.So is it possible someone somehow to hack the editor so we can increase that number?This will allow us to make even bigger maps in vertical terms.

[Giftheck]

I'm afraid I'm no good when it comes to program hacking. Otherwise, I'd have found out how to extend the memory for both models and sounds in the game for sure.

I've been putting together a few models. I have an AT-MP that needs rigging and animating (it's based off the TFU2 one rather than the Commander one, I got it down from over 11,000 triangles to 5,728 - I'm wondering if it can be made to fit the AT-RT skeleton with the leg bones repositioned). As a joke, and mainly for practice, I rigged a Mickey Mouse model to the Jawa skeleton. Probably won't be included in the mod, but it's ideal for testing de-detailing models.

[Ginev]

I munge one model which is 30 000 triangles and it worked ingame however the munge process took more than 30 minutes   Ingame the model worked fine however some close objects infront of me switched from high to low poly which mean the game can't handle too much polys   Only if we knew and how to increase that limit...

[Giftheck]

The limits are console-based. I've enveloped high-res models so that they work as low_1 models and there's not even a hint of a frame dropout or game slowdown.

BattleBelk made custom launchers for both the main exe and SP_Test, but he stopped modding years ago, he's unreachable now and nobody else seems to want to write their own launcher program to modify the program to get rid of or decrease these limits.

[Giftheck]

Here's a few work in progress shots of units. Some are for Phase IV, the Campaign Phase (in other words they won't be playable), unless I decide to include hunt maps for you to play around with them.