Hey all!

There's a small tweak to the SWBF 2004 original that I've been wanting to do since I started playing these games on PS2 as a kid: the frontal death animation of infantry units (where they fall backwards into an awkward "twisty" pose on the ground is jarringly bad in my opinion. I have been playing around with the idea to switch it up, preferrably to the death animation when hit from the model's right (the one where they fall ontheir back, arms outstretched).

Now, my limited knowledge and experience in programming and modding tells me "I only need to open the files and switch frontal hit death animation to the hit-from-the-right one, and all will be well!". However, I cannot find the animation hooks anywhere in the game files -- the place where "hit front = frontal death anim" could be changed to "hit front = right-side death anim". I am beginning to suspect the animation hooks are baked deeper into the system.

Can anyone here give some advice to achieving my quest, point me in the right direction, or better yet, show me if someone's already done a mod that tweaks death animations for infantry? 

Thanks for your time!

-Militintti

OK. I did check a few times over the weekend and didn't see anyone (I'm running BF2 btw), but maybe I just had the wrong times.
Anyone going to be playing this weekend?

Howdy! Generally the servers are more populated on Saturdays/Sundays.  We haven't had too many people on the PC side organizing during the week, but the PS2 servers (BF2 usually) are pretty well populated during the week.  BF1 has a PS2 event tonight.

I probably should make an event soon to check.  Drop in-drop out is better suited for Steam but I always have performance issues there in BF1.

Glad that fixed it.  It's possible there was something with saving the file the way it was, which seems silly, but I just relayed a situation where a file was saving incorrectly due to the formatting of it that wasn't 100% visible.  It's possible something similar happened here.

Let us know if you need anymore help!

Hey guys. Just signed up and installed SWBFspy, but I can only see two servers and they are both empty. Is this a technical problem or just a lack of players?

It's a good check indeed, I went through the files you mentioned and all seemed in order.

I can't pinpoint what fixed it, but while checking all.req I decided to clean up these lines
        "all_inf_smuggler"
        "all_inf_smugglersnow"
        "all_walk_tauntaun"
        "imp_hover_speederbike"
        "tat_hover_landspeeder"
                "all_inf_flanker"


And changed it to this

        "all_inf_smuggler"
        "all_inf_smugglersnow"
                "all_inf_flanker"
        "all_walk_tauntaun"
        "imp_hover_speederbike"
        "tat_hover_landspeeder"

Afterward I was able to load the flanker class into the slot of the smuggler and even the soldier class. The NPCs happily played the new class without issue. I have not been able to reproduce my mistake, so for the time being I assume that I corrected a syntax error while cleaning up the order of the code. Sorry that I did not catch this myself.

When changing the loadout of "all_inf_soldierdesert" the games continues to crash when NPCs join, but I think I can work around that by just replacing the class in it's entirety.

For now I can continue working on the mod, so thanks everyone for the help so far. I hope to share my work with you soon! I am thinking of calling it

"battlefront, with mustard on the side"

Let me make sure you've got your reqs set up correctly, I actually don't think this is the problem because AddUnitClass does NOT crash on load but it's good to check.

• In All.req you added all_inf_flanker correctly
• In the REQs folder, you created the file "all_inf_flanker.req"
• In that file, you formatted it somewhat like this:

ucft
{
REQN
{
"class"
"all_inf_flanker"
}
}

Then:

• You have an odf of all_inf_flanker.odf
• All of your weapons on all_inf_flanker have valid odfs.
• All of your meshs on all_inf_flanker are working.

Crashing when NPCs spawn or you attempt to select it (Can't tell if you tested this) means that something with that class is messed up specifically.  Either the weapons or the class itself could be the culprit.

Let me know what you find next.

Quote from: {AR}MetalKiller on February 18, 2026, 07:09:01 AMHow exactly have you set up your project?
Do you add the new unit class to the all.req file and copy the munged all.lvl file over to the GameData/Data/lvl_pc/Sides/ folder?
Or did you munge the tat2 map and use it from the addon folder?

Yes,I have added the unit to the all.req file and created the file inside the "REQ" folder. Inside the ODF folder I've created the unit itself. After munging I have copied the file ALL.LVL into the "GameData/Data/lvl_pc/Sides/" folder. With this technique I've already created a new unit replacing the darktrooper and modified other ODF values, this works perfectly fine. (and has been a ton of fun)

I did not munge TAT2 into my addon folder.


To give some more context about my process: I run game version 1.3.7 GOG, I have created the mod using BFbuilder pro and us it to munge the SIDE LVLs. The mission.LVL I made using battlebektoolbox.

Quote from: {AR}MetalKiller on February 18, 2026, 07:09:01 AMRegarding your changes to the soldier class: It would be helpful to see what lines you changed in the odf.

These are the only lines I changed and causes the crashes once NPCs spawn. Once I undo these changes the game runs fine again. I've tested this 5+ times.
The oddd thing is that if for example I use the same method to remove the mines from the vanguard, there are no issues whatsoever.

WeaponName1         = "all_weap_inf_rifle"
WeaponAmmo1         = 6
WeaponName2         = "all_weap_inf_pistol"
WeaponAmmo2         = 0
WeaponName3         = "all_weap_inf_thermaldetonator"
WeaponAmmo3         = 3
WeaponChannel3        = 1
//WeaponName4         = "all_weap_inf_crackgrenade"
//WeaponAmmo4         = 3
//WeaponChannel4    = 1

I am starting to think that some AI routine is looking at the loadouts of several classes (rebel soldier, smuggler) and once some classes are changed, they're no longer compatible with the AI routine.

Sorry, should have been more specific.
Your first guess is right.
However, that should not be the problem since you were able to replace the marksman with the new unit.
I initially misread your first post.

ReadDataFile("dc:SIDE\\all.lvl"

How exactly have you set up your project?
Do you add the new unit class to the all.req file and copy the munged all.lvl file over to the GameData/Data/lvl_pc/Sides/ folder?
Or did you munge the tat2 map and use it from the addon folder?



Regarding your changes to the soldier class: It would be helpful to see what lines you changed in the odf.

Ah I see, could you give an example of what the syntax would look like? Or an existing forum thread that goes into more detail? Because I tried several things like:

ReadDataFile("DC:SIDE\\all.lvl"

ReadDataFile("dc\\SIDE\\all.lvl"

ReadDataFile("dc\SIDE\\all.lvl"

And all of them resulted in crashes.