Battlefield Heroes'42, The mod that started it all.... :D Options

[Apache Thunder]

Ever wanted to play BFheroes in first person? Ever wanted to play it with bots?

Well this mod is for you! This is the first complete conversion mod that I have made. My DCU mod is more of a enhancement of DC, BF242 isn't of my creation, and GCN_Mario_Kart still leaves a lot to be desired.

Anyways here are some of my videos that show the development of this mod:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXTHChjyQBA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y6i-Qb-xzo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uznM7-2ZviU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnnsrIk3-eM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyjbaTLGDWU


Features:

1. All vehicles ported.
2. All maps since 1.25 update ported.
3. Jetpacks ported.
4. Most standard issue handweapons ported. No supers/ubers and no I have no plans on porting them!.
5. Features TurboJet and RippinRocket customization items for jetpack kits on Midnight Mayham. All weapons and items found in this mod are free and do not require purchase of any kind!
6. Features a modified HUD to look like the real game and sound effects too!
7. Doesn't lag as much as the real game.
8. Many other things to long to fit in this post.
9. Update from December of 2010 brought over soldier meshes. Now has a few customization items and the classic soldier meshes from the early closed beta phase of BFHeroes.


New v3.0 Download links:

Client Installer:

BFH42_Setup_v3.exe

Non-installer version for advanced users. extract to the mods folder of your Battlefield 1942 game installation:
bfheroes_v3_client.rar

Server files: (only server admins who have dedicated servers need these)

bfheroes42_v3_serverfiles.rar



Changes in v2.5:

1. Updated ContentCRC32.
2. Disabled Prone. As a side affect, bots are more aggressive now.
3. Made small tweaks to AI behavior wieghts.
4. Added winter version of Midnight Mayhem.
5. Reload animations for RPGs finally fixed. The rocket now shows properly in the soldier's left hand during reload.
6. Corrected crosshair for planes. Planes now use the correct crosshair that was used in the real game.
7. More HUD changes. Changed minimap frame, weapon bar appearence, vehicle health icon position, etc.
8. Ball widget moved to commando kits. Wrench added to Soldier class.
9. Invisible tracers added to rapid fire weapons to reduce lag. (Bullet Flyby sound effect moved to the tracer templates)
10. Re-animated the creek texture to make it more smooth.
11. Altered JetPack behavior to function more like the BFH jetpacks.
12. Changed sound effects for the Jetpack to use the BFH ones.
13. Redid minimap of Riverside Rush.
14. Redid minimap for Riverside Rush Nights and hand edited lightmaps to improve uniformity of lit windows.
15. Added night conversion of Alpine Assault.
16. Added winter conversion of Midnight Mayhem.
17. Edited lightmaps of Victory Village Nights to make the windows more uniformly lit.


Requirements:

1. Battlefield 1942 v1.61b
2. Last version of Punkbuster for online multiplayer if you wish to go online with this.
3. No other mods required to run this mod!

I will continue to update this mod with new stuff once it becomes available and can be ported in a reasonable amount of time.

This post has been edited by Apache Thunder: Feb 29 2012, 07:44 PM

[Apache Thunder]

Yeah the main goal was getting the cartoony feel from BFH ported to BF1942. Porting modern weapons in a mostly WWII mod seemed kinda redundent. Especially since BF1942 has DesertCombat and the BF242 mod which I worked on making a closer representation of BF2. Thus I focused more on the classic features of BFH and worked from there. So nope, no modern weapons.

The closest you'll get to anything modern was that moon map I added to the mod.

Though if you look closely I did port two modern weapons. The turret MGs on the tanks were a new addition in v3.0 and they use the meshes and sounds from a couple modern weapons (the PKM and M249 I think). They still fire the standard MG round I had coded for the Gunner MG. So other then having less bullet spread, they won't be a big step up compared to everything else in the mod.

Also, if EAsy team ever had made a helicopter vehicle, that would probably be the only exception I'd ever make. I just love helicopters and if EAsy added them, I would have ported them in a heart beat. But for now they don't have them nor the matching map they would have likely made to feature them. And I won't go as far as make one up. The only vehicle I added to the mod that doesn't exist in BFH were the boats and the modified tanks on the moon map. That's as far as you will see me go in terms of going off track compared to where the BFH game is going. Most other things I've added that weren't in BFH were mainly small details and better features. Like the ice in Perilous Port Winter and more and better night conversions of the BFH maps. The way I lightmapped the night maps was one other major step up from what BFH had at the time. Though they seem to be finally catching up to me in terms of night map quality since they FINALLY had the sense to at least try and get some added light effects baked into the lightmaps in there Perilous Port map. Their version of it wasn't quite as well lit like I wanted, but that was still a big step up from the old boring night maps they had before where all they really changed was the skydome and light coding changes. (since those night maps were so lame, they didn't even bake new lightmaps for them. It was all just coding tweaks to make them "night" in appearance)

So yeah the main focus of my mod was to put BFH into a first person slightly more hardcore environment but with the same weapon load out and balance that BFH had. The modern weapons and "super" weapons they added later on threw off the balance and I decided to pass on porting badly balanced weapons into my mod.

This post has been edited by Apache Thunder: Aug 7 2012, 04:05 PM

[Dnamro]

Since BF42 does not have handweapon customization/upgrade capability like BF2 and BF2142, the only way that I can think of to add the 'super/special' weapons would be as pickups. One issue is that a pickup kit is not just one weapon, but a whole kit. It could be fun as a secret power up type pickup kit hidden away somwhere on the map. The power up could also give the player certain abilities like reduced damage, high jump, in addition to the special weapon. The bots can't use pickups, so it doesn't become 'a fragfest because everyone has the special weapon', but when playing with others, it does turn into a 'kill the guy with the special weapon so we can steal it' type gameplay. Camping out on the special item pickup location can also be an issue in multiplayer.

The BF42 mod, transformers, has the power ups on some maps which does give a more powerful weapon, the ability to jump jet, and increased health.

First Strike Star Wars mod for BF2142 has special items, such as a bounty hunter jet pack and weapon, hidden as special pickups, but only in single player because of the multiplayer issues.

So, if it were added to BFH, it would be best to add as pickup kits and only in sp and possibly coop.

[Dnamro]

Reinstalled Bf42 and loaded up the mod. Lunar Base totally rocks!!! The low gravity is a blast. Loved taking a jeep and jumping over craters. The whole map looks great. Loved the looked of the lunar tanks, but missed having a machine gun on them.

I never got anywhere with trying to create the boat & landingcraft pathmaps for wake Island. It's a non standard pathmap, so the usual texture map to pathmap conversions did not work. Did you try adjusting the pathmap settings before trying to create them?

[Apache Thunder]

I think the main issue was that the pathmaps didn't completely get along with the size of the map. There was some issues trying to create the secondary pathmaps. The boat path maps and landing craft pathmaps I could generate and edit, but when trying to create new smallones with the debugger (as that's the only thing I know of that does it right) the debugger refuses since it's unable to create the LandingCraft3Level5Map raw files and so on for the Boat ones. It was trying to create one that was too small. Or the conversion tools I used to convert the 8bit raws back to normal wouldn't create the level 5s without crashing. I think because of the size of the main pathmap, the level 5 pathmap couldn't exist and the debugger wouldn't touch them when I tried to make new smallones.

I think in order to fix this I could resize the hieghtmap and world size so that the map is twice the size it is now (the extra space just being ocean) and then use combat area settings to keep the combat area the same. That way the out of bounds area can still be "pathmapped" and thus be seen as a larger map. Wicked Wake is exactly half in size to the vanilla BF1942 Wake Island.

But since I'm already done with making new versions of the mod, I won't really be redoing any of the maps.

If you can get the boats/landing craft working, I could still put together a small update to the mod. But as for doing major work on the mod myself, I've retired from that unfortunately.

This post has been edited by Apache Thunder: Aug 18 2012, 10:11 AM

[ridgeraiser]

BF Heroes 42
BF 242
DC Unauthorisated
DC Global Front

all that Projects from you i like it APACHE.:-)
BF Heroes v4.0 is more better than the last v3.0.:-)
The Moon Map is class and the shooting canon boats i like them very much.

I will hope you can fix the wheel shooting flat effects and put it in a next update if do you have time and like?

[Apache Thunder]

No unfortunately there is a bug where vehicle occupants get killed if a child object of a vehicle gets killed. Game thinks the main vehicle died (but it in fact didn't), so it kills anyone inside the vehicle. No way around this, so that idea has been scrapped indefinitely.

Also I neglected to add this new video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAylLtlr1GY

This is a preview of v4.5. Progress on it has been slow lately, but I'm just about done. I've got Cajunwolf looking at the two new maps I ported and he will get to adding AI to them when he has time. Until then, I still have to add the undergrowth and port the new LVCP boat mesh, but lately I'm been too ADHD to really sit down and do this.

v4.5 will have upgraded winter maps and two new maps among a few other small things. The "day" winter maps all now use the cloud system that I recently discovered how to get working. So for those maps there is a better cloud effect inplace. (I had chosen to use the BF2 skydome with the channel 2 uvmap swapped to channel 1. Seems to get good results)

Night maps will still use the old school BIK texture method since the BF42 cloud mesh system doesn't blend the far off edges right so the edges are too bright and doesn't blend well with dark fog settings and/or main skydome.

This post has been edited by Apache Thunder: Feb 1 2013, 07:25 PM

[Apache Thunder]

Been some time since I last posted, but that doesn't mean I haven't stopped working on the mod. I've decided to skip v4.5 and make it v5.0 when it gets released. It's already got 3 new maps and a host of other changes piling on over time as I continue to slowly add things.

But one big change I have recently finished.

I've brought a classic map back and it is reborn in the style of Battlefield Heroes!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOX-_ZI7Dcw

I've improved it with a night conversion.


BFH doesn't have a desert themed map and thus no desert themed sky dome texture. So I've simply made a gradient with the same color as the fog used in the map and layered it on top and merged the texture so that the sky texture gets along with the fog settings. Certainly didn't want to ditch the fog color El Alamein originally had, so I modified the sky texture instead. The cloud system helps improve it as well.

Both make use of the cloud system I got working awhile back. I finally got some good tweaks to make the cloud system work well on a dark map like the night map. The day version has the clouds set to a large tile scale, so it looks as if there is literally dust in the sky. (much like my Battleaxe example map)

It adds some good atmosphere to the desert map.

Oh and I also ported the helicopters they just released today. I tacked those in at the last minute.

I initially started work in porting El Alamein into the mod around 2010/2011, but only in the last month that I finally decided to finish it. In the state it was in before I finished it, was a mere shell of a map with just a few BFH statics and vanilla statics, but in a few short days, everything was in including the cloud system and modified fog settings.

The night conversion I finished a couple days back.

As you can see, I've decided to take a little more creative freedom with the mod and will add a few more things not actually present in the real BFH. Though the helicopters are indeed available in the real Battlefield Heroes game. They almost as fun to fly as they are in BF1942. But BF1942 still wins, because nothing beats that classic BF1942 heli flight physics that DesertCombat originally brought to the game.

Not sure if I mentioned this or not, but the damage system has gotten a revamp as well. I have decided to take the mod in a more hardcore direction since this is a first person shooter game after all that I've ported this game to.

Thus now all the weapons have much more reasonable damage for a FPS game. You won't have to pore 2 or more clips into a soldier to kill them anymore. I've also ported some more modern weapons (as seen in the above video in places) I haven't buffed the explosives a whole lot though (except RPGS vs tanks), since I'm keeping the unlimited ammo system (kinda too lazy at this point to add ammo boxes and code in ammo supply depots, not to mention my HUD isn't really setup for it right now). I added a 100 round mag size to the helicopters before they have to reload (just like in real BFH). The amount of magazines is of coarse unlimited, but it's the first vehicle in BFH that had a limited mag size. I had to move a few more things in the HUD to accommodate that. Since I was already working on the weapon selection bar HUD, I ended up making some other improvements to it. Like the weapon bar staying on screen indefinitely (unless you are in a vehicle or using external camera view).

I recall BFH has the vehicle icon right above the vehicle health bar. I might move it there at some point and will try and make the "dots" that indicate positions of a vehicle in the vehicle icon become numbers instead. Will see if the meme file will let me do that.

Also, I only had to redo the pathmaps. With the StrategicAreas, I was able to divide the positions/sizes by half (since I've made the map half the size of the original given that Wicked Wake was half the size of Wake Island) and only really had to do tweaks to the SAs for the mountain pass areas.

But aside from that I was able to preserve the original AI that Dice set up for the map despite resizing the whole map to half. I tiled the terrain hieghtmap while I was at it so it tiles better then the original.

The terrain texture is a combined resolution of 16384x16384. because of how I tiled the hieghtmap and the fact that I replaced all the statics with BFH equivalents, I couldn't used the original pre-baked texture Dice made anymore. I didn't want to half the size of the terrain textures as well either since i would lose shadow detail and the detail in the detail layer I created with Battlecraft.

So what I did is that I've made the main texture using Editor42. But I've also made a second one using Battlecraft. I copied over some terrain detail textures from BFH and converted them to BMP files and set them up so BC will use them when making the terrain textures. BC uses the material map to determine which BMP textures gets applied where. (where as Editor42 has a whole other method of doing terrain textures). So I created a detail layer of sorts. Then combined the two via a Soft light layer blend in GIMP to get the final result. It's not quite like the detail BF2 maps have with their more advanced detail tiling system and such, but it's better then the Editor42 texture alone.

This post has been edited by Apache Thunder: Apr 17 2013, 10:34 PM

[Dnamro]

Truly awesome work! I am excited to try out the mod with the new maps and more deadly damage system. The old system was too frustrating for me. Very nice looking BFH recreation of El Alamien!

When I was helping out the BF42 transformers mod, we used the Secret Weapons Fletner helicopter code because bots can fly it with no problem. I can send you the code if your interested in taking a look.

[Apache Thunder]

Wow, I completely forgot that Secret Weapons has the Flettner. So BFH ended up using the same one?

I have the expansion packs and found the code for it. (they packed it in a map instead of the main mod)

The vehicle doesn't have any AI code. (the map has no ai either). So if you got AI code for it, then sure I'm interested. I will add the rudder wing and replicate the hover engine setup the vehicle has. The BFH versions is pretty damn close in size so I bet I can get it's flight physics to match closely. Also BFH had it's center of mass near the center of the hull instead of the rotor mounts like BF1942 has them, but I don't think this will be big enough of an issue. The center of mass offset difference between the two is only 0.5 meters roughly on the Z axis. The front/back line up pretty well though the BF1942 version's hull is slightly longer in length. But it seems even on both ends so they are both centered on the Y axis the same. Also, the center hover engine is also slightly higher in elevation. Where as the little bird and most other DC heli's had them all at the same level.

This post has been edited by Apache Thunder: Apr 18 2013, 01:35 PM

[Dnamro]

I will find the AI code and send it to you. When I saw the BFH heli, I thought it looked very similar to the Flettner.

[Apache Thunder]

Yeah. The object name for the vehicle is ger_helicopter_flettner. So it's without a doubt the same vehicle. I guess they just happened to decide to use the Flettner as the National helicopter. Only the BFH version has actual gun mounts on the mesh. (but no missile launcher) Unlike the vanilla version, it has two gun barrels and not one. The bot AI I have for it now seems to work, but they aren't good at aiming at things and when they do manage to get their guns aimed at someone, they fire a short burst and then give up. They don't crash them like they did the original DC helicopters though, so they do have better control over them then in DC.

Also, I had to offset the lod object position on the main PCO since the center of mass difference was apparently enough to cause the flettner to be quite unstable in flight compared to the one in SW. Rather then re-export all the meshes to match, I just offset the entire lod bundle. Seems to have had the same effect. So now it operates pretty much the same as the vanilla one. I gave it the same mass and inertiaModifier too.

It drops on zero throttle a little too fast for me. I may increase the hover engine's minRotation value just a tad.

By the way, the Royal helicopter is the Sikorsky. But from what I can tell that one is not in the SW expansion pack. Curious why they only did one helicopter and only the one for the Germans.

This post has been edited by Apache Thunder: Apr 18 2013, 04:37 PM

[Apache Thunder]

Forgot to mention this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9d_HV7J8z8

That one shows a few more the other handweapons I ported and gives you a better idea on what the damage settings are currently like.

Also shown in the bullet penetration system I set up for a couple of the weapons.

This thread I made details how it works:

http://www.battlefieldsingleplayer.com/for...showtopic=17355