BFP2 Release 2 Pending Options

[1/2Hawk]

Hi guys -

Just a heads up - PiratePlunder and I have taken some time apart from other projects to knock out a substantial new release for BF Pirates. There are several new ships, aircraft, new weapons and a whole swak of new maps showing off two new gamemodes etc etc. I realize that our early patching for R1 messed up some of the SP capabilities last year, so I thought Id gauge the interest here to see if any of you guys would be willing to work with us to either make SP working straight off the new installer or at least prepared for those that would want to make use of it later?

We'd be happy to pack up the work you guys have already done for us and we can also do some of the heavy lifting adding col3 meshes to the larger statics and coding the ai templates into our stuff ... but theres just so much stuff neither of us know about we could use some advisors. We offer full access to our staff forums and pre-release build files - if interested, shoot me a PM or reply here. Or, if its been your experience that adding SP to mods just doesnt carry a lot of interest, that'd be good to know too.

Thanks!
1/2

[Dnamro]

The boat code is an issue for the bots. Because the cannons are coded as shared PCOs instead of individual PCOs on each boat, the Aitemplates can't be set with the proper position number and it causes the game to crash.

The Dinghy and gnat are rowboats with the camera facing backwards, which results in the bots just sitting in those boats going nowere most of the time. I did have better results with the camera facing forwards.

[Harlock]

Not much activity on the BF Pirates forums. Any news on the update?

[PiratePlunder]

We're currently in (late?) beta testing of R2.

[[TUF]Catbox]

lot's of cool new stuff... more ships... flying keg plane... and more...lol...

[mschoeldgen]

... but still no AI maps . Do you plan to add that in a future update ? Need help ? Drop me a note ( preferably on bfeditor.org ) if you need support . I'd really love to play BFP2 with bots.

[Xenephone]

Have you seen the video interview with Half Hawk on Battlefield Podcast ? No mention of the AI, but some very intriguing Beer powered gliders and trained anti aircraft parrot's

[1/2Hawk]

I did, and boy is that dude a tool or what?

So listen, I know a lot of hard work went into enabling some SP maps and content up in here last year - and we continue to get requests on our public forum about adding this in. Admittedly a SP version of BFP2 isnt something Id be personally interested in playing myself, but I do see the value in enabling guys to play on their own for awhile while waiting for a server to get populated, as opposed to just giving up on the mod. We gave Dnamro full access to our staff forums and files and would be glad to add others who might want to look around and see what can be accomplished if there's interest. I think Dnamro got tied up with RL and other projects, and probably needed a few extra heads to help out besides... but still interested in working with you guys.

I mean, seems easy enough to make SP versions of the boats with the camera and PCO problems made more bot friendly and not use them in our MP maps at least for example. My fear is that we've gone completely off the deep end with a custom python / map setup that enabling bots may not even be possible anymore without a major overhaul. Our conquest files in fact are running the Battleracer code now... I dont know enough about SP to say for sure - you guys can come look to see.

Thing is, we've basically got one musician and two devs left on staff [one with a new baby and the other with a new job taking him out of state every week], plus a few cheerleader/contributors left hanging around of course. But we dont have a single guy with any knowledge of basic AI stuff. Really - not even a clue. Therefore SP isnt going to happen "out of the box" for R2 without some cooperation with you guys (which is why Ive avoided talking about it too much publicly at this point). And that could be as easy as simply getting some advice from y'all about things that would make your lives easier should you decide to continue independent projects here, or onboarding a crew of scallywags from this site into our staff forum and setup a team to make this happen as a part of the official mod. We're not the most hardcore mod team out there obviously - we just do this for fun and to meet other smartypants who like doing this stuff. So we're as flexible as you guys want to be. Just lemme know (here or on the Pirates or Editor sites).

BTW - if you havent been following the news or podcasts... I've collected quite a lot of live action video here:
http://www.youtube.com/1l2Hawk The R2 Maps Preview shows off all our new locations if something there perks your aimeshing fancy. And theres some footage of the new gamemodes, vehicles and weapons in the other vids too.

[Dnamro]

I just contacted 1/2hawk on the Pirates dev forums to let him know that I could take a look to see what I could do. I have been busy with RL. Earlier this year, I integrated the mini-mod AI files into the main mod. The problem with the gnat (rowboat with a cannon) was that the player view is looking backwards, which doesn't work with the bots. The other boats share PCOs which would require seperate PCO coding so that each PCO can have custom AItemplates.

As far as gamemodes, bots only play conquest, but even if the bots don't play the gamemode properly its still good to have team mates helping to fight the enemy.

[Xenephone]

Maybe this is a bit like BF 2142 Titan mode ? The bot's won't do everything but it's nice have them in there doing something.

[Dnamro]

Good News. All the integrated AI is still in the mod and it looks like we are able to fix the game mode conflict issue.

[1/2Hawk]

Dnamro - for the guys here (that you trust anyway), its okay for you to pass them our current R2 build to help convert the newer maps. I put some notes in the AI area of our staff forum for maps I think would go down without a fight.

I also have some SP-only gnats and dinghys with cameras facing the right way that will go up in the next update so keep an eye out for those. Need anything else - just hollar. Can you tell me more about what to do with the ship armaments? Are you saying that instead of adding say (6) identical cannons to the Brig, we'd have to go make like a bunch of unique cannon_frontleft, cannon_frontright, cannon_rearleft, etc etc? That can be done - and probably needs to anyway because the other thing that might fix is the stupid seating chart icon on the HUD. When you switch seats, all six cannons show up as the same icon marker on the boat and its impossible to tell where you're sitting.

This post has been edited by 1/2Hawk: Nov 4 2008, 01:52 PM

[Dnamro]

Yes. That is what I am saying about the ship PCOs. I will play with the deployable cannon with the bots too.

[1/2Hawk]

A public beta of R2 is coming out today... the download links will be posted in a news item as soon as we get the files hosted. We spent a lot of time getting all our vehicles and weapons AI ready, made some navmeshes for more maps and even played with custom bot behavior. Unfortunately we ran out of time to get it all nailed down perfectly before our deadline for a public beta. But the stuff is still in the build to expand upon. We are going to let EA promote an official release of R2 first week of January... so, again if there are any of you guys willing to come help us out over the next couple weeks - there's still time to get SP working right.

[Dnamro]

1/2 Hawk has been very pro AI. He implemented several suggested changes to support sp and coop support. He even added ai support to some more maps and added ai templates to most of the vehicles.
There were still some boat ai issues. Most of Ez's navmeshes are in the mod now. The new CTF gamemode was tested and found to be sp compatible but there was not enough time to fix up proper strategic areas to properly support it for this release. The new zombie gamemode was also tested with bots but would ctd after loading the map during the zombie reassignments.

This will be an awesome release!

[ghostwriter_dor]

It’s alive, it’s ALIVE!

Hurrah! BF2 Pirates for SP!

I know these guys are generally MP enthusiasts but, this mod was just dying to be converted to SP. Ahoy Pirate Bots! Your ship has come in!