I love the SP campains in BZ2 and think there are many awsome maps in the single player missions of BZ2 and FE, and I was wondering if there was a Map Pack that has converted some of these existing SP maps into IA/MPI versions ? (I am not sufficiently familiar with the map editor to do this)
Is there a set of extra maps that works well with 1.3pb4a and thats easy to install?
i converted the FE map 'Tranquility' to a useable PB4a map.
it does tend to freeze up occasionally however because of the water bug. That hopefully will be fixed soon, its a beta issue not a map issue.
Its kicking around here somewhere, or you can find it on http://www.bz2md.com
It shouldn't be to hard, note I don't do it...
Open mission in editor, save as ASCII, remove some items, add pathpoints for appropriate mode, add appropriate dll, save again. Open in notepad and fix the team numbers on items pre-placed so they respect the game mode appropriately.
Granted, I haven't done it.
Thanks TheJamsh and Nielk1
TheJamsh, one that I'd like to play in is the map from mission 13(I think) of FE, the one in an industrial(rusty metal with cranes) setting. Unless Im mistaken its the one from the spash screen in FE, I tried to find it in IA but couldnt find it, and it would be great to play that map in regular(not-FE) BZ2.
Ive looked around but cant find a map pack thats specifies its compatible with 1.3pb4a, did I miss it?
Tranquility IS for pb4a only, doesnt have to be anything to do with FE and you dont need it installed, it comes with all the neccesary files.
there are at the moment no map packs made for pb4a. there are a few scattered ones people have made on BZ2md and on here, check them out if you want. i think Greenheart has done the most map work for pb4a, but those are all included with the patch.
At the moment, im not changing any more FE maps over because the first one was hard enough and i have a full mod underway to concentrate on. Tranquility is a fantastic map if you can get a game to stay working. works perfectly with Steeveeo's Recycler Variant as well, nice big open spaces.
http://www.leinensoft.com/bz2/
I remember that site. I can't vouch for compatibility of the missions with 1.3 or even stock 1.2
What I would love to see if the Single Player dlls converted to work in Multi. Basically true Coop.
Since the single player dlls were never made open source, I don't see this ever happening. That and we don't have enough programmers in the community, if any, that would be interested in making the dlls multiplayer compatible.
If we could get the source code to the missions it would simply be a matter of introducing more players into the mission script.
I believe GSH told me the mission scripts were complete hacks so it may require more work than that.
They're not complete hacks. Just C++ code written by non-programmers. They're big state machines, without a good foundation. Having recently worked on a coop MP game (Mercenaries 2), it wasn't trivial to make all the mission scripts coop-ready. It may seem easy to do the initial work, but the bugs (and a lot of playtesting) are where you spend 90+% of your time.
To move scripts to coop, every "move things to next state" bit of code would need to be updated for more players. For example, in mission 2, when it says "hit i on the building," you'd have to check all players, not just 1. And, checks would need to be done as either a "any player" or "all players." The "inspect building" code makes sense to do as "any player," but the "get to point X" should be done as "all." If you make too much of the mission "any player," then the other player(s) could drive to the other side of the map and just wipe out the enemies production while one player is jumping thru the designer's hoops.
-- GSH
That makes sense regarding the all players for certain situations.
FE coop would definately be interesting considering those missions are made to be much more challenging. Unfortunately those mission scripts were written in the scriptor which isn't multiplayer compatible.
speak to fishbone, he made DC, first true co-op game.
i want to make some of my missions available for co-op, Overminddl's Python scriptor is capable of it if i remember rightly.
Yeah, it is. You just need to learn python to use it though.
I said it would simply be including the additional players, I didn't say that actually doing that was simple.
As massive state machines all that needs to be done though is looping though all appropriate users. Some things won't work IIRC like the info reading and will have to be redone by range or something else. Custom functions for death would be needed.
I personally don't really like OM's scriptor, but go ahead and try to learn it.
It uses 1 DLL and a mission parameter tells it what python script file to load.
I have never tried it because I don't know the first thing about python.
Why don't you like it N1?
I'm not sure, but there might be some SP-to-IA converted maps at Ice Rhino's review archive:
http://www.planetbattlezone.com/teamshambler/
Or there are probably none at all, but otherwise just try the IA's there you may have not played before. Not sure if the maps are still downloadable from Fileplanet though!
dont mean to sound funny, but you could always do it yourself :lol:
its not really that hard. THe only issue you have is getting the map to open in PB$a's editor without any issues, that took the longest amount of time. Then its a case of removing and re-adding pathpoints, checking the map CAN actually function as an IA map well, and jobs a good un!