I appreciate this might sound a bit weird, but...
I'm from the Armada community. Battlezone's engine was used as the basis for both Armada 1 & 2 and while some of the battlezone code has been removed, some of the ODF coding etc is still left over from battlezone and therefore usable but unused in Armada. We're hoping that going over all of the warzone ODF coding and trying it in Armada will give us a couple more working ODF codes, which might let us do things that we haven't been able to do before.
The easiest way of doing this would be simply to sit down a compare all of the battlezone ODF codes to the armada ones. Do you have a modders "bible" for battlezone that contains a list of valid ODF codes? We're just wondering, as it would be easier for us than systematically searcing your ODF's for things that we don't recognise.
I'm afraid that (AFAIK) there is only a 'modders bible' or Modlog for Battlezone II. However, I am sure members of the community would be very happy to help you.
BZ1/2 and Armada 1/2 are very similar to each other in terms of modding.
I've modded Armada 2 and i've found it very easy. However only a few odf lines are identicle or similar to BZ1/2.
Good luck, but I think you might be doing a lot of work for very little return - most likely the devs would have taken out most or all of that code as it might introduce bugs into the new game - Battlezone was partially based on the Interstate 76 engine, and there were a couple of legacy classes in Battlezone from that, but they don't do anything.
You could try looking at the odf pack for Battlezone - that is a complete list of all the odfs from the game - it might give you some ideas - I'm not sure where that is up for download right now, but Dx would be able to give it to you. There was a help archive up a long time ago for BZ also that I think slingshot put out, though I think that was based more on understanding AIPs vs. the Dark reign AI.
Your right. Only a few lines are actually used from battlezone in Armada, things like the "cannon" weapon class were left in the code, though not used by any weapon used in the retail version of Armada to my knowledge. However, some liberal coding abuse allowed it to be used to create a SOD based tracking missile. That's what we are looking at finding more of.
I didn't know that Battlezone was programmed from Interstate76. It's interesting really how long the underlying engine's lasted, Interstate76, Battlezone, Armada, Armada II and Star Trek Legacy just recently. It makes you wonder what Interstate76 was based on!
It's also interesting how the AI has actually got a lot less flexible and programmable from Battlezone to Armada. AIP's have long been one of my interests because few people in Armada can actually write decent AIP's and virtually nobody has killed humans without cheating but your AIP's contain little in common with ours and frankly i'm envious of the sort of control you have with yours. However, I suspect that writing AIP's that complex without getting your AI stuck must be problematic.
Anyway yes, we will be doing a lot of work for very little if any return. However, it's worth doing for the pure interest value if nothing else. After all, how often do you come across something genuinely new in modding for a game that's been out for almost ten years?
Looking at the thread on our home forum, we've found something already. One of our other modders found the ODF pack for Battlezone on BZScrap and is looking through it at the moment and has found another working classlabel which is a pretty big deal for us, namely "I76building" which i'm thinking is probably actually a leftover from Interstate76 from what ssuser's just said. What is that classlabel actually meant to do in warzone?
To quote my colleauge, in Armada "it creates a useless building at map height, rather than the background obj below the grid."
I76building is indeed pretty much useless. It's used for BZ buildings with no real function other than to unlock things - the Tech Centre, for example.
I76building stands there and laughs at you.
:P
As for odf lines, yes look for BZ1odfpack on www.bzscrap.com
You got it right the first time with 'Battlezone', but after that lapsed into 'warzone'... but we know what you mean...
There's also an i76sign class, but there's no difference that I can see to i76building.
I've never played Armada but if you do love the game and want to see it improved/restored/saved/upgraded/whatever you might gather together the community modders and suggest they look at BZ2 with the latest 1.3 patch. I honestly believe that there's NOTHING out of reach with the current engine/patch given halfway decent modelers and coders... :)
-Av-
I think sign dies more like a tree does.
Just following some wikipedia links here...
It seems that Interstate '76 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_'76) was based on MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MechWarrior_2:_31st_Century_Combat)
Quote from: Avatar on October 25, 2009, 11:15:29 AM
You got it right the first time with 'Battlezone', but after that lapsed into 'warzone'... but we know what you mean...
Oops. :| Sorry, I can't think why I keep doing that, I haven't played Warzone 2100 for ages.
QuoteInterstate '76 was based on MechWarrior 2
Classic.
I'm half tempted to track down the remains of the mechwarrior modding community and ask them what MW2 was based on but i'm not sure I want to know. I'd probably end up tracing the engines history back to
Doom or
Wolfenstien 3dQuoteI've never played Armada but if you do love the game and want to see it improved/restored/saved/upgraded/whatever you might gather together the community modders and suggest they look at BZ2 with the latest 1.3 patch. I honestly believe that there's NOTHING out of reach with the current engine/patch given halfway decent modelers and coders... Smiley
Oh, we've pushed our engine up to modern standards as it is. That said though, it's about a year younger than Battlezone, and we have the obvious problems with the sheer age starting to catch up with us, ultimately no matter how much we put it off that's going to kill us eventually.
From doing a little googling before finding this site I see that there is a copy of the Battlezone source floating around on the net, can I take from what you've said that you can legally build it and offer it for download?
Battlezone source code? Where did you see that? As far as I know only one of our modders has access to the BZ1 source. But no, I don't think you could legally build it and offer it for DL, that would still be piracy - it is NOT open sourced, according to Activision.
i76Building and i76Sign were the 2 classes "leftover" from I76 in Battlezone, as far as I know there are no others, at least not referenced in the odfs. Neither really do anything, i76Building is used to make empty buildings that do nothing, used often for relics and such in the game. i76Sign is used for pylons, pretty much the same, though it has different collision sounds assigned to it.
Well, this is titled "Battlezone Source Code", I just assumed that's what it is. Looking at it in some more detail it only looks like it's the source code for the .dll's
http://www.filefront.com/4684025/Battlezone-Source-Code/#
and in conjunction with Avatar's comments about your 1.3 patch I assumed that you had the complete source code for battlezone but obviously that was a misinterpretation on my part.
Yup, that's just the DLL source I think.
It's funny how ObjectDefinitionFiles are just glorified INIs.
The 1.3 patch is being made by 2 of the original BZ2 developers. (they have access to the source code. :P )
To be clear, I was suggesting looking at the Armada community moving the game into the Battlezone 2 engine, patched to 1.3pb5. At this point there's almost nothing that modders love to tinker with, from physics to AIP's to the controlling C++ DLL, that isn't pretty much open source. If you all had the original BZ2 game and a decent DLL coder you could make an exact duplicate of the original game...
Let me put it this way... I originally started making the BZ1 ships and buildings as a hobby. At some point BZ2 came along and was moddable enough that I started looking at making a mod that let you play BZ2 DM in the BZ1 recreated ships. Then BS-er came up with the DLL Scriptor and it allowed me to remake the SP missions. Then GSH pretty much spelled out how to set up a free C++ compiler and it became a full fledged mod complete with MP play. The DLL let me duplicate those things that were in BZ1 but left out of BZ2, like undeploying Production Units that had scrap capacity in vehicle form.
Toss in a rabid quality control guy who's darn good with shells and I think, when done, BZC will be pretty darn true to the original BZ1, but with DX9 and TOTAL mod-ability.
-Av-
Quote from: Avatar on October 25, 2009, 06:43:13 PM
and TOTAL mod-ability.
I already started a BZC mod with the Pan Asian Space Coalition :-P
It's on hold pending BZC.
For simplicity and easyness of versioning, I would ask that you ensure that the things work as a map pack and do not break BZC assets please. 8-)
In Aramada 2 Activision put the program debug database and linker address map in the install folder.
All cpp and obj files are listed, should be easy to find any Bz code left in Armada 2.
Dx is da Man where digging into BZ1 code is concerned... :-D
-Av-