Jump to content

Home

Hoth X-wing Mod released


subs0nic

Recommended Posts

*Hoth X-wing Mod release 1*

 

Screenshot

 

This is my first mod for Star Wars Battlefront. It changes the Hoth map and replaces an Imperial AT-ST with an X-wing, a Taun Taun with a AT-ST for the Rebels, another Taun Taun with an X-wing, and the snowspeeders with another X-wing.

 

- ***Installation***

 

***BACKUP THE FOLLOWING FILES BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING:***

c:\...\Star Wars Battlefront\GameData\Data\_LVL_PC\mission.lvl

c:\...\Star Wars Battlefront\GameData\Data\_LVL_PC\HOT\hot1.lvl

 

1) Run mission_patch.exe.

2) When it asks for the directory to update, browse to your Battlefront folder and select the ...\Star Wars Battlefront\GameData\Data\_LVL_PC folder.

3) Click 'Next' until the patch is installed.

4) Run level_patch.exe.

5) When it asks for the directory to update, browse to your Battlefront folder and select the ...\Star Wars Battlefront\GameData\Data\_LVL_PC\HOT folder.

6) Click 'Next' until the patch is installed.

7) You should now be able to play, load up the game and go to Instant Action, and start Hoth. :)

 

To remove the patch, just copy your backed up mission.lvl and hot1.lvl over the modified ones.

 

- ***Notes/Bugs***

 

- The snowspeeders are currently removed, so no roping of the ATAT legs at the moment. Not a great problem since the X-wings have enough firepower to take the ATATs out in a couple of passes.

 

- Be careful when flying the X-wing out of the hangar, it was only designed for a snowspeeder. :p AI units currently have a very hard time getting the X-wing out intact.

 

- AI units don't fly the x-wings very intelligently (they aren't programmed for it on Hoth). I recommend you play as Rebel, otherwise the AI will not use the x-wings to take out the ATATs and the Empire will win easily.

 

- Sound effects for X-wing are currently not being loaded (stealth x-wing!.. um yeah). This is first on my list of things to fix.

 

- Probably more bugs, but none I can think of right now.

 

- ***Mod notes***

 

This is a fairly easy mod. If you look at mission.lvl with a hex editor you'll see a bunch of settings for each map. All I did was replace the snowspeeder under the Hoth section with an X-wing; this make sure the vehicle is loaded when the Hoth map loads (and is also why the speeders are currently removed). The second stage is simply to replace one of the snowspeeder spawn points in the Hoth map itself with the newly loaded X-wing (or any other vehicle spawn point for that matter). Easy huh? :)

 

Download: http://jupiter.walagata.com/w/subs0nic/HothModr1.rar

 

Enjoy!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 66
  • Created
  • Last Reply
Originally posted by subs0nic

 

This is a fairly easy mod. If you look at mission.lvl with a hex editor you'll see a bunch of settings for each map. All I did was replace the snowspeeder under the Hoth section with an X-wing; this make sure the vehicle is loaded when the Hoth map loads (and is also why the speeders are currently removed). The second stage is simply to replace one of the snowspeeder spawn points in the Hoth map itself with the newly loaded X-wing (or any other vehicle spawn point for that matter). Easy huh? :)

How did you remove the snowspeeders? You replaced one of them with an X-Wing, of course (by changing an all_fly_snowspeeder to all_fly_xwing, right?), but what about all the other instances of all_fly_snowspeeder in hot1.lvl? And the mission.lvl edit was just changing all_fly_snowspeeder to all_fly_xwing under the Hoth section after SIDE\all.lvl, right?

 

When I edit mission.lvl as I just described, then replace an all_fly_snowspeeder with an all_fly_xwing in hot1.lvl, the result is crash to desktop. I've also tried replacing ALL instances of all_fly_snowspeeder with all_fly_xwing in hot1.lvl, and the result is the same.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by Visceral

How did you remove the snowspeeders? You replaced one of them with an X-Wing, of course (by changing an all_fly_snowspeeder to all_fly_xwing, right?), but what about all the other instances of all_fly_snowspeeder in hot1.lvl? And the mission.lvl edit was just changing all_fly_snowspeeder to all_fly_xwing under the Hoth section after SIDE\all.lvl, right?

 

When I edit mission.lvl as I just described, then replace an all_fly_snowspeeder with an all_fly_xwing in hot1.lvl, the result is crash to desktop. I've also tried replacing ALL instances of all_fly_snowspeeder with all_fly_xwing in hot1.lvl, and the result is the same.

 

You can leave instances of all_fly_snowspeeder in hot1.lvl, since the vehicle isn't being loaded in mission.lvl they will simply not spawn. What I've been doing to stay on the safe side as far as bugs go, is to make sure I don't paste 'all_fly_xwing' over 'all_fly_snowspeeder'; the two are different lengths and you lose the extra bytes on 'snowspeeder'. Type all_fly_xwing over manually and take out the rest of 'snowspeeder' with blank bytes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by subs0nic

You can leave instances of all_fly_snowspeeder in hot1.lvl, since the vehicle isn't being loaded in mission.lvl they will simply not spawn. What I've been doing to stay on the safe side as far as bugs go, is to make sure I don't paste 'all_fly_xwing' over 'all_fly_snowspeeder'; the two are different lengths and you lose the extra bytes on 'snowspeeder'. Type all_fly_xwing over manually and take out the rest of 'snowspeeder' with blank bytes.

Thanks! I've got it working now, but in mine the Imperials have a TIE instead of an X-Wing. :)

 

I'm looking through all.lvl at what all_fly_ things there are, and I've found an all_fly_kwing and all_fly_moncalamari that crash the game when you try to load them through mission.lvl, nevermind putting them in hot1.lvl.

 

EDIT: I've found that you can get the sound to work for the starfighters by having it load the sounds for a level that normally has them - replace sound\hot.lvl;hot1gcw with sound\kas.lvl;kas1gcw, for example - but then you lose the sounds not in that level, like the AT-AT sounds. I don't know if it would be possible to, for example, find the X-Wing sounds in _LVL_PC\Sound\kas.lvl and paste them over the snowspeeder sounds in hot.lvl, but if not we'll have to live without sound for one vehicle type or another until the official mod tools are released.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by Visceral

Thanks! I've got it working now, but in mine the Imperials have a TIE instead of an X-Wing. :)

 

I'm looking through all.lvl at what all_fly_ things there are, and I've found an all_fly_kwing and all_fly_moncalamari that crash the game when you try to load them through mission.lvl, nevermind putting them in hot1.lvl.

 

EDIT: I've found that you can get the sound to work for the starfighters by having it load the sounds for a level that normally has them - replace sound\hot.lvl;hot1gcw with sound\kas.lvl;kas1gcw, for example - but then you lose the sounds not in that level, like the AT-AT sounds. I don't know if it would be possible to, for example, find the X-Wing sounds in _LVL_PC\Sound\kas.lvl and paste them over the snowspeeder sounds in hot.lvl, but if not we'll have to live without sound for one vehicle type or another until the official mod tools are released.

 

Great minds think alike eh? If you check my thread on swapping factions on hoth, this is the exact fix I used. :D

Looking at the sound .lvl files, it doesn't look like the sounds are referenced in the files in any easily discernable way; doesn't make it easy to copy/paste. :rolleyes:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As an experiment, I tried copying the entirety of kas.lvl and pasting it into hot.lvl, hoping that it would therefore load ALL the sounds, and of course I fully expected it to crash given the propensity of changes in file size to cause problems. Amazingly, it didn't crash, but it didn't load any sounds from the Kashyyyk data either. At least we know there's leeway in changing the file size when editing those sound .lvl files, if anyone can figure out a way to meaningfully alter them before the tools come out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by Tighte Bodalla

have replaced "all_inf_vanguardsnow" (in the hot part of mission.lvl an in the all.lvl) replaced with "all_inf_lukeskywalker". Now the game load the map (hot) but there isn`t the unit ?! No Vanguard and no skywalker ??? Please Help me !

 

It's not possible to just swap in Luke Skywalker or any of the other Jedi, or the Ewoks/Wookiees/Genosians etc. Or more specifcally, it IS possible to swap them in (I did it last night), it just crashes the game once the level loads - note that the level DOES still load, it just gets stuck when it tries to bring up character select.

 

These characters were never intended to be playable, so all the code that would be required to make them playable is missing. This possibly could be modded without too much difficulty, however other things such as seperating out the file structure, changing spawn points and map parameters are more of a priority right now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by Tighte Bodalla

"These characters were never intended to be playable"

 

hmm...sorry guy but...I did it. Play now as Windu together with the clones...download here it is one of the latest post (from Garndmaster (me)):

 

http://swbf.4players.de:1049/forum/showthread.php?p=5587#post5587

 

Colour me impressed :) I admit I am surprised the code was there to enable control of these characters; I guess it's a generic control system.

 

Though looking at your patch, it was something I hadn't actually tried; I tried to replace an entire team with Geonosians, which didn't work. This method has given me an idea though.. stay tuned... :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, all units could be playable, but playing the jedi is just not fun. He blocks all the shots and has a single swing as a melee attack. Not to mention his health is obscenely high. Doesn't make for a fun character to play. Same with Ewoks and Geonosians, they take 2 shots to kill. And no one wants to play as a Gungan.

 

Not to mention since they weren't designed to be playable they lack some of the essential features: first person view models, squad commands, and certain animations.

 

I should also note that the reason you don't have sounds for vehicles on levels where they vehicles weren't originally is because the assets aren't being loaded by that level and are only present in lvl files for levels where they were intended to be. Load a different sound lvl and you will have other sounds go missing. Same goes for crashing levels, memory allocation for the existing levels was explicitly set up for what is on those levels, start changing it around and don't be surprised if it runs out of memory and crashes. Yes, that means the number of flyers on a level is all that is being allocated in memory and same with walkers, hovers, etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by psych0fred

Yes, all units could be playable, but playing the jedi is just not fun. He blocks all the shots and has a single swing as a melee attack. Not to mention his health is obscenely high. Doesn't make for a fun character to play. Same with Ewoks and Geonosians, they take 2 shots to kill. And no one wants to play as a Gungan.

 

Not to mention since they weren't designed to be playable they lack some of the essential features: first person view models, squad commands, and certain animations.

 

I should also note that the reason you don't have sounds for vehicles on levels where they vehicles weren't originally is because the assets aren't being loaded by that level and are only present in lvl files for levels where they were intended to be. Load a different sound lvl and you will have other sounds go missing. Same goes for crashing levels, memory allocation for the existing levels was explicitly set up for what is on those levels, start changing it around and don't be surprised if it runs out of memory and crashes. Yes, that means the number of flyers on a level is all that is being allocated in memory and same with walkers, hovers, etc.

 

I agree that playing jedi is not fun, however playing Ewoks, Wookiees and others is definitely fun - I just finished an Ewok vs Ewok Endor, a great laugh.

 

I do have to point out that they neither lack 1st person view models (at least, no more than any other unit) nor squad commands - they play on your team as the normal AI units would. I merely take my screenshots 3rd person because it looks better. Regarding the sounds, this has already been covered in this and other threads. As for the crashes, I think you're underestimating the solidity of the file structures; the .lvl files can take fair bit of punishment before they'll produce a CTD, and myself and others have already shown that you can lift a walker out and replace it with a flyer, or any other vehicle type, with no problems. With info that has been unearthed on where in the files the length of each section is defined, it's only a matter of time before we can reliably add data to the files (this is the only hinderance we have at the moment).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Subsonic, good work.;)

It's a start but people are starting to understand the hex editor. Thank you for the detailed post.

For maps, has anybody been able to see if you can export the hex files to the Battlezone 2 editor and work with it? I don't have Battlezone 2 but it's suppose to be based on the same 3D engine.

 

Vinny

:)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by seabass901

Im having problems modding this..

 

I replaced the all_fly_snowspeeder thing with the all_fly_xwing in the hoth section of the mission.lvl and then I replaced the all_fly_speeder thing with the all_fly_xwing thing in Hot1.lvl and when I start the map it crashes.. am I doing something wrong here?

 

Make sure you're not changing the size of any of the files, this is the most common cause of crashes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.


×
×
  • Create New...