Subject: Baldo's Mod Pack - Thread Update: November 17th, 2009!
Baldo_the_Don
Administrator
Posts: 945
Registered: 12-5-08
Member Is Offline
Mood: Nervous, but cheerful.
posted on 17-5-08 at 19:09
Baldo's Mod Pack - Thread Update: November 17th, 2009!
Latest News:
091117 - Fixed three small things: The comma in NovaSheep.com
on the Thanks List, the "Male Somailian Civilian" that shoots an AK47 round instead of a rock, and the "Cocaine Crate - Single" won't kill when
exploding anymore.
On the start screen, added a space to the "Current Player:" string. That always
bugged me.
Added 5 new sound markers of my own devising to the mods. Updated the "a00 test
SOUND.bms" to include one.
To access these new sound markers in the MED, remember to add the "/d" and the
"/mod baldosfolly" tags to the target line of the shortcut for the MED, just like you do for the dfbhd.exe.
Also tweaked "Iron Sight Zero Range.bms" a little.
New mod version: 091117
091026 - Have confirmed that the now web compliantly renamed
Baldos_Mod_pack.zip is available for download from the DFReload DFBHD Mod Database. Click here and see.
091022 - Came up with a dirt and scratch effect for the dot
sights.
In the Laboratory mods, I changed the CAR15/M203 and M16/M203 to the Folly mod specs
and put the G36 crosshairs back on the G36 sight for auto mode. Semi still scoped 2x.
These mods do not install themselves, but by drag and drop, and the tiniest bit of
shortcut creation and target line editing, you're about five minutes from playing DFBHD with Baldo's Folly Mod right now. Everything's explained in
the Baldos_Mod_Pack_ReadMe.txt file included in the .zip.
090610 - Found out that the "Enemy Littlebird" has silent
miniguns when assigned the AI Textfile H_AH6Z because the original items.def is missing the extra soundloop LP_GS_AHMINIGUN. I corrected the items.def
and added it to the mods.
New mod version: 090610
090527 - Completely redid this post. See
below.
Baldo's Mod Pack
Baldo's Weapon Mod - Baldo's Folly
Minimal Tweaks Mod
Baldo's Shakey6 Mod
Baldo's Mod Lab
Baldo's Mod Lab B
A Short Philosophy of Rebooting
I was going to start this off with a philosophical rant about the cyclic nature of
extended projects; how if you work on something long enough, you'll end up facing it with the same feeling you had about it when you started, namely:
failure. It's not working. You'll find that what you were trying to do is not possible 'cause what you've gotten done so far won't support it.
You'll get to a point where you can only keep going if you start over from the beginning.
This seems especially true with learning-by-doing projects. As your proficiency
increases, your goals shift, your vision expands, and what you've accomplished so far no longer satisfies you.
I was going to go on like that a while longer, but I can't be sure this is a
universal project-stopping problem that everyone can relate to. I can only confirm that that's what happened to me with my weapons
mod.
I was stuck. I started over. More than once, actually.
A Tale of Two Minds
I've explained before how this all "game modification" crap started with me as an
attempt to put sights on the machine guns. I just wanted to make the MGs a little better.
That was my first mission statement: minimal improvements.
Along the way, I started to discover more and more aspects, imbalances and flat-out
mistakes in Delta Force: Black Hawk Down and Team Sabre that I wanted to change. Missing sounds, suicidal RPG AIs, over-powered
weapons...
A new mission statement: maximal improvements.
I found myself getting in my own way, so I decided to split the mission statements
between two projects.
It's never a good idea to fight a two-fronted war, but luckily for me, my enemy was
immobile.
The Minimal Tweaks Mod
Just admit it, DFBHD fans: the sights in DFBHD suck. They all look terrible and some
hardly help aiming. The sighted view on the CAR15 is cartoonishly unrealistically unobstructive to periferal vision, while at the same time, the red
dot is centered high and left. The MP5 is way too difficult to aim on dark maps without tracers.
Don't get me started on TS weapons.
The miniguns have the same fire rate as the M60, although it should be tripled, and
the minigun's ammo does three times as much damage as the M60's where it should be the same.
The TS vehicles are completely silent.
I figured I could at least fix these things.
Baldo's Folly Mod
I'm sure Novalogic wanted to do the best job they could at gameplay balance, but it
was lunch time and they were hungry, so they rushed it a bit.
Okay, facete aside, NL's standards of balance are probably based on years of
experience in previous games, or they wanted to keep things similar to previous titles so nobody's boat gets all too terribly
rocked.
I wasn't happy with a lot of it, though.
Having no real clue about what I was doing, I started tweaking ammo power, accuracy,
loadout amount, fire rates... feeling my way along, testing things thoroughly, seeing how much wiggle room I had. I found things more to my pleasure
and put that result out in the baldosfinal.pff as Baldo's Weapon Mod Final.
I should've known better. I do know better, but I was optimistic. Really, though,
one should never say never, and final's rarely final.
Around the time that I noticed I could take out a technical with two shotgun blasts,
I realized that I might have made a few mistakes, and that the final mod was not so final.
So I went through everything again. Again and again. Tweaking, testing, retweaking,
retesting. Arbitrary standards started becoming less arbitrary. Logical scales for damage, accuracy, recoil and loadout started to become clearer and
clearer.
Sight graphics were made by repositioning the weapon models in-game and making
screenshots, which were then 'shopped. Some sights were drawn from scratch, and redrawn when found wanting. Again, methods were arbitrary at first,
standards made up as I went along, but logical solutions for certain questions solidified as work went on.
And all this time, the search and research went into the baldosfolly.pff. 'Cause it
was stupid to think I could get to a final mod.
All Good Things...
Last week, a final (HA!) link in the chain of logic fell into place. Another (most
likely final) round of screenshots, conforming to a solid logical method, were made and photoshopped for the sights in the Folly mod. Sights for the
Minimal Tweaks mod I drew by hand, most of them based on the screenshots for the Folly mod, some based on photos I found around the internet, all of
them made with improved shading and blurring techniques I've been perfecting the whole time.
These are the best sight graphics I've ever produced for these
mods.
With the production of those graphics, I saw the finish line. When the mods are
finally made available for download, I'll have crossed it. I won't know if I've won until I've heard from the players, but I'm
confident.
I think Baldo's Weapon Mods are finished.
All My Mods
All the mods I've done have a few things in common. The main things
are:
dfvgame.lwf - This file is a catalog that the game uses for playing the sounds
of firing weapons, vehicle engines, environment sounds and stuff. The dfbhd_update_012104_xx.exe and dfbhd_update_012104_de.exe both install a
corrupted version of the dfvgame.lwf. This is why the TS vehicles have no motor sounds and why you hear the "abandon ship" alarm when you're
promoted in MP games. Mappers that write .wac files will also find that the ammo_AI_ROCKET_POD yells "HOON!" with a pakistani accent. Other mappers
will know about the dune buggy's .50 cal that sounds like a tree frog. Some may even know about the missing sound loop for the Pavelow's hatch.
German players can also tell you about the AIs mumbling a half-hearted "ow" when you kill them. Iraqis and colombians never make a
sound.
I've fixed all this. Basically, I extracted the dfvgame.lwf before I installed the
update, then again afterward. The update's dfvgame.lwf is missing 1200 lines of code. An educated guess: about 600 different sound loops missing (the
.wav files are there, yes, but the game can't find them 'cause they aren't listed in the dfvgame.lwf). I added the pre-update .lwf in my .pff files
after I edited a few mistakes, changed the death screams back to the originals for the germans, and added the odd new sound or two.
Gametext.bin and menutxt.bin - The game menu screens and HUD all display lines
of text. These text strings are encoded in the Gametext.bin and menutxt.bin. I've corrected the few mistakes I could find in these (like the number
of grenades the loadout menu displays for the M203) and each mod has special text strings of its own.
Thanks List - I am deeply ashamed to admit that it occurred to me only rather
recently to include a thanks list of any sort at all. I'll go on feeling like a jerk about that, but in the meantime, I've put some hard work into
making up for it by figuring out how the dfvmenu.mnu file works and editing a new screen for the thanks list into it. The dfvmenu.mnu file is what the
game uses to layout the menu screens and make clickable buttons on them. The Folly mod has a link to the thanks list screen right on the main screen,
below the Options and above the Exit Game. In the other mods, you click on the mod logo to the upper right on the main screen.
Version Number - You'd think this was obvious, but I missed it, somehow. The
game displays a game version number in the lower left corner of the main screen. I added a text string to display the mod version in the upper right
of the main screen, above the mod logo.
The latest versions of all my mod .pffs are from May 24th, 2009June 10th, 2009October 22nd, 2009 November 17th, 2009, so the mod version number on all of them is
090524090610091022 091117.
Wrapping Up
The Shakey6 Mod is the Minimal Tweaks Mod with an AK47 for the player. In a thread at Novaworld2, Shakey6 asked
about the possibility of adding an AK47 to the DFBHD arsenal. I said I'll see what I can do. Not having 3D modeling capabilities, I defined the
weapon and ammo for the AK47, but used the MP5 .3di in-game. This may be fixed in the future.
The Laboratory Mods are Folly mod weapons and ammos with mintweak sights, and a few
neat new weapon ideas.
I used to have a fancy chart displaying the differences between the Folly mod and the
original DFBHDTS here (not the least bit simple to code for phpBB, mind you!), but it got cumbersome trying to include the Minimal Tweaks
info in it. Besides, anytime I talked to someone about my mods, all they ever wanted was to see screenshots.
So, killing two birds with a thousand words:
Side-By-Side Comparison Screenshots
Weapons in the original DFBHDTS, the Minimal Tweaks and Baldo's Folly mods.
Hopefully all the information you can possibly find useful.
AI weapon ammos now have the NoGravity flag since they don't raise their aim
for farther targets. Folly Mod - Emplaced Weapons: Tracers always on. Folly Mod - The M203 on the CAR15 does not have adjustable
elevation.
Chrispy
Staff Sergeant
Posts: 997
Registered: 28-10-06
Location: Peria, New Zealand
Member Is Offline
Mood:
posted on 18-5-08 at 09:40
Good job man. Hopefully people will play it heaps. All the best.
baldo i love these iron sights and scopes :-) i was wondering if i could use them in joint ops please? i really love the new sights i really do!
Baldo_the_Don
Administrator
Posts: 945
Registered: 12-5-08
Member Is Offline
Mood: Nervous, but cheerful.
posted on 16-7-08 at 20:17
Tell you what, Kev... I knew when I released the mod that I was giving up all hope of
controlling it. I'm glad you like what I've done and want to use it.
I don't feel I can say no, but I can't do better than a reserved yes.
Mainly, what I'm worried about is that you'll use the targas I made for the mod with a crappy weapon.def. That you'll just swap the old sights out
with my new ones without adjusting the layouts and it'll all look stupid and work badly.
But that's a flaw in my nature, you see. I have no confidence in the competence of others.
My final answer: If you can do a good job of using the sights I made for DFBHD in JO, go ahead. If, however, you
cannot, then please don't.
Baldo_the_Don
Administrator
Posts: 945
Registered: 12-5-08
Member Is Offline
Mood: Nervous, but cheerful.
posted on 18-7-08 at 11:19
People, I know, you haven't heard a thing from me lately, but you're hearing from me
now.
It's been over two months and over 400 downloads. Baldo's Weapon Mod is probably not the best thing that ever happened to DFBHD, but it is the best
thing I've ever done for DFBHD, and the most involved project I've had this year.
I never stopped working on it, and every time I thought I'd done all that can be, I found one more tiny detail. There's much I've changed since the
release, although nothing really big, but much that was necessary.
I've been waiting to hear from the masses on bugs and glitches. I haven't heard much.
I'm saddened by the fact that I came to make this mod so late in the game's history. DFBHD is pretty much dead, but it's still my favorite.
I want to get the mod wrapped up, though. I'm making this one last appeal to you as a community, DFBHD players.
Let me know what you've found in my mod that you can't stand, maybe things you feel are missing. If your idea is good and within my skill base,
I'll see what I can do to implement it.
If you don't have the mod, go get it: http: //www.dfbarracks.com /downloads /index.php?action=df&fid=367
Thanks for reading this, and I hope you write me soon.
Baldo the Don
Chrispy
Staff Sergeant
Posts: 997
Registered: 28-10-06
Location: Peria, New Zealand
Member Is Offline
Mood:
posted on 18-7-08 at 11:42
It's hard to make a mod for DF and try to get heaps of downloads on it, these days (in my opinion).
When next I update my mod, it'll have my edited dfvgame.lwf included. So far, I've
put the motor sounds back on the Pavelow, VBL and RHIB, I made a soundset for the Pavelow's hatch, the dune buggy's .50 cal sounds like a .50 cal,
the ammo2tgt ammo_ai_rocket_pod no longer yells 'HOON!' when launching, and the promotion sound doesn't call to adandon ship. Also added an
electrical arc soundset.
Stuff's happening here at Baldo's Folly HQ, Europe. Watch this space...
Chrispy
Staff Sergeant
Posts: 997
Registered: 28-10-06
Location: Peria, New Zealand
Member Is Offline
Mood:
posted on 17-10-08 at 12:52
Sounds good.
Why change the promotion sound though? You only hear those in NW servers (you don't get those in pubs), and if you use that in an NW server, you're
probably gone...
Why change the promotion sound though? You only hear those in NW servers (you don't get those in pubs), and if you use that in an NW server, you're
probably gone...
I had this mission once where when you finally won, it played the promote sound. Then all of a sudden it was abandon ship!
I don't know. I guess I'm just crossing Novalogic's 't's and dotting their 'i's.
Baldo_the_Don
Administrator
Posts: 945
Registered: 12-5-08
Member Is Offline
Mood: Nervous, but cheerful.
posted on 22-10-08 at 08:09
This reply used to have the screenshots above.
Baldo_the_Don
Administrator
Posts: 945
Registered: 12-5-08
Member Is Offline
Mood: Nervous, but cheerful.
posted on 29-10-08 at 21:40
Ammo power in DFBHD and TS.
Being the thorough kind of modder I am, I was recently in a conundrum about ammo velocity and damage values as
defined in the original game and how I changed them in my mod.
Rather arbitrarily, in the Baldo's Folly Mod, I started changing these to factors of 2 and 3, you know, 2, 4, 8, 16, or 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, and so
on.
I got caught up in the math. Some things in BHD are so, so wrong. Although there are no 30mm weapons for the player in this game, if there were, the
ammo.def assigns 30mm ammo a velocity of 300m per second and an impact damage of 24. The Beretta ammo has 40 impact damage at 341 m/s.
So I did some editing for the Baldo's Folly Mod, making up rules as I went along. Not entirely satisfied with my results, I started wondering: Is
there a way to mathematically assess weapon damage accurately? Or at least consistently?
I went through Wikipedia's entries on the weapons and ammo available in BHD, noted bullet weights and velocities.
That means velocity times velocity times bullet weight divided by 2 is the ammo's kinetic energy in joules for that weapon.
For instance:
According to Wikipedia, .45 caliber FMJ-FP, the round used in the 1911 Colt, weighs 15 grams and moves at 310m/s, so...
310m/s x 310m/s x 15g / 2 = 720,750 joules of muzzle energy.
Or rounded, 721 Kj.
Novalogic's ammo.def says .45 Colt does 51 damage.
Not quite there yet.
Then a few days ago, an inspiration... How about the square root of the
muzzle energy?
(A square root is the number that you can multiply by itself to get the number you want the square root of. I'm no math whiz, don't get me wrong,
I'm sure my algebra teacher showed me how, but I couldn't do this on paper with a gun to my head now. I can press that single button on a
calculator, though!)
The square root of 721 is 26.851443164195104394202719253801. We'll say 27.
Seems we're halfway there, so 2 x 27 = 54.
Awful close. After checking the rest of the ammo in the BHD arsenal, the weapons available to the player, with the strange exception of the 5.56mm
weapons, all have damage values within an acceptable tolerance to the formula.
According to the formula, the CAR15, to name a 5.56mm weapon randomly, should do 84 impact damage, not 51. (Although after checking with the original
600m/s velocity of the 5.56mm ammo in the ammo.def, before Novalogic upped it to 990, 53 is closer to the 51 it is now.)
And according to the formula, the GAU-8 firing 30x173mm ammo would do:
1067m/s x 1067m/s x 393g* / 2 = (switching to a calculator that can handle a number this large) 223,713.0885 Kj muzzle energy. About 294 times the
power of a .45 slug. 2 times the square root of 223,713.0885 means 945.96635986698808189241942474643, or 946 impact damage, not the 24 NL gave it.
And in my baldosfolly.pff, I gave it 512 impact damage. I sold it short.
Well, editing the mod now...
*Averaged between the 425g API and 360g HEI 30mm rounds.
Baldo_the_Don
Administrator
Posts: 945
Registered: 12-5-08
Member Is Offline
Mood: Nervous, but cheerful.
posted on 26-3-09 at 08:15
Extra .jpgs to see with tons more information to consider.
Originally posted by Baldo_the_Don
"It was on suggestion from ShadowZ that I started this new thread
to display the Relapse stuff. He'd be the one you'd thank for the improved load time on this information and the thread I moved it
from."
![[*]](./images/ultragrey/default_icon.gif){kind=icon}
posted on 17-5-08 at 19:09
