Comments - Gattobuono

Nice!
Just a suggestion from my experience of shooting in real life. Maybe it's something that people who don't shoot wouldn't really notice, but I feel that the weapon 'resets' too perfectly immediately after firing. It should take a moment to stabilise and reacquire the target.

Hopefully when I've got Dust 3.1 uploaded I'll have some time to enjoy your mod. :-)

Hi, sorry I only just saw your comment.

Debugging took a bit longer than expected, but I now have a beta version that will be ready to send to my testers within the next week.

After that, if no serious issues arise I'll be able to release it here on moddb fairly soon.

Thanks for you interest. :-)

Great work!
If I was capable of doing animations I'd add in the time it takes to put the empty mag in a dump pouch and extract a new mag ... but that's just me. :-)

Very nice!

The number of ai on my maps is carefully chosen to maximise their tactical potential based on the Control Point and Strategic Area layout.
Increasing the number of ai will result in them being less 'intelligent' and the overall gameplay being less tactical.

N.B. *Setting the ai to 64 (63 bots) will seriously degrade the quality of the gameplay experience*

However, in order to change the number of ai on one of my maps you will need to go to the specific map and change the layer that you want to modify.

For example, to change the number of ai on the sp16 layer of Janat Alqanaas go to 'Battlefield 2\mods\Dust_v3.0\Levels\Janat_Alqanaas\server.zip\GameModes\sp1\16\AI\'
Now open the StrategicAreas.ai with notepad or similar.
At the top of this file you'll see:

aiSettings.overrideMenuSettings 1
aiSettings.setMaxNBots 33
aiSettings.maxBotsIncludeHumans 0

rem *** Create strategic areas ***
aiStrategicArea.createFromControlPoint CP_32Players_Mashtuur_Alleyway 5 50
aiStrategicArea.layer 1

aiStrategicArea.createFromControlPoint CP_32Players_Mashtuur_Archway 3 50
aiStrategicArea.layer 1 ........................ etc. etc.

Change the setMaxBots number as you wish, but make sure you set it to an odd number in order to have balanced teams.

Each layer (16, 32, and 64) of each map is set up in this way. You cannot increase the ai globally without going through each map and deleting those lines in the individual StrategicAreas.ai. which would kind of defeat the concept of having three different layouts for each map.

"quality not quantity"

Exactly, that's my motto!

Great work mate, let's put the copy and past gang to shame. :-)

Thanks you. :-)

That's a great video. The F15 is a very elegant aircraft.
I know that airbase, RAF Lakenheath, as I lived not far from there. They used to have a great airshow there every summer.
Back when I was a kid they had F100s stationed there, and there were always C130s flying in and out.

I would imagine that the pilot raises the seat on the ground for taxiing purposes perhaps.

Nice!
Remember that the 'pilot's view' in these videos is not actually the pilot's eye view because the video is shot on a helmet mounted camera. Hence the camera pov is higher than what the pilot actually sees. :-)

Thanks!

When I first started doing repaints it was tedious, but I've since developed techniques that I use with certain tools in paint.net that make it a lot easier. And if you're not in a rush to finish it's strangely satisfying, somewhat like a kind of meditative puzzle.

I actually get a lot of inspiration from plastic kit modellers on youtube who are painting everything by hand or airbrush. Their patience and attention to detail is astonishing.

I particularly love the weathering techniques, and although plastic modellers are using real paint on a real surface a lot is transferable to working on a 'virtual' 2d texture applied to a 3d mesh.

Ok, great mod, I especially enjoyed the gunplay. The KA-50 will probably appear in a future mod once I've finished Dust ... if I ever do ... 🤪
I'd like to do something in a green environment for a change, and I have a few ideas, but first I need to publish 3.1.

Thanks, that's really encouraging!

Are you, by any chance, the author of Spec Ops Warfare?
That used to be a favourite of mine.
It has a very nice KA-50 in it, which I extracted with the idea of using it in a future mod, if that's ok.
Any idea who made it (if you were indeed involved in SOW)?

Ok. However, looking at the Gripen again I notice that in the version that you sent me the mesh is missing for the canopy, hence I can't add the reflections.
In the original file which is called 'huair_gripen' the canopy mesh is there. So I'll try renaming the original mesh and using it with your tweak file.
Also, remember that the runways are extended in my new version of Dust, so ai takeoffs are more successful.

P.S. I bet my car is filthier than yours! =)

Thanks for your kind words, it's very encouraging.

The copy and paste 'mod' mentality, which seems to have taken over from the good old days when modders tried to come up with fresh ideas, is really a bit pathetic.
But we live in a world of pre-made commodities where people generally aren't required to use their imagination too much.

That's why I feel that it's important for those of us who have the skills and knowledge to encourage a high standard in the community.

I'll bear your kind offer in mind, thanks, Gatto :-)

Nice!
I'm still debating whether to include this in Dust - Combined Arms (3.1). I have a version that you shared a while back. If I go ahead I'll redo the pit.
Speaking of which, in the video I noticed that you have a shiny mirror like finish on the panel/coaming. That's due to a wrong shader technique which is referencing the envmaps.
Open the model in meshview and check the Geom 0. Set 'shader technique' to alphaNoHemiLight. That should fix it.

Thanks. Send me a private message here on moddb, then when I have a beta version for testing I can share a link with you.

Thank you. :-)

Thanks.
Ideally I want to get it released by the end of March. I need to get one more big map finished for the new aircraft. Then I have a list of other things to sort, but nothing really major apart from hopefully a radio message upgrade for the Claw faction to bring it into line with what I did for Viper.

Anyway, you'll get a copy in advance.
I really appreciate your support!

Thanks for your comment. :-)

Thanks! I can't believe that it's nearly a year since my first release, but I seem to have got quite a lot done.
I'll send you a link to a beta test version when it's ready, if that's ok with you.

Ciao Longobardo!

Yes, it would be possible to have the ground visible even at very high altitudes, but that would cause problems: the fog draw distance seems to work equally in all axis, so having the ground visible at great heights would mean little or no 'fog' lower down as well, which doesn't look natural.

In order to get a naturalistic atmosphere at ground level (which is where most of the action takes place) you need to set up the 'fog' parameters correctly.
As Frostbite lighting is fairly primitive by today's standards the fog enables you to give more sense of depth and perspective (what is known in the art world as aerial perspective). This can easily be seen in the BF2 editor by simply turning fog off.

The other problem is maps size. The maps are very small areas from an aviation pointy of view (usually 1 or 2 square km). They have detail textures which cover the ground up to the edge of the main map area, then there are just very low-res muddy textures going out to the horizon (some maps don't even have this but just end in a straight line with nothing beyond).
The 'fog' helps to hide this, and without fog, or with very low fog it looks pretty bad.

However, if you've played my mod (Dust 3.0) you'll know that I have quite long draw distances (low fog) on most of my maps, especially those with aircraft, and you'll never have a reason to climb to a height where the ground is no longer visible.

If you want to know more about the fog parameters and how to edit them on existing maps send me a private message here on moddb.

P.S. you addressed me as devs, plural. I'm just one person! 🤪🤪🤪

Thanks! :-)

Nice one Morty!

I lived for a while right next to RAF Honington Airbase in the UK when these were operational. They made hell of a noise when they scrambled!
The Aeronautica Militare is still operating upgraded versions of the Tornado here in Italy.

Good work, that turned out really nicely. :-)

Yes please.

You did a really great job!

You're welcome! Thanks for the link. :-)

This looks like a pretty decent model. Any idea where it comes from?

This is going to be really useful!

Thanks. :-)

Thanks. :-)