SWBF1/2 -- differences between demos/betas and production

Talk and share anything related to Star Wars Battlefront 2. No maps or mod announcements here. Use Work in Progress forum.

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FragMe!
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Re: SWBF1/2 -- differences between demos/betas and producti

Post by FragMe! »

What you can do is to rename tan1.lvl uta1.lvl and spa1.lvl in the original folders the copy over the ones from the beta folders to the proper directories. I did this and didn't really see too much difference in the maps. Now what you cannot copy from the demo is the other files, common ingame etc it tends to go crash.
You can then play these as single player.
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Re: SWBF1/2 -- differences between demos/betas and producti

Post by Teancum »

I would assume the levels themselves aren't any different, but I still wonder if anything else is different: loadouts for characters, etc.
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Re: SWBF1/2 -- differences between demos/betas and producti

Post by Marvel4 »

No, the sides were also the same...
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Re: SWBF1/2 -- differences between demos/betas and producti

Post by Fusion »

From what I remember, the PC beta was really just the 3 maps from the final game and was only used for server testing.


...which worked great by the way. :P


Oh, and does anyone else think that Death Star really could have been a DLC map for Battlefront I? I mean, it did have the first game's sides and animations, plus it wouldn't be the only DLC map for BF1 that made it into BF2 (Jabba's Palace). Also, considering how rushed Pandemic was (14 months), they could have just shunted it over to the new project.
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Re: SWBF1/2 -- differences between demos/betas and producti

Post by DarthD.U.C.K. »

i dont agree with deathstar being dlc for battlefront 1!
just kidding, it is possible or the screenshot could have simply been taken during the developement of swbf2 when the cps were still green and the unitmodels different, i guess welll never know
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Re: SWBF1/2 -- differences between demos/betas and producti

Post by Eggman »

DarthD.U.C.K. wrote:i dont agree with deathstar being dlc for battlefront 1!
just kidding, it is possible or the screenshot could have simply been taken during the developement of swbf2 when the cps were still green and the unitmodels different, i guess welll never know
I always assumed it was the latter, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Death Star was meant to be DLC for BF1.
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Re: SWBF1/2 -- differences between demos/betas and producti

Post by Teancum »

Fusion wrote:Oh, and does anyone else think that Death Star really could have been a DLC map for Battlefront I? I mean, it did have the first game's sides and animations, plus it wouldn't be the only DLC map for BF1 that made it into BF2 (Jabba's Palace). Also, considering how rushed Pandemic was (14 months), they could have just shunted it over to the new project.
I can't speak for their situation, but I can tell you as a web developer when we're rushed we split everything up, then piece it back together later. The mappers might've built the maps using SWBF1 while the code team updated the executable for SWBF2.
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Re: SWBF1/2 -- differences between demos/betas and producti

Post by trainmaster611 »

The feel of the SWBF1 Demo was pretty good and, I have to admit, considerably better than the final SWBF2. And I agree with Fusion, it's painful looking at those extra features that were cut (like the bigger hangars).

Does anyone know the .fx names of those fiery explosions that appeared in the PS2 SWBF1 Demo video and in the below picture?

Image

I have derivatives of these effects but I'm not sure which were the originals.
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Re: SWBF1/2 -- differences between demos/betas and producti

Post by Teancum »

Just played the SWBF1 Xbox demo on my Xbox. It was awesome, but I'm glad they changed things up. Here's a quick list of things I noticed:
  • The menu interface was waaaaaay different. Clips from the movies were shown full screen behind the menus, and the loading screen featured some cool promotional art
  • You can "build" the rolling log trap. The files actually still exist in the Endor assets. (log_gate.odf) Neat fact, the Ewok catapult also exists in the assets (end_weap_ewok_catapult.odf).
  • It was three classes to a side. I've only played it once, but the rebels had a soldier (looks close to how he does in SWBF1), a rocketeer (the same, but he's a white guy), and a wookie
  • The left trigger changed your weapon, right trigger fired. B changed the weapon's mode (if it had a secondary mode. I only played as the soldier, but he had a rifle, pistol, and thermals
  • Grenades were on the primary trigger. You could hold down the button to wind up the throw.
  • The rifle's secondary mode was a charged fire. Kinda cool
  • Prone was buuuuuuuggy. Crouching was easy, going to prone would reset the camera. Once you were in prone it was the same as it normally is.
  • The lighting system was definitely primitive
  • The HUD is pretty different. Reinforcements are in the upper right, weapon stats in the lower right. It works okay. The shipped hud is still better
  • Friendly CPs were a light blue color, as seen in development screenshots
  • The XBE is encoded in big endian, so there's no ripping ODFs and whatnot
More to come. I'm going to see if the demo will burn to a CD-R and run off it. If it does I'll upload it, since it's just a demo and it'd work on any Xbox.
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Re: SWBF1/2 -- differences between demos/betas and producti

Post by [RDH]Zerted »

Here's all the info you need when starting Beta servers: http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=152834
And a little extra info: http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=154004
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Re: SWBF1/2 -- differences between demos/betas and producti

Post by Darth_Spiderpig »

Nice, got a server up and running, but my CD key isn't authorized to play on it >.<
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Re: SWBF1/2 -- differences between demos/betas and producti

Post by Darth_Squoobus »

Is it possible to aquire somme of the assets used in the beta that don't come with the stock assets?
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Re: SWBF1/2 -- differences between demos/betas and producti

Post by Teancum »

Fusion wrote:the PC beta was really just the 3 maps from the final game and was only used for server testing.
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Re: SWBF1/2 -- differences between demos/betas and producti

Post by Warpedout »

I'm sorry they never kept the random explosions going on in the background. There was a similar effect used in the Rogue Squadron games (Rogue Leader & Rebel Strike) for Gamecube during their respective Battle of Endor missions. It would have made space combat look more interesting and chaotic than it actually does in BF2. Also the game Wookiepedia entry notes some differences between trailers/early versions and the final product, just look in the section entitled "Behind the Scenes":

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_War ... lefront_II

Also I recently re-played the campaign, I find it interesting that the anti-aircraft turrets look so much different than the large cannons you find the campaign missions of Mygeeto, Felucia, and Kashyyyk. Finally what is the deal with the Nebulon-B frigates? I've seen them used in custom maps and in Renegade Squadron, but were they cut content or just goodies left in the mod tools for modders to use (I recall this is the case with some weapons and assets)?
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Re: SWBF1/2 -- differences between demos/betas and producti

Post by myers73 »

earlier builds of the bf2 .exe had an aim bot, believe it or not, plus some other goodies.
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Re: SWBF1/2 -- differences between demos/betas and producti

Post by DarthD.U.C.K. »

i guess because the developers could then play without hud (in the videos etc) and still hit something :P
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Re: SWBF1/2 -- differences between demos/betas and producti

Post by Teancum »

So I played the SWBF2 demo the other night, and it's most definitely a "SWBF 1.5". Not that it's a bad thing, but everything about it seems like SWBF1 with more classes and objectives.
  • The main menu, like the SWBF1 demo, has full screen clips from Star Wars movies, this time focusing on space battles
  • Utapau doesn't seem different structure-wise, though as people pointed out before gunships appear at the end of the mission (do they in regular campaign?)
  • Friendly CPs are green instead of blue, yet another SWBF1 artifact - and probably more proof that the development team ran on a sort of "SWBF 1.5" while working on levels.
  • The hud is waaaaay different. It's not necessarily any better or worse, though.
  • Space flyers cannot roll. It's possible they hadn't changed the flyer code by the time the demo was built. Even though the demo was technically released the same day as the game (The Ep 3 DVD came out the same day as SWBF2) I would bet this is a playable E3 demo or something to that effect, and it just got dropped right onto the DVD as a bonus.
  • The one space objective I had time to complete was to destroy two vital systems. Both were in the hangar itself instead of further into the ship. The timer ran out on me, so I don't know if you can get into the ship after beating those objectives.
  • Space hangars overall have a different layout
Seeing this and the SWBF1 demo makes me wish the source code for SWBF2 proper had been released, even though I know that would never have happened. It would have been so much fun to bring back some stuff cut out like dynamic CP colors, prone, etc.

Still, I guess we should be happy with what we have. Pandemic gave us pretty much everything we could ever need to modify the entire game, so long as it wasn't in the executable.
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Re: SWBF1/2 -- differences between demos/betas and producti

Post by Fusion »

You can't actually get into the ship, but you can look through the wall in third person mode. The Auto-Turret Defense mainframe in the CIS cruiser looks really different, from what I remember it had blue bloom lighting the sides and more of a bulbous area near the floor.

Also, go to the back CIS ship to find a Tri-fighter. It has Invisible Guns.

Edit: How did you like how the heroes just ran away instead of kneeling? I kind of liked that system better than the kneeling one.
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Re: SWBF1/2 -- differences between demos/betas and producti

Post by Teancum »

I didn't get to see that part. I'll have to check it out. I just ran through it once before bed. I've got it installed on my 'box so I'll have to play it some more. Oh, and I'm 99.999% sure that I can just upload a simple launcher with both demos in an ISO that folks can burn to a CD. DVDs don't have any special Xbox-specific encoding, so demos should run right from a CD on an unmodified Xbox. I'll be able to tell if my modded Xbox will play the demos from the DVD, since I don't have a modchip in it.
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Re: SWBF1/2 -- differences between demos/betas and producti

Post by Fusion »

The demo was also on an OXM magazine CD. I ended up breaking my original (dropped it, would take upwards of 30 minutes to load one map) then got another one later on. :P

But yeah, if you could get it running on something else, or maybe even extract some of the assets (like the hangar models, the auto-turret thing) that would be great.
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