-= Gametoast.com =-

Hi everyone,


sorry I've been off for so much time but I'm sure no one really felt my absence.


I had my HD to be replaced so I had to start my PC from ground up, losing any data that was not backed up.

Unfortunately, SWBF2 saves were NOT backed up.

And I had no intention at all to replay all of the game from start and replay it again and again to redo my stats. So I decided to not reinstall it.


Until THIS came out: http://www.moddb.com/mods/battlefront-2013


The mod aim is to update Battlefront 2 graphics to modern standards.

The goal is achieved by injecting new code into the execution of the program.

It already show a color correction effect that gets rid with the greyning effect of the vanilla game bringing in more realistic, living colours.


I know this space is used to announce one person's own projects, but this one deserves the attention of every BF fan out there, since it promises to better the experience of everyone who is playing it.

It would be a pity if those who play BF2 missed it, and since I saw no news here I decided to post it here.

I'm not related with it in any form, I'm just a follower on Moddb and as you have read when I saw it I understood I will be reinstalling BF2 so I found correct to advice you all as well.


If I had broken any rule I apologize and accept any sanction.

You guys should really take a gander at this mod in progress! Its an HD mod that is aiming to improve the battlefront experience. I am really impressed with this so far.

Sorry to be blunt, but it doesn't look any better. It just looks different. A "2013 graphics" mod isn't really possible with the Zero engine. What you see is really about how far it can go. If everything were remodeled from scratch and higher resolution textures were created you'd see some difference, but the engine just doesn't have the rendering capabilities that an "HD pack" can enhance.

It just seems like a waste of time, like all the "Movie saber" mods for Jedi Academy. It's a miniscule visual modification that folks tout as amazing. If I'm honest I think it looks worse.

Alpha347 wrote:The mod aim is to update Battlefront 2 graphics to modern standards.

The goal is achieved by injecting new code into the execution of the program.

Wouldn't that go against the EULA?

license.txt wrote:(2) New Levels may not modify any COM, EXE, DLL or other executable files.

Just wondering...

Regarding the EULA, injecting code into the executable would probably not be considered as modifying it since it's only a run-time change. It's like how we can inject code into LVLs. Probably, anyway.

Teancum wrote:Sorry to be blunt, but it doesn't look any better. It just looks different. A "2013 graphics" mod isn't really possible with the Zero engine. What you see is really about how far it can go. If everything were remodeled from scratch and higher resolution textures were created you'd see some difference, but the engine just doesn't have the rendering capabilities that an "HD pack" can enhance.

It just seems like a waste of time, like all the "Movie saber" mods for Jedi Academy. It's a miniscule visual modification that folks tout as amazing. If I'm honest I think it looks worse.

To be fair, he's also adding shaders to the game and has actually been more-or-less successful in doing so, and more shaders (can) mean more render types like parallax mapping!

Honestly, it looks like they just upped the contrast on all the textures. I felt like I was looking at one of those "spot-the-difference" images when looking at those screenshots because I seriously could not tell the difference in a couple of them.

Teancum wrote:If everything were remodeled from scratch and higher resolution textures were created you'd see some difference, but the engine just doesn't have the rendering capabilities that an "HD pack" can enhance.

This.

To be fair, he's also adding shaders to the game and has actually been more-or-less successful in doing so, and more shaders (can) mean more render types like parallax mapping!

I'm quite skeptical about Zero's ability to handle shaders, as well as peoples abilities to create more advanced ones. The last shader experimentation (That I know of) was RSS and I a few years back, and we never made serious headway. I'm not saying it's impossible to do, and I'm sure this person may have figured it out, but it's never had any serious testing done to see Zero's ability to handle new shaders.

tldr; Remodel everything ever in Battlefront, code completely new shaders, and I'll be impressed. The screenshots I see so far almost make Battlefront look worse.

A little touch up never hurts.

I have some suggestions for this.
-Battlefront I maps! That would be awesome! (This mod would be sort of like an Unofficial Patch)
-High Res Shadows on everything! Haha, little details like that can make a map look better.

Maybe you don't need to raise the contrast, instead focus on the visuals of the maps. For example.
These two maps did a very good job with the visuals of the map and made it look fantastic.

http://starwarsbattlefront.filefront.co ... ity;115155
forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=28496

Good luck creating your mod!

Meh I'll give it a download when it comes out. It looks okay

RogueKnight wrote:tldr; Remodel everything ever in Battlefront, code completely new shaders, and I'll be impressed. The screenshots I see so far almost make Battlefront look worse.

Thank you! Somebody gets it.

Marth8880 wrote:To be fair, he's also adding shaders to the game and has actually been more-or-less successful in doing so, and more shaders (can) mean more render types like parallax mapping!

Add shaders all you want, but those shaders are driven from core rendering capabilities. I love Zero as much as the next fan, but that engine does *not* have a hidden power in it. According to Pysch0fred and other past developers it was old in 2002 when it was used for Clone Wars. The absolute best it could do is roughly Lord of the Rings: Conquest quality, and that is, quite frankly, an assets upgrade, not some looks-the-same-if-not-worse shader swap.

Additionally the engine is not optimized for "HD updates". That's why it can choke down to a crawl on decent machines when all options are turned up. It doesn't do a good job of handling multiple cores (this wasn't added until a patch). Cranking that all up, turning up model polygon counts and texture resolutions, trying to update shaders with increased rendering capabilities...

It's all a great dream, but frankly it'll never be anything more than a matter of taste. It won't be a true HD upgrade.

Well that escalated quickly.

Gez I thought this looked good for a mod in progress. The next thing to this is the ENB mod which lagged the freak out of lower end pc's. This gentlemen is removing code from that thing and he really has the skill to mess with that stuff. Also its not like its just adding buffs and effects either, he said he is adding higher pixelated models, newer weapon models and it is aiming to work on almost any pc with out lag. If you guys would go look and see his updates, you will see the amount of professionalism and work he is doing. Also he hasn't revealed all his cards yet, there is a lot more that this gentlemen is working on (This is just a small taste of a much bigger bowl of cookie duogh). Now I may not know how coding works and all that jazz is, but I don't think you guys are giving him much of a chance. I talked with this guy, he really wants to make something that will improve the look and feel, if you think it looks horrible why not go post on their and tell him that so he can change things. He has experience working with the crytek engine which he has shown me proof and its not like this is a finished product. That would be like me telling marth or wulfman that the early concepts of their mods look bad and that they should keep dreaming (Hypothetical of course, right now they are looking great but im betting they didn't always start of that way).

All I am saying is why discourage this young man? If I can't convince you gentlemen now, you can bet when I get an advanced copy in the future that my team videos will prove otherwise.

"This mod aims to improve the visual and rendering capabilities of Pandemic Studios Zero Engine. It does this by injecting code into the game during run-time that adds modern graphical enhancements and effects. Also, it replaces many of the default weapons and models in-game, including all player models and every weapon available."

I have seen mods that have done things the Zero engine shouldn't do, I say give this some time and encouragement.

So experience with a totally different engine suddenly gives him the manpower of a full development team who work a bare minimum of 40 hours a week for multiple years on a game?

The reason I get irritated is because modders seem to think they can do everything that a full development team can do in less overall time, with less staff, and with less hours a week. The reality (having been an application developer for several years now) is that this shows ignorance as to the huge scale he/she is going for. That ignorance inevitably either vastly scales something down, or it causes the mod to fail all together. Take a look back at all the large-scale mods you've followed over the years. For every one that succeeds, hundreds fail. And when they fail it's either for lack of interest to help, or a leader who has extremely lofty goals.

As far as injecting code, unless he knows assembly he'll have a hard time being successful in doing so. That is unless he uses one of many (awful) canned solutions which simply add copious amounts of bloom to the scene, which doesn't help either.

The problem is Zero just cannot handle that level of detail. It will lag and it is pretty much inevitable without doing something that would break the EULA.

Also LOL my mod looked like utter crap when it started, HAHA!

Time to Adjust things up...

Teancum wrote:

RogueKnight wrote:tldr; Remodel everything ever in Battlefront, code completely new shaders, and I'll be impressed. The screenshots I see so far almost make Battlefront look worse.

Thank you! Somebody gets it.

Btw you didn't even took the time to actually READ the OP or the link before start give any "judjement".


Because (1)


What you see is NOT the mod final results to "judge", but only the very first effect of a WIP mod started just e few days ago.

The mod project IS to add shaders, remake HD textures, player and weapon models and much more.


And it all will run thanks to new, modern code injected during the execution of the program.

That's how it will overcome Zero limitations, basically it will add any of the modern features with the new code making possibile such capabilities.


No surprise so as the author has still to do all of the deal.

In this case, as explained what you see is a color correction, since the original colours are all but realistic, with their unexplicable graveyard-like greying-everything effect.


As a side note, every and each one Moddb user has appreciated it, with no exception.

Very first stime I saw such a positive unanimity in any project on Moddb (or anything else).

No exception if not for GT user - that later Apologized. See below:


In fact, a certain Marth8880 has expressed his interest and requested the author to contact him via PM.

You can see it in the comments here: http://www.moddb.com/mods/battlefront-2 ... 3#comments Last in bottom page, can't miss it.

He wanted it for his own mod....


Also it will be interesting to know that after a series of skepticism and basically hoax accusations, GTRogueKnight apologized for their behaviour

http://www.moddb.com/mods/battlefront-2013#comments see bottom of page.

I'll also forwardly apologize for our "tooth & claw"-like attitude towards this, we tend to be a bit condemning towards mods that aren't Gametoast-based. We think having a centered modding community makes the entirety of the game stronger. Haha.

Now they are invinting the author to this site...

If I were him/her, which I am NOT, I will pass 'cause of such a "presentation"...


Yes because also (2)

"I'm not related with it in any form, I'm just a follower on Moddb and (...) I found correct to advice you all as well."

So this is not my mod, it's someone else work and I am just spreading the word as it is very strange such a project has no attention here.


Well, not being publicy shown in these site, but on the original page on Moddb is all a tour of GT heads asking permissions, invitations and excuses....

I am sincerely dis...appointed by such a behaviour (my interior gentleman prohibites me to complete the word that means "the opposite of fine taste")


/End of justice redistribution.


I hope the author will join here so I can follow all the BF2 projects in the same site, but I'm not very confident...

Hello, my name is CreatorOfThings and I am the creator of the Battlefront 2013 mod. I am reluctantly coming here to Gametoast after being invited by a couple members, RogueKnight and Marth8880.


I have received nothing but amazing feedback and support by everyone on ModDB. I even received a PM from the site creator, Scott, saying that the mod is the second fastest to ever reach the top 10 list in the 14 year history of the site. On the other hand, two of the 3 Gametoast members that I have had contact with have made public statements on my page that I am a fake and that my images are "Photoshopped" and the mod is a hoax. They apologized for their actions and I appreciate that, but I am surprised by their harsh and negative responses. Especially when as Alpha347 said,

While not being publicly shown in these site, but on the original page on Moddb is all a tour of GT heads asking permissions, invitations and excuses....

. By PM, the heads of several mods have asked for my work and have asked to combine my mod with theirs. Marth8880 even described the mod as "brilliant" and then asked if he could incorporate my work in his Unification mod. And yet on the game page these same individuals will completely trash it and say it is fake. Simply put, if this is a good representation of the Gametoast community, I don't believe I will spend much time here.


Now I think I should clear up some misconceptions. This mod will:

*Inject code at runtime that adds modern shaders and effects. I will get into this another time. By the way, it is not ENB but a custom made program that works differently, but I did get the idea and some of the code from it.

*It will update a good majority of the textures to improved quality and resolution. And yes I understand the engine limitations.

*It will update some of the models, but not all. I am being picky on choosing what models to replace due to the engine limitations.

*Also it will replace loading screens, some UI, and the fonts.

*And lastly, I have already secured support from 2 very well known mappers who have expressed making custom maps for the mod.


So now that some of the misconceptions have been addressed, I want to say one final thing. I believe it is unfair to judge a mod so harshly when it is only 5 days old. I have literally revealed only one very simple shader, and yet the Gametoast community as a whole seems to look at the mod as if it finished. The ModDB community has not. Many more shaders will be revealed, as well as some updated textures and models. If you have critiques, then by all means give them. But give them knowing that this mod is 5 days old and only 2% finished. For what it's worth, I do realize the engine limitations, and also that this project is far from perfect.


Also, I hope I never have to make another post criticizing the actions of any member of this site. I do not wish to be known as someone who would do this, especially when I am generally known as a kind person.

I am open to answering any questions or concerns you have

Thanks,
-Creator

Ah, you see, with most mods released in the WIP thread, they are at least 50% done. So, although the mod as only 2% done, we Gametoasters thought it was halfway complete! I think this misunderstanding may be a reason behind some of the statements made here at gametoast. I really had no contact with your work until now, but from what I can see, things look to be set up well. Your project's goal is ambitious, but it also seems to be possible. I earnestly hope things good well.

yuke5 wrote:Ah, you see, with most mods released in the WIP thread, they are at least 50% done. So, although the mod as only 2% done, we Gametoasters thought it was halfway complete! I think this misunderstanding may be a reason behind some of the statements made here at gametoast. I really had no contact with your work until now, but from what I can see, things look to be set up well. Your project's goal is ambitious, but it also seems to be possible. I earnestly hope things good well.

I understand completely I originally intended to wait a couple weeks before posting here, but the decision was sorta made for me

Thanks for the feedback.

You're welcome to defend your mod, and frankly you should. However after years of seeing this exact thing happen repeatedly I've taken a "I'll believe it when I actually see it" stance. Experience has taught me that such early debut typically does not bode well. I hope to see something more than expected, truly I do, but you have to admit that you have seen this exact thing happen hundreds of times for games, and that 'money talks' so to speak. I've learned not to heap praise so incredibly early. Look at all the great mod developers, and professionals for that matter. They hold back a reveal until there's quite a bit of real substance to show. (Maveritchell is an excellent example of this in the Battlefront community)

I hope you'll forgive the cynicism, but this reveal has all the telltale signs of big plans coupled with a learn-along-the-way attitude. (to be fair, you might have the skill level, but I don't know that) I wish your mod the best -- truly and completely I do, but for now I can't help but see the gaping holes. It's just something being a modder for 10+ years (and being in my 30's with a wife and kids) has taught me -- I just can't get excited this early on.

Also, sortof off topic of criticism, but who are the two mappers you have on board?

CreatorOfThings wrote:I have received nothing but amazing feedback and support by everyone on ModDB. I even received a PM from the site creator, Scott, saying that the mod is the second fastest to ever reach the top 10 list in the 14 year history of the site. On the other hand, two of the 3 Gametoast members that I have had contact with have made public statements on my page that I am a fake and that my images are "Photoshopped" and the mod is a hoax. They apologized for their actions and I appreciate that, but I am surprised by their harsh and negative responses. Especially when as Alpha347 said,

While not being publicly shown in these site, but on the original page on Moddb is all a tour of GT heads asking permissions, invitations and excuses....

. By PM, the heads of several mods have asked for my work and have asked to combine my mod with theirs. Marth8880 even described the mod as "brilliant" and then asked if he could incorporate my work in his Unification mod. And yet on the game page these same individuals will completely trash it and say it is fake. Simply put, if this is a good representation of the Gametoast community, I don't believe I will spend much time here.

Dude...RogueKnight pointed out that the two shader screenshots aligned perfectly and that is a very common sign of image alteration; oh, and this was after I made my proposition. We did what many people would do and drew provable conclusions. Also, I thought we already peacefully settled this, so why are you bringing it back up again. Good day.

Marth8880 wrote:

CreatorOfThings wrote:I have received nothing but amazing feedback and support by everyone on ModDB. I even received a PM from the site creator, Scott, saying that the mod is the second fastest to ever reach the top 10 list in the 14 year history of the site. On the other hand, two of the 3 Gametoast members that I have had contact with have made public statements on my page that I am a fake and that my images are "Photoshopped" and the mod is a hoax. They apologized for their actions and I appreciate that, but I am surprised by their harsh and negative responses. Especially when as Alpha347 said,

While not being publicly shown in these site, but on the original page on Moddb is all a tour of GT heads asking permissions, invitations and excuses....

. By PM, the heads of several mods have asked for my work and have asked to combine my mod with theirs. Marth8880 even described the mod as "brilliant" and then asked if he could incorporate my work in his Unification mod. And yet on the game page these same individuals will completely trash it and say it is fake. Simply put, if this is a good representation of the Gametoast community, I don't believe I will spend much time here.

Dude...RogueKnight pointed out that the two shader screenshots aligned perfectly and that is a very common sign of image alteration; oh, and this was after I made my proposition. We did what many people would do and drew provable conclusions. Also, I thought we already peacefully settled this, so why are you bringing it back up again. Good day.

It's all cool I'd say we just move on I purposely mentioned no names in that because we did end it all peacefully lol. Honestly I don't blame you for questioning it.