So I had this idea after reading through some of the effects.con and creating a few of my own, that you could have a vehicles main LOD change after a certain amount of damage creating a damaged vehicle over time. As in I made multiple effects for the willy like creating a version were the more damaged it got the more dents it had. To do this though requires the ability to create you're own effects files and have a strong sense of how Gmax works.
First you have to extract the objects.rfa and copy the appropriate files ( I used the last effects.con Tlight_m1) and renamed them. In this case I used the name WillyDamaged and then the version number. ( as in willyDamaged1 and willyDamaged2 and so forth. so now I have a Effects object.con file with the name WillyWreck. here's whats in it:
Objects/Effects/WillyDamaged1/Objects.con
ObjectTemplate.create SimpleObject WillyDamaged1
ObjectTemplate.geometry Willydamaged
ObjectTemplate.setHasCollisionPhysics 1than I have a geometries file for it. in it is:
GeometryTemplate.create StandardMesh Willydamaged
GeometryTemplate.file WillyDamagedNow pack the new objects.rfa with either PackRFA which would be in your archives file where the objects.rfa is if you had made your mod. If your just modding vanilla bf1942 (like me) with backup files, then your going to want to use winrfa to pack the file.
Now we have to extract the standardmesh.rfa (which I like to extract to the desktop for easy access). In it find Willy_Hul_M1 and Willy_Hul_M1.sm. copy those and rename them WillyDamaged and WillyDamaged.sm. now don't pack the rfa yet. if you have the Gmax tools installed open that up. if not you can download Gmax at . and you can install the Gmax tools from the from the BF1942 Mod Development Toolkit that you can download here from the nice shiny downloads link up in the right hand corner.
With the Gmax tools open click on the mod toolset button on the top row (with File, Edit, View and all those) near the top right. select the import model tab and deselect the collision and shadow check boxes and make sure the box "only main LOD" is checked and click import. navigate to your extracted StandardMesh.rfa and open the WillyDamaged.sm file that you made earlier. you should see the main Hull of the Willy on the screen.
right click on the LOD and select "turn into editable Mesh" or something like that. now you have to make a drastic change that will be noticeable in game. one thing you can do is select the vertex under the editable mesh tab on the right of the screen and select the move button.(in the middle of the top row of buttons and it looks like 4 arrows going differant directions). using that move some vertexes aroung ( the blue dots) into a dent or something noticeable. after that select the mod tools button again (if you closed that box) and click on the export tab. click the "add LOD" button and select your main LOD (LOD01). don't click any other buttons but export. find and select the WillyDamaged.sm file and save over it.
you can go ahead and close Gmax and use which ever program you perfer to repack your standardmesh folder.
now open your objects.con for your normal willy. add the line:
ObjectTemplate.addArmorEffect 60 WillyDamaged1 0/0/0 near the lines that look similer to that. you barely have to scroll down to find them. If everything went right you should have a willy when at 60 percent health and below will have you modified LOD.
If you have any problems please post! I might have made an error in the tutorial and it most likely isn't you're fault!
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