Lawrence Brown (Battlefield's Franchise Mod Support Coordinator) passed on an article today that summarizes the Battlefield 2 Mod Tools (also known as the BF2 Editor) that will be released a short time before Battlefield 2 hits shelves. These tools are simply amazing and we hope you enjoy this preview.
Today I'm pleased to present a first look at the tools we will be releasing to the Battlefield 2 Mod community: The BF2 Editor.
Unlike the package of separate tools that were released for Battlefield 1942 and Vietnam, the BF2 Editor consolidates all the tools a Modder will need into "subsections" of one Editor, allowing you to do pretty much everything from the same application.
The Level Editor subsection is where you do most of the layout work. In this subsection, you place your objects, spawn points, control points, static effects (such as fires, smoke, or whatever), as well as undergrowth and overgrowth. In the Level Editor you also define boundaries, triggers, playable areas and more. Alongside the Level Editor is the Terrain Editor subsection, in which you can sculpt the terrain and paint ground textures. One really handy feature of the Level Editor is that you can switch to "soldier cam" to get a view of what the map will look like during normal play without having to save the level and load it in Battlefield 2.
After laying out your map and testing, you may realize that one of your vehicles just isn?t quite working right. You would then switch over to the "Object Editor" section.
The actual creation of a vehicle (or building) is actually done in either 3DS Studio Max or Maya (we will support current versions of both art suites at launch -- more about that in a future update) but once the basic vehicle is complete, you simply load it into the Editor where you can then tweak pretty much any setting for the vehicle without ever having to "hack" the .con files (you BF1942 veterans will know what this was like). You can also test any changes you?ve made to the vehicle physics and so on right in the Editor. No need to make changes, launch the game, test, and repeat -- feedback is immediate.
BF2 includes a much more intricate damage system that Battlefield 1942 and Vietnam. Want to see what your vehicle is going to look like when it blows up? There?s actually a button in the editor for that.
The Object Editor will play back the explosion effects that are assigned to the vehicle allowing you to see what they are going to look like even as you make the changes. The actual effects themselves are created in the Effects Editor subsection.
Assign the sprites, tweak the particle rates, change the colors, play back the explosion over and over again until you get it just right. All the variables are right there.
Another great feature of the BF2 Editor -- it is now also much easier to manage material damage using the Material Editor section.
The interface here is basically a spreadsheet. On the left side of the main window is a column that lists attack materials while the rows across the top define"defending" materials. All of the cells in the middle of this window carry the attack modifiers for material collisions. Selecting one of these brings up a column to the very left where you can assign additional damage modifiers, effects, and sounds. It?s hard to see in the screenshot, but if you look closely, you can see all the materials listed by actual names instead of numbers. Thus, tweaking has never been so easy.
And finally, if you want to change a soldier animation, you would use the Animation Editor subsection.
One thing to note: this tool only allows you to tweak animations, rather than create them (which will require Maya or 3DS Max). For example, if you wanted to do a custom weapon loading animation, you would do that in your favorite animation program and then export. The Animation Editor then allows you to hook that animation up to a soldier, define when it plays, adjust the speed that it plays back at, and so on.
So there you have it: the Community's first glimpse of the BF2 editor. This tool allows a modder to change pretty much any aspect of the game without delving directly into the .con files. Very exciting.
-Lawrence Brown
-Battlefield Mod Support Coordinator
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