Battlefield Modding Tutorials BFMODS

I made a custom "Aim-54" rocket for use as a guided Stinger rocket that will be either a replacement for the Stinger kit or for pickup after spawning with standard stinger kit. This will be used in my "PoE Mini Mod" and is won't be SSM, so please be aware that I won't be limited to SSM only stuff!

Also, the original Aim-54 and the original Stinger kit will not be affected as I have made copies and made the changes to those. My new kit will be US_AA_Guided and will have a knife, MP5 (as the default weapon when you first spawn) the Guided Stinger. (may also do an Iraqi version once finished with the US version).

Currently it works as expected (and with the usual quirks with having a handheld guided weapon like that camera bug and such). I also modified the way it explodes. I made it to spawn a projectile that behaves as a normal stinger missile would, so firing it at a plane and detonating it nearby (with a distance similer to what was needed for the normal stinger) should do similer damage to aircraft.

Depending on attack angle, sometimes you can kill an Hind with two shots or more if your aim isn't perfact. Of coarse colliding with the aircraft directly instead of detonating nearby will still kill them instantly. I intend to keep it like that as its hard to hit moving targets with it anyway, so it should still be a fair kill. I also plan to give it a custom crosshair. I know how to do this already, so once I have all the bugs worked out, I will then implement one.

Feel free to recommend what you want the crosshair to be. I can't make them from scratch as I have no artskills so keep that in mind. If you have a good recommendation, please tell me what mod or game has the compatible texture file in question that I can use for the crosshair. Right now I want to use a BF2 style crosshair. (perhaps the "TV RC Missile" crosshair used when firing TV controlled missiles from helo's and such)

Here's what I want to do next: (feel free give me tips/code that can help me achieve these)

1. I want to make it so that when the guided stinger hits a tank, that it does NOT result in a instant kill. I want it to have similer damage that the RPG has, maybe a bit more. As it stands right now, it still does a instant kill with tanks. Also, I wish to preserve the instant kill that it has on infantry.

I looked at the matID for the missile (which is matid 850) and none of the damage mod settings seem to be set up to have a instant kill so I guess its in the way it collides with the target and not the mat ID interactions. Being that the missile is a PCO and not a projectile, certain stuff will work differently because of this. I need to know how to reduce the damage it does on tanks. (cars I still want to die in one shot) I set the missile to have a range that isn't too far.

For example, right now if I were to fire the missile from Blue main on El Alamein, it will just barely reach East Post. However if any of you think that being able to kill tanks with this at all is still over powered, then feel free to recommend disabling damage against armoured vehicles entirely. Or perhaps removing the MP5. I have not determined the final kit layout yet, so I'm still open on weapon selections and such.

2. I want to fix the bug in which the soldier holds the stinger launcher a bit weird after using the Aim-54 Projectile. I think it might have something to do with the stinger.ske file that binds the weapon to the soldiers hands and using a different projectile somehow screws the alignment up. It also also breaks the reload animation. Perhaps making it fire a dummy projectile at the same time will fix this? I won't try fixing it untill I know for sure why it doesn't work right.

3. I want to use the visible mesh of the Stinger missile instead of the mesh of the Aim-54 rocket. I tried simply changing the geometry to use the Stinger geometry instead, but as a result, it makes the missile unflyable due to a sever impact on flight characteristics. I checked and it does not appear to be the collision mesh that is responsible and is perhaps the visible mesh. So I might need new settings for the Wings that are in the Physics.con file.

I do not know how the Wing objects work so I would need help on setting that up. If there's someone with experience with the wing objects and such, please help me make new wing assignments for the Stingermissile_m1 geometry. As I don't really want to use the Aim-54 rocket as it looks a bit unrealistic firing that big a$$ missile from a hand held launcher.

4. Hitting infantry with the missile results in them dieing with a "is no more" message instead of a credited kill. I would like to fix this, but its not a priority, as this does not happen with vehicles. If it can be fixed, I'll fix it, but I'm not to worried about this.

That's what I still need help on at the moment. Any help on this would be appreciated. Just keep in mind that all the stuff I'm working on has been copied and none of the original Aim-54/Stinger kit stuff was changed. I made whole new object files that share some stuff from the Stinger and Aim-54 and can be modified without effecting the originals. However it still shares the geometry of the Aim-54 as I have not copied that.

Any other recommendations outside of what I'm doing with it now is also welcomed.

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I have cameras in your head!

No help?

Well to make this post useful I have perfected a few things:

1. I got the object to use the stinger geometry but use the AIM-54 mesh for flight physics. That is, I set it up so that the stinger geometry is always visible and the Aim-54 geometry is always invisible (done using the "objecttemplate.createinvisible" command) Now it it looks like a standard stinger missile when viewed externally and retains the flight characteristics of the Aim-54. The stinger missile geometry that's visible has collision turned off to avoid conflict with the collision physics of the invisible Aim-54 mesh.

2. Fixed the camera bug where the camera would stay at the place the missile detonated. I simply disabled the camera "delay" entirely, and now it will go back to the soldier camera as soon as the missile dies and does not leave a camera position where the missile used to be. This will prevent players from cheating by simply staying on the camera and watching enemy movements with it.

3. The missile now has similer range to a normal stinger missile, though I well set it to go just a little bit further then a standard stinger.

4. I now have it set up so that when you right click to detonate, it will spawn a custom stinger projectile (that has no engine or visible mesh to it) that will detonate as soon as it spawns. I did this by extending the proximity to enemy setting to 2048. This ensures that the "projectile" always thinks its near an enemy and will instantly detonate getting the desired effect on the target. If the player aim is good, it should take the same amount of shots to kill aircraft as it does with the dumb fire version assuming the missile doesn't collide with the target before the right click to detonate is used.

5. The mass and engine power/acceleration are now indenticle to the engine used on the Stinger dumb fire missile.

5. Fixed uncredited kills on infantry. I fixed this by reducing the "explosion damage" of the main missile to a really small number. Since most if not all the time, the splash damage of the missile exploding will kill the infantry target before the stinger projectile does. This results in a "is no more" message. Now you must use the right click feature to kill infantry. Its not easy to get a kill on infantry do all the time, so this should make it a more balanced weapon.

Still to do:

1. Fix alignment bug on handheld stinger launcher. It is unlikely that I will ever fix this if no one can provide any tips as to why this happens.

2. Add custom crosshair to the Guided stinger.

3. Update my lexiconAll.dat file so that the kill messages won't have underscores in it.

5. Still need to figure out how to get it from not killing tanks instantly when it collides with them.

Any help on how to fix the alignment issues with the handheld stinger launcher would be appreciated.

If I can get the missile to get similer damage to land targets (when colliding into them) as the RPG, then this kit can entirely replace the AT kit.

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I have cameras in your head!

I don't have much experience in modding DC but how about change the overall material of the PCO Aim-54 to somthing like the katyusha rocket matid which already has the damage system worked out. or just create the proper damage system for it. I'm not entirely sure how to do that. when I get a chance i'll download DC and try to create a damaged system. it shouldn't be that hard.

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Well the problem is, that the mat id is only a small part of what the game will calculate when a vehicle collides with another (keep in mind the guided stinger is no longer a projectile, and is a PCO).

I will try changing the mat ID, but it will be difficult finding a mat ID where it will do similer damage to tanks that the RPG does and still kill aircraft on direct collision.

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I have cameras in your head!

sorry i'm not used to DC. but why can't it be the material number of say the mortar projectile? by the way the matierial 850 is set up in the damage_system/stinger.con right? or not?

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just create you're own material then? Then you could set it up anyway you like. I can do it for you if you'd like. and actually you would have to replace the tank material it looks like... or change speed mod on it.... the only reason the "aim-54" is killing it seems to be the collision.

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If you do make a new mat id setup, be sure that it isn't already used by another vehicle/object. Also, I want the missile to still die when it collides with the ground and other static objects and such, since changing the speedmod would hinder this.

Update:

I made a new material and use that (mat ID 167, which doesn't seem to be used anywhere). I defined it with damageMod set to zero on everything except infantry targets and it STILL kills vehicles instantly when it hits directly. At this point I'd settle for this being completely harmless collision wise and have it so you must detonate it in order to do damage to something.

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I have cameras in your head!

That might be impossible though with it being a PCO and all... i'll look into later. I have to leave now

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