Ghost Recon: Heroes Unleashed

[ApexMods]

Don't forget your coffee. =)

Funny you should mention this, because it really looks like I just ran out!

Anyhow, close to 40 percent of actor replacements are done now, and it feels like I begin to develop mouse-induced carpal tunnel syndrome - so better step away from modding for a couple of hours... and visit GR.net instead!

While I'm here, is there anyone willing to quickly do a couple of thousand new skins for the original NPCs in GR, DS, and IT...? No...? Nobody...? Bueller...? Bueller...? Bueller...?

[Zeealex]

I could probably do a few, i think my plugin parses most skins. i'll check before i commit XD

[Giampi]

You might want to check my third mission in Armenia Scared where there is the decreasing foggy weather with adjusted spotting distance. I even used the same algorithm for a sandstorm mission for Afghanistan mod but it was never released (I think I still have it somewhere)

Cheers, Giampi. Yes, in a mission script it is possible to dynamically alter weather conditions that will fit the map environment perfectly at all times, and of course you can adjust viewing and spotting distances to match up under those circumstances. The difficulties with dynamic weather changes arise in game type files (GTF) that are not bound to a single map but rather need to work across a wide range of very different maps, each with specific individual environments.

Depending on various environmental conditions, e.g. time of day (day, night, noon, dusk, dawn), weather (clear, rain, snow, fog), sun/moon/artificial light (intensity, direction, color) with corresponding darkmaps/shadows, and drawing distance/mist/fog settings (range, density, color) of a particular map, dynamic changes implemented via GTF may end up looking very out of place and unnatural, because there is no way to query any of the aforementioned conditions to adjust e.g. weather or fog color accordingly.

My bad, sorry, completely misunderstood your post.

Edited October 8, 2014 by Giampi

[ApexMods]

Please mate, no problem at all! Gave me a chance to explain the GTF situation in more detail.

[ApexMods]

Another progress update. I've finished replacing all 1,620 actor files (inkl. manually adjusting their stats), partially re-skinned over a thousand character models so far (inkl. individual faces, all of which blinking, btw), and expanded potential opposing forces in game types (Firefight, Black Ops, etc.) to hundreds of different actors (over a hundred individual enemies per default, desert, and jungle environment, each with unique skin and face textures).

You should NOT run into a group of enemies that look exactly alike, anymore.

There's still some final actor, character, and attachment work to be done before I move on to another huge content restructuring phase that involves altering another couple of thousand strings and file names (to tell you the truth, some of this work is mind-numbingly repetitive, but I feel the job needs to be done).

After that, I'll finally go back to adding more new content. Can't wait!

[Rocky]

That's plain crazy but I love it!

[MrMoon]

Sounds massive!

[ApexMods]

Crazy... moi?

Anyhow, still in the process of restructuring everything... EVERYTHING!

While the workload is immense, the benefit of this seemingly foolish endeavor is that I keep stumbling upon little things previously overlooked... which in turn leads to more stuff I want to do... which in turn leads to my todo list getting longer again. Hang on, was I really talking about the benefit of this?!?

But seriously, while development is moving along fine, I get sidetracked way too often (there will be loads of changes in the next release), so it will be very tough to get the update ready for a December release. I'll keep trying, though! It really depends on whether I can afford to take some time off from RL work, so keep your fingers crossed for me, please.

[MrMoon]

Haha yeah 'sidetracked' is a common word for me and my exploits.

[kothen]

Good luck to you man. I've been looking forward to this!

[Supervisor]

I registered here just to say thank you for your work. I have recently reaquired Ghost recon and it's expansions, just to fall in love with the origin of this series once again.

Downloaded your mod, and I must say you have done an impressive piece of work. Been playing the BI games online with different communities since OFP, so I look forward to trying this out online.

You got my vote on modb ; )

[Rocky]

Thanks for registering and contributing Supervisor

[Brian4845]

I registered here just to say thank you for your work. I have recently reaquired Ghost recon and it's expansions, just to fall in love with the origin of this series once again.

Downloaded your mod, and I must say you have done an impressive piece of work. Been playing the BI games online with different communities since OFP, so I look forward to trying this out online.

You got my vote on modb ; )

The classic Clancy games (R6 + GR) are still great to this day because they're among the few quality titles in the tacitcal shooter genre (I'd also include GRAW 1 + 2). I admit that I also enjoy more the more recent unrealistic titles such as R6V 1 + 2, but at least they're relatively close to being a genuine tac shooter unlike, say, the Call of Duty series.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Brian4845

[ApexMods]

Many thanks for the kind words, folks. Sadly I couldn't get off work for even a single day so far. Hope I'll manage to get some modding done over the holidays, but I'm quite far behind schedule, so I don't think I'll manage a December release, after all. I'm very sorry to disappoint you guys, but I hope I can make up for it, soon. Thank you all for your patience and support!

[MrMoon]

That's cool apex, serious modding can never be squeezed into the smaller half of a couple of hours of free time.

I often get stressed about ballancing real life time constraints, actual relaxation and modding.

I often feel sorry for mod developers working on more popular games, getting hounded day and night by 11 year old kids for updates and release dates you won't find that kind of pressure here

[ApexMods]

Thanks mate. Very true, and we certainly don't have that kind of pressure here at the GR family.

So, I finally have a free weekend to work on Heroes Unleashed full force ahead for once, as I only managed to scrape some time off here and there for modding lately. Anyhow, I ran into a huge obstacle that gave me pause with my whole future plans for GRHU. Turns out there seems to be a hard limit for the amount of files that can be present in active mods (or maybe even the whole mods folder?) at any given time. This thing has been driving me crazy for weeks and weeks, as I would run into seemingly random crashes and other issues I could make neither heads nor tails of.

After some (actually much!) experimenting it finally dawned on me that it was in fact the file number. I still haven't figured out at what exact count the limit is, but it seems to be somewhere around 250,000 files total. I had to almost completely change my planned mod structure to bring the file count down again, which also forced me to throw out much work that I had already done and do it over again. On the plus side, this brought the total mod size back down a bit.

Nonetheless, surrender is not an option! So I'm right back at it again, pushing on to get the next release ready. The good news is that in spite of this major setback, I managed to finish a ton of stuff from my to-do list so it is actually a lot shorter than the last time I checked in here. One thing I'm especially happy to declare done (for now) is a complete re-write of my gun ballistics formulas and spreadsheets and the subsequent implementation of fixes in e.g. bullet penetration, accuracy, handling, etc. for all small arms (incl. several nice new ones).

Please keep your fingers crossed, so that we shall prevail!

[Zeealex]

I often feel sorry for mod developers working on more popular games, getting hounded day and night by 11 year old kids for updates and release dates you won't find that kind of pressure here

or getting asked to do this that and the other, as if y'know it's five minutes work or something! especially when it's the same thing over and over again and you feel like a broken record explaining to people why it can't be done so quickly.

that's a sneak peak of the crap you have to deal with in the BIF and on steam workshop...

anyhoo...

After some (actually much!) experimenting it finally dawned on me that it was in fact the file number. I still haven't figured out at what exact count the limit is, but it seems to be somewhere around 250,000 files total. I had to almost completely change my planned mod structure to bring the file count down again, which also forced me to throw out much work that I had already done and do it over again. On the plus side, this brought the total mod size back down a bit.

Nonetheless, surrender is not an option! So I'm right back at it again, pushing on to get the next release ready. The good news is that in spite of this major setback, I managed to finish a ton of stuff from my to-do list so it is actually a lot shorter than the last time I checked in here. One thing I'm especially happy to declare done (for now) is a complete re-write of my gun ballistics formulas and spreadsheets and the subsequent implementation of fixes in e.g. bullet penetration, accuracy, handling, etc. for all small arms (incl. several nice new ones).

Please keep your fingers crossed, so that we shall prevail!

damn straight, my fingers are nearly merged together!

sounds like this update is going to be freaking HUGE, if you've managed to 'break' the game because you've got that many files in the mods folder, it sucks that you had to throw so much out though, it would be great if ubi###### would give us the source code for GR so we could fix those sorts of issues and make the sky the limit.

are you going to do a bullet-drop like effect for the weapons like Doc.caliban did with the m24?

it's great to hear that the to do list is now shorter anyway! progress is progress!

[MrMoon]

I shall keep an eye out for that file number ctd problem as I have the habbit of accidently finding every ctd mistake and making it lol.

Wow sometimes I feel overloaded by the scale of work that needs to be done and then I read this and realise I do not even attempt to mess around with things like gun settings etc, that's a ton of work without even considering the number of imported firearms heroes has in it. My hat goes off to you sir as one of my least favorite things related to gr modding is weapon modding and importing.

I often feel sorry for mod developers working on more popular games, getting hounded day and night by 11 year old kids for updates and release dates you won't find that kind of pressure here

or getting asked to do this that and the other, as if y'know it's five minutes work or something! especially when it's the same thing over and over again and you feel like a broken record explaining to people why it can't be done so quickly.

that's a sneak peak of the crap you have to deal with in the BIF and on steam workshop...

Indeed I sometimes want to lose my ###### when I hear people complaining about the graphics or ai in a game like they know what the hell they are talking about. No body seems to understand really how difficult and time consuming making even the most basic of games really is and this is just as true for modding.

[Zeealex]

yeah, HU really does put things into perspective!

I'll split off the stuff modders deal with into another thread... saves inadvertently hijacking this one

[MrMoon]

Haha would like to read that zee.

[shakealeg1212]

Keep up the great work apex! im looking forward to the next release!

to second zee, did you add any kind of bullet drop ?

Edited February 12, 2015 by shakealeg1212

[kothen]

Hey, its been almost a month since the last post on here. Any juicy updates for us? :'>

[ApexMods]

At last I have another free weekend with some spare time for Ghost Recon modding and checking in with you guys. You have no idea how much I appreciate all of your feedback and encouragement to continue this crazy modding endeavor. Big thanks to all of you!

Regarding bullet drop: I actually messed around with this for quite a while, but in the end the drawbacks by far outweighed the advantages. Implementing realistic bullet drop in GR means making all firearms grenade launchers in the "eyes" of the game engine, as this is the only weapons category that allows directly adjusting projectile flight properties through drag coefficient, weight, velocity etc.

This, in turn, renders all bullets explosive, which means that any impact is accompanied by an explosion animation of some sort. Even though these animations' visual impact can be minimized to a degree, in the end it tends to look rather strange, to say the least (e.g. characters being thrown off their feet and through the air). Adjusting bullet penetration and lethality properties also becomes another major headache, and frankly doesn't look too promising to ever be anywhere near realistic, no matter how much effort is poured into it.

Lastly, the game's AI isn't able to cope with realistic bullet drop achieved this way (the "grenade launcher" ballistics workaround), which leads to both AI characters and vehicles being unable to hit anything at all, unless the target is extremely up close. So with all these drawbacks considered, I decided not to go this route and rather tried to maximize realism though other means. Within the scope of typical Ghost Recon maps where fire exchange usually takes place over comparatively short distances (usually not much more than about 100-200 meters), the significance of bullet drop probably shouldn't be all that dominant, anyhow. Let's just assume characters do the drop compensation of their weapon sights on the fly.

After a month of silence (sorry about that) I'd also like to update you on the current Heroes Unleashed development progress. The problems I described before (file number limitations etc.) threw me back quite a bit, so to limit the resulting delay, I've actually cut a couple of corners by postponing to include a number of assets I originally wanted to add for the next release. Don't be too disappointed, though. There'll still be loads and loads of new stuff in beta 9, and I will still add the remainder of maps, weapons etc. at a later time, e.g. for the final 1.0 release.

On the bright side, the current to-do list has finally become somewhat manageable, as there's basically "just" a complete kit/kil redo and... drum rolls, please... campaign mission scripting to be done now. As another tidbit of teaser info, I'm planning 40+ campaign missions (single-player and co-op) and over 3,000 equipment kits total (all soldier classes combined). Now, before you start to worry about carpal tunnel syndrome and broken mouse buttons, you will not have to click through all those kits - I've found an easier way for in-game kit selection.

Ghost Recon forever!

[kothen]

Oh man, Im so excited! Great work so far. I've been looking forward to this update for so long!

Also, with the addition of 40 campaign missions, How many missions will we have total?

[MrMoon]

Wow that's a big ass load of missions great to hear dude.