:shock:

8)

:-D

YESSSSS!!!!

R@S, what's the point in going over to play Back in Action, when it's not even moddable. With good ol' (buggy) 7.62, you can still play god, and have a cult of followers who ceaselessly worship you. BiA can't give you that! ;)

Seriously though, the above changes to the AI sounds AMAZING. I can't wait to try it!

In regards to the Read Me, perhaps I can contribute something to that. If you reply to any PMs that give fleshed out advice to others, feel free to send them my way. I'll organize them, and ensure that the spelling and grammar are correct, and send them your way on request. If, for whatever reason, they're not included in the .zip, then perhaps they could be offered in the first posting next to the latest release, and that way people could download it if they so desire. Let me know if you want to try this out.

I badly hope that BiA's developers are seriously reconsidering their "non-moddable" stance. Yes, I understand that it's partly due to having to pay someone else money to make the game moddable, and to ensure that there are tools available to make alterations to the game, but look at the years' worth of extra sales that the Bear's Pit community have undoubtedly driven (it was their work that convinced me to try JA2).

It would be interesting to know just how many sales of 7.62 have been generated since BSM's first release. Does anyone have any clues in regards to that?

I don't know about the actual sales numbers, but I have noticed a steady increase of people playing the mod. I think there are five times as many people that played BSM 1.8 compared to the 0.8 version, and keep in mind that this is 3 years after the initial release of the game. And reading from the reviews over at gamersgate, the only thing that seems to give the game a good rating is the fact that the unofficial patch and BSM has fixed many of the vanilla bugs.

But that's enough of me tooting my own horn:grin:

R@S,

Brilliant update with BSM 1.9. The sounds, the Kreb AK, the Walther W2000 - sheer brilliance. Well done to you and the team.

Your work on 7.62 keeps this as one of the games I return to time and time again, (it might be a small pond, but it has a hell of a lot of fish!)

By the sounds of things BSM 2.0 is going to be wicked, I can't wait. (Any chance of making the Delta Boonie hats a wearable helmet? - patterned to match the BSM outfits)

Keep up the good work

I did some testing a while back trying to add a balaclava, but never managed to get the coordinates right. But that was by replacing the whole head of the character model, adding a new hat should be a little easier. But my texturing skills leaves much to be desired, and I'm not sure if TodeswolF has time and will to make textures that matches his uniforms for it. But if I manage to export the hat from the delta model, I promise I will try to contact him about it. If he can't, I'll post the texture file somewhere and hopefully someone with some free time and skill could do it instead. But this depends on my success in the exporting part, I'll start working on it later this week.

I also want to add a few new types of armor, I started working on that last weekend. I managed to figure some things out that was holding me back before, but once again it comes down to my inability to draw new textures. There are 2 types of armor, the ones using a model that gets added to the character model(the big clunky ones), and the ones that is "painted" on top of the normal merc textures. Not sure which would be best to use as a template, and if it's the big clunky one, I should actually export it first and let Geroj do some adjustments, maybe adding textures in the process. But Geroj has exams all January and wont have much time until next month, so that would have to wait.

The next release of HLA promises to be something out of the ordinary tho, Deadhead has been working on some new merc bodies, and from the test version I checked out it's going to be awesome. And it might also include some stuff from BSM for a change, I sent them my code for the hospital/treatment system. And they are talking about adding a toolkit for repairing weapons, much like in BSM. As it is in the 0.7 version you would have to take the weapon to a mechanic/trader to get it fixed.

Do you mean these...? http://hla.3dn.ru/_nw/0/42502229.jpg

Moments ago was the first time I laid eyes on the new suits, and the details are astounding!

One could actually setup Russian and American factions that wage platoon-sized wars on one another! Imagine stumbling across, or getting caught up in such terror inducing chaos!

Whose side would one take? Pretty mind blowing to even contemplate.

What are the chances of BSM getting the above work from the Hard Life Addon incorporated into it? What a boon that would be!

I'd be happy to take a crack at the armor vests, that's if you found my previous work worthy enough. If you can export it, and send it my way along with what you want done to it, I'll see what I can do. Let me know. no insult will be taken if you'd prefer to pass it along to somebody else.

The more you write here, the more excited I get for what you still have up your sleeve.

They have never turned down any of my requests, so chances are pretty good. But we have an understanding about these things, their content is to be released in their mod first, so we would have to wait until the next version of HLA.

As soon as I have exported the model I'll make the textures available, if you have time you are welcome to give it a go:)

I got a request about fixing the GUI when you have more than 7 mercs, so I threw together this little quick fix for that:
http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/824...1202437.th.jpg

Since some things in the GUI are hardcoded, there still are some issues.You have to click on the merc's forehead to select them, otherwise the one below will be activated, it's due to some hard coded stuff but it's as good as it's gonna get.

12 Merc GUI

Have fun

Happy to be of assistance...
 

The only real concern that I have with taking a shot at the armor vest textures is that all of the graphics programs that I use are free, like GIMP 2 and Paint.Net.

It's been ages since I came up with those two camo uniforms, but I'm pretty sure that it was Paint.Net that can automatically make LOD versions of the textures (I'll look it up to make sure). The point though, is that even the graphics program that I used "worked" at creating the LODs, they still wouldn't work in the game itself.

I'm a bit foggy on the details right now (and I'm in a hurry and don't have time to comb through my emails), but I'm pretty sure that I sent them off to TodeswolF to fix, but after that, I didn't hear anything more.

Do you know if he was able to get them working (that's if they were desired for BSM)? To save myself a bit of potential embarrassment if they are in the game, I haven't encountered them yet. The furthest that I've been able to get playing BSM is about 4-5 missions on behalf of the rebels, and then Real Life rears its ugly head and I get sidetracked for a long time. By the time I have the opportunity to play BSM again, and I check here, there's a new version released, so I start allover once more. Rinse. Wash. Repeat.

In any case, I'll "for sure" take a shot at the main image file, and if I can't get the LODs to work properly, I'll do what I've done in the past, which is pass the textures on to you or anybody else who has a better program that can make the LODs for us.

I'll be waiting for your call. :)

Well, that looks like a good portion of firepower :)

Is it possible to change the GUI so that it prompts the events on the upper part of the screen like in good ol' BE5? I like the map and want to read the events also. But with the 7.62 GUI I always have to switch between the modes.

@Kyle
It seems I got a bit ahead of myself regarding the Boonie hat, and to add it to the game requires a lot more work than I had anticipated. Due to the whole structure of the character models I would have to add the mesh file to every RPC's AZP archive(a bit over 100 since the JA2 mercs were added). They did add berets in HLA a long time ago, but those were only for the "IMP" merc and only 8 AZP archives had to be altered, and this might be something I actually have time to do. We'll see what happens.

@Mick
I totally agree with you about the sharing of the mini-map and event log, and I seldom use the mini-map anymore. The bad news is that the text displayed on the screen can be considered hardcoded, so I can't do anything about it. :rolleyes:

@all
I'm almost ready to start testing the new weapon order script, and maybe I shouldn't call it that anymore since in the new script you can order clips, ammo boxes and weapon attachments too. Maybe I'll add the armor too, but that can wait until I have some working code.

So far you'll get a list of what's available depending on CGL and type(weapon, clip or attachment) and the price of the item. If you select one it gets added to your shopping cart list, a list where you can remove items as well btw. I haven't decided on the time it will take for the shipment to arrive but am leaning towards 2 days for sentimental reasons. Once the shipment arrives it can be picked up at your local bartender, but that might be changed to a centralized point to at least give it something negative.

I will also have to make a list of what items should be available, but that's the fun part which I'm saving to last, motivating myself to get it done quicker:cool:

Ahhh... a modder's pride is a weird thing.

Even for an unknown and obscure game such as this, the modder's pride comes first. Other mods are competition and no way we're going to give them our cool features.