Ultralights for Battlefield 2
Here are some ultralight aircraft, offered for free use** by the BF2 community. You can reconfigure them as you wish** - just please give me a credit for the original works if you include them in a mod or map. They have been tested in vanilla BF2 and in an AIX environment - running these in other mods might require some adjustment to avoid conflicts and such. Please see the 'Terms of Use' outlined at the bottom of this document before using or re-releasing these aircraft.
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Meshes and textures are copyright (c)2011 Clive Williams.
Various included script/code technologies are owned by DICE and/or Electronic Arts.
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Included Aircraft:
Scout Mk. III (Transport)
The basic unarmed Scout - a fixed wing airplane in the conventional layout, it has no weapons, no defences. Sailcloth is orange in colour. Bots flying these will generally fly towards an enemy CP and then bail out over it.
Spawner name: Scout_MkIII
Scout Mk. III (Bomber)
This Scout has a gatling cannon^^ on Primary Fire, and six small bombs on Alt Fire. Flare Fire releases a pair of heatseeker flares. Its sailcloth colour is blue. Bots flying these will attack ground targets but not air targets. Spawner name: Scout_MkIIIb
Scout Mk. III (Striker)
This is similar to the Bomber Scout but instead of bombs it has a salvo of rockets. Its sailcloth colour is green. Bots flying these will attack both ground and air targets. Spawner name: Scout_MkIIIc
Mosquito Air
The Mosquito is an ultralight helicopter which will unfold when it spawns, and can also be deployed from a kit. (the real-life one does not unfold or have a nosewheel.) Like the Scouts it has a gatling cannon^^, but also has a mortar launcher on Alt Fire and a rocket salvo on Flare Fire. It currently has a heat-object to attract the Scout's flares but this is easily removed. Spawner name: MosquitoAir
Also included: The basic workings of a kit deployer, so you can spawn a new MosquitoAir whenever you like - even in mid air. The stand-in geometry doesn't show up, and the animations are absolute squid shit - they are the old mortar animations from AIX. But in spite of this, the deployer works in the manner intended and so i included it here. In this release, only the US Spec Ops kit contains the deployer in slot #6.
^^ Gatling Cannon: This is just my old AIX minigun mesh combined with the gatling cannon code from my A-7 Corsair. I couldn't be bothered making new gun meshes, so call me Mr. Lazy
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Pros and Cons:
Due to their slow-flying slow-turning slow-climbing nature, bots piloting Scouts can sometimes end up on a hillside or similar and will sit there until they either destroy themselves, or until they manage to turn the aircraft around and take off again. This is just a manifestation of the usual BF2 bot-pilot bug, which always previously resulted in the (jet) plane going splat into said hill and often without the player noticing. Because the ultralights tend to take less damage from ground collisions due to low speed, they often survive these types of collisions and make complete arses of themselves.
In my tests on Fushe Pass, i noticed some Scout bot pilots would 'skew' on takeoff and not gain enough height before hitting the boundary fence. In these cases they would sit there motoring into the fence until destroyed by fence damage or enemy, or rescued by the player.
All aircraft have infinite numbers of weaponreloads, to bring them into line with bot's auto-rearming capabilities.
These aircraft do not play well with standard BF2 aircraft such as jets and helis. I recommend replacing all map aircraft with ultralights only, and disabling any SAMs or AAA. Because these things fly so slowly and have exposed pilots, there is still plenty of opportunity to destroy them from the ground with handheld weapons.
When I first released the unarmed Scout by itself, community interest was lukewarm because everyone wanted weapons it seems. (what a bloodthirsty bunch you are) so in the true spirit of overkill, weapons were added and the weaponry on each of the armed aircraft is sufficient to win a small war. Why do things by halves? (In real life, none of these ultralights would be capable of lifting these weapons, let alone carrying ammo for them)
The Scouts bounce around on the carrier deck due to a materials issue - this can be minimised by tilting the spawner backwards -12.5 degrees and setting the height so that the wheels are *only just* touching the deck, e.g. Object.rotation xxx/-12.500/zzz
IMPORTANT: These aircraft NEED the air density changed on any map you use them in. Add this line to the end of your map's init.con:
physics.airDensityZeroAtHeight 5000
...this change makes the air at low altitudes better able to support the ultralights, and gets rid of that stupid 'losing aircraft control at high altitude' syndrome that Dice put in place. It is a worthy addition to all your maps, not just ones with ultralights in. But without this map change, the ultralights can barely get off the ground and are not fun to fly.
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Before you begin:
- Smart modders always backup files before modifying them. Super-smart modders build their own stuff instead of using mine.
- These aircraft are unsupported, are supplied as-is, and are used entirely at the user's own risk. Your risk.
- If you break your PC or lose data as a result of using these aircraft, then there will be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Your wailing. Your teeth. We will all stand by and offer sympathetic comments and tut-tut accordingly. And perhaps a quiet smug chuckle or two because you didn't follow instructions properly.
- These aircraft may or may not work correctly in an online environment; they are intended for SP use only.
- Use of these aircraft assumes the user has a moderate to advanced knowledge of BF2 modification - If you do not have sufficient knowledge to install, use, and modify these aircraft, either research the info yourself or do not use the aircraft. Please do not email or PM me asking for help because you are a slacko and can't be bothered looking for the answer yourself. (If however you want assistance with an issue of an advanced nature, I will help if possible)
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Basic Installation Instructions:
After unzipping the downloaded file, you should find a folder called clivewils_Ultralights which contains two files, called Ultralights_Menu.zip and Ultralights_Objects.zip
Drag the clivewils_Ultralights folder into the main folder of the mod you want to use the ultralights in, i.e. \mods\AIX2\
Copy and paste the lines shown below, into the very top of the ServerArchives.con file (found in your mod's folder)
fileManager.mountArchive clivewils_Ultralights\Ultralights_Objects.zip Objects
fileManager.mountArchive clivewils_Ultralights\Ultralights_Menu.zip Menu
- To make a plane replace an existing aircraft in a map, edit the map's GameplayObjects.con for the game mode you want, and replace the existing aircraft spawner name with the appropriate spawner name listed earlier in this document.
example:
ObjectTemplate.setObjectTemplate 2 AIX_AH64
is changed to:
ObjectTemplate.setObjectTemplate 2 MosquitoAir
...and re-zip the map's server.zip if required. When you next play the chosen map/gamemode, a Mosquito will appear where the AH-64 once was.
More info on this procedure can be found at the BFSP Forums, along with some interesting articles on wine tasting and fancy needlework:
http://www.battlefieldsingleplayer.com/forum/index.php.
At BFSP, we are also happy to offer advice on any marital or relationship issues you may have, and i even offer a free wife/girlfriend-minding service to keep her warm while you are away on holidays or at the conference.
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**Terms of Use:
Your use of these planes indicates your acceptance of these terms.
If these aircraft are to be compiled into any distributed mod, please let me know for courtesy's sake.
If these aircraft are compiled into any distributed mod, they in no way becomes exclusive property of that mod - everyone else is still allowed to freely use the public version. (But of course that mod team can lay claim to any work and modifications they do to the aircraft themselves)
IMPORTANT: Please do not re-distribute any versions of these with up-graded engine power or added maneuverability. The whole point of these aircraft is in mastering how to maximise their effectiveness with the tiny bit of engine power available - change that aspect and you've just instantly fucked up the whole exercise. If you want to hang different weapons off them and release that, fine. But if you absolutely MUST have something capable of stunting and looping, then go play with my F-14 Tomcat instead.
No matter how much extra stuff you add onto these planes, you didn't make them - I did. There is no magical point where they suddenly become your creation.
I reserve the right to update these planes as i see fit. I reserve the right to never update them again. I reserve the right to cover them in fur and call them Susan if i so desire.
No fee is to be charged for these aircraft except for reasonable charges to cover downloading or media expenses where applicable.
This ReadMe must be included with any re-post of the planes.
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clivewil April 2011