EALA Pacific Assault Mod Day

[JFrank(GD)]

Day One 11/4

Much like Community Day my day started by hopping on flights spending half the day to get to sunny Los Angles. Once I arrived I had instructions to find transportation to the Renaissance hotel where the rest of the Mod Day members would be meeting. Our international members had arrived at the hotel a day in advance after some of them had traveled three days to get to LA. I wish I had of known as I enjoyed talking with modders that I have always wanted to meet; Surgeon, Bjarne, and Yochoylamuete just to name a few.

The rest of the Mod Day members arrived at the hotel hours later and once we went though our introductions with one another we jumped in the hotel van and off to the EALA campus for dinner and an MDK overview.

Once at EALA we packed into a large conference room with the complete members of Mod Day, EALA dev team, and TKO dev team. After a round of formal introductions among all in attendance we dove into the spread that EALA provided and all ate until full.

A brief overview of the MDK was what was in store for the evening. For some it was a first look and for others we got the tools varying days in advance in preparation for this day. As Bill Billodeau from TKO went over the MDK we got our first chance to give feedback on the tools much like we have with the game itself. It was great to see all the suggestions the MOHTeam has made for tools in the future finally come to life right in front of us.

Here is a brief overview of the MDK as Bill described it to us. The tool set is nicely designed in a GUI interface that will take a lot of knowledge as to how a mod needs to be setup out of the user’s hands and do it in the background for you. Now that does not mean that if you choose to do things “the ol fashion way” you can’t. This GUI interface will simply help new ones of course and help others be more efficient in producing mods.

You start with the “MDK launcher – Creation Tools” which helps you setup your mod from its name to its version and down to a link where one can download it from. Once the mod ground work is setup you then can launch the model editor (Milkshape) and map editor (PA Radiant) that can have specific settings for each of the mods you are creating. The last option of the launcher is where you configure the mod. The configuration part of the launcher I will be getting more information on as I am not 100% clear as to its use or reason of being. You can enable and disable your mod(s) in this area and I am not sure why you would want to disable a mod your developing. Don’t worry though as there were several areas of greyness that we simply did not have time to cover and Bill gave us his email so that we can do additional follow-up on these grey areas.

Next we have the “MDK launcher – Utilities” which is where your able you launch your pak utility (Pakscape), a terrain generator utility (World Machine), texture utility (Currently this errors out on my machine and I again will contact Bill for an answer), and decal utility (EALA GUI for making decals using Photoshop).


Last section of the launcher is the “MDK launcher – Documentation”. This is simply a way of opening the documentation provided with the tools by means of a GUI. Its broke down into four sections; User guide, Tutorials, FAQ, and MDK website.

At the end of our overview there was a Q&A section. Two main questions I had about the MDK was if we would be receiving a sample map(s) with the tools for the community to dissect and if the MDK would be updated if needed. Both were a yes which I was happy to hear. I will be getting with Bill as to what I would like to see in a sample map. Anther answer to a question worth noting was what the difference between a pk3 file and a rez file. Bill said that the main difference or the only difference in EALA using rez files was for streaming media. I wont go into detail on this as once you own a copy of the game it will make more sense.

The time had come to head back to our hotel for the evening and once we arrived some of us meet back down in the lobby to head out for some more discussion on the tools, getting to know each other better, and of course a couple of pitchers of beers.

Day Two 11/5

For some of us after a few hours of sleep we assembled in the lobby around 9am and headed back to EALA for a day packed full of modder specific areas to go over. As I looked at the itinerary it was not hard to tell that we had about 2-3 days worth of material to go over in one day so we quickly devoured breakfast and jumped right into the tools.

Narayan had the task of getting Milkshape and PA to talk to one another. We went over taking a model that we had created in Milkshape and getting it into our map. He has also created some very nice GUI interface within Milkshape for getting your model ready for PA. These tools consisted of setting up LOD levels, collision types, bones, physic modes, and sanity checks so that you will know ahead of time if you’re missing anything in order for PA to accept your model. I know that a lot of us are not really Milkshape fans but the effort that has been put into Milkshape gives modders there first PA modeler without having to rely on others to come up with bandages and fixes in order to get material into our mods. I am not a modeler by any means but with the documentation promised to go along with this tool that has been setup for PA I could see getting models into PA very easy…even for a first time modeler. This was very nice to know as a lot of mapping will require models and now we will have easy to use modeling tools.

Next up was the radiant by Ed which was what I was looking forward to the most. This was an area I could spend pages on telling you guys what’s in store so I will do my best to keep it as much as an overview as I can. We can always discuss this feature like any other in more depth via our forum here at TMT. So where do I start, well I guess lets start by telling you what’s not in the radiant anymore. Brush support for visible brushes is no longer supported nor patches or meshes. Those are the big features removed from the radiant.

Now on to the new features. The largest change has been the integration of the new terrain tool. Those of us that have been into creating realistic terrain will love to use this tool. Among its list of features include height editing, texture painting, resolution increase and decrease based off of a quad system, smooth editing, and copy/paste editing.

Terrain textures not present in early MDK

Applying textures or materials as it’s called in the terrain tool could not be easier. You can apply up to 3 materials on top of your main material per quad. You also apply what type of collision that material should have in the terrain tool. That’s another big change from having to set that up in a shader. You also set the scale of the material in the terrain tool. If you want to set materials based off of their height on the terrain you can. As you can see setting up materials on your terrain is much more involved than simply placing one on your terrain but now you have options so as to make it look real.

Terrain lighting is done within the terrain tools also. Model lighting was done in Max and TKO is working on a light editor as we speak for models. You can set the sun color, ambient color, sun rotation, sun elevation with a couple of clicks and even see its effects in the radiant.

Other then a few options as to how the terrain looks in the radiant; wireframe, shaded, textured, and the other typical preview options that pretty well sums up what the terrain tool has in store. I by no means have covered everything within this tool but you should get an idea on how versatile it will be.

The next largest change involves the addition of the “Scatter” command. Now the EALA and TKO dev teams did not really use this tool a lot as you must use great caution using it. A good way to compare it, as far as being careful using the tool, would be the CSG subtract tool in brush mapping. As this tool can help you rough in vegetation in a map it can also get out of hand and you could end up with a map that’s a performance hog. Without going to far in depth into the tool its purpose is to take Photoshop layers and associate them to certain models. You can take an overhead shot of your map in the radiant and bring that into Photoshop. Once in Photoshop you can then create separate layers and simply paint on each layer where you want the model that you will tie to that layer to be. Next save your psd file and run the scatter tool in radiant by loading the psd file and the rule file that states what model to use with what layer. Then the radiant will start to generate the models. The problem with this tool as you can see now is that it could become out of control but you can also see that it can rough in model work.

Two other model modification features include Terrain Hug and Terrain Align. Remember how you would have to rotate and move you model into location if it was on uneven terrain. Well know you can highlight you model and hit “N”, like before, but you will have these two options to use. Once they are active simply slide the model around on your terrain and it will stay aligned and attached to the terrain. A word of advice from TKO that again as this tool helps a great deal you may notice that some models will need to be tweaked as they may be slightly above or below terrain level.

Terrain textures not present in early MDK

If your familiar with outdoor model work you will know that along with keeping them aligned and attached to the terrain is for them to look random. That’s another tool for modifying models. You can select one or more models and use the Randomize tool which will allow you to rotate around the z axis and set +/- scale changes. Another easy tool to use to make you model work look real as far as placement and scale.

Last tool that helps with your model work is the group tool. This is simply a nice tool to create groups and add models to the group so that if you want to select/modify a certain group of models you can do so quickly rather then individual selections or window selections that modders are used to now.

So as you can see with brushwork gone for visible brushes a ton of work as been put into model manipulation. You may ask what about a skybox? Well that’s the last major change made to the radiant. Since visible brushwork is no more skyboxes are models now. Just right click and place a skybox model in your map. This should greatly reduce leak issues that we were used to and custom skyboxes should also be easy to create.

Two areas that we simply did not have the time to get into were the use of World Machine and the use of Havok.

Next we took a short break for lunch and a trip to the company EALA store.

After lunch we went over the tech of PA by Mark, the same overview that you can find in my Community Day review.

Mike went over a section called AI Wrangling which was an overview for our SP modders. He discussed squad, jump up, jump down, and several cover nodes and it seems pretty straight forward. With the AI now being procedural the amount of work in a SP maps looks to be greatly reduced. Since our community consists of about 98% MP modding I will leave this section as a very brief overview. Mark has some very nice documentation that he created in addition to the documentation already provided on AI scripting and mapping so what I have not covered is heavily documented. We soon will be getting this documentation from the Mod Day event and hopefully it will be in the MDK final release.

Nesan discussed multiplayer scripting which many focused going over setting up invader maps as PA scripting has not changed but just been added to from the old moh series. I won’t spend anymore time on this as Nesan has also put all this into a document in addition to what comes with the tools. We soon will be getting this documentation from the Mod Day event and hopefully it will be in the MDK final release.

Chris was next up and he went over the hag files which control all the aspects of weapon control and action. It’s pretty straight forward not to mention he commented on about every line in the hag scripts so I won’t go into depth anymore on this section.

After a short break Josh touched on effects just for a second as he had literally 2 minutes for his section before TKO had to leave for there flight. We really did not get any information other then we have a full effects editor in game by typing “pushmenu emitter2” in the console. It’s a very neat feature but I don’t have a clue how to use it. Josh said he will come up with documentation and I look forward to going over it.

One of the sections up next was the most impressive not because of what it was but that it was something that some in the community wanted so EALA whipped it up for us…try that with another game developer. Luis created the flight level within PA and he whipped up a sample map and script so that we could get vehicles into MP. It was buggy but that was not the point. Here is a developer that everyone claims is evil and does not care about the community. Don’t know why but that left a big impression on me.

We finished up the day with some dinner and Ed briefly went over setting up a map for the invader gameplay. I won’t go into depth on it as we should get one of the invader maps with the MDK final and it’s very clear on setting up invader objectives in ones map. We also got a copy of the director edition which we soon got some of the dev team of EALA and TKO to sign.

Well we ended up covering about 75% of what we set out to which is not bad at all as like I said before we had 2-3 days worth of material to cover. Overall I come back from this event changing my opinion of PA modding from “I will play with it” to “I must play with it”. I, like many, were very worried about the lack of brush support but with the amount of work EALA has put into the Milkshape model interface not to mention a possible brush to model converter that we have been asking for my faith in modders supporting PA is much higher. I always knew that PA would be a great game to mod due to the developers support but I was worried about the model work and that has been put to ease with this event as the model part of the MDK we got in advance did not have all the bells and whistles. Now there was only one thing left to do, say goodbye to EALA, TKO, and Mod Day attendees and get checked in for our flights. Modders get ready; tools and documentation straight from the developer are on its way and they are good!

[Kalti]

Thanks for the great review GD :waves:

Now, about that brush 2 model converter... I've seen something like that for Unreal. It's called MeshMaker

See my post from 06-09-2004 here

[seere]

Agreed great work,
I , like yourself and Kalti have been a little (actualy very) concerned about the brush/modeling transition as its taken me up till now to get to a competent level with brushes so the news that you have brought back goes some way to elieviate these fears.
Thx again for the info.
Seere.

[yochoylamuete]

Aye, great review, and thanks for the pics GD, I didn't take my camera to the studios. Seeing again the Rennaisance and EALA brought a tear to my eye, sigh, it was only a week ago.

I hope to have that damn DVD recorder ready today, so that I can start modding MohPA at last...

Regards,

YoChoy

[So_Dead]

I must say it was a great time. I hope we get the chance to do it again. It was great meeting everyone as well

[General Moses]

Cheers to that! What a blast! A ton of information, great food, excellent hospitality, and nice weather (we just got 5 inches of snow in Rhode Island for crying out loud!). Can't wait 'till next time... what? There isn't going to be a next time!?? DAMN!

~MOSES~