How to Create Pickup Kits tutorial - Battlefield 2142

This post aims to give an example of how you can create custom pickup
kits and add them to maps fairly easily (bf2 editor not required).

At the bottom of this post you will find an attachment which contains the
CollisionMesh you can use for any pickup kit, as well as an example US
Long Range Sniper pickup kit. The following explains the steps taken to
create the example kit.

1.0 - Creating the Pickup Kit

Determine what kind of kit you want to create, based on the different soldier
kits/classes in the game. For our example we are going to create a
Sniper kit.

1.1 - Start with a template

We want to create a Sniper kit for the US team, which means we want to copy the contents of the following file:

Objects_server.zip\Kits\US\US_Sniper.con

Into our own custom file (see attachment):

Objects_server.zip\Kits\PICKUP\PICKUP_US_LongRangeSniper.con

1.2 - Renaming the Kit

We now have a template to work with for our custom pickup kit. We need to
change a few things to get it working. First we need to rename the kit
to our custom kit, as follows:

Replace this line:

With this line:

Notice that the name we replaced US_Sniper with is the same as our kit's .con file.

1.3 - Adding the CollisionMesh

The CollisionMesh was created by mschoeldgen and kindly made freely available at Bfeditor.org. This thread also contains information on how to get your pickup kits into the bf2 editor if you prefer using the editor.

After this line:

Insert these lines:

1.4 - Modifying kit items (weapons)

In our example, we're going to replace the standard M24 with the M95 Barrett, as follows:

Replace this line:

With this line:

1.4.1 - Adding a weapon geometry (optional)

If you would prefer to see the actual weapon on the ground, instead of a soldier's kit, then replace this line:

with this line:

Note
that by default if you replace a PCO on a map with this, then the
weapon may well be half submerged in the ground. To remedy this, you
need to edit the Y value of the 'Object.absolutePosition X/Y/Z' for the
ObjectSpawner you are using (adding .2 to .3 to the Y value seems to
work well).

1.5 - Removing the unlocks

AFAIK,
it won't hurt to leave the unlocks in the .con file, but they only work
on ranked servers anyway so you might as well go ahead and remove them:

Delete the following lines:

1.6 - Save the file

Save the file and we're done. We've now created a US Long Range Sniper pickup kit. The next step is getting it into a map.

2.0 - Getting Our Pickup Kit Into a Map

This is a little more tricky. First off, without using the editor we are
limited to replacing an existing PCO (e.g. Stinger/Igla/TOW/Artillery
Cannon, etc). In this example we're going to replace the US Artillery
Cannon (USART_LW155) with our US Long Range Sniper Kit on Gulf of Oman
SP 16 (vanilla).

2.1 - Getting our map to load custom objects

You've probably seen this before in a number of maps which have been released
on BFSP. This is a process which allows us to load custom objects
(vehicles, weapons, etc) for a particular map.

First off, we're going to extract the server.zip for Gulf of Oman so we can modify it. Go
ahead and extract it to your temp directory.

2.2 - Modifying tmp.con to load our custom pickup kit

Open \Server\tmp.con and add the following line:

This line tells the game that when we load up this map we want it to include our pickup kit.

2.3 - Creating a ServerArchives.con file

Create a new text file \Server\ServerArchives.con and open it. Now add the following line:

Save and close the file. This file tells the game to mount the archive which
contains our custom pickup kit. OK, almost done, all we have to do now
is place the pickup kit on the map.

2.4 - Replacing a PCO with a Pickup Kit

Here's where we're going to replace the US Artillery Cannon with our pickup
kit. Open the file \Server\GameModes\sp1\16\GamePlayObjects.con and
replace this:

with this:

Save and close the file. Now you will need to re-zip all the files under \Server\*.* into a zip file called Server.zip.

2.5 - Deploying our map

All that is left to do is deploy our map. First make sure you have made a
backup copy of the original Server.zip for Gulf of Oman, and once you
have done that go ahead and copy your new Server.zip to
'\mods\BF2\levels\gulf_of_oman\Server.zip'.

Now copy our custom Objects_Server.zip (see attachment) to '\mods\BF2\levels\gulf_of_oman\Objects_Server.zip'.

That should be it. Fire up Gulf of Oman SP 16, join US and spawn at the
beach. Then go have a look where the US Artillery Cannon used to be and
you should see a soldier's kit sitting there. Walk up to it and press
your 'get key', just like you would to pick up a fallen soldier's kit.

Have fun.

The Download