Welcome to the second installment of Project Reality's December update! This update is jammed packed with many exciting updates and announcements! To get things rolling, the Reality Studios Team is proud to announce that we will once again be releasing a Project Reality: BF2 Christmas Map Pack this year!
Project Reality 2010 Christmas Map Pack
With the great success of last year?s Christmas map, Operation Snow Storm, the Reality Studios team decided it would once again bring in some Christmas cheer for the 2010 holiday season with not one, not two, but three snow maps! The 2010 Christmas Map Pack will include the maps Northern Lights, Barentz Invasion and will also see the return of last year?s smash hit, Operation Snow Storm.
Project Reality 2010 Christmas Map Pack
Friday the 10th of December 2010
Northern Lights is a 4km Assault and Secure (AAS) map that features the German and the Russian Forces battling it out over an open, slightly woody terrain. Both factions will have tanks and APC's at their disposal, along with transport helicopters to provide support.
Barentz Invasion is a 2km coastal map which pins the British Armed Forces against the Militia Forces in both AAS and Insurgency game modes. The British have light vehicles, APC's and helicopters to seek and destroy the hostile militia forces that although lightly armed, have dug into the surrounding countryside making them hard to destroy.
Operation Snow Storm is a 4km AAS map that features British and Chinese forces in mountainous, woodland where both sides will be relying primarily on helicopter support to navigate the harsh terrain. They are also backed up with light vehicles, APC's and mobile Anti-Aircraft.
We will be releasing the Project Reality 2010 Christmas Map Pack on Friday the 10th of December 2010, so keep your eyes peeled for the released! With the release of the map pack, we would like to encourage server administrators to organize special events for the community to sign up and participate in. If you need any assistance from the PR team, please do not hesitate to contact us!
Project Reality: BF2 Media Update
The Reality Studios team is still hard at work on the development of next installment of Project Reality and we are making great progress. Listed below is media from just a few of the multiple projects we are currently working on.
FNA: AS 565 MB Panther Light Transport Helicopter
The French Naval Aviation's AS 565 MB Panther is a naval search and rescue version of the AS365 N3, currently in production. The version shown above is the Mk2 version, which is currently in production (but not yet in service thou should be in the next few years). It features an upgraded cockpit, avionics, implementing an electro-optical FLIR, improve the tactical system and develop a system of self-protection. The main role of this helicopter in Project Reality will be light transport on maps which feature a naval presence with the helicopter being able to transport a full squad into battle, while also being able to laze targets.
Brazilian Army: HM-1 Pantera Light Transport Helicopter
The HM-1 Pantera (Panther SA 365 K) is the first version of the Panther, based on the AS365 N2. Although very similar to the Z-9, it dose have a few differences like its longer nose, different air filters over the engine intakes etc. In game it will serve as the light transport helicopter for the Brazilian Forces, being able to swiftly drop a full squad of troops into battle where larger helicopter might be unable to reach.
MEC: BMP-2M Infantry Fighting Vehicle
The BMP-2M is an upgraded version of the BMP-2 equipped with AG-30M automatic grenade launcher, four "Kornet-E" ATGM launchers, new day/night(FLIR) sight for gunner, panoramic TV-sight for commander and new FCS. The BMP-2M has the ability to fire two missiles simultaneously at one target.
Shijia Valley - UK vs PLA
Shijia Valley is an all new 4km AAS map based on the fertile Shijia Valley in central China. With a large river basin, rice patties, mountainous terrain and an urban city, the battle landscape will be as varied as the assets needed to accomplish the mission.
And what might that mission be? In partnership with her allies, the British Army has been tasked with securing a uranium mine in the hills above this otherwise peaceful valley. They have already taken control of the local rail yard, set up a forward operating base and are about to begin the final push across the river. It is now up to the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to protect their land and nuclear resource. Both forces have armor, APC's, boats, and helicopters at the ready and are waiting for the storm clouds to clear.
2010 Mod of the Year - Phase 2 Voting
We would just like to put out another reminder about ModDB.com's 2010 MOTY Phase 2 Voting for anyone who has not yet voted in Phase 2. We ask that you vote for your favorite mod(s) from across the board. If you think Project Reality: Battlefield 2 and/or Project Reality: ArmA2 deserves your vote and deserves the 2010 MOTY award, we would very much appreciate your vote. Every vote counts - registering is free, quick and easy and registered users votes are worth a lot more than guest votes so please register before voting if you really want your vote to count! For more information on MOTY and how to vote, click HERE.
Well, that wraps up the second portion of the Project Reality December update. Be sure to keep a close eye out on the Project Reality website for more updates and for the PR 2010 Christmas Map Pack release!
Those look really good.
Awesome. But, please, why, WHY, why can't you guys make those snow maps permanent? I really miss snow maps in PR. Having them only in Christmas is so... tragic.
The reasons the snow maps aren't permanent is due to them not being proper snow maps.
The team would have to make new materials for the ground, new sound effects for walking/driving on snow etc, retexture all player models and vehicles as well as trees buildings. All in all it's a lot of work for them to do amongst all the other things that they are trying to achieve.
However if members of the community create these things then we could have snow maps all year round!
As a follow-up question, would it be possible to make some pure-winter factions for use in PR?
Like Finland, Sweden, Canada, some variant upon Russian?
not quite sure what you're asking there. You mean like having the soldiers in snow camo?
Yes. Since the existing factions are made to work in woodland/desert/urban environments. Snow maps would be cool as well, but I notice you saying that it will be a lot of work, but not impossible.
The soldiers will have snow camo textures in the mappack, what happens is the snow texture is made and saved with the _snow (or whatever) suffix. Then in the maps init.con there is a line in which custom textures are added to the vehicles and soldiers etc. For a map like say Fools Road it would be 'woodland' and for the mappack would be 'snow'
Hope that covers what you wanted to know :)
Just realised what i said there is not how it works for the mappack, but is still semi relevant to having snow camod soldiers
Insane.
Are these going to work for coop?
No there is no coop, just the modes stated in the news post.
Is there AI in this? <_<
Yes, there is AI/Bots in PR. They're predictable like in most games but they can be very lethal.
Voted!
Been playing pr for over 3 years now and i still love it, although i wished people would play more chechen maps like Iron Ridge or Dragon Fly, it seems nobody likes them that much. Me on the other hand love them the most and i'm sure other people do too. I hope to see some more chechen maps in the future. Anyways keep up the good work :)
I've had a Coop Server since the very beginning. We were the 3rd Coop Server ever and the only one left standing. We have a huge community of awesome gamers that love PR, but we continue to get overlooked. Considering it's Christmas I love how your treat us like ******* Rudolf the Rednose Reindeer! I don't even know why I bother with this anymore.
dude do you realise how much work it takes to navmesh a level (16 sq km at that too) for coop? and how few people actually on the team that can do it. I'm no expert but my guess is that it'd probably take a month to get them coop playable which would defeat the point in releasing them for christmas.
The fact that we weren't even considered is the sad part. We would have been happy to receive one map! Instead we get the big stiffy. I'm trying really hard to be polite but this so wrong it makes wrong the best right that could ever be.
Are you serious? Be happy we even get these maps! What the hell are you talking about that it's "so wrong"?
First off; the mod is free! How about you ask for a payback if they don't release a christmas map pack for COOP?
And second; It's supposed to be a MULTIplayer game, I understand COOP can be fun sometimes, but it's just meant for practice and random lols with vehicles. If you wish to set up a server for that "huge" community, then that's your choice, but atleast keep it in the back of your head that the developers are not aiming for COOP based gameplay.
Anyway guys, great update once again!
Yes it's free, but I pay for and support several servers. I/we do not play in deployment servers! I would like to be able to offer the same awesome new stuff to my community as well.
I'm a fan of VG COOP and was disappointed with the AI vehicle changes in 0.95.
However I think you're overreacting about the Christmas map pack. It's a short term novelty project that was obviously put together quicker than someone can navmesh the maps. It's got nothing to do with your preconception of COOP's neglect, COOP-only map packs have been released before as well.
"VETERANS-GAMING", you talk like we, PR, owe you something for playing are game, or even hosting it. Let me tell you we do not owe you anything. We treat all our players and epically server admins with respect but we do not owe you guys anything for playing or hosting our mod, epically when you consider how much time, effort and even money we put into crating this mod.
If coop means so much to you VG, you can always make the AI support for maps yourself, there are plenty of tutorials out there on it.
Bfeditor.org
Bfeditor.org
There are just two, you can probaly find more if you look about, epically on BF2 SP. Battlefieldsingleplayer.com
Trust me it is my dream to take what you made and make it better. But I'm literally starting at zero. Why is it so hard to include everyone in the updates? Why can't we be included in that? Don't you see we want to benefit from it as well? just because we play coop we get no respect from you and it chaps my ***.
The maps where not made with COOP support as if they where, they would not be released until next year since it takes so long and so few of the team actually can do it.
BTW, I, and every other PR team member started "at zero", we where not born with the knowledge of modding BF2 :p
Barentz Invasion? LOOKS AWSOME! :D
I don't think you guys will ever understand how much we've put into Coop even though we do not Dev. We've still done allot to build the Coop Community, we have the #1 Server, we're the most honorable crew you'll meet but yet we never get any love from you guys. Every release Coop gets worse. You release 4 Hotfixes, but nothing for Coop. We've lost dozens of maps since the inception and never get anything new. We get Deployment Server hand-me-downs and it blows man. You like everyone else are missing the boat with Coop teamplay. Once a game developer see's what we do with it I can promise you something awesome will happen. It's about treating everyone equally and if you're going to make something, make it for everyone. We love PR just as much as the next guy so why don't we matter enough to get some love like everyone else. I'm not trying to Battle with you man I wish you guys would include us because we're the real experts on game play, bugs, glitches, exploits, etc.. but whatever. I just would like to be able to share the same new releases with my crew as you do with yours.
On another note, I'm going to try to make a mod of PR someday, hopefully soon. How do I apply for permissions, do you know?
First of all, we haven't released any server-side hotfixes for coop, because there is nothing we can fix for coop with a server side fix which we haven't fixed for MP. We have released just the same amount of client side patches for MP as SP since v0.9's release (ie, 0) and when we do release a patch, it will include as many SP fixes as we can fix in the time we have to fix them.
Also "like everyone else are missing the boat with coop gameplay", maybe its you who's missing the boat on MP teamplay? :p
PR is primarily a Multiplayer mod for a multiplayer game and that will not change. Your lucky that we have even included the SP side fully into PR. We can not "treat everything equally" as for starters, we do not have the man power with the right skill sets to do that. We can't get a modeller to code SP stuff can we? If we get more SP guys, then we can look at "treating it equally" but right now, we can only give the SP side as much love as we have people to work on it.
You also apply for permission by asking a PR Manager (red tag). Have fun modding, maybe one day I can scream to you "why haven't you fixed that yet, I want this fixed now!! and while your at it, I want some fastropes!!!" ;)
We've had discussions about your requests previously VG. We've also clarified that (1) we do have a small dedicated Single Player/CO-OP team within the development team; and (2) the technical difficulties with releasing any patch that updates CO-OP content and data, without reworking some MP values, is quite an issue. From my count this is the forth time you've had this issues answered publically.
I'm not keeping count Gaz, lol..wtf?
Maybe all those other previous posts were me commenting on the Hotfixes as you released them. I was hoping for Coop fixes cus it's all screwy now but we weren't getting any. I understand you better now why, but you can't give out sugar and then replace it with vinegar. Your lack of people to work on this is distressing indeed...SOS...SOS...SOS
Oh, as for the Fastropes...That was an epic vid.
VG, feel free to furnish us with a few full time salaries of professional developers for a week's work per month and I will personally write a contract that is answerable to you and you only, and I bet we'll have the bods who will make the changes :D For a simple CO-OP change there will probably be around 30-70 MP changes that may need made. So that might be an expensive option.
My point is that we all PLAY a mod mate. We're all in it together. Whether we invest our time, money or playtime.. We're a mod. Granted, some of us feel strongly about it, and I am glad you do to be honest. We've never claimed to be anything else. We still, as volunteers, have your calls listed as things to sort. I've told you that personally before. If I was lying, I doubt we'd have over 47,000 as a community.
How much would it cost to hire someone for this? If it was reasonable then I would consider it since I personally don't have the experience. There has to be someone who would do this as a part-time job. This would help us develop coop further and get it done faster.
Just FYI - Pretty much all the things you've mentioned on our forums have already been fixed. But as already mentioned - none of it can be implemented by a server-side hot fix, so it takes time and it has to go through the usual release process.
Needless to say, the co-op dev team is VERY small and we all have real lifes, families, kids, jobs, university etc to take care of and ofc these things have priority. Trust me, whenever I have time and motivation, I work on PR COOP stuff, but that time is limited and frankly - every once in a while I simply want to play the game instead of starring at the editor or fixing navmeshes with a 3d program.. ;-)
I appreciate that you've built up a solid COOP community, I really do. In fact, that's one of the reasons why I still work on this project, modding an age-old engine. It's good to see it has become quite popular, back when we started working on single player support we weren't getting much feedback from the players, people had to download multiple files and tweak some stuff manually etc, now it's fully integrated into the main mod.
But PLEASE show more patience. It's not like we're ignoring your feedback, bug reports etc, but this simply takes time.
Hans I'm sorry man. It's my love for PR Coop that makes me crazy sometimes. I love PR so much, we all do. It's just harsh not to get the same new stuff as everyone else does, but I understand.
I want to try to help. I'm studying the material provided and talking to my Clan about making some maps. If we're any good, maybe you can use them for Coop. Wish us luck.
Regards,
Blud