Porting First Strike to Battlefield 2 tutorial

This is a Blueprint for porting First Strike from Battlefield (BF) 2142 to Battlefield 2. This is not to say that any plans are in place, just to explain the benefits of porting to BF2, the limitations of what could be done, and some possible work-arounds.

First of all, the main reason to keep development as a mod of a Battlefield Game instead of one of the open game engines such as Unity or Unreal, is that EA has already unofficially endorsed First Strike as mod and is not likely to see it as a threat to Battlefront, like they have with other Star Wars fan games. As a Battlefield mod, there should be no issues for continued development. There are also plenty of models from Galactic Conquest for BF 1942 that could be cleaned up for use with First Strike. First Strike could even be expanded to cover the clone wars and other eras.

EA basically killed BF2142 when they dropped the master account server. Unlike, BF2 which was designed to be played in offline mode, BF2142 was designed to be played only with an online account. The difference is the with BF2142, if you play singleplayer, you are playing with your online account player. In fact, you have all your upgrades - you just can't earn any new upgrades. DICE [BF2142 creaters] did this because players were complaining that in BF2 they could not use the upgrades when playing singleplayer. The result is that BF2142 game requires an online account but is actually buggy without it, which was discovered after EA dropped support for BF2142. Other fans have picked up and created their own master account server (Revive and then Reclamation and Gamespy has been recreated as OpenSpy to support it), but that means that in order to play First Strike, we are relying on another team to keep running the master account server. It would be possible to reach out and find out how to pick it up in case they ever shut down, but the reality is that BF2142 was never as popular as BF2, and player counts were already getting low when EA shut down BF2142 support. Furthermore, with the game no longer available except in the resale market, it just is not worth it to continue development of the First Strike on the BF2142 game engine.

BF2, however, still has a huge fan base, can be played in offline mode indefinitely, and has a debugger and an editor. Both games use the same model format, so porting maps, vehicles, static objects, weapons and player models between the games would be relatively easy. BF2142 has some features that are not in BF2 so a scaled down port would be necessary. BF2 does not support mechs, hover verhicles, EMP weapons, automated weapons or full space maps.

Here are some specifics:
- BF2 can not support mechs (AT-AT, AT-ST, AT-PT). The best way to simulate walking would be set up the waling animation in a rotational bundle. This what was done for the mechs in the BF1942 mod, Galactic Conquest. It looks more like trying to ride an invisible bike. Twenty years ago, however, when Galactic Conquest was released, it was awesome, but compared to the way the AT-ST walks in BF2142, it would look lame. For BF2, in would be best to either find a replacement for the mechs or create re-imaged versions with an alternate mode of transport, such a tracks or repulsor lifts. On the other hand, the Imperial Tank can replace the AT-ST on most maps.

One other possibility would be to have the AT-ST, AT-PT or AT-AT spawned on the map at an advantageous location, but with the engine disabled. That way it would look great and be able to fight. It just could not move. For example, in a Battle of Hoth, the AT-ATs could be positioned in attack range of the Rebel's Defenses. They could be fully manned and could fight, but could not move.

Galactic Conquest 1942 mod: Moddb.com

- Space map would not work in BF2 as is. In a BF2142 patch, DICE made it so that ground was not required, which allowed true space maps. Work-arounds would have to be made. Galactic Conquest, the BF1942 Star Wars mod used black water and a grid pattern at the top and bottom of the maps to help give perspective when flying. Some space maps could be re-imagined as an atmosphere map (high in the air over water or land).

- Automated personal droids would have to be modified. The automatic weapon feature in BF2142 which allowed the droids to work automatically does not work in BF2. You could deploy a droid for health, supply, repair, but they would not follow. The attack droids would not autofire. - Not a deal breaker. It was a nice feature in BF2142 but critical to game play.

- Autofire weapons would not be possible. First Strike multiplayer did not use this feature, but it was useful in in singleplayer. There are ways to spawn bots into weapons instead, so there are work-arounds.

- EMP weapons, like the Demp would not work the same in BF2. They could be set to damage only vehicles, but they would not shut it down.

- Speeders that hover could use the same trick as in BF1942 - invisible wheels. It worked great for speederbikes, landspeeders and the Hovertank.

- First Strike has a large number of weapons, but fewer classes. It would be possible to add more classes to give players a better weapon selection list.

It would be best to start with the land maps and then do some testing on space maps, depending on community interest level and support.