BATTLEZONE
Unofficial Battlezone 1.5 Patch
Battlezone (Activision, 1998) was the first game I worked on professionally. For the past two years I've been working on an unofficial 1.5 patch with numerous fixes and enhancements relative to the official 1.4 patch. Activision does not endorse or support this patch.
- Runs properly on modern computers without needing compatibility settings
- Improved hardware-accelerated rendering
- Supports all display resolutions
- Supports wide-screen formats
- Supports higher color depths
- Supports anisotropic texture filtering
- Supports multisample anti-aliasing
- Fixes a variety of crashes and gameplay bugs
- Fixes several multiplayer cheats and exploits
- Adds new "Very Easy" and "Very Hard" difficulty levels
- Improves AI skill, especially at "Hard" and "Very Hard"
- Shell works better in windowed mode
- Improves the mission editor (shift-F9 view)
- Support user-created mission scripts in Lua (as of 1.5.2.1)
- And much much more!
Current Release
Version 1.5.2.27 (update 1) (2014-12-17)
Previous Releases
Version 1.5.2
Version 1.5.1
Version 1.5.0
Data Files
All-In-One 1.5.2.25 Asset Pack (2014-09-17)
- Unpack into the root folder of a working 1.5.0, 1.5.1, or 1.5.2 install
- Includes all patch content from 1.4, 1.5.0, 1.5.1, and 1.5.2
- Includes the original Large Assets pack (like prior all-in-one asset packs)
- Includes a subset of Red Odyssey content that works with BZ (created by Sporkinator)
- Includes animation files needed by the shell
- Read assets_1.5.0.txt in the package for details on what's changed since 1.4
- Read assets_1.5.1.txt in the package for details on what's changed since 1.5.0
- Read assets_1.5.2.txt in the package for details on what's changed since 1.5.1
- You can safely remove bzone15.zfs and bzone151.zfs as bzone152.zfs includes everything from them.
- IMPORTANT! Remove any 1.4 assets or prior release of bzone152.zfs from addon
Optional 16-bit Enhanced Texture Pack (2013-10-19)
- Unpack into the root folder of a working 1.5.0, 1.5.1, or 1.5.2 install
- Requires 1.5.1.7 or later
- Now includes buildings, props, and Black Dog faction
- Includes contributions from General BlackDragon:
- 24-bit reconstruction of SSUser's Black Dog Construction Rig (bvcons)
- Olympian Hephaestus (obheph) and Omega Star Port (obstp)
- Other texture adjustments
- Ganymede Jupiter texture contributed by Dx
- Achilles sky color matches the original
- Upside-down mine texture fixed by General BlackDragon
- Fixed incorrect Soviet Pilot texture size (!)
- Textures are somewhat darker than their 8-bit equivalents
- Breaks content that relies on palette swapping BZ environment textures
- Screenshots
Optional Ogg Vorbis Music pack (44100 Hz sample rate) (48000 Hz sample rate)
- Unpack into the addon folder of a working 1.5.0, 1.5.1, or 1.5.2 install
- Requires 1.5.1.10 or later
- If the 44100 Hz version stutters (especially on Windows 7), try the 48000 Hz version.
Changelogs
1.5.0 code changes and asset changes
1.5.1 code changes and asset changes
1.5.2 code changes and asset changes
Documentation
Debugging
How to collect debugging information when the game crashes
Scripting
I found the Decoda Lua integrated development environment and debugger helpful for working with Lua mission scripts; it's much better than trying to debug using print statements.
Configuration
Cheats
Sprite Table
Terrain
Asset Utilities
MakeZFS and MakeZIX utilities (2014-07-15) for manipulating ZFS pack files and ZIX index files
- MakeZFS uses LZO compression library version 2.08
MakeTRN utility (2012-08-29) for creating terrain files
- Original version written by George Sutty (GSL)
- Converted to Visual C++ 2008 by Dx
MakeMAP utility (2014-08-10) for creating texture files from images
- Filename list supports wildcards (? and * characters, e.g. *.tga) and directories
- Improved perceptual accuracy of color selection for palettized images
- Colorization parameters are now floating-point values
- Can read from MAP files (all types)
- Can write to BMP and TGA files
- Uses stb_image library version 1.44
MakeSTB utility (2013-09-07) for manipulating sprite table files
- Reads from STB files and writes a tabular listing, TXT, CSV, XML, or JSON document
- Reads from TXT, CSV, or XML and writes a STB
- TXT is very close to the original source format
- Works with the reconstructed sprite source
MakeObj utility 1.1.5 (2015-01-24) for cooking vehicle and building models
- Original version written by George Sutty (GSL) (and others?)
- Reads from a type-specific descriptor TXT file and X model file
- Writes VDF/SDF and GEO model files
- Applied enhancements to the original version:
- Converted to Visual C++ 2008
- Compute average polygon colors from any texture format, not just PPM
- "Detriangulate" meshes created by many X model exporters
- Remove paths from material textures
- Handle texture coordinates outside the range from zero to one
- Allow more than 10 vertices per face; the game itself supports up to 32
- Fix BSP model partition sometimes generating bad vertices
- Tolerate variations in the X model format
- Improve stability
Servers
When installed from an original disc, the servers.dat file is out of date and prevents the game from connecting to matchmaking servers. Community-created game installers come with updated version of the file. If you want to straighten out an existing retail install or update with an all-inclusive server list, here's an updated servers.dat file that includes all known Battlezone Anet servers.
If you want to roll your own from scratch:
- Optional: edit bootserv.txt to list server IP addresses and names that you want
- Delete servers.dat
- Launch the game
- Go to multiplayer
- Select Internet
- Anet will rebuild servers.dat
Difficulty
Difficulty settings work differently from 1.4 and earlier versions. Very Easy and Easy bias damage in the player's favor similar to 1.0-1.4, but Hard and Very Hard dial up enemy AI skill instead of adjusting damage. Units on the player's team always use maximum AI skill.
- Very Easy
- No damage to or from friends
- 50% less damage from enemies
- 50% more damage to enemies
- Enemy units have lowest aim accuracy
- Enemy units do not attempt to evade
- Easy
- 50% damage to or from friends
- 25% less damage from enemies
- 25% more damage to enemies
- Enemy units have low aim accuracy
- Enemy units do not attempt to evade
- Medium
- Normal damage
- Enemy units have normal aim accuracy
- Enemy units attempt to evade line of fire when fleeing
- Hard
- Normal damage
- Enemy units have high aim accuracy
- Enemy units attempt to evade line of fire
- Very Hard
- Normal damage
- Enemy units have highest aim accuracy
- Enemy units attempt to evade line of fire
- Enemy units attempt to evade ordnance
Special Thanks
Many people have contributed to the development of 1.5 over the years, both directly and indirectly. Without them, 1.5 wouldn't have come nearly as far and in some cases would not have started at all.
- Dx: software development; numerous bug-fixes and enhancements, both early on and ongoing.
- Tug: software development; numerous bug-fixes and enhancements, especially early on
- Sporkinator: testing and content wrangling; performed extensive campaign and multiplayer testing, fixed and improved a variety of game assets
- Mr. Spock: community management; brought the community to my attention in the first place, provided a detailed list of known 1.4 issues, organized and prioritized bug reports and feature requests; this helped guide and focus early development
- Battlezone 1 Community Forum: extensive testing, bug reporting, and feedback
- Battlezone Club: additional testing, bug reporting, and feedback
- Nathan Mates's Battlezone Forums (Battlezone and Battlezone 2): additional testing, bug reporting, and feedback
- Battlezone Universe (R.I.P.)