Battlezone II patch 1.3 Public Beta 6 has been released.

Battlezone II patch 1.3 Public Beta 6 has arrived. See below for a list of new features. If you wish to download it, see the following set of links:

• BZ2_v13_PublicBeta_6_english.zip This is a .zip'd installer, which will upgrade any previously installed version of Battlezone II to 1.3pb6. Note - if the .zip file has errors opening, please ensure that your download is complete and/or try downloading again. If you use Windows Explorer to view the properties of it on disk, the .zip file should be 93,044,229 bytes, and the .zip should contain a 93,343,232 byte executable file. (Size on disk varies, and is not an accurate judge). You may want to try using a download manager if you have issues.

Modders may also want to download the following helpful items. If you don't have a program that handles .7z files, I recommend 7-Zip, a 100% free program that handles .7z files and many other compressed file formats.

• modder_data_b86.7z This contains the raw models (.xsi) and textures (.bmp, .pic, .png, .tga, etc), which are not distributed by the 1.3pb6 installer. This is only of interest to modders.
• BZ2_1.3b86_DLLSource.7z This contains the source code for the Deathmatch (DM), Instant Action (IA), Multiplayer Instant Action (MPI), Strategy & Strategy Capture The Flag DLLs. Knowledge of C++ is recommended if you want to poke at the DLL source code; this source code is designed to be compiled with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (including the Express Edition.)
• BZ2DXTGen_v28.7z. This converts textures to the .dxtbz2 format used by BZ2. This is an updated version of what was shipped in the past, and has several important new features for 1.3pb6, especially the ability to convert 640x480 shell backdrops to DX9-optimized larger, square textures.

If you want to comment on this patch, you can find community boards here

For the paranoid, the md5sum checksums on the files are

Legal disclaimer: The Battlezone II 1.3 patch comes with no warranty, to the extent permitted by applicable law. Except when otherwise stated in writing the copyright holders and/or other parties provide the package "as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose and the accuracy of the information contained within it. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the package is with you.

The 1.3 patch has been in development since September/October 2001, headed by two programmers who had worked on the original Battlezone II team: Ken Miller & Nathan Mates. In January 2009, Ken Miller moved to Armature Studios; in November 2009, Nathan Mates left Pandemic Studios (acquired by Electronic Arts in early 2008) for Total Immersion Software. Pandemic Studios's offices were closed in November 2009. Ken and Nathan are working on other titles as our day jobs; Battlezone II patches are done in our spare time.

The major improvements of 1.3 public beta 6, compared to the previous release are:

• Upgraded to latest GameSpy SDK. BZ2 now uses the GameSpy QR2 communication protocol, the GameSpy transport SDK, GameSpy NatNeg technology for easier hosting w/o having to open ports in many routers, GameSpy Voice communication for ingame voice communication.
• Tweaked network code for better performance with lots of players in game.
• Various other fixes and optimizations.

A number of tweaks and enhancements of the 1.3 series are: are:

• Updated graphics engine that uses (and requires) DirectX 9.0c for the best balance of compatibility and speed. Hardware transform & lighting is now supported, allowing a lot of work to be offloaded from your CPU and onto your graphics card. New DirectX features like fullscreen antialiasing (or multisample antialiasing) are supported to improve visual quality. DXT Textures are supported to more efficiently use graphics card memory.
• Music from the BZ2 CD is now distributed with this patch, in ogg vorbis format, allowing for better performance. You can also set up a random playlist of music to be played ingame, if you copy in .ogg files to the right place and the right name. (Note: other music needs to be user-supplied.)
• Much greater MOD (game modification) support, allowing up to 26 total races to be active at once. Many MODders have been among 1.3 beta testers, and have been working to take advantage of the new features. [Their participation or nonparticipation is their own business; no support for 1.3 is implied or MODs promised by us.]
• Developed/Tested on Windows 2000/XP/Vista, for much better compatibility out of the box. Should work on Vista without requiring Administrator access. Limited WINE testing has been done as well. For Vista/Win7, should fully support being installed to paths with unicode, has high-resolution icon for Windows Explorer
• Redone audio system that supports far more channels (up to 64) and DirectSound3D for a far more immersive experience. Note: not all sound cards on the market support that many channels; if the driver on your system notes a limit under 64, BZ2 will use that instead.
• Support for Ogg Vorbis compressed sounds - similar to mp3 files, but with higher quality.
• Various lagout bugs in network games should be drastically reduced. Resyncs should be reduced in general, units (human & AI) should warp less online
• Many crashes/freezes fixed.
• Performance optimizations to DirectX 9 graphics, most noticeably in the terrain rendering. Satellite view should be far faster, especially on slower machines
• EMBM bumpmaps work once again. High res shadows are re-enabled, but still just as buggy as it's always been (since Battlezone II v1.0)
• Local fog should look better
• Max vertex count for models has been upped to 20,000 verts/model; old limit was 2730 verts/model. No stock assets have higher poly counts, but mods may take advantage of that.
• Enhancements to many parts of the game, including AI, craft handling, etc.
• Many more pregame options for IA, DM, Strat & MPI games (feature available to MODs to define custom options pages on a per-map basis)
• Bots in DM, and some additional DM gameplay modes.
• Strategy-CTF game mode -- capture a goal, tug it back to your recycler to win, on 6 classic maps. Finally a good use for tugs in MP!
• Over 50 additional Instant Action & Multiplayer maps by several mapmakers within the BZ2 community, and tweaks to some existing maps to reduce bugs. As of 1.3TechAlpha5, there are 20 classic & additional IA maps, and over 100 classic & additional MP maps installed.
• Several additional security measures to make cheating in multiplayer much more difficult; deliberate remote crashing of games should be fixed.
• New BZ2 editor screen layout files contributed by testers to expose more functionality that was already there.
• Ability to rotate buildings (on 90-degree increments) for even more base-building fun
• Updates to the manual (located in the Extras folder where BZ2 is installed to) to give updated and more accurate information
• Includes over 1.1MB of text files listing changes made since 1.2. This changelog contains our (minimalist) notes as to what changed for each version, and isn't guaranteed to be easily understood. But, it may be useful reading.
• More features, including weapon linking, thumpers, and variable gravity DM maps
• Many more modder features, such as 60-char ODF names, inheritance, tons of new tuning values, etc
• Easier to host games w/ automatic UPNP, Windows Firewall support(*)

*: requires router w/ UPNP support, and Windows Firewall as your primary firewall; other firewall software/hardware will still need some manual attention

For now, this patch will be pretty much English-only. If you have a foreign (French or German) version of BZ2, this patch will replace a lot (but not all) of the files used to display text ingame with English. Voiceovers and other sound effects will remain in the installed language. A translated version of these text items may happen at a later time.

A special note: one of the bugs fixed is the infinite flying bug present in BZ2 1.0 - 1.2. This was removed because it is considered to be a bug by those of us who worked on BZ2 from the beginning. It is not due to complaints from "newbies" or the like. Certain people certainly feel strongly about this. Fine. Please realize that feelings are not an argument. Whining about this will not change anything-- we've heard such complaints for years, and your comments will only serve to harden our resolve in this.

Compatability w/ previous BZ2 versions

Some notes on compatability w/ previous versions:

• Like all other BZ2 patches, the 1.3 patch is not network compatible with any other version-- all players in the game must be running the exact same version (e.g. 1.3pb6)
• Maps & DLLs for BZ2 1.2 should load fine. However, any map/dll that depends on certain behavior in the AI, etc for scripting may need tweaking.
• Progress in Singleplayer missions, preferences should be read fine; where more options than 1.2 exist (especially the sound setup), users may need to adjust those new options if they don't like the defaults. 1.3 uses a new file format for pilots/prefs, and upgrades 1.2's files on reading them. Those new preferences files can not be read by 1.2.
• Mid-mission savegames from BZ2 1.0-1.2 can not be read, as the file formats changed too much. But, as noted above, progress in SP missions is left untouched.
• Missions created with the editor in 1.3 will not be readable in previous versions, same with savegames, etc.
• Many MODs for BZ2 will be uninstalled as part of the install of 1.3. Some broken MODs that installed themselves into the Data folder (which should *never* have happened, but some people refused to do things right and install to addon) may have to be manually deleted.
• MODs that replaced out large chunks of the BZ2 shell (aka FE) may need extensive tweaks before they can work with 1.3. There are various works in progress to make such MODs work, and they may be complete by the time you read this.

Requirements for this patch:

HD Space:

The 1.3 Public Beta 6 patch is currently about a 91MB download, with the bulk of that coming from additional maps, as well as updates to all the textures. The 1.3 download is designed to upgrade any previous version of BZ2 (1.0-1.2) to 1.3. Approximately 200MB free HD space is required to install this patch over and above the disk usage of your existing BZ2 install. So, at least 250MB free HD space is required to install, 300+MB of free space is really recommended.

If you're under 300MB free HD space, it is highly recommended that you get another HD. BZ2, like all Windows apps, uses your HD as swap (pagefile) space if your physical RAM is exhausted. You should have at least 100MB free (250MB recommended) on your HD before starting BZ2. The 1.3 installer can be deleted (or moved to another system, drive, CD backup, etc) before running 1.3 to get a bit more space.

A separate 1.3 directory is the preferred method of installing 1.3, as it helps gets rid of any debris left over from broken MODs that installed themselves into the data directory, doesn't have any compatibility issues with MODs not yet updated for 1.3, and gives you a clean slate to begin with. If you take this route, you should have at least 650MB of free HD space before starting the separate install is required -- doing some tests here, an install of 1.3TechAlpha5 over a BZ2 1.0 install from CD took a total of 580MB, not counting the installer.

CPU:

Battlezone II, since v1.3 public beta 4a, has required Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE), which were introduced with the Pentium III. AMD's Athlon XP (and newer) CPUs also support SSE. SSE provides some framerate boosts due to more efficient use of the CPU.

Graphics Card:

Battlezone II v1.3 requires a graphics card (or integrated video) that has DirectX/Direct3D 9.0 (or higher) drivers. A card that can do hardware vertex Transform & Lighting (aka T&L) is highly recommended, and may be required. Limited to no testing has been done on graphics cards without Transform & Lighting. As T&L was first introduced August 1999 -- before Battlezone II 1.0 shipped to stores in December 1999 -- most systems should now have T&L support.

RAM:

Battlezone II's original box specs noted that it required 64MB RAM. However, Windows 2000/XP/Vista and the like require more memory than that as their base specs. You should add at least 128MB RAM to what the requirements for your version of Windows are (see Microsoft's website for exact details). Thus, 192MB is a practical minimum amount of RAM for Win2000/XP, though Windows itself will crawl on such a system -- 384-512MB will be better. Vista and/or Win7 will probably require at least 512MB memory.

Audio:

BZ2 also requires an audio output device (sound card, motherboard audio, etc) that supports DirectX 8.x. 3D positional audio is supported, but not required.

Operating System, DirectX:

Windows 2000/XP/Vista (or newer) are recommended. DirectX 9.0c August2008 SDK version is also required. Win95/98/ME support has been dropped because of several reasons: (1) Microsoft has dropped support for Win95/98/ME in the latest DirectX/Direct3D. (2) Microsoft has dropped support for Win95/98/ME in Visual Studio 2008. (3) Lots of useful programming library code is available only for Win2000 and up.

System Recommendations for this patch

Most testing and development of 1.3 has taken place on machines with at least a 500Mhz processor, 256MB ram, and a GeForce or better video card. This may be a good baseline; 1.5Ghz, 512MB ram, and a GeForce 2/Radeon 7200 or better might work even better. With Vista/Win7, at least 1GB of memory is recommended.

What uninstalling 1.3?

Sorry, there is no uninstaller for 1.3 specifically. For this reason, it is recommended that you reinstall BZ2 into a separate directory specifically for 1.3, and apply the 1.3 patch to that directory. There is no need to install any other patches (e.g. 1.2) before installing 1.3 -- there is only a cumulative patch able to upgrade any 1.x release of BZ2 to 1.3.

A sepatate 1.3 directory is the preferred method of installing 1.3, as it helps get rid of any debris left over from broken MODs that installed themselves into the data directory, doesn't have any compatability issues with MODs not yet updated for 1.3, and gives you a clean slate to begin with.

If you take this route, probably 500-600MB of free HD space before starting the separate install is required.

Will I get a bajillion FPS with 1.3 like I do with game XYZ

With 1.3 Public Beta 6, you just might. 1.3 Public Beta 6 finally adds in support for DirectX 9 and hardware Transformation & Lighting (commonly abbreviated'T&L'). Support for that means that such work is offloaded to your graphics card, freeing up your CPU to be able to do more work. 1.3 also has a few speed optimizations in place, most of them not in the graphics code-- AI overbuild (which should be fixed) can cripple your FPS, but isn't graphics code related. Since 1.3pb4a, an additional requirement of a CPU that supports Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE), which was introduced with Intel's Pentium III family, and AMD's Athlon XP family. (And, later CPUs from them supported SSE as well.) Testers have noted that this produces a noticeable framerate boost -- not to stratospheric framerates, but definitely better than before SSE.

Further note - some graphics options, like local fog and reflections will definitely affect your framerate. Reflections, if enabled and the current map has water, will cause the entire world to be drawn twice -- once upside down in the water view, and once normally. That doubles the amount of work for BZ2 (figuring out what to draw, and telling DirectX about that), and doubles the work for DirectX 9 (the drawing). Thus, enabling reflections can and will drop your framerate.

Local fog submits many transparent polygons in order to provide a hemisphere of fogging over an area. BZ2 1.0-1.3pb4a did local fogging purely on the CPU; this can't easily be replicated with the 'fixed function pipeline' in DirectX 9. Thus, many transparent planes are drawn in order to draw something of a parallel effect. This will almost certainly reduce framerates when local fogging is enabled, and you are looking at such a region.

Also, turning on anisotropic filtering and/or multisampling antialiasing (MSAA) from the graphics options page will increase quality at the cost of framerate. (Anisotropic is generally cheaper than MSAA, I think.) Anisotropic filtering improves the look of triangles that are relatively perpendicular compared to the camera -- e.g. the terrain. If MSAA is set to anything above 'none' makes your card draw everything at a higher resolution than what is displayed, and then scale it down before drawing. This can drastically increase the load on your video card. As above, higher values for MSAA setting and quality will make things look better while reducing framerate. Lower MSAA setting & quality will make things look a little worse, but increase framerate. MSAA settings can't be changed without quitting restarting BZ2.

What about my overclocked system?

As noted above BZ2 puts much more work on your CPU than some other games. That amount of stress may expose faults in your overclocked setup far earlier than other games may do. If you are experiencing problems, then please try temporarily undoing your overclocking, and rerun BZ2. If the problem goes away, then the problem has been isolated to the overclocking, and not BZ2. No two applications use the same parts of the CPU, memory, etc, and "stability" in one application does not guarantee it being in all applications.