BF2 Limitations (FAQ)

[Maveritchell]

EDIT: D'oh! Team "0" is obviously neutral. Anyway, I still haven't gotten the eighth team to work yet, but I did find that there is a limit on the number of text characters/spaces combination that can go into a "popuptext" message. The number is fairly reasonable (not sure about the exact count), but exceeding this limit crashes the game without any related error messages that I know of. The crash occurs the moment right before the popup appears.

Thought I had posted it somewhere in here, but yes, I ran into that string limit error when I was making Spira. It took me a long time to bugcheck, because it only crashes the game and not the ModTools.exe. I had a hard time making more than eight teams work in that same project, but I haven't tried that again since (so I don't have any current information to add).

[AQT]

There seems to be a limit to the number of animations you can have in a map, I had ~32 and I experienced a freeze during load, undocumented in the error log. I have not tested whether or not there is a limit on animation groups.

It's a limit to animation keyframes, like I told you - not animations themselves.

That's weird, I have fewer animations than before with more keyframes and it is performing much better. I wonder if I miscounted something...

I had 35 animations with 74 keyframes total, and the I experienced a freeze at the last loading circle. So I switched it up and got rid of a few things to the point of me ending up with 32 animations with 75 keyframes total, and the map worked just fine. I suspect that animation limit itself is indeed 32. There's probably a keyframe limit number as well.

[AceMastermind]

Are we all in agreement that:

• A) You can't modify the Droideka or Fambaa shield effect geometry.
  B) You can't change which bone the JetEffect property uses as the attach origin (bone_ribcage).
  C) ZeroEditor will crash when attempting to load models mapped to textures 2048 pixels or higher.

if no one objects to these or is able to prove otherwise then i'll add them to the list of limitations in the first post.

Discussion threads:
viewtopic.php?f=27&t=28100
viewtopic.php?f=27&t=28200
viewtopic.php?p=471310#p471310

[Maveritchell]

C) ZeroEditor will crash when attempting to load models mapped to textures 2048 pixels or higher.

This isn't true, at least insomuch as ZE "cares" about single dimensions. 2048 is fine so long as your other dimension is small enough (I've used 2048*16 for a scrolling texture before, but had a crash when I used 4096 as its dimension). Total number of pixels on the texture is what makes sense anyway.

[AceMastermind]

Ok thanks, i'm seeing conflicting information according to this post though.

EDIT
I just performed a quick test with a 24-bit RGB tga image and here are the results:

• 2048x2048 didn't crash ZE (12 MB)
  4096x1024 didn't crash ZE (12 MB)
  4096x2048 crashed ZE (24 MB)
  4096x4096 crashed ZE (48 MB)

The same test using a png image:

• 4096x4096 didn't crash ZE (619 KB)
  8192x8192 didn't crash ZE (3.82 MB)

I believe the crashing is due to file size rather than the number of pixels. I'd say images larger than 12 MB in file size will crash ZE based on these test results.

[Tears2Roses]

A unit can not have a secondary weapon and no primary weapon. For instance, in all_inf_default_rifleman

Code: Select all

 WEAPONSECTION = 1
WeaponName     = "all_weap_inf_timebomb"
WeaponAmmo     = 0
WeaponChannel = 1 

That crashed the map, while this:

Code: Select all

WEAPONSECTION = 1
WeaponName     = "all_weap_inf_rifle"
WeaponAmmo     = 0

WEAPONSECTION = 2
WeaponName     = "all_weap_inf_timebomb"
WeaponAmmo     = 0
WeaponChannel = 1 

Did not. There will be no errors when the map crashes.

[Teancum]

Correct. However if you're looking for a workaround you can equip com_weap_null.odf in the primary slot

[Nedarb7]

I was planning on making a more detailed skeleton (which included tentacles as well) for Ahsoka and I ran into another limitation.
You can have up to 30 bones + the bone root and dummy root (dummy root must be keyed). This also applies to tentacle bones included within the unit's skeleton. That means you can't have any more than 7 tentacle bones included in the unit's skeleton (if you are using a human skeleton that is: 23 bones by default). However, this limitation does not apply to tentacle bones in addon geometry (wookiee warrior's hair, for example, has 20 tentacle bones)

[AceMastermind]

The unit template has 22 bones, 24 if you count dummyroot and bone_root, if 30 is the max that would leave 6 for tentacles. This means Aayla Secura (rep_inf_aaylasecura.msh) is an example of the max when tentacles are exported with the unit.
Thirty bones seems low though, did you get any errors when compiling, or did it just crash the game?

[Nedarb7]

I wasn't clear, but this includes all keyed objects (so hard points too, hence I came up with 23, as I included hp_weapons). And as I said the limit is 32. General Grievous is an example of a unit using the max number of keyed objects. The game crashes if you go over this number, for units at least.

(23 [including hp_weapons] + 2 [bone root and dummy root] + 7 [extras])

(final edit)
Lastly I feel like this is along the same lines of the tentacle limit, where the limit was set just as high as it needed to be for the stock game. No more and no less.

[Marth8880]

Having more than 26 doors in a map will cause the game to freeze and eventually crash during loading.

[AceMastermind]

Its not really about the doors, but that you hit the animation memory limit, animated textures from material flags also pull from the alotted amount you can have as we found out when converting Sereja's Otoh Gunga.

[Maveritchell]

Having more than 26 doors in a map will cause the game to freeze and eventually crash during loading.

One way to get around this issue would be to animate parallel (or nearby) doors with the same animation. I ran out of animation memory on my Corellia railway (Coronet Rail) map, which is why you'll notice the doors animate in pairs rather than individually.

[Marth8880]

Indentation characters (tabs) cannot be used within the entered value of a VOSound parameter in an ODF. Spaces must be used instead. Using tabs will result in the VOSound not working, and it will cause the following type of error to be printed:

Code: Select all

Message Severity: 2
C:\Battlefront2\main\Battlefront2\Source\VOHelper.cpp(196)
unknown VO type: AdrenalineLow

Example with whitespace characters shown in Notepad++ (pay no mind to the black "CRLF" characters at the end of each line, those just designate the line breaks):



The first line uses spaces to separate ssv_chatter_Jack_Target_Right and AcquiredTarget, whereas the second line uses tabs to separate ssv_chatter_Jack_Target_Husk and AcquiredTarget. The first line would be acceptable, and the second line would be unacceptable.

I'm not sure if the AI hook modifiers (e.g., +Right, +VOUnitNum031; see more here) have anything to do with it, but it'd be best practice to simply not use tabs with VOSound parameters at all (other than in VOSound = ", of course).

__________________________________________________________________________


Every sound bank file (*.asfx and *.sfx files) that is loaded into memory (through ReadDataFile()) must have a unique name. Loading two sound bank files of the same name will result in only the first one being loaded.

For example, say you have two LVL files: SFL_Jack_Weapons.lvl and SFL_Jack_VO.lvl. SFL_Jack_Weapons.lvl contains a sound bank file called heroJack_bnk.asfx, which references a bunch of weapon sounds, and SFL_Jack_VO.lvl contains *another* sound bank file called heroJack_bnk.asfx, which references a bunch of VO sounds (like pain/death chatter). In your world's mission script, SFL_Jack_Weapons.lvl is loaded near the beginning of ScriptInit(), and SFL_Jack_VO.lvl is loaded near the end of ScriptInit(). When you go in-game to test out the sounds, you find that the sounds from SFL_Jack_Weapons.lvl are working, but the sounds from SFL_Jack_VO.lvl are *not* working. The reason why is because even though the two sound bank files were stored in separate LVL files, they shared the same name (heroJack_bnk.asfx), so the sound bank that was loaded *first* (the one in SFL_Jack_Weapons.lvl) was accepted by the engine, and the other one (in SFL_Jack_VO.lvl) was ignored.

[Maveritchell]

Oh, and I remembered a limit I came across making Spira (this should be directly applicable to you if you're making an RPG map): You can have a maximum of 70 regions in a map (all layers being loaded in one instance, so for example if a map loads the base layer and the conquest layer the regiontotal in both combined cannot exceed 70). This same idea (that limits apply to the total of all the layers being loaded into any given map instance) probably holds true for objects and everything else.

A quick update: This isn't entirely accurate. The limit seems to be on active regions (regions activated with ActivateRegion) and it looks like it's 64, not 70.

[Marth8880]

^Yep, just took a look at stock Polis Massa and it has 127 regions loaded in Conquest alone. Not gonna lie, this "revelation" is a HUGE relief for me for SWBF2 map design haha

[SkinnyODST]

I`ve always wondered, I see prone a lot when looking through coding and when doing some scripting and stuff. Is prone in the game? But just not used?

[AnthonyBF2]

I thought that it would be nice to have all of the hard coded values for BF2 in one place.

Updated List:

• Prone does not work in SWBF2

Post any more that you know of.

[Marth8880]

Sound LVL files containing soundspace data must be loaded before world LVL files that contain soundspace regions. Otherwise, your soundspaces won't work and you'll get errors like this:

Code: Select all

Message Severity: 2
C:\Battlefront2\main\Battlefront2\Source\LoadUtil.cpp(1329)
CreateRegion('soundspace sp_hangar' [061e1bb5], type [70c67e32]) failed

To clarify, this would be the right way of doing it:

Code: Select all

ReadDataFile("dc:sound\\ABC.lvl;ABCcw")
...
ReadDataFile("dc:ABC\\ABC.lvl", "ABC_conquest")

And this would be the wrong way of doing it:

Code: Select all

ReadDataFile("dc:ABC\\ABC.lvl", "ABC_conquest")
...
ReadDataFile("dc:sound\\ABC.lvl;ABCcw")

[correctmushroom2013]

Sometime ago I had a crash of my map because of it has a lot of simple prop objects. I think what this is another limitation, of course idk how many objects can have a map. Any way to count them in ZE or somewhere... somehow...?