Some good news, I will release 2.03 probably tomorrow, it's 99% percent ready, only I have to fix small problem with shell dispersion I enabled and works little strange, either will fix it untill tomorrow or cancel and release without dispersion, it will go into next update then. Dispersion for MGs works very nicely, spreading bullets in almost correct way, but for tank shells it spreads only to the left and down, never up or right, not yet sure why.
The mod will be little bigger, as few new sounds and textures went into it. It will completly replace all mod files, the mod and all files in it have new names, it don't use any of old AB files, all this to avoid any possibility of problems with interference between versions. So it should work for everyone now, doesn't matter if and which version of AB was installed before.
Here's a change log (not complete for sure) between 2.01 and 2.03. Some visual work, some cosmetic, making order in files, fixing few issues, remodeling tank sights... and few surprises ;-). Did also quite extensive research for this and future work and learned few things.
And a picture from tank range, testing & calibrating tank sights and shell dispersion:
the shell "hole" marks on targets are new too, I was bored with default HE "splashes" from AP shells ;-)
And above a new, scaled binoc reticle, the pattern of reticle is from real German binocs, the scale is in mils and can be used for ranging now. The red vertical things are 10m apart at 1000m (so 10 mils). Almost good, can't be better because of screen resolution... The center horizontal mark is 2mils wide (one mil each side), so space between it and first 5mils mark is 4 mils - and it matches with 4m target too, as good as screen resolution allows.
For comparison, you have picture of old RO binoc reticle, how good scaled it is...
Matches with red 10m columns ideally, isn't it ? :-/ I wonder how long the GFX worked on it...
You can test it all tomorrow probably, no I'm going to sleep, goodnight
Changelog:
2.03
name of the mod changed to ArmoredBeasts2 (and that should be final)
- All filenames in mod changed, to avoid any interference with previous versions of mod.
From now on, any new mod version will be overwritting old one.
- ******** Remodelled tank optics and tank binoculars **********
(new Stug sight and binoc scale based on real photos of sight/binocs, more on this later)
- speed of tank shells reduced back to 0.5 of real speed, to see if full speed caused problems or not
(my personal bet would be that problems my reduce by 10-20% but still exist, and this was not the cause).
- Tracer of German tank shells changed to orange, Russian to yellow-green (as in 2.01) and some shells have red tracers, tracer size and visibility tuned a bit
- Panzerfaust remodelled, having now realistic ballistics, no smoke trail, and actually detonating on tanks
- Reduced size of tank AP shell 3D models, they were up to 200mm in diameter (for Tiger and IS-2 shell).
- Tank HE shells 3D models set to be same as AP shells - in stock RO HE shells of all tanks had 3D
model of Panzerfaust warhead... !!!!!!!!!!!!!!???!!!! :-O
http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/2159/76mmhesj0.jpg
- Tank HE shells don't have tracers anymore (as they usually didn't in real life)
- Fixed a bit T-60 gunsight, that was working backwards... But still not completly, it requires new reticle texture
- reduced AP shells explosion damage against tanks (no longer close misses should damage tanks)
- reduced HE effect on tanks (to increase number of hits needed to destroy tank by HE).
- Tracers of tank MGs had speed 2 times slower than normal MG rounds, now set to almost the same speed
(normal bullets little faster than tracers, but not 2 times faster)
- Reduced penetration of ricocheting tank rounds against other targets
- PzIVF1 got HEAT shells (it now uses AP and HEAT instead of AP and HE, HEAT works against infantry
almost just as good as HE and has 75-85mm of penetration against tanks)
- Fixed "invunerable" Su-76 upper hull issue from 2.0/2.01 mod v.
- Tiger tank split into several versions:
Tiger E early
Tiger E middle-early (the one used in game by default)
Tiger E middle-late
Tiger E late (having TZF9c double-magnification optics)
Currently only Tiger late differs from others (having better optics) but in the future there will be more differences, externally and in parameters
- Tank gunsights of most tanks (all in next update) scaled every 100m up to 2000m (not to 1000m as in stock RO). So now you can set 1100 or 1300m if needed (on Orel for example)
- Don't stay in burning tanks, it's unhealthy ;-), from now on the ammo and will blow up after some time and you will die if you stay so long
- basic shell dispersion added to tank cannons, dispersion based on available ballistic data of German
and Russian shells (like 50% dispersion zones/errors, hit probability ect) (still at work).