[Sy]

If anyone has any contacts within EA on the BFME dev. or support team, I would very much like them to ask how we might go about creating our own applets, what tools we need or what formats are required.

For that matter, would they publish details of all the file formats used?

Various people have suggested that EA is doing its best to support the modding community, right now I don't see it. What I see is a system that was open and readable in the WND format, has now been moved to an abstract binary format and no information or tools are provided, this also applies to the various other stumbling blocks that BFME has introduced.

I'm not saying EA has any duty or obligation to provide this information either, they don't. But they no-one can claim they are being helpful either.

[DeeZire]

I think they are being helpful in their own way, I still maintain the issue is that perhaps they dont fully understand the requirements of the editing community at large. The reality is that modders remain the vast minority.

Besides, everybody whined about not being able to edit WND files properly, so I released an editor for them (to make it even easier than WordPad!) and hardly any mods have surfaced that have extensively made use of heavily changed WND files - and thats nearly two years after the game came out. Sometimes, some things just dont justify a greater effort.

I agree that some people may want to change the Palantir into a Command Bar, but even with a proper apt compiler you wont do it - the core game code no longer does much else, regardless of how you change the apt files, it will only do whats required for the game, that is display the radar/play movies in it and allow you to click the buttons that are already there. In short, I think the best you will achieve is changing how it looks, what not what it does or can do.

[Sy]

I fully appreciate that. I was one of the modders that did use your window editor. I'm curious to know exactly what is and isn't hard coded and exactly what functionality can be changed, until I see the apt source I will never know as its unlikely an exhaustive list will be published.

[Ingoneur]

I know a few Mods having used the wnd files often

Tiberian War:


Rise of Europe:


Survive by Conquer (this is the mod i worked for a time but after my harddisk crashed i gave up :/ )


and a mod i'm working at the moment:

(not completed yet


so i think you can't say there are only a very very shot number because these all are only german mods ^^ and i think there are much other mods in the world changing the wnd much

[DeeZire]

I thought this topic was way dead, it seems not. Since BFMEII is upon us, its worth knowing that the .apt files and the entire UI were done in Flash (Flash MX IIRC). Not sure if you can reverse-engineer them, havent tried myself.

[Ambershee]

I've been trying so far with MX Studio 2004, with no luck. I don't think it's too tricky though, I've just not spent a great deal of time working on it

[Ingoneur]

has anyone got any results in the meantime?

[Ambershee]

Nothing yet; I've not found a way to reverse engineer them properly, and I still get crashes everytime I try. Short of picking at them with a Hex Editor, I've not managed anything, and even then it's really, really minute.

[jonwil]

Just a FYI, the new Command & Conquer 3 is using this same Flash UI format. If anyone makes any progress on cracking it open, that will be GREAT for C&C3 modding