Copernicus

Hello there,

got DoW2 today and heard that some people are crying for an option to let some of the dead bodies stay on the battlefield. Well. Here it is, my little modification. As said, not all of the corpses will stay - I didn't manage to do this, it's the same problem we had with Company of Heroes. Guess we can't really do something about it.

Interesting fact #356434: Corpses will more likely stay, if you don't watch while units die. Don't even TRY to ask me why!

This mod changes attrib-files! It's only for the singleplayer-part and doesn't change any of the files related to MP/skirmish! BUT IT WILL PREVENT YOU FROM JOINING MULTIPLAYER-GAMES WHILE IT IS ENABLED! (as long as the other players don't have the mod activated, too)

So, here we go:

Rapidshare Link

FileFront doesn't work for me. Feel free to add a link.

Installation instructions are included!

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How was this mod made?

I edited all the infantries' EBP-files with a hexeditor and changed "delete_when_dead" to false. To find this value in the file without understanding too much about this RBF stuff, search for the health-points (you can get hte hp-value via SGA-Reader by Corsix), then for the regeneration-value (as you can see in Corisx, the regeneration is not as unique as the health value but is just inbetween the health and the delete_when_dead-value) and now look for a hex-doubleword which looks like 1000 0000. Well, we now that "delete_when dead" is a bool, so the h-dword has to be changed to 0000 0000.
If you want to check, if you did everything the right way, just open up the RBF-file with the SGA-Viewer and check "health_ext"->"delete_when_dead"


Have fun with this little modification.

-cope.

EDIT, 22th of February, 5:05 am:

Here's a picture I made using this modification (and photoshop xD):

Sebi

Very cool

Shuma

Awesome, Thanks Copernicus. Dling now, will test it in MP later.

Copernicus

Yeah, don't forget that you only have to test if MP still works, cause it's a singleplayer-only modification .
(Making a MP-version wouldn't be a problem, but then you could only play with people having this mod installed, too!)

BL4zD

Will this work with coop? Or do we both need it for it to work?

Copernicus

I guess that both persons need this, otherwise it might tell you that you have different versions of the game.

Achronos-117

Interesting, I'll be testing this mod ASAP

AlienHack

cool......

dezztroy

Great, thanks. If you don't mind me asking, what did you use to edit the RBF files?

Copernicus

Hex Editor Neo. Any other Hexeditor with the ability to search for floats would have fitted aswell.

Insano-Man

How bad would a ton of dead people affect performance with this installed? I run on a machine just barely passing the minimum in terms of processor and RAM, so this I don't want it crashing on me.

Copernicus

Mhm, it gets me from 70fps to about 30, so it's quite alot.

LochKopf

and what is with the Blood ? can stay too ?

Copernicus

No - and I don't think that it's possible at all.

z_h

Thanks Copernicus. With your mod I actually made me an invincible FC running around in Primarch mode.

LochKopf

Why ? It must be a timer for the Blood, but where is he ?

i mean the "black" Blood under the Dead Bodies.

please ! !!!!

edit: sry for my poor english

Copernicus

Of course there is one - but tell me WHERE I can find it or even HOW to edit it. If this would be so easy, you could even do it yourself.

LochKopf

when i understand more the SGA Reader, i would help you. ^^


i search in gameattrib and DELTA and i found something with BLOOD

but i understand the text not

Ludovsky

... you do know that's exactly the kind of thing that could causes Microsoft to /exactly/ put pressure on Relic to lockdown the game even more to prevent players from using this to "cheat" their way through achievement gathering to get higher so-called gamerscores?

... granted, it depends if this block achievement gathering or not. If this doesn't... well, frankly, I'd have a hard time not seeing Microsoft putting pressure on Relic to make sure the achievement scores can't be cheated this way... even if at the cost of any future modding support.

supr3mekill3r

Thanks for releasing this so fast.




Great way for them to waste time and money, seeing as how achievements do nothing in the first place but waste peoples time trying to get them...

Ludovsky

Perhaps. And maybe most players won't care. But sadly they're Microsoft's property and system so to speak. Big companies like that don't like third party content that could "mess with their stuff". That's the problem.

Grimdark

Cheating was, and always will be. Start to live with it.

Oxyminoan

Thank you so much for this mod. The game just isn't as epic without you being able to stand on the 100s of corpses of your enemies.

It made the last mission just that much better.

Copernicus

Woah, THAT's what I call a massacre! It's a lot of fun to make such a mod if the feedback is so positive!

supr3mekill3r

I'd like to try this in skirmish but at the moment I don't know a thing about hex editing

Copernicus

Then it now it's your time to learn to edit with hex-editors. Just search for the health-value as a float and look for something like "1000 0000" somewhere right near the value you found. Change it to "0000 0000". good luck.

Oxyminoan

Just to let you know, it interferes with Multiplayer...which is a shame.

Had to revert back in order to join my friends.

Vertrucio

I'm sure Relic will put such a feature in eventually, they did with DoW1. The issue here is they're already dealing with memory leaks in the code, so they should probably deal with that first before adding more memory use on top of it. Thankfully, these corpses are static, which should work well with things like vertex shaders and the like.

sardaukar69

Cool mod. Relic should have left the option to choose persistent bodies in the game.

Ludovsky

I can live with it. The problem is, can /Microsoft/ live with it? And if it can't, will it be at the cost of /any/ possible future official mod support due to pressure they could make on Relic?

That's the point I'm trying to raise.

Copernicus

Could you please discuss this somewhere else? This has nothing to do with the mod, 'cause the mod is NO cheat at all and I don't want anybody outthere to think it is. Thank you.

RayvenQ85

Simple, it's governed by the universal law that applies to buses, they'll never turn up while you look, but the moment you turn your back three show up at once

TheWickedGerman

I just want to let you know that you can´t join MP with this mod, all games were greyed out for me.

Copernicus

Thank you for the information. Added this.

noname

thx for this !!!
but i'm still seeing tacticals marines deleted...
scout marines stay dead, but not tacticals marines, can you fix that please?

thx a lot !!!

Copernicus

I'm quite sure that they stay as well. Please notice that not all of the dying troops will remain on the battlefield.

newcomer

nice mod! its nice to have a huge pile of orks lying around if you like to play defense maps. On a side note, i think the reason why bodies dont allways stay is because ragdoll bodies, from what i noticed, dont seem to stay, ever. perhaps disabling ragdoll deaths may fix this

Valtonis

it sucks that you have to go into each an every single file to change true to false.
i am going insane and i am just halfway through orks and haven't even started on Tyranids yet.

Nellum

thank you it's cool~

duffbeer

hahah it actually works, this is SO much better!!

Yamaeda

Can you limit how many/how long the corpses stay? I love the fact they'll litter the field, but after a couple hundred corpses the best of computers will get hick ups.

/Y

Copernicus

I guess that this is not possible (although there's a field called "death_time" which doesn't seem to change anything).

supr3mekill3r

Opening the ebps files for all the infantry and changing "death_seconds: 10" to "death_seconds: 120" will change how long corpses remain from 10 seconds to 2 minutes.

Will keep the effect, but save you alot of performance later on.

Copernicus

So this works? I always thought that it didn't change anything at all as changing it to -1 didn't work.

27X

Can anyone put up a link for skirmish?

supr3mekill3r

Heres a tip on how to save alot of time, however this only works with the rbf to text converter tools by corsix and theendlessgray, not with hex files.

Download notepad++

Open all ebps/troops files at the same time with that program.

Press control + H and do a search for "delete_when_dead: true"

Enter "delete_when_dead: false" in the replace option.

Click replace in all files.

It will change that code in all of the files instantly.

That will save you alot of time. Note that this only really works if the code is the same in all files as it is in this case. This will not work when changing say, the requisition cost of different units, because all the values are different.

Also works with the "death_seconds: 10" because all of the infantry use the same value for that. So if you want bodies to remain temporarily, do the same thing and change that to a higher value such as 60 or 120.

27X

Has anyone tried extending the death time to a ridiculous amount to see if that covers the ragdoll-bodies as well as the "offscreen" (nonragdoll) ones?

AlienHack

any chance of uploading a file that includes 1st: "delete_when_dead: false" and
2nd: "death_seconds: 120" or something....

i hate trying to hex edit my files..

supr3mekill3r

You don't really need to hex edit any RBF files anymore since theres an RBF to text converter, and a GUI version to make it faster.

http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=216952