Afghan National Army Mod

[Zveroboy1]

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Afghan National Army for Combat Mission Shock Force 2
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Okay so I am going to release this because it has been sitting on my HD for about a month without me tweaking it further. So it is probably good enough in its current state.

This is a two-in-one mod that turns some of the Syrian Infantry into Afghan National Army. Here is what it does in detail :

Syrian mech infantry ----> Early Afghan Army
Syrian airborne infantry ----> Late Afghan Army

So basically you get both uniforms in a single mod and it is up to you to decide which type you want by selecting the corresponding branch.

 

Early Afghan National Army :

 

They replace Syrian mech infantry and use AK's with a woodland camo uniform. The camo is supposed to represent either regular US woodland, a variant from Iran or Pakistan or a cheap chinese knockoff with a slightly different pattern and colours.

 

Late Afghan Infantry :
 

They replace Syrian airborne infantry, field M16's and their uniform is a mix of woodland camo and the new Spec4ce Afghan Forest camo.
If you plan on using late war afghan infantry, I suggest you use regular airborne infantry as opposed to mech airborne infantry, both located under special forces. They will have a full allotment of RPG ammo.

 

When to use early or late war?

There isn't a clear cut date really but here is what I could gather with a quick search online.

Uniforms :
The ANA began to issue its own pixelated camouflage design in 2008-2009, designed by Hyperstealth Industries and named "Spec4ce Afghan Forest" pattern with some initial batches of these uniforms were made in China.

Weapons :
The U.S. military began shipping about 55,000 used Marine Corps M-16A2 rifles to Afghanistan with the intent of outfitting every soldier in the Afghan army with one by the late spring of 2009.

Of course both of these changes happened gradually but before 2008, you should opt for early ANA and after 2009, go for late war ANA.

Issues :
 

1/ The texture for the buttstock of the AKS-74U used by the squad leader of the paratroopers and the AKMS of the mech infantry looks a tad messed up. I think this is caused by the weapon swap and shared parts so I don't think it can be fixed for late war ANA. For early ANA, you could just temporarily remove the AK74M to M16 weapon swap folder from your mod directory.

2/ This isn't directly related to the ANA mod because the issue stems from the Syrian uncon fighters-Taliban conversion that I made previously, but since both mods are likely to be used in conjonction, I should mention it here. In my Taliban fighter mod, I swapped uncon fighters (the guys with the black pajamas and balaclava) with uncom combatants models and re-textured them both to use the same skin. Syrian uncon fighters and Syrian regular soldiers share the same boots though.

If you want to pit ISAF forces versus Taliban, there is going to be no issue whatsoever.

However if you plan on having a battle with ANA on one side and Taliban on the other, either the boots worn by ANA soldiers or the boots worn by Taliban fighters (depending on the load order) will look messed up because they share the same texture.

Again, I need to emphasize that this will only be an issue if you are using both my ANA mod together with my Taliban fighter mod (And NOT combatants who don't wear boots but trainers).

To keep it simple, I recommend that to represent Taliban forces, just use my Taliban combatants mod and only use my Taliban fighters mod sparingly. Only if you need heavy weapons like Dshk and recoilless rifles that combatants don't have for instance. And finally make sure the ANA mod loads after the fighters. This way the glitch won't be as noticeable.

How to install :

Extract the mod in the following directory : Documents/Battlefront/Combat Mission/Shock Force 2/User Data/Mods

 

Credits :

37mm did the weapon swap for the late ANA. Without his help I would probably not have bothered with the weapons and only modded the uniforms.

 

Download :

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9gcpgmkwc8lgga2/zzANA.rar?dl=0

 

Let me know if there is any problem or error with the mod.

Zveroboy

 

[Zveroboy1]

By the way I didn't bother with mod tags because the weapon swap folder includes a string.txt file and a wav sound file and I didn't know if you could add tags to these types of files. I figured you would then have to manually swap the weapons folder anyway so it sounded a bit pointless. If someone knows please tell me and I'll make a mod tag version if people are interested.

[MOS:96B2P]

9 hours ago, Zveroboy1 said:

In my Taliban fighter mod, I swapped uncon fighters (the guys with the black pajamas and balaclava) with uncom combatants models and re-textured them both to use the same skin.  

+2  You are one talented dude.  It's interesting that the appearance of the ninjas can be altered so drastically.  If you ever had the time to explain how you accomplished that it would be interesting and educational.  Maybe along the lines of a guide.  Then other player /modders would have a basic starting point and might be encouraged to give it a try.  What programs you had to use etc.  I've recently done some very basic modding (see below) using Paint but your skill is many light years ahead of what I've been able to figure out on my own. 

Thanks for making and sharing your mods.     

   

Edited May 9, 2019 by MOS:96B2P

[waffelmann]

It looks very cool in game!

 

Well done!

Edited May 9, 2019 by waffelmann
can't write 2 short sentences correct!

[Sgt.Squarehead]

5 hours ago, MOS:96B2P said:

+2  You are one talented dude.

I'll second that.....Really impressive stuff. 

Will this work with the units in @puje's Afghanistan campaign?

Edited May 9, 2019 by Sgt.Squarehead

[Zveroboy1]

11 hours ago, MOS:96B2P said:

 If you ever had the time to explain how you accomplished that it would be interesting and educational.  Maybe along the lines of a guide.  Then other player /modders would have a basic starting point and might be encouraged to give it a try.  What programs you had to use etc.

It was benpark who gave me the idea and it is actually really easy to do a model swap, no need for a long guide or fancy software. Well at least for soldiers, for weapon swaps it is a bit more involved, same principle but more files to modify. You have weapons sounds and the UI to take care of as well. 37mm did this part for the ANA mod.

You simply copy the model, the mdr file found inside one of the brz, of what you want your unit/object/weapon to become and rename it with the name of the unit you started the process with. In other words, you want A to become B. You copy the B model and rename it A. The game doesn't care what the model looks like. It just sees that the ninja model points to the Syrian uncon combatant and that's it. The 3D engine then simply renders an uncon combatant whenever the oob of a battle has an uncon fighter.

For instance in the ANA mod, you have this file smod_syrian_helmet-soldier.mdr. That's actually the special force helmet model. But here it uses the name of the regular Syrian infantry helmet.

Once that's done, you do the exact same thing for the texture. You grab the corresponding bmp, copy it and rename it so it matches the new model.

smod_syrian_helmet-airborne 1.bmp, that's the special forces helmet texture recoloured and renamed.

Without this last step, the game would use the regular Syrian helmet texture on what is now a special forces helmet and obviously that would look wrong.

It is not that easy to explain clearly, but in practice it is not that hard to do.

 

 

Edited May 10, 2019 by Zveroboy1

[Zveroboy1]

5 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Will this work with the units in @puje's Afghanistan campaign?

I haven't played puje's campaign yet. Does it use ANA forces?

It should work though, it is just like any other mod really. I don't think puje bothered with mod tags in his campaign unfortunately. That's a pity but my ANA mod is not tagged unlike my other Afghanistan mods anyway. You'll just have to add/remove the mod(s) manually.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Just now, Zveroboy1 said:

I haven't played puje's campaign yet. Does it use ANA forces?

Nor me, I haven't checked yet TBH. 

Actually, to be completely honest, when I initially posted I thought it was your campaign and that you had designed the mod to purpose, but then I checked and edited my post. 

[Zveroboy1]

The only problem with campaigns is that the creator needs to add mod tags for each battles. If he doesn't, you can't just do it yourself in the editor like with a regular scenario.

[MOS:96B2P]

12 minutes ago, Zveroboy1 said:

It was benpark who gave me the idea and it is actually really easy to do a model swap, no need for a long guide or fancy software. Well at least for soldiers,

 So it was @benpark  .   Well you've done a fantastic job and I'm going to attempt to follow your directions above.  Thanks.  +1 

[Zveroboy1]

Yes it was him. By the way your modded vehicles look good. And I don't consider myself super talented with photoshop at all. I just got into it seriously barely a year and a half ago. You just need to watch tutorials on youtube and practice. There is no lack of tutorials online about this topic if you want to learn.

[benpark]

Fantas-tic!

Swapping the models won't change the fundamentals of the underlying code, but the visuals changing matters a lot when a soldier is a soldier is a soldier (and all the vital statistics can be set in the Editor).

[37mm]

21 hours ago, Zveroboy1 said:

You have weapons sounds and the UI to take care of as well. 37mm did this part for the ANA mod.

Looks good & I was just wondering about this mod recently.

I'll try it out soon but I could've sworn that the scripts/sound changes I did were for an AK-74 & don't the airborne use an AKS-74u?

[Zveroboy1]

Both special forces and airborne troops use AK-74M. Only the squad leaders use AKS-74U.

Mech infantry uses AKMS. Some HQ's use AKS-74U.

Uncon and Syrian reserve both use AKM.

So I think it all works but let me know if there is an issue somewhere with the swap.

Edited May 10, 2019 by Zveroboy1

[evilman222]

On 5/9/2019 at 9:22 AM, MOS:96B2P said:

+2  You are one talented dude.  It's interesting that the appearance of the ninjas can be altered so drastically.  If you ever had the time to explain how you accomplished that it would be interesting and educational.  Maybe along the lines of a guide.  Then other player /modders would have a basic starting point and might be encouraged to give it a try.  What programs you had to use etc.  I've recently done some very basic modding (see below) using Paint but your skill is many light years ahead of what I've been able to figure out on my own. 

Thanks for making and sharing your mods.     

   

Hmm... I don't recall Coup! including a hospital with that kind of entrance... does this perhaps suggest a new scenario is in the works?

[evilman222]

Also, @Zveroboy1 any chance you could put out a version of this that swaps out the Dutch uniforms for these ANA ones? Would be the final step in making the great Heart of Darkness fully playable in SF2

[Sgt.Squarehead]

16 minutes ago, evilman222 said:

Hmm... I don't recall Coup! including a hospital with that kind of entrance... does this perhaps suggest a new scenario is in the works?

Send our mutual friend a PM.....I highly recommend it. 

Edited May 12, 2019 by Sgt.Squarehead

[MOS:96B2P]

32 minutes ago, evilman222 said:

Hmm... I don't recall Coup! including a hospital with that kind of entrance... does this perhaps suggest a new scenario is in the works?

It's the old Mout hotel.......... 

http://community.battlefront.com/topic/133391-shock-force-2-unofficial-screenshot-and-video-thread/?do=findComment&comment=1788146

And this:

http://community.battlefront.com/topic/133391-shock-force-2-unofficial-screenshot-and-video-thread/?do=findComment&comment=1788491

 

Edited May 12, 2019 by MOS:96B2P

[37mm]

On 5/11/2019 at 12:55 AM, Zveroboy1 said:

Both special forces and airborne troops use AK-74M. Only the squad leaders use AKS-74U.

That's another change from CMSF1... interesting to know!

[Zveroboy1]

On 5/12/2019 at 3:01 PM, evilman222 said:

Also, @Zveroboy1 any chance you could put out a version of this that swaps out the Dutch uniforms for these ANA ones? Would be the final step in making the great Heart of Darkness fully playable in SF2

I don't know, not really planning on it at the moment. I wanted to focus on mapping for another Afghanistan scenario. One of the reasons why I did the swap for the uncon fighters after you asked for it, was that they could also be used alongside my Taliban combatants to supplement them with heavy weapons that fighters lack.

If you're motivated you could do it yourself though. All the files you need are in the ANA mod. You just need to unpack the right brz where all the uniforms are located, find the dutch infantry texture, the dutch infantry mdr, then rename the skins and the model included in my mod accordingly. It is just a matter of renaming files.

 

[evilman222]

On 5/14/2019 at 8:12 PM, Zveroboy1 said:

I don't know, not really planning on it at the moment. I wanted to focus on mapping for another Afghanistan scenario. One of the reasons why I did the swap for the uncon fighters after you asked for it, was that they could also be used alongside my Taliban combatants to supplement them with heavy weapons that fighters lack.

If you're motivated you could do it yourself though. All the files you need are in the ANA mod. You just need to unpack the right brz where all the uniforms are located, find the dutch infantry texture, the dutch infantry mdr, then rename the skins and the model included in my mod accordingly. It is just a matter of renaming files.

 

Okay I'll try doing it myself. If I manage to do it, would you mind if I posted a dl link on this thread in case anyone else wants to use it for HoD?

[Zveroboy1]

Yes go ahead, I don't mind. Give it a try. There is a post in this thread that explains the method. Message me if you struggle too much. Hmm of course you'll have to pick one of the uniform sets, early early or late. And if you succeed, you'll have to kneel then I'll tap you on the shoulders with a kalashnikov and make you a knight.

[borg]

On 5/16/2019 at 1:06 PM, evilman222 said:

Okay I'll try doing it myself. If I manage to do it, would you mind if I posted a dl link on this thread in case anyone else wants to use it for HoD?

Yes please !! IM DYIING to play the Heart of Darkness Campaign in CMSFII with ANA mod please.

[Zveroboy1]

Okay it has come to my attention that the 2.02 patch breaks the ANA mod.

Here is a quick fix in the meantime until I find a way to fix it : delete the "ak74m to M16" folder inside the mod. I think the string.txt used for the weapon swap must have changed and it is causing all sorts of weird issues. The uniform mod will work, you just won't get M16's on late war ANA soldiers.

[waffelmann]

I think, it is sufficient to delete the "strings.txt".