Battlefield Vietnam Windows game

Well, Christmas has come again, and with it, the next version of Operation Remembrance. I find myself having mixed feelings about this release, as it's not everything I expected it to be. Although all of the features I promised have indeed been added, I made the decision a while back not to polish many of them to the same degree as I did with V1.0. The reason for that is because during its development phase, V1.1 became less of an independent major update and more of a stepping stone for V1.2. In fact, I wouldn't have released it at all if I hadn't promised everyone that it would be coming, and that it would bring certain features.

What I came to realize while working on V1.1 was that there was no purpose making certain features absolutely perfect when they were just going to be heavily changed for V1.2 anyway, and this affects all aspects of the mod. For example, in the new map "Firebase Whiskey", which takes place in 1969 and features the US Army vs the NVA, why should I go to the effort of creating a custom loading screen, loading text, briefing text, and making sure every vehicle and kit spawn is perfect when I have plans to change it to a France vs. Viet Minh map set in the early 1950s for V1.2? Why should I put effort into adding the pick-up kits that can be found lying around the maps in V1.0 back into the maps (after renaming most of them), when V1.2 is going to feature an overhaul of the kit system that will to require me to redo all of the pick-up kits anyway?

At this point, it makes more sense to me to release V1.1 in a functional, but unpolished state than to continue polishing something that isn't even mostly finished to begin with. As I've mentioned in previous articles, after working on this mod for over ten years, I'm ready to start moving onto other things. My plan is to leave V1.1 as it is unless the need for a small patch arrives, and I'm going to start working on other projects for a few months. I'll come back to Operation Remembrance once in a while, and when late spring or early summer comes around, I'll begin devoting more full-time work to Operation Remembrance.

To give everyone an idea of what's coming for V1.2, I can say that it will likely be the final major update for Operation Remembrance. It will mostly focus on the addition of the First Indochina campaign and the associated weapons, vehicles, factions, and maps, but will also add major quality tweaks to the rest of the mod. Every handweapon, vehicle, and weapon emplacement will receive close examinations to make sure that every detail is as close to perfect as possible. The AI will receive heavy work, which will largely be courtesy of Professor_Smith of Bf1942's "HTroop" mod, who has kindly provided me with a collection of his research into how to edit and improve the AI of Bf1942 and BfVietnam. His research should allow me to make significant improvements to the AI, and I've already managed to make a few changes to the AI for V1.1 based on the information he has given me, such as improving the accuracy of bots using helicopter door guns and other machine guns. Although the new armor and damage system has already been implemented for V1.1, V1.2 will feature a few small alterations and fixes, along with further improvements for the new ammunition/resupply system. V1.2 will feature several new factions as well, including the French, Viet Minh, South Vietnamese Civilian Irregular Defense Groups, and two surprise factions that I'm not going to name yet. To avoid disappointment, however, I'll say now that South Korea is NOT scheduled for addition to V1.2, not because I'm unwilling to do so, but because I lack the knowledge to create authentic-looking character models with Korean features. If anyone knows how to do this, or knows where I can get models that are compatible with Battlefield Vietnam, please let me know. I also need at least one South Korean voice actor to provide soldier voices.

Most prominently, V1.2 will introduce destructible bunkers and buildings. For right now, I don't know how far this feature will go, but I do know that some existing, indestructible bunkers in current maps will be replaced with destructible bunkers with mounted machine guns. Because Operation Remembrance features fewer armored vehicles in the early maps than most mods, these destructible bunkers and fortifications will give rifle grenades and rocket launchers a new useful purpose on many maps, while the ability to destroy buildings will allow for some fun objective-based maps (like destroying ammunition supplies or buildings that spawn vehicles), while some objects like bridges will be destructible to alter the direction of gameplay. Note that due to pathfinding concerns, no objects that could alter the abilities of the bots to properly maneuver around maps will be destructible in singleplayer. For example, a bridge in a specific map might be destructible in multiplayer, but not in co-op or singleplayer because allowing it to be destroyed would cause bots to get stuck. Another feature I plan to add is spawnable, destructible ammunition boxes. Because V1.1 introduces a system where a specific team's ammunition boxes can only be used to supply weapons by that team, this will allow for a more dynamic system that lets troops controlling a specific flag be the only ones who can resupply from local boxes, but if the flag gets taken over by the enemy, they can destroy the ammunition boxes and have their own brought in. This can also add a new difficulty to maps, as ammunition boxes can be destroyed to temporarily deny their use to the associated team.

On the subject of bots and pathfinding, another feature that I'm hoping to add in V1.2 is pathmaps with significantly greater detail than ever before. It has been explained to me that there's a way to use a certain program to manually create custom pathmaps, and if I can learn to do this properly, it should greatly improve bot performance on most or all of the maps.

I think that's about all for now. I hope everyone enjoys V1.1 and can forgive its unpolished state, as it's just a set-up for the biggest update of all. I might go quiet for a little while like I have in the past, but I can assure everyone that Operation Remembrance will be back one day, and far better than ever before.

An NVA soldier uses an RPG-7 to shoot down an American UH-1 advancing during Operation Pegasus.

A member of a South Vietnamese Popular Forces unit stands guard at the edge of his hamlet with a MAS-36 rifle.

A US Marine Corps A-4E Skyhawk drops an M31 napalm bomb on Viet Cong positions during Operation Starlite.

A US soldier fends off advancing NVA troops during Operation Paul Revere IV.