Star Wars Battlefront II (2005) - Scrapped Rhen Var Map
64I know this map isn't anything special considering the fact that there's been tons of conversions of it at this point but it's still very interesting to me. Rhen Var has text strings in every version of the game and the PS2 Beta. This seems to imply that the map originally was supposed to be part of the base game at launch but was cut at some point in development. There are no mission scripts for it and the map is not present in the PC, PS2, and Xbox (base game anyway) version's files. However, the map CAN be found in the PSP version's files, though its textures are very buggy. The map file was also included as part of a downloadable server manager for the game but it was missing textures (to save space).
Pandemic did not include Rhn2.lvl in the files of the PC version, however, approximately 12 years after the game was first released, an update to the game was released by GOG, which brought the game servers back online. However, in doing that, they (probably unintentionally) included a few extra .lvl files, including Rhn2.lvl! It seems like they went back and recompiled everything instead of just compiling the few files they actually modified. Why? I don't know. But at long last, we now have the PC version of Rhn2.lvl.
For the video, I just copied over Rhn2.lvl to the NAB folder and renamed it nab2.lvl so it's actually running off the mission script for Naboo. That's why Obi-Wan is the hero here. I do not know who would have originally have been the heroes on the map.
The map is a very simply conversion of Rhen Var: Citadel. And by simple, I mean they literally just copied over the source files from SWBF1 and recompiled it for SWBF2. This means that there are no other modes supported. No CTF, no Hero Assault, nothing but Conquest. They didn't setup any Conquest layer either so the Conquest CPs will load no matter what mode is setup by the mission script. It's a very minimal port and the conversions done by modders are generally much better (understandably, since Pandemic's conversion is incomplete) as they support more game modes.
I know it's not really the most amazing discovery. But for someone like me, it's definitely a cool little discovery.
I'll probably bring this up again in a video at some point, but GOG has also left behind some other goodies. These include:
- test1.lvl: A test map that differs from the test map found in the PSP version. The assets to the map found in the PSP version are publicly available but the map found in the GOG version's files is completely different.
- KOR Folder: There's no .lvl contained in this folder unfortunately but evidently this was going to be another map. It's very likely that "KOR" stands for Korriban but there's no way of confirming. It's a bit far fetched but given that Renegade Squadron has quite a few maps ported from SWBF2, there is a chance that the Korriban map in Renegade Squadron may be using assets from Pandemic's map, if Pandemic ever even started development on the map at all. Just a thought, but this is not factual in any way.
- BES Folder: A folder for Bespin. Again, no .lvl but given that text strings for Bespin exist in the files of every version of SWBF2, it's possible Bespin was supposed to be in the base game at some point.
These folders are also present in the server manager and in the PSP version of the game.
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