DUST 3.1 – Combined Arms is the successor to Dust 3.0 which I released some 14 months ago.
If you already have Dust 3.0 you can safely delete it and replace it with 3.1.
What is DUST 3.1 – Combined Arms?
DUST 3.1 – Combined Arms is a single player only 'hardcore' modification for Battlefield 2 with a focus on tactical gameplay rather than run n' gun. It features a completely reworked environment based mainly on vanilla BF2 assets.
Promo Video by Dukern
Gameplay video by Mohammed Furqon
Hardcore
In DUST, the AI is aggressive and accurate. Weapon damage is high and players have less body armour than in vanilla BF2. If you find Dust too hard? Ask for help!
Tactical
The new map layouts aim to make winning a round more challenging. Work as squad leader, and use tactics such as flanking to undermine or distract the enemy.
Use cover as you move, avoid crossing large open areas, and take roundabout routes to the CP that you want to capture.
Find good defensive positions and choose your loadout wisely based upon the situation.
This will give you the best chance of success on the battlefields of DUST.
Assets
DUST consists mostly of vanilla BF2 assets reworked by me over the last roughly 7 years.
Nearly all of the middle eastern buildings and props, including vegetation, have been retextured and enhanced.
Maps
The maps in DUST are a mixture of classic vanilla BF2 maps and maps made by other modders. All have been completely reworked by me. They have new colourmaps, details, lightmaps, vegetation, undergrowth, and lighting. They also have unique custom effects such as waves, dust storms, and custom sounds.
Control Point layouts have been arranged specifically for single player and, as far as possible, make use of the whole map.
N.B. The 16, 32, and 64 labels are a legacy of vanilla BF2 and have no meaning in terms of size or player count in DUST. They are simply different gameplay layouts, some more challenging than others.
Vehicles
Most of the main vanilla vehicles have been completely reworked with new textures, including custom alphas, normal maps and new HUD's. They have also had a lot of mesh edits to improve their appearance.
Handheld Weapons
The carbines, pistols, marksman's rifles and rpg's have been ported from other versions of Battlefield and elsewhere. This is because I believe the that vanilla weapons are mostly of too poor quality to use.
Factions
Viper (a western coalition) and Claw (a middle eastern coalition) are the two factions that battle over the arid dusty territory of DUST. They are not based on any particular nation or ideology.
Effects
Effects are an important part of DUST, and these are all custom made by me. They include new explosions, fire and smoke, bullet hits, ambient sounds, radio messages, and many other ingredients that add to the general atmosphere.
What are the requirements to run DUST?
DUST needs an unmodified copy of Battlefield 2 with all patches and DLC's.
N.B. Trying to run DUST on a modified copy of BF2 will probably result in crashes.
Because DUST uses mostly vanilla assets, and all new assets have been optimised, you should have no problems running DUST even on an old PC. I've tested it on my 12 year old PC and it runs at around 90 fps with all graphics set to high.
Credits
I've been creating DUST for a long time, and there are a few minor assets that I've downloaded over the years but have lost trace of the original makers.
So, I want to say a collective thanks you to all the BF2 modders who've shared their work with the community.
Thanks to the makers of the USI mod who kindly allowed me to use their assets: Link to USI mod
Most of the handheld weapons were ported to BF2 by Ponysaurus_Rex: Link to his moddb page
Custom maps
Abandoned Town: original map Abandoned Village by Jones
Airbase: original map Airport by SPFreak & ShaneJohn
Al Janna: original map by dennis75 and StrykerJ
Blackhawk: original map Operation Blackhawk Down by pro.bf2|Du$t
Factory: original map Kubaysah Cement Factory from BF2 Australian Forces
Kirkuk: original map Battle of Kirkuk Oilfields by ImTheHeadhunter
A special mention to my friends and fellow modders Dukern and Mortarty for their tips, advice, tweaks, and testing!
Custom aerodynamics for the Dust jets were created by Mortarty.
Last but not least thanks go to my wife, who has an intimate knowledge of dry, dusty desert environments, and gave me a lot of advice when it came to recreating the maps in DUST.
N.B. If you spot something of yours in DUST, please let me know so that I can credit you.
Important
You may not reupload any of my original work without my explicit permission.
I am, however, always ready to help other modders where I can.
Important Note: Sound Settings
Make sure you use the following sound settings or you may have problems with distant gunshots sounding as if they're right next to you.
![Recommended Sound Settings]()
Download Dust 3.1 HERE
Have fun! Gattobuono May 2024
You´ve been very prolific again, nice job, Gatto! Thank you for mentioning me in your credits for creating the jet flight physics! But obviously, you did not implement the flight physics for the AIR_F18DUST that I sent you May 19th this year, which is a little bit sad - since they were the physics coming with my released jet addons.
With all of the bits and pieces that I had to work on to finish 3.1 I'm afraid that I totally forgot about the latest F18 flight dynamics. However, the version in this release does fly really nicely. :-)
It´s my previous version without yaw authority correction that you have in version 3.1 now. But I´m glad you´re also happy with this version then. The Dust MiG 29 has got my latest flight physics already in your version 3.1.
I'm very happy with this version. I just got a bit overwhelmed with finishing the mod and preparing the publicity for modb and I completely overlooked the file you sent me.
Congratulation Gatto! Thank you for your time, effort and patience you dedicated to this Quality work :)
Thank you for beta testing and giving me useful feedback.
You are welcome, I'm really happy that you found some of my feedback useful.
Great job, I liked it.
hell yeah!
Good mod, works very well on a low end pc, but it randomly crashes i just tryied the mod in a few maps and like i said it randomly crashes, thanks!
Sorry to hear that you're getting crashes. What graphics settings are you using?
well im using all on high and it crashes i alr set al on min and still crashing idk if my pc is bad but i think is that, any ways great mod! sorry for my bad english.
I suspect that it's your PC.
Do you have a dedicated graphics card or integrated graphics?
Does it crash while you're playing, or when loading a map?
Does it crash on all maps?
We could try disabling the undergrowth and seeing what happens.
Computers with integrated graphics have problems with the undergrowth in BF2. If your undergrowth has very bright unnatural colours then that's due to lack graphics memory for the shaders.
My maps have way more undergrowth the vanilla BF2.
Thanks for the compliment by the way, I hope that we can get it working for you. :-)
hello sorry for the late reply, yeah it used to crash while i was playing, it crash on all maps, i play on an integrated graphs i5 2310, i think i found a solution, i just created a new profile and everything works fine, no more crashes, and the menu is a bit pixelated, when im on the ground i try to change the weapon and the right bottom (that menu) just shows pixelated squares, but the game in general works fine, thanks! and sorry for my bad english again!
Time to download :))
Nice Update
Thank you for the new update
You're welcome!
good
Thanks! :-)
perfect
Thank you. :-)
HELL YEEEAAAAAHHH!!!!!!!!!!
my files are ****** up imma fix them up then fixate on this mod
10/10 btw
Your files?
Thanks for the 10/10 rating. :-)
yeah my bf2 files
i have fresh ones now
i tried modding a mod lol
man this is awesome
the gunsounds and the tracers are insane
whats next? u gonna look at my suggestions
for the next one?
just make sure to rest well after this one to cook up smth good
If you want to send me suggestions in a pm I'll consider them for future projects.
I have a few ideas for things that I like to do next, such as a themed map pack. But you're right, I need to have a short break! :-)
alright a week or two i will try to compose some ideas maybe even links and photos for u and i will pm them
Ok, thanks. :-)
hello, Gattobuono. can you tell me how to increase the tickets to 800? i tried by going through the python folder but it seems nothing has changed. could you help me out, please? thanks in advance!
If you want to increase the ticket count to make a game last longer you can do it on a per map basis.
For example, go to Dust_3.1\Levels\Abandoned_Town\server.zip\ and open the init.con with a text editor.
Look for the following lines:
gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 16 1 150
gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 16 2 150
gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 32 1 150
gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 32 2 150
gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 64 1 200
gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 64 2 200
gameLogic.setDefaultTimeToNextAIWave 8
gameLogic.setTicketLossAtEndPerMin 1500
gameLogic.setTicketLossPerMin 1 10
gameLogic.setTicketLossPerMin 2 10
The first number is the gameplay level: 16, 32 or 64.
The second number is the team: 1 is Claw and 2 is Viper.
The third number is the ticket count: so if you want a long match on the 64 layout you could change it to:
gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 64 1 800
gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 64 2 800
I hope that answers your question. Let me know if you need help with anything else. :-)
thank you! it worked!!
Great, 800 tickets will give you a nice long match I imagine.
If there's anything else just ask. :-)
just figured out something, my game closes after 10s/20s while playing Kirkuk Oilfields 64. i tried running on windowed mode and none popup showed up either, so i decided to record my screen, as you can see here: Youtu.be
It works fine for me. Are you running Dust on an unmodded version of BF2?
Do you have this problem on any other map?
In the video it looked a bit stuttery, is that due to the video quality or do you have low fps in-game?
the only modded file in BF2 directory it's the executable, which i got from the Weapons Unlocks addon and patched it with the 4gb patch.
all other maps are OK.
the stuttering was because i was recording, my average FPS is 40/60 with almost everything on high settings + AA 4x, except for the shadows and lighting which i turned it all off
Hmm, that's strange. I'm glad that the other maps are working for you. What about the 16 and 32 layers on Kirkuk, do they crash as well?
The only suggestion that I have is to run the map in full debug mode using BF2_r.exe.
There's an article here explaining how to do that: Moddb.com
I ran all of the Dust 3.1 maps through the debugger numerous times when I was finalising the mod in order to catch any problems. I also has the mod beta tested by several experienced modders.
Everything seemed to run fine ... but BF2 can be a bit quirky sometimes.
Let me know how you get on, ok? :-)
i have figured out that only 64 layer has this issue, the 16 and 32 run fine for me. i tried your suggestion but when i try to load bf2editor, i got a DLL missing error file
Did you run BF2_r.exe as administrator and in XP compatibility mode? It would be interesting to find out what's causing the problem. I've just been testing Kirkuk 64 and it runs fine for me.
You could try reducing the bot count to see if that helps.
Go to:Dust_3.1\Levels\Kirkuk_Oilfields\server.zip\GameModes\sp3\64\AI\
Open the StrategicAreas.ai file with note pad or similar and look for these lines at the top:
aiSettings.overrideMenuSettings 1
aiSettings.setMaxNBots 43
aiSettings.maxBotsIncludeHumans 0
Try reducing the bot count to 33, i.e. aiSettings.setMaxNBots 33
That will give you 17 players on each team.
Pretty soon you'll be making your own mod! ;-)
thanks! i changed the bot count as you said and now it works fine!!
is there any more map for this mode cause there is only 6 of them
There were six maps for Dust 3.0, but Dust 3.1 comes with 12 maps.
Download it here: Moddb.com
This mo**therfu**cker MaxPV1981 spoilt your grading by the way.
But don´t give a sh**it about him - he´s just a sick little Russian Stalinist, not worth wasting anybody´s time. His shi**tty bugged mod (banned from moddb) with all assets stolen from PR can´t compete with your DUST mod, not at all!