Putting Pilots and Ejection seats in SF2 (by MigBuster)

[+EricJ 3,937]

Putting Pilots and Ejection seats in SF2

 

 

1. The Basics

2. Moving Pilots from SF1 the easy/lazy way

3. Putting pilots and Seats into their own subfolder

4. Renaming your Pilot

5. Putting your Pilot in a plane

6. Positioning your pilot

 

 

 

1. The Basics

Rejoice for not only do pilots have their own folder now in SF2 but they can have their own subfolders too.

 

Remember this mess in SF1:

 

Like anyone even bothered finding the pilot again once the files were dumped in there!!

 

 

Well basically the Pilot models and Ejection Seat models now go in the \SF2\objects\Pilots folder which you will need to create if you haven’t done so.

 

 

They must go in the Special Mod folders with the other Mods – which if you don’t know are here:

 

 

XP Default

C:\Documents and Settings\<Name>\My Documents\ThirdWire\

 

On Vista and later versions:

C:\Users\<Name>\Saved Games\ThirdWire\

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Moving Pilots from SF1 the easy/lazy way

If you are lazy and don’t have time you can just copy the pilot and seat files from your old game (objects\Aircraft folder) and just dump them in the Pilots folder and it will work fine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Putting pilots and Seats into their own subfolder

Note: This is the same for both Pilots and Ejection Seats

 

If you are a bit more particular about which pilots you use then you can sort the pilots into subfolders.

 

Unfortunately Pilots in your old game or ones you download will just be a collection of files – so as with the other game objects you need to find the Pilots 3D Model, Skin and ini file (if it has one)

 

• So the 3D Model that’s the files with the LOD extension

• The skin will have a bmp extension

 

Ok so out of that mess I picked an easy one to convert:

 

 

 

See above that those 4 files were already called Red7002 by their thoughtful creator, and this one like many other has multiple LOD files.

 

So you see I've created a folder called Red7002 and just dumped the files in – yep that’s it. The folder name MUST be the same as the ini file – and there MUST be an ini file in there for the game to pick it up.

 

So you can now use that pilot if you wish.

 

 

Now sometimes the skin bmp file will have a totally different name to the LOD – so sometimes you will need to open the lod file and see which skin it uses (If you don’t know how to do this see my guide on adding converting weapons to SF2)

 

 

The IMPORTANT part here is the ini file. You must create an ini file if there isn’t one with the existing files so that the game can find the pilot. An easy way to do this is just copy one from another pilot then alter the name of it and the “Filename=” lines. Here is what the ini should look like (for multiple LODs)

 

[LOD001]

Filename=Red7002.lod

Distance=40

 

[LOD002]

Filename=Red7002_lod002.lod

Distance=200

 

 

IMPORTANT1 – The name of the ini file must be the same as the folder so if the folder is called PilotUK – the ini file must be called PilotUK.ini

 

IMPORTANT2 – The Name of the LOD file in the "Filename=" line above must be correct in spelling and case.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Renaming your Pilot

 

Easy this – say I wanted to change the Pilots name to RobinOlds

 

Rename the folder to “RobinOlds”

Rename the ini file to “RobinOlds.ini”

 

That’s it

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Putting your pilot in a plane

Ok so to put the pilot RobinOlds in the F-16A we go to F-16A_data.ini and go to the [Pilot Section]

 

 

[Pilot]

SystemType=PILOT_COCKPIT

PilotModelName=RobinOlds <-------------changed to RobinOlds

SetCockpitPosition=TRUE

PilotHeadNodeName=head

Position=0.0,4.10,0.86

SeatModelName=seat_F-16A <-------Here is the Seat model its using

SeatPosition=0.0,4.20,0.40

MinExtentPosition=-0.36, 3.76,-0.15

MaxExtentPosition= 0.36, 4.75, 0.96

CanopyNodeName=canopy_frame_outer

CanopyAnimationID=7

 

 

and save - Job done

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. Positioning your pilot

Open up the data ini file (e.g. F-16A_data.ini) and find the [Pilot] section

 

 

[Pilot]

SystemType=PILOT_COCKPIT

PilotModelName=F-16_Pilot

SetCockpitPosition=TRUE

PilotHeadNodeName=head

Position=0.0,4.10,1.10 <-------------- Pilot position coordinates

SeatModelName=seat_F-16A

SeatPosition=0.0,4.20,0.40

............

 

NOTE: If you don't have that line just add it in!!

 

 

 

 

 

See here it has 3 parameters:

 

Position=0.0, 4.10, 0.86

Just change the values accordingly

If we call the above Positions = 1, 2, 3 then here is what each bit does:

 

1. Move pilot sideways

2. Move pilot Forward(increase value) or backwards (Decrease value)

3. Move pilot Up (Increase value) Or Down (Decrease value)

 

then save the file