suggestion for mb'ers

[sitting_duck 3]

anyone who has built a mission knows you get that list of planes (11 for most aircraft type), and the only one you can identfy for sure is the sqd,,cause its got the asterick next to it.

 

and there is the tempataion (if you know about this) to edit the shortname in the xdp file for the plane,,,,so instead of just showing up as a fokkerdr1 in the list, now it shows up as a fokkerdri ac1.

 

i highly suggest you do not try this. It seems that it throws something way off kilter.

 

Just as a test,, i suffixed the shortname of all my dri's with a, b c etc,,,so the fokker ac1 became fokkerdr1a, the fokkerac2 became fokkerdr1b, etc etc,,

 

when i went into mb, the dr1s (as expected) all showed up in alphabtical order,,,which made sense,,,,

 

unfortunaly,,the game does NOT list the planes in alphabetical order,,,,dont ask me how it does list them,,cause i dont have a clue...

 

By skinning a alboawac1, and making a mission with it with the plane at the top of the list,,then the secnond one down,,etc etc,,and seeing when the plane actuall showed up in the mission,,i finnal figured out which plane in that list is actually the alboawac1...then i did the same thing for the ac2,,the ac3,,etc

 

this is how the planes are listed (at least for the alboaw) in mission builder..

 

1 sq4 2 sq4 3 sq2 4 ac4 5 ac3 6 ac2 7 ac5 8 qc1 9 sq1 10 ac1 11 sqd (has the *)

 

so if you are builing a mission, and want the sq2 plane in it,,you would pick the third alboaw plane down from the list.

 

but,,if you edit the xdp shortname,,it throws the way the list is sorted,,,cause now it sorts that renamed plane in alphabetcal order (for a reason i can not explain)...

 

not sure where else the implications of this show up, but they show up big time if you are trying to do custom skins for you missions.. and/or single player. You apply a custom skin to a dr1 sq4, make a mission with it,,and it shows up fine,,,,then you run the mission again,,and you have a stock skin. Its not that the custom skin stopped working,,,i belive its cause the game is not picking the plane you told it to use for the mission....