Green Hell 3 with SF2V Air & Ground Expansion

[thegeoff 15]

I'm currently trying to use Stary's excellent Green Hell 3 tile set with the VietnamSEA and South Vietnam terrains from the SF2 Air & Ground War expansion pack. I prefer the look of GH3 in the jungles, fields, villages and rice paddies but I like the denser cities with bigger buildings from GH2 (the terrain in the expansion pack). So far I've simply copied the files from the GH3 terrain folder into the VietnamSEA and South Vietnam folders, and that has mostly worked. The new target areas and objects all appear on the GH3 tiles, exactly as intended.

 

The main problem is with the city tiles. The buildings seem to use the wrong textures, and the trees and bushes in the cities don't render correctly. I've included some screenshots to show what I mean - while some buildings look alright, some seem to use roof tiles on the walls and have doors on the roof. The trees and bushes are also strangely rectangular.

 

 

I know very little about modding terrains in SF2, but I had a look around in the terrain folder to see if I could easily fix it. I've tried copying the .tod files for city tiles into the root terrain folder but that didn't work. I noticed that the textures of the buildings are mostly from TEROBJECT_BUILDINGS1.bmp (which is a GH3 file, not a GH2 one) so I tried deleting that, didn't work though. What I'm trying to do is have buildings and trees on the city tiles from GH2, while using the tile textures from GH3.

 

Does anybody know if it's possible to do this? Thanks.

[ignacioc91 101]

Hi there!!! I have SFP1, but maybe, what I'm about to say applies to SFP2 too. Probably, the terrain_DATA.ini files of GH2 and 3 are different, that's why the city textures are wrong. I don't know if you can have half a GH2 and half GH3 terrain. Probably yes, take a look at the _DATA.ini file. As far as I know, that may work. I hope what I said helps you!!!

[Wrench 9,616]

yes, you'll have to edit the TOD callouts in EVERY tile listing of the terrain's data ini to get the correct Ter_Objects.

 

(or just copy/paste the tile listing from Stary's GH3 data ini directly OVER the existing VietnamSEA data ini)

[thegeoff 15]

Yep, that worked for the buildings! They now appear with the gh2 textures on the gh3 tiles. I went through both the gh3 and gh2 vietnamsea_data.ini files, and wherever there was a reference to hanoi_buildings1.bmp in the gh2 file I modified the corresponding entry in the gh3 file.

 

The trees and bushes in the cities still don't display - they seem to be in a file called City_trees1.TGA which is missing. Doesn't really matter, the buildings are the main thing. Thanks for the help!

[Wrench 9,616]

did you transfer the *tile-name*.TOD files as well? that's where the '3d objects (trees and buildng) are stored

[+Stary 2,426]

yeah, sorry for missing this

 

I will re-release GH3 completely redrawn in 1024x1024 with GH2 cities, but that's the future

 

Now the thing that is important are indeed bitmap (.bmp) or targa (.tga) graphics files calls in all tiles listed in the terrains' _data.ini files -city textures are those with "C" in name, example VietnamC1.bmp or VietnamSC25a.tga -so for these files ou need to copy/paste the graphic filenames calls from GH2

 

I'm at work currently but will send my version of the GH3 with GH2 buildings I have in my install later, here's example:

 

[Texture036]

Filename=vietnamSC25A.TGA

HasWater=1

HeightMap=vietnamSC25A_hm.BMP

HeightMapScale=25.000000

Color=0.287661,0.338985,0.352909

SolidObjectTexture=terobject_buildings1.BMP

AlphaObjectTexture=terobject_trees1.TGA

 

the lines in red in GH3 _data.ini must match those found in GH2 _data.ini for all Vietnam-whatever-C tiles

[thegeoff 15]

Yeah, I've copied the .tod files for all of the city tiles across, it didn't change anything though - Green hell 3 does not include .tod files for the city tiles, so the GH2 tiles were not overwritten and the tods were already in the directory.

Thanks Stary, that's what I did earlier after Wrench's advice - it worked perfectly for the buildings, but the city tiles all have AlphaObjectTexture=City_trees1.TGA as the second line, and I can't seem to find that file in either GH2 or 3. That seems to be the reason the vegetation is missing from cities.

[+Stary 2,426]

is it GH2 from download or from Air&Ground Expansion pack? Asking as the latter had some changes made by Eburger and team I'm not fully aware of. If the latter, try with sundry freshly downloaded GH2

[thegeoff 15]

I've tried both, the file isn't included in either of them. There's a small chance it's in one of Pappa Goat's repaints, I'll try those too.

[+Stary 2,426]

oh yes, those repaints... might be it, frankly I never tested them

[thegeoff 15]

No, looks like the file isn't in any of the green hell 2 downloads. There aren't any trees or bushes in the cities in any version of green hell 2 it seems... I guess these were removed before the mod was released? Doesn't matter, the cities look much better now anyway.

 

It's a great terrain, definitely looking forward to the release of an updated GH3 in the future. Thanks for the help!

 

[+Stary 2,426]

Hmmm, will have to check, I haven't used GH2 or Air&Ground expansion in a long time