Instant Sunshine! For Everyone!

[SebastianP 5]

I've done what I could for the transports for now, need to figure out how to actually model some aircraft before I can do more with that project. So now I turn to one of the more fun parts of the game, even if it's kind of frustrating right now...

 

I'm attempting to collect all of the various nuclear weapons that have been released for SF2, and fix their effects up to the latest standard so they look good right out of the box so to speak, no further ini tweaking neccessary. After I'd spent the better part of the night converting a big batch of SF1 weapons to SF2, I discovered that all of that work had already been done for the Ordnance Shop II pack, which I should have known considering I have something like three unzipped copies of it spread over my drives right now. Oh well, mine has most of the Lexx effects added at the moment, which was not the case for the OS2 package, so there's that at least. I've also messed around with copies and availability dates so now the US freefall bombs will change designations from MK to B in 1968, following real life.

 

Right now I'm doing a KB crawl looking for the final word on how to get the nuke effects to look their best - once I've gotten the shaders and materials sorted, I'm thinking of expanding the range of effects to get a few more sizes of mushroom cloud, and possibly some more burst altitudes.

 

Also, while testing out the effects, I noticed some oddities with the data inis for the B-52s in the superpack as uploaded, mainly with the bomb bay configurations, so I'm going to have a go at them as well, to make sure that you can't do silly things like load up both 8 SRAMS *and* a clip of free-fall nukes internally, which the current setup allows for, at least with the 1975 B-52H. I'll probably give the various other bombers a looking over as well while I'm at it. :)

 

Aside from the work I can do myself with ini editing alone, there are a few things I'd like to ask for help with from the modeling guys - there are a few weapons missing from the arsenal that I'm hoping I can get someone to make for me:

 

1. the B57 nuclear bomb used by the US Navy for strike and ASW - it's the only gravity bomb missing from the arsenal right now, the others are all in there.

 

2. the GAM-72/ADM-20 Quail, a decoy missile used during the 1960s in combination with the Hound Dog and Mk28 bomb on the B-52.

 

3. the AGM-86A ALCM, which was supposed to arm the B-1A (another item on the wishlist, someone posted one for FSX recently on Simviation but I want one I can have *fun* with...), as well as anything else that could take the SRAM as it was the same size.

 

4. the AGM-131 SRAM II/SRAM-T, the cancelled replacement for the AGM-69 that would have armed not only the bomber force, but the F-15E as well.

 

I won't ask for a B90 bomb, as I couldn't find any pictures of that, just some dimensions. It, like the SRAM II, was cancelled in 1991 due to sudden lack of Soviets to aim at... And now, I shall go back to my data editing. :)

[+ianh755 196]

I've got the AGM-86 A/B/C in my weapons folder but I've no idea where they came from other than the MGunny's pack.

[SebastianP 5]

Are you sure it's an A model? I've got a bunch of ALCMs as well, but IIRC all of them are the larger B/C versions when you look at the .ini stats.

 

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I'm slowly getting the bomb bay configuration to where I want it for the B-52. If it wasn't for the conventional bomb loads, it would be fairly easy to set up a loadout screen that would allow you to split loads the way you want them, as for nuclear stores the bomb bay is pretty much divided into two sections with identical load options (1 large or four medium nuclear bombs, or four decoys). The problem is that the conventional stores are split in three sections instead of two, which means the easy option is out. To get split loads, they'll have to added as predefined loadouts and selected from the mission editor. Gah.

 

Right now I'm using five bomb bays, with no groupings except for the wing pylons, in order to get flexibility. I'm a little miffed that I need that many - if the "clip" bomb rack for the gravity bombs was available, I'd be able to cut that to three, as is I can't do it because the game will load five gravity bombs per bay half (due to there not being a minimum size for the Mk41/Mk53 attachment point). Somewhat irritating, that...

[SebastianP 5]

I managed to solve the problems I was having with the B-52 bomb bay, as well as the issue of the Hound Dog pylons apparently accepting Maverick missiles as well. (Hound Dog now has a SpecificStationCode, as do the B53 and B41 bombs). I'm considering separating the B-52H into conventional and nuclear versions, which would let me get rid of the conventional bomb bay as well which would fix my remaining major issues.

 

Aside from that, I've been working on getting all the mods of the B61 into the database - all nine mods (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11) are now in my game with correct yields, operators and service dates. And base numbers, for the tactical versions. All I need right now is to figure out how to get the nuclear explosion effects to not up and vanish as my aircraft flies away from it - it's hard to properly appreciate what it looks like up close, and you can't seem unless you're almost inside the range of the explosion for the biggest ones. :(

 

Back to the grindstone for me now, cheers!