Ground Objects' dates question

[+quack74]

Good morning gents. This question is kind of a two parter.

 

1. Is there a way to have a ground object , from the /Objects/GroundObjects folder, to appear only in the winter months? I know you can set the dates when they start and end but can they start, stop for a few months then start up again?

 

I'm using a Fort made by Stephen1918 as a permanent ground object on the Verdun terrain for First Eagles. It has working guns so it's always active. But when the seasons change the tile it's on changes to snow but the fort stays green. I could create new Fort objects that have painted .bmp's to match the current season and adjust the start and end dates for each one. But I would have to make enough to cover 4 years of seasonal changes! Don't really want to do that. Would be almost 24 new forts if not more. How would that work in the Targets and Types.ini?

 

So my question is, can I make a new snow fort and have it appear only in the winter months specified in the terrains' config.ini?

 

2. I made none active forts that I placed directly into the terrain via the Types.ini and Targets.ini. they have new .bmp's (damaged or destroyed) that I placed in all the seasonal folders to match their corresponding seasons. They work perfectly. But again they don't do anything but look pretty.

 

So my second question is, can an object placed into the terrains' main folder (just the .bmp, .LOD, and Config.ini) be made to be active some how and use the seasonal .bmp's? 

 

Or is there just a simple way to use ground objects seasonally that I should know about?

 

The snow covered fort is from the terrain folder and the green and damaged none snow covered ones are from the ground objects folder.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for any help.

 

 

Edited April 26, 2014 by quack74

[Wrench]

those forts REALLY are amazing!

 

well, I know that certain items, for instance the ASR (which is a terrain object) can be made an active radar with the addition of a data ini residing in the terrain folder.

 

have you tried putting the snowy textures for the fort IN the seasoned terrain folder, just for testing? (you can actually try putting ALL the bits for the snowy into the terrain folder too, as well as the other seasons) just for testing. With luck, the engine would "see" the gun entires and act accordingly.

 

Thinking about the "activedate=" and "inactivedate=" switchs, with I don't know if FE has, probably won't work, as you'd have to define them over and over for each yearly seasonal quarter. Then, how would the 'year' be expressed ?

[+quack74]

 

I think I did place the Forts' .bmp (from the ground objects folder) into each Verdun seasonal folders. But I don't think that worked. Are you saying that if I placed a Data.ini for the fort into the terrain (Verdun) folder it should work? I'll try everything again. It all works fine if I just use the forts as stationary terrain objects. That I already did. But it is pretty cool to see the fort guns fire at targets. We'll see. Thanks Wrench.

[+ravenclaw_007]

Florian made the Shelter for the new Pferdsfeld and Büchel air fields so that the shelter show the seasonal colors , the object skin must be in each seasonal folder the lod and the object.ini of the object must be in the seasonal terrains folder and it should work

[Stratos]

I agree with Wrench. Those forts are simply amazing, and FE2 looks still really cool.

[+quack74]

Thanks guys I'll try it out. Stephen1918 made the forts for me to put into the Verdun terrain. The city of Verdun was surrounded by fortifications. So it looks incredible around the city now. FE does keep getting better and better.