FastCargo

Oh my God....I'm still laughing my ass off! I've heard of similar situations, but nothing quite that bad... FC

I've flown into Vandenburg several times, however, the big thing from what I understand is that's it's a bit isolated relatively speaking. FC

The gun sight is a TGA file. It can be resized the same way a bitmap can. FC

Put the damn install disc away, now. Don't touch it again unless you plan to follow the instructions I gave you. A question, did you read this line in a previous post I made? Note, is there anything referencing the original install disc? FC

Alright, I see the fundamental issue here. Okay, I want you to first find your Wings Over Vietnam directory on your hard drive. Once you find it, I want you to copy it. I don't care where you copy it to/from. Drag and drop the whole directory somewhere...on a DVD, external hard drive, memory stick, etc. Name the new directory something else like "kticker's modded WOV backup" or something. Verify that the contents of your new directory match the contents of your old directory. Now, uninstall WOV. Completely, totally. Delete the old WOV directory once you've uninstalled. DO NOT DELETE YOUR FRESHLY MADE BACKUP DIRECTORY. After you've cleaned out all remains of the old install, reboot. Yep, we are going to start fresh. Now, reinstall WOV from the CD ROM. Once complete, download the newest Oct 08 patch from ThirdWire or here. Install the patch. Remove your WOV CD ROM and store it away somewhere safe. You should never need to touch it again. Now, start WOV and set the settings to your preferences (joystick, video, sound, etc). Verify that the stock game works (fly a mission). If everything is good, shutdown WOV and reboot. (The reboots probably aren't actually necessary, but I'm making triple sure nothing remains in cache). Now, see your shiny new stock WOV directory? Remember how we made a copy before? I want you to do the same thing, but of your new stock WOV directory. Put that new, stock backup directory on a DVD, or better yet, a couple of DVDs (backup of a backup). You now have a backup directory that doesn't need an install...EVER. If you ever need a fresh install of WOV, just copy the whole directory back on your hard drive. WOV (and all the other ThirdWire sims) are completely self contained, heck you can even run them off a USB stick. Anyway, now that you've made your fresh backup DVDs of stock installs, you can now uninstall WOV again for the final time. Clean everything, then put the original backup of your modded install back to where you had it. Make a shortcut on your desktop to start it (or in the start menu, take your pick). You now have your modded install on the hard drive, and backups of stock installs on DVDs in case you need to fix your modded install's core files. No pesky install routines, etc. FC

Okay, time out. You need to understand how the game works. Simply put, starting with a bone stock game is easy. Install, patch up, go through the menus to select your options (including video, sound, key commands, etc) then save the whole directory to a DVD. You now have a backup copy that you can install anytime by drag and drop...no install menus, uninstalling, whatever. If you ever so totally pooch your install up, you can always just delete the whole directory and start over. Now, the game engine works by simply pulling whatever information it needs from the directories at hand. If it does not find a weapondata.dat for instance, it will go to the Objectdata.CAT file to find it. Everything the game needs to run stock is in the various .CAT files located through the directories. INI files, most bitmaps, etc. Which means that if you screw up an INI file, the easiest way to fix it is to delete it. You must also execute discipline when modding. You do one mod at a time, testing between each modification. Yes, that's right. One aircraft, one terrain, one INI modification at a time. If you pooch something up, then just remove the modification. Most of the time, if a critical core file is damaged due to a hard CTD (rare), all you have to do is recopy the .dll, .exe, and CAT files from the backup DVD you made to your directory...AFTER you remove the modification that caused the crash. Modding this game is easy...but it requires logical and methodical application. A lot of addons have been made over the years, and the game's structure has changed a lot since it was first released. Therefore, the older the mod, the likelyhood increases that it may no longer be fully compatible. Finally, if you need to, make a separate install just to play around in to test modding. That way if you hork something up, no big deal. We learn by doing. FC

Realise that most of the tips in the Knowledge Base were for pre-Oct 08 patch. Post Oct 08 patch, all ThirdWire sims should run in Vista just fine. However, it's not a bad idea to review the Knowledge Base just in case. FC

Damn JW, you beat me to it! Video/pictures without context means nothing. For all we know, this could have been an instructional sortie done with a perch setup, where the student actually STARTS in the crosshairs of the instructor and must D-BFM his way out of it. For those who don't know, instruction in the F-22 is similar to what was done in the F-117. The instructor actually 'chases' the student in a T-38. So the scenario is quite likely...that looks like a T-38C HUD. Also, a T-38 nose on is VERY small, outside of about a mile, all you see is a dot if you know exactly where you are looking. The T-38 doesn't smoke either. And of course, since it's got no radar/lidar emitters, it's basically EMCON silent. Laughing about such a thing like 'Oooh, look at me, I kicked an F-22s butt in a training scenario', is like bragging about having phone sex. Sure you may have got a release out of it, but mostly, you sound like a dork. And painting a silhouette of a simulated kill on your aircraft (I'm looking at you Growler guys)? Now you look like that guy notching his bed post after phone sex...a pathetic, needy dork. FC

Preliminary work: Drag chute added. Speedbrake hard coded animation removed, now done by the TW engine. Additional flight control links added, elevons are now 'blended' in pitch and roll. Arresting hook works. Doing other stuff first before I work on weapons bays to get an idea of how many animation slots I need. I suspect I will need 4 slots and a new FFAR model. Thanks for letting me help Veltro. FC

Adding a sound file is easy. Getting it to do what you want...aye, that's the trick. The soundlist.ini file is a plain text file. Use notepad. The weapondata.ini and gundata.ini files are the only ini files requiring a special editor. All other ini files are plain text and can be edited with notepad, no special programs required. Read the Knowledge Base for more information. FC

You have to extract it. FC

YAP is NOT compatible with ANY of the 08 patches. If you install them you will break your YAP install. However, this also means you will have additional issues when trying to run the TW series in Vista. Please check our Knowledge Base for ways to run pre 2008 versions of ThirdWire sims with Vista. In addition, like Migbuster said, YAP is not designed for Campaign or computer generated Single Mission modes. YAP is designed for YAP missions only...anything else is at your own risk. FC

Basically, normal doesn't take into account certain things that hard mode does. What those things are, I'm not sure. I know at least one thing is the position of the pivot points for meshes called out by the data.ini. In HARD mode, those pivot points define where the center of mass is for the particular mesh called out. I found this out the hard way while debugging the F-107. FC

Not an issue, there's even an option for that in the data.ini. I was using the FM that C5 provided. FC

Actually, depending on the type of hook, we may not need to hardcode the animation for it (saving a slot). I'll check the animation on the canopy, and I've got a perfect drag chute all ready for ya! FC

I'd imagine if she was anything like her ancestor the T-38, that she would have been a little hot rod...like a suped up MG compared to a modern Corvette. Also, the FM is based HEAVILY on the MF F-5E, so that's where most of your flight characteristics come from. Jug is the person to ask, he flew E and F models back in the day with our southern hemisphere residents...some of the minor tweaks to the FM came from him. FC

JSF_Aggie and CA_Stary are the respective authors. The short answer is yes, they are, but it involves some tweaking. I have not had time yet to work on the 'all in one' terrain mod since CA_Stary put out the 'all season' version of the GermanyCE terrain. FC

Veltro was kind enough to share the F-102 MAX files with me, so I can take a good look at working the weapons bays. I MAY have a solution to the bays that would allow only needing 4 animation slots, yet still make a convincing looking rocket engagement without making it a gun. It involves making a tweaked version of the FFAR . FC

I'll check the stroke length value for the nose gear, it might be too high. But why are you applying full grunt with brakes on? You do that in a modern day fighter (not on a catapult) and you'll start skidding. FC

I have to admit, I dig those old style color schemes. FC

Shouldn't be moving in 2 axis at the same time (in fact, i don't think the TW engine is capable of that)...sounds like your axis are still misaligned. FC

Okay, at first blush, to get EVERYTHING to look right during bombbay door openings (by player and AI), requires a staggering SEVEN separate animations. Doable...but tough. If that's a bit much, the alternative is the rockets are combined into 1 animation, reducing the total needed to 4, and roughly giving the same appearance as the current setup. Also, I'm assuming based on preliminary research, that the Deuce never carried the larger Genie, so it's internal armament would have consisted of a combination of 6 guided missiles (3 pair) and 24 rockets (or 12 if a pair of AIM-26A was carried in the center bay). Any contradictory info out there on that armament issue? FC

That works too. FC

Not a problem. I can send you the MAX file for the XF-103 for you to take a look how I did it. The trick is that each weapon station MUST have it's own discrete animation slot so that the player and AI can use it and it looks correct (ie weapons don't fire through aircraft). Which means the linking can get complicated. FC