swambast

Hmmmm, not necessarily. Many modern 3d models especially make use of Multi/Sub-Object material properties to assign different materials to faces that share a single mesh. I bring this up because when working with these models you must of course change those assignments so there is only a single diffuse texture map or color applied so the game engine recognizes them. Russouk2004, I am sure you already know this but just putting it out there for the benefit of others that might stumble across models with multi-sub-object material assignments!

Great to hear your plans Mue, and of course even better will be active updates. For what it's worth, my vote is #2: I believe this will be beneficial for a greater majority - plus there is a tremendous opportunity and need to enhance basic functionality in these tools (e.g., copy/paste in TAE, etc). And also selfishly, I'd love to see the requirements/wish list I drafted up a while ago come to reality some day! Thanks for your update and consideration...

Wow, I usually don't tread into the Gen1 Forums these days so not sure exactly how I arrived here...but anyway relevant to this post. This totally reminds me of an old program I had developed for some of the CombatAce Leaders to solve the exact same issue back in the day. Think it basically did exactly what you were looking for at least regarding the Aircraft. Here was an old screenshot. Program was super simple, checkbox which aircraft you want out of your build and it gets automatically moved out. Then one press of a button to swap paths and restore the aircraft. The nice thing is once you set it up, you could set "defaults" that remembered your selections so you didn't have to re-select anything. Here was an old screenshot, not even sure if the thing works anymore these days or if I still have the source code around...

I have not seen any evidence to support the engine can handle more than 999 target areas - but I could still be proven wrong. For what it's worth, for my dev tools I also program only to 999 max entries Mue. Even then, depending on the flight engine settings, object counts that high typically will get cut off anyway not rendering the full desired effect depending on values like maxmesh/model, maxvertexcounts, etc.

Awesome Mue, THANK YOU for the advice - and for your ground breaking tool, much appreciated!

Does anyone know what is the logic used in Mue's LOD Viewer to read _Data.ini files? I don't understand why so often I open aircraft models that clearly have the correct _data.ini called out in their base .ini file - but the top of the viewer still reads <no ini file> <no data file>

OK Ed, I'll bite...F-18 or F-35?

Understood Gerwin, yes that is not what I would need - actually it would be VietnamSea July 2013 which were the latest, let me see what info I can pull together for you, thanks again for your help.

Thanks everyone - Gerwin since you already have the lists compiled, hate to ask, but would it be possible to create a text file listing now that has: Only and all of the Vietnam .LOD related files is one text file (e.g., without any .bmp, .ini, etc. and that combines all the .LODs from the other CAT Files into one "master list")?

Awesome - thanks a lot, I'll give this a try and this should be incredibly helpful...

Gerwin and Mue, thanks both for the tag team support. @Mue, isn't there a way you can just point CATExtractor to a base folder that already has just the .CAT files in there? From the looks of it, would I have to install the entire game and patch it, etc. to use your program? I say that since it is specifically coded for the "Strike FIghters 2 Installation Directory" and just needed some clarification.

Gerwin, that is a great start and should be very helpful - THANK YOU! Do you happen to have or could obtain listings specifically for the Vietnam CATS which includes the list of protected .LODs by chance? And just in case, is it possible to get the listings without the file size info - literally a straight sequential dump of just the file names?

Thanks Wrench and Sundowner! I'm not interested in the actual .LODs themselves. Just literally a text listing of .lods that would be found in each directory. Sundowner, that sounds like exactly what I need - I'll keep looking as I was almost certain someone had dumped out and listed the contents at one point. Not sure if it's exactly going to be what I need, but I can picture that post in my head and thought it was in the knowledge base...time to search again!

I thought I might have saw this one time in the Knowledge Base but I can't seem to find what I'm looking for, or it doesn't exist. Anyway, do we have a "master list" of all .LOD files that would be found in each of the respective directories for Vietnam CATs; for example: \Terrains\VietnamSea \Objects \Objects\GroundObject etc. I know some of them are protected, but I would think one could reference the earlier versions or we might have a list of what .LODs were later locked away. Thanks for any insight.

Thanks for the replies. Sounds like there's a few conflicting theories out there. If anyone is interested in helping me with a series of test scenarios, please PM me, thanks.

Yakarov, that really helps - thank you very much for your quick reply and explanation!

Yakarov, thanks - much appreciated! I'm trying to optimize some mesh/textures... The challenge I'm also having is identifying which ones I could collapse and smooth into a single mesh element without affecting something like cockpit functions defined in the _data.ini Therefore, is the only way to ensure I don't screw something up would be to consult the _data.ini and ensure those elements are not selected and their hierarchy maintained?

Hey 3d Max Gurus - what techniques are you using to identify and select all mesh objects that share a common texture?

Yes, of course it does Niels...it can do both (e.g., renumber target entries and target types).

Does anyone know how priority is given between similar .ini entries. Specifically, let's say one has MaxVisibleDist=12000.0 defined in the _Types.ini file. But within the object's separate .ini file, let's say the MaxVisibleDist=8000.0 What entry is used? Which one takes priority?

Niels, I have created an arsenal of helpful tools for this series, some private and some public. Anyway, I thought the limit for target limitations was also 999. But more importantly perhaps for you, is that I have a development tool with a built-in targets.ini renumbering function. Feel free to PM me your file and perhaps it will save you a tremendous amount of time and effort...

Ummm...while I applaud performance enhancement efforts, I'm struggling a bit with this proposed solution. That looks to me like a DirectX 9 dynamic link library file...combined with an ENB post-processing file. So of course reverting back to DirectX9 and is going to help with performance, but you do realize you're giving up bump mapping, speculars, etc. under the Gen2 engine, right? Unless I'm misinterpreting something, which could be the case and I'm all ears... Edit: WOW, this is for the Gen1 engine series, not even sure who's left playing that - but anyway, might be better to move this post to that forum rather than SF2 forum?

KJ, thanks for the update - but where specifically would the check be for the generic guns using for example tracer.tga??? Also, I noticed in your tag line you're the "Ground Object Data.INI Guru" - give me a PM when you get a chance as I have something that I think might be extremely interesting and helpful to a modder like yourself...

Hi all, must have messed something up in my modding efforts. I have these unwanted, long "laser beam" tracers on most of my guns. Pretty sure it's related to TRACER.tga. But can someone help me remember what is the fix to reduce the tracer tail length (think it might be an .ini tweak?). Right now when the aircraft is firing, the tracers literally appear behind the wings, like in this example screenshot. Thanks for any guidance!