Baltika

This is exactly what you need, JoneSoft Generic Mod Enabler. Here's where to get it:- http://www.users.on.net/~jscones/software/products-jsgme.html Very easy to use, switch mods in and out with ease, you can create specific era installs and swap them in & out of your game folder from a central mods directory. In fact, it was Johan217 who set up his Middle East Wars campaigns using JSGME to do just what Dave suggests. I still use it on an old SFP1 install for Johan's Suez campaign, awaitng TW release of WoI add-on. Cheers, Baltika

There are 3 requirements to establish self-defence in Scotland (which has distinct criminal law system from England/Wales/Northern Ireland) 1. Be under imminent danger/perceived threat of attack (physical violence) 2. No other option than to use force in self-defence (like it or not, the law requires you to run, provided this is possible, the whole circumstances are to be considered by the jury). So, if you are backed into a corner, pinned down, surrounded, blocked from leaving a room or otherwise restrained, or confronted face to face with an armed assailant, the use of force is permissible. Also, my personal view is that the option to run is not available to a person in their home with spouse/children/family members present, although this has not been definitively tested in the Scottish Courts. 3. Force used in self-defence must not be "cruelly excessive," again a matter for the jury to decide, based on the whole circumstances of the incident. The Judge is required by law to direct the jury that allowance must be made for "the heat of the moment." "Self-defence" is an absolute defence in Scotland (resulting in acquittal, should the jury accept that defence) to any charge of assault, up to and including murder. The overwhelming consideration for the jury is whether the use of force was reasonable in all the circumstances of the incident. Self defence of another is permitted, so if your friend is under attack, you are permitted to use reasonable force to defend him/her, provided there is no other option. Also, all decisions as to whether to prosecute in Scotland are taken by the Lord Advocate (or her deputies) who is head of the prosecution service, independent of government, police, or the alleged "victim" of any crime. I have recent experience of cases in Scotland where persons attacked by burglars in their own homes, who used deadly force to defend their families (although no deaths resulted), were not prosecuted, but rather were witnesses against the burglars. Also, a more dubious situation, where a group of people came to the door of an individual's flat and seriously injured him with knives, his friend, who ran out of the flat and attacked the group with a samurai sword, was acquitted of attempted murder by the jury, despite life-threatening injuries being inflicted by the swordsman. But then, that was in Glasgow, where everyone has a samurai sword hanging by the door for just such eventualities @Fortiesboy, I haven't read about the case you mention. Was the accused convicted after trial (by judge or jury), or did he plead guilty? In England as well as Scotland, the law requires people under attack to run if that is an option, otherwise in law the defence of self-defence is not avialable. If he went to trial and was convicted, the jury did not accept his defence, and the judge has shown leniency by not sending him to jail. Maybe the guy with the axe found out your decent man was sleeping with axe-man's wife? There are always two sides to every story.

We aim to please Glad you got it sorted, I like your solution. All knowledge is good

Better yet, here's the fix. Unzip and drop the Kamchatka_Targets.ini file into your terrain\kamchatka folder, over-writing the old one. This will enable airfield take-offs for those who are not using the GermanyCE.CAT file, by activating desert_airfiledX.ini call-outs for each runway. Use with Desert.CAT.rar Cheers, Baltika

@Wrench, thanks for the tip. I'll bear it in mind for future terrain releases to ensure maximum compatability. @ikon71, I'v looked at this issue again and deleted my earlier advice as it was overly complicated. Open up the KAMCHATKA_TARGETS.INI file and look at the following entries for each airfield (there are 18 in Kamchatka terrain) :- [TargetArea002] Name=YELIZOVO-1 Position=506000.000000,478000.000000 Radius=8485.281250 ActiveYear=0 Location=1 Alignment=ENEMY AirfieldDataFile=soviet_airbase3.ini <<<--- THIS IS IMPORTANT! NumSquadrons=6 Target[001].Type=Runway4 <<<<---- THIS is ALSO IMPORTANT! Target[001].Offset=0.00,0.00 Target[001].Heading=340 The desert cat file does not contain the soviet_airbaseX.ini or german_airbaseX.ini files, which is why your planes are piling up in the starting grid. AS Wrench says, the actual runway >LODs are the same in each game, and the airfield layout is roughly the same. Open up the desert_targets.ini file in the desert terrain (you may need to extract this file) and look for the various "AirfieldDataFile=" entries. These are called things like desert_airfield1.ini, desert_airfield2.ini, and so on up to desert_airfield6.ini. As a very quick and dirty fix, go through the KAMCHATKA_TARGETS.INI file and change each of the AirfieldDataFile= entries to call out the desert airfield .ini file which matches the number of the runway called out for each airbase. So, for YELIZOVO-1, your new entry should look like this:- [TargetArea002] Name=YELIZOVO-1 Position=506000.000000,478000.000000 Radius=8485.281250 ActiveYear=0 Location=1 Alignment=ENEMY AirfieldDataFile=desert_airfield4.ini <<--- CHANGE THIS ENTRY AS SHOWN NumSquadrons=6 Target[001].Type=Runway4 <<---- TO MATCH THIS NUMBER Target[001].Offset=0.00,0.00 Target[001].Heading=340 Go through each of the runways in the Kamchatka_targets.ini file, making the same change for each runway type, and you should be good to go. There is no need to change anything in the KAMCHATKA_TYPES.INI file. Any problems with this procedure, just give me a shout. Cheers, Baltika

Yes, Thirdwire have the 1st-gen WoE for $9.99 in their download store. Well worth the investment if you don't have the rig for the SF2 series. As Wrench says, to use the desert.cat only, you would need to convert the terrain_targets.ini and terrain_types.ini to use desert.cat equivalents for many, many items, not least the runways. It's a lot of work for minimal return. EDIT: See my post below for details on how to convert the KAMCHATKA_TARGETS.INI file for use with the desert.CAT terrain file. Cheers, Baltika

Very impressive terrain work, I have been tearing my hair out over a Northern European map using the standard method, and there is some great info for terrain builders here. S! Baltika

Good work

I think all the targettypes are hard-coded into a .dll somewhere. If you look in any campaign_DATA.ini file, under each [FORCEXXX] header you will see a whole list of AirOffensive[xxx]. entries various target types listed for each one. The campaign engine uses those settings (which match the target type assignations in the terrain_types.ini file) to select ground targets for air strikes at each stage of the campaign. I did a fair bit of work with this for BoB campaign to ensure a properly "phased" campaign, before TK came up with the AirOffensive[xxx].FocusArea= parameter, which directs an air strike onto a particular target area, as defined in the terrain_targets.ini, and I seem to remember that only the existing target types are recognised by the game. An easy way to check is to list your new runway as targettype=TINY_RUNWAY in the terrain_types.ini, place a few tiny runways in your test terrain, then set up a campaign file where all the air strikes are directed onto TINY_RUNWAY, then fly a campaign squadron with 100% chance of strike missions. If you get assigned a strike on one of your new tiny runways, you know it works Cheers, Baltika

@ Derk I'm glad you're enjoying it, thanks for the positive feedback, if you spot any problems, let me know, I'll fix them (North Cape is coming, I am working on Norway Airfields right now ) @ Eric Man, you found it, got the shot, kudos is yours Like I said, Kevin sowed the seed. I just thought, I can't do 3DMAx, how do I get Cthulhu in game? Sorted I will do Godzilla for Tokyo

This issue, and the solution to it, is addressed in Gepard's terrain tutorials in the KB. There are a number of points. The stock TW terrains are 63% (or thereby) of full-scale. When you import terrain DEM data to TE, the default settings will give you terrain which is 63% scale, or thereby, in the x and y axes. You can alter the heightmap data in TE to give 100%, 150%, or whatever you want, of the heightfield. As Gepard explains, and as he has done with his WW2 BoB terrain, Israel2 and others, if you export the heightmap as a .BMP file, and expand it in photoshop, gimp or whatever, then re-import it to TE, you can have a full-scale terrain. Edward has done this with some of his WW2 and WW1 terrains which are still available here at CA. You also have to play with the following values in the terrain editor.ini, depending on the maximum peak height of your chosen terrain, so you don't get chopped-off mountain peaks:- [bitmapExport] HeightScale=22 [bitmapImport] HeightScale=22 These are my settings for my recently released Kamchatka terrain. So, you can make full-scale, full heightmap terrains for WoX using TE. My preference is to have an x- y- axis map about 100% of RL, and bump the heightfield up to about 120% of full scale in TE. This gives a nice, large, flyable map with some serious looking mountains. What I think we tend to forget is that most of the world is as flat as a pancake , at least when viewed from any sort of altitude. In a game, things should be exaggerated, because it's more fun. To see what I mean, shameless plug here, check out my Kamchatka terrain Having said all of that, my current guilty pleasure is the Wings of Prey PC demo, because it runs like a dream on my 6+ year old machine, the terrain detail and ground clutter is second to none, and the sense of speed at low altitude is amazing. Those guys just raised the bar, and hopefully we will all see the benefits. I am very excited at TK's recent mention of a new terrain engine for SF2:Tomcat. Terrain will be developed in Gmax and Photoshop, with TE providing only final data (all this on TK's boards) so we can only imagine the possibilities. And personally, I find using the F2 cockpit view makes me feel like I'm really shifting, especially at low altitude Cheers all, Baltika

Good detective work there, Eric S! And, yes Kevin, I remember the happy days of Chaosium roleplaying, "Call of Cthulhu," losing 1d20 investigators per round to this guy, and winding up insane in an asylum was a result! Cheers all

Close It was Kevin's suggestion about the Big G that got me thinking about how to get something like that in-game without making a 3-d model. I have been creative with terrain-tile .tga files. You can make them get really, really big

Not a bad guess, but no, something altogether more. . . gargantuan

I am delighted to announce that the Russian Far East "preview" terrain has now been fully completed and uploaded, now available right here at CA. Here's the link:- http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=10530 Meantime, here's a sneak peek of what you get in the package:- Russians at the Ready at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsk Casco Cove CGS, tricky for take-offs Heading North over Paramushir Outbound from the now Japanese-occupied Shelikhovo-1 Mountain peaks somewhere over Kamchatka Krai Trouble brewing over the Sea of Okhotsk Heading for home in the weeds, taken some damage Get that landing right first time around. . . Coming Soon: The Kamchatka Crucible, 2010 Campaign. Tally-Ho! Baltika

Thanks very much for another great bird

I wish I could help, unfortunately FMs are beyond my comprehension. If I may make a suggestion, I think you should team up with gregoryp of the AvHistory group, as he is doing great work with bringing the WoX/SF2 WW2 FMs up to speed, as he has posted about here and on the Thirdwire boards. I know AvHistory are looking for certain 3D models of WW2 planes to take their work further, you may wish to check their boards out, they have a dedicated Strike Fighters section:- http://avhistory.org/communityserver/forums/39.aspx Thanks for all your great models Cheers Baltika

TK's post of Sat Jan 09 2010 at 1.47pm: http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2706&start=32 Exciting

Looks good

Great work, thanks very much for this

Thanks Wrench Really looking forward to trying this one out Tally-Ho! Baltika

Thanks very much for continuing to update this pack. As someone who took the plunge to the SF2 series with TK's combo pack, and therefore have no option but to fly at the Dec 2009 patch level, I really appreciate this series of fixes. Cheers to all concerned Baltika

I tried the very same thing when First Eagles came out. First and foremost, FE is based on a build of the game engine later than 2006. So, the FM problems Wrench referred to will appear for most of the WW2 birds available. I also got serious clipping issues with the WW2 cockpits, although that was resolved after some digging. The WW2 weapons will not show up as stock in FE, so you would need to incorporate Wrench's WW2 wep pack and keep all your WW1 weps in place. FE handles the terrain slightly differently than the other WoX titles, for slower planes with a shorter view distance, but higher definition in ground detail, so you may get issues with the WW2 terrains. Read this thread for more info:- http://forum.combatace.com/topic/25752-ww2-planes-for-first-eagles/ I'm sure Wrench will say, "It's just far easier to make a dedicated WW2 install!!" And I would have to agree