Baltika

Broken my intentions already. Progress update:- Campaign Files (Air War only) completed. Here's the backstory:- Kamchatka Peninsula, Far East, 2010 The discovery of a vast oilfield in the Sea of Okhotsk brings the promise of great wealth and prosperity to this remote region. The largely non-Russian population is vocal in pressing for independence. These claims are flatly denied by the Kremlin, which refuses to allow the disintegration of the Russian Federation and the loss of the massive mineral wealth and strategic importance of the area. The situation is brought to crisis point when the Far East Military District Generals unilaterally declare independence from Moscow, and claim sovereignty over the Eastern Russian Empire. With military resources stretched to breaking point, and having suffered the mutiny of the entire Eastern Command, Moscow thinks the unthinkable and seeks United States military assistance in stabilising the region. America is reluctant to be drawn into a bloody Russian civil war, but when Japan takes advantage of the situation by occupying the long-disputed southern Kuril Islands, the Eastern Russian Generals order an all-out offensive to maintain the borders of their new Empire. With the blessing of the UN and Moscow, the President orders USFJ Command to protect civilian lives, destroy enemy air assets, and comply with treaty obligations by assisting in the defence of Japan. . . Air war features all USN (CVW-5), USAF (44th & 67th FS (F-15C); 13th & 14th FS (F-16C Blk 50)), and USMC (VMFA(AW)-242 "Bats") units stationed in the area. All JASDF units are flyable. Red Side consists of the air units of: 11th VVS & PVO Army (Far East Military District), flying SU-24M, SU-35 (too good to miss out), MiG-31M, SU-27; the Russian Naval Aviation Units of Pacific Ocean Fleet, flying TU-22K and TU-95M (as stand-ins for TU-22M3 and TU-142), plus 387 IAP flying TMF's MiG-29C_rus. Still to be done:- Airfield flattening and alignment Adding selected air units of 14th VVS & PVO Army (Siberian Military District) Adding ground war Basic terrain targetisation (sorry Wrench, this won't be pretty, but it will work) Fine-tuning front line for disputed Southern Kuril Islands Adding terrain_movement routes for all mission types Adding more Russian airbases on Sakhalin Adding more Japanese cities Adding Naval Bases for all forces What won't make the first cut:- Anything to do with China, North or South Korea. Sorry, but I had to draw the line there as I want to keep this manageable on a short timescale. Cheers for now, Baltika

Hi all, @ pureblue, you are most welcome to use anything I can put together if it helps. I have based my new transition tiles on Deuce's old WoE repaint, so unfortunately they may be of limited use if you are using Stary's 4 seasons WoE. I confess I have not even addressed the issue of new .TODs, so, I will have to take a look at that. I found that creation of the transition textures is not too time-consuming once you get into the swing of it. I combine existing textures in paint.NET, then paint over and merge them a bit in gimp to give them a proper blended and unique look to aid variety. I worked them up for my NZ and Northern Europe terrain wips, which have a while to go before release - NZ is most advanced, but targetising the terrain is slow work done manually. So, as I needed a break from my more detailed projects, and as a vehicle to get the enhanced tileset/texturelist out, and to help out with this project if I can, I have spent a little time in TE with this:- Before I hear everyone say, "Oh no, not another map wip from Baltika that will never see the light of day!" - probably justifiably - let me make my intention clear. I will work up about a half dozen or so airbases and cities for each of the main players (Japan, Russia, China, and maybe about the same for N & S Korea) then set up the front line and a couple of movement routines so each of the mission types are covered. Then, I will post this up as a flyable beta for development by whoever fancies a crack at it. I will include the expanded texturelist I posted above, the new tiles and .tgas I mentioned, and the CityList so it can be taken further in TE. If I have time I will add a little mini-campaign as a sort of template. Timescale, well, "two weeks" of course, but I hope I can make this a quick fix to fill a gap and maybe give folks somewhere fun to fly around in. Cheers for now, Baltika

Hi Wrench, Just as a reminder, here's my old Japan build:- Looking to the WW2 invasion of Japan thread, it seems MKSheppard has taken things much further map-wise. But, if what you're after is more of a subset of his large map, pretty much what you posted at #2 in this thread, I can shift my map North amd East to cover it, and fire it up as a beta flyable with a couple of airbases and cities on each side, to be taken further as and when time permits. I can included my expanded tileset to aid with transition tile woes as well. If that's useful, say the word, and I'll crank it out P.S. Just checked my NZ texturelist. Stock Germany has 123 tiles. Here are the additional ones, following the same naming convention:- Filename124=GERMANYA-JR.bmp Filename125=GERMANYA-JS.bmp Filename126=GERMANYA-RJ.bmp Filename127=GERMANYA-RS.bmp Filename128=GERMANYA-SJ.bmp Filename129=GERMANYA-SR.bmp Filename130=GERMANYC-GS.bmp Filename131=GERMANYC-RS.bmp Filename132=GERMANYC-SG.bmp Filename133=GERMANYC-SR.bmp Filename134=GERMANYG-CS.bmp Filename135=GERMANYG-SC.bmp Filename136=GERMANYG-SR.bmp Filename137=GERMANYG-RS.bmp Filename138=GERMANYJ-AR.bmp Filename139=GERMANYJ-AS.bmp Filename140=GERMANYJ-RA.bmp Filename141=GERMANYJ-RS.bmp Filename142=GERMANYJ-SA.bmp Filename143=GERMANYJ-SR.bmp Filename144=GERMANYRA25A.bmp Filename145=GERMANYRA50A.bmp Filename146=GERMANYRA75A.bmp Filename147=GERMANYR-AJ.bmp Filename148=GERMANYR-CS.bmp Filename149=GERMANYR-GS.bmp Filename150=GERMANYR-JA.bmp Filename151=GERMANYR-SC.bmp Filename152=GERMANYR-SG.bmp Filename153=GERMANYSA25A.bmp Filename154=GERMANYSA25B.bmp Filename155=GERMANYSA50A.bmp Filename156=GERMANYSA75A.bmp Filename157=GERMANYSJ25A.bmp Filename158=GERMANYSJ50A.bmp Filename159=GERMANYSJ75A.bmp Filename160=GERMANYS-AJ.bmp Filename161=GERMANYS-AR.bmp Filename162=GERMANYS-CR.bmp Filename163=GERMANYS-JA.bmp Filename164=GERMANYS-JR.bmp Filename165=GERMANYS-RA.bmp Filename166=GERMANYS-RC.bmp Filename167=GERMANYS-RJ.bmp

Wrench, How much of that map area do you want? I can crank out a basic .hfd pretty quickly, as you know I had started a Japanese home islands map but didn't take it very far, too much other stuff on my plate, and your upgraded Okinawa map works for what I want to do anyway. So, if all you're needing is a basic terrain build, I can do that NP. I should also say, that as part of work on my NZ/Northern Europe/North Cape maps, which I am progressing, I have built a stack of additional transition tiles for the Germany_CE tileset, mainly city to sea, but also mountain to sea, forest to sea etc etc, with working alpha channel .tgas, which make autotiling with TE much easier for these island/mountainous terrains. I had been planning to upload them with my new terrains when they come out, but they could easily be included with a basic Kurile Islands build, for use by terrain builders. You have no idea how long I spent banging my head off a brick wall trying to get Iceland to tile properly, before I realised - the stock tileset just didn't have enough transition textures. So, the custom Iceland set I am working on covers just about every two- and three-way combination between every tile type. Cuts down hand tiling by a huge amount. So, give me a shout if I can help. Cheers, Steven (Baltika)

Glad hear it, happy flying

Thanks for the heads up on this, and cheers to geo for releasing this beauty

Good point, this needs an Operation: Icebreaker campaign to go with it Cheers mate Baltika

A few more WIP screenies. . . They don't call it Ice land for nothing Just make sure you don't eject without your survival kit

Thanks These are the low-res 256x256 summertime set, aka Iceland on Acid. The much more subdued, dare I say realistic, high-res set pictured earlier in this thread is still a long ways off completion. I am obviously still having some issues with seams and joins, but I am no texture artist, just a guy with paint.net and not enough time on my hands. Happily, I recently had a breakthrough with setting up the sea-tile alpha channel, making that process much quicker, so the whole tiling thing is being progressed again. Water effects are disabled in the above screenies, as none of those sea tiles have alpha channels applied (yet!). That's why the sea looks so black. The beaches are meant to be black, takes some getting used to. It's like flying over one of the moons of Saturn, what with the orange volcanic scree, green lakes and purple rocks. But it's all there in RL, trust me Watch this space, we are inching towards release with the speed of a melting glacier :yes:

Progress update:- Glacial rate of progress, but we're getting there

Glad you like the look of it. I set out to make a proper PI '41 map for the very reason that that invasion was launched from Formosa,and that would allow a full range of japanese flyable units for that compaign. But, an alternative set of .inis would easily transform it into a later setting for a US liberation campaign. If there's no rush, then what I'll do is continue working up the CityList.ini to convert all the existing target areas to this map. I got about half way before my butterfly's attention span got distracted to other projects. Once that's done, I can zip it up and send it on, or even post it up here as a flyable beta. But, yeah, it could be next year before it happens. I got a few things just needing knocked into shape and kicked out the door first Cheers mate Steven (Baltika)

Hi Wrench, At the risk of being OT, I have thrown together a very very early stage PI full-scale terrain which includes Formosa for Japanese airbases there. If you are going to Wrenchify the Philippines, do you want to take a look at that build? There are some problems with using Edward's PI map which is available here, not least that part of the islands (where the Japanese landings took place in the North) are beyond "The Wall." Also, it is the standard TW 66% (or whatever) scale. So, if PI is on your hitlist for a makeover, I suggest going from the ground up. Here's where I have got to so far:- I also thought this would give plenty of room for some later shipborne encounters out in the Philippine Sea, get my drift Let me know if you want it and I'll get it over to you somehow. Cheers, Baltika

You may also need to adjust the graphics settings in your FLIGHTENGINE.INI file. You will need to extract this file from the FlightData.CAT file (in the /Flight folder). Scroll down and replace these entries as follows:- [GraphicsSettings] ZBufferDepth=24 MaxVertexCount=16384 MaxIndexCount=32768 MaxTextureCount=16384 MaxModelType=2048 MaxMeshPerScene=2048 MaxModelPerScene=4096 MaxLightPerScene=1024 AspectRatio=1.333333 MinPixelSize=1.0 Then leave the modded FLIGHTENGINE.INI file in your flight folder. Some 3d party models can cause a CTD if these settings are not high enough. Good Luck!

Hi Shrikehawk, Yes, the wep pack will create a weapons folder inside your objects folder, so that's fine. There shouldn't be a problem with Wolf's a/c pack or AD's Japanese plane pack. Have you tried this fix:- http://forum.combatace.com/extending-usable-years-wire-sims-t27492.html Like jet_spud says, checking the CATfile pointer in each of your terrains is also well worth doing. Make sure it is pointing to desert/desert.CAT as you are running SFG. Can you fly WW2 a/c on the stock desert terrain? If so, that may narrow things down to a specific terrain problem. Some of the WW2 terrains had a bit of a problem with planes that need a large or medium runway size to take off, as they had only the small Runway3 included. Shouldn't be a problem with the F4U-1, though. Tally-ho! Baltika

I included a step-by-step guide to getting a PTO install up and running in the Readme to the Midway campaign. Grab it here, should give you a few pointers, if you haven't already http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=8420 Replace Bunyap's pack with Wrench's WW2 wep pack and you are good to go. Note to self: Will have to update these WW2 campaign readmes to refer to Wrench's WW2 wep pack, rather than Bunyap's. Buny's will work fine, but you will end up with a lot of modern stuff you don't need for a WW2 install. If, like me, you end up with a half-a-dozen theatre-specific WW2 installs, every little bit of space helps

Hi Shrike, I seem to remember that when Gepard created Midway terrain, it included many groundobjects such as ships and the like. Permission was subsequently withdrawn for many of those items, and Gepard re-released the terrain minus those groundobjects. You will have to get them individually from capun's website. That might be causing a CTD. Have you installed Wrench's WW2 wep pack? Also, what plane are you flying? What WW2 planes have you installed? You may also have to check the date tag (in OPTIONS.INI, I think) to allow single missions to run from, say, 1930 up to 2010 on whenever. Those are just a few thoughts that occur to me to check. Let us know how you get on. Cheers, Baltika

Can anyone point me to a Norwegian F-16 skin? I have searched through the Modern plane and skin d/l section here and at C5 for such a beast but it is proving elusive. Surely there's one around somewhere? I'm thinking F-16AM/BM for 331, 332 or 338 Sqdns ;-) Thanks for your help, Cheers, Baltika

Great news, thanks for the update. Looking forward to the TMF Block 15 Cheers, Baltika

Progress update:- Presently working up airfields in Norway. This will be a preview-style release in advance of the main map, which still has a long, long, way to go. But there will be a North Cape campaign to go with this little map. Cheers, Baltika

And Nathan Zachary flies again tn_prvteye, you are the man Thanks very much for flagging up this fix. Now have Crimson Skies running at 1600x1200, no corruption or crashes in-flight (menus are small), superb WinXP, Gainward Bliss nvidia 7800 GS+ AGP, for those with an interest. Brillaint! For those who haven't tried it, I throughly recommend getting a copy from somewhere. Sure, it's an arcade flight shooter, not a sim, but for atmosphere, fun missions, action, and crazy thirties planes, you can't beat it. Nursing your shot up Devastator back to the "Pandora," your pirate Zeppelin carrier for a hook trap, is very satisfying. Great work (I'd still love to see these birds in SF series )

OK, I am extremely disturbed by the thought of your little zombie turtle

Hi Stary, Thanks for this terrain. I have been out of touch with FE for a while, but this has piqued my interest. Do you have any info (even in very general terms) about what forces/units were involved in the conflict here? Even some pointers as to where to start researching would be useful. I haven't had a crack at a FE campaign yet, so, this might be a good place to start :yes: Cheers mate Baltika

I have very fond memories of flying the old Crimson Skies, sadly it is rather porked for Nvidia cards these days - new drivers conflict with the text bitmaps or somesuch - so to see these birds fly in SF series would be great

Nice pic, is that a new one or the Team Viper RNoAF skin? If the latter, it wasn't available here when I started this little project, hence the existence of my stand-in skin. It now is, as part of Team Viper's viper pack d/l. But, the more the merrier. Here's why I'm so interested, in case you're wondering:- I have placed about 40 airbases so far, mainly in Russia, Kola Peninsula, Finland and Sweden. I am working up Norway ATM. This is a "subset" of my massive WIP Northern Europe terrain, and should hopefully be released as a beta, in, say, two weeks My intention had been to release a mini-terrain with campaign, but, as always, the tale grew in the telling, so now it is a full-blown independent terrain in its own right. Campaign WIP is set in 2010, with Russia vs Norway, Sweden and Finland, with support from the RAF and the USN/USMC with the full complement of CVW-3 "Battle Axe" based on USS Harry S. Truman. Think an update of the Janes F/A-18 campaign and you will see what I am aiming for. Cheers, Baltika

Glad you got the decals t show up OT: Yes, thanks, we had a fabulous day on Sunday, great turnout fom family and friends to welcome the latest mini-Baltika into the fold, beautiful service and a great party afterwards for the grown-ups. It was the christening of our new arrival, Hector, 10lbs 5 oz at birth and now a strapping lad of 3 months, from the rate he's growing he'll make a front-row prop for Scotland, we certainly need some :yes: So thanks again, best wishes to your family also. Baltika