Baltika

Well, I'm in that happy stage of campaign building when you can fly the missions and see how it all works out - enjoying the fruits of one's own labour, if you get my drift. RL is about to wreck my modding time for a while, so I'm back to saying "two weeks" for Burma, North Africa, Burning Sands WW2, New Guinea, Guadalcanal and Midway campaigns. But that's OK, I'm trying to beat the Philippine invasion right now - anybody managed it yet A gentle reminder to those who are using CA_Stary's superlative WW2 effects pack - Stary released a new a/c fire effect as an update on the BoB thread (page #13, about post #243 or thereby) which is an absolutely fabulous addition to his effects pack mod. Whacked a Claude and the darn thing went up like a firecracker:- Looks even better in motion, with the smoke & fire swirling out of the burning wreck. Cheers for that one, CA If you don't have it, grab it now :yes: Cheers all, Baltika

Hi Stary, Great work here, I'm just wondering if it is safe to install your EE3 over your WW2 effects pack? I am using that, plus the extra effect you posted in the BoB thread, for my WW2 installs, but something tells me there might be the need for your outstanding nuclear mushroom cloud when the atom bombs start falling in the South Pacific But, I don't want to break the WW2 effects as I like them so much. Your advice would be appreciated :yes: Cheers mate, Baltika

Thanks for the update, really looking forward to this one No problem re carrier take-offs, as it's a known issue. I have already been researching OOBs for a Midway Campaign, so that will take care of that problem If the carriers are defined as targets in the terrain_types.ini, then a little bit of creativity in the [AirOffensivexxx] section of the campaign_data.ini will ensure that they are targeted at the appropriate time. OTOH, given the nature of the battle, it may be that a series of scripted single missions is the way forward here. Cheers, Baltika

Go ahead, make my day, punk! Things are about to get ugly on the Sino-Japanese front:- Work continues on Burma Air War campaign, although these Chinese infantry will probably come in handy for scrapper's Flying Tigers China campaign as well :yes: Cheers for now, Baltika

Thanks peter

Happy Birthday Spitfire

Nice one, Wrench, cheers But now, I've got no choice - I'm going to have to separate out my CBI stuff from my PTO install - well, it would be rude not to

Good tips, Thanks stiglr I had been eyeing up the Bloody Shambles series on amazon, now I just need an "excuse" for a little present to myself

Nice work, Thanks

Hi Wrench, I'm open to suggestion on the ship destruction options, I'm not really up to speed on all the different callouts. I'll certainly give that one a go. Pics of topless native girls sound great PM me if you are in fear of breaking board rules by posting them - Well, we are supposed to be family friendly round here As to retiling for Clark Field, not a problem, just let me know what you need. Or, if you can dig up a picture from somewhere, post it & I'll try to copy the layout as best I can. I did a bit of re-tiling and flattening for the extra fields used in v1.1 of the campaign, so I already have PI set up in TE. And on the topic of airfields, my research for the extra ones didn't go much beyond reading that the japanese landings in North Luzon, at Davao and Legaspi were made specifically with the purpose of seizing airfields to provide local bases for air support, A6Ms in particular moving very quickly to the occupied airfields. So it seemed to make sense to have fields near the landing zones. If I've got them wrong, let me know. Cheers all, Baltika

Hey Stiglr, Nice work you've got there I was going to ask what game engine you were using, but I think you've answered my question Right now I have a few too many projects "on the workbench" to think about starting something new, and 3D modelling seems like way too big a learning curve, but I'll certainly bear your kind offer in mind for the future. Cheers, Baltika

Hi Wrench, Thanks for the pointers, I will certainly check out your new runways and see about incorporating them. As to skins, well, I'm backed up with stuff to do right now, but maybe one day I will get around to an OD repaint for the P-35. CA - Wow, you bet I would be interested, that sounds great Thanks very much for the offer, I would be delighted to take you up on it Might be worth dropping Gepard a line about his Midway terrain, which seems to feature a lot of ships. Cheers all, Baltika

Thanks for the tip re skins - I just used the stock skin that came with the P-35, I'm not sure if there are any OD camo skins available for the model. I will take another look around. The P-35 currently uses the Hurri pit made by Kesselbrut, which looks like this:- Clark Field is laid out as in Edward's original Philipines terrain, using stock SFP1 large runways. A more detailed historical layout is outwith my capabilities, I'm afraid. This shot taken using Deuces Vietnam_SEA tileset upgrades and Treemod for WoV:- Sorry to disappoint if you were looking for something a bit more historically detailed. I'm not sure how to go about modding runways/layouts etc, but there are certainly ways to mod airfields. I'm just a jumped up campaign .ini meddler

As an alternative, you could try setting SecondaryEffect=ShipDestroyedEffect so you get a big splash around the ship, showing it's been breached and is about to go under. Just a thought.

Hi there, hope you enjoy it Any problems, give me a shout. Here's something that didn't make the final cut, as it's a bit fiddly to implement, but may be of interest:- There are quite a number of IJN taskforces around the islands, ferrying troops to the landing zones. You ought to be tasked bombing/escort missions to try to disrupt the invasion. Under the "stock" campaign, when a ship gets blown up, it will disappear without trace leaving just a splash in the water. As Gepard pointed out in his Midway thread, it should be possible to have "destroyed" ships which remain afloat but heavily on fire, belching smoke. Here's how you do it. First, in the terrain_types.ini, you have to set UseGroundObject=TRUE. This is set by default in the Philippines1941_types.ini. That's why you have to d/l & install the various ships (Benham, Brooklyn, Liberty & JapDestroyer) as otherwise they won't show up. You have to set them as GroundObjects in the terrain.ini or their guns are disabled. Then, the fiddly bit. Go to the object_data.ini (in each objects own folder in SFP1/Objects/GroundObject folder) and make sure there are entries like this:- [GroundObjectData] DamagedModel= DestroyedModel=Liberty Ship-R5.lod <=-- This entry to match the name of the model .lod file in the Object's folder DestroyedEffect=LargeOilFire <=-- Gives you nice plumes of smoke SecondaryEffect=VehicleFireEffect <=-- More flames, smoke, etc SecondaryChance=100 SinkTime=5 Then, the tricky part. Because of a bug in the game engine, these entries will not be "read" unless the DestroyedModel as defined above, and its relevant .bmp file, are placed in the MAIN Objects/GroundObject folder. So, from the Liberty folder, COPY the files "Liberty Ship-R5.lod" and "Liberty.bmp" and place them in your Objects/GroundObjects folder. Leave the originals in the object's own folder. Now, when you successfuly destroy a liberty ship, you will get a nice burning wreck pumping out plumes of smoke as in the above picture. I haven't tested if the SinkTime= flag will then cause the burning wreck to sink, but you get the idea. The only thing you may want to do is hexedit the .lod file you are using for the detroyed model (the one you have just put in the main Groundobject folder) to read a different .bmp texture file, eg Liberty_Destroyed.bmp - you would then add the appearance of battle damage, flames and wrecked panels onto the damaged .bmp file by painting it with your favourite paint program. Gimp or PAINT.net have lots of nice textures you can add as transparencies to .bmp files to give the appearance of being smoke-blackened, charred and burning. Oh happy thoughts of destruction Well, the screenshot above shows it can be done. Cheerio for now, Baltika

Excellent news

v1.1 of the campaign is now available for download. A host of fixes and improvements for your campaigning pleasure. Cheers, Baltika

What with all this activity on the PTO/CBI front, I tried to impress my brother by showing him Invasion of the Philippines campaign. His response:- "When do we get the Tales of the Gold Monkey sim, complete with Grumman Goose and Flying Tigers flashbacks?" I think it has been demonstrated that floatplanes are possible in Thirdwire, so anyone feel like taking this on? Now if we can just get the Japanese princess/secret agent in-game Cheers Baltika

Hi there, Peashooter is at Bunyap's site, not upgraded so far as I am aware. Guardsman I don't think has been upgraded since back then. But lots of good WW2 stuff over at Skunkworks, worth getting hold of. Just to let everyone know, I am aware of certain issues with my AI airbase placement, ground war oddities, and some typos in the Start/End campaign text, and a few other bugs. v1.1 of the campaign is in the works, due for release pretty soon. Don't let me stop anyone who has been playing through v1.0 report any bugs they have found right here, I won't bite your head off. As I said, the campaign was pretty much untested when released, so probably ought to have been called a beta. But, I had been getting bogged down in lots of minutiae for Burma Air War, mainly to do with skinning, which is not my forte, and I wanted to get back to basics by battering out a campaign .ini and flying the darn thing. And I reckon the best way to playtest something to death is to let you folks round here loose on it Don't disappoint me - I don't want to have to start working on v1.2 as soon as I get 1.1 out. Not that that would be unusual for me

Great work, Wrench. Just getting to grips with your Burma upgrade (and hotfix), but I'm looking forward to this one

Great work, Thanks very much

Hi Gepard, Like many people I am looking forward to release of your Midway terrain. Thanks for your hard work, and also thanks for taking the time to explain how you do it in your terrain tutorials I have some questions about your carrier battle groups, which I see from your earlier post you have included in Midway terrain. Have you found a way to make carrier take-offs flyable in single missions? If so, do you think this will have any effect on campaign play, where carrier units are treated in a similar way to ground units as defined in the campaign_data.ini? And, again in campaign play, if (as I suspect) you have made carrier groups targets as defined in the {terrain}_targets.ini, is there any way to force the campaign engine to end a campaign if your base carrier has been destroyed? Or are these all questions that us poor campaign builders are going to have to work out answers to once your Midway terrain is released? - if I may volunteer to build the campaign to go with it S! Baltika

Hi everyone, Wow, there is some great stuff going on here @Edward, great to hear from you - those Burma shots look fantastic Burma Air War campaign is about 90% done using your 60% map, but, obviously I've not seen Wrench's upgraded targets.ini yet, and if you are contemplating a release of Burma 100%, then I should probably hold off to adapt the campaign to the full-scale map. As Wrench says, we can always "assimilate" As I'm sure you know, the problem for campaign building is setting strategic nodes so your ground war operates. Generally, the way around any problem is to create some simple "waypoint" target areas so your ground forces behave properly. I had added in a stack of such waypoints to get the Burma ground war to operate, but, of course, those are set up on the 60% map. They would have to be re-done for a full-scale map, but that gives more room for manouevre so the "disappearing ground units after successful offensive" glitch is easier to avoid. As to adapting the 1941 Philippines targets, no problem, I think. The one realeased with the PAW1 campaign, as I said, is a simple "retrograde" mod of your original, with airbase occupation, fleet designations, and statics changed to fit the time period. I have also added "dummy" airbases on Formosa (Off-map) and in the North of Luzon for the invading forces to occupy. This is fine for campaign play, as the japanese are mainly AI (with the exception of the carrier-based squadrons) but may give odd results in single missions. Since release, I have been working on upgrading the 1941 targets, as I am running into some node problems. Here's where I'm at just now:- Again, I am adding mainly "waypoint" target areas round the coast, and I have been working up a proper OOB for naval forces in the region. Still a WIP, but, again, if you are contemplating a release of your full-scale Philippines terrain I may be as well to hold off til then. Further note to self: Use completed, released terrains for campaign building first But it looks like we have found a destination for PAW Chapter 2 - Your full-scale, Wrenchified New Guinea terrain. Anyone point me in the direction of some good source material for OOBs and the like? And this probably means that I have no excuse not to finish off & release that WW2 North Africa campaign which has been sitting on my hard drive for, oh, since before my daughter was born @CA_Stary Green Hell 2 Drool. . . @Wrench, Re Burma 60% upgrade - well you've done the work, I say release it :yes: I can always release BAW campaign as a beta for rigorous playtesting And finally (for now), Edward, can you advise on how to flatten those sea mountains and shoreline tsunami? All those Norwegian fjords are giving me a migraine Cheers all, Baltika

geezer, those are fantastic Sorry, can't help with the pivot question. You may want to head over to capun's forum and ask him. Unless anyone round here can help?

Nice trucks, looking good. I'm sure we can find a use for them somewhere - strafing them, dropping bombs on them, blowing them up Dotted around the airfield would seem fine, even if not fully incorporated as targets of opportunity in Armed Recce missions.