Baltika

Hi there. So far as I know, there is no manual for Le Missioneur. You could ask over at check-six, whence it comes, although you may need to learrn French first http://www.checksix-fr.com/ Here is the link for Lowengrin's site:- http://www.lowengrin.com/news.php I just tried his campaign editor on my various sundry installs going back to 06 patch levels, and I couldn't even get it to load up a campaign file. I don't think this has worked for a long, long time (pre-06 patch anyway). Having built a fair few campaigns, there is no easy way to do it. Hit the KB here, read up on what the various ini files do, and mess with stuff in your test install to see what happens. There are a stack of threads in the campaign building section with discussions on such arcane topics as frontlines and their behaviour, strategic nodes for ground war, creating red-flyable campaigns, etc etc. Less a hobby, more a way of life

Thanks for the info. I personally haven't seen that bug, but it's been a while since I played a full campaign in SF1 series. If others have seen it, that's probably your answer. As for supply effects on upgrades, I'm just going by something TK said over at the TW forums. Upgrades are affected by supply issues in campaign play, but the details of precisely how that works are hazy. What you are talking about sounds more like a bug. Cheers, Baltika

Equipment upgrades are not necessarily automatic, they can be affected by the unit's supply level, and the overall force supply level, which is in turn affected by success rate of interdiction type missions against that force, destructions of hangars, fuel tanks etc etc. No idea why it would give you the wrong skin instead though. I take it you have checked that the requested skin is in your install? ...\WoI\Objects\Aircraft\Nesher is the place to look. Cheers, Baltika

Congrats

Try Le Missioneur, take a read at the tutorial:- http://combatace.com/files/file/8855-le-missionneur-mission-editor/ http://combatace.com/files/file/5092-le-missionneur-mission-editor-tutorial/ Likewise with kreelin's KMD, which has been fully updated for use on SF2 series. http://combatace.com/files/file/2678-kmd/ Streakeagle's tutorial on KMD:- http://combatace.com/files/file/2679-wovqmdkmd-tutorial/ As for campaign building, lowengrin over at some WW2 site ( ) built a campaign editor for use in SF1 series, but that was not updated to run on anything other than very early builds of SF1 engine. So, for campaign building, the basic editing tool is wordpad. There are quite a few threads around here on how to go about doing that. Get the Catpack extractor tool, unpack the stock campaign files, have a read at them to get the hang of how the engine works, then, you can start editing to suit your taste. Or, d/l any of the modded campaigns that take your fancy and see how they have been put together. Sorry, no easy answer - we learn by doing

You could always try this. Designed for WoE, I have no idea how well it will work in SF2. http://combatace.com/files/file/7699-alternative-height-map-for-woe-germanyce-terrain-beta-02/ And for some seriously mountainous terrain, look no further:- http://combatace.com/files/file/10530-kamchatka-peninsula-v-10/ Cheers, Baltika

Hope you are enjoying the Festival So, runways are all aligned and test-flown, various sea-mountains squashed, coastlines fiddled with to flatten the edges - for some reason which escapes me, "Level Sea" command doesn't work properly on non-stock tiles, and I have a lot of non-stock transition tiles. Ho hum. The really slow part is now progressing. Terrain targetisation. Fire up game. Point hud at likely spot for com building, etc. Write down co-ordinates. Repeat ad nauseam. Exit game. Type long list of co-ords into TARGETS.INI. Fire up game again. Check everything in right place. Move on to next target area. Argh There has to be an easier way. . .

What you are looking to do is a simple question of editing the campaign_DATA.ini file which contains details of all the units which appear in campaign. However, for WoV, this is recommended:- http://combatace.com/files/file/10658-wov-air-ground-war-expansion-pack-gold-jul-2010-update/ That contains links to the three main d/l packages, and represents a magnificent upgrade to stock WoV. Cheers, Baltika

Thanks for the suggestion, I have incorporated Gepard's NATO/WARPAC airfields, with Wrench's parked a/c mod from his Formosa update, into the working build. So you get the new airfields, plus "dynamic" static a/c placement. Those bases give a very different "feel" to the whole thing. Slainthe! Baltika

Hi guys, Kamchatka terrain is a preview of the full-scale Japan/Kurils/China/Russia/Korea terrain I somehwat ambitiously posted wip screenies of ages ago, and then realised I had bitten off way, way too much in one go. Next terrain release from me will be from the other side of the world entirely. But the big Japan terrain may emerge at some point, as I did a fair bit of airfield/city plotting on that map which would be a shame to waste. Cheers for the interest Baltika

No problem, understood. TK has admitted that the campaign.dll changes the way the frontline is handled from version to version, so it is a bit mystic at times. You could try posting over at the Thirdwire forum, as TK does step in and explain things himself when he has the time. Also, if airbases are too close to the frontline, that can affect how they are "occupied" - I had that problem myself on one map (I forget which) when I was working on a campaign a while back. Also, only one ground unit per node will show up - just checking.

If I remember right, Gepard created the original Israel 2 map and Wrench updated it long before WoI and its campaigns were released by TK. So, it is certainly not the fault of the authors of the Israel 2.5 map that the names they chose do not fit with TK's new campaigns for TK's official map. And we can hardly expect TK to create new games which fit in with every user-created map in existence. I understand it is frustrating, but that's part of being a modder. Sometimes, new patches will break existing mods (maps and planes), but we are not going to ask TK to stop producing free updates for his titles. And, when they have the time, people will generally upate their stuff to the new level - look at the mammoth work done by the NATO Fighters team getting up to speed on SF2, and on the recent round of patches. As a gentle word of advice, it's usually considered rather bad manners to bad mouth people who have put a lot of time and effort into creating free mods. But feel free to ask questions, and don't lose faith. Like I said, it's all part of modding. It can be frustrating, but we've all been there at one time or another. Cheers, Baltika

I get round that by using the zoom function in KMD rather than switching to 1:1 using the button. So, I always keep KMD windowed. Just one of these things

You have to check the actual size of your map before fixing start and end co-ordinates. Load Israel2 into KMD and work from there. Strange stuff will happen if the frontline is set up wrong. Also, the campaign engine moves units towards or away from the enemy base node depending on supply and morale of the individual unit, and whether their FORCE is in attack or defend mode, etc, etc. All I can suggest is that you define the frontline first, then make sure air and ground units are assigned to airbases and nodes respectively on the correct side of the frontline. Cheers, Baltika

I use kreelin's KMD mission editor for all campaign building work:- http://combatace.com/files/file/2678-kmd/ If you load a map into this, it will show the locations of all target areas, with co-ordinates displayed on the map. If you click on the map it will give you the name of the target area for you to use in your node list. It is also extremely useful for finding out co-ordinates to create a working frontline. It is an essential utility, cheers to kreelin TK has some freelancers for skins etc, but he is pretty much a one-man band. Re the frontline, if you make the frontline invisible, it is still there, it just won't show up in the in-game planning map. And yes, the more you find out about this sim the more there is to mod. Wait til you get started on terrain building Cheers, Baltika

The campaign engine can only handle two forces, "FRIENDLY" and "ENEMY." The different nations have to belong to one or the other force. This is defined in campaign_data.ini file. The red line you see is only the visible frontline in planning map. It actually should go all the way from on side of map say, 000,500 to 500,1000 for a map which is 1000x1000. How much of the frontline shows up in planning map is set by the StartShow= & EndShow= tag in terrain movement.ini. Strategic nodes are set in the campaign_data.ini file, like this:- [strategicNode001] Area=Sacremento ConnectTo[001].Target=Stockton US Army Strongpoint ConnectTo[001].BasePoint=473545,887756 ConnectTo[002].Target=Reno (Destroyed) ConnectTo[002].BasePoint=464018,916163 [strategicNode002] Area=Stockton US Army Strongpoint ConnectTo[001].Target=Sacremento ConnectTo[001].BasePoint=455281,907463 ConnectTo[002].Target=Palo Alto ConnectTo[002].BasePoint=478038,857021 [strategicNode003] Area=Palo Alto ConnectTo[001].Target=Stockton US Army Strongpoint ConnectTo[001].BasePoint=477292,884695 ConnectTo[002].Target=Monterey ConnectTo[002].BasePoint=491615,797884 [strategicNode004] Area=Monterey ConnectTo[001].Target=Palo Alto ConnectTo[001].BasePoint=474882,846332 ConnectTo[002].Target=Listening Post Gold ConnectTo[002].BasePoint=549132,717366 [strategicNode005] Area=Listening Post Gold ConnectTo[001].Target=Monterey ConnectTo[001].BasePoint=491615,797884 ConnectTo[002].Target=Camp Calumet ConnectTo[002].BasePoint=601281,675463 [strategicNode006] Area=Camp Calumet ConnectTo[001].Target=Listening Post Gold ConnectTo[001].BasePoint=563945,703170 ConnectTo[002].Target=Oxnard ConnectTo[002].BasePoint=650808,649063 [strategicNode007] Area=Oxnard ConnectTo[001].Target=Camp Calumet ConnectTo[001].BasePoint=609882,671332 ConnectTo[002].Target=Van Nuys Munitions Depot ConnectTo[002].BasePoint=691744,656072 [strategicNode008] Area=Van Nuys Munitions Depot ConnectTo[001].Target=Oxnard ConnectTo[001].BasePoint=654520,646501 ConnectTo[002].Target=Lakewood Munitions Depot ConnectTo[002].BasePoint=710766,634207 [strategicNode009] Area=Lakewood Munitions Depot ConnectTo[001].Target=Van Nuys Munitions Depot ConnectTo[001].BasePoint=694883,650120 ConnectTo[002].Target=Camp Pendalton USMC Base ConnectTo[002].BasePoint=741620,605762 [strategicNode010] Area=Camp Pendalton USMC Base ConnectTo[001].Target=Lakewood Munitions Depot ConnectTo[001].BasePoint=712608,632141 ConnectTo[002].Target=SouthWest Command HQ ConnectTo[002].BasePoint=758188,599940 [strategicNode011] Area=SouthWest Command HQ ConnectTo[001].Target=Camp Pendalton USMC Base ConnectTo[001].BasePoint=744990,604418 ConnectTo[002].Target=San Deigo ConnectTo[002].BasePoint=759500,594732 [strategicNode012] Area=San Deigo ConnectTo[001].Target=SouthWest Command HQ ConnectTo[001].BasePoint=758916,599073 ConnectTo[002].Target=Tijuana ConnectTo[002].BasePoint=764989,579781 [strategicNode013] Area=Tijuana ConnectTo[001].Target=San Deigo ConnectTo[001].BasePoint=762625,586058 ConnectTo[002].Target=Ensenada ConnectTo[002].BasePoint=770021,562619 [strategicNode014] Area=Ensenada ConnectTo[001].Target=Tijuana ConnectTo[001].BasePoint=766724,573656 ConnectTo[002].Target=Guerrero Negro ConnectTo[002].BasePoint=805961,511297 [strategicNode015] Area=Guerrero Negro ConnectTo[001].Target=Ensenada ConnectTo[001].BasePoint=775507,553735 ConnectTo[002].Target=Mexicali Tank Farm ConnectTo[002].BasePoint=879744,474727 [strategicNode016] Area=Mexicali Tank Farm ConnectTo[001].Target=Guerrero Negro ConnectTo[001].BasePoint=805961,511297 ConnectTo[002].Target=San Felipe ConnectTo[002].BasePoint=909653,460850 [strategicNode017] Area=San Felipe ConnectTo[001].Target=Mexicali Tank Farm ConnectTo[001].BasePoint=883353,472157 These are taken from my SoCal campaign for Wrench's California map. Each node must be a target area as defined in the terrain_targets.ini file. So, San Felipe is the enemy base node, and Sacremento is the friendly base node, as defined in the campaign_data.ini file. You have to join the dots between the two so that the ground forces can capture the other side's base node to win the campaign. Here is the frontline to go with the above example:- [FrontLine] FriendlyBase=Sacremento EnemyBase=Baja Base Position[001]=000000,1000000 Position[002]=450000,950000 Position[003]=500000,920000 Position[004]=520000,900000 Position[005]=550000,850000 Position[006]=580000,770000 Position[007]=600000,720000 Position[008]=640000,680000 Position[009]=665000,650000 Position[010]=675000,647000 Position[011]=685000,655000 Position[012]=707000,678000 Position[013]=748000,667000 Position[014]=758000,628000 Position[015]=801000,602000 Position[016]=786000,587000 Position[017]=764215,582873 Position[018]=754000,565000 Position[019]=720000,530000 Position[020]=750000,450000 Position[021]=780000,400000 Position[022]=900000,300000 Position[023]=950000,150000 Position[024]=1000000,000000 StartShow=2 EndShow=23 This is for a map which is 1000000,1000000. As you can see, the map is bisected by the frontline, which starts at 000000,1000000 (top left) and finishes at 1000000,000000 (bottom right). If I set StartShow=1 and EndShow=24, you would see the map go all the way across planning map. I suggest you set this variable to show all of the points so you get the full picture for modding purposes. It can be changed later for release to tidy up the appearance of your planning map in-game. The frontline has to divide the map into an ENEMY controlled area, and FRIENDLY controlled area. I have to say, the Middle East setting is probably one of the most complicated to set up a campaign in. You might want to try this out on a small map, and define your own, small conflict, with only a few air units on each side. That would be much easier to handle to get to grips with the nuts and bolts.

I also suggest you read over these threads for some advice on strategic nodes:- http://combatace.com/topic/19858-building-stategic-nodes/ http://combatace.com/topic/31321-how-do-you-make-a-red-flyable-campaign/page__hl__baltika http://combatace.com/topic/27549-question-about-strategic-nodes/page__p__152332__hl__baltika__fromsearch__1#entry152332 http://combatace.com/topic/20489-ground-units-in-campaigns/page__p__88545__hl__baltika__fromsearch__1#entry88545

OK, I'll see if I can help. This advice is good for SF1 series, up to Oct 08 patch only. If you are working in SF2 this may all have chganged. I am a bit behind the curve these days. The air units have shown up because they are now on the correct side of the frontline, as you have fixed the frontline for this map. It works like this: The frontline must split the map in half. It can wind around a lot, but you must split the map into two halves. Each force, FRIENDLY and ENEMY must have a base strategic node which is a target area on their side of the frontline. The base node is defined in the FORCE section in the campaign_DATA.ini file. The strategic nodes must connect the ENEMY and FRIENDLY base nodes together through a network of points. Ground forces will appear on whichever strategic node you specify as their starting point. Air units are set to appear on airbases, but air units can jump between air bases and will only show up at air bases which are on the correct side of the border. So, in your above example, the Egyptian units were probably set to start on the wrong side of the border, so didn't show up. Also, airbase target area should not be used as strategic nodes, only standard target areas. Finding this out cost me a lot of grief and head scratching for BoB campaign. The various supply variables affect when units attack, are resupplied with new planes, etc etc. I suggest the next thing you check is whether the strategic nodes in the campaign_data.ini file match up with target areas as defined in the israel2_TARGETS.ini file. Also, some ai units have a percentage chance to appear, so may not always show up. Gepard really explained what has to be done to convert campaigns over at post #4. Working out strategic nodes can be tricky, but imagine them as pearls connected by a string, or points on a spider's web, and you will get the idea. Good luck, hope that helps. Cheers, Baltika

Check out my WW2 RAF speechpack (in SFP1 d/l section) which contains a spreadsheet which contains a list of all of the stock SF speech files and the text of what each one contains. Yes, it did take a long time, but at least now no-one has to compile that information again. That is your "script" for compiling a new Hebrew speech pack (or Finnish, or Klingon for that matter). All you need is some Hebrew speakers with a mic attachment on their PCs and a desire to do some voice acting. Bon chance, mon brave! Baltika

The answer is that the stock map and Israel 2.5 are diffent sizes. The frontline is defined by absolute x,y co-ordinates. So, if you use the same frontline on a bigger map, you are going to get a problem. To get your campaign to work on the bigger map, you will have to re-define the frontline by setting new x,y co-ordinates for each frontline point. As malibu43 says, the frontline for any given terrain is set by the MOVEMENT.INI file in the specific terrain folder. This frontline is used by the game for single missions, and for the start of a campign, UNLESS you have defined a different frontline in the CAMPAIGN_DATA.INI file for your particular campaign. This is a feature which was added for FE, I think, and works only on Oct 08 patch builds and later. Basically, it means you can define a "stock" frontline for single mission use in the terrain movement.ini file, but you can specify a different frontline in your campaign_data.ini file which will over-ride the movement.ini. The placing of the frontline is very important to get a campaign to work properly, both ground war and air war. Believe me, I have spent a lot of time in kreelin's KMD checking co-ordinates for each frontline point and setting them in terrain or campaign files to get things to work right. There is no easy fix. You need to set the frontline for the terrain so that it goes from one side of the map to the other, in eihter x or y axis. You can wind it round as much as you like, and for a good ground war the more defined points the better. TK changes the way things work with each round of patches, but as a general rule, mission targets are assigned by proximity to the frontline, so if you want diverse targets in your campaign, make sure the frontline is close to many specific target areas. The campaign engine is truly dynamic, but Strategic Nodes for ground units MUST be set properly in your campaing_data.ini file. The frontline will move as ground units capture strategic nodes. Ground unit mission success is influenced by your personal air mission success or failure. It is all more complex than TK is generally given credit for, IMHO. For an example of frontline created from scrathc for a new terrain which is complex, but which works (at least in Oct 08 patch level builds) check this out:- http://combatace.com/files/file/10530-kamchatka-peninsula-v-10/ Please ask if you have any further specific questions about campaign building. Cheers, Baltika

So, spent the afternoon placing runways and planting trees. . . Now have the worst case of carpal tunnel ever Hats off to Stary and Jan Tuma who can crank these things out zippily fast But, progress is being made. Targetlist is done. Transition tiles complete - this is a blend of various tiles based on Major Lee's DBS, plus some winter city tiles and green forest tiles. HFD and tiling is finished, runways flattened, sea level . . . levelled, I suppose. Forest tod files finished - cheers again to Stary for his pine trees which are re-used here Here's how it looks now:- Next up:- Runway alignment. Terrain targetisation - aarghh!!! Then, North Cape flyable beta will go up. Slainthe! Baltika

Thanks everyone for the tips re volcanoes. I will look into it and see what I can whip up. Meantime, I knocked together some city tiles for Reykjavik. The airport is still a wip, obviously, and these are somewhat. . . functional. But you get the general idea The main port facility is in progress. And I just have to add the local golf course. It looks crazy, but it's there Those of you with high perception may have noticed a flurry of activity on this terrain of late. With good cause - I am hoping to make a release befoer SF2: Tomcat comes along. But, I am taking the family on holiday tomorrow so no updates for a while. Tally Ho! Baltika

Been doing some target area plotting work today, first on airfields:- Then some towns, villages and settlements:- After this comes flattening and test-flying airfields, then targetisation (Aargh!!) Another inch of progress

Nice

Yes, I think it is your Emil, as per the credits sections of the readme:- Wings over Russia_ReadMe.pdf The WoR mod is free to download, with membership of capun's site. You have to email him for membership, might take a couple of days to get clearance, after that it's all good. Cheers, Baltika