Baltika

Nice I will press on with Operation Watchtower in anticipation. . .

Hi Wrench, Sounds good, looking forward to your TBF-1 update The VT-8 Midway detachment IS available as a flyable squadron in the campaign, although far be it from me to create additional headaches for anyone I leave the question of specific skins/numbers for them entirely to your discretion, Sir OT: Is your upcoming Solomons map based on Edward's original terrain, or is it a completely new build? It's just, I have an "Operation Watchtower" campaign data.ini file (NOT based on any previously released Solomons campaign files) sitting on my HDD, waiting for all the squadrons to be assigned bases (Well, I know where they were all based in reality. It's the precise terrain_targets.ini name for each base I'm interested in). If the updated terrain has essentially the same names for airfields etc as Edward's terrain, I can go ahead, but, if not, I'm better to wait until your new terrain is released before editing the data file. In case you're wondering why, well, I do a lot of commuting by train in my job, and for some reason I find it relaxing to type up OOBs as SFP1 campaign files. . . As for personal interest, well, none of this stuff was taught in history class at school for me. So, I am discovering a lot of basic European, American and world history through my own reading much later in life. The UK in general, and Scotland in particular, was (is?) a minefield of political interest groups all of whom had a direct interest in the syllabus - and not in a good way. As a Scottish child of the Thatcher years in Britain, it's only now I'm discovering that the reason proper Scots history wasn't taught AT ALL in school, was that Thatcher was afraid of the Scot Nats gaining a lead in the polls. . . And if that isn't political censorship of a population, I d/k what is. As for WW2, well, the mentality in Britain, and probably much of Europe, is still John Cleese's send up of the phrase, "Don't mention the war!!!!" OK - rant over. Back to trying to get my win/lose conditions for Midway campaign to work properly. . . darn

Hi Wrench, I'm happy to go along with however you want to release your "Vinda-way" - either at your place, or if you want to send it to me, I can include it in the campaign d/l pack if you agree. Either way, it will fill a gap in the USMC squadrons meantime. OK, is this where I get told off for wondering if we have a B-26 or B-26B around somewhere I can find the -K model, but that seems rather a late version for Midway :yes: Good call with your TBF-1 mod - I have already got the TBD squadrons set up to use that. If you want to take the trouble to make numbers etc, that would be great - every squadron (on both sides) is selectable as flyable from the campaign screen, so some differentiation in the skins would be nice. (I got bored on the train commute home from work today, and editing the campaign.ini file to make all the callouts helped the journey go by). There are a number of stand-ins. I have put yours & capun's Rufe mod to good use for the Chitose and Kamikawa Maru air units - well, floatplanes they are, and I can't seem to find an F1M2, E8N2 or E13A1 anywhere The Rufe looks good flying around, though, and it works great on Gepard's sea runways The above picture of a near collision has flagged up an issue - I would have loved to have USN squadrons taking off from the flight deck of their carrier in the midst of Gepard's crowded carrier groups, and that can be done, but with the random results pictured above. The carriers can be made to stay put (as Kesselbrut did with his Falklands package) but the campaign engine gives them a random heading each time. So, they are pointing the wrong way for their escorts, at least much of the time. The alternative (which I have been working with til I tried the new method out) was to give each carrier unit a separate base, away from the main group. Doesn't look so good, but avoids odd headings, and allows proper carrier landings, i.e. on a moving carrier. Any strong preference either way?

"Hard to starboard, d*mn you, Mr. Sulu!!!!!!!!!!" Enterprise Captain having some trouble with helm control: Still some issues to iron out for campaign play

Yup, .tga tiles are your coastline tiles, as jtin says they have an alpha channel which displays the water. Here's instructions on how to make them: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showt...a+channel\ .bmp tiles are your standard terrain textures. Using the terrain dialog box in TE creates .tod files for the specific .bmp or .tga tile you are working with, to create trees and non-targetable buildings for each tile of that type. To create target areas with stuff you can blow up, you need to place objects by hand in the [terrain]_TARGETS.INI file. Wrench is the man to ask about that :yes:

For WW2 may I dare to suggest the Battle of Britain all-in-one campaign mod, right here: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autoc...p;showfile=5246 No bias there at all More modern campaign packs well worth your time are: Falklands campaign by Kesselbrut: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autoc...p;showfile=6700 Harrier campaign by JSF_Aggie http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autoc...p;showfile=5390 The OTC package by Dave, C5 and others is one of the best: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autoc...p;showfile=3874 http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autoc...p;showfile=3873 NATO Fighters 2 by C5 et al for WoE is essential: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autoc...p;showfile=3348 And MK2's Vietnam 1984 and Iran/Iraq campaigns are also extremely good. Just a few of my top picks. Cheers, Baltika PS cellinsky's widesky mod and the terrain tileset/treemod upgrades by Brain32 and CA_Stary are absolutely essential.

Oh, yes please

Looking good, Wrench. I'll hazard a guess and agree with Geezer, looks like the Marianas/Guam to me For autotiling of sea textures to avoid coastal tsunami, there is a little bit of fiddling to be done with the texturelist.ini. I don't have it entirely figured out yet, but I have spent a fair bit of time on this trying to get Thunder Bay / Salmon River to tile properly for your ANW upgrades. You have to make some adjustment to the altitude settings and Priority level for your water texturetype and your coastal terrain types. Also, it is much easier for TE to autotexture the coastal areas correctly if you have followed Gepard's instructions to re-size your terrain .bmp to make a full-scale terrain. As for your texturelist settings, I set water textures, and the adjoining land textures in TextureList/Edit Texturetype list to the following settings: [s Sea] Water=1 UseAutoPlacement=1 CheckAltitude=1 MinAltitude=0 MaxAltitude=0 CheckCity=0 MinCityDistance=0 MaxCityDistance=0 CheckSlope=1 MinSlope=0 MaxSlope=0 Priority=1 RandomFactor=100 GroupingFactor=0 ExclusionRegion=0 ExcludeMaxX=250 ExcludeMinX=0 ExcludeMaxY=250 ExcludeMinY=0 [R Grass] Water=0 UseAutoPlacement=1 CheckAltitude=1 MinAltitude=0 MaxAltitude=800 CheckCity=0 MinCityDistance=10 MaxCityDistance=999999 CheckSlope=0 MinSlope=15 MaxSlope=90 Priority=0 RandomFactor=100 GroupingFactor=0 ExclusionRegion=0 ExcludeMaxX=0 ExcludeMinX=0 ExcludeMaxY=0 ExcludeMinY=0 You will see that grass has a minumum altitude of 0, so you may expect that grass would cover all the sea. Except, the water texturetype has a higher priority than the grass type, so where all the other factors for water are met, then you will get water rather than grass. This means that grass will come right down to 0 altitude, but only for areas which don't meet the water specification of maxaltitude=0 and, importantly maxslope=0. It does mean that the coastal areas probably creep out to sea little bit more across the board, but it pretty effectively removes most instances of sea creeping up onto the land. When I get a moment I will take a look at Socal using the same sort of settings. It takes a bit of experimentation, and sometimes odd things happen, but that should help. Looking forward to full release Cheers, Baltika

Great news, thanks for the update Midway campaign is in final beta testing and should be along in a week or two :yes:

Great work, Thanks very much

Included in my Battle of Britain RAF Speechpack is a spreadsheet file which tells you the text of all the speech files, so you have a "script" all prepared. There are many variations on a similar theme. From memory, there are 3 or four different pilot voices, Red Crown voice, Tower voice, and your ground commander's voice. Cheers, Baltika

Hi there, Yes I think that's the way to go. Looking at jtin's modded heightmap again, all the water meets up, so unless we want a tsunami, all the water has to be the same height. There is an alter sealevel function on TE, but I've never worked out how to do anything useful with it. perhaps we can specifiy a height for sealevel and then TE can autolevel for us. At least, then, sea level would be 0m rather than 650 metres. Just a thought.

Okay, repainted sea level to about 660m, knocked together some sea tiles, and here we go: On the down side, there are sea mountains wherever you look. That is going to be a lot of work to straighten out. The simplest way, I suspect, is to go with the transition zone around the mountains, which would enable autotiler to do it rather than having to hand place tiles everywhere. That should also get rid of the "sheer cliff" then "flat rock" effect you are seeing here. OK, have to do some paying work now. Cheerio for now. PS, I will attach the tileset and Texturelist.ini to go with it for whoever wants to play around with this. The tiles are mods of work by Deuces, Doghouse, Brain32 & Thirdwire, bashed together and painted over a bit by yours truly. They are beta beta. Water effects are not enabled on the sea tiles - I don't have time to make .tgas out of them, and they may need editing. The sea to desert transitions are rudimentary and should be viewed as beta testing placeholders only. I have made a new ANW terrain folder called ANW2, with all the inis changed to match. Don't want to mess up my main install ANW2_TILESET.rar

Well the Terrain & Tileset is Brain32's, CA has done/is doing the trees, and Wrench is the Target man - of course

To avoid duplication of effort, just to let you all know I am working up a set of sea-transition tiles based off Brain32/Deuces' Winter Thaw set.

I have been experimenting with this one as well, just a few comments: The elevation of the area covered by Thunder Bay, Salmon River and River of No Return is about 800m in MajorLee's original build. Looking at the general scale of the heightfield, with all the peaks and troughs, and the overall elevation, I think the Major bumped up the height scale percentage in TE somewhat, although I could be wrong about that. Anyway, I know I made a suggestion to paint the water areas blue, but that makes them a height elevation of 0m, obviously. That will give a pretty big coastline drop all the way around - which may or may not be what we are looking for. The rivers will obviously be deep, deep, canyons with thousand-meter walls. Could be fun to fly down, right enough, but may cause tiling problems. An alternative is to paint the water areas a uniform, 800m say, and specify that as the tile type water level in TE. That would give a much more natural look to the coastline, particularly around South Bend - we may want to put a harbour or port in there, and an 800m drop to the water could be tricky. That, however, causes problems over on the West side, as the water there is already at 0m. That can still be tiled as water, but it means Thunder Bay would be 800m above it. A huge inland sea, caught up in the surrounding mountain peaks? Overall, Brain32's suggestion of a transitional sea-to-cliff band may be the way to go, to smooth out that 800m drop, at least for Thunder Bay.

Hi there, Edward's original all-inclusive Korea mod is right here: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autoc...p;showfile=1494 MK2's Red Falcon Add-on here: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autoc...p;showfile=1902 Malibu43 has made an updated Campaign_data and ground object pack, get it from post #13 here: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showt...=32507&st=0 And bear in mind that Wrench, Brain32 & CA_Stary are working on a completely new Korea terrain. Happy Hunting

Into the Fire

OK, happy to report that a separate install is NOT required for Naval Ops CAS missions - in campaign play, anyway (which IS where it's at, don'tcha know ). It seems the GroundObjectRole= flag is called out only by Single Missions, and doesn't affect how a groundobject behaves if it is called out as a ground unit in the campaign_data.ini file. So, I can leave all the ships as GroundObjectRole=WARSHIP, so they don't turn up as tanks on land in Single Mission CAS missions, but they DO turn up as expected in campaign missions as ground units, and, even better, follow the GroundObjectRole=TANK behaviour in campaign CAS missions. Also, I have defined specific Formation types for Naval Nations, called out from the NATIONS.INI, so the ships are not all scrunched up like tanks would be. So, your USN and IJNAF fleet elements (the latter a new nation type) now behave like this in Midway campaign, when they run into one another:- The Destroyer squadrons manoeuvre to engage: Advancing in attack formation under full steam, the lead USN Destroyer takes heavy damage: IJN DesDiv 11 comes under concentrated fire, suffering heavy losses: The outcome hangs in the balance as a Wildcat from USS Yorktown swings round for another pass: Cheers all, Baltika

May I say I am very impressed with the work being done here, I have d/led the pack and fixes and it is working great. Good effort, thanks Thanks again for the hard work in compiling this pack Cheers, Baltika Edit: Duh! Found what I was looking for :blush2:

Well. . . I have to admit my wife & I were stumped for a film to watch recently, and, almost as a joke, I said, Why don't we watch Top Gun? (We had the DVD sitting on the shelf, it had cost about £1.99) The missus was up for it, out of nostalgia, so, we did, and it was like, brilliant. I have to say what impressed me most was the flying sequences, obviously, but mainly for the fact that there was no CGI in sight - it was all real Although, strangely, watching it for the first time in about 20 years, and with a consequential change in perspective on life, I found Iceman to be a hugely sympathetic character, and Maverick to be a total pain in the arse I must be getting old. . . And, yes, I went off and built a Top Gun intercept mission, flying 2 F-14s (using the Iceman and Maverick skins from C5) off the Big E to tangle with a crowd of MiG-28s, as soon as I'd finished watching the film. Just because, with Thirdwire - you can If anyone wants the .msn file, I'll post it here

Thanks, Wrench I have added new formation types for Naval Nation types (USN & a new IJN Nation type) and added them in to the Formations.ini and Nations.ini. Now, fleet engagements take place over a respectable distance, and the ships don't cross over one another unrealistically. OK, I'm off to test out whether the IJN Battleships really will chew up a DesDiv in short order. OK, I know that surface engagements are not really what Midway was all about, but ship-to-ship really does make for good CAS missions

Great work, krfrge

Hmmm. . . Well, I've run it through TE but I'm having trouble re-creating the complex tiling between desert & Mountain tiles, which is part of what makes this terrain so interesting to fly over, despite the limited tile types. Of course, I am having to create a texturelist from scratch to do so. Anyone have the Texturelist MajorLee used to create this terrain in the first place?

Can anyone point me to the GunData entry for the 15IN_Mk1 which is used on Hinch's Japanese Battleship? I wondered why the big ships weren't firing, only to discover that this "big gun" is NOT included in the GunData from Bunyap's weapons pack. I have checked a few of my other installs and I can't find it anywhere. If some helpful soul could post the GunData entry that would be great. Cheers, Baltika