Baltika

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.

Good call with the Green Hell mod, I think CA mentioned somewhere that any terrain which uses the VietnamSEA tileset will work with his treemod. I must try that out, but I've been too busy squashing bugs in Battle of the Philippines '41-42 campaign v1.0, oops As to the tsunami, yes, there is a way to fix this. Just follow Gepard's excellent TE tutorials (right here: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showforum=191 ) and either hand-edit the .bmp file of the terrain to smooth out the sea, or place land tiles over the tsunami waves so they look like land. Hmm, yes, I know, it's time-consuming, but not impossible The problem with the elevation of Corregidor is that the game engine only "sees" elevation in certain pre-determined "bands." There is a TE discussion thread somewhere which tells you how to fine-tune those bands to the overall elevation of the terrain you are dealing with - just fly over Dave's resurrected SoCal terrain (courtesy of Wrench, The) to see some real coastal mountains But, again, you have to get your hands dirty in TE to fix it. It would be possible to simply hand-edit the .bmp elevation file for Corregidor to make it more mountainous, but I don't have Edward's Phillippines terrain set up in TE just now. And, having started on Iceland, I'm not about to start another TE project in this lifetime. (OK, I admit, I have a full-scale Scandinavia on the go, but that won't see the light of day for, ooh, decades ) Note to self: Finish current projects before starting any more new ones Hope that helps point you in the right direction, at least. Cheers, Baltika

Looking forward to this one, thanks Gepard

Hi there, Canadair, Like I said I got the idea from one of Stwa's maps, so he gets the credit for that particular idea. Like you say, the possibilities are interesting. Wrench, Good idea about setting the target value, although I have to say I have not had this problem yet in campaign play. I think Clark Field 1 & 2 on Luzon are both Runway 5 - your B-17s need somewhere to take off from after all But the rest, I think, are all runway three, so it would be easy to select an "unused" runway type for your off-map airfields. As to the earlier B-17 variants, do we need a different 3D model, or can it be done by .ini edits? Wait, no, if it could be done that way . . . I'm sure you would have done it already Sadly my 3D skills are non-existent. Hmm, now where should chapter two take us? Wait, no, back on the road to Mandalay

Hi CA, Hope you like it Of course, a couple of errors have crept into the readme. When setting up your Philippines 1941 terrain, do NOT copy the planning maps from the original terrain. I have included new planning maps for the 1941 terrain which will be over-written if you copy them from the original terrain as instructed. For the avoidance of doubt, you should copy all the files in the "Phillipines" folder over to "Philippines1941" EXCEPT the following:- P40E1.BMP P40E1Dest.BMP P40E2.BMP PlanningMap1.bmp PlanningMap2.bmp PlanningMap3.bmp Phillipines.INI Phillipines_briefing.INI Phillipines_DATA.INI Phillipines_dogfight.INI Phillipines_movement.INI Phillipines_nations.INI Phillipines_targets.INI Phillipines_types.INI This is because the Philippines1941 folder already contains the appropriate version of the above files. If anyone has any trouble getting it up & running, just give me a shout. Cheers, Baltika

Hi there, Wrench, Yup, the B-17F is a placeholder. There are a couple of others, in particular the G4M2 in place of the G4M1 and the G3M2, and the D3A1 for the C5M/Ki-15 and Ki-36. The tanks are not quite right either - we need an early war Jap Light Tank (Type 95 maybe, but I'm no expert) and an M3 Stuart Light Tank, some mounted cavalry for the 26th Cavalry Regt (Philippine Scouts), and of course the IJN Ryujo. Thanks for confirming the origin of the Val. I will update the readme to credit Pasko (although of course the planes are not included in the campaign d/l). BTW, where can the Val be found these days? I had a good hunt around for it and couldn't find it online - maybe it could be uploaded here? Canadair, The simple trick is to define runway target areas which are beyond the edges of your terrain map. Obviously you only need the first few entries, like this:- [TargetArea043] Name=Taichung Field ;Formosa Position=340000.000000,1500000.000000 <= These co-ordinates are off the edge of the map Radius=4242.640625 ActiveYear=0 LOCATION=2 Alignment=ENEMY AirfieldDataFile=desert_airfield5.ini NumSquadrons=6 Target[001].Type=Runway5 Target[001].Offset=0,0 Target[001].Heading=240 Target[002].Type=Tower2 Target[002].Offset=-54.867,10.024 Target[002].Heading=0 Target[003].Type=windsock Target[003].Offset=50.621,682.426 Target[003].Heading=0 Target[004].Type=windsock Target[004].Offset=-50.37,682.426 Target[004].Heading=0 The campaign engine "sees" the above base for the purpose of stationing air units there. AI only, obviously. I think if you try to use a squadron based there as a flyable, and take off from its home base, you will get a CTD - but I haven't tried it. I don't want to end up in the Twilight Zone. I d/k if this will cause problems with single missons, but the 1941 terrain mod was designed specifically with campaign play in mind. So far, I have not been tasked to attack one of these "ghost" bases, but if it happens to anyone, let me know, I may have to go back to the drawing board. Cheers, Baltika