Bandy

Tried to see what could be done to freshen up the old stock FRTown background tiles; I was finding them very busy and hard on the eyes compared to the soothing sight of Jan's bucolic countryside. These screenies are just experiments/proof of concept of streets and shadows for only one town tile (stock tiles surround). I tried making drop shadows for the buildings, but this single tile is implemented in various rotations in game side-by-side and it looks funny to have conflicting shadows, at least to my eyes. I'm going to add more textures to mix it up so there will be less of a "concrete" feel: sidewalks, grass for parks, open squares,... Cobblestone streets would be nice too, eh?

Apologies, the following download has the beta tiles in proper rotation! I couldn't figure out how to delete the other upload. FRTown betas.zip

OK, Despite the mentioned bit issue with Photoshop (I cannot save as 8-bit bmps in the CS2 version I'm using, I MUST change Image Mode to 'Index Color' for 8-bit option to be activated on 'Save As', no way around it...), I can post some progress screens. What you see are only replacements for 3 core tiles, all the 9 other 'margin' town tiles (SEEN AS COLORED PLACE HOLDERS IN SCREEN SHOTS) still need to be completed, but they should go quickly now... Of interest, I've noticed that on sim-render the Town tiles sometimes randomly 'drop' a building here and there, sometimes even a complete set of buildings for a whole tile (see upper right of bottom screen shot), so if you try these beta tiles and see this problem it is not my fault!!! What I did to ameliorate this though is to leave 2D renders of buildings on the tiles, which render under the 3D buildings, so if they fail to show, all is not lost image-wise. The basic background below Jan Tuma's buildings is green grass, side walks, and what I hope looks like a cobblestone street texture. Also, the drop shadows give a nice effect, but when the same tile is used multiple times at different rotations, then there must be shadow conflict. If you can't live with this, don't try these tiles! That said, please try them out, and post constructive criticism. If you don't like the large 'round-a-bout' for FRTown1, I supplied an alternative [ALT] version of this FRTown1 tile, simply rename by deleting the [ALT]. TO INSTALL: Unzip the attached file, and place three of the town tiles in the .../Terrain(s)/seasonal_tiles/Early_Summer folder of Jan Tuma's terrain tile install. PLEASE back up FRTown1, FRTown2, FRTown3 first. Fly a 'Single Mission' in July in any terrain...

An update. I have made some progress with repainting Town tiles, but have run into an issue that I hope somebody may be able to help resolve. I have posted the following over at 3rdWire as well... The stock 3rdwire FRtown tiles are 8 bit, when I try to insert 16 bit bmp's they do not appear in game. I'm thinking TK has coded in this limit to help reduce the resource intensity of rendering towns in game because of the added requirement of all those buildings. Just a guess though. I'm using Photoshop to make the new Town tiles (and have had absolutely no problem making new tiles or editing bmp rural or river tga tiles in the past) but Photoshop does not allow me to save these Town bmp's at 8 bit, the option is not available. I have to change the image mode to 'Index color' to get the 8 bit option, which just wrecks any detail you try to introduce. Can I get Photoshop to save 8 bit bmp's without resorting to the mode change, or does it amount to doing the same thing? Can something other than 8 bit bmp's be used for town tiles???

FYI: 10.3 is beta, and some people are reporting certain problems (lost effects, etc...) with recent games tho didn't notice any flight sim issues on a brief browse of AMD's forum. Just mentioning this in case anybody reading this plays something other than flight sims

Yes, please post a screenshot. If TK used the SPAD XIII pit as suspected, then there should be at least some poke through of the cockpit mesh to both sides of the fuselage by the machine gun, as well as some poke through on the padding surrounding the pit opening. If this is the case, it is likely the reason why it is considered AI only. If not, let us know!

Moving the cockpit around is a PITA, but once accomplished is very rewarding. This has been done before, a cockpit.ini tweak for the SPAD VII and XII is described HERE...

I'll have to post some pics later of my son's Lego Bismark (inspired by the Dog Fights episode I let him watch) and the mini Swordfish I put together to attack him. I never get through the AAA... Lego time cuts in on sim time, but I have no regrets.

Well, you could order your wingmen to 'Rejoin' you at some point when you think they still have ammo left, then head for home. Difficult to do in a blazing dogfight tho... Try it out! I can't tell you the number of times I've been chased ALL the way back, sometimes by multiple NME AC. If they are within a certain range, they will continue to follow you. If you are a bit faster, then you'll see the NME at the tail end of the chase start to drop off. If possible I'll drag them over a nearby friendly airfield and let the AAA and AAMG even the odds a bit. It is usually a spectacular dogfight, and good for the morale of the ground crews and other regulars . One time on a campaign mission I had BvR, his brother, and another ace (I think Voss?) all chasing me in their DR1's, as well as at least a half doz. subalterns. My flight of SE5a's was mincemeat, so I ran for it and kept just ahead at tree top level. I was so shot up I just barely landed once I reached a friendly airfield. I took a screen shot b/c I knew it wouldn't happen again, or hopefully not... No line shoot.

Thanks for reply. Actually I did look at the link you provided before I replied above, so I know what it is, but I want to know HOW it is different from the stock campaign? What does it do better? What does it do worse? Is it like OFF campaign? Does it put more random AC in the air? Can you get jumped by enemy before you reach mission objective? So many questions... I hate the fact that everything happens at waypoint 5!!! If it is worth it, then JFM has a good suggestion, contact him. There is a very good chance that the Strike Fighter version could be ported over to FE since it is the same sim engine.

This is great Peter. Haven't had a chance to absorb any of it, but opening the black box for all of us is very cool of you. Thanks for sharing some of the knowledge you've gained. I suspect this thread is going to grow now that you've let the genie out of the bottle. Cheers!

Thirdwire on Twitter Grimviper posted over on 3rdwire forum...

Perhaps this is worthy of the knowledge base.

sponky, I'm ignorant of DCG, how/what would be different from the stock FE campaign? If you get it working, let us know! I'm willing to try most things at least once.

Olham, not sure if you have a cooler on your 4870 (or is it on your CPU as mentioned by RAF Louvert) but that GPU runs pretty hot as stock. It is supposed to take it, but IMHO they lowered the fan speeds just to decrease the fan noise. For around $20 to 30 I also picked up an Artic Cooling dual fan set up with a monster heat sink designed for the 4870. It lowered my temps at load by 30 to 40 degrees, and I'm not boasting. It was worth every penny... OC is a barrel of monkeys that can get out of hand... Will have to try boosting the sliders as you say, but I'll be a "doubting Thomas" till then. What I've noticed is that I can fly with absolutely great graphics and fps in the early to mid war period, but as soon as I get into mid 1917+ it all goes for a burton, and OFF turns into a slide show. Could be too much going on, too many polys in the late AC, who knows...

Somebody (I think it was Peter01, search on his posts for the last week or so) posted something about increasing Max vertex counts and some other variables in one of the ini's. Edit: Ah, I printed it off for future ref: Flightengine.ini ... [GraphicsSettings] ... Maxmodeltype=6144 Maxmeshperscene=12288 Maxmodelperscene=12288 give it a try.

quack! Yes of course it is for Jan's terrains; anything less would be, well, less!!! I totally agree with you about the human element required, but I was thinking one step further... At least a couple of animated vehicles (troop trucks, delivery trucks, a taxicab, ... but not too many to avoid FPS hits) could be made to travel a set path/circuit, such as the large rectangular boulevard in the tile featured above. These animated vehicles wouldn't be any different than having a truck make a circuit on the periphery of an airfield, as we see can be done. I suppose I understand the confusion about what tile set these will be made for. Jan did not re-paint the FRTOWN tiles, but he did a fine job with buildings and a natural layout. The issue I've run into is that it is d@mn hard to make the street pattern flow seamlessly from tile to tile as they are because the building layout is not mirrored, or symmetrical, along the edges within a tile let alone between the 3 FRTOWN tiles, i.e. a natural place to have a street 'exit' a tile ends up running into a building on the next tile 50% of the time. Now this was likely done to mix up the appearance of tiles, which is a noble goal.

No problems with campaigns here, just problems surviving in them! Those Fokker wingwarpers sure can put up a d@mn good fight though, too much roll perhaps, they're just nasty in scissors... PS: is it just my connection? None of the threads are showing up as viewed? They're all zero.

TK will not be upgrading the code of FE1 (or FE Gold) any further... So any new expansion pack will leave you behind. I'm currently waiting myself, even though I run Win7 and Dx10.

Peter, I've always had serious issues with Bortdafarm's aircraft, such as the entire rear portion of the fuselage swinging from side to side when the AI pilot uses rudder, and one of the Albatri flying around with sheared off prop, just little stubs left. Is this just a bad install, or have others noticed this as well? PS: can't wait till the whole package comes out! Thank you.

Oh, I have not seen that Buckey. Sounds like OFF2!!! I can rememebr fighting against EIII's with the engines blazing and the pilot looking for all the world like the blazing Ghost Rider... This is an interesting development. Engine fire but the pilot must have been unaffected according to the code, so he kept flying the burning crate. Got to admit, that does take heart! EDIT: so much for the notion that parachutes will make pilots prematurely jump out of their aircraft...

Has anyone experienced AI opponent with a shot-out dead engine, yet the AI pilot maintains flight control? I've always been morbidly interested in what happens to AI NME with a dud engine since first days of FE (remember the rampant "soft landings"?), then subsequent patches where soft landings almost never happened, or at least I never saw one for years. So now I try to follow them down every chance I get. Most times the pilot disappears after around 30 seconds and the AC crashes. Lately the pilot seems to be lasting much longer, and despite not having an engine some aircraft I've seen will still try to dogfight you if you follow them. On one occasion I had a prolonged dogfight with a Fokker DIII that did not loose altitude over the course of several minutes, and when I flew off finally "he" kept doing his patrol. I've had a few weird instances of things like this, but maybe not quite like that DIII. Not sure if these are unique glitches in how the game loaded on those occasions, so wanted to ask if others had weird experiences like this, or if might have something to do with the FM's.

Paint, From my understanding to mod any of the 2nd generation of 3rdWire sims the mods now go into your user documents/game folder/mod folder rather than the main game directory in the programs folder. See this thread HERE. Also look in any of the knowledge bases or on 3rdWire forum... The sim looks in the user/mod folder first before uploading. It is much simpler to do it this way; remove a mod from your user folder and the regular game file is then used, so no need to rename/copy stock files anymore!.

TK doesn't like to include the more graphic aspect of aerial combat. He has pretty much made this know and is set despite the fact that a simple slumped forward pilot is not that gruesome (he could be simply tying his shoes for instance!). I do not have FE2, but I would bet a year's wages it hasn't changed. A while back a group (sorry guys can't remember names) tried to see if they could mod a small wounded/dead pilot that would fit inside the active pilot so he would show up when the active pilot 'beamed out'. It didn't work, or it isn't available publicly, though I assume it is the former. Somebody else modded a scream when the pilot got hit, and is available here for download I beleive, but it was too blood curdling for me...

Ah, Jan's terrain is marvelous isn't it! Thanks for screenies Peter and for the effort to get FE2 up to speed. Quick question, your cloud tga looks different than mine, is that the IL2 cloud mod?