malibu43

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/ntsb_to_get_findings_in_reno_air_DPVbsn4BwgiNO6aHNnWczO Interesting to finally see the results.

Didn't realize I missed this great terrain update from Stary when I was out of town a couple weeks ago!

My suggestion would be to release "Hot fixes" in a file announcement thread or something (just a simple .zip file attached to a post) whenever an update is needed, and at the same time go back and update the main download. That way those that already have it installed just need to check in with CA every once in a while and d/l the hot fix when needed. Someone who hasn't installed it can always go to the main download and get the most up to date version without having to wade through months or years of hot fixes and patches as well.

OK. Here this is basically what I posted on the first page + the SAM/AAA packs, SARCASM, and Unified Effects Pack. All integrated happily. This doesn't include the paveknife and AAA/SAM changes you posted above. This also doesn't include the terrains. I have them zipped up and ready to go, but they're huge. I'll just hold onto them unless someone specifically wants to work on something. Then we'll eventually have to figure out how to split them up and upload them (or just give links to the originals...). Common BaseMod Folder.rar Full Merged BaseMod Folder.rar SF2 BaseMod Folder.rar SF2E BaseMod Folder.rar SF2I BaseMod Folder.rar SF2NA BaseMod Folder.rar SF2V BaseMod Folder.rar What's left at this point? Off the top of my head: - squadronlist.ini - avionics from Crusader - weapons - any loadout adjustments other than A-10's and F-4's. I didn't include Gerwin's NA tiles at this point in my terrains. I know they're necessary for a lot of people to get acceptable frames, but they also really downgrade the appearance of the water. Do you guys think they're a "must-have"?

That happens to me when I tell my laptop to us the Integrated Intel Graphics Chip instead of my ATI 6770M. Do you have switchable graphics?

I'll try to get something uploaded today. With regards to the depression angle - If I remember correctly anything that resembles a useful depression angle results in the gunsight not being on the reflector glass and down in the cockpit somewhere instead. If you download Bunyaps Weapons pack (I think it's from 2006), it had a great pdf with all sorts of charts, airspeeds, altitudes, angles, etc...

I was actually thinking a couple days ago that I missed the WoE Euro Camo for the F-4's. If I get any skinpacks, this might be one of them. But that's a big if... Have any of the other skin packs included updates to campaigns to utilize the skins?

That sounds fine then. I'll try and help out with integrating as much as I can, but like I said, I'm pretty limited on time right now. If someone feels like picking it up at some point, feel free. As much as I hate to say it, I'm totally burnt out on SF2 right now. So I'm going to be poking along pretty slowly on things.

So, it looks like those are all objects that don't currently have a userlist. Is that correct? If that is the case, I don't think there is any advantage of adding one. Without a userlist.ini, they will still show up on the Black Sea terrain. The only time it's an issue is if an object does have a userlist and a terrain that should use the object isn't on there. I'd rather not mess with eburger's files if we don't have to. That way if he updates his pack, we can just drag and drop into our mod. I can add that other stuff as well. I'm busy for a while, so I can't say it will be anytime soon. To be honest, things like ejection seats seem like something that might be overkill and crossing from the "basic must-have enhancements to the stock game" to "rivet counting". Maybe that's just me though...

Trying to figure out how the hell to be effective with CCRP...

Yes, adding "dummy terrains" to a mod folder will prevent that terrain's campaigns from showing up. Here are dummy terrain folders for all the stock terrains: Dummy Terrains.rar

If there is going to be a DCS/LOMAC presence here at CA, that makes it all the more tempting. Installing DCS world now to play around with the SU-25T. Gonaa fire up FC2 and learn the ropes of the A-10 so I'm ready when FC3 comes out. If anyone is interested in some REALLY casual multiplayer, let me know.

It definitely seems a big change is imminent.

Go to options.ini and adjust the single mission start and end dates.

Agree. I'm really surprised it hasn't happened already.

While I haven't bought any DLC (other than the campaign editor) because it doesn't really interest me, it at least seems like the pricing is fair. $3 for a skin pack or new variants of existing aircraft seems fair to me. Yeah, he's selling stuff that someone in the community can do on their own, but he's selling it for less than a lunch at a fast food restaurant. I feel like my time's worth enough that (if I was interested in any of the DLC), I would spend $3 easily instead of trying to hack it together on my own. Actually, at $3, I've been contemplating getting some stuff I'm not super interested in just because it's so cheap.

Go ahead and send me your updated userlists and .ini files. I'll take a look at adding them.

Well, we already have it broken down into common files, title specific files, and files for a full merged install. That's 6 folders already. I'd like to not have to replicate that same structure through multiple .zip files if possible. I think we should be able to fit everything but terrains into one file easily. And then I guess we'll just have to have a couple more .zips to cover all the terrains. I'd like to add some other stuff to the terrains like waternormal.bmp and maybe JSF Aggie's hi-res runway and taxiways (if someone can help me figure out why some airbases still have some stock textures showing in spots).

I've been teetering on the edge of doing the same thing Dave did for a while now. I want to fly, not edit files in notepad and shuffle around folders in order to get my game to look like an up-to-date title. Not to mention the Combatace and Thirdwire forums have had more drama than an episode of Keeping up with the Kardashians. In fact, I thought I'd made the move a couple weeks ago, but FC2 just didn't quite do it for me and I came back to SF2. But my focus is on finishing up a couple things I'm working on and then I just want to play!

Cool. Sounds like we are all in agreement. I am starting to compile Stary's stuff and the AAA/SAM pack into the folders. Then once I'm done with that, we can look into weapons. My GermanyCE folder with Stary's Baltic tiles is 470MB zipped up, so we may be looking at multiple files to download (which I didn't want to do). We could do separate downloads for the terrains, but then if we aren't adding anything other than Stary's tilesets, we may as well just point users to the existing downloads. Hmmmm... will have to think about that. Or maybe we'll add more stuff than just what Stary has...

Well, to your point earlier HF, it seems like we seeing two different purposes for the realism mod develop. The first (and original) intent of the realism mod was to fill in "gaps" left by the stock game. My understanding was that this would first and foremost be things like terrains, effects, and clouds (things that look 15 years old in the stock game). And then we expanded that to some other things like loadout or avionics corrections, and expansion of some of the stock campaigns. In my mind, the AAA and SAM mods still fit within the original scope, since the stock AAA and SAMs are pretty limited and not very threatening. The AAA and SAM pack help to make it feel like WW3. Again, all things that the stock game "should" have. And now it seems another purpose is being proposed, where this mod becomes a base pack for all other mods to be built on top of and includes things that really may not be noticed by most users unless they add something else later on. For example, adding in lots of decals doesn't do anything to enhance the stock game unless you add other mods that utilize them. A Soviet bombs pack will be totally invisible to someone unless they add flyable red aircraft that make use of those weapons. Gunny's weapons pack is great, and contains a lot of stuff that is neat to see in the loadout menu, but serves no purpose in the stock conflicts (different types of napalm and incendiary weapons, smoke marking rockets, bombs with fuse-extenders, etc...). Also, I don't know if it makes sense to include hi-res skins of weapons when we aren't even including aircraft skins. (the exception to everything in this paragraph would be stock weapons that need to be fixed or new weapons that fill obvious gaps) Not only does adding all the secondary stuff mean extra time to test and compile it (as well as bumps up the size of the download), it also works off of the assumption that folks will actually use the "modding base" that we're building. If someone builds a new aircraft 6 months from now, will they use our decals and weapons, or just customize and create the few things that they need? There have been several weapons packs over the years. Each one was going to be the new standard, until something came along 6 months later that replaced it. In fact the community seemed to move away from weapons pack toward individual aircraft comeing with the specific weapons that they needed. I'd just hate to see us put a lot of extra work into something that is ignored or superceded a few months down the road. So, I agree with what we talked about earlier - the "realism mod" that is just an enhancement of the stock game, and then a community weapons/skins/decals pack that can go on top of the realism mod and serve as a base for futre mods. I'm going to focus mostly on the realism mod (since that's really what I'm interested in) and leave the community mod base up to you guys (if that's OK). *edit - Of course, I ain't the boss. If folks feel that adding lots of weapons is the way to go, then we can always do that. It's just a game, afterall...

I can be the integrator. I already have most of the work done (I've already integrated eburger's new stuff). So as more folks have things to add, I can compile them. I'll take care of adding all of Stary's stuff (terrains, sky, effects). Lets see what we have when we're all said and done and see if/how it makes sense to break things up into two packs. Maybe we could do a "Level 1" with terrains, clouds, and effects, and then a "Level 2" with things like loadouts, avionics, SAMs and AAA, etc... But again, we should look at it when we're all done. We're already at 6 different folders to install with just one realism pack. I don't want to make things overwhelming with 12 different folders to look at. Adding in a weapons pack is fine, as long as: 1. There's a reason for it. I don't want to create and entire weapons pack just because. I think the stock weapons cover the time frame very well, work well, and are balanced. I think we should limit the weapons pack to key weapons that are missing or fixes for stock weapons (like the adjustments for base qty for the MK82SE and Rockeye that I've included). 2. Someone wants to do it and does it right. I don't have time right now. And, I think most of the weapons packs that are already out there are pretty old at this point. So pulling weapons from those will require a lot of testing, updating, and checking for gameplay balance.

Yeah. Who knows what the real cost would be for a stand alone "new" DLC aircraft. SF2NA just gave you the F-14 and an A-7. But the A-7 was just ported over from an existing title. That means it was $30 for the F-14 (plus other code/terrain changes). It seems in general the cost per aircraft has gone up throughout the life of the series. SF2 by itself delivered all kinds of flyables, and then each title after that usually had less "new" aircraft to offer. TK sure has milked the crap out of the old F-4, A-4, and Hunters. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

It's been quiet around here lately...

Below is a zip file that has the "master" RWR.lst based off of dtmdragon's with all the neccessary entries for eburger's AAA and SAM's pack. It also has avionics files for all the stock TEWS aircraft updated to use the new master RWR.lst. These folders could be just dropped into the aircraft folder and you'd be ready to go. RWR Lists.rar If we want to use eburger's new AAA and SAM pack for this mod (which I think we do), I can replace my "Common BaseMod Folder" from the beginning of this thread at some point with eburger's new stuff dropped in instead of my old AAA pack. Speaking of "what we want to do", Dave was the ring-leader for this project, but it looks like he's taking a break from modding for a while (or for ever). Other than my initial uploads and the squadronlist.ini work that's gone on, we don't really have anything else done yet. What else do we want to include? - updated avionics? - Crusader, Dave threw your name out for this one. Do you have anything in the works for this? Or is it just grabbing all of your individual mods out of the downloads section? - Terrains - I can add the latest and greatest terrains mods from Stary from the downloads section. - Sky - I can add the latest and greatest sky mod from Stary from the downloads section. Is there anything else we want to add here? I know Dave had mentioned a weapons pack, but I don't know of one readily available that's up-to-date, and I don't know of anyone working on one. My time is limited, so I may be able to compile the stuff listed above, but I don't have bandwidth to tackle a weapons pack. Do we really need a weapons pack? I can't think of weapons that I really wish I had during typical gameplay.