gerwin

Not so long ago I was still mainly running SF1 2010, but now I am quite settled in SF2. There is still on thing ugly in SF2 that is fine in SF1. It is a shimmering effect of TOD buildings. Even with a slight change of zoom level the offset of the buildings seem to noticably change in relation to the terrain tile. As illustrated with the picture, which is a detail of a screenshots scaled 200% to make it clearer. The situation in the two pictures is the same except that one is slightly more zoomed in. I tried a few things with the "SolidObjectTextureMaterial"in the terrain datafile, but currently I don't think that the problem is in that datafile.

You mean the clipping/popup distance of the terrain objects? For that see This Topic In particular the code snippets below the line: "Also the TOD visibility was actually reduced in SF2 vs SF1!? so I changed it back."

Then jpeg is the type of compression that is lossy. Whereas png and also zip/rar/7z are lossless, but generally compress less. For fun just try to compress an image with maximum jpeg compression to see the nature of the compression. You will start seeing squares with gradients, which is wat a jpeg consists of. More subtle jpeg settings look fine though, for big images. The 1024x1024 skins have a good margin in that regard. Images that are already small as they are, are better left as bmp.

It was mostly the interest in guided missiles that made me look for something else to play next to IL-2 Sturmovik, years ago. I think the behaviour of the missiles can make or break this game. I also recently noticed the changes in missile behaviour, or in hitbox behaviour. But if I want to define it I need to do lots of testing and make lots of notes. I guess the only way to settle this, is if TK would write a missile behaviour test procedure, One that calculates different missiles fired at different targets in different conditions, let it process dozens of combinations, then look at the statistics of the effects. Then something else, It seems that Thirdwire is devoted to emphasize their strong points (pretty planes), but has a very "typical" approach regarding its weak points (like sound and terrain). Maybe that is the budget game effect?

Spinners-Style Modification, nice one! To end my topic hijack, here is the new place for the F-14_77 LoVis, together with some other skinning projects in the same style. SF2 Patches and Tools \ USN-LoVis-Paintshop (I will remove the file from the previous location. )

File Name: USN-LoVis-Paintshop File Submitter: gerwin File Submitted: 04 July 2012 File Category: Utilities / Editors USN/USMC low visibility tactical color schemes Paintshop - GB 3-7-2012 All USN/USMC low visibility tactical color schemes are now put in a single archive for sharing at combatace. All due credit to the original model and skin creators: Third Wire (A-4M,A-7E,F-4J,F-14A_77) Mirage Factory + BPAo + Flying Toaster (F-14A+B,F-4S,FA-18A) Mostly I just made masks and converted colors which took enough time as it was already. Work In Progress Release: Beware that in the past the max resolution I worked with was 512x512 per skin, and lower res decals. Beware that I was sometimes to lazy to make the correct seperation from light grey to medium grey. Leaving the seperation where the old Gull grey used to fade to white. Photoshop 60 Conversion.atn contains the following automated actions for color conversion: -F-14 grey Med (convert to Medium grey, from gull grey as used by third wire) -F-14 to grey light (convert to Medium grey first) -F-14 to grey dark (convert to Medium grey first) US Navy/Marine Low visiblity colors: Dark: FS 35237 used as anti glare, or topside F-4S Medium: FS 36320 (RGB 157,164,176) top A-4,A-6,A-7,F-14,F/A-18, side F-4S Light: FS 36375 (RGB 171,176,184) bottom A-4,A-6,A-7,F-14,F/A-18,F-4S The Medium and Light RGB values were obtained by taking average color values from photographs on the net. Click here to download this file

Sorry about that. was fast enough during upload. I felt it was too unfinished to upload here. Here is an alternate address, I will keep it there for the weeks to come: F-14A_77_LoVis.rar The skins have the detail of the Third Wire Skins, but with adjusted colors. The selection masks I used are in the PSD's too (alpha channels).

F-14A '77 in experimental paintscheme, Iceland 1984.

Glad I could help. Something entirely different, well not entirely, I just had to see how this F-14A looks in Low Visibility Tactical paint, The skin pack made the color conversion a lot easier. Here are the PSD files of the skin, maybe someone feels like reviewing the details and adding decals? (first time I use this file host, don't know if it works well) F-14A_77_LoVis.rar:

That is weird, I just tried it again a few times with my install, and these folders are automatically regenerated and updated. I attached the folders for your convenience, but really, they should be created by the game. Aircraft.zip

I had that too at the first try. This fixed it: Delete the F-14A and F-14A_77 folders from your user content folder / mod folder and restart the game.

The patch is quite big in size: 105 MB. Whilst the previous may patch was just 20 MB. I wonder what changed other then wat is officially listed.

Should work fine on XP, without compatability wizard. Works for me.

Another update: I noticed Jane's US Navy Fighters has different music tracks, these are now included.

File Name: CatPack Archiving utility File Submitter: gerwin File Submitted: 29 December 2008 File Updated: 20 July 2011 File Category: SF/WO* Utilities/Editors CatPack - Archiving utility for Third-Wire CAT format, GB 17-07-2011. V1.22, Freeware, Use at your own risk, files limit is set at 8000. Packs all files in current folder to CatPack.cat except CatPack.exe/CatPack.cat. Unpacks any cat file you drop on the icon to a folder with the archive's name. You can press Ctrl+Break to interrupt and close the program, but it will leave files unfinished when doing so. UPDATE: CatPack V1.1 will extract contents of the new Strike Fighters 2 Cat (no 2) archives. The Display will tell the Cat version to be 2, instead of 1. Subfolder information contained in version 2 archives will be restored properly. The unicode filenames in the version 2 archives are converted back to ASCII, therefor actual unicode-only characters in filenames will not be restored. Catpack does not yet support creating a version 2 Cat archive. Maybe later. CatPack V1.11 works properly when Cat files are in folders that have their 'archive' flag set. This seems to be the case with the SF2 objects folder. CatPack V1.12 has some additional features when extracting a Cat archive: First it automatically creates an index file of the Cat file. Second and it allows one to optionally pass a wildcard string, only files matching this wildcard string will be extracted from the archive. For example "mig" will only extract files that have "mig" in their name or extension. CatPack V1.22 Supports extracting a slightly new Cat format (no 3) as introduced between May and July 2011. Yet the compressed format that was also introduced is not supported. As SF2 since that time does not recognize version 1 cat archives, support for creating version 2 and 3 was added. Though without packing subfolders. For now it is recommended to just use format 2. Credits: Gerwin (gbroers[at]quicknet[d0t]nl) - Author Kreelin and Paolo - Beta testing of V1.1. Allegro game programming library - File and Unicode routines. Click here to download this file

Next time it would be better not to import the DEM height data like this. It is sourced from a rectangular world projection which squashes everything in the north and the south of the globe. Stretching it with photoshop can reduce the effect.

Glad you got it sorted out. It takes some tweaking to make it run nicely on XP.

eh.. Read the readme file.

The latest Third wire cat extractor is from april, not march. Third Wire Tools

I checked it: they are in flightdata.cat, but locked.

I don't have much to add to whgat was written already. The only sure way to determine any tile placement is by reading both the terrain TFD file, and the terrain Data.ini. Then of course the tiles themselves .BMP/.TGA. The TFD is the tilemap, the Data.ini is the reference table. When these files are in a CAT archive, they need to be extracted first. The file formats are pretty easy to read, except for the latest CAT format, that one is terrible.

IIRC they are in flightdata.cat, but locked.