gerwin

Let me know what comes out of that. If need be I will consider keeping things to myself. I don't have THAT much time invested in making 3D models from scratch, so not too much at stake for me personally. For some other modders here it is a different matter.

That is what I am thinking of doing. I will also make two variants. One that reads unobfuscated LOD v0, v1 and v5. Another version reads all versions. The simpler variant will be able to open 95% of the user made aircraft, except some LOD v2 variants made with the feb 2010 3DSmax exporter. Yesterday I had to work on the animation importing again. LOD format stores animations fragmented, as in every frame has the position/rotation key stored, even if there was originally only a starting point-key and end-point key. I am trying the options to reduce superfluous animation keys. Other then that I did everything possible to retain the data stored in the LOD. There are no "unknowns" left in the LOD handling. I also added a bonus script to change textures from bmp to jpg or dds, or the other way around. The importer is aimed at 3DSmax 2009 32-bit. I tested it briefly in 3DSmax 8 (2005) but the importer runs out of memory there. At this point I could make it a 3DSmax-version agnostic exporter too, but I haven;t thought about it much, because I am content with 3DSmax 2009. I am not at home in Blender either. Exactly. Repair and improve. As well as making aircraft variants, or adding distance-lods for framerate unfriendly models.

They are intact. In the screenshot, I moved the animation slider all the way to the right to extend the landing gear, exhaust nozzles, and so on. After re-exporting, everything works in the game just as it did with the original LOD file. Note that the smoothing groups and welded/unwelded vertices are also intact.

Proof of the second part of my message: TW F-14A '77 No manual adjustments needed.

I have been giving old shelved projects a try with some AI assistance. Most of it for another game series. ChatGPT seems good at the start, until it isn't good anymore, and just keeps wasting your time, it is like it is pulling your leg. Claude Sonnet/Opus is good. Miles better. But you have to keep token usage in check. I don't see how with a pro account you could give it all SF2 dll files and spit out a useful project within the token limit, not at all. Too much to parse. It will ask for decompiled C anyways. And claude may refuse because of copyright. Maybe one dll project at a time would be a feasible project. Then when one dll is replicated in source, it may not be able to do what was hoped because another dll is at its limits (no room or interface for expansion). I got my old 3DSmax workflow up to e new level yesterday. Basically it can get any LOD into 3DSmax with all features "restored" in 10 seconds. Like I can export it back to LOD again and it will be functionally the same. Or in other words, it is like the max source file for everything is there. Probably not what some people would like, and I understand that. But that is how it goes with these things, it is always a thin line. I am undecided on what to do with it. My other "Combat Mission" project: I could not release before, but now, since these games are in unprotected form at GOG.com, will never be patched again and the devs were bought out by Slitherine, I no longer had the objections I had before.

Good to hear that SF2 works on Linux with this terrain. I never had much luck getting Strike Fighters 2 to run on Linux through Wine. My system is at Wine v10 level and uses the AMD GPU driver. I have a Windows multiboot to run SF2 and such.

Congrats on the release! Bought it yesterday. The game is new me, so I haven't gotten far, yet. Yes I would also much prefer a GOG version. I have wrapped the Steam_Api.dll so it is practically a GOG version now, as it runs without the Steam Client. It runs in Windows XP 32-bit even. The Demo mode is neat. I noticed there are 4 Demo templates, but things play out a little different every time. Good to see it is still has all the original (low poly) assets, not some mixup with mods in a different style.

I assisted Wrench with this terrain at the time. Used Xplanet software to convert rectangular DEM format to a Spherical image. October 20, 2013: "Here is Norway and the North sea in gnomonic projection. As a TFD file. Silimal to Germany CE in scale, and 1500x1500km. A Part of Iceland is still visible on the top left."

I updated the terrain slightly. Upload no. 15. - Two additional red airfields in the north. Two blue off-map airfields in Japan (which the mission generator does not really use...) - Completed the tod objects for the cities in the forest surroundings.

Not quite. This is a 1999 engine, AFAIK running as it always was. https://www.mobygames.com/game/1126/star-wars-x-wing-alliance/

So basically you asked for an update and now you have (found) it. ;) Do you mean airbases or just general bases? I suppose any added target-area can be a target, so I am then forced to make it a challenging and complete target-area, with AAA+SAM defences and such.

I am in the Netherlands. Actually it is currently quite hot here as well, in the afternoon especially. It reads 26.5 degrees Celsius in the shade. There is no air conditioning in my house...

Just happened to read this. You are talking about TFDtool data.ini exporting? And TAE is somehow case sensitive here? TFDtool used to write uppercase N: "FileName=something". I just changed this to "Filename=something" with lowercase n. In version 1.20 that is (no other changes since may 2025). Edit: need to change the syntax in the terrain mods on my website as well.

Glad you like it. Last version is upload 14 from 27-03-2025 (readme used to say 27-02-2025, but that is a typo) I will propably add some more TOD objects for cities and rivers, plus more Target-Areas like bridges. But it is summer now, with nice weather, so less time for computer hobbies...

Sorry I don't have any other GOG files for EAW. It seems GOG currently only offers v1.20 for download. See screenshots.

I have it here setup_european_air_war_1.20_(45828).exe eaw.exe = 1.431.040 bytes / CRC32: C757AE47

daddyairplanes/Nightshade. Good to hear that. I will keep that in mind. :)

Appreciate that. The aim is to stick to the Falcon 4 world, which depicts the situation in the 1990's. Not the 1950's. The map tiles already define airfield locations. The falcon 4 link gives it a touch of nostalgia. I found this sometime last year, and used it identify the airfields. https://maps.falcon-bms.com/ ( The BMS Korea there is a slightly tweaked version of the original Falcon 4 map, but it is mostly the same. ) I don't know if people actually use this Strike Fighters terrain conversion for something, other then me?... Wish I also had a conversion of Falcon BMS "MidEast 128". It looks neat: https://forum.falcon-bms.com/topic/23905/bms-4-37-theater-list

Hey Wrench. I see it in the screenshot. But In the game, and in TFDtool as well, there are no missing tiles. I would have seen it by now. Since I have been staring at this terrain long enough. Maybe TEA has a maximum amount of tiles limitation? I never really use TEA. (I do use Andy's LOD-viewer an TOD-editor)

It has been a year since. Past december I added 36 new .tod files to the terrain (=buildings and trees), amongst some other small adjustments. But I never uploaded it, until now. Also added an unrelated download package to my website: Ropucha Landing Craft.

There are 9 known version of LODs. It goes v0 to v8. Last official 3DSmax exporter makes v5 ones. v8 came with SF2 North Atlantic Wings over Israel expansion 2010 (not SF2) can use up to v4. IIRC. You can check the version of a LOD file with a hex-editor. v0 has no "LOD" header and starts right off with the number of nodes at byte 1. All other versions have their version-number in the 8th byte of the file. I do not use Blender much, so I don't know about the specifics there.

The promised update is available now. At least; the city tiles are now added. I did not get to the river tiles, because the Falcon 4 terrain conversion took too much time already. The default install still retains only the stock IcelandNA targets. So to have populated harbors and some other tweaks, refer to the standalone variant files, as found in the 'standalone' subfolder. The Terrain Objects .tod file tuning was also brought over to the Novalogic terrain conversions, so these are also slightly updated now.

Upload no.11 The height-map is now upscaled to 4x the tile-map size. The main reason is that the Strike Fighters engine seems to run better with this change, for some reasons I don't know... It gives better frame-rate and has visually better horizon terrain buildup. So the _Data ini settings from the first post do no longer apply. It was not easy to upscale the height-map in a way that retains sharpness in the mountain- and ridge-tops. Had to program a custom upscale in TFDtool, then blend it with some filtered variants. It should be good now. Added some target-area's in the hills and at the DMZ. This is where the terrain looks best. The DMZ is not quite so demilitarized now. There are around 40 .tod terrain objects now. Solely for the full city tiles. Tailor-made to fit these. Then the usual tile-map and tile-texture adjustments.

AFAIK it is like this: - You can open the aircraft main ini with LOD viewer, and that is the best way of making it display properly. - You can open the .lod model file, but then LOD viewer assumes there is a main ini file with the exact same name (before extension) and tries to open that. For example: When the lod file is named phantom.lod and the ini file is F4.ini, then LOD viewer will not find, read or use the F4.ini file, and it will not know about texture subfolders.

Back to the classic tileset. Upload No.7 is there. -Rewrote TFDtool randomized auto-rotate of certain tiles, to be as smart as I could possibly see it. Then applied it. - More manual adjustments of 45 degree road/river tiles. - Photoshop adjustment of 4 tiles. - Added 3 blue airbases. The ones which were historically significant. Edit: Upload 8 - Added harbor target area for blue and red. - More tile mapping adjustments and tile texture adjustments. - Renamed one airfield.