gerwin

May I ask about the FM? With the F/A-18A FM I currently use, the wings break off the fuselage at high G. I am wondering if the FM in this package is different from the previous one.

Practically it means that the three ini files that matter: -terrain.ini -terrain_data.ini -terrain_targets.ini Are to be opened with NotePad (included in Windows), then click 'save as', and select ANSI. And leave them like that, no need to change back to unicode. ...hardly a show stopper.

TFDtool can do these things too, but you need to extract the desert terrain from the cat first, and convert the necessary unicode ini files to simple ansi text. http://combatace.com/topic/68667-alternate-tfd-terrain-tilemap-editorviewer/

I messed with replacing the init screen some time ago, It did not work when put in any of the mod folders that I tried. The strange thing was that it does show when one puts the replacement bmp in the game's menu folder, IIRC.

There is an update available, v0.83: - F1 now shows the entire manual directly (html format). - Global Mouse X Y coordinates are shown in meters at the bottom right of the screen. Which probably raises the desire to have the mouse coordinates relative to a target area? My first attempt to add a clickable menu system did not go as smooth as I hoped, it conflicted somehow. I postponed that for now.

What I find annoying with the Navelmap system in single missions, is that when the KIEV carrier is enabled, A Strike mission will always target the KIEV, ignoring all other possible target areas in the map.

Icarus, If you want to replace every occurence of a tile with a new tile-image, just replace the tile-image, you don't really need any tool for that. If you want to add a new tile image only on certain hand picked locations: add the tile-image and manually make a new entry for it in the terrain_data.ini at the bottom of the list (with a unique number). Now when starting TFDtool you can toggle a tile to your new entry (with pgup/pgdn key IIRC), then as it becomes visible use 'copy/paste' to paint the new tile to locations of choice. Hope that answers your question.

desert? ain't that just the stock vietnam city tiles.

No, it is still the same thing. I case of updates, it will be notified here.

Glad you think so! Sorry I do not have it in an optional higher resolution. I wasn't really planning on making this release, it just started as an experiment. Here are the things I did, for as far as I remember: - 50/50 blend as mentioned already. Including the water, which now retains the darker spots on sea2. - snow tiles did not align seemless to eachother, so I repainted the edges. - Reintroduced the snow with rock patches, as I had earlier placed these tiles on specific places such as mountain tops. - the lowland green texture: I reduced the rocks on this particular tile, to give contrast to the more rough hills. - I removed the small lake from one of the tiles, as it was often was showing on ridges, while gravity would not allow water to show like this. ;)

New IcelandNA TFD terrain package is up. By default it now goes with a 50%-50% blend of my original tiles and stary's tiles. The Terrain now also works on any SF1 or SF2 game other then SF2NA.

UPDATE 5-9-2012: - Now includes reworked textures: 50% Based on my original israelME based tiles, 50% Based on Stary's high-res tileset for this terrain (v0.9 of 14.11.2011). with some adjustments - Now includes Stary's excellent terrain TOD set (trees and geysers). - Now includes some toned-down textures for the Iceland buildings. - Now includes files to run this terrain on any SF1 or SF2 game. For Download location see the first post of this topic. (Stary's package is located here: http://combatace.com...24-tileset-v10/ )

OK, thanks. I will upload it in the coming days.

As I am home again, I could try out this tileset. It is actually generally better then my original tiles, so that is great. If only for the fact that the green vs snow difference is more subtle. The tod work is excellent! I still had some stubborn ideas: made a 50%-50% blend of the original tiles and stary's at stock resolution, together with some other adjustments. This gave me the look I liked the most. Stary, would it be okay to equip the base Iceland terrain package with the 50%-50% based one? (With all credit and a link to your set.) PS, Also ready is a standalone version of IcelandNA modified to work with any SF game, even with SF1.

Nice to see some things evolving on iceland, Won't be able to check it out though, I am not home and internet is horrible here.

It is more complicated then that, actually. The CAT files are MUCH MUCH more difficult to open since that patch of around March 2011 Stary got what he needed, that is not the problem.

It isn't really useful to make a new cat extractor, I figure. Once ThirdWire hears about it they will encrypt the cats differently with the next patch release. I would. Maybe if someone asks Thirdwire nicely to release a new extractor version that allows extracting .lst+ .wav or something else too? Though .lst and .wav are not that interesting... I bet it is 99% unchanged since 2 years ago.

Why? I suspect it is because TK did not lock these files consciously. But instead all is locked by default, UNLESS the filetype is in a list of allowed filetypes: targa, jpeg, bitmap, ini.

Looks very good! I like the new skin details and the weathering.

USS America CV-66, launching strike missions. North Atlantic, Oct 1983.

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. )

View File USN-LoVis-Paintshop 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. Submitter gerwin Submitted 07/04/2012 Category Utilities / Editors