Gepard

LESSON 4: improving the Terrain (The City List) With the end of Lesson 3 we were able to fly the first time over the new terrain. Now we will make a better looking terrain. I dont know wheter you like the allocation of the terrain types. I, for my case, think there is to much snow in this terrain. This i want to change now: Step 1: - Open TE, open Kashmir terrain, open texturelist Step 2: - click Texture List, click Edit Texture Type List A dialog box is opening. It shows the types or classes of the texture tiles. You see, we have classes for Sea, Grass, Field, Forest, Snow, City and two markers. Step 3: - double click on one of this classes, lets say Snow you see, that the allocation of the texturetiles is defined by Altitude. The Snow tiles starts at 1200 meters. I change this enty into 2500 meters. Click OK. Step 4: -Then i open the Forest class and change the max Altitude from 1200 to 2500. Click OK. If i would not do this step there would be a gap in tilesetting that the TE would fill with strange tiling. -Then i close the dialog box Step 5: -click on Edit -click on Autotexture -check out wheter you like the result. If not go back to step 3 and readjust the values. Play a little bit with the values till you find a allocation of the tiles you that fit your taste - If you has found such a allocation, then save the Texturelist After that we can start to work the City List. The City List is a very powerfull tool of the TE. With the CityList you can define where to place cities and airfields. With this list TE will create a new prototype _target.ini. With this list TE will be able to flatten areas for runways. With this list TE will place automatically city tiles on the map while autotexturing the terrain. Lets go! Step 1: - click City List - Click New City List - choose a name and save it. In my case i save it as Kashmir_Cities.ini Step 2: - click Edit City List A Dialog Box is opening -click New next Dialog is opening -i insert following entries: City Name: Karachi Terrain type: C City Position x 226 Position y 305 Randomess 0 Width : 8 Lenght: 7 -click OK Now City of Karachi is done. You will ask from where i get the values for the entries. Now this is easy. To get it you need a sheet of paper, a pencil and a map. Change the view of the TE from "View Texture Tile" to "View Height Field" Then you must look on the map choose a town then look on the heigh field of the TE and try to locate it with the cursor. I know it is difficult and often more a guess, but with the help of Coastlines, mountains and rivers it is possible to place the cursor more or less on the correct place. Now look in the left below corner of TE. You see the position of the cursor in values of a coordinate system. The values are given in meters. For the position of Karachi i had 226000 and 305000. The dialog box need entries in kilometers, what means i enter only 226 and 305. If you has to enter values like 226755 meters, so write in dialog box 226.755. The Width and Length of a city are only guesses. But make this values not to small. The best way to handle this step is to write down all values and if you have all on the paper, then enter them into the dialog box. - After doing Karachi i enter the values for the next two pakistani cities and 3 indian cities. Hydrabad x 282 y 333 W 6 L 5 Mirpakhas x 294 y 329 W 4 L 5 Ahmadbad x 478 y 325 W 8 L 7 Rajkost x 406 y 169 W 4 L 5 Goa x 411 y 93 W 4 L 5 On this Step you should include all cities you want to see on the map, as more, as better. For this tutorial i place only 3 cities for each side. But you can place some hundreds of cities here. Step 3 - Then i save the Citylist Step 4 - Then i will Autotexture the terrain again and look wheter the cities are on the place i intended. If not i go back to Step 2 and edit the entries. When we have placed all cities we should place the runways Step 1: -Look on the map for airfield positions, then look into TE and find out the x and y coordinates. write it down on your sheet of paper. Step 2: -Click Citylist, click Edit City List - Click New - Enter the values but now make sure to set a hook into "Has Airfield" the values i use are: P1 airfield x 224 y 295 w 6 L 6 P2 airfield x 268 y 333 w 6 L 6 P3 airfiled x 258 y 302 w 6 L 6 I 1 airbase x 339 y 174 w 6 L 6 I 2 airbase x 303 y 178 w 6 L 6 I 3 airbase x 390 y 209 w 6 L 6 As terrain tiles type i use in this case Grass. (W and L define the size of the airfield. with the value 6 the TE will create a flatten area in form of a circle with 6km. You can experiment with this value, but make it not to small.) Step 3: - save City List Step 4: -Click Edit - Click Autotexture the terrain You will find now at the places of the airfields grassland, and of course the cities at the places where they have to be. Step 5: -Click Edit -Click Transistion textures Now you can see the change of the terrain. The tiles now fit. Between the tileclasses are now placed transistion tiles. Step 6: -Click Edit -click Level airfield Look on the Heighfield map. Around the airfield placed the area is flaten. Step 7 - Click file - click Save all Now the work with TE is done. (For the first time, we will need the TE later again.) You can close the TE. Now it is time to make backups. Move the hfd and the tfd file into your backup folder. The best is to give this files calling names. For instance Kashmir_leveled_airfields.hfd. The reason is, that TE has no undo function. If you make a mistake in further development, you has now a original file to start your work again. (BY THE WAY: If you fly a test mission over water, you will see, that something looks strange. The water is white. The reason is that the TE had overwritten the Kashmir_DATA.ini file with an old (incompatible) version. Thatswhy i told you in LESSON 1 to put your Kashmir_DATA.ini into your backup folder. Now its time to fetch it back to get back the blue water of the rivers and the sea. And this you must do every single time when you has saved something with the TE.) The next step is to creating the target areas. But this will be the task for the Lesson 5.

1.I renamed the terrain, as many users wanted it into Formosa Strait (Taiwanhaixia). 2. Made finetuning of terrain tiling, set some rivers on the map. 3. Created Port of Gaoxiang (Taiwan) screenshot is above.

Hunter. A FT-17 beta version you will find at Capuns Site. And a F-18C, why you dont try it yourself? All modders started because they wanted something that was not available.

The limit of target areas is 999. But there is a limit of objects which can be placed on the map. But dont ask me how big this number is.

Mirage 2000 Mikoyan Gurevitch E-8

For the Radar we have some nice features which i would like to have in the HUD. For instance the Horizonline, the max and min rangebars of the weapon and the target rangebar. Has someone an idea, how to copy this features from Radar to HUD? Would be nice to have for further improvements of soviet HUD.

LESSON 2: Preparations Now it will be time to prepare our Terraineditor (TE) and to fetch the files which are neccessary for working with it. But before we do it, i think i should explane you some basics of a SFP1 (WOV, WOE) terrain. 1. The terrain is allways a square 2. All datas are given in metric system 3. The terrain has a high data field which define the position and altitude of hills etc. 4. Over the high data field are layed out single tiles of terrain texture. With this tiles you must puzzle together the terrain. All available terrain texture tiles together are the Texturetileset. 5. .... Ehm, sorry i have forgotten it at the moment, but no problem we will get it running without No.5. Okay. Before we can work with the TE we must have access to the terrain texturetileset and to the High data field. From where we will get it? Step 1.1: Terrain tileset extraction The terrain tileset is part of the file GermanyCE.CAT. Also we must open this file with SFP1E extraction utility and extract all terrain tiles. You can identify this files by name It begins with GermanyA1.bmp end end with GermanySG75A.tga Extract all of this files ( but no _HM.BMP files, they are not neccessary). The extracted files you will find in GermanyCE folder. Move them into your Kashmir/texturelist folder. All file in this folder are neccessary for TE working, not for the game itself. The bmp files are normal terrain tiles, the tga files are for "water" tiles. (rivers, coasts, sea) Step1.2: Tileset preparation The TE is working only with bmp files in size 256x256 pixel. What means, that we must convert all tga files into bmp files. Open the tga files with paint program and save them as bmp file. If you want to work with a high res tileset which you has downloaded from Internet you must resize all tiles into 256x256 pixel. I know it is a boring job, but without this procedure TE will not work properly. Step 1.3: The Texturelist The Texturelist define the terraintiles for the TE. Be happy, that TK has sent us the texturelists of SFP1, WOV and WOE with his last version of the TE. When i began terrain building i had to make the texturelist myself. Open your terraineditor folder and copy the file TexturelistWOE into your Kashmir/texturelist folder. Thats it for the terrain texture. Step 2:Now lets go to the high data field. You can create a random high data field with TE, but i had never done it. I prefer real high data. Such data you can find in the Web. This are GTOPO30 data which are basing of radar satellite altimeter measurement. You find them at following link: http://edc.usgs.gov/products/elevation/gtopo30/gtopo30.html This site is selfexplaining. Download the area of the world you are interessted in and store it in backup folder or where ever you want. What you has to do with it i will tell you in LESSON 3, which will follow soon.

This is advanced terrain building. I will explain it in a later lesson.

Okay friends. In the last time i got a lot of questions how i make my terrains. Instead a Tutorial i will show you the development of a terrain in my way, step by step. I know there are other ways and i dont think that my approach is the one and only. But if you want to follow my way you will be soon be able to create your first own terrain. LESSON 1: Laying the Foundation Step 1: Basics The first step of terrain development is to decide to do it. This decision is of major importance. I know a lot of people have a lot of good ideas over which area of this big world they would love to fly and fight, and then they wait that someone else will make a terrain for it. But be sure, if you want something, then do it yourself. Its better then wait for ages. This was also the way how i came to the terrain building. I wanted to fly over the Sinai and Jordan valley. No terrain was available and no one was interessed into making the terrain, also i builded Israel terrain myself. It began small and it became bigger and bigger and i think it will be a never ending story. Lets say we want to make a Kashmir terrain. Now it is to decide which basic game we want to use for the terrain. SFP1, WOV, WOE or WOI. I choose WOE. It is widely used in the community and we will find some more target objects for placing on the map than in the other games. Step 2: Tools What tools i need. 1. TK's Terrain Editor (TE) 2. Cat extraction program (i use SFP1E Extract Utility) 3. a paint program (i use paint shop pro) 4. Windows Notepad editor Step 3: Terrain folder creation With Windows explorer i open the folder Wings over Europe/ terrain. In this folder i create the folder Kashmir Open the Kashmir folder and create the subfolders backup and tileset. Later you will see for what they are usefull Step 4: Filling the Kashmir folder with live Then i use the SFP1E tool and open the file GermanyCE.CAT. I extract the files: GermanyCE.ini GermanyCE_DATA.ini GermanyCE_Dogfight.ini GermanyCE_movement.ini GermanyCE_nations.ini GermanyCE_Targets.ini GermanyCE_Types.ini This files are now in the GermanyCE folder. Copy them into Kashmir folder. (Not the big GermanyCE.CAT) Now rename the files into: Kashmir.ini Kashmir_Data.ini Kashmir_Dogfight.ini Kashmir_Movement.ini Kashmir_nations.ini Kashmir_targets.ini Kashmir_types.ini Open file Kashmir.ini with notepad editor Press CTRL+H (STRG+H) and replace GermanyCE with Kashmir Change Fullname of the terrain from Germany into Kashmir. And enter the line: (for WOE) CatFile=..\GermanyCE\GermanyCE.cat or (for SFP1) CatFile=..\desert\desert.cat or (For WOV) CatFile=..\VietnamSEA\VietnamSEA.cat Save and close the file Then copy file Kashmir_DATA.ini into your backup folder. Why, i will tell you later. Now we have laid the foundation of making the new terrain. You could now start the game. You will find the terrain Kashmir in the single mission screen, but if you start it you will see, that it is still Germany. Could not be different, because we have till now only renamed original files. The next step will be to play a little bit god and create a new world. But this will be part of LESSON 2. Which will follow soon.

You can get it running on SFP1 with some tricks. You will need a WOE based tileset. And you must edit the file Formosa.ini Search the line CatFile=..\GermanyCE\GermanyCE.cat and replace it with CatFile=..\desert\desert.cat The only problem will be that you will not have some target objects, like the Powerplants which are included in GermanyCE.cat, but not into desert.cat.

http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autoc...l=1&id=6163 I have uploaded the new Beta some minutes ago. Now we must wait till the administrator will give its okay.

In Vietnam war the Vietnamese Air Force used MiG-21PF pairs with mixed armament. No 1 with R-3S Atoll and No.2 with UB-16 rocket pods in the intercepter role. And in reality today, tank crews are trained to use their main gun against Helicopters. The V0 of the main gun is high enough to hit an hovering or slow moving heli at longer ranges.

The ports of the western side of Taiwan are now finished. Ports of the eastern side i had to scrapp because using ALT+N button caused very often crashes in the mountains west of the ports. The bridges of Taiwan are done, the SAM network of Taiwan is done, the EWR stations are placed. Some retiling of the terrain is done ...... I think the date for releasing the next Beta version is soon.

Why all people believe this tale of the white strip on the cockpits of soviet planes? I have nerver seen such a strip on our birds!

Do you has made the MiG-27 flyable yourself? I had the same problems when i made TK's MiG-27 flyable for WOE. The best would be, download my bird, and check out the differences in the data.ini

For test reasons i use a FW-190 when i make a WWI terrain. Its nice.

I get randomly CTD. Dometimes the LOD disappears. Strange thing. But else, a very nice bird.

After some development work on BoB terrain i faced the problem of CTD while flying over Paris. This problem is caused by the EiffelTower. I had to delete the Eiffeltower to solve it. 2 Questions. 1.) Has someone else the same problem? 2.) Has someone a better Eiffeltower available?

Fjords are very challenging. You will face the "water climbs the hill" problem. Not very nice and very time consuming to solve it.

The relating lines starts with [FrontLine] and end with EndShow=21 simply overwrite this complex

With nightfighter missions, (i normaly use the He-219 UHU) i faced very often daylight fighters which flew bomber escorts during night. Its stupid to fight a Spitfire or Mustang with an Uhu.

To flatten airfields is easy. Make a citylist. In this citylist designate the airfields=true. Save the list and then use level airfield function.

Heavy flak use Schrappnell (sorry dont know the english term). Would be nice if we would have such warhead. But the increasing the explosive warhead may be a good starting point for improving Flak efficency.

Strange thing. Okay. Lets try it on following way. 1. you must have an folder wwi/terrain/vogesen with all files relating to Vogesen terrain. 2. you must have the folder wwi/terrain/cambrai with all files relating to TK's Cambrai terrain 3. In folder cambrai you must have the subfolders Fall, Snow, Spring 4. In this subfolders you must have all files which TK put into this folders plus the two files i made (FRRheinG.tga and FRRheinK.tga) for Vogesen terrain. If you has deleted the subfolders Fall, Snow, Spring you has a problem with the seasons, because the game will not find the neccessary files. In this case a reinstallation of the subfolders Fall, Snow, Spring will be neccessary. If you dont want to have them into your wwicambrai folder, you can place this subfolders into Vogesen terrain folder. Then you must edit the file Vogesen.ini. The lines you find below. Simply copy ond overwrite the existing lines. I hope my answer will help you. [Terrain] TerrainFullName=Vogesen DataFile=Vogesen_data.INI TargetFile=Vogesen_targets.INI TargetTypeFile=Vogesen_types.INI MovementFile=Vogesen_movement.INI NationsFile=Vogesen_nations.INI BriefingText=Vogesen_briefing.INI DogfightFile=Vogesen_dogfight.INI DogfightOnly=FALSE CatFile=..\wwiCambrai\wwiCambrai.cat Longitude=5.221 Latitude=49.176 [Map] FilenameFormat=Vogesen-Map%d.bmp Width=250000.0 Height=250000.0 NumZoomLevels=2 [WeatherChance] ScatteredChance=25 BrokenChance=25 OvercastChance=17 InclementChance=8 [season001] Directory=..\Vogesen\Snow StartDate=1/1 EndDate=1/27 ScatteredChance=0 BrokenChance=40 OvercastChance=50 InclementChance=10 [season002] Directory=..\Vogesen\Fall StartDate=01/28 EndDate=04/14 ScatteredChance=25 BrokenChance=40 OvercastChance=17 InclementChance=8 [season003] Directory=..\Vogesen\Spring StartDate=04/15 EndDate=06/20 ScatteredChance=40 BrokenChance=25 OvercastChance=17 InclementChance=8 [season004] Directory=..\Vogesen\Fall StartDate=09/21 EndDate=11/25 ScatteredChance=25 BrokenChance=40 OvercastChance=17 InclementChance=8 [season005] Directory=..\Vogesen\Snow StartDate=11/26 EndDate=12/31 ScatteredChance=0 BrokenChance=40 OvercastChance=50 InclementChance=10