Old Diego

I should keep my mouth shut but I see work of questionable source on here from time to time. Lets put it this way, if I poured hours and hours into something, I usually recognize it in an instant. So why try and hide it? I've confronted a few and it usually gets squashed but there have been/are others that still flaunt the fruits of my and others' labor. My favorite was someone who used a few of my textures and then claimed they just "sampled" it. WTF? This isn't a 3 second beat for a rap song. I guess what I'm trying to say is develop your own skills and do the work. Otherwise, ask nicely BEFORE you upload "your" files. If the answer is no, then accept the answer and move on.

This is a very basic instructional - not a tutorial, on how to add things to a ship. I will assume that you have a basic understanding on where to place files, make changes to data inis and if you don't know where your mod folder is located - move on because this is over your head. This will not be the place to explain any of that and you're better off reading up before you tackle this mod. Now, you will need a few things - a ship - in this case a carrier but any ship or sampan will work if you mod it correctly. a plug - in this case its a plane that can't take off. The plug should be as simple as possible. By this I mean paper airplane with wheels and very ultra low poly. You don't need to make it pretty because you won't see it at all. You must have the 3d model for this plug. a data ini for the ship - latest one is always best. an object to place on the deck - a crew, a plane or whatever you want. an image editor - Photoshop or whatever a 3D modeling program - Max if you got it or anything else and a friend who has Max and the latest exporter. ability to UV map Lets prepare our ship first. What I do first is start a mission with the ship, clear skys and noon settings. Launch the plane and wait for the cats to retract. What you ant to do is take a screenshot of the deck from straight above. I hit pause and Ctl+F12 or Shift+F12 - I forget which one gets me in roaming camera mode. Anyway, line you shot up so that you get the deck to fill up the screen without cropping the edges of it. Take the shot and save it - use BMP for this because JPGs look ugly...you want a clean crisp shot without any major distortion. Create a folder with the back up copy of your ships data ini, the screenshot of the deck and the plug model. Take that image and open it up in Photoshop or whatever image editor you use. What you want to do is make it a bit sharper and crop all the unneeded ocean out. Look at this image of the KittyHawk as an example of what you want...I reduced the size for forum purposes BTW. Now open Max up and create a rectangle that has the same dimensions as your cropped deck image. Make sure that rectangle is set to XYZ 0,0,0 and facing Z or UP for those who don't understand modeling lingo. Now would be a good time to UVmap that rectangle to the deck image. While Max is open, go ahead and import/merge your plug model and whatever object you want to SEE on the deck. Ensure you link the deck object to the plug model so that the hierarchy is linked to the fuselage. What I do is make a simple box and name it LINKER and link all my deck objects to it - things get messy when you have a full deck of planes, crew, vehicles and clutter. Place that linker at XYZ 0,0,0. Now link the linker to your plug and you can keep things nice and neat in Max. Ok, go ahead and place the objects wherever you'd like but stay within the bounds of the deck image below you...don't need to have objects blocking #3 and #4 catapults.Save the model and close up Max. Open up the ships data ini and add another catapult. How you ask? Like this - Add this line to the HULL section [Hull] ModelNodeName=Hull EffectSize=1.0 MaxExtentPosition= 28.98, 181.63,19.58 MinExtentPosition=-28.98,-120.50,-3.98 StructuralFactor=10000.0 HasArmor=TRUE ArmorMaterial=STEEL Armor[FRONT].Thickness=100 Armor .Thickness=100 Armor .Thickness=100 Armor[REAR].Thickness=100 Armor[TOP].Thickness=100 Armor[bOTTOM].Thickness=100 SystemName[001]=Engine SystemName[002]=Deck SystemName[003]=Cat1 SystemName[004]=Cat2 SystemName[005]=Cat3 SystemName[006]=Cat4 SystemName[007]=Cable1 SystemName[008]=Cable2 SystemName[009]=Cable3 SystemName[010]=Cable4 SystemName[011]=Plug01 <========== add the entry here...notice that 011 comes after 010? ...and after the last catapult section add your plug data block [Plug01] SystemType=CATAPULT CatapultID=5 <---------this number should be the next one in line. If you have 4 cats, make this 5. If you have 2 make it a 3 etc StartPosition=0,0,123456789 <------XYZ of where you want to place the catapult to start. EndPosition=0.0,0.10.0,123456789 <-----XYZ of where you want the end of the catapult to be. LaunchTime=999.0 <------VERY important number - this tells the game how long to wait for the launch - make it 999.0 LaunchEffect= CatapultEffect= ReadyAnimationID=5 <---should be same number as catapult ID number ReadyAnimationTime=999.0 <------VERY important number - this tells the game how long to wait for the launch - make it 999.0 Whats with that 999.0????? That was the missing key to using fake catapults. They would always launch and form up on your wing. BTW, make sure you drop a copy of your edited and BACKED UP data ini into your mods ground objects folder. While you're at it, make a folder with you plug name and drop a copy of everything you will need to make it "fly" - that means all ini , you texture folder and the LOD. Ok, you have the basic plan set and now all you need is to do is make sure your objects are where they should be. This is where things get tricky and a knowledge of decal placement comes in handy. Firstly, know that this is tough but not impossible. If you have the ship model, this makes things much easier. Start a mission that has the same amount of cats + one more. If you have 4 the make it 5. In the loadout section your first 4 planes are whatever you want but the fifth MUST be your plug. I name mine something obvious like F4plug. Make sure that your plug is the last one in the mission because its basically going to be married to that cat forever. Launch the mission and hit F7 so you can find the linker model. Its not always where you think it is. Now, if you're lucky it will be ON the deck without sinking or floating. If its close just adjust the height of the plugs catapult until it sits right on it. If its floating way up there or sunk way down there, check your Z coordinates in Max - it should be set to 0,0,0 Once the deck elevation is set. Don't mess with it. I usually move the deck rectangle in Max until the objects are just resting upon it. Now comes the part where you move deck objects around the X and Y coordinates. If your deck rectangle is off, move it around the X and Y until it closely matches. Takes some time but in the end it pays off. Once all the axis are set, feel free to move the deck objects around by using the deck rectangle with the image as your guide. BTW, you are not limited to just objects. Remember that this is a fake plane, a fake catapult and plane can take any shape - like an entire squadron of A-4s ready for some action. What else do planes have? Lights, props and sounds. All these things can be added with a bit of imagination and thinking...err...hacking outside the box. Ask questions here so that I know if I left anything out or just need more clarification. Do you have a better way to do something or explain it better? Please do it here so that all the info gets compiled in one spot and people don't go looking all over for it.

Congratulations, Dave. Now get hired by a contractor to do the same job for 4X the pay.

Very nice. Must be a new model, right?

Not sure I know what you mean????? I THINK both the Plug and Weapon method allow for multiple LODs. I don't have any Thirdwire games installed so I couldn't check that right now.

I have put one together. Its up for download here.

Well, you're both wrong. I made the original There is a way to remove the visor. Download my pilot pack and look for the one with a TGA for the visor. I am sure I included one or two without the visor.

Not true, Kevin. I made one with the typical "star of david" pattern. People have added it to various downloads over time. I can't remember who added it but I think its in the Vietnam ground pack and a variety of other ground clutter type downloads. Pappa Goat, if you can't find it, PM me and I'll send it to you.

If you like to buy stolen property, go for it.

They're talking snow, not ice, here in San Antonio this Wednesday night. This ought to be good:lol:

According to TK, he doesn't test his releases on mods. So what line are you talking about? He has said, just recently, that he tests on plain vanilla - which is 100% correct. So testing on mods never enters the question for him. That was always left to the modders - unofficially of course and always in between testing versions. The whole flags/prop issue was made to sound like it was our fault for setting flags incorrectly. Who knew about the flags? As far as I know, nothing was ever mentioned about them in his forums and definitely nothing was written in the exporter documentation. Now he is falling back to that same attitude that we are to blame for his problems - "Well, you may be okay with mods crashing the game for going past the limits, but most people wounldn't be... and if modders keep releasing mods that crash the game, and many people have problems with them and complain about them here, it just make us look bad (other people thinking our game constantly crash)... thats when I have to step in and make these limits hard-coded so you won't exceed them. And we already have many such limits, anytime we know certain mods cause issues, we try to put limits in the code so they can no longer cuase problems. We try to make our game as error-tolerant as we can so modders can try anything without worrying too much about CTDs. Sorting issue isn't as critical as CTD, so we've kinda let this go for a while, but same thing here, I've been saying from day 1 that large alphas do not sort well, but still too many mods have way too large alpha and have all sort of sorting problems, at some point, I do need to step in and limit that so this doesn't happen." TK from his forum My bold text to high light the attitude Old incompatible mods crash the game. People not reading the READ ME file crash the game. Missing objects crash the game. As far as I know, nobody is talking about game crashes. We have been talking about bad quality control and lack of communication. I wish he would focus some of that vision inward and see why he truly looks bad.

Some people are getting tired of the ongoing trend toward Thirdwire not communicating or documenting about upcoming changes in how his releases will affect mods or not just beta testing their product properly. I don't think it has much to do with the community or customers expecting too much from him or his product. We each have our own wish list but that doesn't equate to us being the cause for his problems. Lets see a show of hands - who asked for the canopy/prop casting shadow effect? That's right, nobody did. Who asked for air starts only? Again, not one person did. I can see cutting TK a break, I do when it comes to things that require manpower - making assets, programming etc but taking the blame as a community for something like beta testing or asking for features is laughable. Remember, TK took that responsibility from the community when he disbanded the beta testers and took on the testing himself. Nobody to blame but him. So go and feel sorry for him but you really should feel sorry for those who paid for the honor to beta test. As far as asking for things, come on, TK does what he wants when it comes to his vision of fun and anything else just falls into the "too" category - too much money, too much time required to...., too much fill in the blank______________. If his only recourse is to hard code certain aspects of the game then what does that do to the customer base? I can see lots of modders taking their money, time and skills elsewhere. With nothing left to mod, many won't be satisfied with plain vanilla. Up until lately, if you wanted to fire a gun at some jets and mod, Thirdwire was the only game in town. That monopoly has not been overlooked by other developers with eager/available community talent and an open architecture in mind.

I guess if you're flying an Argentine A-4 against a British task force, the ability to sink a carrier might come in handy but I know what you mean about the invincibility - the carrier might as well be solid ground. I want as much info out there so that people know up front what to expect from each method.

Not completely invincible, they can eventually be destroyed.

Let me back up here a bit...I was wanting to see the pros and cons of each method because it seems that one works for single missions only and the other for both campaigns/single missions. Saying that, they both come with handicaps, they are both "involved" and they are both hacks susceptible to being "fixed by TK" at a moments notice. Weapon method - always on and it never needs to be added to mission works in campaigns and single missions non-modder friendly capable of light material no capability for sound, decals or game lighting requires duplication of complete weapon for texture change lose all other weapons on ship susceptible to developer changes - hack must make two separate ships for launch and recovery unless generic layout is made Plug (fake catapult) method - not non-modder friendly susceptible to developer changes - hack capable of game lighting, light material, sound, limited animation and decals requires only an ini change and new texture folder for new texture works only in single missions - no campaigns keeps ship weaponry system intact system allows for launch and recovery during same mission Please add to this so that these ideas can both be fleshed out. Sure wish other modders could join in and explore and give us their findings. It helps to get other points of view when you're trying to hack outside of the box.

If I follow, you do have to create a completely new weapon (texture, lod etc) if you wanted different textures for a new squadron, right? Anyway, its good to see the other option fleshed out, The situation sucks because if you want a campaign with a cluttered deck, you must go the weapon route but if you want to keep the ability to fire back at the bad guys, you lose that ability. Two steps forward, one step back. I figured more people would jump on this and create some cool mods but its just us two?

To make Julhelm's statement more correct - I think it should have read "...The point is that his customer base is the same audience who buy Jet Thunder or Storm of War...". TK's target audience is like Zur says - simlight. Too bad that those customers are such a small minority that they couldn't support Thirdwire for as long as his real customer base have. Anyone who has ever beta tested software will know that they always come with an NDA and that their only job is to find bugs, reproduce them, list the steps needed to reproduce them and not classify them in any manner. That is left to the developer who knows what the delivery schedule is and what the project budget is. In the case of the Thirdwire testers, they had a great system going. They tested the stock game for free and in between test versions, they tested their own mods on it. The system worked great that way for years and the new system is obviously not working. Think back to when things began to negatively change in the quality control department. Now, you still think the community is worried about one bug that affects mods and one that affects stock? No way. It has been a steady release of version123-a, 123-b and 123-c....and now 123-d. People get tired of paying to beta test and even more upset when something forces them to do a full reinstall because of piss poor QC. Its too bad that what should have been a great release was marred by problems that were caused by him and not some percieved notion that the community was rushing him. Come on, who didn't want a native mission editor? That was enough for me to buy it buy I learned to wait a few weeks to see what the quality was before I turned over my cash. Glad I did because I don't pay to beta test.

Sound advice, FC. I haven't directly supported TK since SF2I...I recall something about some cobbled patch that made him hand out Combo Packs. What I have done since then was support friends and fellow modders with their projects. Hopefully, Jet Thunder is capable of being the next sand box.

Julhelm. You have managed to put into a soundbite what I've been trying to say in paragraphs. Well put, man

Happy New Year. Wishing everyone more luck and peace of mind.

All interesting points, FC. From a business standpoint, TK is a genius - Keep putting out small incremental changes and sell at a small profit/break even. That business plan worked up until the point that the customer saw no cost benefit for HIS dollar spent. The changes we have seen lately, were in my opinion, random and not really addressing the major things that were broken since day one. I can't keep supporting a developer who ignores the majority of his customers. If he doesn't know how much of the community is plain vanilla, then put up a poll. He seems to post them whenever he needs to know if people want a new plane - hey look, something shiny! I'm pretty sure that there is a minuscule amount of people who enjoy the clean lines of the plain vanilla stock game but that ultra minority is not representative of the loyal paying customers who get all warm and fuzzy supporting the developer. Its been a while since I've seen a Thirdwire game box but I do recall the community mods as being a selling point on the back of the packaging. I've never seen anything on the box saying that you can play this game bone stock and be satisfied with the developers vision. The series was made for modding since it was released and during the long dry spell of "when will the patch come out" days, the community built on what was available and kept this series alive. By all rights, this game should have been dead once it made it out of Walmart so long ago. Its odd how I see a few of very same names here as I did back then and I think some of those old heads are ready for some of their own vision to see the light. We're tired of hacking the game to do simple s**t because there is no other way and we're tired of asking. A new terrain engine? Really? At this point why bother if it will include the same bugs and textures. The community has shown that it can re-texture anything but if the trees still look like alpha release candidate crap, why should we spend our time and energy behind it? WOI was a major step towards better textures but then again, that example doesn't translate too well when there are a handful of trees on the entire map. No, I am NOT looking for a "new to us" terrain engine. I will only pay for a modern terrain engine. Thirdwire multiplayer was always TK's vision of fun - not the community's. It came in two flavors - airquake and crippled co-op. It was no wonder the MP crowd regarded it as a diversion and moved on. Oh, there were some die hard players that tried to get something going but they quickly saw that the developer was not interested in expanding it. As I see it, the community was not interested in TK's vision of MP and he blamed the community for not playing it and didn't see the benefit of expanding it because we didn't play it and couldn't make money off of expanding it - viscous circle. As you, FC, I don't know the answers but I do have an opinion.

Well, isn't that nice. I am sure relieved to know that he'll be including built in legacy bugs. If he re-uses the same textures as well, it will be like nothing has changed

You can do that but how will you add light materials, game code lighting, normal mapping, sounds etc? Look, any way you add the stuff is fine by me since they're both hacks anyway and are susceptible to random code changes...and more than likely will be changed because its not the developers idea of fun. This is one way to do it on ALL ships. The best reason for ME to not go the weapon route, is because you can't have more than one type of visible missile, like FastCargo just mentioned. I'm assuming you meant missile since you said weapon.

Nobody is saying that Thirdwire is not filled with normal humans. We ALL make mistakes. I think my issue is that if you remove the beta testers and take on that extra task, you are responsible to perform the task - not the paying customer or community. I mean, think about this - TK has said that he doesn't keep mods in mind when testing...or something to that effect. Fine, I can agree with that since he is not patching mods but what I don't think he realizes is that the beta testers use to test the patches/updates on their own mods too. Don't believe me? Ask around. The system has worked. This is a symbiotic relationship we have with TK. He doesn't see it that way and claims to build just for the vanilla stock customer. Woohoo for that tiny minority. Maybe those customers can keep up that warm fuzzy feeling of supporting the developer. The end of the sim? Naw...more like who will be left to care if its still around.

Merry Christmas