baffmeister

Maybe try putting it in the Campaign Folder? [just a guess]

Game probably assigned a low cruise altitude and your alt N'ing into rising or higher terrain. [ if its happening all the time I have no idea]

I wish it was real. A couple of squadrons of used Tomcats would probably make for an effective interceptor screen around Canada. In the intercept role they could operate in a low "G" environment, extending their service life. Would also free up some CF-18's for other duties. [ maybe Afganistan?] Regards.

Really interesting things happening with YAP.

Thats a great piece of information, thanks Crusader. Works fine. Looks like the first update [beta 0.41] will be arriving sooner than I expected. I found a misplaced factory building today so I will fix that as well. Probably do the update this evening. Regards.

Barnes Wallace. [ He might be a "Sir" as well.] I think he was involved in the development of the Tallboy and Grand Slam bombs as well. Might have been Michael Redgrave who played the role in the original movie. Good performance for sure. Edit: Sir Barnes Wallis. Michael Redgrave is a "Sir" as well.

File Name: Desert Target Zone Beta 0.80 File Submitter: baffmeister File Submitted: 3 Sep 2006 File Updated: 14 Dec 2006 File Category: SF Maps/Terrain Mods For Strike Fighters Project 1 and Strike Fighters Gold. Beta 0.80 because it's about 80% complete. I wanted a terrain to fly real time low level strike missions that wouldn't take too long. Dhimar and Paran are reduced to 3 Airfields aside and the frontline is relocated to an area in central Dhimar that has some nice rolling hills. There are some frontline positions as well as strategic targets further from the new border. It should only take about 30 minutes to fly a strike mission including a bit of air to air on the way home. Main Features: 1. 134 target areas. [some quite small, some just for scenery] 2. 10 SAM sites for Paran, starting in 1967. 3. 3X zoom planning map from an earlier version of Strike Fighters. [ shows desert and green spaces better] 4. My Quicker Take Offs mod is pre-installed for the airfields being used. [easy to remove if you have issues.] 5. Some Third Wire objects are being used for more than one purpose. Example: Building 2 could be a Government Building, a Police station, a Residential Building, or an Elementry School. [Mega Minus Points!] 6. Some Factory Place objects being used, with more to come. 7. Install technique will create a new Desert Terrain called DesertTZ. Your stock Desert terrain and target areas will remain unchanged. 8. Some Ground Attack, Truck and Shipping routes [with more to come] so you can fly CAS, ARMED RECON and ANTI SHIP missions. NOTE: I'm using specific AAA objects for Paran, so the useable date range is 1955 to 1980. More info in the Read Me. This project has been very slow and updates will arrive about every 3 months. It's been more fun blowing up target areas than building them. Future plans are for about 160 target areas. When all the target areas are complete I will probably try and make a few " mini-campaigns" using stock aircraft. CREDITS: 1. This project uses some Factory Place objects that were made by " Mitch". Thanks Mitch, whoever and whereever you are. 2. Some of the Factory Place objects I lifted from Gepards excellent DRV terrain and have been somewhat modified by him. Thanks Gepard. 3. Thanks to "Wrench" for hosting the Factory Place objects at his websight. Any problems or ideas for this project, please PM me here at Combat Ace. Cheers! Updates: 04sept2006-beta 0.41 Install technique simplified. Thanks again, Crusader. One factory object repositioned. Slight change to the types.ini. If you downloaded the beta 0.40 you might want to wait for a bigger update. 14Dec2006-beta 0.80 MAJOR UPDATE. Only up to 134 target areas but many have been extensively revised. 3 new Airfields added. Moving water enabled. Paran gets the SA-13L Mobile SAM for point defence, available HERE. Some new factory place objects added.Next and final update in about 2 months. Click here to download this file

Had a quick look at the stock Desert campaign. Ground force equipment updates appear to be supported. [GroundUnit002] GroundObjectType=T-55 UnitName=2nd Paran Tank Div ForceID=2 Nation=Paran BaseArea=Maqazad RandomChance=100 StartObjects=100 MaxObjects=100 Experience=75 Morale=80 Supply=100 Intelligence=20 UpgradeType=ANY ------- look here. Cheers.

The idea of building "Mini Campaigns" within a frontline area is very interesting!

Took awhile on my slow dial up but saw enough. A formation take-off! Totally amazing and not a clue as to how it was done!

More speculation, but I think any Strategic Node can be used as a base area and you can call it what ever you want. I don't think the last strategic node listed has to be the Base Area, I suspect any of them could be used. As far as I know, ground units are assigned their start positions in the campaign data.ini. Example: [GroundUnit004] GroundObjectType=T-54 UnitName=4th Paran Tank Div ForceID=2 Nation=Paran BaseArea=Jarimin ---Start point for this unit is the Strategic Node named Jarimin. RandomChance=100 StartObjects=100 MaxObjects=100 Experience=60 Morale=60 Supply=100 Intelligence=60 UpgradeType=NEVER CAS missions probably won't be generated until the actual start of ground attacks, which is based on start dates, supply levels, and other data fields that are contained at the start of the campaign data.ini. A lot of speculation here, no guarantees. Since SP-4, the movement of ground units in a campaign seems much more interesting. Stronger units moving to the frontline to replace units weakened from battle, interesting encirclement maneuvers, and probably more effective Soviet equipment. I think you will be doing a lot of experimenting and testing! Regards.

It doesn't appear to be possible to get the game to do formation take-offs. If you taxi ahead far enough your wing will start his take-off roll but thats not really a formation take-off. I made a mod that generates 'Quicker Take-Offs' by moving two aircraft onto the runway behind the player. If you want to try it you can download it Here. Regards.

After playing around a liitle bit with the stock SFP1 campaign I got the impression [no guarantees] that the base area for each side is the campaign objective. Lose the base area, lose the campaign. As for strategic nodes, I think they are just interconnecting paths for ground forces to move along. The base point is the grid position of the node, I think the "Target" is just a target area near the node and is used for the brief and debrief. A bit of a guess, but I think you could put what ever you want in that field and it will show up in the Brief/Debrief screens. For your project, an example might be Target=Viet Cong squad, or something like that. Havn't built a campaign from scratch yet, so these are just semi-educated guesses. [strategicNode006] Area=Al'Samir ConnectTo[001].Target=Al'Megnah ConnectTo[001].BasePoint=297000,592000 ConnectTo[002].Target=Mosak ConnectTo[002].BasePoint=447000,489000 ConnectTo[003].Target=Najahafi ConnectTo[003].BasePoint=358000,491000

The huge amount of work you have done to make this game more fun and interesting is greatly appreciated by myself and many others. It's probably worth noting that you and other "Early Modders" recognized the potential of the game and " hung in there" during the bad old days. Hopefully, the game [and ThirdWire] are on more solid ground now and we can look forward to new releases and a continuation of improvements. Interests change, but hopefully you will find time for a project of interest now and again. Semi retirement might be the most enjoyable approach! Regards

I tried increasing the explosive charge on a 3.2 install but it didn't seem to have any effect. [ read that in a thread at ThirdWires forum.] Possible I did something wrong. Time to try again, and will try decreasing muzzle velocity as well. Good to hear some people are getting tagged by flak. [ exploding timed fuse variety] I was starting to wonder if it was just there for decoration!

Don't take this the wrong way, but thats good news. I recall a post by TK quite awhile ago, he doesn't consider flak very effective in real life. Getting shot down by it might be a bit of a random event. Another post I recall someone mentioned the approach used in IL2 / Pacific Fighters, in that game apparantly the flak is more effective than real life. The developers used that approach so they wouldn't have to put large numbers of flak guns around target areas, which would really kill frame rates. Might be time to fiddle with the KS-19 again. Regards.

I havn't had any damage from flak since about the 2.0 service pack. Tried making the flak more effective with the 3.2 version but was unsuccessful. Havn't tried with SP 4.0. I think theres a radar guided KS-19 available somewhere that might work better. I think this is an interesting question, especially for players who like to fly in the "Pre Sam" eras. Any ideas?

I've seen anisotropic filtering reduce shimmer in some games, might be worth a try if your not running it already.

Definite fan of "Stiff Upper Lip" british war movies. Dam Busters, a favorite. Sink the Bismark and Cruel Sea were good also. The Longest Day had some great moments, [para drop sequence was great and the Free French Harbour Assault was one of the best long scenes ever filmed. About 90 sec. I think.] Also, a "Bridge too Far" had some great moments. [Para Drop sequences were awsome.] Still, hard to beat "Patton" with George C. Scott. Regards.

Great News! [ Sometimes, computers are beyond reason, and really annoying!] :)

There has been quite a few crashes reported to ThirdWire but I don't recall any similar to your issues. Regarding crashes out of 3D, I've had quite a few, but they were not as predictable as yours, and I could usually get a decent amount of game time out of it. My graphics card is an ATI 9800 Pro so the issues I've had might not have much to do with your issues. I have windows 98SE sound settings at Standard Acceleration [second highest setting] and the sample rate conversion quality at "Good". [lowest setting] I'm not running ATI's most recent drivers for win98, getting better results with older drivers, so a different Nvidia driver may help. The fact that your getting some 3D time prior to crash may indicate a graphics driver issue, but I'm no expert. The biggest improvement I got was reducing ATI quality settings from "High Quality" to just "Quality." Got way better frame rates and better stability, and I think it still looks good. Thats with object textures and object detail settings on high for the in game settings. As a temporary work around, you might want to try patching to 3.2 standard on a separate install so you can at least play the game, then just keep experimenting with drivers etc. on the fully patched install. I'm sure there's lot's of people running the game on 6600GT cards and you will solve the issue eventually. Also, a post at ThirdWires tech support site will probably generate lots of ideas. Regards :)

I'm Baff [From New Scotland], not Buff [From Old Scotland]. :yes:

Adding buildings etc. is relatively easy but quite tedious. The information regarding type and position of ground objects is contained in the target.ini. Here is an example from Strike Fighters Project 1. [TargetArea054] Name=D3 Airfield Position=229000.00,743000.00 Radius=6000 ActiveYear=0 Location=1 Alignment=FRIENDLY AirfieldDataFile=desert_airfield6.ini NumSquadrons=3 Target[001].Type=Runway6 Target[001].Offset=0.00,0.00 Target[001].Heading=0 Target[002].Type=Tower1 Target[002].Offset=-66.16,0.09 Target[002].Heading=0 Target[003].Type=windsock Target[003].Offset=50.00,-1200.00 Target[003].Heading=180 Target[004].Type=windsock Target[004].Offset=-50.00,-1200.00 The Target.ini for the stock WOV targets will be found in the Cat file within the WOV terrain folder. To modify the Target.ini, you will have to first extract a copy of it using the SFP1 extractor utility [available here at combat ace] After modifying the file, place it in the WOV terrain folder and the game will use the new file instead of the one contained in the Cat file. This is just a general overview of the procedure, for more details about modding the game, you will have to do some research. I would suggest looking through some of the help guides available at this site. Regards.

Had my share of various types of crashes but none that quickly. If you havn't tried it yet, reducing graphic settings and sound settings may help. Probably worth posting the problem at ThirdWire as well. Be prepared for lots of questions. Heres a link. ThirdWire forums.

File Name: Dhimar-1963Ver2 [an AI experiment] File Submitter: baffmeister File Submitted: 26 Jun 2006 File Category: SF Missions/Campaigns This campaign was made to test some A.I. changes in a controlled environment. You can play the campaign "as is" or try out the experiment. The main objective was to raise dogfight speeds. Second objective was to make it more difficult to shoot down A.I. aircraft when they are in "Navigation Mode". To raise dogfight speeds there is a revised A.I. that uses reduced pitch inputs/rates, as well as revised aircraft data ini's that have higher stall speeds. The A.I. in this version is quite a bit different from the one in version 1. [Hunter vs. MiG-17] To make it a bit more difficult to chase down aircraft in "Navigation Mode", the aircraft cruise speeds have been increased significantly. [550 knots for F-100D and MiG-19S.] The higher cruise speeds raise some issues that are covered in the read me. The campaign is just a rework of the stock desert campaign and uses the same strategic nodes. Dhimar/USAF get the F-100D and A-4B. Paran gets the MiG-19S and IL-28. The only flyable aircraft are 2 USAF F-100D squadrons. One is all air to air missions, the other is a combination of air to air and ground attack missions. I run this A.I. with high cruise speeds all the time. The project is designed as a simple way for players to check out the concept and see if they like it. The campaign uses stock weapons/aircraft so no other downloads required. Regards. Note: Tried to update the ver. 1 campaign but it seems to have disappeared during the process so I'm uploading as new. Click here to download this file