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Menrva

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Everything posted by Menrva

  1. Version 1.0.0

    524 downloads

    Hawaii, Central Pacific (1959-2028) Terrain December 13th, 2020 (1st Release) by Menrva >For Strike Fighters 2: Vietnam, Recommended Full-5 Merged This is a complete remake of the Hawaii terrain. Unlike the original one released by Wrench, which is not in full Real World scale, this new terrain was made and tiled from scratch, and it features all the main Hawaiian islands in full scale, with more cities and pretty accurate elevation details. A better looking and more complete tileset has been added. Numerous target areas, such as small civilian airports, have been added in order to expand playability, targets of opportunity and year range. This terrain features a fresh new 250m resolution heightmap (instead of the stock 500m resolution), allowing for greater details and precision in elevation changes; overall it provides the whole terrain with a better look. The terrain spans from August 21, 1959 (when Hawaii officially became the 50th American State) to December 31, 2028; it is designed for fictional clashes between Red forces (namely Russia and China) and all of the American services (USAF, USN and USMC). The island of Kauai is added to Red Side for better gameplay; imagine it as the first step of a hostile invasion of Hawaii. All mission types are available, including CAS and Armed Recon. Targets reflect Real World events as accurately as possible; for instance, some airfields will appear only after a certain year, according to historic changes. If you have SF2NA, naval fleets will spawn in the Pacific Ocean. Also, Off Map Airbases have been added and long range AI flights can be generated from them. All main targets have been placed accurately in their Real World locations. Ground Objects are not included. You can obtain the most needed from Wrench's original Hawaii terrain release. >Credits (in no particular order): -Wrench, for his permission to use his target areas from the original, smaller scale Hawaii terrain. -swambast, who provided me with invaluable help in tracking and fixing common and uncommon bugs, and for allowing me to include his exclusive Pearl Harbor Memorial 3d model (which you cannot redistribute). -gerwin, whose TFDtool has proved to be essential in today's terrain making. If the terrain is pretty accurate to RL it's also because of him. I included his very nice Airfield 7+8 Addon Pack, too. -mue, for the improved shaders he made, which I have included and reworked for the terrain, and for the tools he made for SF2 modding. -luk1978, for the waternormal bitmap he shared at the SF2 screenshots thread. Your mods are very interesting! -JSF_Aggie, for his great Hi-Res Runway Textures v2.0 which I included. -Stary, for the hi-res Okinawa tileset he made, which I have reworked and expanded. -Gepard, for his great tutorials about terrain making, in the SF1 Knowledge Base at CombatACE. It's a gold mine! -krfrge, who has produced a tutorial for recreating SF2-like planning maps, which prompted me to work on templates and my own high quality planning maps. Thank you very much! -comrpnt, for his Approach and Airfield Lighting Pack mod packages for SF1 series, which I reworked and included. Because this terrain re-uses some of the original target area layouts by Wrench from his previously released Hawaii terrain, I included the ReadMe files from his original package, to the end of giving proper credit to everyone involved directly or not. >Disclaimer: This is a freeware; yet it can be redistributed ONLY in other CombatACE mods/mod packages. Any changes to the terrain package's files and/or any copy-and-paste attempts of their contents are NOT authorized if you plan to release them in other mods. But permission might be granted to those who request it to me at CombatACE. This terrain may NOT in any way, shape or form be used in any payware additions.
  2. Mod package has been updated to Version 1.5; read the change log for further details.
  3. Never been a huge fan of what ifs, but this plane is so unique and rare, it would be a great addition to the amazing roster of aircraft in Strike Fighters. The Wiki page says that 7 such aircraft were built; I'm not sure if that's reliable info, but it wouldn't even be a big what if in that case.
  4. Thanks to you for the feedback! We're glad you like it. The January release was kind of rushed, so that version is filled with bugs here and there. If all goes as planned, this August a much better package will be released!

  5. Is the F-15EX USAF jet worth it?

    Menrva replied to GKABS's topic in The Pub

    Yeah, I already saw that video when it was posted, I follow that channel. It makes sense to have such a multirole platform, maximizing firepower while sacrificing stealth. As much as I love the F-22A Raptor, they never fully explored the potential of that aircraft, it's only capable of carrying small GPS-guided bombs, otherwise it's just a stealth air superiority aircraft with no HMD capability. It would be weird to see those F-15EX aircraft being manned by a single pilot, even though the airframe is dual-seat. Maybe they've played Ace Combat too much...
  6. Air refueling does not exist in SF2; by design the game features scaled terrains which are roughly 60% of their Real World size. Modders had fun creating animations of refueling probes etc. for addon aircraft including tankers, but tankers are treated just like any other transport aircraft of the game, meaning that they never spawn flying in game generated missions, aside from campaigns where that may happen. Beating a dead horse here, air refueling is not a thing in this game and never will.

  7. ODS Warbirds: Tornado Fmk.3 ODS30 Squadrons

    Menrva commented on Viper63a's file in Tornado

    Those you showed are Tornado IDS aircraft, not the F.3/ADV variant which is proposed here. The IDS, ground attack variant, featured the desert scheme during the Gulf War; the ADV, interceptor variant, mostly flew CAP and had no reason for such camouflage.
  8. It's a known issue with custom 3d models, decal bleeding has been a thing since the early days of SF. We cannot modify LODs, that means we cannot solve all such issues on all custom models we have. Sometimes it cannot be solved, like on the new F-22 Raptor I was working on with few others, which is in hiatus unfortunately.
  9. Let's be honest here, MS knew well that wasn't going to be true. New advancements in technology dictate new operating systems. Besides, Win11 is a free update, so consider it an extension of Win10. They have a lot of reasons to name it Win11, both for marketing and security issues. The number of changes is massive, and to have it named Win10 would only confuse the market. You can install Win11 only on newer processors, not on old crappy hardware which is affected by severe security vulnerabilities. Windows is not just for home computers, and MS does not need companies complaining about any breaches which could be unrelated to the OS. Seriously, I complained about MS a lot of times in the past, but so far they're doing common sense moves. I'm actually intrigued by what Win11 brings to the table, both as a consumer and as a programmer.
  10. A new Instant Action mission will be included with the next release of the ODS 30AE total conversion, complete with bonuses! Shot down a MiG-25 coming head to head, and then I shook off a pursuing MiG-29 which ultimately crashed into the terrain, trying to follow my crazy evasive maneuvers (shown in the last pic).
  11. I assure you, it is not. The latest executable is dated 2013, but SF2 is from 2009 and 64 bit programs weren't the norm back then. There's only one executable and it's 32 bit. TK was not that crazy to provide just a 64-bit only executable when most people wouldn't even have 64 bit processors back then, let alone the OS. If TW ever produced a 64 bit executable, now I would have a choice between StrikeFighters2.exe and StrikeFighters2_x64.exe, which is not the case here. You're probably confusing the fact that SF2 fully supports DirectX 10 with proper shaders, while FE2 does not; it was left in such a state with a last patch dated 2010, IIRC.
  12. Bitmap obviously would be best for quality, but with modern painting software you can save high quality JPGs with no noticeable loss in quality. Keep in mind that JPG textures do bring longer loading times especially on older hardware (despite the smaller size, the SF2 game engine has to decompress such textures), especially if all are saved at 100% quality, but they help save some serious disk space. All in all, always go with .JPG where possible, save with maximum quality. If things go awry, always keep a copy of templates at hand, so that you can re-export the same texture with different settings.
  13. Definitely yes. Are you sure you're not running the game with Intel's integrated GPU? By default SF2 uses the first GPU it finds, and so users think to be playing SF2 on the dedicated GPU, while it currently uses the Intel one. You can change it at the graphics options in the menu. Also, avoid running the game with all options to Unlimited, use the Customize setting and only put Texture settings to Unlimited, everything else to High.
  14. Don't get crazy over this. 2K and 4K textures do work in SF2. The reason you see them not loaded is due to your video card; it runs out of memory, and so it cannot load all the skins. Just reduce graphics settings in the options, that may help. Nothing to do with your custom skin nor with the game engine. When you have tons of third-party mods with high quality and high resolution textures, chances of this happening increase, especially on older GPUs. The game itself is incredibly stable, even when your video card runs out of memory, you expericence just missing textures, no crashes to desktop over some textures.
  15. Not true, Windows 11 will support 32 bit applications for compatibility reasons (Microsoft isn't going to kill itself), it's just that Windows 11 is only made for 64 bit processors and so there won't be a 32 bit version of the OS. My old PC is from 2011 and it already had a 64 bit processor back then. I really see no point in creating a new 32 bit OS these days. If TK is really working on a Win10 update, the coming of Win11 changes nothing; that update was about bringing the game to DirectX 12 and surely to be 64bit; Win11 is not changing anything in this regard (surely there will be a DirectX 13 in the future, but the base of Win11 is DirectX 12). DirectStorage is a new addition worth having a look at, but I doubt TK has the resources and willingness to add that. I'm not concerned at all about the future of the series. I can still play games from the late 90s on Win10, with due graphics wrappers and tweaks. Some of those very old games even had 16 bit installers, and there are ways to circumvent this (you cannot run 16 bit executables on 64 bit OS). What I'm truly worried about is that my old desktop PC won't support all the new minimum requirements of Win11, so I'll have to stick with Win10. At least on my work laptop I'll be able to check how the new OS will be.
  16. Working again on these terrains so they get in a releasable state. Orion MPCV courtesy of @nuni. Coming soon together with a new update for the realSKY Environment mod...
  17. It is. Korea uses seasons, so each seasoned tileset uses its own folder. Stock terrain object textures, such as this one you're dealing with, must be copied inside each tileset subfolder as well.
  18. A new update for realSKY is in the works; fixed night ambient colour being too dark, slightly tweaked cloud textures from Cellinsky's Widesky mod, brand new sun flare, different space sun flare, smoother rainbow ring flare and newly recoloured Stary's original lens flare drops. Last but not least, a new experimental shader providing a minor bloom at daytime with Effects set to Unlimited, in place of the original blinding effect at dawn/dusk by TW. New horizon glow, fog and ambient colours, with reworked bloom shader. New sun and reworked lens flares, bloom effect being visible only with exterior views (thank your cockpit glass for not blinding you). Extra shots at high altitude, with new space sun flare textures.

  19. Battlefield 2042

    Menrva replied to TROOPER117's topic in BattleField

    Yeah, that fighter jet scene is crazy. But I've read it's actually meant to be an homage to an amazing player feat achieved online in an older Battlefield game. That being said, I would never pay 70$ for a multiplayer-only game, it's just plain wrong. And of course, they'll be adding all that lovely MTX and loot boxes that EA craves about. I'm unimpressed by recent games. Battlefield used to be a decent series, but EA ruined it. Ubisoft has ruined Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six with childish games. I'd rather invest money on indie efforts in game development.
  20. Back then, I missed the chance and posted a stupid request (actually a joke) for an X-32. Now that I think seriously about it, have you ever thought about remaking the Su-24? The old model is showing its age, and you have become a lot more experienced with 3d modelling. Ditto that!
  21. My bad, I remembered wrong about my terrain; this is what I use for the terrain and campaign that comes with ODS: [FrontLine] Position[001]=1000000,315000 ... Position[038]=433000,1000000 HideOverWater=TRUE StartShow=2 EndShow=11 StartMove=2 EndMove=10 I hope it can be of help. Basically it starts from maximum X value and ends to maximum Y value (or from X=0 to Y=0, it should work okay as well). There's no other reason I know for that base to turn Red or Blue, unless areas close to that base are also strategic nodes for ground forces and anything is re-based there. Also, you may want to consider using StartMove and EndMove statements. Basically you decide which points of the frontline can change during a ground war; it's pretty powerful, it can help avoid getting weird quirks with frontlines in general.
  22. You have to double check the frontline data. Frontline coordinates must cover the entirety of the terrain, they must go from 0 to 1000000 (or whichever the maximum size of the terrain is). If you don't divide the terrain exactly into two parts via frontline coordinates, this may happen. It's the only plausible reason (unless that area is involved in ground war strategic nodes), I've had same issues while making the new ODS campaign, until I fixed the front line data. You can specify a different front line for each campaign you create, so no need to change the one of the terrain's movement.ini file.
  23. No worries, it's just that topic titles don't need to be in caps, that's the equivalent of shouting. You were not impolite in your following questions, so all is cool. As for the question, yes, you may get missions before January 17th. Nothing we can do about this, especially since we allow missions from August 1990 by design. You can only specify a start date and end date, nothing in between for each single month. If you don't like the date of a created mission, just go back to the single mission screen and let the game create a new one. If you want a more realistic and historically accurate experience, you should play the campaign mode instead. I'm talking about ODS 30AE, the old mod was very inaccurate in pretty much everything, campaign data included. Even if ODS 30AE surpasses the old mod in quality, we are in no position to remove the old one, it would be just wrong and not respectful to the amount of effort put in past years by other modders. There should be no confusion about which is the most recent, since you can see when each was uploaded at their respective download page.
  24. No, I can confirm he has not downloaded ODS 30AE, so he's definitely talking about older ODS mods which are not my work. If he was using the latest ODS 30AE package, he wouldn't ask a question about a (seemingly non existent) feature which is already included by default and works as intended. Please, let's not add further confusion to other readers and imply that ODS 30AE has issues it does not have. JamesWilson is talking about the old ODS mod package by eburger69, which is totally unrelated to ODS 30AE. If he can only select years (like in stock SF2) and not specific months, then that is not ODS 30AE. @daddyairplanes No offense, but you've been in the development team of ODS 30AE, so it surprises me that you don't even know about its features.
  25. What's the fuss all about? The ODS package I released allows to select months (from August 1990 to February 1991), not years. It's part of the included menu mod, it makes use of a function from TW's First Eagles. If he's talking about the older ODS packages, I won't provide support for those as they are not my work. Not true. PS: Please, refrain from writing topic titles all in caps, it's just impolite. We're not blind, we can read and we do read, and we reply where we have something significant to say. Thanks.
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