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Menrva

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Everything posted by Menrva

  1. That's an inaccurate statement, Kevin. We don't get a single dime from that mod, so it's not a paid product actually. You don't pay for it, you pay for the subscription service which offers unlimited downloads among other features; the mod is just an extra/bonus to it. It encourages end users to support the site and cover its costs; hosting costs money, and I know for a fact that Erik had to jump through hoops in order to upload this quality package in its entirety, as it is exceptionally big in the amount of content it offers. Besides, the mod should be available free of charge to the long time supporters of the site, be it admins, moderators and recognized modders. Speaking of actual paid products, I've seen some payware for Strike Fighters, and the overall quality of such packages leaves a lot to be desired IMHO. ODS was built upon months of passion and effort, it is still being worked on (some software developers don't even care to patch their own paid products) and eventually it will be available for unrestricted downloads by anyone. For now, those who like what we modders create, can help sustain the site. Without it, all mods no longer have a home.
  2. I thought as much. I believe this was a "quick fix" by TW for performance reasons, just like view distance for TODs being severely reduced in the stock game by the last official patches. By simply putting a limit to active SAM sites, you get less missiles, less effects and less ground objects. It's a pity it is so.
  3. I don't think you can do this. I'm afraid button types for each screen are hardcoded, you cannot add new ones expecting the game to recognize their function. There's no secondary position function either. The only way to do this, would be to use animation/hotspot images. Make a bigger bitmap as button animation, so that includes the original background, and add your other button to a new position in the bitmap texture of the animation. Not sure if I have been clear, just experiment with animations. It does have some limitations, so depending on the size of the bitmap of the animation, you may lock other buttons inadvertently.
  4. Of course, but he should have done it way back, when he was able to work on SF2 with a reasonable budget. Now, I wonder what's the point of communicating, as he knows well he cannot develop those features the community asks for. He would only disappoint the audience even more with sad news about TW, I think. I'd really love for something like this. The source code is his own work, though. I can understand he doesn't want to give it away for free. He knows SF is a unique product, and had the economic situation been different, he'd do more with it.
  5. Well yeah, probably. And I totally agree with you. I wish more can happen, but there's only so much a one man development team can do. TK is pretty much alone. As for the forums being gone, he announced that back in March, so you probably missed it. I speculate that's because of server costs; with the forums being gone and now using a free alternative like Discord, he surely has to cover less costs. I enjoy your exotic aircraft 3d models as well, BTW! There are fewer modders these days, so I do appreciate there are still some being active.
  6. I don't think I missed the point, I simply do not want to beat a dead horse because the matter has been discussed countless times. TK might have made wrong decisions in the past, now he's not in the position of solving everything overnight. And if he no longer communicates with the community as he used to in the early days of SFP1, something must have happened. As for the Third Wire community being gone, you probably missed the point. He announced back in March that he would move to Discord, and so he did. I've already explained it above, I won't repeat myself.
  7. Third Wire has not released updates even for mobile games for quite some time, so I have no idea about what you're talking about. TK definitely is in a difficult situation, his latest tweets date back to March, to announce the opening of new forums in a Discord server. The suggestion box in the Discord forum is still there. TK probably couldn't afford to pay for all servers, and moved the forum ones to Discord. Simply put, the situation is even worse. It's not like TK doesn't want to move forward with the PC series, we were promised a Win10 updated funded mostly thorough loans, since the kickstarter failed. The fact he is not even active on the mobile games shows how bad the economic situation might be. I wish this... I wish that... The reality is that many players always suggest things and features which sometimes are not even feasible for triple A developers. I'd like to see a brighter future for the Strike Fighters series, which IMHO carries lots of unexpressed potential; however, complaining like that brings us nowhere, it's like beating a dead horse. In all modesty, I think I've done more to support TK in the way of working on a high quality total conversion together with an awesome team of active modders, than by asking countless times about air refueling like many end-users do (in a game which by design has scaled 60% terrains, just to be precise). I'd love more communication with TK, but by the time I've become a more active modder together with a few others, damage was already done.
  8. Just look harder. It should be in the FlightData.cat, IIRC. There's no tool to edit .str files properly. The only way would be to hex-edit them, but hex-editing is not ideal and not for everyone. For menu screens, it's not needed; you can overwrite original strings referenced by those .str files directly in the .ini files.
  9. S!
  10. Wasn't the ban lifted in August 2018? Here's an article about it: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45142651 EDIT: I read the article more carefully; the ban is lifted only on officially rated videogames. In the case of custom content, of course you're still subject to the general ban.
  11. Be careful about using custom fonts; you have to make sure that such font type does exist on the OS of end-users. This is why the stock game simply uses Arial, it's one of a series of basic fonts always includes with Windows. If you plan to use a third-party font, it's no problem, but you'll have to provide end-users with the font type to install.
  12. As Nyghtfall said, it goes in the root Decals folder. However, a single InsigniaXXX.tga file does not suffice in covering the plane with decals on all sides. You must tweak the ALIAS.LST file, and that is a very tricky part. That file is responsible for telling the game which texture is to be used in all decal instances the stock game provides. For instance, in it you'll find something like this; InsigniaLVBR257.tga Insignia257.tga InsigniaLVBWingL001.tga Insignia001.tga Basically, you're telling the game to use the Insignia257.tga texture when the decals.ini calls for InsigniaLVBR. This is just an example, the game does feature so many other instances for which you must specify a texture, such as InsigniaL, InsigniaR, InsigniaLVL, InsigniaLVR, InsigniaLVGR, InsigniaLVGL, InsigniaFuseR, InsigniaFuseL, and so on... I suggest you try my Nations Expansion packages to see how it works in detail: https://combatace.com/files/file/16986-nations-medals-expansion/ AFAIK it's the only package providing a tweaked ALIAS.LST file, fully compatible with the stock nations.ini of SF2. Alternatively, this "fork" I produced could be more immediate: https://combatace.com/files/file/17484-ace-combat-nations/
  13. Ah, now I remember. My bad, it's been a while since a worked on a custom GUI. For buttons, what you did is the correct way to proceed. NumFrame is used for other different cases. I used it in a "tricky" way for the credits screen of the ODS mod, so that it displays dozens of artworks. That's your example for using NumFrames. It's not for buttons, where NumFrame must be set to 1 for each button animation texture separately.
  14. Bitmaps are preferable. JPEG is a lossy format; each time you re-save a JPG, generally there's a loss of quality and crispness. You can use .jpg if you wish, but make sure that you're saving .jpg textures with the maximum quality allowed by your painting software. Always keep templates at hand, they are your source at the original quality.
  15. Always make sure to double check the file format you define in the .ini, if it's another one than what is actually used and put in the folder, it won't show up. My mistake about the .tga textures, they don't work with animations, IIRC. This is why I had to make buttons for the ODS menu the hard way, using bitmaps, and of course you cannot have a transparent background with those. It's a lot of trial and error, so do not worry about making numerous attempts to make the buttons look and work right. You'll learn more and more by trying.
  16. 1) you must use .tga for buttons with transparency, .jpg does not hold transparency info and .png is not supported by the game. 2) I don't remember exactly, but you do not have to add three different animation statements. You must have a single one with NumFrame=3, that tells the game that the animation is using three textures for the animation, numbered sequentially as you did (maybe starting from 0). Check the menu mod included in the ODS package, files can be opened and you'll find examples on how to do similar buttons and other tricks.
  17. I had noticed you posted about the matter soon after that post, so it was no longer needed in my view as I was already replying to your latest with a more exhaustive post. Man, I never thought I would cause all these issues with this! My apologies to you. Next time I'll mind my own things, it seems I only cause trouble.
  18. I'm sorry you got offended and show such hostile attitude, that was not the point of my post. I don't recall I explicitly asked you to spend hours to remove those guidelines. I just wanted to tell the community about this oddity with .jpg and Photoshop. Up to you to consider removing them before exporting or not. If you do not, no problem, I can do it (and already did) on my own. Peace, man.
  19. I just speculated without any clue that they might be behind the issue Flogger23 explained; he confirmed they are not related. I totally agree about being ordered with layer names, that's what I do as well. You're misunderstanding my remark about bad practice; it's not a problem if those .jpg skins weigh more on the HDD, but it's a problem the moment SF2 takes longer to load countless custom .jpg skins for dozens of custom 3d models, especially on older PCs and hardware. So, any optimizations on this end should be taken into account IMHO. The same issue about loading times is clearly represented by the resolution used for specular maps; if those are saved as 4K (excessively), a mid-end system takes much longer to load a simple mission with the affected aircraft.
  20. It is free. We currently are restricting downloads to recognized modders and subscribers of the site; CombatACE does have important costs for hosting files and all of the forums, and it's a "home" for us modders to discuss and work together. If it's not supported, eventually the site as we know it would disappear. We modders would like to keep this site alive. At some point it should be available for download to anyone, but it depends if you're willing to wait an as of yet indeterminate amount of time. A 1 month subscription to the site should be reasonable and grants you unrestricted number of downloads for all kinds of mods. Just to make things clear, we modders don't get any revenue from what we do and release here (and rightly so, we produce mods in our free time just for the passion and love of creating things and letting end-users enjoy them). All the money from subscriptions goes exclusively to cover the site's costs. The ODS 30AE total conversion is pretty much an extra for subscribers, you're paying for the subscription service, not for the mod and its contents; it currently is one of the most comprehensive and high quality freeware packages available for SF2. It is still being developed and improved, the current release is just v0.9 after all.
  21. Are you using guide lines in Photoshop? They are common use with templates, they usually have a cyan colour. If you export a texture file in .jpg format or anything else, guide lines are still kept as info! They are not needed and only increase overall size, and might be the issue behind what you're dealing with. I've seen tons of skins with guide lines into them and that's a bad practice; they are not visible in-game or in a simple image viewer, but reopen them with Photoshop and guide lines are there as if they were in the template. Always double check and remove them.
  22. I wonder if it could have been part of the Iran-Contra affair, after all Iran still received American equipment such as MIM-23 Hawk launchers back then.

  23. The Corona Virus Thread

    Menrva replied to Wrench's topic in The Pub

    In all honesty, it's even worse, this one is on the WHO. Here in Italy we're in the middle of a scandal, it seems there's corruption among some WHO officials. Our pandemic plan hadn't been updated since 2006, despite there had been other epidemics in later years (H1N1 and MERS to name a few). I remember when the WHO (Tedros Ghebreyesus) said it was all fine back in Autumn 2019, that China kept the epidemic under control. Not even two months later, we saw the truth ourselves. The Chinese do have their responsibilities for what happened, then I look at Brazil and I don't think the West can consider itself 100% clean, the situation was even worsened. Had this started in Brazil or in another country with lunatics in power, we'd find ourselves in this sh*t anyway.
  24. That's your main problem; there is no ultimate weapon pack. There's ravenclaw's Weapon Pack 2 (a version 3 is in the works) but there are many other weapon packs dealing with different ordnance and countries; rather often you might encounter different folder names and 3d models, but both refer to the same weapon type (some weapon mods feature Soviet missiles with NATO names, others feature them with their Soviet naming convention and outdated 3d models); you can even find things like R-552 and Matra550-2, but they are actually the same thing and only one should be featured. To make things worst, sometimes weapons which seemingly are copies of one another may contain specific station codes so that they are used only by specific aircraft, and so they may be needed. To make things even worse, you'll find weapons with alternative skins/camos, and copies and copies of rocket pods using alternative rocket types, and those usually are needed as well. IMHO, limit yourself to the stock weapons. If you plan to expand with custom weapons, it's a minefield. For the ODS mod we've released, we've spent much time removing any unwanted/double versions of the same weapon, and even now that we're working on a patch we find ourselves removing some, adding some, all while tweaking dozens of aircraft files as well. My point is, save yourself some trouble and enjoy the game, or you'll end-up in an exhausting loop at some point. Just for reference, in ODS we currently have 448 weapons. Imagine that number x2 or x3, considering all other time frames and conflicts featuring older and newer ordnance.
  25. That is happening because you only edited the .ini file, while the .dat file is still that of the original game, hence you get the original names. You must re-save the .dat file with TW's Weapon Editor. The .ini file is just an interface for the Weapon Editor, the stock weapon data that is truly read by the game is held in the .dat file.
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