Menrva

@daddyairplanes yeah I'm aware of him, he's got his own website with reviews to flight sim games and a YT channel. I'm glad he enjoys the mod, indeed it's not from 2008 so I'm glad you corrected him.

You can't. Unlike with aircraft, it's not possible to hide nodes of the 3d model for ground objects. Only a 3d model edit could fix that, but those are stock LODs. Unless someone makes new ones from scratch, we're stuck with the SH-3 on them.

View File Iraq, Western Asia (1980-2003) Iraq, Western Asia (1980-2003) Terrain February 13th, 2017 (1st Release) by Menrva >For Strike Fighters 2, Recommended Full-5 Merged This is a complete remake of the DS/IR terrain released long time ago by Wrench. The entire map has been retargetized and retiled using a whole new tileset, combining tiles from JSF_Aggie, Stary, Centurion-1 and my bad transition tiles. All major water bodies, lakes and some minor rivers have been hand-tiled. The Caspian Sea coast had to be hand-tiled as well. Numerous target areas 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 September 22, 1980 (the beginning of the Iran/Iraq War) to May 1, 2003 (the end of major combat operations of Operation Iraqi Freedom); it is designed for the Iran/Iraq War, Operation Desert Shield, Operation Desert Storm, Operation Desert Fox and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Iraq is Enemy, Iran is Friendly, other countries are Friendly as well. Due to limitations in the terrain engine, and not wanting to make three different terrains, I opted to set Iran as Friendly together with other countries such as Saudi Arabia. While you might see US planes spawn in Iran during Single Missions even if the 1979 Iranian Revolution already happened, it's up to the users to play with missions in the editor to fix any historical oddities. Targets reflect Real World events as accurately as possible; for instance, after the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, Kuwaiti airfields are set as Neutral, enemy targets appear inside Kuwait, etc. Some airfields won't be available after a certain date and/or will change name according to historic changes. Various Operation Desert Storm expeditionary bases and FOBs have been added, and will appear only during Operation Desert Storm dates. All main targets are in their Real World locations (I tried to be as accurate as possible, to such a level that even surpasses ThirdWire's stock terrains). Shiraz Int'l Airport and Prince Sultan Airbase are beyond the Wall. However, if you have SF2NA, long range AI flights can be generated from such airbases. Ground Objects are not included. You can obtain most of them from Wrench's original Iran-Iraq terrains, or from other mod packages. >Credits (in no particular order): -Wrench, who reworked the original terrain and provided the CombatACE community with plenty of mods and scenarios to play with. He gave me invaluable advise, the tools I needed and introduced me to the beautiful, exhausting world of terrain modding/making. Thank you, sir! -swambast, who offered to build two high quality 3D models (Mosul Dam and Mosul Grand Mosque), featured for the first time in this terrain, it's an honor! He also provided major help in tracking and fixing common and uncommon bugs. If the terrain is stable (no CTDs), it's his merit! -Nyghtfall, for creating 3d models of the Kuwait Water Towers and Kuwait Freedom Towers. -tiopilotos, for providing reworked .tga tiles with new alpha channels. Much appreciated! -Spudknocker, who helped me complete the 1980-2003 beta version of the terrain, providing additional target areas. -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. -MigBuster, I have included some of his great hi-res textures for runways. -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! -Crusader, who provided me with the info I needed about ODS and other stuff related to targets. -JSF_Aggie, for his high quality DS tileset, which I have expanded with my horrible transition tiles. -7eleven, who directed me to a website filled with Desert Storm related info. -Centurion-1, since I used some tiles from his Desert 4 Mountain Regions+ Addon. I tried to contact you for permission, but it seems RL got in your way. Your WIP mod about the Iran/Iraq war gave me the motivation to complete this terrain. The least I can say is thank you. Best of luck, mate! -Stary, because his tilesets are pure art. I borrowed a few TODs and tiles from his excellent IsraelME tileset. -Gepard, for his great tutorials about terrain making, in the SF1 Knowledge Base at CombatACE. It's a gold mine! -Stratos, who supported me support during the terrain's development. -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. I am totally sure I missed someone, especially because the terrain was born from Wrench's original ones. So I also included Wrench's original readme files from his IR and IR2003 terrains 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. Submitter Menrva Submitted 02/13/2017 Category Full Terrains  

Just wanted to let everyone know that a user active on FB posted news of his "mod" on ModDB with a link to it. He goes by the nickname "Strike Fighters 2" (how original) and has a following of over 500 users. The package is a mix of mods from CombatACE without any permission from the original authors, including yours truly; he made use of the NL terrains package that gerwin and I produced. I also saw one of the terrains by Wrench in the screenshots, and I'm sure he got a lot more in the package I don't dare downloading. The guy apparently made his own skins for aircraft and cockpits, nothing wrong with that, but he's also sharing tons of aircraft and terrains which he definitely not produced, and doesn't even credit the authors at all. If you're among his 500+ followers, consider yourself on par with him, shame on you. We produce tons of mods in free time for free, but that doesn't mean that our work can be shared elsewhere and others can take credit for it without shame. I don't have the power of closing his FB page. I have an account on ModDB though and I reported both his page: Strike Fighters 2 - Lightning 2 - Falcon Edition mod - ModDB and his profile: StrikeFighters2 - ModDB. Due to how ModDB works, multiple reports are needed until the admins consider them. You don't need an account to report it, so I'd appreciate if you click on the " ! " in the Profile box. Thanks in advance.

@toro The campaign is like this by design, just like the campaigns of Strike Fighters 2 Vietnam. Naval fleets ala SF2NA only work in so called naval campaigns, but naval campaigns remove night-time missions and force the enemy aircraft to find and attack the opposing naval fleet, which is not proper for the Gulf War scenario. We cannot have the best of both worlds, so the campaign won't feature fleets. One possible workaround I'm planning for a future update is to add other ships as terrain objects, they'd be static but at least would populate the Gulf during the campaign.

An hot-fix has been uploaded and it requires admins to approve it again. Wait until the mod gets approved again. If you downloaded all four split parts of the ISO of the mod before January 19th/20th, after installation you're advised to manually install the hotfix. If you did not download all parts before the latest reupload, I'm afraid all parts need to be downloaded again, old ones cannot match the checksum of the new split ISO. Apologies for the mix-up and thank you for your patience and understanding.

An hot-fix has been uploaded and it requires admins to approve it again. Wait until the mod gets approved again. If you downloaded all four split parts of the ISO of the mod before January 19th/20th, after installation you're advised to manually install the hotfix. If you did not download all parts before the latest reupload, I'm afraid all parts need to be downloaded again, old ones cannot match the checksum of the new split ISO. Apologies for the mix-up and thank you for your patience and understanding.

@Muesli Disregard what EricJ said, please refer to this post for the issue you're having: https://combatace.com/forums/topic/95630-operation-desert-storm-30th-anniversary-edition/?page=8&tab=comments#comment-810329 I'll be updating the mod's page to include the following more complete info about the installer: The installer will automatically detect your installation of the required Strike Fighters 2 games by reading through the registry keys. Pirated copies and/or game folders that are manually moved from where they were originally installed are not supported. You need all three aforementioned Strike Fighters 2 games and they must be installed with their original installers by ThirdWire, not manually copied from other sources nor moved elsewhere after installation to other folders or drives. If you do not meet any of these requirements, installation cannot proceed and you are on your own. If you install all required games properly, the installation of the mod will proceed correctly as intended. The installer then lets you choose where to install the mod folder; you can even install the mod on a different drive or partition than the one where Strike Fighters 2 is installed. No further user input nor manual edits after installation are ever required; the installer takes care of creating all proper links to your desired path for the mod folder. After installation is over, simply run the mod by using the created Desktop and/or Start Menu links. I have to hope users read all that I write, though.

@MurmanskPrPr I'm sorry to see you posted a 4-star review for something you couldn't even play. If you need assistance, this is the right place to ask. The installer of the mod looks for where your games are installed by reading through the registry keys. You need all three Strike Fighters 2 games I mention and those must be installed with their original installers, not manually copied nor moved elsewhere to other folders or drives. If you own all required games and you install them with the official installers by ThirdWire, the installation of the mod should then proceed correctly as intended. Game folders that are manually copied from or moved from where they are originally installed are not supported.

That's weird, I'll have to double check. EDIT: @mono27 It pains me to see that there is a mistake, the cockpit.ini file has the position that's used on the A-6E. I focused on fixing so many bugs and this slipped through, argh! Here's the fixed file: EA-6B_ICAP_COCKPIT.INI

Yes, but that's something I feel most users wouldn't like to hear. So my main suggestion is to find a balance between the graphics settings of the game and what your hardware allows, so that you can run consecutive missions without major issues. My second suggestion is to give the DXVK wrapper a try, apparently it makes the mod playable on weak integrated GPUs (given that they are Vulkan-compatible) whereas without it the mod wouldn't work on such hardware.

No.

I think Easy equals unlimited fuel. I never play with Easy settings, but they literally turn it into an arcade flight combat game.

It has been discussed already in the past, the start from ramp is an incomplete feature from SF1, it never got implemented properly. It can be made to work for the player only by manually editing mission files, but it won't work for the AI aircraft:

Transport missions are generated for any campaign since SF1. We have them working also on ODS.

I once saved a campaign generated mission of the ODS 30AE mod and discovered that it somehow assigned a Transfer (not Transport) mission to a cargo plane. After further investigations, it seems it's a valid mission type that can be assigned to AI-only aircraft in ThirdWire's Mission Editor. Just add Transfer to the roles of the aircraft in its data.ini file, and it'll appear in the Mission Editor. I don't know the exact differences between Transport and Transfer, but on the campaign generated mission it seemed to make the aircraft take-off from one airport and land on another. I want to reiterate that this is an AI-only mission type, so it won't appear for the player, regardless of the aircraft type.

I was surprised to find this out, I've been modding the game for so long and noticed about it only now. The secret was all about saving a campaign mission. I think that without saving, most of us would have thought a cargo plane was doing a mere Transport mission. I don't think there are any other hidden features, mission type wise. Also, I don't think it's related to SF2NA, I think it existed before it. In DLL files, the extra mission types of SF2NA are called after disabled ones from First Eagles 2 (balloon busting and the likes), while Transfer is before those. Moreover, my ODS campaign is not a Naval one ala SF2NA, thus SF2NA's extra mission types don't work in it.

Nope, these others don't seem to work, they do not appear in the mission editor at least.

@bazillius You were credited in the Thanks page of the ODS mod, it's not like I'm taking credit for the work done by other modders. Anyway, I had already decided to remove your MiG-29UB from the next version of the mod. I'm not comfortable with featuring the work of someone who condones piracy and the violation of intellectual properties. Not to mention that I seriously doubt you made that 3d model from scratch yourself. Thank you for your understanding. PS: if you have a beef with me, just say it and insult me in private, I prefer it. This thing has dragged on for too long. When I posted the topic, I simply wanted to advise other respectable modders that their work was being shared without their permission and/or without them knowing. It seems it hurt you in some way (maybe because you like to download stuff from dubious sources) and now you're persecuting me. You want to impose your view on intellectual properties on everyone. You had the right to notify the admins that you didn't want me to include your aircraft in a package, I genuinely didn't notice you were not in the freeware licensing agreement. Just because you don't care about your own works, it doesn't mean others shouldn't care about theirs. But you don't want to understand it, this has been a pointless conversation. From now on, every time I want to post anything, do I need to send you a PM asking for your permission and blessing to do so? It seems so.

@Sundowner Agree to disagree. I'm not losing my sleep over such issues, but when they involve my works (and those of the modders I closely work with), I want to do my part to try and prevent that they are shared without permission. I may fail at it, but after spending months and even years in making terrains and other mods, I think I have this small right of pointing out where mods shouldn't be downloaded from. It's bad that some others repackage stuff as their own without crediting the original authors, especially since it doesn't take much to do so. I'm like this, like it or not. I won't be silent when things like this happen. You're entitled to being passive on the matter, but I certainly did not expect that my post is being called out more than those pages of piracy. It seems to me things are starting to become the opposite over here as well, and I truly hope it's just a wrong impression.

@PeacePuma I admit I might have been hot-headed in my post (I'd say reasonably once you see your mods worth months of work being stolen), but my point stands. UllyB confirmed that such page distributes a pirated copy of SF2NA. Of all those 500+ followers, for sure there are some who were just interested in seeing screenshots this hack posted; nothing wrong with that. However, his page still exists, which means that when he uploaded a pirated copy of the game, none of the 500+ followers did a thing about it. There are users who didn't notice and soon unfollowed him once they got aware of what happened, alongside reporting the page. Those may have felt offended by my post and if so I apologize to them. Now that the page has been exposed, to follow a group or account that condones piracy is a deliberate action to my eyes. I want to precise I'm not referring to users who started following that account long ago and even forgot about it. Of all 500+ followers, I feel safe to assume some are still active and condone piracy. One of the reasons why TK left was piracy, and I think it happens to a greater extent than we'd think if pages like this exist on FB.

While not publicly shown, the previous release of ODS 30AE offered reworked hit boxes and collision points for all of the over 140 aircraft of the mod; some aircraft required major fixes, others only needed small improvements. Referenced model node names have also been corrected in many cases. This (boring and time-consuming) work improves the hit detection of bullets and missiles and of crashes into the ground; overall it puts all of the aircraft of the mod on par with each other, for quality consistency's sake. Another detail that is often neglected regards landing lights. After several days of work, I'm happy to announce that the next release of the mod will offer standardized brightness and range values of landing lights for all of the flyable aircraft of the mod (not player-flyable aircraft will get the same treatment at a later time). Previously, many aircraft were missing landing lights or had broken values that caused rendering issues of landing lights. Each of the over 80 flyable aircraft (sub-variants included, not counting AI-only sub-variants that were also fixed) has been tested carefully to make sure that quality consistency on landing lights is kept throughout the entire roster of aircraft.

Don't be sorry, because you should be ashamed of this comment. This isn't the place for it, but since you bring the matter up, let me explain why it is not comparable. His site is open to everyone, it does not require accounts to access the info, and on top of that no one here is taking credit for the work he has done, I certainly won't. Yesterday's matter was about one guy taking credit of the work of multiple modders (mods that are not freely available without an account and that usually come with ReadMe files detailing explicit wishes not to share them elsewhere), sharing it elsewhere without any permission nor crediting to the original authors. Just because you're fine with someone taking your stuff and share it as their own doesn't mean that it should be fine for me and everyone else.