Menrva

IIIRC when you choose Unlimited Effects, your graphic card uses DirectX 10 level shaders (in fact you get bloom and other special effects). When on High Effects or less, your graphic card simply uses DirectX 9 shaders, so there is no way to preserve that look you have on Unlimited. This also explains why you have lower FPS when on Unlimited. Most likely your graphic card is not good enough to use DirectX 10 while mantaining a good FPS (the rest of your PC is very good instead, an I7 and 16GB of RAM, it's more than okay). You might want to consider updating the video drivers of your card and see if there is an improvement. If not, consider buying a new and more powerful video card. I have a really bad computer instead, and I usually use Medium Effects or even lower settings sometimes. You can set all Texture related options to Unlimited though, they don't take much FPS and improve the game looks quite a lot.

My bad, I missed the one with updated .inis, apologies.

Lovely decals work as always, Wrench! Just one thing, this should be called Skin Pack 2, not 3, for obvious reasons.

S!

Apart from the new and uber-realistic tiles from Stary (I can't believe this is SF2!), did I notice new water effects and a new version of SARCASM?

So the changes I suggested didn't work? But the odd thing is that everything else works ok, I guess we must find an alternative LOD for those signs. But I have some sort of an idea as to why this bug is happening; those signs are acting as if they were ships, in fact they sink into the ground. You might want to double-check the object type, their relevant .ini statements in the _types.ini, etc.

-Try setting the LowDetailMesh back to its stock value (LowDetailMesh=-1.5). It won't affect the ships I am pretty sure, so just take a look at the signs. -If nothing changes, in the [NormalTextureMaterial] restore the RenderedInOrder value (you should have it set to TRUE, now try setting it back at FALSE). I have no idea what this means, but who knows, it may work. -Moreover, make sure you removed the [NoiseTextureMaterial], it seems it is no longer working/present in the stock SF2 terrains _data.ini files. Hopefully we'll find a fix for this odd bug. I'll be busy in the next 48 hours, but I'll be back. Keep us posted!

Such adjustments have fixed one bug, but may have introduced a new one. The only way to figure out what is going on is to replace parts of the _data.ini statements one by one, or group of strings by group of strings. Eventually we may find the "buggy" value. Do you have the old _data.ini values? If you do, please post them here, I do have some suspicions.

In fact, that is strange and makes me wonder. On some terrains using custom _hm files I experienced enemy tanks totally sinking into the ground during various missions. But this is another case, all objects seem to work fine except those signs. Could it be LOD related? krfge, did the signs work fine before the .ini changes I suggested? If they did, then we'll have to dig inside the _data.ini to find out the culprit/s. At least we're going to learn more about the _data.ini values.

I have no idea actually as to why this is happening. Are the other objects in the same island sinking a little more too? If not, just try to move the signs into other positions. Also, make sure that that particular tile of the island has a proper black _hm.bmp and the usual 2.000 value. Let's see if The Warrior has some suggestions. I was thinking about the ZBufferOffset values in the _data.ini, but they simply alter the rendering of the .TOD objects, not the .LODs

Indeed, thanks to your tool, gerwin, I was able to flatten various airbases in the North Cape terrain, for one of eburger's expansions. It would be nice to implement some functions of TW's TE into your tool, such as "Smooth Height Field" and "Adjust Sea Level", but I'm already happy with the current version of TFDtool

Great images for the new menus! With all the new additions in the coming expansion pack, next release should be called TSF3 instead of TSF2. Great work!

I'm glad to be helpful, krfge. Your terrain really deserves all the attention it can get. Good job with the islands, that's some very fine texturing work!

Good call, The Warrior. I forgot about the Material settings, now I think we got rid of all the known bugs once and for all. krfge, please copy all the following statements and overwrite the ones you have in your _data.ini (make a backup first). This is what I use in all the terrains of my personal mod folder, it's a combinations of statements that Stary and others have suggested during the years, for SF2, and I have no issues with the ships and the Height Field: [HeightField] DetailScale=1.0 DetailFrequency=1.0 MaxHeight=1000 MinHeight=0 BumpAmount=100 [HeightOffset] LowDetailMesh=-25 WaterMesh=0.8 [NormalTextureMaterial] EffectShaderName=terTerrainEffect.fx DepthBufferCheck=TRUE DepthBufferWrite=TRUE RenderedInOrder=TRUE AlphaTestEnabled=FALSE CullMode=CLOCKWISE LightEnabled=TRUE SpecularEnabled=FALSE EmissiveEnabled=FALSE FogEnabled=TRUE AmbientColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000 DiffuseColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000 ZBufferOffset=0.000000 BlendOp=ONE NumTextureStages=1 TextureStage[01].TextureName= TextureStage[01].MipMap=TRUE TextureStage[01].FilterEnabled=TRUE TextureStage[01].StageColorOp=TEXTURE_MODULATE_DIFFUSE TextureStage[01].StageAlphaOp=NO_OP [WaterTextureMaterial] EffectShaderName=terWaterEffect.fx DepthBufferCheck=TRUE DepthBufferWrite=TRUE RenderedInOrder=FALSE AlphaTestEnabled=FALSE CullMode=CLOCKWISE LightEnabled=TRUE SpecularEnabled=TRUE EmissiveEnabled=FALSE FogEnabled=TRUE AmbientColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000 DiffuseColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000 SpecularColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000 SpecularPower=10.000000 Reflectivity=0.00000 ZBufferOffset=0.000000 BlendOp=ONE NumTextureStages=1 TextureStage[01].TextureName= TextureStage[01].MipMap=TRUE TextureStage[01].FilterEnabled=TRUE TextureStage[01].StageColorOp=TEXTURE_MODULATE_DIFFUSE TextureStage[01].StageAlphaOp=NO_OP [backgroundMaterial] EffectShaderName=terFarTerrainEffect.fx DepthBufferCheck=TRUE DepthBufferWrite=TRUE RenderedInOrder=FALSE AlphaTestEnabled=FALSE CullMode=CLOCKWISE LightEnabled=TRUE SpecularEnabled=FALSE EmissiveEnabled=FALSE FogEnabled=TRUE AmbientColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000 DiffuseColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000 ZBufferOffset=0.000000 BlendOp=ONE NumTextureStages=1 TextureStage[01].TextureName= TextureStage[01].MipMap=TRUE TextureStage[01].FilterEnabled=TRUE TextureStage[01].StageColorOp=TEXTURE_MODULATE_DIFFUSE TextureStage[01].StageAlphaOp=NO_OP [solidObjectTextureMaterial] EffectShaderName=terSolidObject.fx DepthBufferCheck=TRUE DepthBufferWrite=TRUE RenderedInOrder=TRUE AlphaTestEnabled=FALSE CullMode=CLOCKWISE LightEnabled=TRUE SpecularEnabled=FALSE EmissiveEnabled=FALSE FogEnabled=TRUE AmbientColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000 DiffuseColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000 ZBufferOffset=2.000000 BlendOp=ONE NumTextureStages=1 TextureStage[01].TextureName= TextureStage[01].MipMap=TRUE TextureStage[01].FilterEnabled=TRUE TextureStage[01].StageColorOp=TEXTURE_MODULATE_DIFFUSE TextureStage[01].StageAlphaOp=NO_OP [AlphaObjectTextureMaterial] EffectShaderName=terAlphaObject.fx DepthBufferCheck=TRUE DepthBufferWrite=FALSE RenderedInOrder=TRUE AlphaTestEnabled=FALSE CullMode=NO_CULL LightEnabled=TRUE SpecularEnabled=FALSE EmissiveEnabled=FALSE FogEnabled=TRUE AmbientColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000 DiffuseColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000 ZBufferOffset=2.000000 BlendOp=BLEND_SRC_ALPHA NumTextureStages=1 TextureStage[01].TextureName= TextureStage[01].MipMap=TRUE TextureStage[01].FilterEnabled=TRUE TextureStage[01].StageColorOp=TEXTURE_MODULATE_DIFFUSE TextureStage[01].StageAlphaOp=TEXTURE [NoiseTexture] Size=256 MinColor=229 MaxColor=255 Frequency=1.7 ResolutionFactor=4.0 StartFadeDistance=200.0 EndFadeDistance=500.0

Hmm, I do know that bug of the boats that sort of "fly" over water, but I think that there was another working fix, I'll make some searches here in the old threads. BTW did you try the values I posted? EDIT: Look here (check post #6 and post #7), Wrench encountered the same bug in one of his terrains: http://combatace.com/topic/66343-waterworld-terrain/ If it does solve that problem, you may want to restore the WaterMesh value back to the stock value.

Experiment with my values, probably nothing will change, but it's better to have a try. BTW did you change the WaterMesh value on purpose? The stock 0.8 should do okay, hence why you might be getting such Height Field issues where there are water .tga files. This is just a guess though...

Check these values in the _data.ini, most likely they are going to create more problems or not: [HeightField] DetailScale=1.0 DetailFrequency=1.0 MaxHeight=1000 MinHeight=0 BumpAmount=100 [HeightOffset] LowDetailMesh=-25 WaterMesh=0.8 (sometimes I have also tried LowDetailMesh=0.0 on stock terrain size, not your case indeed)

"Two weeks" here means "not going to happen anytime soon". 3D modeling is a very difficult task and requires lots of freetime. Moreover there are not so many Ace Combat fans here, despite it's probably the best arcade flight game series (apart from ACAH). Here's a fine Ace Combat aircraft available: http://combatace.com/topic/81994-ace-combat-x-02-wyvern/ But it's for SF1, so some tweaks are required to make it work in SF2.

Hmm, could the issue be caused by the _hm.bmp files? In some occasions I've seen that they create such problems, unless some edits are made in the terrain's _data.ini. Anyway we'll surely find a fix and Height Field smoothing is an option, but only when the terrain is complete. Keep up the good work, krfge!

I use XnView, you can set the quality of the .jpg conversion and select all image files you want. The only downside is that once you select a folder, it selects all supported image files, so you may want to remove from the conversion list such image file formats (like .tga files etc.)

Looking forward to it! Many thanks to you, Erik!

I've discovered this video last year. I'm wondering if Maj. Tullia was ever interviewed about that day; that very same day other friendly aircraft were shot down.

krfrge, you are doing a very impressive work with this terrain, I am amazed about the new tiles, that 4-tiles atoll looks just perfect. Keep up the good work and take all the time you need. @Wrench -As saisran said, that applies to me too. I am almost tempted to get that achievement too, just for fun.

As he wrote, such statements are present in some campaign inis from SF2I.