Menrva

Italy, Southern Europe (1963-1991) Terrain September 13th, 2022 (1st Release) by Menrva and tiopilotos >For Strike Fighters 2, Recommended Full-5 Merged I am very proud to release a long awaited, brand new terrain made from scratch! The result of many years of dedication and sweat starting in 2017, it features thousands of manually placed tiles reproducing Real World river courses and lakes, not to mention tons of cities all accurately placed in their correct locations. This terrain portrays a pretty complex area, no wonder it never got made properly in two decades of Strike Fighters modding. It is my hope you realize the amount of time and hard effort that I have put to reproduce it with much care and detail. The terrain completely covers Italy (with the exception of Sicily, which is included in my Libya terrain), Yugoslavia, Albania, Corsica (France), Liechtenstein and nice portions of Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Greece and even a bit of Romania. The tileset, based on one of Stary's GermanyCE tilesets, has been recoloured and expanded with needed transition tiles and features beautiful, unique tiles by tiopilotos which reproduce real islands. Expect long and very accurate river courses, all major and some minor lakes, and tons of islands in the Adriatic Sea. Numerous target areas have been added in order to expand playability, targets of opportunity and year range; those include more than 140 airports, more than 100 SAM sites and more than 70 EW-GCI sites, all placed accurately in their correct locations as shown by well-made SAM site datasets for Google Earth. 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 April 7, 1963 (the day the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was introduced) to June 24, 1991 (the day before Slovenia and Croatia declared independence). This terrain is adapt for Cold War scenarios pitting NATO forces against the combined Red Side forces of Yugoslavia, Albania, Hungary and Romania. Airfields in Austria and Switzerland have been set to Neutral, so the AI and the player will never spawn on those by default. Targets reflect Real World events as accurately as possible. Having SF2NA is a must, as I have enabled naval ops; if your mod folder contains American, French and Italian aircraft carriers, sometimes you'll see fleets being generated in single missions. NOTE: The terrain is not fully finished. It currently misses targets for cities, such as bridges, warehouses, factories etc. If time will allow, maybe someday it will be completed properly. >Credits (in no particular order): -tiopilotos, for working on very well done island tiles which offer more unique sights in the Adriatic Sea. -swambast, who provided me with invaluable help in tracking and fixing common and uncommon bugs. -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. -JSF_Aggie, for his Hi-Res Runway Textures package which I have included and slightly reworked. -Coupi, for his Soviet style repaint of the stock Runway3 airfield. -luk1978, for the waternormal bitmap he shared at the SF2 screenshots thread. Your mods are very interesting! -Stary, for an old version of his GermanyCE tileset included in the Anatolia v1 terrain by PureBlue. -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. >Trivia: Some statistics of the amount of work that went into it, gathered thanks to gerwin's TFDtool. I placed manually one by one: more than 8600 rivers tiles, more than 1100 road tiles, more than 2000 city related tiles! This is just the tip of the iceberg, not counting other thousands of tiles that have been placed manually on the tilemap to better reproduce coastlines, islands and lakes, and not counting the endless hours of research since 2017 into adding all possible airports with much accuracy. >Disclaimer: This is a freeware; you are NOT allowed to redistribute it without my prior explicit consent. 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.

NovaLogic Skin Pack September 13th, 2022 (1st Release) by Menrva >For Strike Fighters 2 games This package includes high quality skins representing the player's aircraft from three lite flight simulators released by NovaLogic, namely F-22 Raptor in 1997, F-16 Multirole Fighter and MiG-29 Fulcrum both released in 1998. Below, a summary of the details of each skins: -NL_357CW, for the F-22A Raptor aircraft I released. This skin represents the fictive Raptor Squadron of the 58th TFS, 357th CW (Composite Wing), which took part in military operations in Angola, Jordan, Russia, Colombia and Iran. Serial numbers are realistic, the first being 001 as portrayed on the player's aircraft from NovaLogic's game. -NL_16AESOG, for the F-16C Block 42 aircraft released by The Viper Team. It depicts the fictive Viper Squadron of the 32nd TFS, 16th AESOG (Air Expeditionary Special Operations Group), which took part in military operations in Serbia, Liberia, Congo, Burma and Somalia. I made the skin for the Block 42, since it's closer to the one that NovaLogic modelled. Serial numbers are semi-realistic, the first being 112 as portrayed on the player's aircraft from NovaLogic's game. -NL_11EW, for the MiG-29S Fulcrum-C aircraft released by The Mirage Factory. It depicts the fictive 300 Squadron of the 7th Red Banner Guards Regiment, 11th Expeditionary Wing, which took part in military operations in the Kurile Islands, Uganda, Somalia, Burma and Tajikistan. Serial numbers are generic, the aircraft does not have any in NovaLogic's game. >Credits (in no particular order): -The Viper Team, for its detailed F-16 3d models and relative templates. -The Mirage Factory, for its good old MiG-29 3d model. -Sundowner, for the MiG-29 templates he made available. -yakarov79, for his reworked F-22 3d model and relative templates. >Disclaimer: This is a freeware; yet it can be redistributed ONLY in other CombatACE mods/mod packages. This mod may NOT in any way, shape or form be used in any payware additions.

F-19 Stealth Fighter September 13th, 2022 (1st Release) by Julhelm, Dels and Menrva >For Strike Fighters 2 games This is a rework of Julhelm's fantastic F-19 stealth fighter 3d model, now featuring a centre strut canopy structure (thanks to a cheap trick of repainting the bubble canopy glass) and a new cockpit, a purposely modified F-117A cockpit by Dels. Among the improvements, it now features proper hit boxes and collision points, proper location for position lights and landing gear lights, reworked skins, aircraft characteristics and loadouts meant to resemble the ones of Microprose's F-19 Stealth Fighter game. It still features two internal weapon bays (unlike Microprose's exaggerated four bays), but with properly reworked limits; you can have 4x Sidewinders or 3x AMRAAMs per bay, 2x bombs or AGMs depending on their overall weight and size. A 20mm cannon is on the nose with 680 rounds, and an extra 1,900 lbs fuel cell has been added for a total of 11,800 lbs of fuel; non-afterburning engines are used for stealth reasons. An (invisible) arrester hook has been added as well, since Microprose's version could also operate from aircraft carriers. Skins feature the 83-019 serial number and an F letter on the vertical tails; these two details come from a picture of a menu screen in one of the releases of Microprose's F-19 Stealth Fighter game, where you could choose between an F-19 or an F-117A. More serial numbers couldn't be featured as the 3d model of the aircraft does not support decals without decal bleeding issues. Just imagine piloting the only example of F-19 in very black operations! Three new skins were created: a Prototype Black skin created from the specular texture Julhelm had made, and Desert and Arctic camo skins made by modifying the USAF Euro camo skin created by kblomkvist. NOTE: Strike Fighters 2 has no proper IRST functionality, so for the purpose of launching AMRAAMs a very basic ACM radar mode has been added to the avionics file of the aircraft. Moreover, the default cockpit features an obtrusive front strut which makes the cannon difficult to use. You can activate an alternative cockpit LOD in the relative INI file. >What-if Backstory During the development of the Have Blue demonstrators, Lockheed's Skunk Works division also conceived a third experimental stealth aircraft featuring an entirely different shape, rounded fuselage and wings, and meant to have air combat capabilities. The CIA got wind of it, classifying it at the highest possible level and using it as a cover-up story for the stealth aircraft that came to be the F-117A Nighthawk. In 1986, the Testor Corporation released a plastic model aircraft kit, calling it the "F-19 Stealth Fighter". Jane's All the World's Aircraft 1987-88 book listed an RF-19 as a Lockheed development project. The conceptual drawings of it were generally similar to Testor's design. In 1988 a combat flight simulator game, F-19 Stealth Fighter by Microprose, was released just moments before the public unveiling of the F-117A Nighthawk attack aircraft, which is said to be what it sought to represent. The reality is that a single F-19 existed and, during secret flights over Groom Lake, this experimental aircraft showed unique strength and was deemed a super-aircraft. Due to its funding and maintenance costs, the project was officially abandoned in 1983. Unofficially, this single example of F-19 took part in black operations all over the world until 1997. It is named F-19A Nightowl, internally nicknamed "Flying Frisbee" for its rounded shape and also referred to as "Ghostrider" for allegedly being affiliated with the 416th TFS Ghost Riders flying the F-117A Nighthawk. "The view would have been frightening to most men, there were solid clouds overhead at 4000 feet. He flew through the showers, he more heard than saw on this black night and the dark outlines of the trees appeared to reach up and snatch at his speeding fighter. Only a madman would be so low on such a night. 'So much the better' he smiled in his oxygen mask" - Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising >Credits (in no particular order): -Julhelm, for creating this well-made 3d model of the F-19. -Dels, for his kindness in reworking the F-117 cockpit following my request. -kblomkvist, for his USAF Euro camo inspired by Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising book. -guuruu, for sharing his RWR symbols improvement mod and for his improved sound files. -simonmiller416, for his smokeless rocket effects mod. -Crusader, for the more realistic weapons data for AIM missiles. -TaktischesGenie, for his suggestions and chats we've had about the F-19 concept. -My girlfriend, for supporting me in all of my endeavors.