Menrva

Don't worry, Wrench. I've got the entire planet Earth in DEM files, I have all of them. Also, they are divided in parts according to latitude and longitude values. I simply have to take a look at the area with Google Earth, a few minutes of trial and error, and I can make a new heightmap, and flatten everything as usual. @PFunk, my offer is still valid, I can help with your heightmap too.

Well, I'm here to help, I'd be very glad! I can even attempt making a whole new 250m heightmap from DEM files, for the DBS terrain, it's been on my mind for quite some time. That way we can get realistic altitudes (IIRC the map seems to have suffered the smooth heightfield treatment in the TE). Just shoot me a PM and I will look into it.

PFunk, do you have a older version of the heightmap, one that was not resized? The heightmap should be modded and flattened only at the end, if you work on it more and more time, it gets broken and less detailed. If you wish I can provide help, just send me a PM, and I'll show you my way to resize and make 250m heightmaps (without using .act palettes and other "unuseful" stuff). I can also make a brand new heightmap that matches your exact area, so that you won't need to replace targets locations or retile it, etc. (see what I've done for FRPignon's Europe terrain). I noticed that you flattened lakes with height=0, as if they were sea. It's better to flatten lakes and rivers, etc. as if they were part of land, the same thing we do with airbases flattening. IMHO it's not worth inverting the colours of the palette at this time, but it can be done easily; it's better to work with a heightmap bitmap exported with TFDtool (the one that is black and white) instead of the ones you have showed before. Open with Photoshop, simply invert colours. Now, sea areas will be white instead of black, so next step would be to export (always with TFDtool) a tilemap bitmap. From it, select by colour (there is a tool in each paint program for this) the sea areas. Copy and paste them over the heightmap, and turn them completely black. Some small tweaks here and there, and it's done. Believe me, once you understand how it works, it's a five minutes job. Ah, even if the bitmap is black and white, just save it as a 8bit bitmap, and you can import it into TW's TerrainEditor. This is also what Stary explained in his tutorial for 250m heightmaps. I no longer see the utility of working with .act palettes, now that we can use both TFDtool and the TE together. Again, heightmaps should be the last thing to mod, it's better to place targets and tiles first, flattening is the last thing to do (I suggest using gerwin's TFDtool, for all kinds of flattening, lakes, rivers, airbases). So, if possible, I suggest reverting to a precedent heightmap if you have it, even a 500m one. It can be easily converted into a 250m at the end.

Congratulations, Raven! Wish you the best of luck!

What a beautiful, moving thing, my best wishes to this guy and the organization! Having suffered from bullying and (subsequent) depression, I know how difficult it is for someone to recover. I once thought there was no one that cared about me, and that was a big mistake. There were loved ones I didn't notice or forgot about. I wish there were organizations like this in my country, today's threat is cyber-bullying as well.

The avionics .dll has only to do with the aircraft avionics, it has nothing to do with speechpacks. It's the NATIONS.ini in the Flight folder that controls which speechpack is activated, according to the chosen "nation". IIRC Hawkeye appears by default when flying for USN and USMC, that's it. Not to mention how bad and incomplete Hawkeye's speech is, the fact that other flights still call for Red Crown instead of Hawkeye, etc. Red Crown is historically accurate for the Vietnam era, AFAIK. I miss the AWACS voices from Jane's USAF, they were cool and rather professional.

I too have found lots of unused parameters inside the dlls, through an Hex editor. From what I've seen most if not all of the unused stuff doesn't work. Keep us informed with any findings, EMCON360. Maybe there is something working in the code.

Thanks for the reply, EMCON360. Unfortunately it's not what I was looking for. The parameters you posted are relative to the comms box, the one we use to communicate orders to flights and to ask the TACC for help. From what I have seen, it's all hardcoded, there is no way to change colour to the flights subtitles. That blue is too dark for my likings. Yellow and red are still visible under various conditions, those are ok.

FRPignon, did you flatten airbases with TW's TerrainEditor function? Such oddities are caused by it. That's why I resorted to use gerwin's mighty TFDtool for almost everything; with it you can tweak the heights of single tiles, and you can create small, simple flat tiles unlike TW's big circular ones.

I'd say not. A screenshot would help better.

I should have wrote it earlier, I followed pretty much everything that you said, Stary. However, in regards to sea areas, I usually take them from the texture bitmap, and copy them into the heightmap bitmap, and paint them completely black, so that when I reimport them into the TerrainEditor, sea is blue (IIRC your Kamchatka HFD treats sea as land, but only in regards to altitudes of course, it doesn't affect gameplay in anyway). Also, I rather use gerwin's TFDtool to flatten rivers, airfields and lakes, and I usually tweak the exported bitmap to add slight blur between the flat tiles and the surrounding, non-flat ones. Just minor tweaks. I would avoid using the smooth heightfield function of the TerrainEditor, since it really removes many details of the heightmap. What I learned is, the less you touch a heightmap, the better, unless it's necessary for water bodies and airbases.

Good to hear from you, Baltika! I've experimented with 250m heightmap, and the results are really great. I know it's difficult to work on terrains due to RL and overambition; the Iran/Iraq terrain I released was my first effort, and it did take three or more years of development, mostly because I was never happy with it...

PFunk, if you want I can help with 250m heightmaps, I "developed" a similar procedure to the one discovered by Stary. Also, it's not too late for your Aegean terrain, I can convert it to 250m resolution. I already did it for my Iran/Iraq terrain, and for the Europe terrain FRPignon is working on. I am also planning a series of mods that will include 250m height maps compatible with SF's stock and custom terrains. Now I'm not at home, but feel free to send me a PM if you're interested, and as soon as possible I will reply and fill you in with a step by step procedure.

Wow, it's beautiful, PFunk! I always desired a smaller version of the Anatolia terrain, and here you made it!

Simply you can't. I'm afraid that you'll have to scrap those two airbases. If people own SF2NA, you can make such airbases as OffMapAirbase=TRUE (just check he stock IcelandNA terrain's targets.ini). Or try to make a bigger terrain, 2000x2000, but that means you'll have to start from the beginning. I think first choice is the one you may want to do.

yubba, it works in SF2, but it's not what I asked about. Please do not hijack the thread.

Unfortunately no, it has nothing to do with that .ini. Logic says such parameter should be in the hud.ini, but I can only find the following that apply to in-flight dialog: NormalColor=1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0 (white for common messages) WarningColor1=1.0,1.0,0.0,1.0 (yellow for warnings towards your flight) WarningColor2=1.0,0.0,0.0,1.0 (red for warnings towards your aircraft) I know this already, yubba, I made several changes to target boxes. You can change the color with the following parameter: BoxColor=1.0,1.0,1.0,0.75 First three numbers are RGB (Red-Green-Blue) colours, fourth value is transparency. 1.0 is equivalent to 255 in programs like Paint. Choose a colour in some painting software. Let's say that your custom colour has a Red value of 223, you simply divide 223 by 255, and you have the value to put in the BoxColor parameter. I hope this is useful to you. Back to topic, I think I'll give up, it really seems it is hardcoded, I have looked everywhere. Damned TK always locking things up!

I'm making some interesting changes to the game's default HUD, eventually I will release my modded .ini files in a simple package. I have a problem regarding text colours: As you can see in the image above, text from other pilots is dark blue, yet I'd like to change the colour from dark blue to the light blue you can see in the box at the lower right-end corner of the image. I can't seem to find the related parameter in any of the .ini files, it's like it is hardcoded. Can anyone confirm this?

Among the things that Ground Map mode uses are the _HM.bmp files; I have reason to believe that they are the behind the CTDs. Just thinking out loud.

Thanks for the kind words. I'm glad that the bug you experienced with the early version of the terrain is no longer present. Trees have been removed from certain tiles, since there are rough mountains, and they would look bad. I hope that in the future some artists manage to make a whole new tileset for it, with better TODs. BTW, with little modding knowledge this terrain can be made to work with Spudknocker's campaigns, since this one is also a better-looking version with the plus that Iran's got new SAM sites which were totally missing from the early version.

EDIT: ops, sorry, my bad, you were asking about the tile map import, which I never tried. I hope you find the following about height map bitmap import useful, anyway. Check the following statements inside the TerrainEditor.ini [bitmapImport] HeightScale=22 MinLandHeight=0 HeightScale makes a huge difference. I had to set it at 22, otherwise my Iraq terrain would have had wrong altitudes for mountains etc. Each terrain has its perfect value. So I suggest that you check the original EAW map in TFDtool, there you can see the heightmap value of each tile. Focus on the one who is more red (the higher altitude). Import the bitmap in the TerrainEditor and check with TFDtool. If you get similar altitudes it's okay, if the altitudes you get are lower, you should increase the HeightScale value and reimport the bitmap again and recheck with TFDtool. It's time consuming, but worth it. Oh, BTW, you can also take real height values for reference. For instance, you can use Google Earth to get the values of altitudes you might want. Sometimes, you get an already "wrong" HFD to work with, meaning that altitudes are wrong, mountains are flat after certain values, etc.. The less you mod the HFD, the better, because reworking an HFD too many times might get to the point that the terrain won't be realistic. Another big suggestion, do not import and then export the same bitmap multiple times, because each time it loses quality and detail. Make your own bitmap file, and when you think it's okay, just focus on the HeightScale value in the TerrainEditor.ini.

Jackpot! What can I say, you discovered a bug that is present on almost all terrains. I have a very huge mod folder with many terrains. Same ActiveYear setting of 1965. It's totally pointless that it is present. Even ActiveYear=0 should do, as long as SAM objects have their own Service Year statements correctly added.

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