SpinyNorman

hahah classic! :)

i've got FE2, and in that If you don't have the skin, the plane will be pure black. So like Panama said, if you go into the data.ini file for each campaign there will be the different squadrons, what plane they use, and what skin they use.

Yeah I agree it does eat into frame rate. I've also scattered balloons along my front at lower altitudes (800m) and given them a silent and inaccurate artillery gun that rains down on targets opposite, that works quite well, gets explosions going off further behind the lines, alhtough too far away or too high and the bullet seems to 'time out' and not go off. What effect do you have as your artillery gun's ground hit explosion? I've found TankGunEffects using GroundHitEffectName=TankGunObjectHitEffect in the BulletObject.ini makes quite a nice explosion as your normal artillery round going off. [TankGunEffects] TracerEmitterName= //GroundHitEffectName=TankGunGroundHitEffect GroundHitEffectName=TankGunObjectHitEffect GroundHitSoundName=Artillery.wav WaterHitEffectName=LargeRocketWaterHitEffect WaterHitSoundName= ObjectHitEffectName=TankGunObjectHitEffect ObjectHitSoundName=SmallExplosion.wav ArmorHitEffectName=TankGunObjectHitEffect ArmorHitSoundName= AirBurstEffectName=FlakEffect AirBurstSoundName=SmallExplosion I like your thinking though quack, the artillery explosions are the most obvious component of a lively looking front, if you could just easily get random explosions going off and sprinkle a bunch of AAA machine gunners along the front it would be a quick and easy way to liven up no-mans land.

I don't know about emitters, but you could do it with guns I think, although long winded and not perfect..... If you gave your said small object several invisible guns; with muzzle postions placed far enough away around it at 'random' spots. Then assign a new gun that has no bullet to each of them, each with a different slow rate of fire, and make the GunFireEffect whatever explosion you normally use (like TankGunEffects). Then in your said small objects file, make a weaponsystems and either get the object to target another ground object, or make it AAA so that it only starts exploding when a plane (or you) flies overhead. So when your object 'opens fire' all the 'guns' (explosions) will go off at the same time, but if they all have different rates of fire then the explosions will quickly get out of sync, so just give the object a nice long burst amount.... Would that work? Haven't got loads of time to try it but might have to have a play... Something I have found helps my frame rates with frontline explosions is find the gun your artillery is using and cut back the MaxVisibleDist, I have mine set at 3000. Hope this helps! Either that or it's bonkers and I'm talking crazy.

Awesome!

The 1pdr Pom Pom / 37mm SockelFlak AAA is very scary! I have it defending most of my Balloons.

Great Stuff! they are choice.

very cool :)

Hi All, This might be a pipe dream, and might not be worth the trouble, but I was thinking about making the RECON mission a bit more realistic by having to actually 'photograph' the target . But I need some advice from the experts. My current plan is along these lines: I have a 'Camera' gun, invisble and effectless (apart from shutter sound) mounted underneath my 2 seater facing 90degress down. You have to re-load it between shots as you would plates in the old cameras. It is just a big enough caliber to damage a target on a STRIKE mission. So this is where I need the advice. I was thinking if you can change the parameters of RECON mission to be the same as STRIKE, but the conditions for success be damaged target rather than destroyed target; then as long as you hit the target with your camera and 'damage' (photograph!) it, then the mission was successful. Can this be done or are the Mission Parameters locked? I was also wondering if you can add ground targets to STRIKE ( or to the new adjusted RECON) missions, so you could have to photograph a Bunker2 or a watertowerDestroyed; i.e. Enemy positions along the front line. There are obvious flaws, like it will still say in the debrief that the target was damaged (rather than photographed, unless that can be changed too?), if the Top Brass wanted detailed photos of Bridges or Bunkers, they are quite tricky to 'hit' and take several passes! Also if you loaded up with le prieur or bombs you could quite convincingly 'photograph' with those! But just a tinkering thought..... Thanks guys, sorry about the number of posts I'm throwing up at the moment. SpinyNorman.

Interesting thinking...Yeah I think my line of thinking was far too complicated, was just wondering about getting that mission feedback, I just found myself not even looking at what the target was I was supposed to be reconnoitring, just dodging flak madly and hitting the white triangle and getting out of there! But I have just starting having enough of a look at the target so my observer could get off a snapshot, then carry on dodging and jinking.

Hey Panama, just updated my realistic sky mod of yours I had to the latest release, awesome work!

I can imagine that would have been some very bad cases of back seat driving! Getting chaffeured around by your 'contraption wrangler' up the front.

hahah, yeah I reckon I'm getting too complicated with this! I have this mental picture now ojcar of you doing a couple of nervous circles, shouting at your observer to hurry up! meanwhile flak going off and scouts scrambling, then a quick roll away and a tree top race to the lines!

Yeah I agree Lazarus, I guess it's just as easy to replicate it by doing a screen shot or something, Jjust thought it would make the recon mission a bit more of a realistic challenge, and have the success of the mission reflect on that. At the moment I tend to barrell in jinking around, hit the white triangle and dive away swerving, or fly silly high. My thinking wasn't so much to merge RECON and STRIKE. But make rather make the RECON mission an almost exact copy of STRIKE, with the difference being outstanding success = damaged target, and maybe adding some frontline targets rather than just Airfields etc. So instead of RECON being like ESCORT, where you just have to get planes to the waypoints, you instead have a target you have to hit and 'damage' with your Camera. Like I said, might be a Pipe Dream, and in the end not make that much difference, or be too challenging and your chance of surviving it are too slim!

cool, cheers for that.

cool videos! sounding good. heheh I like the horses! You have got so much life around your airfields... I'm still busy livening up the front, tedious but at the same time strangely addictive (and educational!). By the sounds of it I think I'm using the same cheer for Stephen1918s Infantry, seems to be the only decent one I could find... I like the cheer the infantry gave in Red Baron 2, a good hearty roar! nice one. P.S. how do you take videos in game?.....

Panama's right, something might be out of kilter in your effects folder, so try taking that out of the loop. Or it could be something out of line in your guns folder. Can you hear the Flak going off around you and just not see it? or neither? How much have you unpacked and played around with, and mods downloaded? Is it mod AAA or effects? or stock AAA and effects? Have you played around with any guns in the gundata.ini? If you have done any playing around with guns, or in the data.ini file for the AAA, then just double check things line up. If you can't hear the flak explosions as well as not see them, have a look in the data.ini for each of your flak ground objects. See what gun it uses, then look in the gundata.ini (in the objects folder) and see what bulletobject effect that gun is using (effectclassname=), then make sure this lines up with the data.ini file for that particular gun in your guns folder. As Panama said say for the 13pdr or the 75MM_MLE97 it would be EffectClassName=EntenteAAEffects. If this all lines up ok, but still no joy... try changing the effectclassname= to something different another gun uses that you know works, say like TankGunEffects. If this then works you know its something out in EntenteAAAEffects If you have been playing around with or downloaded new effects: Try looking in your bulletobject.ini file (in objects folder if you have extracted it, in Object001.cat if you haven't). Look up for example [EntenteAAEffects] and make sure there is a viable effect under AirBurstEffectName= and AirBurstSoundName= (if your sound is smallexplosion then you should at least be hearing the flak). It might be it's trying to use an effect that's not there. Hope this helps, sorry if it's complicated, but let us know what level you have modded to and what things you have added and there might be a clue there somewhere..... Good Luck! SpinyNorman Just posted this and then saw you had replied saying it's somehwere in the flight folder. ahaa! nice one... good luck finding the culprit..

Hi all, Just stuck up a simple Object Mod. It's just the stock Trucks repainted as Ambulances. They are just a vessel for an air raid warning system. So once you start to dive in on an enemy aerodrome, the alarm bells (or siren) will start ringing! Unfortunately unless you want them guarding bridges and balloons you have to place them manually on the Terrains at the Airfields. But this isn't as time consuming as first thought, most of the Aerodromes have Trucks already placed at them, so you just need to substitute in an Ambulance. Cheerio! SpinyNorman.

That's great! Thanks heaps for that.

Cool Ojcar! I can fully appreciate how much time it must take! Just had a quick look at placing ground units at the front, and if I use the same target points as in the campaigns and just offset from there then it's not as bad as I first thought.

hmmm, mine lines up with that: [HeightField] DetailScale=5.0 DetailFrequency=1.0 MaxHeight=1000 MinHeight=0 [HeightOffset] NonTexturedMesh=-0.5 TexturedMesh=-0.1 Will have another fly and see if it's ok

Very cool pic! I've also seen your pics for crash sites and train stations... nice work! Looks good, think I will start to chip away and add units to the bits of the front I fly most for now (I normally fly Cambrai in Armchair Aces Flanders). Yeah at the moment I have the gun on the Ambulance for the air raid siren/bell, and the engine sound as ambient_airfield. And for the Infantry at the front I had to add an engine to them and the engine sound is ambient_frontline, and for movement sound the cheer. I really like the Vogesen terrain, but I have noticed some of my ground units 'sink' or start underground... how do I fix that?

Cheers Ojcar, I have seen in Campaigns there is the ground objects (love Armchair Aces! ), in the campaign should they generate for any mission type? or is it only if one of the air units has a CAS mission? and how many would I expect to see on the ground in Armchair Aces Flanders 1917? (I see it says startobjects=100). Just wondering if mine are not generating properly... I See them when I have a CAS ok. I was wondering if anyone had added infantry to the front along with Geo's artillery and Machine Gun nests in the targets.ini to give a bit more substance and life to the frontline. But from what I have read it seems like quite an undertaking with finding your offsets with debugged hudata.ini and then entering it all into targets.ini then giving them wildly inaccurate guns. Also I'm not sure how much it would slow everything down? wasn't sure whether it is worth doing?

No worries! Great thinking with adding the ambient sounds, now I can't stop playing. I've just added frontline ambient sounds to Stephen1918s Infantry by giving them an 'engine' (I also gave them a cheer for when they charge). Which is all very well and good, but I haven't yet bit the bullet and dived into targets.ini and started placing them along the front line! Seems like a very long process to go through. Have you got units placed along the front?