MKSheppard

This was a real project. Twin Grand Slams; object was to use it to destroy certain targets on the Japanese mainland that could not be destroyed by conventional bombing.

TK's big mistakes over the years in my humble opinion: 1.) Pedestrian DLC. I...really am not rushing out to buy the following: A-7H Corsair II (Greek) F-4N Phantom (USN/USMC) F-4K Phantom FG.1 Royal Navy etc because they're all reskins of existing aircraft with maybe some minor 3D model work done if necessary to make them more accurate (maybe an antenna deleted or what). If he had however done some unusual aircraft, such as the AJ Savage or F2H Banshee; I'd be screaming "TAKE MY MONEY NOW!". Additionally, I kind of haven't played SF in a long time, because I'd just rather buy officially supported stuff, rather than go "hey, a new patch just came out; time to spend several hours correcting things in mods the new patch broke." HINT: Red Fighter Packs containing about three models (MiG-15/17/19) per pack would sell like hotcakes. YES, TAKE MY MONEY TK, SO I CAN PLAY OFFICIAL MiGs! Wait, you're not doing that? Bah. 2.) Lack of Continued Innovation. There's a reason I didn't buy SF:NA. Sure, it had the F-14 and a bunch of 'modern' USN ships in it; but there wasn't any extension of the game engine into areas people had been screaming for since 2003, such as: No radar bombing mode that could be used to simulate optical bombsights or stuff like the A-6's DIANE or the F-105's bombing system. Air to Air missiles, strafing, and guided bombs kind of get boring after a while. No actual terrain following radar, making it impossible to simulate a F-111 strike in North Vietnam. Now, we don't need 100% accuracy, because we just need a 'generic' model for them that can be applied across different aircraft across different eras. A simplified design would also be cheaper to code. 3.) Leaving Money On the Table. This is a subset of 1; but TK kept on saying "no WW2", "no WW2", when WW2 is the biggest selling era for flight sims, ever. WW2 is also big enough to support several games alone, meaning even more monetization, but he left all that on the table.

File Name: SF2 WOE Style Hangar Maker File Submitter: MKSheppard File Submitted: 23 Dec 2009 File Category: SF2 Series Add On Objects Converted from my SF1 series hangar maker. Is also available on my website at http://www.alternatewars.com/Mods/SF2/SF2.htm ---------------------------------------- How to use: 1.) Copy your StrikeFighters2.exe or StrikeFighters2 Israel.exe or whatever. 2.) Rename it SF2 Hangar Maker.exe (or whatever). 3.) Run your new executable. Exit. 4.) Go to User\Saved Games\ThirdWire\SF2 Hangar Maker 5.) Unzip this file there/place them in that folder. 6.) Launch the game using the SF2 Hangar Maker.exe 7.) Remember to start the mission on the ground! 8.) Manuver the external camera directly overhead over the plane and take a screenshot, as big as you can take it without the user interface getting in the way. 9.) Exit WOE 10.) Go into either photoshop or paint shop pro. 11.) Load up the screenshot you took. 12.) Use the wand tool to select all green areas in the screenshot and delete it, making them the green area transparent. 13.) Move the aircraft into the center of the now mostly empty image, or enlarge the picture as needed. 14.) Create a drop shadow. With Paint Shop Pro, its: EFFECTS (Menu) 3D EFFECTS DROP SHADOW The settings I've found to work well are 30 Horizontal Offset 30 Vertical Offset 65 Opacity 10 Blur and pure black for color. 15.) Copy your drop shadowed aircraft to the clip board 16.) Load DEFAULTHANGARSCREEN.BMP (found in \Hangar Maker) 17.) Place your aircraft picture with the drop shadow onto DEFAULTHANGARSCREEN.BMP as a new layer. 18.) Move around the aircraft until you've gotten it into a good location. 19.) If the aircraft image is a bit too bright, reduce the gamma for the aircraft layer by 0.68. 20) Once you've gotten it where you want, save the image and put it into SF2. Click here to download this file

So, I was bored today, and decided to merge all the various Hawker Hunter conversions for SF2 into a single easy to install superpack (note, this is for SF2 merged install with WOI, etc; to take advantage of any loadout changes or cockpit changes TK has made for the stock Hunters). Anyway, after several hours of work, I have a workable beta; and I've installed it once or twice to my merged addon folder; but I need some people to help check it over before I officially upload it to Combat Ace. You can get it here LINK It's a 65~ MB 7-zip that unzips to about 1 GB installed. Hangar Screen for Hunter60 Loading Screen for Hunter60 Rough readme is below --------------------------------- Superpack put together by Ryan Crierie (Aka MKSheppard) for Combined Install of SF2 Games. What it contains: An integrated Install For: Hunter F.1 by Spinners Hunter F.2 by Spinners Hunter F.4 by Spinners Hunter F.5 by Spinners Hunter F.6 by Spinners (integrated with Stock Third Wire) Hunter F.9 (Stock TK with new hangar screens etc) Hunter GA.11 by Nigel "ndicki" Dickinson Hunter F.50 (Swedish J-34) for 1955 conversion by Paul Hunter F.50 (Swedish J-34) for 1960 conversion by Paul Hunter F.51 by Paulopanz (integrated with Stock Third Wire) Hunter F.52 by Paolo Hunter F.57 by Paolo Hunter F.59 by Paolo (integrated with Stock Third Wire) Hunter F.60 by Paolo Hunter F.70 (Stock TK with new hangar screens etc and made flyable) Hunter F.71 by Paolo Hunter F.73 (Stock TK with new hangar screens etc and made flyable) Hunter F.74 by Paolo Total size is about 1 GB unzipped. I've done hangar and loading screens for all of them, and I've made some edits to bring them into compliance with TK folder naming conventions; e.g. instead of Hunter_F1, the folder and files are Hunter1. The J-34 installation instead of being two folders labelled: J-34 Hunter and J-34HUNTER is now Hunter50_55 and Hunter50_60 After their dates of introduction. I also made the decals for Spinners' hunter mods fit in better, by having them go into folders labelled Hunter1, Hunter2, etc in the Decal folder; rather than just being dumped into the main Decal Folder.

I just noticed and fixed another issue, this one pertaining to the Hunter57: if you want to have just 100 liter drop tanks on both the inboard and outboard pylons; you will have to use the hunter6 LOD. the Hunter9 LOD has nodes for 100 and 230, which means that it will always load 230 L even if 100L is specified. The Hunter6 LOD has nodes for four 100L tanks, so that works.

Thanks for uploading your latest hunters! I've merged them into my superpack, and they've been an invaluable help in figuring out how to do the new drop tank system.

Speaking of tanks; I've been having problems trying to get specific fuel tanks to show up, like the FAA dark grey tanks for the GA.11 or the brown ones for Saudi Arabia's F.60s.

So I've gotten to play around with the hunters; and I'm finding a bug -- basically the FuelTankNodeName= is not defined in many of the ini files; causing the game to load up fuel tanks in addition to whatever you selected in loadout -- leading to occasional hard lockups of Windows 7

This is a very awesome little utility; so awesome indeed, I'm going to mirror it on my website, to provide a second d/l site for it, for those who can't wait until the next day to download it (you hit your download limit fast on CA, with so much awesome stuff).

File Name: SF2 Combo Effect Pack v1.00 File Submitter: MKSheppard File Submitted: 23 Dec 2009 File Category: SF2 Series Add On Objects Compiled and Cleaned up by Ryan Crierie (MKSheppard) Also available on my website at: http://www.alternatewars.com/Mods/SF2/SF2.htm In case you hit your daily download limit ----------------- I claim no ownership or creation rights for any of thes effects; I just modded them to make them work in SF2, and then put them together to make it easier for other SF2 Owners. v1.00 circa 12/23/2009. I went through all of my installed effects INIs from all my addons and the various effects packs, like Deuce's, LEXX LUTHOR's Strategic Nuclear Effects™, etc and edited them to make them SF2 shader compatible to fix missing effects like MiG-19 afterburners not appearing, etc. I used the rule of: Materials that have BlendOp=BLEND_SRC_ALPHA EffectShaderName=effectLightLevel.fx (aka Volumetric emitters like smoke, groundmist, dust). Materials that have BlendOp=BLEND_INV_SRC_ALPHA_ADD_SRC EffectShaderName=twColor1.fx (aka fire, explosion, light, flash, flare, streaks) Found on Combat Ace Knowledge DB. I slightly modified LEXX LUTHOR's Strategic Afterburner files so that you can have both Large and Small versions in use at the same time e.g. J58_Large calls the Large effect and J58_Small calls the Small effect. You can see this in the Screenshot for this mod; the one on the left is J79_Small and the one on the right is J79_Large. I also rewrote some of LEXX's Nuclear Weapons Readme to make it a bit more comprehensible on how to make weapons datafiles call those effects in SF2. Click here to download this file

File Name: SF2 WOE Style Hangar Screens Version 1.2 File Submitter: MKSheppard File Submitted: 23 Dec 2009 File Updated: 24 Dec 2009 File Category: SF2 Series Add On Objects Updated my SF1 WOE Style Hangar screens to work in SF2. You can also get them from my website here http://www.alternatewars.com/Mods/SF2/SF2.htm If you've hit your daily download limit from Combat Ace ------------------------ Strike Fighters 2 Wings over Europe Style Hangars version 1.2 by Ryan Crierie (MKSheppard) Version 1 released 12/23/2009. Version 1.2 released 12/24/2009. Updates over my original SF1 series hangars: 1.) The original BMP files which took up 460~ MB have been resampled into 1% compression JPEGs which take up only 156~ MB. 2.) They have been sorted into folders, for easier installation and most should use the naming convention for SF2. Count is about 300~ hangar files -- some repeat, like for F-8H and F-8H_69. I have copied some aircraft INIs over and changed the hangar file pointers to more standard formats, e.g. AIRCRAFTNAME_Hangar.jpg rather than Sabrehangar.bmp Click here to download this file

From the foreword for “ABM: An Evaluation of the Decision to Deploy an Antiballistic Missile Systemâ€, printed by Signet in 1969, written by Ted Kennady, who led the effort to defund SAFEGUARD after it was operational for one day.

Speaking of A-Bombs; we can put in FAT MAN and LITTLE BOY; though they only become available for OLYMPIC landings. Because if the initial two A-Bombings didn't cause the japanese to fold; we'd have held them in reserve for OLYMPIC landings; to hit airfields, etc in the vinicity of landing beaches.

In Two Weeks I can do the basic 3d modelling, but I'll need someone to help me with the texturing and layout of the data ini for SFP; since I'm not very good at those. Also, I just aquired Tlai Enterprise's WWII Deck Lettering: ; so we don't have to make 40 individual skins for all the CVEs in the theater -- it will however require a separate WWII/Korea Install, because I don't think you can have two types of CV Deck Numbers (WWII style and Modern) in one install.

Not really. Remember, that in September 1945, with VJ Day occuring, both the USN and USAF in addition to cancelling tens of thousands of planned aircraft, also put a hold on R&D spending and new aircraft procurement for the immediate post-war years -- remember that while the first XP-84 was ready in December 1945; it wasn't until the summer of 1947 that the first actual Thunderjets, P-84Bs began to be delivered. This is a result of going from $556.9 Billion DoD Budget in 1946 to just $52 million in 1947. It wasn't until the Korean war that US military spending really began to revive. USS Midway commissioned 10 September 1945; so if we give three months to "shake down", she becomes available to the USN for offensive operations from very late December 1945/ Early January 1946.

I think I created a Kamikazi! Okay, make a copy of what plane you want to turn into a kamikazi, like for example D3A1 into D3A1_Kamikazi and in the D3A1_Kamikazi_DATA.ini add So when I ordered my wingman in a test to attack a carrier, this is what occured: Course, some tweeking is needed to get the AI right, but this approach has many benefits -- for one, you can get credit for destroying Kamikazis in the campaign, and you can program in some limited evasive manouvers for the Kamikazi. Of course, when you're doing the ini tweeks; don't forget to remove the rear gunners. I'm not sure, but Kamikazis didn't have them, instead relying on Zero Escort.

By the way, a 1946 scenario is starting to look ever more interesting; we could have the following flying: FD/FH Phantom FJ-1 Fury F6U-1 Pirate P-80 Shooting Star off carriers

Try THREE: 2462 km map with the same relocation of the marianas to save room; deletion of taiwan and northern Hokkadio weighing in at 46 MB HFD 17 MB TFD Get the 2.4 MB ZIP HERE

Okay, here's TRY TWO: 3,300 km map, weighing in at: 83 MB HFD 31 MB TFD You can see how I saved space by relocating the Marianas to somewhere between Okiwana and Iwo Jima. Link to 7 MB ZIP

1.) Will there be a random mission generator? In that you tell the game that you want an infantry or armor battle, and it goes through installed mods and creates one for you?

Okay, rebuilt it; and made sure everything was to scale. Guam is 49-50~ km long; good enough for our purposes. The Bitmap Scale is 2 pixels per 1 km; so if you wanted to create a subsetted map 1,000 square km in size, you'd just crop it to 2,000 x 2,000 pixels. Right now; this map is 5450 km from the Marianas to Sakhalin; the HFD is 226 MB, while the TFD is 85~ MB Thank god these things zip up pretty well. You can download the map height BMP, the HFD, etc from HERE 15 MB... and unzips to 425 MB!!!

I suppose it's possible to kick up the screen a little; so that we can have Hokkadio; as you know, Stalin was planning to invade the place after he'd taken Sakhalin... OOH OOOH OOH. Wrenchie! We could modify this terrain set for the Japan War, between North Japan (Communsit) and South Japan (US), as well as for the Real World Korean War; allowing B-29s etc to be based in Japan, etc.