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[agracier]

I have found several nicely made mission templates, in .mis form, which contain ready made airfields, factory complexes, cities etc ... these can imported into the FMB and used as a basis to create new flyable missions.

But I was wondering if there is anyway for the objects contained in these .mis files, to be copied and then used in making and populating a map in the Map-Maker version of the FMB?

I've been trying various things, but it seems the Map-Maker will not open .mis files, and neither does opening and closing from one version of the game to another work.

Are there any (nifty) tools for this kind of thing? Something like that would be a great help to creating maps.

[SAS~Malone]

agracier, have you tried PFMW(Pacific Fighters Monkey Wrench)?
Its a great tool for copying and pasting entire groups of objects onto any map. You can custom build your own towns, airfields, bases, whatever, and save them as presets.
I don't have a link onhand, but it shouldn't be too hard to find.
Its the only tool I can think of that might do what you're wanting to do...

[agracier]

Thanks for the Monkey Wrench program suggestion.

Downloaded program and looked at the tutorial. Sometimes it really feels like being back in classes at school again and trying to learn something absolutely incomprehensible ... ha ha

I'll give it a try though ...

[SAS~Malone]

You can't go wrong with it, mate. Once you get the hang of it, you'll wonder how you managed without it. Essential mappers/FMB'ers tool, imho. 
Just think, you'll only ever have to build a complicated scenario once. With this, you can then save that and use it on any map...

[agracier]

I've given it a quick look over, but it seems to only be able to handle .mis files ... can't seem to open a map as such for a map-maker version of Il-2

[viking4570]

agracier - you need to take one of the many actors.static tools out here - ZUTI's is my favorite, and use it to decompile the actors.static into it's component text files.  One of these is the outBuildings.txt which contains all the hard-coded object placement info for a map.  If you cut and past the objects section from a .mis file into the outBuildings.txt (you'll notice the syntax is the same) then recompile the actors.static with this modified outBuildings.txt - you have essentially hard-coded the objects contained in that .mis file into your map.  ZUTI's actors tools are easiest to use since the operate through a GUI. cheers - viking

[air_tramp]

Yes ,I now have Zuti's tool and it is by far the easiest to use to cut and create actors.
I have added .mis file buildings to my inBuildings file and it works good.

One thing though,the .mis files need to be from the same map,
otherwise the map coordinates would mean nothing taking buildings from a .mis file from a different map and adding them to another map.

example from mission file
207_bld House$FurnitureSandbag_Wall 1 124674.84 36290.72 410.00

# 207 in mission file under header[buildings] (it is a sandbag wall) 1 is (good condition and 0 is destroyed state) then the coordinates of where it sits on the map.

124,467 meters by 36290 meters roughly and I believe that is from the bottom left corner of the map.I could be a little off on this but that is what I have been doing and it works for cutting small actors by placing 4 sandbag walls on the 4 corners I want to cut to find the coordinates for the actor cutter tool.

Cheers:
air_tramp

[agracier]

Yes ,I now have Zuti's tool and it is by far the easiest to use to cut and create actors.
I have added .mis file buildings to my inBuildings file and it works good.

One thing though,the .mis files need to be from the same map,
otherwise the map coordinates would mean nothing taking buildings from a .mis file from a different map and adding them to another map.

I've gotten as far as being able to decompile an actors.static and then to add the buildings from a .mis file to the extracted inbuildings.txt file.

But I have not yet been able to recompile an actors.

I noticed that in the inbuildings.tx file, all objects are numbered. When you add the buildings from a .mis file, they are all numbered too, but naturally starting from '0'. When you paste these .mis building objects into the inbuildings.txt file, the numbering sequencing does not of course follow ... does this effect recompiling the actors.static by any chance?

[viking4570]

I've gotten as far as being able to decompile an actors.static and then to add the buildings from a .mis file to the extracted inbuildings.txt file.

But I have not yet been able to recompile an actors.

I noticed that in the inbuildings.tx file, all objects are numbered. When you add the buildings from a .mis file, they are all numbered too, but naturally starting from '0'. When you paste these .mis building objects into the inbuildings.txt file, the numbering sequencing does not of course follow ... does this effect recompiling the actors.static by any chance?

No - although zipzap in his tools does have a renumbering app, if you want to be tidy.  To create a new actors.static, rename the extracted files from outXXX to inXXX, place them in all in the folder

\Z_ActorsManagement\MW_Statics\Base_Files\

and make sure you create the mapsize.txt file there also - it is just a text file with the size of your map indicated in meters - - this file tells the compiling utility how big you map is - for instance, my Crete map is 376 kilometers along the north/south axis - so the syntax in the mapsize.txt file for Crete:

# Size of map y direction in meters
376000.0

Once you have all the files in order, open ZUTI's application and use the create function and where it says infile browse to and select the new inbuildings you want to use.  for outfile, browse to where and what you want the new actors.static called.  You can call it anything you like. Click create, and bob's your uncle. -viking

[agracier]

and make sure you create the mapsize.txt file there also - it is just a text file with the size of your map indicated in meters - - this file tells the compiling utility how big you map is - for instance, my Crete map is 376 kilometers along the north/south axis - so the syntax in the mapsize.txt file for Crete:
# Size of map y direction in meters
376000.0

Thanks for the explanation. It's beginning to make sense now ...

But perhaps a silly question but I am mathematically challenged, or let's say I really hated it school and my (lack of) math skills have never changed since. Anyway, how does one find out what the size of a map is?

[viking4570]

Take the vertical dimension of your image of map_c and multiply by 50.  Or likewise, take your map_h or map_t and multiply by 200.  Remember (as his holiness kevinP taught us) - 50 m per pixel in map_c and 200 m per pixel in map _h and _T -cheers - viking

[Vampire_pilot]

actually where can i get ZUTIS actors tool? I have searched but found no results here or there