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Special Aircraft Service
Individual Mods and Packs for IL-2 1946 => Other Mods => Weapon Packs => Topic started by: WxTech on January 28, 2023, 11:00:50 AM
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UPDATE: Jan 29, 2023: I noticed that I had overlooked 8 classes, all whose names begin with "MGunTs". They are Hispano404, Oerlikon and MAC1934 derivatives. Archive updated.
Get it here:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/evw38fg7vyzb6v1/%2521%2521%2521_Gun_class_timeLife_increase.7z/file
From the included and updated readme file:
A number of aerial guns have projectiles with what seem to be rather brief live times. These times set both tracer disappearance AND termination from existence. If you've wondered why no hits at longer range for certain cannons were ever possible, or why no ground/water hits could be seen inspite of other ordnance causing such hits al much longer range, now you know why. For instance, the Hispano 20mm rounds winked out of existence after merely 1.5 seconds, typically. Yet the Browning and SAFAT .50 lived for 6.5 seconds.
I have identified 36 (UPDATE: 44) weapons for treatment. You can see which ones by perusing the Java folder for the names. Any text editor will open the .java files, if you're curious to see what's there and what was changed. I keep the original values in place, REM'd out with "//" characters.
Where smaller calibre bullets had 1.0 or 1.1 second live times, I increased them to 1.8 seconds.
For 20mm+ calibres, values of less than 3 seconds were increased to 3.
These might be considered conservative. As a first stab at it, I prefer to remain cautious against the potential for unintended consequences. In future this could certainly be revisited.
These classes come from B.A.T. 4.1.3., and should be widely compatible. I did note a couple of differences from my B.A.T. 4.0 install. In particular, there were a couple the newer versions of classes which were made to implement a parent class, using that parent's various properties (instead of having those properties specified within the class).
I place the hashed classfiles in the root folder where they belong. I include also folders each for the classes and the Java files.
This work is absolutely NOT definitive, being based purely on complaints, feelings and desires! :-D
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UPDATE, a few hours later: I noticed that I had overlooked 8 classes, all whose names begin with "MGunTs". They are Hispano404, Oerlikon and MAC1934 derivatives.
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WxTech
Jan 28-29, 2023
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Wil it be in your next effects release? hope so. Like everything else you do.
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If no bad consequences arise, I'll certainly incorporate increased live times into the classes I include with my effects pack.
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I appreciate your quick response to my request. It's something that's bothered me going all the back to the Il2 initial release in '02! Did no one else besides me ever discuss it?
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I noticed that the cannons on the DH Vampire are unaffected by the mod.
How many different types of 20mm cannons are there for the allies?
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It might be that my WAW classes don't include weapons appropriate to JTW?
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Ah ok. You know a LOT more about this stuff than I do, but I was not using the Jet Age pack. I was still in WAW.
I was also doing some testing on the bomb effects so I figured I try out the PE8 with the 5,000 KG bomb!
The explosion was tiny so then I tried a Tall Boy and that was a big explosion!
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Don't ever think I'm some kind of guru. I'm just another chimp flinging poo! 😀
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Don't ever think I'm some kind of guru. I'm just another chimp flinging poo! 😀
maybe, but you know which poo to grab and where to fling it
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I just tested the 20mm in the P39 and it seems to be unaffected by your mod.
Same with the P38.
Is there more than 1 type of 20mm cannon for the allies in the code?
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We'd need to know with certainty which gun a plane uses, and I'm not sure how to find out. Told you I ain't no guru! ;)
I have had strange instances from time to time where the solution was to locate the same classfiles in BAT's Classes-ObjectsWeapon folder and rename them with a preceding "-" character.
If you're 7sing a more recent version that my BAT 4.0, you can probably use either the hashed classfiles (they have 16-character hexadecimal names or the *.class files. You could try moving the .class files into this mods root folder and move the classfiles out of the game altogether. Now I have no direct experience of this at all. I hope VampirePilot will chime in.
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I just tested in my BAT 4.0, and things are working. My Spit's cannons are now reaching out to the 3 second mark. The .303 rounds formerly giving up the ghost at 1 second are now lasting the expected 1.8 seconds, as confirmed by the denser pattern of water hits. And the 110G's MG81 pink stingers are whipping past me at ranges where formerly they disappeared before even reaching me.
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UPDATE: Jan 29, 2023: I noticed that I had overlooked 8 classes, all whose names begin with "MGunTs". They are Hispano404, Oerlikon and MAC1934 derivatives. Archive updated.
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Yaro,
I get nothing like that, day or night. In your images I can't tell what that dead straight, broken line is... It seems more like a very long 'richochet' effect. How long did it last? Was it moving or stationary? Details, man. ;)
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I just tested in my BAT 4.0, and things are working. My Spit's cannons are now reaching out to the 3 second mark. The .303 rounds formerly giving up the ghost at 1 second are now lasting the expected 1.8 seconds, as confirmed by the denser pattern of water hits. And the 110G's MG81 pink stingers are whipping past me at ranges where formerly they disappeared before even reaching me.
Awesome! Again, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that the developers definitely intended for lots of bullets to be calculated all at once when they introduced the 50BMG with its long flight time. I don't see why it would be a problem to simply increase all ammo types to beyond their "effective" ranges. Is the tracer time really the same and the live time? I ask because we have bullets with no tracer that are calculated as well. I know in BOS the tracer time and live time are independent numbers.
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Live times set the period of existence. If a tracer is assigned, that same time determines its interval of visibility. These can never differ.
Each individual round on the belt sequence can have its own discrete live time.
I wonder why some live times were set to be so short. Could this have been arrived at as some measure of balancing out effectiveness?
It sure seems odd to make an explosive round cease to be after just 1.5 seconds. I'm not aware of some timed deactivation of the fuse. (There can be a timed terminal burst, as far as I understand.)
I have no issue with further boosting live times where appropriate, as long as this does not introduce any other upsetting/unbalancing issues. ;)
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Thanks for the update!
Now what about tracer appearance?
I had actually modified the tracers in a copy of ModACT that I've had for years.
I increased their length and brightness.
Where are those files located in the BAT version?
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The 3D tracers are modeled in
3do/Effects/Tracers/
Inside the Tracers folder are a number of other folders, one each for all the tracer colors, which contains the mesh which models the 3D tracer. Also present is a TEXTURES folder containing the little .tga images that are mapped to the mesh.
There are a number of existing tracer mods that have this material present and which you can further tweak. You could obtain my v1.5 effects pack and pull out just this stuff, as a basis to build upon.
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The 3D tracers are modeled in
3do/Effects/Tracers/
Inside the Tracers folder are a number of other folders, one each for all the tracer colors, which contains the mesh which models the 3D tracer. Also present is a TEXTURES folder containing the little .tga images that are mapped to the mesh.
There are a number of existing tracer mods that have this material present and which you can further tweak. You could obtain my v1.5 effects pack and pull out just this stuff, as a basis to build upon.
Since my mesh tracers aren't working, only the line kind, what should the file structure be? I have your FX mod installed and I see the smoke effects but not the tracer effects? It looks like all the mesh files and .tga files are in the mod but maybe I didn't place them correctly?
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The tracer resources are where they're supposed to be within the context of the Effect folder contents. If other effects are working, we should expect the tracers to work also.
That there is no console warning of a failure to load resources suggests a simple conflict of some sort. Or effectively a setting which disables the drawing of the 3D meshes, which I see no way of occuring just by installing my mod pack. It's not happened for other users that I'm aware of.
What other mods lie above mine in your mods folder?
Parenthetical, I'll add that by the time one gets to grips with being comfortable about installing all kinds of mods and handling conflicts with panache, one is almost qualified to be a modder himself! 😀
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The tracer resources are where they're supposed to be within the context of the Effect folder contents. If other effects are working, we should expect the tracers to work also.
That there is no console warning of a failure to load resources suggests a simple conflict of some sort. Or effectively a setting which disables the drawing of the 3D meshes, which I see no way of occuring just by installing my mod pack. It's not happened for other users that I'm aware of.
What other mods lie above mine in your mods folder?
Parenthetical, I'll add that by the time one gets to grips with being comfortable about installing all kinds of mods and handling conflicts with panache, one is almost qualified to be a modder himself! 😀
I have no other mods installed. I tried 2 ways.
First, simply placing the files into the #WAW folder. The increased live times of the bullets is working, as are the smoke effects, etc. Just no tracer meshes, only the simple lines.
Second using JSGME. The files appear in the JSGME window and I add them to the mods list but am alerted to a couple conflicts within JSGME. Once running the sim, I don't see ANY changes that have taken effect. The squiggly tracers are back as I believe they're part of the 4.2.2 Hotfix.
I'm currently not using the JSGME mod installer and rather, placed the files back into #WAW. The tracer are only lines, but at least I get the extended live times and other good effects.
I would still love to find a solution to this problem