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[NS~mati140]

Hi,

I was making a cold-war style mission today using blue sided USA as there are US vs Soviet engagements during that mission. When I went on to populating airfield I had to put US St. Aircraft on blue side and I realised that, while US is present on blue side in Aircraft with FC, there is no blue US in stationary - there is RAF, RNZAF etc. here but no US.

So, I wanted to ask if there's any way to add those countries manualy. While there are many countries-from-shithole-which-never-saw-air-warfare available, some crucial ones (like blue USN/USMC, USAF or blue US for stationary) are missing. I know the mod can satisfy everyone but maybe there's a way to customize it without making new mod from scratch?

[KiwiBiggles]

Hi ya Mati! 

I'm a big fan of Forgotten Countries and I hadn't noticed this problem. Since I was bound to run in to this issue too, sooner or later, I'd like to try and help fix it.  Would you be keen to help me test it?

I'll post my ideas below.

Cheers
Kiwi

[KiwiBiggles]

I had a little play around (with my customised version of CirX's old Forgotten Countries Lite) in my 4.09 classic modded.

I didn't have a whole lot of luck until I looked at this line in MODS/Forgotten Countries/PaintSchemes/regiments.ini:



'NA' is the code for the alternative Blue US country, and here it's been related to the stock (Red) 'US' country (as are the stock US Navy 'UN' and USMC 'UM').  I don't know the details of this relationship, but it's referred to as [branch] which gives us the clue that 'NA' is subordinate to 'US' and is probably assuming some or all of the 'US' properties.

So, I've cancelled out the line with a couple forward slashes ('//') and we'll see what it achieves.

[KiwiBiggles]

OK.  We're on a roll! 



This image is of a 'Blue' 'NA' stationary aircraft.  You can see it has no decals - which we'd be pretty safe to assume is because we've lost all the old 'Red' 'US' associations and properties, including the decal.  Next to the NA aircraft is a Blue North Korean stationary plane.  North Korea is working successfully in this install as a blue side country (as far as I know) so we'll use it as a guide to fill in the missing properties for our custom version of 'NA'.  North Korea is 'KP' in this install.

Let's have a look at fixing the decal for our stationary plane.

[KiwiBiggles]

Ouch!

I followed the trail of the decals and it led right to some pretty tricky looking java classfiles - not really something I want to mess with.  I tried a basic java edit to add 'NA' to the 'PaintScheme' classfile and butted into some incompatible code right away - that sort of problem soon gets well out of control and well beyond the scope of the cheap and cheerful mod I had in mind. 

I'll see if I can think of a different approach. 

The trick might be to look at some different versions of Forgotten Countries and see what they offer.  The first clue that we're on the right track could be to check for that 'branch' association in the 'regiments' file.  If it's missing, we could be on to something.

[KiwiBiggles]

Ok Mati - not great news.  This problem exists in all versions of Forgotten Countries I've looked at.  The latest version - that built in to DBW 1.6 - has had the post-war RAF fixed for example, but not the post-war US. 

I don't have the right tools set up to extract the DBW files - so the best idea might be to contact CirX and ask if it is being addressed in DBW 1.7.

I have a few different older versions of Forgotten Countries on my hard drive now, so I'll potter about with it some more and see if any version is compatible with my (out of date) java setup.  Maybe I can yet make some java edits myself - no promises though.

[KiwiBiggles]

Mati,

I'm just heading out to spend some time with my boys.  I've had another look at the java and still no joy - it really does look like a headache with my beginner level skills.

I do have some ideas on how to convert the Forgotten Countries 'Blue' 'Germany' side into a full-on NATO outfit to fight the 'Red' Russian/USSR side.  It would be a custom version of Forgotten Countries that you would enable or disable in your MODs folder as required.

Don't know how good it would be for DBW (not good at all I expect because of the different structure) but I'll post my ideas up later and you can see what you think.  Big plus is that it would be a copy and paste, notepad only DIY kinda mod - no java. 

[NS~mati140]

Hm, that's strange...

North Korea is available on both, red and blue sides in stationary aircraft, only blue US is missing. Gonna mess around with it a bit myself till evening (BTW, Marry Christmas, we've got Christmas Eve today!).

It would be nice to have an alternative to Forgotten Countries Full in JGSME, e.g. Forgotten Countries Cold War - which would include all countries from NATO/UN on blue and Warsaw Pact on red + some more important countries from that time, like Argentina, Brasil, Mexico, Egypt, Israel, on both sides (of course including only countries with actual air force in all of those groups).

BTW, there should be also red sided Luftwaffe (WW2 one) for FC full - for German-deserters and early war (III Reich - USSR alliance until Operation Barbarossa) scenarios...

Generally, as you say, it should be DIY mod - everything should be customisable via ini files, so everyone can make own version suitable for his campaign, and include it in campaign download as JGSME mod, so everyone can install it and enable when playing that campaign and then disable without touching original FC files.

Gonna ask CirX for it. Thanks anyways!

Marry Christmas

[KiwiBiggles]

Hi fellas 


Stationary 'NATO' C-47

I've added a 'NATO' version of Forgotten Countries to my custom 4.09 install.  Basically, it's a conversion of the stock/Forgotten Countries 'Blue' 'DE' German 'country'.  The trick is to replace all the 'German' decals with blanks - because markings cannot be turned off for stationary planes - then swapping in default skins with markings already painted on.  After that it's a straightforward case of renaming Germany to NATO and adding custom NATO 'regiments' or squadrons.  I can simply rename the different versions of Forgotten Countries with a minus sign (-) to swap back to a stock or custom Luftwaffe version depending on what period I want to play.

I'll be experimenting a bit more with this (off and on) so let me know if you're interested and I can post some more details if you want to try it yourself.  I haven't attempted to install this in DBW or UP3.0 due to the different file structure, not yet at least.  As long as the custom version of FC was read first by the game engine - it might work?

The custom default-skin folder with 'marked' defaults can also be used with the FC 'Blue Alternative USA' (NA) country - because once we 'break' the connection to the stock 'Red' (US) country (by disabling the [branch] association) the markings no longer appear, as we saw in the example posted above.  It's quite a flexible idea as long as you're happy to invest a little time setting up your default skins:



Anyhow - let me know if this is something that interests anyone.

Cheers!
Kiwi

[NS~mati140]

I am - especially the Blue USA.

BTW - I didn't say before that I'm using FC from DBW 1.6, it's a bit different + it's provided as .sfs archive (it's called dbw_decals_##.sfs) - it requires SFSextractor from mod-making section to open, but once you change something e.g. in regiments.ini and drop the modified one into #DBW folder it will always load first (though the original one will be still here, so to revert changes one can simply disable regiments.ini 'mod').

So, if it would simply appear while still being branched with red sided US, then I would be happy, bc all decals problems would be solved as well.

Isn't there really any separated ini for stationary planes countries?

[NS~mati140]

OK, I found an interestin thing - after extracting country_ru.properties form dbw_decals_02.sfs (note: the one from jgsmemods not from SAS_DBW) I found a following 'section' (just spearated by comments for recognition, not actually separated from the other parts of list) in it:

Code: [Select]

//New country blue for CLASS

cq Canada (Postwar)
iq Israel (Blue)
kq Korea South (Blue)

vb RAF (Postwar)
na USA (Postwar)

bu Generic Blue

All countries on this list show up on blue side in stationary - except of USA (Postwar)

[NS~mati140]

OK, now I see what's the problem:

In DBW version rmoving NA US branch didn't break the insignia - all squadrons were on place and decals were here as they should. The stationary USA (Postwar) appeared as well. However, now I see why it was eventually branched - removing branch breakes the connection to dedicated US deffault skins. The only other way to get it back would be adding new copy of all those skins dedicated for na01... and I guess some Java work. Gonna check it further.