Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[MOUSQUITO]

Hi Sikshoota,

I Have no problem on my install to save Kokoda as a base...

[Sikshoota]

Hello Mousquito,

Thanks for the rapid reply, much appreciated.
Well I'll re-download/install etc to find if I can fix whatever it may be.
I'll advise if successful in case anyone else may get the same issue.

Cheers
Sikshoota

[WxTech]

Just installed this map, and checked out much of it in the FMB. Fabulous!!

I've been toiling off and on with my own update to the *stock* New Guinea map, and the areas shared by both maps has become pretty familiar territory. The textures used here really capture the variety of vegetation and ground cover. Render's my effort thus far as largely superfluous.

A bit of a missing element in this excellent map is rivers. Those present tend to be the flat, sea level variety, often terminating not so far inland (where the terrain begins rising to any significant degree.) I've found that painting thin rivers on map_c even up into mountainous terrain is fine. Although my implementation was planned to have the 'layer cake' forest textures covering much of such rivers, to partially hide them (which is typical for narrow rivers in reality) and thus make less evident the vast distance under them to the sea level water texture far below.

I knew I'd be missing objects in my 4.09m game, even after installing Geezer's objects and Tomoose's groundcrew. (And I have Boomer's object pack, in 4 SFS archives...)

The missing objects:

Code: [Select]

buildings.House$Hut_type01
buildings.House$Hut_type10
buildings.House$Hut_type06
buildings.House$Hut_type02
buildings.House$Hut_type09
buildings.House$Hut_type08
buildings.House$Hut_type07
buildings.House$TrackStopWooden2
buildings.House$mining_tower
buildings.House$Hut_type03
buildings.House$HangarPBYdamaged
buildings.House$MapBoard_01
buildings.House$StarterCart
buildings.House$46Furniture3
buildings.House$wartrees1Ag1
buildings.House$warpalmsAg1
buildings.House$wartrees1Ag2
buildings.House$AirfieldBarrelforSigns
buildings.House$Tent_Shed_summer
buildings.House$Ladder1
buildings.House$Sign_Airfield06_HoldforFollowMe
buildings.House$46Furnitureburned
buildings.House$Hut_type05
buildings.Plate$Blank
buildings.House$FilmScreen01
buildings.House$Boxes_Chickens
buildings.House$Hut_type04
buildings.House$Semafor
buildings.House$warpalmsAs2
buildings.House$warpalmsAg2
buildings.House$warpalmsAs1

The couple of "46" entries are puzzling, as I thought all those were already long since stock with 4.07...

And the blank plate entry seems odd, too...

So. Where to get this stuff so I can start flying?

Thanks again for the marvellous map; it'll be a highly ranked favourite of mine for some time to come!

[WxTech]

A helpful hint..

All the runway (and Kokoda River) textures included in
3do/Airfield/PlateS/

have alpha channels. But their .mat tiles do not take advantage!!

Therefore, do this. For all of the base.mat files, change:

AlphaTestVal 0.5    to    0.0

tfBlend 0    to    1

This will rid you of the awfully sharp, artificial, hard-edged cutoffs, and smoothly blend the textures into the underlying landscape textures. Much more natural looking!

Another hint. All base.mat files are identical. Edit just one, then copy/paste it into all the other folders, replacing the originals.

[WxTech]

Well, with no help coming thus far on my list of missing objects a couple posts ago, I did the following in order to be able to fly on this fantabulous map.

For the blank plate object, I faked it by using the existing blank runway plate.

For all the others, I made them the same as the Russia Sortir (the outhouse, or outdoor crapper). You see, years ago I made this object very simple, with a single low-detail model having no collision box, no shadow, and a visibility distance of practically zero. Mainly because the Murmansk map was lousy with the damned things. So now when I have some intractable missing object problem as now... Ta da! No more missing stuff, and I don't have to bother with trying to divine some reasonably similar substitute. Just put up with the missing stuff by making it invisible.

I really should cook up a dedicated 'invisible' object for just this purpose. But this was an expedient solution for now.

In other helpful hints...

The pop-up trees (whc_Jungle) were too light in tone, standing out rather garishly as bright yellowish things in a darker landscape. I made a version for this map (GH_Jungle) that was made darker and of a slightly cooler hue (by adding more cyan to offset the yellow). Now they blend into the general green of the landscape textures much better, which has the salutory benefit of hardly calling attention to themselves when popping into and out of visibility.

[Squashman]

Well, with no help coming thus far on my list of missing objects a couple posts ago, I did the following in order to be able to fly on this fantabulous map.

I've personally never played 4.09, but my 4.12 installs (BAT & Modact 5.3) have benefited from adding the extra 3do sfs files (fb_3do27, fb_3do28) from the 4.13 game version.
Perhaps 4.12 has an expanded 3do file complement over and above that in 4.09?

Vanilla 4.12 goes to fb_3do26 and vanilla 4.13 goes to fb_3do28 (don't know extent of fb_3do files in 4.09)

I'll gladly put these in a Mediafire link if you think you might need them.

EDIT - By the way, thanks for the tip about altering the base files. It gives a pleasing improvement to the airfields.

[WxTech]

Squash,
Never played 4.09, eh? Should we be checking behind your ears for dampness?

Thanks for the offer of posting those later SFS files. Unless someone beats me to it, I'll let you know the latest for 4.09 when next I fire up my 'puter.

About that business of the texture transparency. It surprised me when I found numerous instances in the *stock* files where such failure to properly implement it was encountered. For instance, in the Japanese compass, such as found in the Zero and Ki-43. There, the .tga applied a gradient to represent diffuse shadowing upon the ball carrying the azimuth tape. But the .mat file's neglecting to command transparency resulted in a hard-edged cutoff in the shadow, instead of a proper blending. Makes one wonder if the original artists fully understood the various parameters controlling the way the graphical elements interacted.

[Squashman]

Hi Tech
You are fully correct in your suspicions about the moisture levels immediately behind my ears and, sadly, I fear it will be some time before these areas are completely dry. Hearing advice from yourself and a few other notables has, however, accelerated the evaporation process considerably, though the odd drip does still occasionally splash silently onto my keyboard.

With this in mind could you explain in more detail how you "faked" the missing objects and how you changed the colour of the trees

regards Squash   

[WxTech]

Squash,
Second time doing this, as the computer locked up when almost finished...

Faking static.ini entries, in...

MODS\STD\com\maddox\il2\objects\static.ini

1) Create a new section just before the end of static.ini, naming it as you like.
2) Copy the names of the missing objects, as reported by the static ini checker utility, enclosing them in square brackets.
3) Copy/paste the contents of the object that is already in static.ini and which you wish to use as a substitute.

Here is the start of my new section, with the first few entries. The blank plate uses the existing runway blank plate data much earlier in the file. All the remaining objects have been given the same data as for the Russia Sortir (sh!t shack) I long ago made effectively invisible.


//===========================================================================
[***]
Temp substitutions for Green Hell map missing objects
//===========================================================================

[buildings.Plate$Blank]
Title           Runway
Mesh            3do/airfield/Blank/Runway/mono.sim

[buildings.House$Hut_type01]
Title           RussiaWC
MeshLive        3do/Buildings/Russia/Sortir/live.sim
MeshDead        3do/Buildings/Russia/Sortir/dead.sim
Body            WoodSmall
Panzer          9.999

[buildings.House$Hut_type02]
Title           RussiaWC
MeshLive        3do/Buildings/Russia/Sortir/live.sim
MeshDead        3do/Buildings/Russia/Sortir/dead.sim
Body            WoodSmall
Panzer          9.999

[buildings.House$Hut_type03]
Title           RussiaWC
MeshLive        3do/Buildings/Russia/Sortir/live.sim
MeshDead        3do/Buildings/Russia/Sortir/dead.sim
Body            WoodSmall
Panzer          9.999

.
.
.
.
.
//===========================================================================
// eof
//===========================================================================



As for re-coloring the trees, this was done in photoshop. Because two of these three tree image files have alpha layers for transparency, the graphics software must be capable of saving files utilizing alpha layers. The freeware GIMP works fine.

I merely darkened the image brightness, added some cyan emphasized toward the shadows, and slightly boosted the saturation.

I'll post the result to mediafire for all to download, here in this thread...

[WxTech]

Here is my darkened tree texture set (3 files), which blend in better with the general greenery and hence do not so 'loudly' call attention to themselves when popping into and out of visibility...

Note that this does not deal with the palm trees, only the so-called pop-up trees.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/07ez1rkmic0oazg/Darkened_trees_for_Green_Hell_map.7z/file

Enjoy!

If the map makers wish to link to this download in the first post in this thread (or wherever), that's OK by me. Or if they want to incorporate these files into the general map release, that's fine too. All my work is offered for anyone to do with it as they wish, without restrictions of any kind.

[Squashman]

Tech
Thanks for the above!

Your "Faking" technique is nothing short of marvellous, in that such a simple solution potentially means an end to the irritating missing object problem with maps.

The tree colours are also a great deal more realistic.
Great work

[WxTech]

In my post #159 I pointed out how to make the runway textures better blend with the underlying land textures. Now, I don't know if the following was present to any degree *before* I made this alteration to the .mat files (probably not), but it sure catches the eye after application of a zero threshold for transparency cutoff!

I discovered that for a few airfields there was present a partially transparent, dead straight line or two a short distance from the field, like a 'border'. Particularly obvious where located on/over water (as for Lakunai and Gasmata). Another similar effect was found at Schwimmer, where the border floats above the river just to the south.

Upon looking at the relevant textures, in the alpha layers for these there was a noisy fringe of partial transparency along one or more edges. Painting over this narrow fringe with black (for no transparency) cured that issue.