Hi Uber,
If you dont intend to update UQMG ? Any chance you could open it up to allow new additions like Maps/Planes etc ??
It is not that I do not intend to update UQMG. It is just that it takes a lot of work to update it. The easiest thing to do is add aircraft, and that is hard enough. With mods coming up daily, it is an impossible task. Also I could not have written a more open utility if I tried... UQMG could be hacked just by analyzing the files in it... the problem is that UQMG is composed of over 5000 (five-thousand) files... most of them text configuration files, and whereas I know what they do, explaining it and trying to figure it out is not that easy.
Here is why it is difficult. I have a complex set of spreadsheet tools which help me design the multitude of "ini" files in UQMG.
Take a look at the "C:\Program Files (x86)\UberQuickPF\ini\fb100\main" directory. Say you want to add a plane... you would have to update:
* fd_Aircraft.ini (the meat and potato)
* fd_ComboAircraft.ini (for composite flights such as the He-111Z-1 towing a Me-321 Gigant)
*fd_DogfightNames.ini & fd_DogfightNamesFly.ini, which are basically the same after IL-2 began to be modded (before this, yours truly, discovered that in DF mode one could fly the AI planes from the outside with a utility I wrote, or by following a series of steps... when I released that utility I was expelled from two or three countries, was persecuted by several online flight gangs, was banned from the uninteresting website of at least three or four obnoxious people, and was sentenced to a naughty slap on the hand by the pseudo self-created IL-2 protection police... all this after Oleg told me himself that he had no problems with it as long as people did not expect him to support that feature... sorry I get emotional
... anyway, UQMG could allow or prohibit that feature.. now that feature is mute)
* fd_noseart.ini (to indicate which planes take noseart)
* fd_Skins.ini (to indicate Skin directory name)
* fd_Weapons.ini (this is the obnoxious one... gotta have the code for all weapon loads...)
* fd_SpecialWeapons.ini (for the weapon load of composite flights, such as Aces and Tug/Gliders)
You also have to update a few files in the "C:\Program Files (x86)\UberQuickPF\ini\fb100\main\database" directory:
* airDB.ini (definitions for the database... open it up and you will get an unpleasant surprise... it is very non-descriptive).
* airStatDB.ini (for simple data about the planes)
* airStatic.ini (because a static plane needs to be assigned to every airplane even if it does not exist, otherwise the ground editor gets frustrated...)
* and there is also a pictures directory which is for pics of the planes, although when I updated UQMG last year with a bunch of mods from AAA, I did not include pics.
This is just the planes. Another challenge is that I need to know the weapon codes for each plane. Whereas if every modder included the codes in
weapons_ru.properties, it would be a little easier, many of the modders do not, which means I would have to either go through the FMB and find out in the Mis file for every combination of a plane (think how much time that would take with something like the Skyraider would take...), or, I would have to decompile the modder's files to get the weapon text codes from their source code.
This is just the planes... if you want to update ground objects, regiments, etc, it is all the more work...
For maps, the templates are very complex... magnitudes more complex than QMB, (even QMB PRO). That is why in UQMG you can automatically select seaplanes, composite flights in any map, as well as carriers in any body of water. Whereas QMB and variations are mission BUILDERs, UQMG is a mission Generator... it takes various pieces of data to build a fairly complex mission if you choose, as opposed to QMB, which takes one mission and substitute values in one template (as in one mission file for a None, or Airbase, or Bridge, etc...). I actually wrote the Online Summer Gulf template for Oleg (at his request) but it was never released one of the Forgotten Battles updates. The process of writing a descent map template for UQMG is a multiple day project, just for a single robust template.
I have always wanted to change how UQMG works, but it is very complex to do so.
So will I update it? Yes... just don't know when.
In the meantime, you can always generate a mission and then change the plane using Mission Pro... not the same of course, but can be done... I may create a thread on how to do all this as time permits.
Best Regards,
UberDemon
Author
Topic: IL-2 '41 Field Mod w/ Playable Gunner (Read 40725 times)
