To all theater-makers: post your projects here!

[krfrge]

Well if someone is already working the area I will fall back and continue on Africa

[Malc]

Test Post

[Malc]

Hi everyone...

I'm in the early stages of creating a Panama Canal scenario. It'll be a 10 by 10 area, including a small part of Nicaragua, all Costa Rica and Panama, and a fair chunk of Columbia. I have the L2 made, and all E00 files are converted. I really need help with the actual theatre making bit, so e-mails will be sent in hope soon.

The rationale behind the campaign will centre around the canal. Russian-backed Columbians are trying to gain control of the canal, you're job will be to drive them out of Panama completely.

A web page will be up real soon... Anyone interested in helping out?

[Snake Man]

quote:Originally posted by Malcolm Hutcheon:
I'm in the early stages of creating a Panama Canal scenario. Anyone interested in helping out?

I'm too busy with my current theaters, but any information you need, just ask.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[TheSilkMan]

Im late on this discussion but just wondering if you guys have discussed working on one theater at a time (together)? This would probably cut the time needed to tile theaters by 50-75% and would enable you to move to other theaters more rapidly.

[Snake Man]

quote:Originally posted by TheSilkMan:
just wondering if you guys have discussed working on one theater at a time (together)?

That would be a good idea, mostly the time consuming job is tiling. when terrain is 100% tiled (even bad tiling is better than autotiling with terrainview), it is totally different to view at.

I've been doing lots of thinking in last two weeks about Desert Storm. Now we live in February 23rd... Vietnam is looking pretty good but its not done yet. My summer activities (read == less time with computer) starts in about two months, so no more sleepless nights tiling theater(s) until next winter. This is long time to wait.

But if we would get about 10 active tilers, we could do huge progress on the tiling for Desert Storm. Its the desert that is fast to tile and when we are using LODFixer to autotile the generic farmland/forest, it is even faster.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[CAG]

CCC - I talked with the other Taiwan developer and he is at a standstill. He said he would psot his work for download but i havent heard anymore then that from him. I am also at a standstill due to no free time to work on F4......

What should I do with his campaign work if I get ahold of it and dont have time to integrate it to mine?

CAG out......

[ccc]

CAG,
then drop it.
if you got time to do it, start it from the begining. I think his files didnt use spherical converter.
BTW, check Lil John's terrain HQ, i noted there is a link to Taiwan theater.

http://www.simspot.com/tscp/main.html

[This message has been edited by ccc (edited February 25, 2001).]

[Smart]

We here in Thailand have finally started the project once again. See if we can get it done before the end of the year (2002)

[87th_striker]

Looking good, Smart !!!!§!

[Smart]

Yo Striker! /O_

How about yours? I still got confusions here with the tools mentioned in the tutorials. Will send you a private mail... thanks

[Snake Man]

quote:Originally posted by Smart:
We here in Thailand have finally started the project once again.

Check this out before you proceed.




More info on the vietnam page.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[Smart]

Snake Man,

Since the SP2 allows for larger theatre, we intentionally want to make it bigger! Do you think there will be any difficulties or limitation on this when we run the tools?

As I said, I'm still confusing with the procedures to make a complete theatre.. the tutorials are good, but not in steps of 1, 2, 3 ... that easier to follow. Need more time to understand the whole pictures now.

Thanks for the reminder.

[Smart]

Here's from the first message from me ... the objective of Thailand Theatre

quote: Anyway, the Vietnam Theater will be used for the past war in 1969 ! and you can only have Korat to the left of your map. We can't have the Bangkok, Chiang Mai, or some part of Myanmar because of the map limitation. And I wan't to use the Thailand Theater for some folks here, cause we have 2 Falcon nests in Thailand (Korat and Taklee, central part of the country and out of your Vietnam Theater), we might have another airbase for F-16 ADF next year

Then I have planned to make the theater for training purposes rather than bring them back to the old war.. but yes, I have your Vietnam installed

At this stage, we have no plan to simulate any conflict with the neighboring countries... just want to get it done first.. then we can think a bit more in the future possibilities.

Also need to have some suggestion on making 3D model of F-5E and its' cockpit. ... we have so many tigers here still in operations. The first delivery of F-16 ADF ( 5 aircraft) has just landed here. We expect to get the theatre done very soon.

[Joe Labrada]

The F4Spain works in the Spain-Marocco Theater

We work in the first Beta.

[Death_119]

Almost finished all tiling after two long years . all was left is like 50% of israel roads to fix and lebanon. also to make some new forest road tiles and thats it.

after that 3d placing of rest of the countries remain and campaigns.

[RobC_F4]

Death 119

Keep going, you have ODS now as well for some ideas. You should have more Sat. Imagery available to you on Israel and surrounds than any of the rest of us!

Looking forward to testing - Rob

[ccc]

Revive another old thread posted in 2001

*Balkans(Manfred et al):Italy/Balkans, beta5
*Vietnam(Snake Man et al): Vietnam, beta2
*Desert Storm(Snake Man): hold?
*Falkland(ccc et al): Falklands, beta1
*Middle-East(T-bone et al): Iran/Iraq/Saudi, alpha?
*Israel(Dudi et al): Israel/Syria/Egypt, alpha?
add more?

Time flies.. but What's NEW now? my summary here..

1. Default Korea theater/campaigns remain the most popular, working, and complete one. Many new campaigns (like DoctorX's mod) do enhance its playability.. and there is lots room left for improvement, both in database contnet and campaigns.

2. Balkan (AF) mod seems quite complete and working. i hardly fly AF. i used PMC Balkan-RV vesion..hmm i have difficulities win the three campaigns..need more test.. choking at several spots.

3. Israel / ITO2 (FF5), this soon-to-be-released mod bears high expectation.. Ranger/Peled work hard on it for years, and Biker makes SDW camapign working. i've not checked it yet. Ranger invests tons time and energy to make a truely dedicated databse for ITO2.. many new 3d toys

4. Aegean V4 by Phoenix711 et al(OF), announced to be released on 1st of June 2009!
http://www.f4support.com/forums/showthr ... #post64637
this mod looks very promising, the team must have worked hard for long time - i noted their work covering new 3d stuff, new terrain tiles, working campaigns, etc.. almost like a commercial-quality mod.

5. Spain / POH by Closter et al. the first time we have a mod covering this area. though at early stage, i noted some areas are covered with new tiles.

6. Panama by Malc.. AF installer available. no RV installer to play with yet.

7. PMC mods.. though all at early stage- and the collection keeps growing bigger - i like them the modding just brings lots fun..and you can see the possibilities.

[ccc]

falcon world... at war

[Luk]

falcon world

Nice post! We can almost encircle Earth around equator...

[derStef]

FF5 Taiwan group.

Still alive and kicking!

[ccc]

acutally i did not mark all past, dropped, half-done theaters.. like nordic, north africa, io jima, qubec, berling strait, etc.

[Sherlock]

@ ccc,

What's the difference between the yellow 128 and the green 128?

[ccc]

@ ccc,

What's the difference between the yellow 128 and the green 128?

no. some maps are overlapping.. i use two colors to seperate them.

[toonces]

I'm actively working on Nevada, Kuriles and Vietnam.

I have the following projects in worK-
Nevada: The whole "Battle for Fulda" tweak is essentially done and working for a solid 3-4 day "war". I am telling you guys, you will not get better dogfighting experiences in a Falcon campaign than you will find in my Nevada mods. I've posted enough AARs to demonstrate that. I have two different versions- a more or less modern version, and a "Fighter Weapons School" version set in the mid-80's and fleshed out with Navy/USMC aggressors and all Navy/USMC Bluefor jets. Based on my Playtest #1 it still has some balance issues. This is going to rock when FF5 is fixed up. I have a handful of additional ideas for this campaign, dependent on some answers I get from things I posted lately.
I have an idea to make a few more air mods, using air OOBs from the dreamland resort website; essentially some of the air OOBs I used back in late 08/early 09.
Another mod that I haven't started on, but is essentially an extension of the work I've already done, is to add even more red and blue ground forces to the Fulda mod (perhaps reinforcements at the 2-3 day mark for both sides or rolling reinforcements- blue on day 2, red on day 3, blue on day 4, red on day 5...) to see how reinforcements affect maintaining a ground war. I'm toying with the idea of dropping in forces around the map as airborne troops as reinforcements behing enemy lines and seeing how that affects things. Really, this could ultimately expand into a battle royale with a fully built blue and red OOB that fight for control of key cities- Las Vegas to Los Angeles. The only thing slowing this one down right now is imagination.

Kuriles: Right now I have ccc's ground OOB and terrain mods fleshed out with a mid-80's JASDF/Soviet air OOB. FF5 is perfectly suited to this because it has a ton of JASDF cockpits and skins including 4 Phantoms, 2 F-1s, an F-104J, F-15J. On the Red side there are working MiG-21s, 23s, 25s (no 3D), 29s, with pits/skins, and there are a few Su models- the Fitter, 25, 27...I know you've seen my experiment using winter tiles which really changes the feeling of the theater, especially with the weather cranked down. I'd like to see a new pallette for the water tiles with a darker, grayer color, but that is just an opinion and isn't slowing down anything at all. Frankly, with not alot of work this theater could be ready to kick out the door as the next release candidate. With a month of dedicated work fleshing out silly things like getting squadron names and patches historically accurate, writing up a scenario manual and storyline, and so on, this could be "finished" and become part of the WW3 at PMC storyline. Of all the campaigns I've played, this one seems the closest to being finished...again just waiting on FF5 to get patched up with an unlocked DB. I don't think this campaign is nearly as interesting in other Falcon versions because of their limited planeset, cockpits, etc.

Vietnam: I'm working (slowly) on Vietnam. I have two main campaigns in mind. The first is based on the Easter Offensive of 1972, pitting US airpower and ARVN ground forces against the DPRV. This is an excellent candidate for work because the campaign historically consisted of air strikes against the north and south, so there isn't much suspension of disbelief of player blue-side tasking. Furthermore, the historical campaign took place is distinct phases, allowing for a reasonable sim-campaign timeframe of a few weeks per campaign. Theoretically this could be expanded into a full 3 campaign scenario with the DPRV offensive, the pause, and the ARVN counterattack. Again, this is very well-suited for FF5 with its excellent Vietnam era planeset and cockpits, including Phantoms, A-4, 6, 7, F-111, F-105, and so on. This campaign is a ways away from being complete. I have the first draft of the red OOB done, about 1/3 of the blue ground OOB done. I have a first draft blue air OOB that needs some work. The red air OOB needs a complete overhaul and I don't have any historical references to indicate the quantities or locations of red air for this campaign. The links need a thorough going-over, lots of bridges will need to be worked out. I've made no attempt at capturing historical air squadron name designations but this could be done later quite easily, as well as patches, etc. The ground OOB is based on historical divisions that I've drawn from my references- my brigades and battalions are arbitrary.

A second Vietnam campaign could be built on the Tet '68 Offensive but I only have a few references so far, and no work has been done at all. This would utilize an earlier blue planeset and would be interesting if Doctor X's campaigns are any indication.

So, in summary, Nevada can be release ready anytime now. Kuriles needs a few weeks of work and playtesting and it can be release ready. Vietnam needs months of work still, although the air war is already pretty fun.

All would/could be developed faster with a handful of dedicated test pilots to put them through their paces. I fly as much as I can, but it's hard to spend hours tacediting and a further number of hours then testing. I'd love to have folks that could test and report, freeing me up to work on another project in between tweaks. I solicited help on FreeFalcon, but the response was ice-cold unfortunately.

All will be immeasurably enhanced once FF5 is patched and the DB is unlocked.

I can't speak to compatibility with OF, although Nevada could be OF compatible with minimal work- just a matter of adjusting the planeset to match those available in OF as well as the aggessor skins available for OF- which in many cases are much better than those available for FF5.

[Closter]

falcon world... at war

A slight ammendment: Pillars of Hercules (POH) Theater (ex-Spain)is 128. It covers From South France to Canary Islands, best part of Algeria and North of Mauritania.

[ccc]

updated.

[ccc]

this pic show the PMC 2010 theater update..


and..this one shows missing hotspots.

[ccc]

just for record, my quick review and thoughts about latest WIP theater mods..

- Panama, nicely done terrain work. just minor bugs. deserve further campaign work.
- Korea / PMCKorea, TCL testbed. needs more GUs, GUs need to be placed/adjusted carefully to avoid stanstill.
- Korea 128, terrain work/road systems need to be checked, focus is korea pennisula and china border. very early stage.
- Balkan, nicely done terrain work. just minor bugs. deserve further campaign work.
- Israel, Ranger on it.
- Aegean, nicely done terrain work, deserve further campaign work.
- Afghanstan, need NEW tile and re-tiling first, then can enter next stage of dev.
- Europe, Luk on it.
- Georgia, still checking/tweaking obj-linking and road systems. minimal progress.
- Iran, Sherlock and Demer on it.
- Kurile, i've checked major roads on Hokkido but, with NEW experience and understanding, road system needs further polishing.
- Nevada, need NEW tile and re-tiling first, then can enter next stage of dev.
- ODS 128, terrain work/road systems need to be checked.
- Taiwan, DerStef on it.
- Vietnam, need NEW tile and re-tiling first, then can enter next stage of dev.
- Lybia, need NEW tile and re-tiling first, then can enter next stage of dev.

For theaters like Afghanstan, Nevada, and Vietnam, hope we can have tile artists to help.. Polak's israel tile sets should benefit Nevada, Afghanstan, and Lybia.

[toonces]

I've been toying around with ODS lately. Nothing substantial, just testing out some ideas.

I've forwarded all of my Panama files to the FF Team.

I have a couple of .cam's for Kuriles. I'm not sure who has them- I think I've posted them here somewhere. Kuriles is a nice theater and really doesn't need much work to be complete.

I have two great ideas for new theaters, but I hardly see the point with so much unfinished work laying around.

[ccc]

I have two great ideas for new theaters, but I hardly see the point with so much unfinished work laying around.

t, nobody is responsible for unfinished work..they are toys, playground, for modders.

[toonces]

I'm also hacking Snakeman's Nevada v0.5 theater. I have my Fulda campaign imported- very short testing indicates that it works differently, but still works to some degree. I just don't understand a lot of why the campaign engine does what it does. The answer is in there somewhere, I'm just not seeing it.

I also have 2 other campaign ideas in that theater that I haven't worked on yet.

[demer928]

- Panama,
Think Toonce's is correct,not much work there left to be done!!!!
- Korea / PMCKorea, TCL testbed. needs more GUs, GUs need to be placed/adjusted carefully to avoid stanstill.
I thought I had posted how to avoid this,maybe not. Anyway "Not Interested", Korea for FF is done in my book!!!!
- Korea 128, terrain work/road systems need to be checked, focus is korea pennisula and china border. very early stage.
Same as Above ]
- Balkan, nicely done terrain work. just minor bugs. deserve further campaign work.
Bug's are CT related in FF,I checked briefly for someone last week.
- Israel, Ranger on it.
HEHEHE....!!!!
- Aegean, nicely done terrain work, deserve further campaign work.
Yes
- Afghanstan, need NEW tile and re-tiling first, then can enter next stage of dev.
Yes
- Europe, Luk on it.
Yes
- Georgia, still checking/tweaking obj-linking and road systems. minimal progress.
Tough Terrain
- Iran, Sherlock and Demer on it.
Yes
- Kurile, i've checked major roads on Hokkido but, with NEW experience and understanding, road system needs further polishing.
Point them where you want them to go,and make SURE they can get there!!!
- Nevada, need NEW tile and re-tiling first, then can enter next stage of dev.
Hmmm.See only AirWar\Training Scenario's here???? Maybe do a "Red Dawn" thing????Whadda' you think Mike??
- ODS 128, terrain work/road systems need to be checked.
Not Interested, 12-16 Hour Flight's to Target?????........Yawn!!!!!
- Taiwan, DerStef on it.
Yes
- Vietnam, need NEW tile and re-tiling first, then can enter next stage of dev.
Falcon has a HARD time with Historical Campaign Structure's,I have tried to make this run for over a year now for someone on the FF Team.No Go!!! Maybe after Iran?!?!?!!
- Lybia, need NEW tile and re-tiling first, then can enter next stage of dev.
Dunno...not Familier with it.

For theaters like Afghanstan, Nevada, and Vietnam, hope we can have tile artists to help.. Polak's israel tile sets should benefit Nevada, Afghanstan, and Lybia.
That would be a nice thing from Polak.
2ct's.
demer

[toonces]

I've been continuing to work on a few different projects. I work on one until I get bored, then switch to another. It's not the most effecient way to develop, but what the heck.

I created a small scenario for ODS, completely different from what you're used to seeing. I did it originally to test some ideas I had about ground movement. In case you're wondering, I place some ground units in the high desert and structured things such that the ground units should have started moving to their objectives. The campaign engine tasks them with major offensive to the place where I wanted them to go for victory conditions. But the don't move at all. This goes way back to a discussion I had with Demer about a year ago about the requirement for roads. I'm starting to think that in ODS: a) roads are important, and b) the desert terrain in ODS prevents movement, sort of like the swamp tiles in Korea. Bottom line- units won't move off of roads in my limited experiment.

But I'm getting off topic here. The other part of the idea was based on some reading I just did. Before the air war in ODS kicked off, the US units practiced in the Saudi desert. I thought it would be a neat idea to create a small fictional area in the Saudi desert where a US Navy Air Wing could practice its trade against some adversary aircraft and SAMs. The air war develops in a very interesting way. Watching what the campaign engine does with a very small number of aircraft to play with shows some interesting insights into how the ATO manager works. As I got into it, I started thinking of how far I could push the idea. I made a supply trigger for end war, but the supply system is working funny. I don't understand it to be honest. Long story for another thread. But anyway, it's an interesting little .cam and I think with some more work it might be worth sticking into one of SM's empty ODS slots.

Another project I've been working on is sort of related. I cracked open Nevada 0.5 and created a whole new air OOB based on the ODS air OOB. The idea, again, would be a work-up related scenario in the late 80's/early 90's with most of the aircraft that flew in ODS present. One of the neat things I found was how dramatically the campaign changed depending on the time of day the campaign started. Originally I had the campaign starting at 0900. Interestingly, the bluefor would get their butts kicked by opfor, even with the inferior opfor aircraft. I presume that it has something to do with the strike tasking vs. simply CAP'ing. Eventually night falls and then the F-117's go to town on the Opfor airfields, shut them all down, and then Bluefor has parity with Opfor. So, I got to thinking. The air war in ODS started at night for precisely this reason, so I altered the start time on the scenario and it made for a much more realistic depiction of the ODS air war. I'm also going through the weapons DB in the Nevada folder and editing the loadouts to remove AMRAAMs and such so that the air weapons are more closely aligned with the historical loadouts. I have also set this up with a supply trigger and it seems to be working a bit better, although it will likely take the player a good two to three weeks to degrade Opfor's supply enough for victory.

I haven't done too much more with Panama. The ground war doesn't quite work in Panama, but I don't think it's related to anything with the unit placement or trigger or anything like that. I think it's the links and maybe the bridges. It might be a tempo trigger...not sure. But again, it takes so long to playtest the campaign that I can't really tell how it will actually play out with the player flying missions for a few weeks.

That's it for now. I'm happy to share out the .cam's when they're ready if anyone wants to give them a try.

[demer928]

Mike,
First, Great to see your back and O.K.!!!!

In our disscusion last year on "Road's", I think you and derStef, as well as some other's there and here recently, are missing my point. I do not mean this in anyway to be demeaning.
You,Luk,ccc and a host of other's are having a problem, I believe, seperating the "Road's" you see on the Relief Map\.dds,.pcx art with the "Path's\Link's\MoveCost and Tile\Terrain type's" that the engine use's to determine GU movement.
A simple (maybe complex for some) experiment with Pathmaker tool can demonstrate what I am saying.
Take a section of tile's in pathmaker without any road's drawn on them.Using pathmaker, draw a continuous serie's of path's through them.Then make sure the Tile type's are something the GU's can move over i.e. farm\plains and that the elevation is flat to 15 degree's or so.Then in TacEdit find your new "path" and link it to adjacent objective's,then make sure the move cost on those objective's are less then 25 for example,except for rail\naval they should be 255(There are no RR's per Se and you don't wan't your Carrier's crossing dry land...HAHAHa!!!).
Then place your GU on the "path" or an the adj. objective's and see how it move's.

Regard's,
demer

[derStef]

Working on Taiwan, Balkans Aegean & Europe for FF5.5.x....

....also up for helping with OOB, campaigns, data DB, skins for other theaters....

[611-eagle]

Working on Taiwan, Balkans Aegean & Europe for FF5.5.x....

....also up for helping with OOB, campaigns, data DB, skins for other theaters....

Yea yea we are going well. Dont thing we are in deep sleep... Working on Aegean...

http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/1221 ... 201013.jpg

EMB-145 here is from FF5.5.1 looking fine... Im also working for runways in 3ds... need time and need time...