Rob "robviper" Senftle's OIF facts

[Snake Man]

There has been so many posts, mostly rumours and confusion about the Rob "robviper" Senftle's Operation Iraq Freedom theater. Here is the stuff he posted on various places.

Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) Theater
Date: 04/12/2005

Robvipers homepage.
***OIF theater update*** Frugals topic.

Persons involved:
Jody "Marvin" Levesque (campaign, terrain)
Ed "Twister" Gordillo (terrain)
Rob "Viper" Senftle (skins & additional art)

====================================================
Operation Iraqi Freedom Theater pre-release features Date: 03/31/2005 15:28
====================================================

- Completely new skins for many aircraft, vehicles and buildings
- New UI, music and videos
- New OIF campaign simulating the war on Iraq in 2003/04
- Historical ODS '91 campaign (based on ODS512)
- several included TEs
- Improved 512x512 tiles (based on ODS512)
- new a/c models & airbases
- comes with an .exe installer

Robvipers interview on F4HQ.com

Okay that was the information from their side. Next they disappear out of the scene, then comes PMC comeback. PMC is now in process of getting all the data/work from Robviper. So I would like to conclude here some points from his promises.

- Completely new skins for many aircraft, vehicles and buildings

I will evaluate the textures I'll receive and if they are good, they will be added.

- New UI, music and videos

New UI, yes. Music and Videos no. Why? I dont care about adding something so irrelevant only to build up the already large theater download.

- New OIF campaign simulating the war on Iraq in 2003/04

I will tweak the campaign yes.

- Historical ODS '91 campaign (based on ODS512)

I have no idea whats this based means. ODS v0.512 historical campaign was build by help from many peoples research, if there is anything to tweak I'm happy to do so.

- several included TEs

I have no plans to do them myself (I have never been fan of TEs), if someone wants to send me TE's and they are good enough, I will happily add them in.

- Improved 512x512 tiles (based on ODS512)

Yes we already have such tiles. I havent seen any improved ground textures by him in any of his screenshots.

- new a/c models & airbases

No. Anyone up to speed on falcon/theater development knows there is no new airbase models made by anyone which are fully working ingame yet, so he was dreaming here making big promises. I wont promise something like this, but of course I acknowledge that one day we will see new airbases added to F4 database and I'm looking forward that day to start using them in our theaters.

As for new aircrafts, sure I'm interested of adding them but I have no examples in mind, neither do I have anykind of list which aircrafts are missing on the various falcon versions. I believe RV already has pretty decent list of new aircrafts included which suit OIF theater.

- comes with an .exe installer

Uh yes, already does and installs to three different falcon versions.


So there you go, some of my answers are pretty "blunt" or gloomy-realistic, ie the new airbases and such, but hey I will not go promising a moon for you guys if I cannot deliver.

So one more time: PMC will receive Robvipers OIF work soon and will continue the work he started to build better ODS/OIF theater!

If anyone has some questions beyond this status update of what happend for Robvipers OIF, feel free to post so I can answer them here as I dont want to run around clearing rumours in various forums out there every other day

[bigstone]

Thank you Snake Man,

As for historical ODS'91 and OIF OOB.<---That is easy to add using tacedit and the proper historical OOB of squadrons. I have a book called Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm Chronology and Fact Book by Kevin Don Hutchison. Tons of OOB info on for ODS'91. OIF OOB from globalsecurity.org. Well will this new OIF or ODSv512 theater ATO generate tons of missions? I mean in the old ODSv512, the ATO begins to generate a few missions by the third day of the campaign and this is with all pak sliders to the right...Anyway to tweak what files for the ATO to generate tons of missions??? Thank you and I/we look forward to a cool new ODS theater and not a moon. Including Iran and Afghanistan(OEF) too.

[ranger822]

Snakeman, since it looks like you are hot on this one - - is Rob going to try sending you a DVD now? If so, great - else I will see about splitting up the Objects folder from the install he sent me and you can take that -- it doesn't sound like you want much more unless you also want the UI stuff. You may have already checked with Rob about his DB build - - I don't think he made very many changes - mostly skins but I could be wrong.

I have been rather busy lately and simply haven't had a lot of time to do much. But if this is a hot project let me get off my duffer and get what I have thrown together, split volume it and then get you some links.

[Sherlock]

If any of the OIF skins, models, etc., are applicable to Iran would they be usable in the Iran theater as well? If so, I would like to find out what is available and use whatever I can to put into Iran. Would this be possible?

[Snake Man]

I have now received succesfully the essential files from Rob "robviper" Senftle's OIF work. Here is what we have:

- Good quality squadron patches and many of them.
- One new theater logo TGA image, but no way matching the other logos.
- One new splash screen, no idea where to use, if even can be used.
- New sat-image kneemap with Red Dog AB's, grid + rings.
- Few Tactical Engagement missions.
- Alot of DDS skins, few PSD's (photoshop file) and BMP's too.
- KoreaObj.LOD and .TEX files, no idea whats changed.

I didn't receive ANY new 3d models, if there are they are integrated already into the LOD/TEX files (I have no idea how to extract them there, if there is a way), all there is, is updated ART... skins, kneemap and squadron patches.

It was pretty much what I was expecting, now I feel more confident with the "blunt" and gloomy mood in my initial post, the whole hyped OIF work is just bunch of skins, people or Robviper himself with the interviews and stuff blew it way too big as if its a brand new theater or something like that. Yes it will be great addition for ODS v0.7 for sure, but I hate to see peoples high hopes brought down like this.

I still havent actually seen the dds skins (I have no viewer to look at them), so I really hope they are indeed good quality and wont turn out to be some poor 256 res ones, or stuff that we already had in ODS v0.512 days. As well as I havent checked the LOD/TEX files, again as I'm not experienced with LODEditor and dont know what to look. I need to learn that stuff and quickly.

If any of the OIF skins, models, etc., are applicable to Iran would they be usable in the Iran theater as well?

What models?

If so, I would like to find out what is available and use whatever I can to put into Iran. Would this be possible?

Yes of course if there is cool stuff we can and will add them into Iran theater, as you know ODS + Iran goes hand in hand.

What is available I have outlined on the above, if you have any more specific questions about the OIF files, feel free to post.

[ranger822]

I can confirm some of the findings - the OIF isn't a big new theater. The database wasn't significantly affected. Mostly skins. The age of the work is now really dated. I probably would use a lot of it ... as is. ODS can still be nicely improved as Snakeman says but it is going to take quite a bit of work . . . tiles still need work, skins need to be sorted out a bit . . .

The UI is a non issue now as far as RV is concerend - things are handled differently. I am not sure what FF Team's plans are for ODS - - it could probably be up and running pretty quickly if the RV-Korea database is used as a base for building something new - - it shouldn't take too long.
As it happens I think between Iran and Israeli theater we have the models and skins to outfit most of what is needed on the red side. Maybe something to pursue after ITO is out of my hands.

edit- I am so out of touch with the rest of what is going on - maybe ODS has already been reissued in RV . . hehehe. I only check a few threads - just no time right now for more than my little area.