posted 03-13- 04:20 AM               

Usually, most planes come pre-packaged in with the folder structure already setup, so all you have to do is paste the downloaded planes "media" folder over your existing SDOE "media" folder.

As far as I know, there really isn't a limit to the amount of planes you can have installed at a time.

And as for skins, each plane can only have one body skin for it at a time, but you can install as many different skins for different aircraft as you like. Installation is easy. Just locate the file with a .tif extension. Each plane has its unique name for its body skin, so it should already be named ok, then just paste the tif file in:

"media\aircraft\aircraft name here\textures\"

For example, a skin for the Ju88A4 would be named "Ju88A4.tif" and it would go here:

"media\aircraft\Ju88A4\textures\"

If the above directories don't already exist, make them.

The planepack can be had from www.simfiles.com

I hope this helps.

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posted 03-13- 06:13 AM               

O.K., I have put this question off long enough. I have searched the site and readmes and tried and tried to load skins. I put the tif's in the media/aircraftname/texture/ folders and they don't seem to show up. How do I select the different plane say the P47 for my mission or do I have to locate missions for that specific aircraft? I had hoped to find the answer without bothering you fine people, but I'm at a loss. I have tried using ground crew and chameleon and have uninstalled/reinstalled various times. I checked read-onlys, hidin folders. I have pp6 and nations plus the patch for SDOE. It seems that I am obviously doing something very wrong. Do I need to install pp5.3 before pp6? By the way, all of the texture folders under the media/aircraft/aircraftname/texture are empty. Is this normal? I don't know what else to do. I am wasting alot of time. I know you answer this everyday and I have tried everything you post-really! What am I doing wrong.
I'll go cry

Please help this moron out. Thank you in advance.(I go off crying with embarrassment and pout in my room)

Riverrat out!

posted 03-13- 08:19 AM               

If you want to fly a specific plane to test it out or something, then just use the Training missions for that specific plane. If you want to have a P47 (or any other plane) in a mission, then you have to open the mission editor and either edit an existing mission, or make a completely new mission with the planes you want.

And about the planepack, when Planepack 6 came out, I completely reinstalled SDOE and started fresh, first to go on, patch 1.5, then Nations v2, and finally Planepack 6. I don't recommend you install a later version of a planepack over an existing earlier one.

And about the empty folders, this is completely normal. These empty folders were added for people to add their own sounds and skins if they wished. All the nessecary files are held in compressed files called "Par" files. Par files are like giant zip files, except WinZip doesn't open them, and SDOE can read their contents during play. It is possible to unbig or "unzip" these par files and do things with their contents with "BigMunger". When you originally install SDOE, three PAR files are installed, DATA1.par, DATA2.par and DATA3.par. After you put the planepack on, more PAR files are added with new data nessecary for the new planes and such to appear.

Each par files has different files types contained within them, and you will find that some have tiffs, and some have only sm files, while others hold sounds and GUI information.

Any file you add to these empty folders you mentioned, SDOE will use instead of the files in the par files. For example, DATA1.par has a tif buried deep within it called Ju88A4.tif. If you place a file with this *exact* name into "media\aircraft\Ju88A4\textures\", the next time you play SDOE, it will notice the new file you added and use *that* new file instead of the "old" original skin in the par file.

This is one good feature about SDOE, you can add your files to the folders, if you don't want them, just delete them or move them from their place, next time, SDOE will use the original tif in the par file again!

Anyway, I take it you are having problems with skins? Apart from putting the tifs in their correct places, they *should* also be named correctly for SDOE to use them.

Some planes have strange names for their skins, so just naming them after the plane won't work. For example, the tif the P38J reads is called "P38JNewCopy.tif". If you named your skin you intend to use "P38J.tif", it just won't work.

I hope this has helped you, go ahead and ask more if you need to!

posted 03-13- 08:23 AM               

"Media\Aircraft\Aircraft Name\textures\".

For example, it should be:

"media\aircraft\Ju88A4\textures\"

not:

"media\Ju88A4\textures\"

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posted 03-13- 09:20 AM               

Thank you, thank you, thank you. You answered a bunch there and I deeply appreciate it. I'll check it out later today. Makes better sense your way. After all my hours and days, I kind of thought that I would have to go to the missions or something. But the renaming thing I had no clue about. Thanks. Where does one find the correct names for the aircraft? In particular, the P47.
As to the texture folder location, I forgot to include that folder in my haste to type, but I was working in the right location on my hd. Thanks. (reminder-fire secretary..... na, take her to lunch). Hehe.

Thank you for all your help. Now I have an idea of how to go about it and won't feel so lost. Thank you for your time and patience.

Riverrat out!

posted 03-13- 10:00 AM               

Riverrat, about getting the skin names, you will first need to look at the original tifs in the par files. Of course, I can tell you the names of the skins, but then you won't know how to do it to other planes, and it helps a lot more if you take a look at the original tifs first, and edit onto them instead of starting a new texture. To view the original tifs, you need to "unbig" them, that is, extract their contents from the par files. You need BigMunger for this.

www.openplane.org has the "BigMunger" program I mentioned.

Here's the download page link:
http://www.openplane.org/tools.htm

Look for "Parfile Tools" and download it.

You can use BigMunger to unzip any par file. You can also view the contents of the par file without unzipping it even and also make your own par files. To unbig the par files to get their contents, open BigMunger, switch to the "Unbig" tab. In the first field, type in the location of the par file you would like to unzip for example:

C:\Program Files\Fighter Squadron\Media\DATA12.par

Then in the next field, type in the location where you would like the contents of the par file to be extracted into for example:

C:\WINDOWS\Desktop\Unbig\

One thing, when unzipping the par files, make sure you *DON'T* extract their contents directly into your SDOE media directory! You can possibly overwrite any existing files you added to your folders if you do.

Instead, make a new folder called "Unbig" or something, and extract the par file's contents in there. Beware when unbigging or "unzipping" the par files, some of them are up to 300 MB so make sure your hard disk is ready

Also, after you've extracted the contents of a par file, you are not in any way affecting the par file itself. The par just copies it's contents (as folders with files within them) to the directory you specify.

Assuming you've unbigged DATA11.par, which is where the textures for all the planes in Planepack 6 are, all you need to do is go to the location you extracted and find your files!

You will notice the extracted files from the par file are in their own folder structure just like the contents of the media folder of SDOE itself. You may also some other folders that you don't have in the SDOE media folder. Just look for the P47 folder in the aircraft folder and open it's textures folder. There you are!

Remember, before you unbig (unzip) a par file, first find out if it has the contents you are after. For example, you are after tifs for planes.

Open BigMunger, select the "listbig" tab. This pane will list the contents of the par files without actually unzipping them and taking up unnessecary disk space. In the "filename" field of the "listbig" pane in BigMunger, type the directory path that points to the par file you want.

Example: C:\Program Files\Fighter Squadron\Media\DATA12.par

Click OK. The pane should now fill up with the files contained in the par file with their path also. If you find the files you are after, switch to the "Unbig" tab, type the location of the par file again, as I said before, in the second field, type the destination where the par file will extract it's contents, and hit OK! It may take a while for large par files, you will see the progress bar in BigMunger during this operation along with the files being extracted.

If you happen to see the files you want appear here, it means that BigMunger is currently unpacking these, wait a few seconds and then Exit if you like! You don't have to wait for the whole par file to extract! This is useful if you have limited disk space. Unfortunately, I don't know of any way to extract the files in the order you wish, I don't think this is possible.

Ok, you may be wondering what to do now. Well, you have the tifs extracted, you can now move the tifs you want (the P47 tifs in your case) to your 'empty' p47 textures folder. You can open these tifs and modify them anyway you like or, note down their names, and add your new skins and rename them to match the names of the tifs you extracted!

I hope this is helpful!

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