posted 09-10- 12:11 PM               

However, I want to recreate that chill, that panic at the sight of ONE all-red Triplane.

Is it possible, and how is it possible, to have TWO Fokker Dr1s installed in the game, so that I can write normal scenarios but occasionally trot out the Red Baron's plane?

I realize that this plane would have to be in it's own squadron, hence there can't be one squadron of green Dr1s with one red Dr1 in it's midst,

But perhaps I could assigne the red Dr1 to it's own squadron, by itself, and assign it to escort the squadron of green Dr1s (regardless of whatever they'd be doing).

Ideas?

posted 09-12- 02:09 PM               

Of course, they are in the form of 2 .par files.
Questions would be:

1) How has the Dr1 been modified since that original (those originals?); and

2) Can the two Dr1s be re-skinned with Blast's skins vice the two it came with...

Again, if I were going to set up a situation where the Red Baron were out flying with a squadron, I'd make a squadron of 'normal' (or green-skinned) triplanes (about 3 of them), and write the mission to have them doing whatever (CAP, Sweep, whatever), then
have a squadron of 1 Dr1 (red skinned), and set it up to 'escort' the other triplanes. The red triplane's skill levels would be maxed out, to justify the psych reaction caused by the red paint job.

Ideas? Can the Dr1 file be altered now, to harmonize it with the other aircraft being harmonized (FMs adjusted)?

V/R,

posted 09-13- 02:24 PM               

Happy landings

posted 09-13- 08:48 PM               

This is way over my head. I suspect that if we want one squadron with multiple paint jobs aka the Flying Circus, we're going to have to wait for the Wings With Wires game.

I am, ignorant as I am of this, puzzled that we can't duplicate the Dr1a with a different name (say, Dr1b or Dr1rb), at least I don't know how.

It just seems to me that for a red Dr1 or a red Albatros DIII (which we don't have, but would fill the gap between the EIII and the Pfalz/DVa/Dr1 nicely) it would be worth the effort.

I'm off work tomorrow. Maybe I can figure something out...

V/R,

posted 09-14- 05:07 AM               

Take a read of this and see if you can maybe achieve it? The process is quite simple, but requires some Openplane Studio knowledge. I can send you Openplane Studio if you want/don't have it. I can say though, that it's as easy as making a copy of the plane's folder (with the plane's loadout, sm and textures folder inside) and then renaming the copied folder as an appropriate name to reflect the new plane's name. Then edit the new loadout.ppf and in the "descName" field where the name of the plane is shown in the game, change it to a relevant name. Maybe "Dr1 Red". Now the next bit is a little hard, when you copied the plane from the original, you must of copied the sounds and textures too. But the copied plane doesn't "know" to use the new textures folder, it will still use the "old" plane's texture folder.

You'll need to start Openplane Studio and open the newly copied plane sm file and "tell" it to use the textures in the new folder you made a copy of from the old one. Switch to the "textures" tab and you'll see the texture references in a long list. These are basically just directory paths pointing to locations within the "media" folder that tells the plane where to find specific textures. Notice how the references still point to the old plane's folder. Double click each reference in this list and a properties box will appear. In the texture reference field, change the plane folder to point to the new one you pasted and renamed, "Dr1 Red" in this example. For example, if you see a reference like this:

.\aircraft\Dr1\textures\wings.tif

Assuming you made the new plane's folder "Dr1 Red", change this reference to:

.\aircraft\Dr1 Red\textures\wings.tif

Do this (just change the "Dr1 Red" bit, not the texture tif names or anything) for all references, then reload the file. It's a good idea to rename the sm file to the new name too. Now the plane will be stand-alone using its own textures and because you edited the loadout.ppf on the copy plane, it will show up as a new plane in SDOE.

That's all there is to it really. If you want to go further, you can take a screenshot of this new plane in-game, resize it to 278 x 209 save it as cutaway.bmp and place it in the "GUI/Art/Hangar/Germany/Dr1 Red/" (assuming Dr1 Red is the plane's name) folder and in the loadout ppf, change the GUi reference to this directory so you'll see it as a new plane in the Hangar. This is purely optional.

So what next? You can now edit the new textures in the Dr1 Red folder all you want and place this new plane in a mission.

I know you said you were over your head with this, but I hate to see somebody give up on something. And no worries if you can't get this to work still, I'm just glad to have tried to help at least.

posted 09-14- 07:00 AM               

It looks to me like the .sm files aren't in the folder, there's not much there at all. I think that's because the Dr1a comes to us from Parsoft, not a 'freelance' builder, and is a .par file. So it looks like I'd have to rename the .par file (and would need permission perhaps to do that, although I would just give all the credit to Parsoft and to Blast for his skin), and renaming that is as easy as being sure to rename it something that wouldn't conflict now or down the road.

But then, I'd need to decompile the .par file to find the place that, just like you said, would direct the plane to the current folder for textures and sound (?). I need to know what program to use to do that decompiling.

Having said all that, I haven't done anything of the scale of creating my own plane (if I did, there'd be a Nieuport 28), but I can work file structures, write .bat files, etc. So, if the above about that .par file makes sense, and if I can sort out the proprieties of messing with Parsoft's Dr1a, I'd appreciate the program, or a reference to it's download site.

V/R,

posted 09-14- 08:17 AM               

BigMunger is the program used to decompile and rebuild par files. Openplane Studio can then edit any (well almost any) sm file you come across, check your mail for both these programs.

It's great that you have experience with bat files and file structures, this job should be relatively easy compared to those (I'd imagine, I'm not too flash at writing .bats and a great learning experience at that too. In a sense, you won't be required to learn any Openplane language, you'll be making copies of an existing plane and changing its internal text-based references so it uses new media (textures, sounds, etc) and has a new name. In other words, should be easy. Feel free to email me anytime with questions too.

posted 09-14- 10:57 AM               

Data1.par was a bad file to pick as the first one to check… After a little trial and error on how to use BigMunger, I was able to decompile my .par files (copies I had placed into a working folder) and I have settled on data15.par.

I have made a new folder in the working folder called Data 23, with a subfolder called Aircraft, and in IT a subfolder called FokkerDr1Baron. This last was FokkerDr1a copied from the decompiled data15.par, which yielded a structure similar to what you see in the Media subdirectory of your SDOE game. Then, as it was easiest, I opened the loadout.ppf, and changed the following parts:

descName "Fokker Dr.IBaron"
descCountry 'strGermany
descPicture "GUI/Art/Hangar/Germany/FokkerDr1Baron/cutaway.bmp"

Next, I renamed the two FokkerDr1Awhatever.sm files by replacing ‘A’ with ‘Baron’. I then used Openplane studio to open FokkerDr1Baron.sm. Here I ran into trouble. I opened the texture tab, double clicked a texture reference that included …FokkerDr1A… in the title, and renamed it FokkerDr1Baron. However, hitting ‘reload’ or ‘OK’ had no effect, and at no time did Openplane Studio give me the option to save.

I got a lot of error messages: “Error Opening File __________ No such file or directory”

So, how do I get the OpenPlane Studio to save my changes to the texture references? I have tried to operate on a file placed in the Media/Aircraft folder of the actual game, where it will be in play, no dice.

?????

V/R,

Chaps

posted 09-15- 08:52 AM               

Thanks, Harman_5, for all your help!
Using you last tips, I was able to load the new textures, I loaded the trial package into my SDOE installation, and set up a scenario.

First I flew as the Red Baron, and to my surprise, I was flying the same green triplane.

Why, do you think?

I'll do some more sleuthing...

V/R,

posted 09-15- 09:02 AM               

I thought there is something somewhere in the FokkerDr1Baron folder that accepts the textures in the FokkerDr1A folder over it's own, but that's wrong since that folder isn't there, and the textures are the default red/black textures. So, it's somewhere in the decompiled files. Hmmm...

More sleuthing... The FokkerDr1A folder is an override folder, meaning that Fighter Squadron will use it in place of a folder by the same name in the 'parent' file. So, I went back to OpenPlane Studio, and looked in the left-most of the 3 major windows, and I found a folder named FokkerDR1A! I renamed it FokkerDR1Baron, copied the new file to the game, and viola! A red triplane escorting 3 green triplanes! I now have to check the Damage files, because of an error message, but I think I've got it figured out.

Why am I posting all this? In case someone can learn from it!

Chaps

[This message has been edited by Wing Chaps (edited 09-15-2001).]