posted 11-12- 05:26 AM               

Night over Dover: making night missions

This guide is made by Poodle_EAF322.

E-mail address: poodle@wxs.nl
Flying Poodle page: http://www.flyingpoodle.cx
European Air Force: http://www.europeanaf.org

Do not ask Parsoft or Activision for support.

Making a night mission works just like making a normal daylight mission, only making the sky dark acquires some more work.

1) After installing “Night over Dover” open the MissionEditor and choose a new map. If installation went well you'll be able to choose the "Dovernight" map *. After choosing the map create your own mission the way you like it, just like you would do with a normal mission.

When the mission is finished you must save it into the Dovernight missions directory.

Usually this is: C:\Program Files\Fighter Squadron\Media\Missions\Dovernight

If the mission is meant for multiplayer you must save it in the Multiplayer missions folder.

2) After you saved the file and you would run SDOE you see the sky is still blue. If you want a black sky, the first thing you first have to install one of Michael Harrison's beta’s, which is at the moment (20-1-2000) being tested for a new unofficial patch.

3) After you saved your mission go to the folder where it's saved so you see your new mission file on the screen.

4) Then open up the Notepad with the Start menu. Notepad comes standard with windows, and in the Start menu it stands in a folder together with Paint, Calculator and Write. Notepad is also the normal viewer for txt files. It's called different in every language. In English it's Notepad, in Dutch it's Kladblok, and so on.

5) After opening the Notepad you should resize the Notepad window so you can see and the Notepad and your new mission.

6) Now, you should drag your mission to the Notepad window with your mouse. Now you see the mission in the Notepad.

7) Then you must scroll some to the right and you see all kind of codes. You see which squads are involved and how many planes they have and how they are armed. You see the mission name and a lot of other things you can change by hand.

8) Now, you should see somewhere on the first line a section called msnEnvironment. You'll see something like this:

msnEnvironment ( msnDate "8/15/1945" msnCloud "strClear" msnWindVelocity 0 msnWindDirection 0 )

This is the environment section and this is important for the sky/fog colour and the visibility too.
Now, you should add 4 words and numbers to get it:

msnEnvironment ( msnDate "8/15/1945" msnCloud "strClear" msnWindVelocity 0 msnWindDirection 0 msnFogColor 1 1 2 msnClearColor 1 1 2 msnFogDist 1 msnViewDist 3 )

As you see there are added msnFogColour, msnClearColour, msnFogDist and msnViewDist. The colours go in RGB values. The distances (Dist) go in miles.

9) Now pick a nice colour with your paint program, note down the RGB value and fill it in behind the msnFogColour and msnClearColour.
The difference between the 2 is that the FogColour will change the colour of the nearest visibility barrier (where the fog begins) and that's the closest to you. The ClearColor will change the background colour, so what's behind the fog.
You can of course make the fog yellow and the sky black, but that totally makes no sense. So try to give them both about the same colour. I both gave them 1:1:2 as you can see cause that's almost pure black for night.

10) Especially at dawn there's always a lot of fog and that's where the FogDist and ViewDist comes in. For a nice touch you can set new distances for these. The FogDist is the distance where the fog begins and the ViewDist is the total visibility (so the last point you can see through the fog). Always make the ViewDist number bigger than the FogDist. The distances go in miles. I often use 1 and 3 for night missions, cause visibility is very low at night.

11) Now after you changed this and you're done just press to exit (you can use the little cross right above). Then the Notepad will ask you to save and now press yes. This way you will save the file in it's original (.mis) format.

12) Now fire up the SDOE beta and you'll enjoy your own wonderful mission.

IMPORTANT: After having changed the file by hand and adding these lines, remember not to open the file again with the MissionsEditor, because this will cause the added environment data to disappear. If you do want to change anything with the MissionsEditor remember to add the environment data again.

Hope this is what you're after.