Player Controlled Ground Units
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Great suggestion using a pencil and the OOB, sometimes the solution is right there on your desk. LOL!
But it would be a good first dip into using the pool of BMS tools though don’t you think? Not too daunting of a quest I would think.
Just to be clear though, if I were to clone a unit and give it a new name there is no way to assign it a different icon than the original unit because they will be the same type of unit? So there are only so many types of units and you can’t create a new type?
UPDATE: So based on Cloud 9’s suggestion what I am going to try is to just take over two brigades from the same division. That way it will be much easier to find them from the OOB. I still would like to tinker around and get them to look differently on the 2D map, but this will help in the interim. Thanks Cloud!
You can create a new type. For instance, an Sa2 Battalion is a type of unit, which contains child units such as the launchers, trucks, and whatever else is in there. If you use the BMS Editor (From the launch menu) you can browse around and find the top level units. At the bottom of the window, it will have a list of all the child units. What you would effectively have to do, is copy one of the parent units, then change a few specific fields to make it unique as far as name, ID, and in this case the icon. The child units assigned to the parent unit can stay the same, because you don’t really want to change the structure of the unit, just how it appears on the 2D map–or maybe you DO want to change it, which you can do here as well.
If you want to start playing around with it, make sure you backup the originals before you start. Once you make the copy of the unit, you will need to modify a SAV file to add the modified units into a campaign, but while you are testing it, you should be able to use a TE. I’ve never added a new ground unit, just changed some existing ones, so you will need to look through the other files in the BMS installation to see if there are lists or indices of ground units somewhere like there are for AC types. Start with the BMS Editor to get an idea of what it is in the DB. If the ground units are similar to the Squadrons, you will probably need to find a copy of F4Browse as there are some things the BMS Editor will not allow you to change. Word of caution though, I don’t think F4Browse is being maintained anymore so it is not 100% compatible with the current DB. This is why you MUST make a backup before you start playing around, and only use F4Browse for the absolute minimum changes required. In other words: Use it as little as possible and at your own risk. That should be enough to get you started. Once you get a feel for the structure and have a look at what you’re facing you can ask more pointed questions.
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@Cloud:
Yes, the unit icon is defined in the DB. No, you don’t use LODEditor to find that, you use either F4Browse or the BMS Editor. LODEditor deals with the model DB
Changing a icon for a unit, would change the icon for all like kind units. So, to go that route you would A) have to make a copy of that unit and rename it to something you would remember, and B) go through all the work of creating a new icon, which requires artwork and insertion into the appropriate files in the Art folder, all of this requires several tools and of course a photo editing program, and the investigation of where the unit icons are located(yes, I know where they are, lol). So you would be doing a lot of work for no gain.
Why is that? Because every unit is unique, you can get it’s information by, A) hovering your mouse over it, or B) right clicking on it and getting it’s status. Jot this info down for the unit(s) you wish to keep an eye on.
Then later when you want to check where they may or may not by, simply go to your OOB and find them by using the Find button. If you can’t find the unit in the OOB, it, ummm, dead!!!
So you can either do a bunch of unnecessary work for no gain or simply jot down the unit infor and check them via the OOB.
C9
I am not somewhere that I have a BMS installation available so I can’t go looking–are there individual Icons for each team already defined and pre-created? Or is it a single Icon that changes color with Alpha layers based on team? If it’s the former, he wouldn’t need to create an icon with a graphics program, just use one of the other team colors so they’re quick to find on the map.
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are there individual Icons for each team already defined and pre-created? Or is it a single Icon that changes color with Alpha layers based on team? If it’s the former, he wouldn’t need to create an icon with a graphics program, just use one of the other team colors so they’re quick to find on the map.
They are pre-defined and created icons.
To use another teams existing set for just an individual unit or several units would require that you create an entire new team within the campaign file. Basically you would have 2 teams that are the same but with different colors.
So if you ask me this would be actually pretty ridiculous and a waste of time given the workings of Falcon when it comes to the campaign files.
I’ve already posted a solution to the problem, which is the way others have done it for years when keeping track of user moved units.
The only actual or practical suggestion I’ve seen here in this thread is if the units glowed or pulsated if moved by the user. But that’s pretty far fetched in my opinion as BMS has tons of other practical things to work on.
In the end, I believe if a player want’s to move units themselves then they should learn how to keep track of them. It’s not that hard. I’ve been doing it since Falcon 4.0 was released in 1998. Of course not in the few versions that didn’t allow the player to move units though.
C9
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… white contoured icons does (should) exists in the “xxx.rsc/idx/irc” (I’ve made them in 2011) to be used like they were in F47AF … but it still no code to use them yet.
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… white contoured icons does (should) exists in the “xxx.rsc/idx/irc” (I’ve made them in 2011) to be used like they were in F47AF … but it still no code to use them yet.
Included with installation and accessible to the DB from the icon index? That would solve the issue. Wouldn’t dynamically change based on User Control since not coded, but would be easy to identify.
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@Cloud:
They are pre-defined and created icons.
To use another teams existing set for just an individual unit or several units would require that you create an entire new team within the campaign file. Basically you would have 2 teams that are the same but with different colors.
I was thinking originally there was explicit mapping between a type and a color icon. This wouldn’t work though because multiple teams can have the same units with different colors. Point taken.
You would have to create an additional Icon then, or if you don’t need super pretty 2D pictures you could use an icon for a boat on land. New icons aren’t hard to do though, a simple subtle change to an existing icon with say a line underneath or a U superimposed over the image would only take a few seconds to create. You would need to add it to the Icon index though.
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The only actual or practical suggestion I’ve seen here in this thread is if the units glowed or pulsated if moved by the user. But that’s pretty far fetched in my opinion as BMS has tons of other practical things to work on.
This is kind of the point. If there is a relatively easy/quick way to “implement” a feature that makes things easier for the user, but doesn’t require the team to get involved or code anything, isn’t that worth a few hours of tinkering around?
C9
Now I’m curious how it all shakes out. I’m going to try to go through the process this weekend to see what all it entails, I’ll post the process for you -Vandal- if/when I get a chance to look at it.
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This is why you MUST make a backup before you start playing around, and only use F4Browse for the absolute minimum changes required. In other words: Use it as little as possible and at your own risk. That should be enough to get you started. Once you get a feel for the structure and have a look at what you’re facing you can ask more pointed questions.
@Mortesil Cool Thanks and looking at it right now! Do I need to backup just the \Data files for the regular KTO or the \Data\Add-On xxx folders if just working with an add on theater? This first backup I am doing is of the entire installation but if possible I’d like to just back up the at risk files.
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Now I’m curious how it all shakes out. I’m going to try to go through the process this weekend to see what all it entails, I’ll post the process for you -Vandal- if/when I get a chance to look at it.
Sounds good! I am going to tinker around with it too so I have a better grasp of all this and should be able to understand your findings better.
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@Mortesil Cool Thanks and looking at it right now! Do I need to backup just the \Data files for the regular KTO or the \Data\Add-On xxx folders if just working with an add on theater? This first backup I am doing is of the entire installation but if possible I’d like to just back up the at risk files.
Someone else might be able to jump in here since I don’t have an installation to look at right now. You don’t need the terrain or texture files, which is a HUGE bulk of the installation. You can more or less copy everything else without those and it shouldn’t be much larger than a few hundred MB. Much easier than several GB for the entire installation.
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@Cloud:
They are pre-defined and created icons.
To use another teams existing set for just an individual unit or several units would require that you create an entire new team within the campaign file. Basically you would have 2 teams that are the same but with different colors.
So if you ask me this would be actually pretty ridiculous and a waste of time given the workings of Falcon when it comes to the campaign files.
I’ve already posted a solution to the problem, which is the way others have done it for years when keeping track of user moved units.
The only actual or practical suggestion I’ve seen here in this thread is if the units glowed or pulsated if moved by the user. But that’s pretty far fetched in my opinion as BMS has tons of other practical things to work on.
In the end, I believe if a player want’s to move units themselves then they should learn how to keep track of them. It’s not that hard. I’ve been doing it since Falcon 4.0 was released in 1998. Of course not in the few versions that didn’t allow the player to move units though.
C9
I can see why you have come to that conclusion. Mainly what I was trying to do was see if there was a way to use any of the editors to get the visual clue I thought would be nice. Sure if there is an ez coding fix, I would welcome that but I agree it’s not a priority (unless someone is actually working on updating 2D then I would suggest this be added to their checklist). Anyway, I was coming at this as someone that likes to tinker with stuff that’s not too difficult. I have been having a good time messing around with Mission Commander and for me this is just the evolution of my tinkering around with the Falcon files. So the attempt to mess around with this is – in large part for me – just about tinkering and learning on a small scale and that’s why I am still messing with it. In the meantime I have taken your advice when playing, but when tinkering this still seems like a small enough challenge that I can learn something by taking it on.
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@Cloud:
In the end, I believe if a player want’s to move units themselves then they should learn how to keep track of them. It’s not that hard. I’ve been doing it since Falcon 4.0 was released in 1998. Of course not in the few versions that didn’t allow the player to move units though.
I agree, my suggestions was more of an ‘it would be nice’ sort of thing. I have no trouble as it is finding those units. I don’t do much of this, and usually only as the units are nearing the objectives, sometime they will go right on past. So I give them a bit of direction. Other times they will do some stoopid stuff. Example: in a Tiger Spirit campaign the division in Wonsan had waypoints to close to Pyongyang. That would have left no Blue units on the east coast to go to Hamhung so I had to step in.
Anyway I know which units I have controlled and where I told them to go but you are right, it isn’t difficult. All this thread about is ways to find these units a bit more easily. Some players I imagine do a lot more of this than I do and in that case I could see having some difficulty.
Which F4 version was the first to allow control of ground units? I’ve always thought it was AF?
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Which F4 version was the first to allow control of ground units? I’ve always thought it was AF?
Nah, SP series you could move the units and in some FreeFalcon versions. I had the RP series also, but don’t remember.
C9
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So for the first go around playing with this I added a copy of an M1A1 battalion as a unit in the Balkan campaign (Index 661). I did not make a new class. I did not “duplicate associated CT also”. I assume CT means Class Table and that meant class table entry. There is a unit icon number which is 10010. I changed that to 10011 just to see what would happen. I opened Mission Commander and you add battalions by CT Index it seems and both the original M1A1 and the cloned M1A1 battalion have the same CT Index of 45. I could not add Index 661 as far as I could see. But I went ahead and added a new CTI 45 to the campaign. I fired up BMS TE and it only lists one M1A1 type battalion and I checked the campaign and it sure enough added my new M1A1 battalion to the OOB 15th Div, 11th Armored Brigade, 1st Armored Battalion. So about all I did was verify that changing the Icon number in the editor by 1 digit when cloning a unit to have the same CTI doesn’t seem to create a new unit that either the TE Editor or Mission Commander sees. So that’s puzzling to me, why have the ability to copy a unit in the editor if it cannot be seen by the sim?
UPDATE: So I reread some of @Mortesil’s posts and he mentions modifying a SAV file. Which I don’t what that is I don’t see any .sav files. Also, I think his second suggestion is to try cloning a class rather than just a unit, that might help, but I’ll see if anyone wants to give me a couple of pointers before trying to clone a class. I plan on doing it tomorrow as I am out of time today.
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Included with installation
Should be … (can’t check it from here)
… and accessible to the DB from the icon index?
… don’t know (?)
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This is kind of the point. If there is a relatively easy/quick way to “implement” a feature that makes things easier for the user, but doesn’t require the team to get involved or code anything, isn’t that worth a few hours of tinkering around?
You missed my point which was this wouldn’t be some easy end user implementation. To have units glow or pulsate would be a code fix, if this were to be done correctly.
I’m not trying to be critical of the idea, but I believe the way of tinkering away and creating a separate icon is more of a monkey wrench approach that won’t really work and look good at all. Of course it would be just one or two person(s) doing that, I understand, but I’d never use that approach.
C9
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So for the first go around playing with this I added a copy of an M1A1 battalion as a unit in the Balkan campaign (Index 661). I did not make a new class. I did not “duplicate associated CT also”. I assume CT means Class Table and that meant class table entry. There is a unit icon number which is 10010. I changed that to 10011 just to see what would happen. I opened Mission Commander and you add battalions by CT Index it seems and both the original M1A1 and the cloned M1A1 battalion have the same CT Index of 45. I could not add Index 661 as far as I could see. But I went ahead and added a new CTI 45 to the campaign. I fired up BMS TE and it only lists one M1A1 type battalion and I checked the campaign and it sure enough added my new M1A1 battalion to the OOB 15th Div, 11th Armored Brigade, 1st Armored Battalion. So about all I did was verify that changing the Icon number in the editor by 1 digit when cloning a unit to have the same CTI doesn’t seem to create a new unit that either the TE Editor or Mission Commander sees. So that’s puzzling to me, why have the ability to copy a unit in the editor if it cannot be seen by the sim?
UPDATE: So I reread some of @Mortesil’s posts and he mentions modifying a SAV file. Which I don’t what that is I don’t see any .sav files. Also, I think his second suggestion is to try cloning a class rather than just a unit, that might help, but I’ll see if anyone wants to give me a couple of pointers before trying to clone a class. I plan on doing it tomorrow as I am out of time today.
By SAV file I just meant your saved campaign file, not specifically a file with extension SAV.
Everything in the DB is hierarchical, the name unit can be misleading. The cloning is a useful way to have a starting point for something you are working on, but it isn’t a catch all, it just clones and you have to make the proper adjustments. For instance:
To create a new type AC–say an F16F with the EXACT same stats and model as an F16C-52. You could clone the -52 unit and you would have the extra type in the DB with EVERYTHING the same. So you change the basics, the name, cool description, etc… - which are all done in different locations and files - and try to find it in the TE…nothing. You created a type of aircraft but there is nothing actually pointing to it or using it inside the database. You also have to create a squadron item, with that aircraft type as it’s contents, and a new flight item with the new aircraft as it’s contents inside the database. This is not specifically the item that will be used in a campaign, such as the 2135th Fighter Squadron, it’s a template in the database that the game looks at when it needs to generate something with that Index–the template it uses to build the 2135th FS after it has been added to a campaign. The database is setup in a semi-relational manner, with a hint of OOP at it’s design, but not it’s implementation. In your mind you think pressing ‘Add Squadron’ pulls a hard coded template of what an aircraft squadron looks like, and you just supply the F16F type for the new squadron and the game does the rest. This is NOT true. The game expects a specific template for an F16F squadron - which very well could have an F16F, 2 B1-s, and an E3, because you have to set it all up in the database. To finish off our example, in the case of adding an aircraft type, you would also have to adjust the flyable aircraft for the theater, the master aircraft list (I believe TEPlanes.lst?), and several other lists/files. This is why I said earlier you would have to search through the installation files to see if there is a complete list of ground units listed or indexed somewhere (Maybe TEUnits? I honestly can’t remember). What gets displayed in the TE Editor and MC get compiled from several different sources and files, not just a complete rundown of what’s in the database.
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@Cloud:
You missed my point which was this wouldn’t be some easy end user implementation. To have units glow or pulsate would be a code fix, if this were to be done correctly.
I’m not trying to be critical of the idea, but I believe the way of tinkering away and creating a separate icon is more of a monkey wrench approach that won’t really work and look good at all. Of course it would be just one or two person(s) doing that, I understand, but I’d never use that approach.
C9
Fair enough. I didn’t particularly mean the pulsing effect-but the white contoured effect is just as good. The code fix piece would only help by automatically switching the icon to a different index if it was being user controlled. Here we are basically doing the same thing that I (and a lot of others) do in a campaign by adding an extra “squadron” that is always going to be User Controlled ONLY. The difference being if we want a quick way to identify them without sifting through the OoB, we have to make a small adjustment to the DB as well.
I just think the modified icons might be helpful for people who really like to control the ground war. This could be a very easy user fix if the icons already exist like Dee-Jay mentioned they might, and really only trivially harder if they don’t. Adding the new unit to the DB only takes a minute or two if you have the steps laid out in front of you–but I’m not willing to list them out until I get a chance to look at it and run through it once so I can avoid a hail of flaming for skipping a step while trying to recreate the procedure in my mind.
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…This is why I said earlier you would have to search through the installation files to see if there is a complete list of ground units listed or indexed somewhere (Maybe TEUnits? I honestly can’t remember). What gets displayed in the TE Editor and MC get compiled from several different sources and files, not just a complete rundown of what’s in the database.
Oh I guess I got too much RDBMS in me for that to have registered when you were first talking about it. Sorry. Well dang it, I wouldn’t have the foggiest where to start looking for a list which enables the relations (backwards and-or forwards). Shoot that’s a lot of digging. Surely somebody already knows those files and what tools are needed to edit them. If they happen to be in a database or binary file then I’ll need the right tool to read those as well. Hopefully, we get pointed in the right direction then. Otherwise, I’ll start digging through the files tomorrow. I’ll start in the Balkan add on theater folder and work through those subdirectories and come up with a list of possibilities.
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Okay I glanced through all of the files (in the original install and theater) and this is what I found to be some of the most likely candidates for the files that may need updating after using BMS Editor.
…Data\Sim\Vehdef
vehicle.lst (ascii)
…Data\Campaign\Save
korea.*
teunits.lst (ascii)
VALIDAC.ACT (ascii)
=== ART ===
…Data\Campaign\Art
Lots of *.lst files but they seem to reference *.irc files so probably the equivalent of an INCLUDE library statement for different modules of the program?
…Data\Campaign\Art\campaign\mission
IMAGERC.IRC
…Data\Campaign\Art\common
IMAGEIDS.ID
IMAGERC.IRC
…Data\Campaign\Art\resource
…Data\Campaign\Art\setup
imagerc.irc
…Data\Campaign\Art\tacref
IMAGEIDS.ID
IMAGERC.IRCI was going to play around with F4Browse which looks at the falcon4.fed file (so that is also a file that may need massaging) but it couldn’t map the KoreaObj.lod file. The version I got was F4Browse_v2.31 and I am guessing it’s a completely dead vesrion.
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