Theater conversion from 4.33 to 4.34
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This is a call for assistance to all theater builders working actively in this community.
Like all of you right now, I’m sharing the enthusiasm of 4.34 and all the new features that the dev team has brought to us. BMS is, certainly, more alive than ever.
We’ve been presented with many theaters in the past to enjoy our beloved Sim, and I’m sure all of us are hoping to see as many theaters as possible fully functional and compatible with 4.34 in the near future.
So, I would like all of us to gather and share knowledge here, regarding theater conversion to 4.34 standards.
Personally, I’m trying to figure out the new structure of the DB, and the best way to convert / pass all the necessary information from one to another, but still no joy.
So, please, theater guru builders, on behalf of all of us, share here your knowledge!
Looking forward to hear from you, and also to share what I may learn from here on.
Cheers!
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Gentleman I reinforce Nuno statement.
It’s not only helpful but urgent that someone that already made the conversion can sit with us for a while and share some basics on this.
We ( POH Dev Tem) dont what to spend another 2 years digging what other dig already.
Please some compassion here.
Thank you
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I’ve exchanged few pm with Nuno Santos regarding this issue. The general idea is that with the xml structure it is easier to convert compared to the past.
First, you have to familiarise with xml structure of the various falcon4 files. Then you have to play around with 3ddb tool and last with bms editor. Once you master these, the rest will come naturally.
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I’ve exchanged few pm with Nuno Santos regarding this issue. The general idea is that with the xml structure it is easier to convert compared to the past.
First, you have to familiarise with xml structure of the various falcon4 files. Then you have to play around with 3ddb tool and last with bms editor. Once you master these, the rest will come naturally.
For sure Mystic
Nuno already spoke to me about this. The only issue here is we don’t have any prior knowledge about this new structure and it will take some agonizing months to figure it out.
If by any chance any Theater Dev that already have done the 4.34 conversion can send some light on the subject it will be awesome.
4.34 is great but it’s a very big bump in our theater development. And it’s really unfair for the non Devs in the other theaters. But what to say life is unfair
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Mystic_J,
If I understood correctly, You’ve managed to use your former 4.33 DB, extract it and then rebuild it to 4.34 standards, am I correct?
If so, this is what I’ve been trying to do:
1- Extract our old DB using 3ddbbuilder. It then creates 3 folders. LODs, Parents and Textures.
2- Then I rebuild it, using the “build” command. When I open it with BMS editor, all I can see is that the DB is exactly the same as stock Korea.Where am I failing to recover the former DB, can you point it out?
Thx, mate.
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We need some break. Also I need to organise the TvT event. But sure I’ll try to give some support (depend my availability)
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Maybe the tool for 4.34 to build with the xml schema is a newer version from the tool that was released publicly months or years ago?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-T818A using Tapatalk
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@Bad:
We need some break. Also I need to organise the TvT event. But sure I’ll try to give some support (depend my availability)
I perfectly understand it, Bad Boy.
Thank you. Really.
Take your time, please. You and the rest of the team, you guys deserve it!
We’ll keep working on it, because we have to. You guys know why, better than anyone
Whenever you have some free time just to lead us in the right direction, we’ll be most welcomed by any assistance you may give us.Cheers, and keep doing what you do!
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Bad Boy, Mistic, please, take your time, that you have won it over and over again. Meanwhile we are playing and understanding the format of the new database.
Thank you very much for your effort and help. We keep moving forward. It would be a pity if all the effort and work of so many members was lost or left abandoned.
Fresco
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@Nuno:
Mystic_J,
If I understood correctly, You’ve managed to use your former 4.33 DB, extract it and then rebuild it to 4.34 standards, am I correct?
If so, this is what I’ve been trying to do:
1- Extract our old DB using 3ddbbuilder. It then creates 3 folders. LODs, Parents and Textures.
2- Then I rebuild it, using the “build” command. When I open it with BMS editor, all I can see is that the DB is exactly the same as stock Korea.Where am I failing to recover the former DB, can you point it out?
Thx, mate.
Convert your new POH 4.34 theater, folder by folder. I mean first convert the Art folder, then the campaign folder, etc. Leave last, the hard work, that is the koreaobj folder. When you finish the DB conversion, then you will have to come back to Art and Campaign folders to fine tune them. I am assuming you are familiar with the various files in Art and Campaign folders.
Now, when it comes to the DB, extract the 4.33 POH DB using the 3ddbbuilder tool. As you said, you’ll get 3 folders. We are only interested in the parents folder that was created. In the meantime, since we are still in 4.33, you can still play around with Lodeditor and modify your models as you wish. The new .lods can be placed directly within the Parents folder in the appropriate subfolder.
Then, create a new 4.34 POH Koreaobj folder and copy & paste there the default KTO koreaobj files. Extract them with the famous new tool (3ddbuilder). What you’ll get are, again, three folders (LODs, Parents and Textures).
Now, the first thing you should do is to import the POH Features (customise taxiways, runways, radars etc.). We need them first in order to import later on the objectives. Leave vehicles and units at the very last.
Here, you have to take a breath and study the xml structure of the falcon4ct.xml. Use BMS editor if you want or notepad++. You have to check where KTO CTs finish in order to continue adding new stuff. I mean you cannot just begin and import new POH stuff on top of KTO db.
This is a step that is kind of difficult to explain in plain english. Just take your time to understand what you have to do. I am assuming again that you are an experienced theater creator, otherwise it gets trickier.
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Do not forget the sound files
Evalfile.xml
CommFile.xml
FragFile.xmlHave been heavily modified
Check new ATC files as well in the ATC folder
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UI files.
“Sim” folder.
3DDB. -
Gents this is a chapter I wanted to be in the tech manual but I wasn’t able to write it not being a theater developer myself. So this post if formatted correctly could certainly be used as the back bone for the well needed new chapter of the technical manual.
I’ll be listening, and don’t be afraid to be exhaustive so that even me can understand the step by steps required -
Art folder is important to convert
You can translate your theater current bin DB files in xml files=> open BMS Editor, go to “File” then “Save DB to XML”. After that a lot of work wait you to check/compare your dedicated theater xml file with the stock BMS’s one
You can also convert you cam/tac files by using the “Convert” function in MC tool (Mission Commander)
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Convert your new POH 4.34 theater, folder by folder. I mean first convert the Art folder, then the campaign folder, etc. Leave last, the hard work, that is the koreaobj folder. When you finish the DB conversion, then you will have to come back to Art and Campaign folders to fine tune them. I am assuming you are familiar with the various files in Art and Campaign folders.
Now, when it comes to the DB, extract the 4.33 POH DB using the 3ddbbuilder tool. As you said, you’ll get 3 folders. We are only interested in the parents folder that was created. In the meantime, since we are still in 4.33, you can still play around with Lodeditor and modify your models as you wish. The new .lods can be placed directly within the Parents folder in the appropriate subfolder.
Then, create a new 4.34 POH Koreaobj folder and copy & paste there the default KTO koreaobj files. Extract them with the famous new tool (3ddbuilder). What you’ll get are, again, three folders (LODs, Parents and Textures).
Now, the first thing you should do is to import the POH Features (customise taxiways, runways, radars etc.). We need them first in order to import later on the objectives. Leave vehicles and units at the very last.
Here, you have to take a breath and study the xml structure of the falcon4ct.xml. Use BMS editor if you want or notepad++. You have to check where KTO CTs finish in order to continue adding new stuff. I mean you cannot just begin and import new POH stuff on top of KTO db.
This is a step that is kind of difficult to explain in plain english. Just take your time to understand what you have to do. I am assuming again that you are an experienced theater creator, otherwise it gets trickier.
This is exactly the type of information that I needed at this stage, Mystic! Guidelines to start.
Thank you so much, that will keep me in motion for the next months, hopefully.
And thanks to all of you guys for your help and support!
Cheers, Mate!
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@Bad:
You can translate your theater current bin DB files in xml files=> open BMS Editor, go to “File” then “Save DB to XML”.
The problem is that (at least at this stage) I cannot access my old DB files with the new BMS Editor. Everytime I open it, it shows “Iberia” as the selected theater but all the visualized DB structure is the stock KTO one.
Maybe I have to update first all the other folders, and then get back to it.
Thank you
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Hey all.
So, DB is one big thing here, and much probably what will give us the most workload regarding theater converting to 4.34.
But, just to be clear, and eventually take out of the big adventure; the tiles/textures, elevations, object positioning (TE work) and the “Stations+ILS” field-work…Any of these will need re-work to get compatible with BMS4.34?
Have seen already the new Stations+ILS that have all the new freq fields, and also know there are freq ranges reserved for the intraflight comms…
Can we just grab the old file and include all the new freqs?Thankyou.
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Hey all.
So, DB is one big thing here, and much probably what will give us the most workload regarding theater converting to 4.34.
But, just to be clear, and eventually take out of the big adventure; the tiles/textures, elevations, object positioning (TE work) and the “Stations+ILS” field-work…Any of these will need re-work to get compatible with BMS4.34?
Thankyou.
Station+Ils needs major overhaul with all new frequencies
Be careful it’s best to not have frequency sharing between agencies
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Big thank you for all 3rd party developers as well! I can imagine the new bms release will yield a lot of work and finding out new stuff. I would say: take your time. And note that your contributions are very much appreciated too. It will be an awesome gift to the community when due time comes.
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Just a heads up here.
Those XML’s Looks great in Excel and might be very helpful for future updates and keeping track what was done what’s new etc.
BUT
one thing I found for us europeans. The code always uses the dot . as comma for numbers.
So before open it or editing with excel you must change your locale to switch decimal with thousands symbol.
Else when you save it 0.0000 will become just 0example original value:
<fineupdaterange>304000.000</fineupdaterange>
resulting same line with european locale:
<fineupdaterange>304000</fineupdaterange>
I don’t know if it will affect the code, since it’s just zeroes???
On the other hand if it’s not affected you will loose the reference it’s a decimal number (integer) and you can use those decimal values for your theater.Now this happens only when decimals are just zeroes.
If the value is
0.7in excel u see it as
0,7when you export it to XML it is
0.7so everything is fine.
Now why freeking excel?
Well I’m good at it :lol:
you can add columns for your discretion to filter data and put your flags to help you for the future update and do the conversion in a snap.
One nice flag would be like your theater name, declaring that this entry is for your theater.
Another nice flag, altered/new. Altered will mean you changed a falcon entry. New will mean a totally new entry to the database.
Third a unique index for your theater things…Having those (just looked at those for 5 minutes guys) when a new database comes it’s just a function away to spot changes and where your data should go. With a little bit of magic (maybe VB macro) even merge things automatically.
Now for now this can be done in an extend like parents and lods but for the rest its an ouch!
For the future it will be easy to spot values changes and if some missing to point it out. Just conditional formatting in excel…Hmmm Klobe since you are in to it and you know the inner of this… I mean the profile and keyboard commands must be harder than this.
like import old , import new and display conflicts and suggest - select changes to apply. like old or new will go to the new XML?
Add a record and shift all record numbers +1… etc…oh I got tired…
Helllooooo Community… are you listening?
Anyone good with Excel and up for the task?