Theater developmental notes - How to Auto Place Objectives TUT

[demer928]

For those who followed me here, this is not going to be a TUT on the old way of doing it. No offense to Baldeagle, but it would take me a Falcon Week to explain how we generate the needed .dat’s for his tools to work in BMS. For instance: We would need to use Pathmaker to generate the Theater Specific TileInfo.lst used by Object Placer…Sigh!
Sooo…to KISS… in this TUT, I’m going to use the new tools for this task!!! I would like us to all move forward and use them in our work. Much more intuitive and easier to use then those from the past decade.
So lets go place some Bridges……

Step 1 We are going to open our new theater in Monsters TE tool. We are then going to open the Theater Preview Window and drill down to a Segment that may contain a Bridge tile…DUNNO…LOL?:

Ahhh…there’s that little puppy….
Step2 We have now identified a tile that needs a Bridge. We need to open the Objective Lab window and load our Te_New so that we can append to it.
We now just need to Mouse over the tile to get it’s Offset# for the next step

Step 3 We now know that this Tile’s Offset# is 2032, lets go find it……Open Search Tiles in the Tool Tab and input the Offset#…

And now,WALAAA we have every occurrence of that tile within our Theater.

Step 4 Now we check the select all box and the Add Objective Type. Next we will drill down to the Sub Type.

Then click the Add Checked Position’s Button and……‘Thar be ya’ britches Matey’…for that Tile… Rinse,Lather,Repeat

Har dee HarHar……Save and Close

Yep Gents you guessed it, I used BMS Editor to align the Features,on the Objective, on the Tile…much easier to do now as we don’t have to convert our .DDS images back to .PCX images that LOD Editor needs

Step 1, we first need to take a look see in TE at the Objective on the Tile:

Hmmm…… not so good alignment there. Time to whip out BMS Editor and take a look at this puppy via its CT record:

Well that doesn’t help a lot, there it is in the middle of the sea…LOL!!! What needs to be done is to get it on the Tile in theater that its on. We do this in…
Step 2, At the bottom of BMS Editor it gives you the option to change the Objective X,Y on the map NOTE THAT THE X,Y in TE and BMS Editor are reversed!!! Punch in the MAP Coords of the Tile and Walaa!!!

Thar she be on her Tile…matey…
Step 3, Now we can Select all features and use the Objective (Not the View) Move\Rotate\Center dialog at the top to align our Features, on the Objective to our Tile

Kewl Aid……Beats the Hell out of the way we used to have to do it…;)

tired demer

(Deej, please sticky this so I can get back to it quick like…there is more I need to add)

[lazystone]

Outstanding thousandth post, mate.

Cheers,
LS

[Joe Labrada]

Oh… My my!!!

it’s too simple!!!

:drink:

I want test this protocol!!! Please…

[Joe Labrada]

Spectacular!

I would like to understand the whole process of inclusion of bridges:

1-To place entries in te_new.tac have used the procedure specific to the tutorial.

2-To rotate the bridges, I guess you used FalconBMS editor to rotate them and place them right at the junction is not it?

Really inspiring.

I see you around some bridges have included trees. I love it.

A questions:
-I see that there te_new.tac: 3398 bridges and instant.cam: 3377 bridges. Is it for some reason?

-Then simply I have to import te_new.tac objects to save0.cam save1.cam and save2.cam? Is that correct?

-Should I flatten terrain areas with bridges too lean?

A lot of thanks!!!

[Arty]

Probably he didn’t updated the instant.
export from te_new.tac then import to instant.cam or the save0.cam save1.cam and save2.cam files

bridge area should be flat else they will sink or fly from one side.

[Joe Labrada]

@Arty:

Probably he didn’t updated the instant.
export from te_new.tac then import to instant.cam or the save0.cam save1.cam and save2.cam files

bridge area should be flat else they will sink or fly from one side.

Ok. I’ll do that.

[Chuckles]

Great information Dave. Thank you for bring more of Falcon’s ‘tribal knowlege’ into the public forums. Its discussions like these that help grow our community of developers. Great work Joe. Judging from teh quality of your screeshots, I am really excited to try out your next public release of the POH theatre.

[Arty]

Well the info exists in the manual: http://docs.sakgiok.gr/manuals:terraineditor:reference:temain:search_results_window
TE is a wonderful tool and has many undiscovered or not too much known aspects and tricks…

[Joe Labrada]

@Arty:

Well the info exists in the manual: http://docs.sakgiok.gr/manuals:terraineditor:reference:temain:search_results_window
TE is a wonderful tool and has many undiscovered or not too much known aspects and tricks…

Indeed

[Joe Labrada]

Har dee HarHar……Save and Close

Yep Gents you guessed it, I used BMS Editor to align the Features,on the Objective, on the Tile…much easier to do now as we don’t have to convert our .DDS images back to .PCX images that LOD Editor needs

Step 1, we first need to take a look see in TE at the Objective on the Tile:

Hmmm… not so good alignment there. Time to whip out BMS Editor and take a look at this puppy via its CT record:

Well that doesn’t help a lot, there it is in the middle of the sea…LOL!!! What needs to be done is to get it on the Tile in theater that its on. We do this in…
Step 2, At the bottom of BMS Editor it gives you the option to change the Objective X,Y on the map NOTE THAT THE X,Y in TE and BMS Editor are reversed!!! Punch in the MAP Coords of the Tile and Walaa!!!

Thar she be on her Tile…matey…
Step 3, Now we can Select all features and use the Objective (Not the View) Move\Rotate\Center dialog at the top to align our Features, on the Objective to our Tile

Kewl Aid…Beats the Hell out of the way we used to have to do it…

tired demer

(Deej, please sticky this so I can get back to it quick like…there is more I need to add)

Thank you very much, Demer.

[lazystone]

@Joe:

Thank you very much, Demer.

+1

Cheers,
LS

[Arty]

well don’t know if it will go sticky but it’s in my Hot List…

[Joe Labrada]

@Arty:

well don’t know if it will go sticky but it’s in my Hot List…

Yes, very very important information to Theater Developpers….

[tsanis]

great information!!! can place and new cities or villages too??? with the same way???
And how can we save it separately to find the’ve done.
thanks!!!

[A.S]

Nice share Demer.

[demer928]

@tsanis:

great information!!! can place and new cities or villages too??? with the same way???
And how can we save it separately to find the’ve done.
thanks!!!

No need to save Separate anymore, just copy and paste the BMS Objects\Misctex folders into YOUR theater terrdata folder, that will be the one both tools use now.

(Thanks BMS guys, now about the SimData???..…LOL!!!)

Demer

[Eghi]

Nice … Now, you can open and edit in TacEd?

[demer928]

@Eghi:

Nice … Now, you can open and edit in TacEd?

Yes,summ……after Save in Objective Lab! That little button next to Load…;)

Demer

[Eghi]

I asked because sometime I added an objective in TE and I could not see it in TacEd… (to rebuild the PAK-add links, parent links).
Thanks.

Eghi

[Arty]

@Eghi:

I asked because sometime I added an objective in TE and I could not see it in TacEd… (to rebuild the PAK-add links, parent links).
Thanks.

Eghi

Well me too couldn’t save via TE… all work was done via TacEdit. And some times iirc some saves went totally wrong and thankfully I had a backup.