Player Controlled Ground Units
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It just popped into my head while playing today that it would be really helpful if player controlled (not “Set by HQ”) ground troops could be designated another color. I don’t want to control too much of the ground war but the AI HQ doesn’t seem to want to take campaign objectives aggressively. So, if the few units I do control were a different color on the briefing screen it would be a snap to check in on them between missions.
I am looking at Mission Commander and not seeing a way to do this. I guess maybe create another team and make those an ally of the player’s alliance?
Or is there some other editor out there that I can do this with?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts on this topic!
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That would be nice. My idea was to have these units ‘pulse’ sort of like the comms button does in MP. That or have a ‘return to HQ at destination’ setting.
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@-Vandal-:
It just popped into my head while playing today that it would be really helpful if player controlled (not “Set by HQ”) ground troops could be designated another color. I don’t want to control too much of the ground war but the AI HQ doesn’t seem to want to take campaign objectives aggressively. So, if the few units I do control were a different color on the briefing screen it would be a snap to check in on them between missions.
I am looking at Mission Commander and not seeing a way to do this. I guess maybe create another team and make those an ally of the player’s alliance?
Or is there some other editor out there that I can do this with?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts on this topic!
Can’t check right now, can you change the unit’s side, making them an ally, as you said?
Everything you need to know and links in my Youtube channel, "About" section.
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Can’t check right now, can you change the unit’s side, making them an ally, as you said?
Well yeah but now the ground unit I changed isn’t showing up in the 2D map. This is the Balkans Campaign, so I don’t know if that makes a difference. Even if I could see it, it might still be a problem to have an ally capture an objective rather than your own flag. So that’s not optimal I don’t think. I think editing the unit icon or flag might do the trick but those may be simply assigned to a faction. So you could change a colors faction (and-or the icon) but not a unit within a faction. Unless maybe you gave it a special unit name and icon? I don’t know, a lot of guesswork here. I am hoping someone that has tinkered with this a bit more can point me in the right direction.
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@-Vandal-:
Well yeah but now the ground unit I changed isn’t showing up in the 2D map. This is the Balkans Campaign, so I don’t know if that makes a difference. Even if I could see it, it might still be a problem to have an ally capture an objective rather than your own flag. So that’s not optimal I don’t think. I think editing the unit icon or flag might do the trick but those may be simply assigned to a faction. So you could change a colors faction (and-or the icon) but not a unit within a faction. Unless maybe you gave it a special unit name and icon? I don’t know, a lot of guesswork here. I am hoping someone that has tinkered with this a bit more can point me in the right direction.
You could clone the unit in the database and give it a unique name, I can’t remember if the icon is identified in the database or not, but it is worth a look. If it is, then you could create a User Controlled version of the ones you want, add them to the campaign, and have the color or icon be different. It is a very similar process to adding an aircraft type to the database (Same model, just different stats). I don’t have the database in front of me so I can’t elaborate on this until I get a chance to look at it. Maybe someone else with some experience in the DB can have a quick look and see if the icon is identified there. Also would need to see if there is a specific color variant of each icon used on the 2D map, or if they are colored using filters and layers based on team? Either one could be done pretty easily from a programming perspective, but I’ve never gone looking for the icons before so I’m not sure how they are done. It is a somewhat involved process to clone a unit like that. Not terribly hard, just a little tedious.
Odds are it will have to be a bit of a mix and match between MC and the Falcon Editor. I may have even had to use F4Browse a little when I created an EC-130 Squadron.
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If someone could just list all the steps that would be great as I haven’t used LODeditor before. (I assume that’s what you are talking about?) But I have looked at a couple of YT videos and I can see it is pretty complex to figure out, but if you have the steps laid out, it should be easy to follow those. And then at the beginning of each campaign folks could clone in a brigade or a handful of battalions with the player colored (or just graphically add a triangle or other shape in a corner and use the same color). I am sure it would be well worth the effort and sort of give a player an allotment of ground troops at his disposal. But I think changing the unit icons instead of cloning the units may be better in terms of playing the campaign fair? I wouldn’t want to say I beat Iron Fortress and forget to mention I was using 4 additional brigades!
Update. With Mission Commander you can change the battalion numbers. It’s not ideal, but if you change a unit to 99 or a number to your liking when you hover the mouse over the unit, you can see that number and know the unit is one of the player controlled units. It saves a little bit of time but you still have to hunt your player controlled units down.
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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
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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… 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.
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!
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@-Vandal-:
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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@-Vandal-:
@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
