ODS sitrep - heading to SP3!

PMC Youtube channel · Post by **Snake Man** » 2002-06-07 15:21:00

There has been some confusion about current state of Operation Desert Storm Theater lately. So here is quick situation report of the latest happenings.

The ODS v0.2 Internal BETA for SP2 testing is over and the forum "thread" is closed. This was the early DEM2L2 converted theater using my village util created and other manually added objectives. Central part of the terrain (old 64 segment theater terrain) was tiled manually through months of painfull tiling by lot of people including me, rest of it was untiled like Iran, Turkey, etc.

Then we got some improved utils to the falcon scene, most important would be dem2terrain. We used to create totally new ODS terrain with it and it also created basic set of objectives for us. This was highly advanced from the old setup using old utils, for example we have now less NoName places and such. Tiling was automatically done using CATE, at the moment my configuration files are not what I'd call perfect so there is still some small mistakes in the terrain, but overall results are very very good - and its for the WHOLE 128 x 128 segments terrain, not just central part.

And now the SP3 has came out and we are fine tuning the campaigns for it as we speak. The basic ODS campaign is now configured with realistic squadrons which uses some aircrafts that still has the * mark on the SP3 database meaning they will most likely CTD when encountered in flight. For more realistic data, just yesterday Red Dog helped me to create realistic airbases/airstrips to the theater which look really good right now. However, the * marked aircrafts does not mean there will not be campaign soon, I'm currently building fictional campaign which promises lot of action for the pilot. Also we can just disable the * marked aircrafts from the real ODS campaign to make it work. In the next ODS release being it beta/alpha/release or what ever, you'll find historical ODS campaign with less action (due * aircrafts) and fictional heavy action campaign timelined in near future.

So simply: New Terrain - New Objectives - New Campaign under work!

Right now the aim is to get the terrain as good as it can be with CATE auto tiling and as much activity as possible for the campaign. This means configuring CATE and sorting texture tiles, adding ground units and squadrons to the campaign.

Umm I think that covers the SitRep for ODS. If you guys want more information, just reply here and I'll try to explain with mode detail.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

prelude · Post by **prelude** » 2002-06-08 17:26:00

Snakeman... i have been havin comp problems as of late and now i have a new computer..hw can i get the latest version of the ODS? Since so much has been accomplished as of late should i just wait until the final release?

PMC Youtube channel · Post by **Snake Man** » 2002-06-08 19:17:00

Updated #2

The new installer will be available as soon as I'm satisfied with it. Meaning I do not want to put the theater out and only after day or two put out another version as some fixes were made. When the first installer is out, it need to be tested/playable at least WEEKS before another version arrives. We aren't going to put you guys to leech 60-70mb theaters every day.

Currently I'm drawing links/paths to the campaign objectives for ground units to move. This is painfully slow but whole Iraq and Iraq - Saudi border has been completed now. I don't think its necessary to make whole turkey in the early version as there will be no ground units.

I'm hoping that the theater is ready for download in few days, at least I've done good progress on the link drawing in past few days so give it couple of more and we have just enough links to make that fictional campaign rock. Oh... yeah well I stil have to add those ground forces into that campaign

PMC TFW
Snake Man

prelude · Post by **prelude** » 2002-06-09 02:17:00

ok sounds great... i can't wait to see the results of everyones work on this after workin on it for MONTHS...

Zaggy · Post by **Zaggy** » 2002-06-10 08:38:00

Desert and Villages.... http://www.spaceimaging.com/gallery/iow ... 050601.htm

Mecca, Saudi Arabia.... http://www.spaceimaging.com/gallery/iow ... 120901.htm

Kuwait City.... http://www.spaceimaging.com/gallery/iow ... iow705.htm

Shiraz, Iran.... http://www.spaceimaging.com/gallery/iow ... iow802.htm

And for the Afgahnistan Crew....

Kandahar.... http://www.spaceimaging.com/gallery/iow ... 012002.htm
and http://www.spaceimaging.com/newsroom/war_gallery.htm

Enjoy....

Zaggy

RobC_F4 · Post by **RobC_F4** » 2002-06-13 05:51:00

Hmmm, Zaggy - nice. SpaceImaging (using mostly Ikonos 1M res images) have a good library.

Snake Man, don't think we are going to be able to do much better than these (Zaggy's links) on SA's Kalahari/Namib "deserts". Not a "high priority" in our field of research. Thus not a highly "photographed" area but I was told last night that this has to be done as part of new Park's management plan. But we are expecting delivery of a Landsat ETM+ image of the "Greater Kalahari Transfrontier Park" (RealSoonNow

) so might be able to get some "other" desert Tex from that. One thing I have noticed is that our "dunes" are much "redder" than MEast. Not going to help too much. Also our deserts appear more "sandy" with less "rugged rock".I have retrieved a good (17Mbyte!) TIFF of Iran, but will have to upload to my server if you need it. Can't do during working hours, tonight if you want it. E-mail to let me know. Good to hear of your progress (Update 2) - think you are going to have to go with the textures you have (for a first cut anyway) then update the artwork in a month or so when we have all found more.

Regards - Rob

PMC Youtube channel · Post by **Snake Man** » 2002-06-13 08:14:00

Updated #3

The links for ground unit movement in the TE/Campaign objectives have been now completed. Campaign is being built by adding squadrons and ground units, it looks good so far.

quote:I have retrieved a good (17Mbyte!) TIFF of Iran, if you want it. E-mail to let me know.

Yeah I want it

quote:go with the textures you have (for a first cut anyway) then update the artwork in a month or so.

Something like that. Dunno if we can manage to squeeze in any more new tiles at this time. Of course if some graphics guru out there wants to improve Desert tiling, I'm all welcome for new tiles!

Adding new tileset and configuring CATE takes total of 30 minutes or so.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

PMC Youtube channel · Post by **Snake Man** » 2002-06-13 14:37:00

Just some teaser of the upcoming campaign, Iraq activity...

[pic removed]

PMC TFW
Snake Man

codec · Post by **codec** » 2002-06-13 14:50:00

ODS - the senario.

In an unexpected move, not predicted by any western observers, Iraq moved swiftly to deal a killer blow that hit the west where it really hurt.

In the dead of night, the Iraqi state managed to get control of the entire world chocolate market. Whilst not initially seeming a killer blow, in just a few days, the full horror of the move began to appear.

It started slowly with a few grumblings in supermarkets as the shelves emptied of chocolate based products. This swiftly became a full scale riot as the women of the western world were denied their chocolate intake.

Numerous governments topple under the pressure, embargo were discussed, but the chocolate eating public would not wait. They demanded action, and action right now...

T_Rex · Post by **T_Rex** » 2002-06-13 15:26:00

LOL

Codec - my wife would be one of those SCREAMING to go to war to fix the problem. Heck, at the right...err wrong time of the month she'd probably take out Saddam himself!

Widowmaker · Post by **Widowmaker** » 2002-06-13 17:46:00

quote:Originally posted by T_Rex:
LOL

Codec - my wife would be one of those SCREAMING to go to war to fix the problem. Heck, at the right...err wrong time of the month she'd probably take out Saddam himself!

tell us more about your wife..

Widmak

PMC Youtube channel · Post by **Snake Man** » 2002-06-14 14:48:00

Update #4

I have received realistic airbase list from Red Dog which also includes the runway orientations, these are now imported into the ODS objectives.

This campaign objective list is missing bridges. Objectplacer was run on the latest CATE tiled ODS terrain and results were approx 5800 bridges to be added. Thats a lot of bridges. I decided not to include them in this release at this time since the terrain itself most likely will change and so will some of the bridges.

Squadrons and ground units are added into the fictional new campaign, there are heavy air defenses in place and other ground forces. Unfortunately in my recent tests these buggers just don't move, I have no idea why is that. Hopefully this get resolved soon.

The campaign has good activity already and I'm not even half way through adding units in it. Now I just need to keep tabs if the sucker starts to lag.

Still no sign of any release dates or anything like that, even an internal beta dates. No idea of any releases, sorry guys.

Hope this small lame update area keeps you happy while waiting

PMC TFW
Snake Man

T_Rex · Post by **T_Rex** » 2002-06-14 16:07:00

[quote]quote:Originally posted by Widowmaker:

tell us more about your wife..

She doesn't like Saddam.

She likes me...most of the time.

T_Rex · Post by **T_Rex** » 2002-06-14 16:08:00

quote:Originally posted by Snake Man:
Hope this small lame update area keeps you happy while waiting

PMC TFW
Snake Man

Actually, I think its very cool. Do you mind if that gets posted elsewhere?

PMC Youtube channel · Post by **Snake Man** » 2002-06-15 09:35:00

Update #5

The good, the bad, the ugly and not working. Sigh.

I was just finalizing the ground forces adding and did my usual campaign 3d test action view run mission and 2d run with 64x and unfortunately... the 2d will crash eventually. This just pisses me off, just when you are going to mop things up... CTD.

Now back to hunt that CTD then. Lets keep our fingers crossed, good thoughts to "ODS fictional campaign" everyone, please

PMC TFW
Snake Man

Golabp · Post by **Golabp** » 2002-06-16 18:37:00

Can I have that 17 mb tiff of Iran????

ramstein · Post by **ramstein** » 2002-06-16 21:55:00

Iran is less than a year off from having a functioning Nuke reactor, has anyone thought of including a reactor to make a bomb run on, in ODS, or crusie missle or something??

PMC Youtube channel · Post by **Snake Man** » 2002-06-17 01:35:00

Update #6

Oh you're going to love this...

I deleted the texture.bin/.zip and I deleted the campaign units list. Yeah both well thought, not by mistake.

I started to create totally new texture.bin and used only the good and usable tiles in the texture.zip for ODS. Now previously our texture.zip was 31mb with lot of tiles that were not used and could not be never used in their current form, but this new cleaned out texture.zip is only 5mb. Thats 26mb less download size for you guys! (of course it still gets larger as we add few additional tiles, for example airbase tiles). The texture.bin was about 2300 tiles and now it shrink to 275 tiles.

As for the campaign units, they are deleted because objectives (ground targets) and units (infantry, tanks, aaa, sams) both uses ID's in falcon which can conflict. Now we added bridges (5884 total) and they would have had conflicting ID's with the ground units so they units must go. Currently we stand at about 12000 objectives in the campaign. This bridge adding means that I must draw most of the links again, its a mess so I'll just simply nuke all the links and do all of them at once. Few nights of work, but at least we do things "right" this time.

What does this mean? Well basically we are dropped almost to the point of this areas first post, but considering the recent experience I have, we are somewhere around Update #2 but without the "out in few days" part. Heh, hey don't be mad its going to be much better this time, trust me

Off to work on the desert...

PMC TFW
Snake Man

ccc · Post by **ccc** » 2002-06-17 03:16:00

Great.. that's realy great :p

i'll keep my fingers crossed.

RobC_F4 · Post by **RobC_F4** » 2002-06-19 08:58:00

Shit happens, it's how you handle it that counts, not asking someone else to clean up the mess ...

Good luck, don't go geting lost in S/Arabia or something

- Rob

PMC Youtube channel · Post by **Snake Man** » 2002-06-19 19:00:00

Update #7

The new texture.bin and terrain file is in. At the moment it only has the most important tiles for the desert. Pretty much one tile for a terrain type... yeah it will be somewhat dull, but thats the texture.bin at the moment. No airbase tiles are included due the reason we are missing more than we have, so they will be added later. Airbases are however realistically oriented and backgrounds are leveled so flights can takeoff & land just fine.

Campaign is still under work, I did some digging on ground unit movement today and find out some small bits. Seems that the bridges are aligned wrong as the L2 is now slightly different than earlier.

New installer sent to Widowmaker to test.

Hopefully everything turns out good. If no problems arrive in the terrain and tiles, I'm back to the campaign creation.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

Zaggy · Post by **Zaggy** » 2002-06-19 19:47:00

Hey SM!!! Finally getting stuck into that texture.bin idea U, me and Widmak spoke about i think it was last year!!! Top stuff..

RobC_F4 · Post by **RobC_F4** » 2002-06-20 06:00:00

Maybe good "Software Engineering: Keep the "Terrain & Texture" simple (don't use the word dull

!) with an incremental approach to adding / improving texture tiles and adding TE's, Campaigns on the way. That way at least one can "Re-Con" fly the (huge) area and make sure it fits with DCW data - "Real World" (roads so on). Maybe this approach will yield "more texture tiles submitted"?
Rob

PMC Youtube channel · Post by **Snake Man** » 2002-06-22 10:55:00

Update #8

My windows 98 se jumped out of the window. It finally broke down after 10 months of daily (heavy) usage. After reboot, it hung every time after about 5 seconds. Okay time for Windows 2000 Professional (sigh)

Ok everything is now installed and I'm back to the campaign creation. But here too the bad news continue as the same campaign CTD appears in this new and latest build also. My knowledge of the campaign ends here, no clue whatsoever of why it crashes. All objectives and units are added to my normal standard which have always worked fine so far. Right now my goal is to fix up the campaign without CTD - no matter if it means that there are 4 ground units.

Terrain looks slick, Widowmaker has been great help to find out any problems in the tiles and so far we have limited all of the palette errors. The terrain looks plain, clear and simply nice. Did I get bored to the old gazillion tiles randomized look or not, dunno. You guys will be the judge when you get the next release.

At least so far Instant Action, Dogfight and TE works nicely. The real historical ODS campaign for this release is still under question mark but if it makes in it will be mostly quiet in the skies as there are so much * marked aircrafts which we must remove first.

Back to campaign bug hunt...

PMC TFW
Snake Man

ccc · Post by **ccc** » 2002-06-22 13:13:00

oh..seems i got to keep fingers crossed for few more days..or weeks?

Or the quantities of items disrupt campaign-making?? could using less items help?

PMC Youtube channel · Post by **Snake Man** » 2002-06-22 13:28:00

Here is image of the historical ODS campaign with the * marked aircrafts removed (deactivated actually).

Pretty decent activity considering there is no enemy aircrafts, no ground units.

quote:seems i got to keep fingers crossed for few more days..or weeks?

No. Absolutely not for weeks. I refuse to drag along this one for so long. Terrain is ready. IA/TE/Dogfight is ready. UI graphics are ready. Realistic airbases are ready. Campaign is ... well you know.

I'll work my fingers bleeding here to get it released!

PMC TFW
Snake Man

ccc · Post by **ccc** » 2002-06-22 14:23:00

quote:I'll work my fingers bleeding here to get it released!

hey, dont hurt youself that bad, take it ease!

we can make several TEs based on historic gulf war missions for this release, falconeers should be happy with such an incredible free mod... consider it's mostly an ONE-MAN JOB !!

**Historic missions like:
A10/F16/F111 do tank-busting.
F117 over Bahgdad
B52 bomb repubic guard
F15C hunt irai a/c, stop a/c escape to Iran
F15E/A10 hunting Scud
F15E/F18/A6E/tornado ids strike airbases/fixed facilities.
AV8 strike targets around Kuwait

Also TE designers could use it for Isarel-related combat missions, like Osirak strike etc.

RobC_F4 · Post by **RobC_F4** » 2002-06-22 15:47:00

Geez SnakeMan, have to agree with CCC here - looks like you have an incredible amount in ODS already (new image map) - I for one will be happy with whatever I get. Even the new. errrrrmmmmm, well tested SP3 still gives CTD's on good 'ol Korea (or worse, Dr. Watsons of the SP3.EXE).

Sorry about your Win'98 woes, hope you find 2000 better - I have been running on "NT" only type O/S's for the last two years or longer, 2K is pretty stable, only my Cougar that succeeds in BSOD'ing it from time to time.

Looking forward to when I can roam the desert... (and set up some "interesting things around Israel")

Regards - Rob

PMC Youtube channel · Post by **Snake Man** » 2002-06-22 17:24:00

This just in from the INTEL

http://www.pmctactical.org/f4/screensho ... enders.jpg

PMC TFW
Snake Man

RobC_F4 · Post by **RobC_F4** » 2002-06-22 20:34:00

Hey, that looked so real I found myself using my mouse on the <Back button to do it again

BTW: Typo in the "News Reports": "14:40 The Iraq surrenders ... " should be "The Iraqis surrendered " (IMHO)

(That's according to M$Words built in dictionary)
Rob volunteers to proofread ...

ccc · Post by **ccc** » 2002-06-23 05:01:00

Excellent... just to remind you, that menu backgroud art should be replaced/tune down its brightness for better reading.

great news, thanx.

Widowmaker · Post by **Widowmaker** » 2002-06-23 05:58:00

its not so much the background
I should give the fonts other colors

Widmak

ccc · Post by **ccc** » 2002-06-23 06:03:00

na, i'd rather have another background, leave those fonts in bright colors.

Ender Wiggin · Post by **Ender Wiggin** » 2002-06-23 15:01:00

looks good, cant wait till we have a beta test.

Widowmaker · Post by **Widowmaker** » 2002-06-23 17:02:00

quote:Originally posted by ccc:
na, i'd rather have another background, leave those fonts in bright colors.

so font color change it is..

/widmak

PMC Youtube channel · Post by **Snake Man** » 2002-06-23 17:40:00

Update #9

The historical ODS campaign has now Iraqi squadrons added, the list is here
Rasheed: TU-16, Mirage F1*.
Kirkuk: TU-22, Mig-21MF/PFM.
Saddam INTL: Mig-29A, Mig-21MF/PFM, Mig-25, An-24.
H-3: Mig-23ML, Mig-21MF/PFM.
Basrah INTL: Mig-23ML, Mig-25.
Tallil: Mirage F1*. Mig-21MF/PFM, Mig-19SF.
H-2: Mirage F1*, SU-25.
Qalat Salih: Mirage F1*, SU-24M.
Mosul: Mirage F1*, An-2, An-12, IL-76M, A-50 (two ship).
Safwan: SU-17, 2 x SU-7BMK.
As Salman army base: Mi-8, Mi-24, Gazelle*.
Al Basrah army base: Mi-8, Mi-24, Gazelle*.
Ar Rutbah army base; Mi-8, Mi-24, Gazelle*.

The Coalition squadrons are done by Red Dog and there too are those * marked aircrafts that have been disabled until the models are fixed.

Campaigns are now locked. No more adding stuff. We only try to eliminate possible CTD's they might have, nothing more.

Widowmaker made some nice updates for the UI. All in all the package starts to look good.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

ccc · Post by **ccc** » 2002-06-23 17:58:00

quote:Originally posted by Widowmaker:

so font color change it is..
/widmak

could you post a preivew shot?
Frankly, since we're still in beta, can we have more UI simples for selection?

no offense, but current one looks pretty wierd...at my first glance.

Ender Wiggin · Post by **Ender Wiggin** » 2002-06-23 23:49:00

wait, did a new beta come out already?

RobC_F4 · Post by **RobC_F4** » 2002-06-24 09:49:00

BETA ReAl SoOn NoW
SnakeMan pushing long hours ...
Watch this space ....