Permission from Snake Man to release ODS to AF Community

[Sherlock]

Just for anyone who is interested in these sort of things. Snake Man gave his permission to our group, The Mod Alliance, to release ODS to the AF community as a add-on theater. The Mod Alliance is a small group of AF flyers who are working on importing the SP theaters into AF to increase theater options in AF.
Here's the post at Frugals from Snake Man:

http://forums.frugalsworld.com/vbb/show ... tcount=319

[Snake Man]

As I said there, I'd be happy if someone does the work of fixing it for AF.

I'm still baffled as hell about all the F4 versions and dont have the long lost clear picture of what to edit etc. So I'm no way certain that its the best course of action to port anything into AF or to remain at SP4/5 series.

However now that we're talking here, give me all the details about your groups Operation Desert Storm activities, what have you done, how exactly it was done (which utils etc) and what is left to do?

[Sherlock]

As I said there, I'd be happy if someone does the work of fixing it for AF.

I'm still baffled as hell about all the F4 versions and dont have the long lost clear picture of what to edit etc. So I'm no way certain that its the best course of action to port anything into AF or to remain at SP4/5 series.

However now that we're talking here, give me all the details about your groups Operation Desert Storm activities, what have you done, how exactly it was done (which utils etc) and what is left to do?

There are really only two primary contenders for the Falcon "crown" now IMHO ( ). They are FreeFalcon and Allied Force. And FreeFalcon is based on requiring the original Falcon 4.0 cd to install (of which no more are made any longer). Others like Open Falcon/SP3/SP4/SP4.2 are no longer supported and are "has beens" (again, IMHO). So the only two installs that people should be spending their time on (again IMHO)...are FF and AF. The others are a dead end. And, unless FF can work something out with Atari/Graphsim/LP they are catering to a vary limited audience since copies of F4.0 are becoming more and more scare with every passing year. So again, IMHO, Snake Man I wouldn't spend your valuable time on anything other than SP4.2 (because of it being the roots for AF) , Allied Force and Freefalcon 3.1.

G2Interactive never delivered anything on Viper Ops after the exe leak and has, apparently, ceased any operations (although their website is still there; there hasn't been any updates for a long, long time). And there has been Nothing coming out on any of the forums about any revival of VO. So IMHO VO is a dead end as well and would be a waste of your time (and it was never released to the community at large). Open Falcon is in pretty much the same situation. Leaked to the public; it was a beta version; the team has disbanded and the leaked version is not supported period.

As to the details on our theater modding group here ya go:

name: Mod Alliance
What have we done: We are taking the older SP3 based theater ODS and making it compatible to install for Allied Force. Where needed we are updating the campaigns to make them more playable. We are not adding very much more content due to the small size of our team (only have about 5 active members). We are also working on Death_119's Israel theater at this same time.

We are using all of the older SP tools (TacEDit 2.46, TerrainView 1.55, F4Browse2.30, etc). since none (except for LxNormalFix) have been updated for use with AF. Our campaign editing has to start, in fact, with SP4.2 versions of many files because the AF cam, trn, tac and .hdr/.vcd files cannot be edited using the older versions of the SP tools (they either come in with garbled text or the tool won't open them all). One of my dreams is to construct a new generation of tools to work with Allied Force but I am not a programmer and programmers of Codec's caliber are extremely hard to find (as you are likely aware!).

As to what is left to do I am not sure since our primary guy (Khronik) had done most of the work and due to RL he's kinda dropped out of touch here lately (in the last 10 days). I hope he reappears soon and then I can, hopefully, give you an update.

Sherlock

[Snake Man]

There are really only two primary contenders for the Falcon "crown" now IMHO ( ). They are FreeFalcon and Allied Force.

Wow that was a clear cut answer, why not post is as clearly to the Falcon Versions versus Editing - the mess sorted out topic also?

In fact... I'm moved MY reply to you into that topic, lets keep this ODS topic purely now on about the file changes made for ODS.

name: Mod Alliance
What have we done: We are taking the older SP3 based theater ODS and making it compatible to install for Allied Force.

Oh, I didn't know what, I always assumed you guys are working with ODS v0.512 which is the latest one.

Why did you choose the older ODS SP3 release?

Where needed we are updating the campaigns to make them more playable.

Can you be more specific, were there CTD's or something on the old ones or were they introduced when imported to F4AF?

We are not adding very much more content due to the small size of our team (only have about 5 active members).

I think PMC had less on v0.512 and definitely less than five with the SP3 version

Our campaign editing has to start, in fact, with SP4.2 versions of many files because the AF cam, trn, tac and .hdr/.vcd files cannot be edited using the older versions of the SP tools

Okay but I guess thats no big deal right? Do we even know what improvements there are on F4AF cam, tac and object files?

One of my dreams is to construct a new generation of tools to work with Allied Force

We share the same dream... my dream even includes like opensource C/C++ code for the utils, but done in a professional manner that there wont be seventeen different editions of "terrain editor" etc.

As to what is left to do I am not sure
I hope he reappears soon and then I can, hopefully, give you an update.

I cant wait. Keep me posted.

[Sherlock]

Wow that was a clear cut answer, why not post is as clearly to the Falcon Versions versus Editing - the mess sorted out topic also?

In fact... I'm moved MY reply to you into that topic, lets keep this ODS topic purely now on about the file changes made for ODS.

You got it. I've continued to reply in that topic. T_Rex also stopped by this morning and left a reply.

Oh, I didn't know what, I always assumed you guys are working with ODS v0.512 which is the latest one.

Why did you choose the older ODS SP3 release?

My mistake. Since I wasn't around at the time I'm kinda fuzzy on when SP3 stopped and SP4 theater building began. We did use ODS .512 beta as our starting point so nevermind my original comment.

Can you be more specific, were there CTD's or something on the old ones or were they introduced when imported to F4AF?

To get the new campaigns to work in AF requires swapping out resource files (creating new theater labels, etc., to fit the new AF UI color scheme), fixing UI problems/swapping UI files and fixing the Lx files for shadows. There are probably other things that Khronik has done that I am not aware of but these are the big things. Plus the theaters have to be repackaged in new installers (because the path information for AF is, of course, different) and since we don't want to tread on LPs IP turf our installers will copy the necessary files needed from AF to the new theater path (thus ensuring an installation of AF already exists on the drive before the theater will run).

I think PMC had less on v0.512 and definitely less than five with the SP3 version

Well, how can I put this gracefully....how many of those team members on the v0.512 beta for ODS actually did anything?

Okay but I guess thats no big deal right? Do we even know what improvements there are on F4AF cam, tac and object files?

Not at this time since I don't know how to decode a .cam file. BUT, I expect that they are not great since TACEDIT will start to open the .cam files but since the version numbers are 83/84 for AF and TacEdit v2.46 is hardcoded to only work on versions 73 (or less) it won't continue from that point. Something I haven't tried yet (since I don't know how) is to hexedit the version number in a .cam file to 84 and try to open it then. May have interesting results...

We share the same dream... my dream even includes like opensource C/C++ code for the utils, but done in a professional manner that there wont be seventeen different editions of "terrain editor" etc.

I'm with ya like stink on $hit! Heck, I've even begun thinking I need to learn how to code just so I can start trying....

I cant wait. Keep me posted.

Khronik stopped by Frugals last night and said he was working on the installers and it wouldn't be long now.

[Couby]

The Virtual European Air Force 235th Wing is flying exclusively with OpenFalcon (not so "has been" ).
We have a litle internal mod team and as you may already know we made ODS working with OF.
I sent an archive link to i8088 about it. I hope we can cooperate and share our work for an ODS always better, no matter on what version it can be . It is for the pleasure of all Falcon geek .

[Sherlock]

The Virtual European Air Force 235th Wing is flying exclusively with OpenFalcon (not so "has been" ).
We have a litle internal mod team and as you may already know we made ODS working with OF.
I sent an archive link to i8088 about it. I hope we can cooperate and share our work for an ODS always better, no matter on what version it can be . It is for the pleasure of all Falcon geek .

I appreciate your point of view Couby, but my term "has been" was used relative to the fact that all of the other versions of Falcon (4.0, SP3, SP4, SP4.2, OF, FF and BMS) all depend on having either the original Falcon 4.0 CD or an install of Falcon 4.0 on your hard drive before they will install. And since there are no more Falcon 4.0 CDs being made (again, ever) this is a dimenishing target audience, not a growing audience.

Additionally, only FF is still be supported and developed (besides AF). The others are non-supported and will not be patched or upgraded, ever. Adding existing or new theaters falls into the category of "add-ons" which my post wasn't really addressing.

Sherlock

[Couby]

You're right Sherlock .

Yet activities and modding are still alive on SP/OF , and that's what matters most for what is interesting us, getting theaters more and more accurate, complete... alive .

[Indiana007]

"Not at this time since I don't know how to decode a .cam file. BUT, I expect that they are not great since TACEDIT will start to open the .cam files but since the version numbers are 83/84 for AF and TacEdit v2.46 is hardcoded to only work on versions 73 (or less) it won't continue from that point. Something I haven't tried yet (since I don't know how) is to hexedit the version number in a .cam file to 84 and try to open it then."

Is this info you got from me when I tried opening a .cam with textpad? Has anybody come up with a work around for this yet?

[Sherlock]

"Not at this time since I don't know how to decode a .cam file. BUT, I expect that they are not great since TACEDIT will start to open the .cam files but since the version numbers are 83/84 for AF and TacEdit v2.46 is hardcoded to only work on versions 73 (or less) it won't continue from that point. Something I haven't tried yet (since I don't know how) is to hexedit the version number in a .cam file to 84 and try to open it then."

Is this info you got from me when I tried opening a .cam with textpad? Has anybody come up with a work around for this yet?

No.
To update, I did try hexediting the version number and TacEdit still errored out even though it was a different series of errors. I also tried bringing a SP4.2 CAM file into AF with the version number hexedited to 84 and it caused a CTD. So there are significant differences in the file format. Still studying it.