Panama Campaign Development 2

[toonces]

Hello all.

I have the following campaigns developed and in a BETA stage right now:

save1: edited Malc's original campaign to be compatible with the FF5.3 DB
save1: a Cooperative Cope Thunder-type campaign built on a somewhat "historically accurate" air OOB.
save1: a "Strategic Strike" type campaign built on a somewhat "historically accurate" Red Flag air OOB.

save2: edited Malc's original campaign to be compatible with the FF5.3 DB
save2: a Vietnam-era "Red Flag" type scenario with a US CVBG and some USAF jets against adversary A-4s, F-5s, and F-8s.

There is some sort of problem with save1 that causes a horrible lock up in FF5, and a CTD when attempting to view the units in Tacedit with the FF5.3 DB. I cannot use it right now.

I will likely need to release 2 versions of this theater. The first will feature the original Panama campaigns and one edited modern campaign. The second will feature the Vietnam era campaigns. Right now I have one extra modern campaign...

The reason is this: in my playtesting of the Vietnam campaign, the manpad threat is just way overmodelled. This is the way the FF5.3 DB is set up. Any jet that flies over a ground battalion under 5,000 feet is going to get hit by a stinger or SA-7/14. In fact, just loitering over a unit at about 10,000 can lead to a stinger/SA-x hit. This isn't historically accurate for Vietnam era and isn't what I'm trying to model. Hustler and I have some ideas to fix this- it will certainly result in some sort of DB edit. For this reason, the Vietnam and modern campaigns will need to be in separate installs.

WHAT I NEED HELP WITH:

I need help with the UI. While you can work around it in FF5.3, it looks like a soup sandwich right now. See the screenshots below. I'd like:

1. A new background image for my campaigns to separate them from Malc's campaigns
2. Fix the slider problems/map problems
3. Create new campaign selection boxes with different names (eg. Cooperative Cope Thunder, Tropic Thunder, etc) for my edited campaigns

I have read the wiki, but I cannot figure out how to do this. I can provide jpgs of what I want if someone can just tell me the format/size they need and then can write them into the theater.

More to come. Is anyone here running FF5 and can test these out?


First- missing a bunch of slider labels (important for an air war only campaign where I want you to manage the sliders); also, PAKs are all pink/same color; the two maps in the middle and on the left look like they're the Aegean or something:



Second- when selecting through the various campaigns, they paste over top of each other in the top right map. This makes it very hard to figure out where the red/blue areas are, which bases are selectable, etc.:

[toonces]

I have Panama successfully installed and running in FF5.5. Since this is the last DB for this Falcon version, development should be rapid from here on out.

I hope to have this wrapped up soon. The error in the UI screens above persist. I'm not going to hold up release to fix them though.

[toonces]

I cannot fix save0.cam.

I have tried opening it with both the various FF5 db's as well as the FF4 DB. Trying to pull either the unit view or map view causes Tacedit to CTD.

If anyone has an older DB installed, if you can open save0.cam, delete ALL units, then save it, then post it for download or email it to me, that would help me a lot.

If you're feeling frisky, a couple of versions, one with all ground removed (but not air), one with all air removed (but not ground), and one with all removed, would help too. That might help me isolate where the error is; if I don't have to rebuild the ground OOB that will save me a ton of time.

Thanks,
Toonces

[Snake Man]

I'm not sure if these help, they are the basic campaign files without objectives or units.

clean_campaign_files.rar.

[toonces]

Update on June 1, 2010.

I did manage to get Panama installed, but I'm running into random CTDs. I'm almost 100% certain this is DB related. I'm going through slowly, trying to isolate what is causing the problems. It isn't obvious, I can tell you that much

My intent for a "first" release of FF5.5 Panama will be for 3 campaigns:

1. Original Just Cause 2, updated.
2. Original Heavy Metal, updated.
3. New campaign, based on Heavy Metal, built with a 1966-era planeset.

I have all 3 done, and have randomly playtested all 3 with various degrees of success. I still can't say if they "work". Everytime I get a few hours/days into a campaign, I find something else I've forgotten, or something that isn't quite right. For example, I had a boredom trigger I forgot to remove that wrecked a bunch of playtesting I had done. I find errors in my attrition triggers. Etc.

The UI is still a complete mess. I haven't tried to get into that yet.

With respect to the new campaigns, number 3 is the one I'm really interested in seeing "work" right now. Until we get a true Vietnam theater, this is a nice substitute. I can't tell you guys how nice the terrain is done in Panama. It really is a true joy to fly over, and the terrain allows for a great deal of terrain masking and valley dogfighting. Unfortunately, I probably over-reached a bit on the campaign. I added a lot of unusual aircraft from the DB that, to my knowledge, have not seen any action in a Falcon theater yet. So, it is likely that my CTDs (campaign 3 is by far the worse), are related to DB problems. For example, I added the KA-3D as a tanker off the boat. The tanker flies, is tasked with refueling, etc, but I've never seen one in "friendly view" and I have a sneaking suspicion it is causing a CTD because everytime I try to fly to it, I get a CTD at some point.
I "think" the A-4M is causing a similar problem.

Both jets have been removed from the campaign for troubleshooting. I flew two missions after removing those jets, and was able to finish both, so I have some hope that I'm narrowing down on the bugs.

I've done a few other things, breaking out of my little comfort zone for campaign editing and theater development. I'm learning.

I'll continue to keep you all updated. Part of me sort of wants to just release what I have as a beta version, and part of me wants to hold on to the files until the whole package is complete. I know what has to be done, it's just the time required to do it is more than I have and I worry whether I'll ever finish tweaking.

[Bobo]

Thanks for posting the updates, toonces. I'm looking forward to flying the theater.

[DoctorX]

...I added the KA-3D as a tanker off the boat. The tanker flies, is tasked with refueling, etc, but I've never seen one in "friendly view" and I have a sneaking suspicion it is causing a CTD because everytime I try to fly to it, I get a CTD at some point...

From my experience, this is usually an issue with the radar settings for that unit in the DB.

...missing a bunch of slider labels...

The data for this is in art\campaign\intel\strategy.scf (the extension may be hidden). Try either deleting the one in the Panama folder or copy the new one from FF5.5 into Panama.

...Create new campaign selection boxes with different names (eg. Cooperative Cope Thunder, Tropic Thunder, etc) for my edited campaigns...

Do you still need help with this? If so I'll PM you my email. Just send me the jpegs and I will convert them for you.

[toonces]

Copying the strategy file from PMC Desert Storm into a "new" intel folder worked. Thanks!

I'll get back to you on the jpegs...I'm rapidly running out of time to work on this unfortunately.