CFS3 Questions

[grover1]

Hi everyone,

It's been a very long time since I've posted here. Had a lot going on in real life as well as in CFS3. I went back to school to finish my undergrad and had to put CFS3's Battle of Britain on hold for a while. However, I'm done for Christmas break and have a lot of time to work on it until my girlfriend gets here on the 27th.

I've been visiting around the forums and have kept up to date on the developments and improvements with CFS3. It's truly amazing what has been done! I've got a few questions as I've been playing around a bit with AnKor's D3D8.dll file and Steven's FW-190 files.

1) Would it be possible to integrate the cockpit damage model from the FW-190's into other aircraft - specifically Hurricanes, Spitfires, 109's, Stuka's, and other Battle of Britain aircraft?
I do see a way for it to be possible, but I'd like to know how it can be done and if it can be done? I'd love to integrate the blood splatter effects and cockpit glass bullet holes into these aircraft.
I do know I'll need the source files for this to work.

2) I saw a while back that someone was working on night lighting for towns, cities, and villages in the ETO? And, has anyone worked on searchlights at all?
Has any progress been made on this? I'd love to integrate this into the Battle of Britain series - especially for the first bombing of Berlin.
I saw somewhere that searchlights were integrated into the D3D8.dll and I'm wondering if that's possible?

3) Does anyone know if it would be possible to "kill" gunners in multi-crewed airplanes?
I find it's so unrealistic that a tailgunner will shoot at you if you shoot it down or blow it right up.
I could see it being possible by reworking sections on the .xdp files, but I'm not sure which sections are the gunner positions

I'm glad to finally have some time to work on CFS3 again!

Chris

[mongoose]

Searchlights. Yes work has been done on them re using with Ankors by Dan (gecko). I'll give you more on this later. Also of course WOTR has them as well but assume similar to WOFF.

Aircraft. There is a group hopefully about to release BoB era Spitfires which would include similar effects as in the Fw190's and later Spitfires. There is also a group lead by Ton Fouteman whoc are trying to update BoB/Blitz era aircraft in general.

BoB in general. I'm not sure what your goals are WRT your BoB, but I assume you have studied Clive's stand alone and also what is in ETO era 2. I in fact try to combine both into ETO, but they also could both be combined into Clives as a stand alone BoB which could be extended into the Blitz. It might be worth your while to discuss your plans with others to avoid repetition.

[Daiwilletti]

Gidday Grover1, good to see you on the forum again!

On Question 3, there is an old thread called gunners kill gunners or somesuch. The gist of the thread is that if the gunstation is modelled with its own system ID and damagebox, it can be (and usually is) included in the damageboxes section of the aircraft's xdp file. Usually the damage threshold is set at 100, where the "break" effect is triggered. If you wanted the disabling of the gunner station to be sooner, you could experiment with much lower damage percents to trigger the break. To be really obvious, you could for example set the rear gunner position on a lancaster to break at 10% damage for that damagebox. In QC you should be able to "knock out" that rear gunner quite quickly in an Me 110.

However if the aircraft is shot down without triggering the Break threshold of all the AI gunners, the blasted AI gunners will still keep sniping away at you as the plane goes down, even if the bailout animation shows the crew has departed! An unfortunate quirk of CFS3 - I wonder if the WOFF whizzes ever fixed that?

[grover1]

Searchlights. Yes work has been done on them re using with Ankors by Dan (gecko). I'll give you more on this later. Also of course WOTR has them as well but assume similar to WOFF.

Aircraft. There is a group hopefully about to release BoB era Spitfires which would include similar effects as in the Fw190's and later Spitfires. There is also a group lead by Ton Fouteman whoc are trying to update BoB/Blitz era aircraft in general.

BoB in general. I'm not sure what your goals are WRT your BoB, but I assume you have studied Clive's stand alone and also what is in ETO era 2. I in fact try to combine both into ETO, but they also could both be combined into Clives as a stand alone BoB which could be extended into the Blitz. It might be worth your while to discuss your plans with others to avoid repetition.

My plan is to essentially create an accurate mission set that represents the Battle of Britain. I've got up to August 15th done for the RAF, but there's so many glitches in these missions that I need to go through and work them out over the next little while. But, unfortunately my present health hasn't really allowed me much time to work on the Battle of Britain as of late. It might actually be worth me sending Clive an email asking him if I could create an install based off of his Battle of Britain install? Or, expand on his? The only downside is I don't have any 3D modelling skills and don't have the patience to learn it - tried once before, but it kept confusing me LOL!

Gidday Grover1, good to see you on the forum again!

On Question 3, there is an old thread called gunners kill gunners or somesuch. The gist of the thread is that if the gunstation is modelled with its own system ID and damagebox, it can be (and usually is) included in the damageboxes section of the aircraft's xdp file. Usually the damage threshold is set at 100, where the "break" effect is triggered. If you wanted the disabling of the gunner station to be sooner, you could experiment with much lower damage percents to trigger the break. To be really obvious, you could for example set the rear gunner position on a lancaster to break at 10% damage for that damagebox. In QC you should be able to "knock out" that rear gunner quite quickly in an Me 110.

However if the aircraft is shot down without triggering the Break threshold of all the AI gunners, the blasted AI gunners will still keep sniping away at you as the plane goes down, even if the bailout animation shows the crew has departed! An unfortunate quirk of CFS3 - I wonder if the WOFF whizzes ever fixed that?

I was thinking of lowering the damage box for the gunner positions to maybe 5 or 10 percent? It might actually work that way!

[mongoose]

I would go with a mission set suitable for Clive's BoB as that can always be used in ETO anyway without too much trouble. Before you finally release it. check with Ton and me as to what new or newer aircraft are available for mission building. Don't forget Dan & Co. are doing new Spitfires and there maybe Hurricanes in the works.
Several further points.
I. A good idea to email various people with your ideas and list of intended aircraft, etc.c that you plan to use.
2. Are you going to include the Blitz?
3. Is this mainly from the British perspective or also from the German one? For instance I have books and info on various Luftwaffe operations, such as by Erp 210 and others. I suspect other people have more.
4. I emailed Bob Ruff *Wulfmann" who is happy for his spawns etc. to be used or modified provided credit is given. It might be worth looking at all his stuff as well as others who have made 1940-41 era mission sets which maybe historical.

Feel free to contact me for a start.

[grover1]

I would go with a mission set suitable for Clive's BoB as that can always be used in ETO anyway without too much trouble. Before you finally release it. check with Ton and me as to what new or newer aircraft are available for mission building. Don't forget Dan & Co. are doing new Spitfires and there maybe Hurricanes in the works.
Several further p;oints.
I. A ggod idea to email various people with your ideas and list of intended aircraft, etc.c that you plan to use.
2. Are you going to include the Blitz?
3. Is this mainly from the British perspective or also from the German one? For instance I have books and info on various Luftwaffe operations, such as by Erp 210 and others. I suspect other people have more.
4. I emailed Bob Ruff *Wulfmann" who is happy for his spawns etc. to be used or modified provided credit is given. It might be worth looking at all his stuff as well as others who have made 1940-41 era mission sets which maybe historical.

Feel free to contact me for a start.

Sent you an email