Remarkably Fuzzy and Complex WOFF for BoB/ETO Procedure

[Threedp]

People seem to want this, so here is my best shot at a 'procedure' for using WOFF terrain in CFS3 (BoB & ETO). Hold on, it's gonna get messy!

BoB

As the last step of a CFS3 BoB installation, replace (do not overwrite) the 'assets' and 'terrains' folders in the install with those from WOFF. So long as you lift the Summer versions from WOFF and don't change seasons in BoB, I think that's it.

ETO

As the last step of a CFS3 ETO installation, replace (do not overwrite) the 'terrains' folders in the install with the one from WOFF. You'll do the same with the 'assets' folder too, but there's a lot of leg work before that!

The main reason is that the main Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter textures can coexist as their names are different, but certain other WOFF files change per season and the CFS3 season changing routine doesn't handle them. Therefore, one must copy in (overwriting) files to really achieve a change of season. I know that's rather unsophisticated, but I haven't the programming skills to automate it. I don't see this as a big deal as I only change seasons rarely, usually with the turn of the real seasons!

First, as WOFF did not cover ETO completely I had to raid Winding Man's (WM's) scenery (which I used before WOFF) to fill in the gaps (and possibly ETO itself?). I built a default Summer version of the WOFF assets by adding in WM's versions of the Summer textures that WOFF did not have. This included the full folders . . .

46th Airfield Addons
ACC_Airfields
ACC_Axis_airfields
BoF Airfields

and additions to the assets sub-folder WW1Summer, i.e. any main texture files not in WOFF. I then used my augmented WOFF 'assets' folder to replace the one in ETO. One season down, three to go! I must point out at this point that I was going on these observations/assumptions:

- CFS3 really only has two seasons, Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter.

- CFS3 does not care where in the sub-folders a file is, so you don't want two files with the same name, even if they're in different sub-folders.

- The CFS3 season switching routine does not handle switching some of the WOFF texture files.

With these in mind (right or wrong!), I then went about creating a Winter set of replacement texture files, not duplicating the non-season-specific files in the Summer one created above. This involved the folders mentioned above:

46th Airfield Addons
ACC_Airfields
ACC_Axis_airfields
BoF Airfields

And within the 'assets' folder, the following:

WW1Scenery Sheet
WW1Texture
WW1WinterFull

Fortunately, if I remember correctly, WOFF does care what sub-folder files are in so all its season files were pretty obvious while stealing them!

Once done, I could copy winter folders into CFS3, overwriting when asked and then when in the game, I set the season to winter and off I went into the winter skies. Fortunately, the textures in the WW1Summer and WW1WinterFull have different names than each other. Unfortunately, the texture files in some of the other folders don't. So while the main set of textures between Summer and Winter can coexist within the CFS3 directory, other WOFF ones can't. So to get back to a true summer, I copied my original baseline Summer set and stripped out the non-season specific stuff to create a set that I could copy into to CFS3 and overwrite.

Then I moved on to autumn and Spring doing the same thing I had done for Winter. The only difference is that for Spring, I used the Summer naming convention for the main textures and named their folder WW1Summer and for Autumn, I used the WinterFull naming convention and named their folder WW1WinterFull. This way, when I copy them into the ETO directory, they overwrite the ones there. I'm not sure the WOFF Autumn and Spring files have unique names, but since other files need to overwrite to complete the transformation, I figured why not the main ones. This means that the WW1Autumn and WW1Spring 'assets' sub-folders are always empty in my ETO install. Sorry, this is very thin, but I'm digging way back to try and remember this!

I now keep a copy of the season changing overwrite files for each of the four seasons on a separate drive so I can easily just drag them over to main main ETO directory on my main drive when I desire.

I messed with darkening/lightening textures to better match the WOFF stuff but eventually gave that up. The only texture I did modify myself was the WOFF scenery sheet to put snow on the roofs of the houses for winter. I can make that available if someone wants it. I can't imagine that I can do the same with the rest of the Frankenstein described above as its built from stuff owned by others, hence this long winded explanation.

Perhaps a lot of this is overkill? I don't know. I think in game experience drove it (green airfields in snowy landscapes and such). If nothing else, I hope this can at least put folks on the right track if they want to attempt it. If there are questions, I'll try to answer them. I'm sorry I didn't meticulously document this at the time.

[Threedp]

If it's not obvious:

You need to own WOFF to attempt this. I bought it just to do this!

Make a backup copy of the entire install directory (BoB or ETO) before you attempt any of this. If things go wrong, delete the whole BoB or ETO directory and copy your backup into the same location to get you back to normal.

[Flamingskull5000]

Not that I have the where with all to pull this off, but could the files from WOTR be used rather than WOFF? Asking for a friend

[Threedp]

I'm afraid that I certainly have no idea. Once was enough for me! In any case, until WOTR expands significantly, I'm not going to invest in it.

[mongoose]

Not that I have the where with all to pull this off, but could the files from WOTR be used rather than WOFF? Asking for a friend

I would imagine so and those are the ones I am going to use. Thanks for your instructions David. I have asked people before who I know have done it but yours is the first how to I have seen with detail.

[Flamingskull5000]

Very disappointed in the lack of progress with WOTR, guess I'll wait and see how Mongoose fares.......

[Threedp]

I would imagine so and those are the ones I am going to use. Thanks for your instructions David. I have asked people before who I know have done it but yours is the first how to I have seen with detail.

Sorry it took so long. I saw requests for it and kept hoping someone had done it more simply and with more confidence than I had and would post something, but as that has not happened, I decided that this time, I would bite the bullet and take a crack at it!

As dicey as it is, I will say that I've been using it for many years very successfully with no issues that I've ever tied to it. So from my perspective, it's been worth the trouble.

[Threedp]

What one gets for one's efforts . . .

Spring (do note the airfield grass color mismatch in the lower right however)


Summer


Autumn


Winter


Also, aside from the aforementioned color mismatch, one does occasionally run into this from Autumn:


And the opposite in Winter:


But not overly often.

[Threedp]

Couple of corrections:

WOFF doesn't seem to care if files are in sub-folders, just like CFS3. It's season changing routine appears to copy in the textures it needs from a directory one level up and delete or move ones not currently needed.

For Spring and Autumn, I did not have to change any filenames. Just like CFS3, they are the same as those for Summer and Winter respectively. The key to my method is the part about putting Spring files in the WW1Summer folder and the Autumn files in the WW1WinterFull folder so that the files in them overwrite when pulled in. Otherwise, I'd have duplicate filenames in the WW1Spring and WW1Summer folders, as well as duplicate filenames in the WW1Autumn and WW1WinterFull folders, which could cause all sorts of trouble! If that worked, I would not have to do the whole overwriting thing!

[Threedp]

This has triggered me to look at things again, and apparently, the WW1DetailTextures in assets needs to be accounted for for each season too.

[Threedp]

For those frustrated by the mishmash from the recesses of my brain above, know that I am currently endeavoring to methodically create a new, cleaner process. Basically, I'm redoing it and documenting as I go. My goal is to finish it by the end of the Thanksgiving weekend.

[mongoose]

Looking forward to it.

[Threedp]

I actually have the basic procedure in pretty good shape and it's just ETO issues I'm concentrating on now. Question:

It has been a long time since I had an out-of-box CFS3 or non-modified ETO on my PC, and I'm wondering, in ETO, what does one gets by default texture-wise in the folders . . .

46th Airfield Addons
ACC_Airfields
ACC_Axis_airfields
BoF Airfields

Presumably one Spring/Summer texture and one Autumn/Winter texture per airfield, one of which is triggered by the selected season in game. The former is obviously green, but what kind of winter is the latter? No snow, light snow, medium snow, full snow?

[grover1]

I uploaded a guide to ETO/BoB scenery using WOFF/WOTR. It is a process to install, but it does work