GOOIE Things
It’s been awhile since I found time to add to the blog, that’s mainly because I preferred to spend my free time fixing a myriad of issues with TRs functionality in hope to attract that help we so desperately need.
In the past 12 months much has happened, not all of it is noticeable at first glance but I think the late nights and early mornings I spent mopping up the TR package will be worth it. I’ll run over some of the things that have changes or been corrected in the last 12 months.
- the Scenario Designer (SD)
This was originally built by Yak as a 3rd party GUI that can be used to build scenarios for the TW engine. One of the requirements of this software is a collection/library of maps for each field or area you plan to populate with targets. Now these maps need to each be aligned to coordinates that link the bottom left corner of your map image to a position on the master SD terrain map. As you can imagine, if you want to use screen shots of actual in game terrain you need to compensate for distortion, allocate a scale size and then position each screen shot using the map co-ordinate library in the SD.
Simple explanation is that you take a screen shot from either 960m, 1920m, 3840m or 9680m dependent on how much area you need displayed in your SD map (obviously the higher you get the less detail we see). You re size this image to correct any distortion 117% x 100% (approximate) and then you crop to a factor of 1024 pixels. I determined the SD map library requires you to set parameters for the scale sizes as below:-
1024px = 1000m @ 960m
1024px = 2000m @ 1920m
1024px = 4000m @ 3840m
1024px = 8000m @ 7680m
You then input the correct scale size of the images into the library data base (in meters) eg 1024x 1536 px cropped screen shot taken from 960m = 1000m x 1500m.
Then comes the fun part, you need to align this map by trial and error (yes trial and error). Create a test scenario for the field map you are placing. Then open this scenario in TR (leave the SD running). Fly over the field map area and estimate the co-ordinates of the left lower corner of you map using the HUD location readout. Input these into the SD as the maps location co-ordinates then close and reboot the SD. Place a target (target 1) on a visable referance point (road intersection etc) and reload the scenario in TR (leave the SD running). Take visual note of where this reference target is displayed and approximately how far off correct position it is. Re enter the SD program and place a second reference target (target 2) trying to place it visually correct in game to you reference point (road intersection etc). You keep moving this second target until it lines up perfectly in game on the chosen reference position. Using the SDs actual target positions subtract position of target 2 from target 1 , the result is the difference from the proposed to the actual position. Correct the SD locations library by this amount and your map should be aligned. At this time check the maps distortion is correct and adjust as necessary.
All this takes about an hour when you get good at it, faster with some luck.
The other thing I did was to create about 50 new fields and correct perhaps about 50 others for alignment and terrain level. I wont explain how to level terrain, you can read the Dev Guides for that (Mm the reminds me, I placed new web style dev guides on the TR web site)
Some of the other things I’ve been tinkering with include new engine damage parts, actually the same parts just re sized. The mini engine I created were too mini and it seems no engine could be damaged. Because the engine is actually a prop location in TR, we cannot get real damage locations for the engine, so a comprimise is a smaller prop part (1.0 x 0.2 x 1.0m) and that should give us the correct damage feel once more.
Whilst I was adding fields I fixed some terrain issues, the grid lines are gone from the Popgirl terrain tiles, many of the missing coastal tiles have been fixed and I also did a lot of realigning and leveling of the terrain where the water bled above the high water mark. I also created a new layer for roads/taxiways and have placed a couple of examples in for Rabaul and Henderson areas.
I did a quick test on creating tree forests and plantations using some existing palm trees imported over and over into a single AC3D file until I had a nice looking cluster. This was then linked to one small acm target part and it seems to function quite well. We need more trees that we can repeat this process for, hopefully that will come soon.
New planes (Ki61), new gauges, bug fixes, 2D and 3D fixes , all these kinds of things have also been done.
The reason for all this was functionality so we can attract and hold peoples interest in TR, it is viable under 0.64 if we can just get all the assets needed to make it work functioning.
Hopefully we are well on the way now to achieving this goal.
Bye for now.
Rabaul Harbor
