[Plantoid 1]

Hey all:

A while ago I asked if there was some way to place wrecked aircraft on the ground around an air base. I had several suggestions like placing stationary a/c and using smoke. Or what I do is bomb the snot out of them while I'm away on a mission.

I stayed awake the past couple of nights mulling over some possibilities. A possible solution I came up with is this:

In the static.ini file an object is pointed to in this fashion: Say I want to use the large, round-roofed hanger that came in a mod (I can't recall whose it is but it might be canonuk's). In the static.ini is a line that reads "MeshLive 3do/Buildings/Russia/Kiev/hangar_Large3/live.sim"

Now, when you follow the path you finally find a file marked "live.sim". I assume this is the file that places a nice clean hangar on the map.

The next line in the static.ini file reads "MeshDead 3do/Buildings/Russia/Kiev/Hangar_Lrge2/dead.sim".

Again, following the path, in the same folder as above is the line "dead.sim". This, again I assume, places a wrecked version of that same hangar on the map in the same position (obviously).

The question I have is this: Do planes have lines like these in their folder? If they do, could a section be added in the static.ini that might read something like this:

[buildings.House$WreckedZero]
Title WreckedZero
MeshLive 3do/(pointer{s} to aircraft folder)/dead.sim
MeshDead 3do/(pointer{s} to aircraft folder)/dead.sim
Body RockBig
Panzer 2.5

Note that the MeshLive = MeshDead so the plane is the wrecked version.

Could someone please point me in the right direction for finding these lines.

Yes, strafing or bombing the planes wouldn't add to the score but then they shouldn't. These would just be eye candy - something I've wanted for a long time now.

Great days all.

[ArcticViper]

Well, Howlin's idea works, and if done correctly the AI's will spawn on their belly with the gear extending as the mission starts etc...

I do remember something similar to what you're pondering here, and I need to look it up. I can't remember if it actually did work...

another way is to leave them intact when you go on your mission and make lots of enemy bombers fly low over them, hope that the gunners can damage the AI's enough to show but not to bail, as that would de-spawn the aircraft... You can then proceed to force the enemy AI's to fly into a carrier, battleship, mountain, a field of chimneys or just fly away to a corner of the map with the ending waypoint being a normfly one... If you really need them to go away that is :wink:

[LAL_RONE]

But if you need wrecked planes in front of player's aircrafts at the beginning of the mission, you can't !


Very good idea Plantoid 1.
I will search that. But I don't know where ...

[Plantoid 1]

Hey all:

Howlin': You know, that might be a pretty good idea. I've never tried that - put a bunch of stationary a/c on the ground in a pile and drop another plane on top of them.

Viper: This is what I do now. It takes a bunch of setting up though and sometimes there's a plane left that the ground fire around the base is still trying to destroy when I get back. Not to mention the collateral damage from bombing.

LAL_RONE: You hit the nail on the head. I'd like to see these junkers in a pile near the end of a runway as I take off.

[edit] Ok. I tried this and it didn't work:

In the static.ini file I added this to the very end (ease of finding it later!!)

[buildings.House$WreckedZero]
Title WreckedZero
MeshLive 3do/plane/A6M2/summer/dead.sim
MeshDead 3do/plane/A6M2/summer/dead.sim
AlignToLand 1
Body RockBig
Panzer 2.5

My thinking was this: In the SKINMOD folder is a path 3do/plane/(all the types here)/(summer; winter; desert; etc). I figured maybe the syntax was the same for the plane folder in the rest of the game.

I tried "A6M2(Multi)" and "A6M2" as above. I opened the Objects list, started at 0 then went backwards. Object 988 (where I placed the plane) had no effect and I had to go to Object 987 to get the next object to show. Same going back the other way.

Don't know if this helps but we now know one way it doesn't work!

Great days all