NATO Airbase Merzifon v1.00 third-party modification

SwingKid and Alfa present:

v1.00 of the "NATO Airbase in Turkey" Mod!

Now available as a LoMan v2.1 add-on:

http://www.waves.utoronto.ca/~pavacic/lomac/theater/merzifon.zip (note: large! ~47 MB)

(note: Windows 98/ME users should read the included "skreadme.txt" file before installing LoMan v2.1)

To download LoMan v2.1:

http://loman.checksix-fr.com

New features of v1.00:

- Razdolnoye airbase objects moved to new location in Turkey

- F11 camera view for Razdolnoye moved to new location in Turkey

- Runways and taxiways now use Evil-JOE and Vinc's "Western Runway" textures

- Ground vehicles scattered around the airbase now replaced by NATO ground vehicles

- Russian-style red fire truck replaced with Evil-JOE and Vinc's NATO-style green fire truck

- all modifications affect only the transformed Razdolnoye airbase; all other airbases retain their original "Russian-style" runways and vehicles

Should be fully compatible with Lock On v1.02 and v1.1

To give you something new, while waiting for v1.1!

Enjoy,

-SK

P.S. If anyone enjoys this mod, please post a few screenshots here to provide some better advertising than I have done... Thanks in advance!

Could this also be installed on the demo 1.1?

Great mod btw! ;)

Great mod!

Isn't it possible to add some trees around the base to put in some volume in the scene?

Some quick pics. :)

Downloading ...

Thanks for the great mod SwingKid and Alfa!

That's fantastic, thanks Alfa and SK!! Could we get some more bases in Turkey??

Thanks for the screens!

Isn't it possible to add some trees around the base to put in some volume in the scene?

That's fantastic, thanks Alfa and SK!! Could we get some more bases in Turkey??

Anything is possible, but some things are more difficult than others. To add trees to the scene - I don't think it would be worth the effort. Trees were not included in the original 229 objects for Razdolnoye, that are common across all Scenes levels. So, they would be much more difficult to add. Also, Merzifon seems to be in a very dry mountainous area without trees.

To create entirely new airbases - I don't know how to do this without removing real bases from another part of the map. Also, there are not any other suitable bases in Turkey that I know. Which one did you have in mind?

One thing I am curious about - is this something you think should be made into a permanent feature for the official "Lock On v1.2" - to swap the Razdolnoye airbase as a Turkish base, and make all future missions and campaigns with it in this position? Or it's better to leave it as a removable third-party mod? The original Razdolnoye airbase position in Lock On's Crimea does not seem to exist in the real world.

-SK

P.S. Sorry, I did not test it with the demo. I don't know if it works.

Great mod !

Did you guys notice a KC-10 is parking by the large hangar?

Thanks for the screens!

 

 

 

 

 

Anything is possible, but some things are more difficult than others. To add trees to the scene - I don't think it would be worth the effort. Trees were not included in the original 229 objects for Razdolnoye, that are common across all Scenes levels. So, they would be much more difficult to add. Also, Merzifon seems to be in a very dry mountainous area without trees.

 

To create entirely new airbases - I don't know how to do this without removing real bases from another part of the map. Also, there are not any other suitable bases in Turkey that I know. Which one did you have in mind?

 

One thing I am curious about - is this something you think should be made into a permanent feature for the official "Lock On v1.2" - to swap the Razdolnoye airbase as a Turkish base, and make all future missions and campaigns with it in this position? Or it's better to leave it as a removable third-party mod? The original Razdolnoye airbase position in Lock On's Crimea does not seem to exist in the real world.

 

-SK

 

P.S. Sorry, I did not test it with the demo. I don't know if it works.

It works fine with demo, at least for me... I thing that Razdolnoye base should be removed so Merzifon could be added as primary NATO base.

http://www.futura-dtp.dk/Flysiden/Baser/Tyrkiet.htm

I don't remember which of other Turkey bases could be fitted on map, maybe Akinci?!

This should definitely make its way into any V1.1 patch or V1.2 project as an 'official' fix.

Fantastic work guys.

WOW, this certainly adds a new realm for mission and campaign creation! Thanks Fella's!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HOW DID YOU EDIT these files?? Hexeditor? If so, what would i search for in hexeditor in the razdolnoe.rn file to change the tower position??

HOW DID YOU EDIT these files?? Hexeditor? If so, what would i search for in hexeditor in the razdolnoe.rn file to change the tower position??

I don't think a hex editor would be enough. We needed a whole mini software suite for reading, decoding, understanding, and then reconstructing the different files. Object locations are stored in the three ".scn" files, but moving objects is quite difficult. Lock On defines invisible "cubes" of 3D space with e.g. 1 km side length. If a cube is off-screen for a given view, then any objects contained within that cube are not drawn, to improve performance. So, moving an object from one position to another within the same 1 km cube is not too hard, but if you try to move it by more than 1 km, then it will probably become invisible. For the mod, I had to create a whole new mini-network of "cubes", to contain the new object positions all the way down in Turkey. So, I don't want to go to all those hours of trouble again just for a bunch of trees.

If you are really interested to know more about the file structures, you might find the following discussion interesting. It describes where some things can be found:

http://lockoncampaign.com:8811/board/index.php?a=topic&t=60

If you are really interested to try moving some particular map object after all the above, ask me again telling me which object it is, and I'll explain to you how to find its co-ordinates stored in the .scn file.

Thanks for interest!

-SK

Hi,

Just a couple of screenies :) .

Merzifon control tower..

Take-off at dusk...

- JJ.

Oops i wasn't clear enough...i mean how do i move the original camera position of tower view!? SO that by pressing F11 it will automatically go to that spot for the tower view... Sorry

WOW, this certainly adds a new realm for mission and campaign creation! Thanks Fella's!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah it does :D

To taxi past US vehicules parked around the Merzifon base, take off from the asphalt runway, take a long flight across the Black Sea and then land on a Russian style concrete runway and see Russian vehicules all around provides a great sensation of distances and national diversity :)

- JJ.

Oops i wasn't clear enough...i mean how do i move the original camera position of tower view!? SO that by pressing F11 it will automatically go to that spot for the tower view... Sorry

Hmm....still not sure what you mean.

By pressing F11 continiously you should eventually get the tower view for "Razdolnoye", which will show the base at its new location in Turkey.

To get the tower view to show "Merzifon" in the status bar, you need to rename the base manually. To do this open the MEinit.xml file with Notepad - open the search function and type "Razdolnoye" in the search field and click "Find next". The Razdolnoye entry will be highlighted - now type in "Merzifon" instead and save the changes.

We didnt include an edited version of the MEinit.xml because this would limit the compatibility of the mod to a single version of Lock-on.

- JJ.

Hmm....still not sure what you mean.

He wants to change the position, altitude or look angle of the default tower view. Not necessarily for Razdolnoye/Merzifon, but just in general, for any airbase.

The 21 camera views for the different airbases are stored just like any other map object, in the .scn files, except that they are invisible. Since they are invisible anyway, maybe you can move them wherever you want on the map without worrying about the "cubes". Which one(s) are you interested in? I can help you find these and yes, this might be something you could change with a hex editor.

-SK

He wants to change the position, altitude or look angle of the default tower view. Not necessarily for Razdolnoye/Merzifon, but just in general, for any airbase.

Ahh...ok I see :)

- JJ.

Stupid question, but does the anti-aircraft static units that come with the new air base attack air targets? Or are they strictly part of the decor?

Stupid question, but does the anti-aircraft static units that come with the new air base attack air targets? Or are they strictly part of the decor?

They are strictly part of the decor :) .

On the Merzifon base, the static Russian vehicules have been replaced one by one with US ones instead.

We deliberately avoided positioning Avengers in a way that could give the impression of these providing active airdefence of the base.

- JJ.

My 2c:

Selecting an airbase from the middle of the Crimea somewhere (like grardeskoye) and moving it to the west coast (across the sea)w oudl be great, there would be two far away usable bases then.

Also, how large are the files that must be modified for this to work? Teh reason I ask is that these files can be pushed to the client in 1.1, thus not requiring them to have the mod installed.

I would like to find the original Razdolnoe tower view position! So i am sure you already know where this is?

The Razdolnoye "F11 Tower & Terrain View" camera position is object #3908. Its data in the scenes file is basically 52 bytes long. The location of this 52-byte record in the file depends on which file you are looking in - Low, Medium or High, and before or after applying the Merzifon mod.

The 52-byte record of each object starts with 9 single-precision floating point values (4 bytes each) that makes the 3D rotation matrix. Then comes 3 single-precision floating point values (4 bytes each) that are x, y, z-coordinates (positive x is north, positive y is altitude above sea level, and positive z is east, in meters). Finally is a four-byte negative integer offset that points to the name of the object's type.

The 52-byte record for camera object #3908 should start at byte #3406616 in the original "Low.scn" file. (So, to change the camera's altitude, you should hex-edit the four bytes #3406656-3406659. You should see the camera's initial altitude here, of "200.00351" meters.)

In the Merzifon-modified Low.scn, you should add 11*32 bytes to the above address to find what you are looking for.

In the original Medium.scn, add 344*32 bytes. For the modified Medium.scn, add (344 + 11)*32 bytes.

In the original High.scn, add 392*32 bytes. For the modified High.scn, add (392 + 11)*32 bytes.

(the extra 11*32 bytes for the modified files are because we added 11 new "NATO" map objects to these files)

You might also get more information from the discussion on http://www.lockoncampaign.com that I linked in an earlier message.

Hope this helps,

-SK

Selecting an airbase from the middle of the Crimea somewhere (like grardeskoye) and moving it to the west coast (across the sea)w oudl be great, there would be two far away usable bases then.

Hmm... I don't have the same desire for Romanian, Bulgarian or Moldovan bases, when we don't have those countries in the game. Gvardeyskoye itself is a very active and important naval Su-24 base in Crimea:

http://sukhoi.ru/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/829/password/0/sort/1/cat/all/page/8

Also, this was a lot more hard work than I am ready to do twice. I'd rather just consult now, if someone else wants to take over moving airbases. I have a dynamic campaign project waiting for me.

Also, how large are the files that must be modified for this to work? Teh reason I ask is that these files can be pushed to the client in 1.1, thus not requiring them to have the mod installed.

Sorry to have ignored this question the first time you asked - I don't know very much about multiplayer or "pushing" files. The required file size depends on the "Scenes" setting. It's about 4 MB total with a "Low" setting, but 90 MB at "High".

Hope this helps,

-SK