Random Dynamic 'Battle' Smoke and Ground Units

[sevenless]

I can´t recommend this enough. It really adds a lot to the atmosphere and gives you the idea to be part of a bigger plan.

[AstroCat]

Does this affect scripted campaigns and career mode or just QMs?

[Kapteeni]

1 hour ago, AstroCat said:

Does this affect scripted campaigns and career mode or just QMs?

It affects campaigns too.

 

[AstroCat]

1 hour ago, Kapteeni said:

It affects campaigns too.

 

Ahh ok, thanks.

[Hessle]

Been trying this out on PWCG and its fantastic, maybe missed the info but does this work for clients in mp coop servers? As the host I can see them fine.

[fubar_2_niner]

I worry that we have lost this modder, not seen since February

[Hessle]

Ah, the way it goes I suppose. will keep using it till it breaks...

[Stonehouse]

8 hours ago, Hessle said:

Been trying this out on PWCG and its fantastic, maybe missed the info but does this work for clients in mp coop servers? As the host I can see them fine.

Yes it does but I found you need to be careful that only the host uses the mod and also you need to look for and update a line network = false to be network = true. See a post by me on the first page of the thread circa Feb 5. I included an example in attachment.

 

If all players use the mod you'll grind things to a halt quickly as everyone causes smoke etc to be spawned. If everyone uses the mod and you don't use network = true then each player will see a different instance of smoke etc. We discovered that quickly because someone saying something like the "tank to the north of the big smoke" was of no use as the smoke only appeared in the right spot to the person generating it. If network = true and only the host uses the mod (ie spawns the effects) then everyone in the mission sees the same thing and performance is not an issue unless you go silly with the density of the effects.

Edited December 4, 2019 by No457_Stonehouse

[Hessle]

On 12/4/2019 at 1:18 AM, No457_Stonehouse said:

If network = true and only the host uses the mod (ie spawns the effects) then everyone in the mission sees the same thing and performance is not an issue unless you go silly with the density of the effects.

 

Thanks muchly good sir, will test this out over coming weeks.

 

cheers, very pleased and looking forward to spicing up the scenery in those long Moscow missions.

[Gamble]

Can't get it to work. Hopefully it's not broken

[Stonehouse]

Use it all the time (at least for smoke and search lights. I turned off the units spawning as it was mucking up my PWCG coop missions) and it works fine here.

[Blukorto0]

Bonjour.
J'adores ce mod. Personellement, il améliore l'immersion.
Malheureusement, mais modestes compétences ne m'ont pas permis d'identifier les valeurs et les paramètres à modifier dans les fichiers de Mod pour ajuster la présence et le nombre d'éléments physiques dans les jeux.J'ai crus  voir dans  ce fil des captures d' écran que l'on peut agir, créer et ajouter des éléments physiques des émetteurs de fumée, notamment les navires (et peut-être les véhicules?). Je ne sais pour l'instant que faire varier le nombre et les emplacements (en gros ...) des foyers d'incendies et de fumée, mais pas de créer et de placer physiquement ces éléments sur la carte (si c'est bien possible !!!).
Les aperçus de captures d'écrans où l'on peut voir de nombreux navires (entres autres ...) en flammes me font littéralement saliver.
Si quelqu'un avait le temps et les connaissances me permettant d'apprendre à identifier et modifier les éléments de fichiers pour pouvoir enfin ajuster tout ces éléments à «ma sauce» je lui en serais plus que reconnaissant.
Dans l'attente de vous lires,
Bien Kordialement,
Stef ...........................

 

Edited January 28, 2020 by Blukorto0
Correction de fautes...

[=VARP=Dragunov]

Thank you very much it's absolutely GREAT !!!

[Dutch2]

Warning it does effect campaigns, missions and scripted campangs. When using this mod the enemy is now random being dropped down. As a sample flying in an SYN-vander scripted campaign you will notice lots of enemy AA on places they never should be. 

Sorry its a bit in Dutch but use you google web translator. 

[Stonehouse]

You can turn individual bits off as you like. The problem you describe is why I turned off additional flak etc because it was causing problems in PWCG missions. I basically just have the smoke columns and the odd explosion to give atmosphere. You can also control the distance it happens from you plus the odds for example a smoke column etc to start. You edit staticexplosions.txt to achieve this.

 

So below for example I have turned off flak units by adding a // at the start of the line. P is the probability - because the frequency of checking is very high you can make this number much smaller than you might think and still see stuff spawn (eg villagesmoke section). Alt should be left at zero as you want the effect to originate at ground level. The range is the min and max radial distance from the player running the script's aircraft that you'll see the effect. Note that for it to work in multiplayer such that all players see the same thing you need to tweak some of the other files in the bots folder to remove the line NetworkEnabled=false (or change it to true but it seems to be true by default so you can remove the line entirely or comment it out) and then only have the host run the script otherwise you quickly swamp the mission with effects. If you don't make changes to the files each player will see their own instance of the explosions if they are all running the mod in a multiplayer session.

 

 

Staticexplosions.txt example below 

//Multiple Ground Area Smoke, Low
[Emitter]
    P=0.00175

    Object="LuaScripts\WorldObjects\mapemitters\villagesmoke.txt"
    WaterObject="LuaScripts\WorldObjects\TemplarGFX\templar_no_water.txt"
    Alt=0
    Range=10000,20000
[end]
//Ground based MG34 enemy gun emplacement
//[Emitter]
//    P=0.015
//    Object="LuaScripts\WorldObjects\Vehicles\mg34-aa.txt"
//    WaterObject="LuaScripts\WorldObjects\TemplarGFX\templar_no_water.txt"
//    Alt=0
//    Range=2500,15000
//[end]
//Ground based Flak38 mobile enemy turret
//[Emitter]
//    P=0.01
//    Object="LuaScripts\WorldObjects\Vehicles\flak38.txt"
//    WaterObject="LuaScripts\WorldObjects\TemplarGFX\templar_no_water.txt"
//    Alt=0
//    Range=2500,15000
//[end]
//Ground based Flak36 mobile enemy turret or destoyer battleship
//[Emitter]
//    P=0.007
//    Object="LuaScripts\WorldObjects\Vehicles\flak36.txt"
//    WaterObject="LuaScripts\WorldObjects\TemplarGFX\templar_no_water.txt"
//    Alt=0
//    Range=4500,35000
//[end]

Edited April 28, 2020 by No457_Stonehouse

[CanadaOne]

Very cool mod. Thanks! Fixes the last-man-on-Earth feeling you get in the QMB.

 

Together with the clouds mod and the 4k cockpits, there is some serious eye candy going on.

[MikeWazowsky]

Nice, but big problem... I seem to be missing all the ships' definition files for weapons. I get error messages stating I am missing .txt files related to them in the luascript/worldobjects/ships folder.

 

The definition files for ships call other definition files for specific weapons, but those files are nowhere to be found. Any idea?

 

example: 1124.txt calls for...

 

[attach=0]
    position= 4.913, 1.465, 0
    object = "LuaScripts/WorldObjects/Ships/1124/1124-Gun.txt"

 

but that fiRandom Ground Fires - 1.ziple is nowhere...

 

Thanks

 

EDIT: after I combined it with the "infinite view distance" mod, many definition files for weapons where not found but I dragged them out of .gtp archives in the game with ungtp-il2.exe . But I can't find graphics or sounds files in the archives, like:

VisualImage=0,"graphics/ships/1124/1124.mgm",true

CollisionBody="graphics/ships/1124/1124.col"

 

I added a version that at least does not pop out an error message, but no sounds nor graphic models for spawned units.

Edited May 3, 2020 by MikeWazowsky

[CanadaOne]

Been running the U-2VS rescue mission in SYN_Vander's excellent mission creator along with this mod and what a furious beating you take just trying to get to the downed pilot. It's pretty impressive and worth a try. I ran it on the Stalingrad map and it's a cast iron sh1tstorm you have to fly through. I haven't made it back successfully yet.

 

Some quality flightsimming right there.

[Stonehouse]

FYI believe this needs updating after the last patch as some epl files changed name and it's generating error pop ups in mission as a result.

 

<edit> not sure if this is all of it as a lot of the text files have small changes between the files in the mod and the stock ones. However it seems like it wasn't a name change but a location change. The attached file may help with the error but I think the mod author needs to review their mod and update as needed.

templar_big_fire.txt

Edited December 17, 2020 by No457_Stonehouse
file

[Venzex]

Can confirm the error messages. I deleted the "cityfire.txt", "cityfiresmall.txt", and "villagesmoke.txt" files which made the error message disappear.

[Stonehouse]

The file I posted a couple up seems to have fixed the errors I have seen although I haven't yet tested it in MP and I did replace the other game files in the mod with updated versions.  I'll try to find time over the holiday break to try some MP with friends if they are available and check how it works. Still hoping the author will swing past and update their mod.

[Stonehouse]

Turns out the guys I usually fly with are going to be away or busy unsurprisingly this time of year. So in case it helps people, find an interim version of the mod below until the author gets around to reviewing and updating it. Some very important points:

• If you use this mod in MP ONLY THE HOST SHOULD HAVE IT ENABLED.  This is because it has been set up to pass network traffic and if everyone is running it then each instance of the emitter will create explosions and fires and transmit details to everyone else. If more than one person in the mission is running the mod this will quickly drown the mission in smoke etc and bring it to it's knees. The benefit of enabling network traffic and have only the host generate effects is that everyone in the mission will see the same thing. If network traffic is disabled then each player could run the mod but people would only see their own created effects. ie so saying west of the large smoke would mean something different to each player. 
•  Changing the frequency of each effect being generated is done by changing the line starting with "P=" in file staticexplosions.txt. This is essentially a probability of the effect being triggered or the unit being spawned. Note that this value is checked extremely frequently by the game and so values should be kept quite (surprisingly) small to avoid too many instances of an effect or unit being triggered. Especially true for units as they don't despawn and so the number of units will accumulate over time. If you fiddle with the values and increase the chance of triggering too much don't be surprised that it causes you problems.
•  All effects are based on the location of the player running the mod. So the min and max distance is based on this players location. Keep this in mind or else expect to have explosions etc be triggered so close that things like taking off becomes pretty difficult. eg spawning an enemy flak gun on your own airfield will ruin your day. The line to tweak in file staticexplosions.txt for this is the one starting with "Range=" and the first value is the minimum distance from the player running the mod and the second is the max distance. The game will trigger the effect at a random distance between these two values.
•  Personally I usually only have the smoke and fire effects turned on and set up to be quite a distance out so they add atmosphere only. However for this post I have left everything turned on. If you wish to turn off a specific effect then you need to comment out the lines for the effect in file staticexplosions.txt. This is done by putting "//" without the quotes at the start of each relevant line. An effect block starts with the line [Emitter] and ends with the line [end]. To remove an effect put // at the start of each line relevant to the effect in question. For example if I want to disable the effect which either creates a 52K mobile AA turret at a ground location or a destroyer at a water location I would change the lines below:

[Emitter]
	P=0.002
	Object="LuaScripts\WorldObjects\Vehicles\52k.txt"
	WaterObject="LuaScripts\WorldObjects\Ships\destroyertype7.txt"
	Alt=0
	Range=4500,35000
[end]

to

//[Emitter]
//	P=0.002
//	Object="LuaScripts\WorldObjects\Vehicles\52k.txt"
//	WaterObject="LuaScripts\WorldObjects\Ships\destroyertype7.txt"
//	Alt=0
//	Range=4500,35000
//[end]

• Note that Alt = 0 should always be left that way as this is equivalent to sea or ground level. While I haven't tried I assume a +ve value will create the effect midair or perhaps cause an error. Not sure.
• If you wish to keep the ground effect but not have a water effect then replace the line starting with "WaterObject=" with the line below, so for example in the above effect block for the 52K AAA and destroyer if I wanted the 52K AAA but not the destroyer I would replace the line with destroyertype7.txt in it with the line below:

WaterObject="LuaScripts\WorldObjects\TemplarGFX\templar_no_water.txt"

• Attachment is set up to use with JSGME.
• I suggest using a real editor like notepad++ to edit staticexplosions.txt 

•  Most importantly - this is just me having a try at fixing a problem and sharing my attempt at a solution. It's still the authors work and his credit and it's use at your own risk. I did update the files in the mod with the latest from the game and made an attempt at patching what I thought needed patching. I'm not the author so may well have missed something important. However, so far it is working for me. Hope it helps someone.

Dynamic Effects and Units.7zip

 

[Stonehouse]

I've been fiddling around with this mod some more. Particularly the image attribute parameter after looking at the old draw distance mod. I think by adding 128 to the existing image attribute you set IA_ALWAYSVISIBLE on. So far it seems to make the smoke etc visible from further away and less prone to fade out although I have not tested it very much at all. Anyway so alternate version attached for those who wish to try it out. Note that I have once again set the staticexplosions.txt file to have all effects and units turned on and with a higher probability of spawn (P= line as discussed in previous post) than I would personally use. If you have a look in the folder Dynamic effects and Units\data\LuaScripts\WorldObjects you'll see two example staticexplosion.txt files. The one with "alleffects" in the filename is essentially a back up of the staticexplosions.txt file you get when the mod is installed. The other which has sparsesmokeonly in the name is the one I personally use to create atmosphere in missions. Tweak staticexplosions.txt to suit your taste and PCs capability using these two extremes as an example. As previously ready for JSGME use. Note that having IA_ALWAYSVISIBLE on plus large numbers of effects and units spawning may hit your frame rate more than the previous version I uploaded, so far I haven't noticed a problem but I tend towards less effects and no units and have a fairly powerful PC plus not much testing time.

Dynamic effects and Units.7zip

[Vishnu]

Not sure if answered here or not, but I've tried the draw distance mod as suggested but I get an error in world objects regarding ships.    I'm new, please be patient, I've only just begun learning about adding mods to this game.  Thanks in advance.

[Stonehouse]

There were some changes in where certain games files were located from what I have seen and errors about certain ship .txt files not being found were also experienced when using the old version of the random dynamic battle smoke and ground units mod (the mod in this thread) so I suspect something similar is happening with the draw distance mod, which is quite old. Someone would need to update the draw distance mod I think. I don't use it myself as this one kind of overlaps it (in terms of making smoke etc more visible at greater distances) and also adds the ability to generate random smoke columns etc to add atmosphere to missions. Like I said above I keep the added effects from this mod quite sparse and just to add immersion. Others use it to create random ground units to make missions more challenging. 

 

PS if you wanted the equivalent of the draw distance mod only I think (but am not 100% sure) that you could download my last attachment a few posts up and prior to activation in JSGME go into the folder for this mod and delete everything except the folders mapemitters and ships and their contents. ie delete the bots folder, the emitters folder, the TemplarGFX folder and also the 3 versions of the staticexplosions.txt file. Then activate the mod in JSGME and I think you'll get the equivalent of an updated draw distance mod.  Pic to illustrate below, red lines showing objects to be deleted:

Edited January 17, 2021 by No457_Stonehouse
post scriptum

[ragvard]

This looks so promising, but i can't get it to work. Tried all the versions, with JSGME, and with direct overwrite  Any ideas? 

Also: Are there any other mods that enhance the "Battle feeling"? 

[Stonehouse]

All I can think of is if it isn't working then it isn't installed correctly. If it is working it's pretty obvious due to the smoke columns off in the distance etc. Probably double check that when you unzipped it you haven't ended up with an incorrect folder structure - that is usually where it goes wrong for people if there is going to be a problem.

[ragvard]

I feel so stupid right now: I didn't know i had to manually activate mods in the settings ?Now it works! Thank you so much.

However, i am getting error messages now: Some effect files can't be found. I guess this has to do with recent updates and name changes of certain effects?

Edited February 25, 2021 by ragvard

[Stonehouse]

Yes exactly. If you look about 5-6 posts back you'll see one from me on Jan 16 with an updated version which should fix those. I'm not the author of the mod so any credit still goes to them but as they haven't been around lately and I was able to fix the issues for myself I shared what I had come up with. 

[ragvard]

Thanks again! Should have read that more carefully ? I fiddled with the script a bit and found some nice settings for myself.

This is a lovely mod and even if they might not read it: This makes the game so much more immersive for me, thank you for your work!

And of course thank you for providing your fix and for your help. Much appreciated!

[T_O_A_D]

On 1/15/2021 at 5:45 PM, Stonehouse said:

I've been fiddling around with this mod some more. Particularly the image attribute parameter after looking at the old draw distance mod. I think by adding 128 to the existing image attribute you set IA_ALWAYSVISIBLE on. So far it seems to make the smoke etc visible from further away and less prone to fade out although I have not tested it very much at all. Anyway so alternate version attached for those who wish to try it out. Note that I have once again set the staticexplosions.txt file to have all effects and units turned on and with a higher probability of spawn (P= line as discussed in previous post) than I would personally use. If you have a look in the folder Dynamic effects and Units\data\LuaScripts\WorldObjects you'll see two example staticexplosion.txt files. The one with "alleffects" in the filename is essentially a back up of the staticexplosions.txt file you get when the mod is installed. The other which has sparsesmokeonly in the name is the one I personally use to create atmosphere in missions. Tweak staticexplosions.txt to suit your taste and PCs capability using these two extremes as an example. As previously ready for JSGME use. Note that having IA_ALWAYSVISIBLE on plus large numbers of effects and units spawning may hit your frame rate more than the previous version I uploaded, so far I haven't noticed a problem but I tend towards less effects and no units and have a fairly powerful PC plus not much testing time.

Dynamic effects and Units.7zip 14.79 kB · 62 downloads

This post from the Jan. 15th only has the mapmitters only and is the equivalent to Draw Distance only as far as I can tel, and it works just ran the same track and was able to watch the smoke for much further as my plane kept flying from them in the track. Thanks for this Stonehouse!

Edited July 21, 2021 by T_O_A_D

[T_O_A_D]

On 12/26/2020 at 3:28 AM, Stonehouse said:

Turns out the guys I usually fly with are going to be away or busy unsurprisingly this time of year. So in case it helps people, find an interim version of the mod below until the author gets around to reviewing and updating it. Some very important points:

• If you use this mod in MP ONLY THE HOST SHOULD HAVE IT ENABLED.  This is because it has been set up to pass network traffic and if everyone is running it then each instance of the emitter will create explosions and fires and transmit details to everyone else. If more than one person in the mission is running the mod this will quickly drown the mission in smoke etc and bring it to it's knees. The benefit of enabling network traffic and have only the host generate effects is that everyone in the mission will see the same thing. If network traffic is disabled then each player could run the mod but people would only see their own created effects. ie so saying west of the large smoke would mean something different to each player. 
•  Changing the frequency of each effect being generated is done by changing the line starting with "P=" in file staticexplosions.txt. This is essentially a probability of the effect being triggered or the unit being spawned. Note that this value is checked extremely frequently by the game and so values should be kept quite (surprisingly) small to avoid too many instances of an effect or unit being triggered. Especially true for units as they don't despawn and so the number of units will accumulate over time. If you fiddle with the values and increase the chance of triggering too much don't be surprised that it causes you problems.
•  All effects are based on the location of the player running the mod. So the min and max distance is based on this players location. Keep this in mind or else expect to have explosions etc be triggered so close that things like taking off becomes pretty difficult. eg spawning an enemy flak gun on your own airfield will ruin your day. The line to tweak in file staticexplosions.txt for this is the one starting with "Range=" and the first value is the minimum distance from the player running the mod and the second is the max distance. The game will trigger the effect at a random distance between these two values.
•  Personally I usually only have the smoke and fire effects turned on and set up to be quite a distance out so they add atmosphere only. However for this post I have left everything turned on. If you wish to turn off a specific effect then you need to comment out the lines for the effect in file staticexplosions.txt. This is done by putting "//" without the quotes at the start of each relevant line. An effect block starts with the line [Emitter] and ends with the line [end]. To remove an effect put // at the start of each line relevant to the effect in question. For example if I want to disable the effect which either creates a 52K mobile AA turret at a ground location or a destroyer at a water location I would change the lines below:

[Emitter]
	P=0.002
	Object="LuaScripts\WorldObjects\Vehicles\52k.txt"
	WaterObject="LuaScripts\WorldObjects\Ships\destroyertype7.txt"
	Alt=0
	Range=4500,35000
[end]

to

//[Emitter]
//	P=0.002
//	Object="LuaScripts\WorldObjects\Vehicles\52k.txt"
//	WaterObject="LuaScripts\WorldObjects\Ships\destroyertype7.txt"
//	Alt=0
//	Range=4500,35000
//[end]

• Note that Alt = 0 should always be left that way as this is equivalent to sea or ground level. While I haven't tried I assume a +ve value will create the effect midair or perhaps cause an error. Not sure.
• If you wish to keep the ground effect but not have a water effect then replace the line starting with "WaterObject=" with the line below, so for example in the above effect block for the 52K AAA and destroyer if I wanted the 52K AAA but not the destroyer I would replace the line with destroyertype7.txt in it with the line below:

WaterObject="LuaScripts\WorldObjects\TemplarGFX\templar_no_water.txt"

• Attachment is set up to use with JSGME.
• I suggest using a real editor like notepad++ to edit staticexplosions.txt 

•  Most importantly - this is just me having a try at fixing a problem and sharing my attempt at a solution. It's still the authors work and his credit and it's use at your own risk. I did update the files in the mod with the latest from the game and made an attempt at patching what I thought needed patching. I'm not the author so may well have missed something important. However, so far it is working for me. Hope it helps someone.

Dynamic Effects and Units.7zip 16.5 kB · 47 downloads

 

As for this one I'm not getting it to work either, Folder structure looks correct I think, and getting errors like in this pic below in quick mission normal flight

[T_O_A_D]

Here is pic of folder structure

[Stonehouse]

Try this. Note effects are quite sparse and 99% of units are switched off. Takes a little while for smoke etc to appear. Also deliberately they are always in the distance.

low Effects plus Units.7zip

Edited July 22, 2021 by Stonehouse

[Pea_Shooter]

I agree with micheald308... I would love, Love, LOVE! this mod but the zip file is completely useless to me.... I cannot assess the hierarchy of its contents in relation to my existing installation. Someone please help. A JSGME .zip would be awesome... (with notification of: 'delete this or that file before installation') I do love this flight sim....

Edited August 13, 2021 by Pea_Shooter

[Stonehouse]

The zip file I posted is set up for jsgme, in fact that is exactly how I use it...so a bit puzzled as to what you want? 

[Pea_Shooter]

Thank you, Stonehouse. I had no idea yours was JSGME friendly!

[Stonehouse]

The dev team updated some of the ships files in a recent patch. I didn't notice as I rarely use the Kuban map where most of the ship action happens but yesterday I ran into some errors as a result. I've done an update to my personal version of the mod but have not really had time to test it much. Since I published my personal version a few posts up and I know a few people are using it I'm now publishing the updated version as a courtesy. I'm not sure how much support I will be able to give as real life is pretty flat out right now. That said I like using the mod so likely I will eventually fix any problems if I can.

 

 

low Effects plus Units.7zip

Edited October 22, 2021 by Stonehouse

[sonicviz]

HI, 

 

Thanks for this. Just started trying out some mods and get a conflict with this and https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/69862-weapons-mod/

with error

Folder "data\LuaScripts\WorldObjects" has already been added by the "Weapons Mod&Tracer Mod JSGME" mod.
 

Can you use the two together?

 

Not sure if the weapons mod still works with latest version of IL2 anyway. 

Edited November 8, 2021 by sonicviz

[Stonehouse]

WorldObjects is a folder not a file so all ok. Could be wrong as I don't use the weapon mod anymore since the dev's revisited the 50 cals a couple of patches ago but I don't recall a conflict at the file level either.