DRAFT Extract From FME Manual - Create a Sequence of Singleplayer Missions (Scripted Campaign)

[JimTM]

Here's a zip containing the procedure for creating a scripted campaign, some sample files that you can use to create your campaigns, and a simple demo campaign. See the readme.txt file for installation details.

FME Manual - Create a Sequence of Singleplayer Missions.zip

 

Note, I don't have Adobe Flash, so I could not test the procedure for creating a "tactical overlay" (optional), on pg. 41. If someone with the software could try it out and let me know if the procedure is valid, I would be grateful.

 

Thanks to Han for posting the details on campaigns in Dev Diary 142.

 

Also, many thanks to Gambit21 for reviewing the doc.

 

Enjoy!

Edited April 7, 2019 by JimTM

[GAE_YaniBarto]

hi, is this still supported currently?

[Gambit21]

12 minutes ago, GAE_YaniBarto said:

hi, is this still supported currently?

 

?

 

[Jaegermeister]

On 2/6/2021 at 4:19 PM, GAE_YaniBarto said:

hi, is this still supported currently?

 

Hola! Yes, all of the Scripted Campaigns on the forum and in the game were made that way.

 

The Flash Player overlays still work as well. They are "supported" in the game if you can figure it out and have the software. I believe @BlackSix uses them for his campaigns. I'm not that far advanced unfortunately.

[Gambit21]

I have Flash, and couldn’t make it work.

Mind you I’ve been using Photoshop, Illustrator, and other far more complex apps (3D) for years so I’m no dunce in this area, but couldn’t get the vector/map stuff to work to save my life.

 

I deemed it a waste of time and moved on.

[HBB*Hunger]

Is it confirmed, that the usage of flash overlays is restricted to campaigns and qmb? I wish I could get it to work with coops somehow.

[Thad]

On 4/6/2019 at 11:27 PM, JimTM said:

Here's a zip containing the procedure for creating a scripted campaign, some sample files that you can use to create your campaigns, and a simple demo campaign. See the readme.txt file for installation details.

FME Manual - Create a Sequence of Singleplayer Missions.zip 1.39 MB · 152 downloads

 

Note, I don't have Adobe Flash, so I could not test the procedure for creating a "tactical overlay" (optional), on pg. 41. If someone with the software could try it out and let me know if the procedure is valid, I would be grateful.

 

Thanks to Han for posting the details on campaigns in Dev Diary 142.

 

Also, many thanks to Gambit21 for reviewing the doc.

 

Enjoy!

 

Jim.... I don't care what the bulk of the community thinks or feels about you. You are a great guy in my book. ?

[JimTM]

19 minutes ago, Thad said:

 

Jim.... I don't care what the bulk of the community thinks or feels about you. You are a great guy in my book. ?

 

You have a book? Where can I download it? Is it up-to-date unlike other books?   

 

Thanks!  

[HBB*Hunger]

No news regarding the flash format?

[JimTM]

6 hours ago, HBB*Hunger said:

No news regarding the flash format?

 

I don't have Flash so I can't test the restrictions you asked about.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

20 hours ago, HBB*Hunger said:

Is it confirmed, that the usage of flash overlays is restricted to campaigns and qmb? I wish I could get it to work with coops somehow.

AFAIK, yes, it only works with careers and campaigns. But I never really tried to get it to work with a single mission.

[HBB*Hunger]

I tried almost everything.. couldn't get it to work for coop missions which is an absolute shame. Suche a great possibility so heavily restricted...

[Jaegermeister]

I have looked into it. The devs have a utility built into the program to make it work, that’s why others have issues getting it to function. I would suggest you move on to other things. If you spend enough time with it, you can create nice front lines and labels with the normal ME icons and markers.

[HBB*Hunger]

4 hours ago, Jaegermeister said:

I have looked into it. The devs have a utility built into the program to make it work, that’s why others have issues getting it to function. I would suggest you move on to other things. If you spend enough time with it, you can create nice front lines and labels with the normal ME icons and markers.

 Thats what I did for almost three years now, but you will seriously never reach the overall quality of a drawn image overlay. Thats why I was trying to get it to work. 

[AEthelraedUnraed]

21 hours ago, Jaegermeister said:

I have looked into it. The devs have a utility built into the program to make it work, that’s why others have issues getting it to function. I would suggest you move on to other things. If you spend enough time with it, you can create nice front lines and labels with the normal ME icons and markers.

It's actually incredibly easy to get custom overlays to work. Thing is, you can only add them to campaign missions....

[Jaegermeister]

5 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

It's actually incredibly easy to get custom overlays to work. Thing is, you can only add them to campaign missions....

 

Glad you know how to do it, you are welcome to share if it's so incredibly easy.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

5 hours ago, Jaegermeister said:

Glad you know how to do it, you are welcome to share if it's so incredibly easy.

Alright then. It's a bit many steps, but I've described literally every action you need to take, and you'll find that it's in fact quite easy. This method has never failed me yet.

 

First, you'll need a program to modify flash files. I use the freeware JPEXS Free Flash Decompiler, though there may be other solutions. Then, naturally, you'll need a program to edit SVG files. I use the freeware Inkscape. Adobe has Illustrator, but as with all Adobe products, they are heavily overpriced and only worth the price if you're a professional. The following steps are done using JPEXS and Inkscape.

 

1) It's easiest to start out with an existing .tactics file. Most are located inside Swf.gtp. After exporting, you'll find the files inside the data\(null)\swf\il2\mapstactics\ folder.

2) Open one of the files using JPEXS (remember to search for all file types (*.*) or it won't see them). You'll find the frontline file embedded as [0].Shapes.DefineShape2. Click it to see a preview on the right hand side.

3) Right-click this DefineShape2, click Export Selection, select the SVG shape type and press OK. Select a folder where you want to export the files, and click Open. You'll find the exported files in this folder, under the shapes subdirectory.

4) Open the exported shapes\1.svg file using Inkscape. Edit it like any other SVG file (outside the scope of this tutorial; SVG is a widely supported format and there are countless of excellent tutorials online about both Inkscape and SVG in general).

5) Save your edits. Best practices for your final svg file are to only use fills and no strokes, convert any special effects (hatching and stuff) to paths, and to merge any touching or overlapping objects. It'll work regardless, but I found this gives the most consistent results. Also, take into account that IL2 adds some transparency to every object, even if they are opaque.

6) Back to JPEXS. Again right-click DefineShape2, but now click Replace... Select your modified .svg file and click Open. You'll find the preview on the right now shows your updated file.

7) Click Save as... in the top bar of JPEXS and save it to an .swf file of your choice (e.g. temp.swf).

8 ) Move this file (temp.swf) to your campaign's folder. Next we need to rename it. The naming depends on the in-game colour settings (Red enemy/Blue friendly or Red Soviet/Blue German) of the player. In order to support both options, you should ideally make two versions with swapped colours, or if you're lazy (like me), just duplicate the file. Rename the two versions to [missionname].coalition=1.tactics and [missionname].coalition=2.tactics. So, if your campaign mission is called 01.mis, you'll need 01.coalition=1.tactics and 01.coalition=2.tactics.

9) Boot up the game and drool in awe of your beautiful front lines.

Edited January 23, 2022 by AEthelraedUnraed

[JimTM]

Thanks very much for the explanation @AEthelraedUnraed.

 

Can I assume that you could start on step 4 by creating an SVG drawing from scratch rather than using an existing one from IL-2?

Edited January 22, 2022 by JimTM

[AEthelraedUnraed]

24 minutes ago, JimTM said:

Thanks very much for the explanation @AEthelraedUnraed.

 

Can I assume that you could start on step 4 by creating an SVG drawing from scratch rather than using an existing one from IL-2?

Absolutely. But your SVG canvas needs to be exactly the right size, or the layout will be offset. You can either dig deep into the map files and figure out the size yourself, or export one of the existing tactics files and simply delete everything from it.

 

Oh, and I've noticed that the tactics files include an object at its upper left and bottom right corners (but outside of the area that's drawn in-game). Perhaps the game uses this for outlining as well, although I'm not sure. Best keep it to be sure.

 

Also, you should probably use some kind of a map image inside your SVG editing software. You can save the background from https://il2missionplanner.link/ or a similar site, or convert it from the source files yourself. In the latter case, it'll be outlined perfectly if you simply scale it to the svg size; in the former case you'll likely have to do some manual scaling and moving.

[HBB*Hunger]

19 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Alright then. It's a bit many steps, but I've described literally every action you need to take, and you'll find that it's in fact quite easy. This method has never failed me yet.

 

First, you'll need a program to modify flash files. I use the freeware JPEXS Free Flash Decompiler, though there may be other solutions. Then, naturally, you'll need a program to edit SVG files. I use the freeware Inkscape. Adobe has Illustrator, but as with all Adobe products, they are heavily overpriced and only worth the price if you're a professional. The following steps are done using JPEXS and Inkscape.

 

1) It's easiest to start out with an existing .tactics file. Most are located inside Swf.gtp. After exporting, you'll find the files inside the data\(null)\swf\il2\mapstactics\ folder.

2) Open one of the files using JPEXS (remember to search for all file types (*.*) or it won't see them). You'll find the frontline file embedded as [0].Shapes.DefineShape2. Click it to see a preview on the right hand side.

3) Right-click this DefineShape2, click Export Selection, select the SVG shape type and press OK. Select a folder where you want to export the files, and click Open. You'll find the exported files in this folder, under the shapes subdirectory.

4) Open the exported shapes\1.svg file using Inkscape. Edit it like any other SVG file (outside the scope of this tutorial; SVG is a widely supported format and there are countless of excellent tutorials online about both Inkscape and SVG in general).

5) Save your edits. Best practices for your final svg file are to only use fills and no strokes, convert any special effects (hatching and stuff) to paths, and to merge any touching or overlapping objects. It'll work regardless, but I found this gives the most consistent results. Also, take into account that IL2 adds some transparency to every object, even if they are opaque.

6) Back to JPEXS. Again right-click DefineShape2, but now click Replace... Select your modified .svg file and click Open. You'll find the preview on the right now shows your updated file.

7) Click Save as... in the top bar of JPEXS and save it to an .swf file of your choice (e.g. temp.swf).

8 ) Move this file (temp.swf) to your campaign's folder. Next we need to rename it. The naming depends on the in-game colour settings (Red enemy/Blue friendly or Red Soviet/Blue German) of the player. In order to support both options, you should ideally make two versions with swapped colours, or if you're lazy (like me), just duplicate the file. Rename the two versions to [missionname].coalition=1.tactics and [missionname].coalition=2.tactics. So, if your campaign mission is called 01.mis, you'll need 01.coalition=1.tactics and 01.coalition=2.tactics.

9) Boot up the game and drool in awe of your beautiful front lines.

 

Jep, thats exactly the way I did it with my singleplayer campaign tryouts. Pretty solid and easy. BUT thats what makes it even more annoying that this kind of feature is only available for campaigns and careers. 

 

 

Edited January 23, 2022 by HBB*Hunger

[Jaegermeister]

@AEthelraedUnraed, thank you for taking the time to write up that description of the process. Although I don’t foresee using it myself, I have been curious as to how it’s done. I know it takes time to share your knowledge with the rest of us.

 

Like most things, it’s only easy if you know how to do it.