I Could Use Some Help

[DetCord12B]

I'm currently developing a complete overhaul modification for Bodenplatte in partnership with @Tom_Weiss currently titled War in the West. I've been altering the campaign, adding squadrons and more importantly, adding airframes (bombers) like the A-20 to the RAF/USAAF and the Ju-88 to the Luftwaffe. The problem I'm having right now are the crew models, being that both aircraft have the wrong ones. The A-20 has the default Soviet models and the Ju-88/He-111 have the default early war models.

 

Again, I could really use some help here. I've spent a ridiculous amount of time (months) altering files, creating custom squadrons, assigning mission sets, assigning AI paths, creating unit and gfx art, etc, that I'd hate to put it on hold for the sake of what could be a simple fix. If anyone can help out here I'd be eternally grateful, and would grant that person early-access as it were.

 

Proof of Concept WIP - War in the West custom squadrons

 

 

Edited February 19, 2020 by DetCord12B

[LizLemon]

What is it you want to do exactly? Change the pilot/crew models visible in the aircraft?

 

If so what you want to look at would be LuaScripts/WorldObjects/Bots/BotPilot_A20B.txt for example. Near the start of that file you'll find "VisualImage=2,"graphics/characters/Pilot_A20B/Pilot_A20B_%s.mgm",true" - change that line to point to the 3d model of the pilot you want instead. Or you could just copy/past the model of the pilot you want into that 3d model folder and name it the same as the model you are replacing,

[DetCord12B]

13 minutes ago, LizLemon said:

What is it you want to do exactly? Change the pilot/crew models visible in the aircraft?

 

If so what you want to look at would be LuaScripts/WorldObjects/Bots/BotPilot_A20B.txt for example. Near the start of that file you'll find "VisualImage=2,"graphics/characters/Pilot_A20B/Pilot_A20B_%s.mgm",true" - change that line to point to the 3d model of the pilot you want instead. Or you could just copy/past the model of the pilot you want into that 3d model folder and name it the same as the model you are replacing,

 

Thank you so much for responding, Liz! I bloody well owe you, if it works. Which I'm sure it will.

 

To answer your question, yes, my intention is to change the A-20 and Ju-88 crews from the default Soviet and early war Luftwaffe models to the Bodenplatte USAAF/RAF and Luftwaffe crew models. I'll give this a try tomorrow via testing and report back. If all goes as planned, I'll shoot you a early copy of War in the West.

 

Again, thank you very, very much.   

[LizLemon]

There might be some issues with the animations. I'm not entirely sure how that works yet but the models have varying degrees of rigging. You may have to change the textures instead for some of the positions. Most textures used by those planes crew will be in textures/common. You can use a hex editor to rename the textures the 3d models use so you wont have an issue of russian yak pilots in british uniforms.

[DetCord12B]

13 minutes ago, LizLemon said:

There might be some issues with the animations. I'm not entirely sure how that works yet but the models have varying degrees of rigging. You may have to change the textures instead for some of the positions. Most textures used by those planes crew will be in textures/common. You can use a hex editor to rename the textures the 3d models use so you wont have an issue of russian yak pilots in british uniforms.

 

No worries. I'll work through it.

 

Check your PM's for a EA link.

[LizLemon]

Yeah, there is an animation issue.

 

Newer crew models have two lines for animation while older ones have just a single animator. Duplicating the new animation lines fixes the pilot, sorta

 

But doesn't work for the rear gunners

 

Animation seems to have changed considerably for BoBP so unless I can figure this out, which is really unlikely, just changing textures would be the most fool-proof fix. You can also do something similar to this with armament to give the A-20 correct british bombs.

[DetCord12B]

On 2/18/2020 at 11:41 PM, LizLemon said:

Yeah, there is an animation issue.

 

Newer crew models have two lines for animation while older ones have just a single animator. Duplicating the new animation lines fixes the pilot, sorta

 

But doesn't work for the rear gunners

 

Animation seems to have changed considerably for BoBP so unless I can figure this out, which is really unlikely, just changing textures would be the most fool-proof fix. You can also do something similar to this with armament to give the A-20 correct british bombs.

 

Well, thanks for taking the time to check it out. By changing the textures I assume you mean retexturing them?

 

Any pointers on the armament aspect with regards to the files that need altering?

[LizLemon]

Yea, re-texturing the crew the A-20 uses by default is probably the only way to get the correct animations and positions. You could try some of the other pilot models and see if they work first. I only tried the RAF B-25 models.

 

 

Changing armament is kinda similar. Look at the planes file in luascripts/worldobjects/planes - there will be entries for each weapon loadout. You can't edit this file though as its one of the few files that will spit out errors if any change is made to it. 

 

In the case of the A-20 there are entries like;

Bomb0=8, "LuaScripts/WorldObjects/Ballistics/Bombs/BOMB_RUS_FAB100M.txt"
Bomb1=9, "LuaScripts/WorldObjects/Ballistics/Bombs/BOMB_RUS_FAB100M.txt"

 

If you then open up those files you can either change the 3d model to be like the british bomb you want to use instead or you can copy one of the british bombs and rename it to Bomb_rus_.........

 

But there may be issues with this. For starters any other aircraft that uses a FAB100M will then have you british bomb instead. That may not be an issue for a western front mod. A more serious problem is the british bomb having a different attachment point than the FAB100. I don't actually know if that would be the case but it has happened when I messed around with torpedoes. 

 

You'd also have to edit a few other files to have the GUI match up with the new loadouts. That shouldn't be hard but I havent tried it yet.

[DetCord12B]

1 hour ago, LizLemon said:

Yea, re-texturing the crew the A-20 uses by default is probably the only way to get the correct animations and positions. You could try some of the other pilot models and see if they work first. I only tried the RAF B-25 models.

 

 

Changing armament is kinda similar. Look at the planes file in luascripts/worldobjects/planes - there will be entries for each weapon loadout. You can't edit this file though as its one of the few files that will spit out errors if any change is made to it. 

 

In the case of the A-20 there are entries like;

Bomb0=8, "LuaScripts/WorldObjects/Ballistics/Bombs/BOMB_RUS_FAB100M.txt"
Bomb1=9, "LuaScripts/WorldObjects/Ballistics/Bombs/BOMB_RUS_FAB100M.txt"

 

If you then open up those files you can either change the 3d model to be like the british bomb you want to use instead or you can copy one of the british bombs and rename it to Bomb_rus_.........

 

But there may be issues with this. For starters any other aircraft that uses a FAB100M will then have you british bomb instead. That may not be an issue for a western front mod. A more serious problem is the british bomb having a different attachment point than the FAB100. I don't actually know if that would be the case but it has happened when I messed around with torpedoes. 

 

You'd also have to edit a few other files to have the GUI match up with the new loadouts. That shouldn't be hard but I havent tried it yet.

 

I've done a few retex mods for the Luftwaffe and Soviet pilots. Unfortunately however, slapping an new coat of paint on the Soviet pilot won't fix the missing life vest, flight helmet, 02 mask etc, as those are parts of the RAF/USAAF models. Unless of course you were mentioning another method as opposed to Photoshopping the DDS files?

 

I'll take a look at the armament cfg's and see if I can figure it out. Though I pretty overwhelmed trying to do all of this on my own. Thankfully @Tom_Weiss is helping me out on the RAF/USAAF liveries.

[LizLemon]

Swapping the pilot models works, but the animations dont. You can try the crew models for aircraft other than the B-25, some of them may work instead. I'll try mucking around with it more over the weekend.

 

Here is a simple mod for the A-20 that swaps the FAB-100 with the british GP 250 and the FAB-250 with the US GP 500. I have no idea if this is the right kinda loadout for the A-20 in that time frame, but you'll be limited to changing things to those 2 russian bombs only. There is also the problem that any aircraft that uses those FAB bombs will also have their bombs swapped, probably not much of an issue focused on the western front though.

 

There is one issue with it, which is the 500lb bombs on the wings are a bit too far back. I can probably fix this.

 

The bombs in the bay look right though

bomb swap a20.zip

[DetCord12B]

17 hours ago, LizLemon said:

Swapping the pilot models works, but the animations dont. You can try the crew models for aircraft other than the B-25, some of them may work instead. I'll try mucking around with it more over the weekend.

 

Here is a simple mod for the A-20 that swaps the FAB-100 with the british GP 250 and the FAB-250 with the US GP 500. I have no idea if this is the right kinda loadout for the A-20 in that time frame, but you'll be limited to changing things to those 2 russian bombs only. There is also the problem that any aircraft that uses those FAB bombs will also have their bombs swapped, probably not much of an issue focused on the western front though.

 

There is one issue with it, which is the 500lb bombs on the wings are a bit too far back. I can probably fix this.

 

The bombs in the bay look right though

bomb swap a20.zip 8.73 kB · 1 download

 

I'll take a look at the historical armament for the A-20 to see what it's typical loadouts were, though they varied per mission. 

 

If you're interested in joining the myself and Tom working on this let me know. Tom's busy with all of the RAF/USAAF liveries so that leaves myself to figure things out and as you can tell, I'm a bit lost in certain areas.

[Jason_Williams]

We will eventually have proper bomber pilots for USAAF and British bombers. They are in the schedule. They take time. Although the A-20 was meant for Kuban. It would take extra work to have them animated for the A-20. In the future we will also have the ability to swap out pilots for planes where different nationalities flew the same model or different genders like the  U-2.

 

Ya know, if someone wants to start a huge re-work of something you can write to me and tell me what you are planning and what you want to do and it can check to see what is possible so you don’t waste time or get frustrated. If something is easy to change to support your efforts I’ll look into it. 

 

Jason

[6FG_Big_Al]

1 hour ago, Jason_Williams said:

We will eventually have proper bomber pilots for USAAF and British bombers. They are in the schedule. They take time. Although the A-20 was meant for Kuban. It would take extra work to have them animated for the A-20. In the future we will also have the ability to swap out pilots for planes where different nationalities flew the same model or different genders like the  U-2.

Great news! Can we expect something like this in the distant future for the German and Russian bomber crews aswell?
And the new system, which allows changing the nationalities on the planes, is really good

[DetCord12B]

7 hours ago, Jason_Williams said:

Ya know, if someone wants to start a huge re-work of something you can write to me and tell me what you are planning and what you want to do and it can check to see what is possible so you don’t waste time or get frustrated. If something is easy to change to support your efforts I’ll look into it. 

 

Jason

 

It's easy to change and all but the animations don't align for obvious reasons, that being the new anims. Which is fine, I'd rather have a more robust and complex animation system for future titles as it increases immersion. Being that they're not backwards compatible is a huge bummer and all but it is what it is.

 

That's part of the learning process though. If it wasn't for @LizLemon I wouldn't have even known it was possible.

[LizLemon]

Adding some american/brit loadouts to teh A-20 shouldn't be that hard. It can't really be done through modding though.