Couple of tips, tweaks, fixes, call them whatever you want.

[65olschool]

I have been testing some IJN ships for Thudman and hadn't realised till just this week the sound files used for the main guns that are called for by the SoundName statement in the XXX_gun.xdp files didnt work, the guns fired no problem but no sound.

So I did a little digging through a process of elimination I found the below entry in the sounds.xml
<c5in>
<no_damage>
<sound file="gun_naval5in.wav" Looping="No"/>
</no_damage>
</c5in>
<c16in>
<no_damage>
<sound file="gun_naval16in.wav" Looping="No"/>
</no_damage>
</c16in>
<c8in>
<no_damage>
<sound file="gun_naval8in.wav" Looping="No"/>
</no_damage>
</c8in>

The next thing I noticed was the other entrys that used the "<no_damage> </no_damage>" are all guns used in aircraft but all the land based guns didnt use that line, so I changed it to -
<c5in>
<sound file="gun_naval5in.wav" Looping="No"/>
</c5in>
<c16in>
<sound file="gun_naval16in.wav" Looping="No"/>
</c16in>
<c8in>
<sound file="gun_naval8in.wav" Looping="No"/>
</c8in>

After doing that change I could hear the guns fire, so if you want the main guns sound work remove the <no_damage> </no_damage> lines as shown above.
Its not important in the whole scheme of things for a aircraft simulator/game but its nice to have that sound working.

Its an easy fix but as ever before making changes make a copy of the original sounds.xml file so you can go back if something goes wrong.

 

[65olschool]

The next thing I've found is in regards to Corrado La Posta excellent TBM (TBF or TARPOON) Avenger.
If you find the AI pilots dont drop torpedos from the internal bay and they just continue to overfly the ship the reason is in the XDP file

In the first line in the loadouts section this statement will be found -
<Loadouts InternalPylons="7">
If you change the "7" to a "0"
<Loadouts InternalPylons="0">
The torps will be released as normal.

I found that some variations of this aircraft have the correct entries, for example "RS_tbmn_ent_45" from Rising Sun addon has the <Loadouts InternalPylons="0"> and drops torpedo's when required, and other TBM's dont have this line at all yet they work fine. Dont change these!!!

The files I originally got from Corrado's site way back and the ones from the original AvHistory site have the incorrect entry <Loadouts InternalPylons="7"> and wont drop torps,

Its another easy fix but as ever before making changes make a copy of the original XDP so you can go back if something goes wrong.

 

[65olschool]

Maybe somebody with bigger brains than me can explain why both those things worked to fix some small annoying issues