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editing facilities

K

KellyB

Charter Member
Is there a way to pull up a facility, such as Rail_marshalling_small1, to be able to see where the buildings and other objects are actually placed?

I can get the mos up in GMAX ok, but don't see if there is a way to overlay the xml data on top of it.

I have looked at PatPattle's guide to airfield construction and I sort of have a handle on that and how it exports to xml, but don't see if importing the xml from an existing facility is possible.
 
yes, there is a tool for this somewhere but if I remember well, it was on Korean Air War site. Maybe someone have it.
 
I think it is the CFS3 Editor - someone correct me if I am wrong. It's about 3,1 Mb and I can send it to you through email. If you want it, send me your emailadress through a PM.

If you can tell me with what purpose you want to 'reverse engineer' a facility, we might be able to help you in other ways. Because there is also another way: create dummy blocks in gMax about the size of the items they are representing and place them at the coordinates taken from the .xml. It takes lot of time but gives you a lot of experience in making your own facilities from scratch. There were two tutorials around explaining how to create a facility in gmax using the basic underlying texture and dummy blocks etc. on the GroundCrew website by Mathias. I think Pat Pattle also has a tut lying around with ACC knowledge on the subject.

Let us know how we can help!
 
I dug around in my Korean Skies install, and actually found it! Once LZ mentioned it, I recalled mention of it somewhere back in the dark vault of my memory.

What started me was O-1 Driver's tips on how to use vehicle, tank, naval mines and bomb explosions in missions. I have been successful in using them against ships and vehicles, and then set out to have the bomb explosions destroy a target. The one I picked was rail_marshalling_small1.xml, and put a lot of bomb explosions on top of it. The bombs go off, the target looks really destroyed, but the goal remains at 100%. Even if I tell it that 5% of damage is enough.

So I copied the mission over, and placed a different facility in as the target (industrial_factory_small.xml) and the mission goal resolves as soon as I start it. Much more like what I expected with the rail yard which shows no results at all.

So, I just wanted to peek inside the files and see if I could see an obvious reason for the difference in behavior between the two targets, and thought a visualization of what the xml describes would be useful. I can now make a dupe set of the files and start eliminating variables till I find what remains, and as we all know from Sherlock, however improbable what remains might be, it must be the truth!

I also haven't tried other more nearly similar targets to see what results there are. That's kind of my next step.

Mostly I'm tinkering which might someday lead to understanding.

Tips are always welcome. Don't be afraid of insulting my intelligence. I understand computers pretty well, but the intricacies of how cfs3 is put together often elude me
 
AHA

I've discovered something; I just don't know what yet.

I simply changed the target from rail_marshalling_small1.xml to rail_marshalling_small2 and it works as advertised. The target is destroyed at 10% and the goal is resolved.

So that suggests something is perhaps strange with the first target, since two other facilities go down to destruction as planned.

I'm off to compare the two facilities and see if I can find anything that would harden the first target even though visually it appears utterly flattened.

Hmmmmmm
 
Winmerge

Hi KellyB,
if you want to compare two facility files to spot the differences, you could try winmerge. This software will compare text editable files and highlight differences, and arrays the two files side by side. Hence both the rail marshalling facilities could be quickly compared to see if there are any obvious differences which might effect the damage settings.

HTH,
D
 
Daiwilletti said:
Hi KellyB,
if you want to compare two facility files to spot the differences, you could try winmerge. This software will compare text editable files and highlight differences, and arrays the two files side by side. Hence both the rail marshalling facilities could be quickly compared to see if there are any obvious differences which might effect the damage settings.

HTH,
D
Click to expand...

Just downloaded it and opened it up quickly. This is a cool tool!! Thanks for the tip!:salute:
 
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