moving vehicles in airbases

Pat Pattle said:
It's dead easy to add the paths (splines) in Gmax if you have the airfield source though you could do it in gmax by creating a plane of the same size as the facility and creating bmp of the dds file to texture it. The other way would be via the CFS3 facility editor.

There's only 4 paths here James, 1 taxiing, 2 trucks and 1 personnel (b_troopers). You can place vehicle(s) on any point of the path so those crew tucks are all travelling on the same path. The path by the hangars is a figure 8 so you get the impression of vehicles in all directions!

The crew truck is already in ETO and BoB (without the crew) - ACC_Thorneycroft_truck - I'll inlcude this new version in with the upload. The viewing vehicle is a driveable Albion tanker I've made. I really ought to get this stuff up and off my HD!
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I will check it out when you put it up. I didn't even know we had moving personnel!

BTW I don't find either b_troopers or ACC_Thorneycroft_truck in any of my 8 or so installs!
 
Pat Pattle said:
Looking forward to seeing what you can conjour up David! :)

This is the result so far, a nice busy airfield scene. The frame rates aren't too good but thats more to do with Fraps than anything else, it's much smoother without it.

I now have kind permission from Mathias to make a taxiing Lancaster as well. I'll bundle all this lot up soon and upload it.
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Hi Clive,
I had a helluva job getting spawns to trigger because I didn't follow my own advice to start off with proven spawn sets. I just tried to bung in something along the lines of the attempted taxiing spawns. I don't have the skills to do that sadly :isadizzy:.

The other thing that threw me off is I remembered that in the standard Railyard facility files, the spawn reference is made under the FLAGS section in the header ie. Flags="israilyard,spawnsRailTraffic". So I started to try and include the spawn reference in the Flags label.

But success has been to use the separate entry as originally mentioned:

Spawns="cap.spawns" in the first entries of the ACC_Scampton facility file. Attached some screenies, I had cap spawns set up so that two separate sets of bombers spawned this time. Note the purple indicator on the TAC - thats because CAP spawns have mission goals etc for campaign missions!
Amazing how much time this all sucks up - I still haven't gotten any takeoff spawns to work.

View attachment 86401 View attachment 86402

Once I've found some reliable takeoff spawns I'll try 'em in the Scampton airbase facility file.

Love your working airbase!!
 
This is great David, the airbases are pretty sterile so any activity is most welcome. Would love to have the odd trainer doing bumps or aircraft landing etc.

edit: have tried adding the lines as you say but am getting nothing David, can you paste the line(s) here so I can have a go too please?
I noticed there are take off spawns in the ETO install. I've opened some files in the MB, it's a whole area of the game I've never delved into.
 
Pat Pattle said:
This is great David, the airbases are pretty sterile so any activity is most welcome. Would love to have the odd trainer doing bumps or aircraft landing etc.

edit: have tried adding the lines as you say but am getting nothing David, can you paste the line(s) here so I can have a go too please?
I noticed there are take off spawns in the ETO install. I've opened some files in the MB, it's a whole area of the game I've never delved into.
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Well I'm not sure if its just the facility file, Clive.

Here is the facility file header line:

<Facility Type="RAF Scampton" Flags="isAirbase" Spawns="cap.spawns" OuterDistance="10001">

Here is the frontend.xml (just in case its influential somehow, particularly for UI spawns):

<Params Version="3.0" Directive="intercept" Country="USA" Airbase="fowe66" TotalGoals="3" Aircraft="P-47D-25" Date="6/6/1944" Time="11:25" CanSpawn="Yes" Weather="ScatteredClouds2Low.xml"/>

Here is my cap.spawns file (IIRC this is totally stock but can't vouch for the actual xml spawn files):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<SpawnControl Stop="n" Priority="1000">
<Spawns Roll="1D5">
<Spawn ID="1" FormationType="cap_air_eub"/>
<Spawn ID="2" FormationType="cap_air_eub1"/>
<Spawn ID="3" FormationType="cap_air_eub2"/>
<Spawn ID="4" FormationType="cap_air_eeb"/>
<Spawn ID="5" FormationType="cap_air_eefb"/>
</Spawns>
</SpawnControl>

Several of the xml cap files are stock. So if you are testing the Scampton airbase in Era 3 ETO, remember to select stock spawns.

Also as mentioned from game.xml file:

<General MaxBullets="120" PlayerInAIMode="false" CanExpandFacilities="true" CanSpawnFormations="true"

Really some of the above shouldn't be of influence. Just need the spawns entry in the facility.xml file, and the working spawns. Other stuff may help aircraft appear in the frontend and UI. I often get bombers attacking my airfield in other installs where this is set up.

NB: Presumably the spawned air formations that appear in the UI/frontend are generated by the air.spawns file, not by the spawns called for by the airbase facility file. The spawns referenced in the airbase facility file appear in missions: either scripted missions or campaign missions.

Now I need to find some working takeoff spawns.....
 
Thanks David, got it working! I think the trigger is adding canspawn=yes to the frontend.xml. My install didn't have this entry. It only works in missions though as you say, not in QC.

I tried a number of spawns but only some work. cap and fjets do and most important when I used the fragging spawn I had a/c taking off :)
Can you replicate this?

:salute:
 
Well thats good news! With spawned aircraft taking off, Scampton is going to be very busy :icon_lol:. Do they get in the way of the taxiing Halifaxes?

I'll try to get a look at the fragging jets spawns later today. Still want to try to get the spawned planes to taxi, rather than takeoff.
 
Pat Pattle said:
I tried a number of spawns but only some work. cap and fjets do and most important when I used the fragging spawn I had a/c taking off :)
Can you replicate this?

:salute:
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Hi Clive, I've sunk a bit of time into this and still haven't widened the net of workingspawns. The annoying thing is that once I had an install where every airbase facility had a spawn attached to it.

I'm not sure what the fragging spawn is? Is it ETO 1.40?

On your Scampton package, I amended the Halifax_taxi xdp from heavy armour because all the squeaking and clanking as they taxiied past annoyed me. Then I tried to get innovative and wrote an effect to get the ai_bomber sound - followed faithfully a formula where the fx_aibomber is triggered at taxiing speed, but have not been successful as yet. It would be great to have the taxiing aircraft come with proper sounds.

Did you think of adding cap spawns to some of your British airbases in Southern England, for your BoB update? I could do some prototype ones if you like. Which airfields had heavy attention from German bombers?

:icon29:
 
I'm not sure what the fragging spawn is? Is it ETO 1.40?
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It's a stock one.

It would be great to have the taxiing aircraft come with proper sounds.
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Yes that ones eluding me too at the moment, I think its a coded thing.

Did you think of adding cap spawns to some of your British airbases in Southern England, for your BoB update? I could do some prototype ones if you like. Which airfields had heavy attention from German bombers?
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Yes I had a go at getting some Spits taking off and buzzing around Biggin Hill. Have been sidetracked by all those lovely Alphasim models at the moment but some attacking bombers would be good, Lympne and Manston and Hawkinge all got plastered but then again all the southern bases did!
 
Doesn't matter, just make sure you don't put it in the middle of an existing effect. If you aren't sure, directly above the last line "</SoundDescriptions>" will do.
 
I must have missed something,but is it possible to have tis working in QC?​
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No, there's something coded into cfs3 methinks. If you start in the air in qc you'll see the animation but not from a runway start.
Would love to be shown differently!
 
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