New ways to have fun... prise deux

hubbabubba

hubbabubba

Charter Member
To say that I was troubled by SOH loosing my attachments in the thread New ways to have fun with CFS1 would be an understatement; I was pi$$ed-of!!!

Fortunately, I kept the original text and accompanying pictures in a folder on my PC. The only question left was "what to do with it"?

Re-installing the attachments in the original thread was technically impossible, at least for me. Re-doing the entire thread was out of the question; I have a life beside this pass time you know, and I want to keep it that way. No Dice suggested that I do it in a PDF format. This is certainly one solution, but it would mean loosing the hyper-links and the animated GIFs. It would also mean having to re-size some pictures to fit the pages.

This is why I opted for a "have your cake and keep it too" formula; HTML. This way, I could include links, pictures and animations, most of them in the original format they were made without wondering if my image server or SOH would permit it and, if so, under which reduced format and size.

It is also a very easy to read format; if you can read this thread, you can read a HTML document.

The first HTML chapter is available at the bottom of "my" page at The Free Flight Site HERE, thanks to No Dice aka Dave.

It covers posts #1 to #19 of the original thread. Chapter 1 covers "The aircraft container", "Gutting a model", "Final gutting", "Tidying-up the place", and an "ADDENDUM". At the moment of uploading, all the hyper-links were functional.

You can also read the HTML document off-line, without the benefit of the links, but with all images.

Once I have caught-up with the butchered thread, I will make new chapters when I have covered enough matter to do so. Right now, I don't know if I will have the heart to go back to that thread or simply go on with HTML version only.

This is where your input would be appreciated...
 
Great work to be studied by all.


Hubbabubba has done it again, after 100's of hours learning; he has now taken another 20 hours or so to put together an easy to follow HTML based tutorial (chapter one)


What you learn here is not just limited to cfs1 and can be applied to many of the newer flightsims.
Download it at the Free Flight Site:

http://thefreeflightsite.com/Hubbas.htm


Thank you Hubba :applause:


Dave
 
Hubbabubba,

Excellent work !!!!!!

Personally I would like to see all of these types of tutorials saved as either a PDF like Robert John, or a HTML.zip file like what you have done.
This then allows that work to be saved for future reference - very helpful when a website has issues or worse still goes into cyberspace liquidation.

Looking forward to seeing more of your work - if I can get my motivation & finances sorted out have a few projects of my own that you & your fellow builders have been a big inspiration for !!!!!

Regards, SGV
 
that goes for me, also.

i look forward to delving
into this as time permits.
...something about a 196,
that seems to take up my time.

i have taken to saving documents
in the MHTL archive format.
at the time, i thought it was the only way
to save a web page for viewing
without internet access.
apparently, i'm wrong,
in it being the only way,
but i still like the format.

______:sheep:_____
 
Thanks all for your good words, it is appreciated.

I see that No Dice beat me to it. This chapter covers post #20 to #25 from the old thread with sections about "How big is our playground?", "Automatic calculation" and "Scales". Lighter than chapter 1, it is nevertheless packed with information that are crucial for future comprehension.

Seagull V, I'm curious; is it a Supermarine Walrus that you have as an avatar?
 
Hello hubbabubba

First things first - Happy Birthday :birthday:

Secondly - downloaded your second tutorial, many thank yous !!!!!!!
Lots of gaps to be filled in the how does it work department where these tutorials are extremely helpful.

Thirdly the avatar is Supermarine Walrus HD874 at the RAAF Mueseum Point Cook.
http://www.airforce.gov.au/raafmuseum/exhibitions/tech_hang/walrus.htm

For an excellent photo walk-around go to the SeaWings Website:-
http://www.seawings.co.uk/ then click on Enter, click on Walk-Rounds, scroll down to Supermarine and click on Walrus (2)
(SeaWings has lots of interesting things to look at)

The Walrus/Seagull V (Shagbat) has always been one of my favorite aircraft - made a Matchbox model of one back in my younger days.

Regards SGV
 
Chapter 3 was just e-mailed a few minutes ago to No Dice and should be available soon.

It covers the F0 colors of the "old" coloring system, still being used by AF99.

This effectively ends the "salvation operation". From now on, material will be new.

This chapter, contrary to chapters 1 and 2, is not merely a copy/paste operation with a few alterations. It includes new pictures of better quality than what was in the original thread. This should help those interested in doing their own coloring without having to experiment with all possible combinations. It also gave me an opportunity to correct some omissions and mistakes and, this way, clarify what was a bit botched. Remember; F0 coloring was as much a discovery for me as it will be for you.

What's next?

Should I go back to "New ways to have fun with CFS1" original thread? Should I give only synopsis of the HTML version or go back to the "full monty" tutorial on-line?

I must say that I'm very tempted to stay with this thread and keep posting the arrival of a new HTML chapters with some commenting here. The work load of uploading images to a server, then posting here, is incredibly time-consuming. So, unless someone has the link to a very-easy-to-use-and-comprehensive-free image server, I think I will do just that.
 
Seagull V said:
Hello hubbabubba

First things first - Happy Birthday :birthday:

Secondly - downloaded your second tutorial, many thank yous !!!!!!!
Lots of gaps to be filled in the how does it work department where these tutorials are extremely helpful.

Thirdly the avatar is Supermarine Walrus HD874 at the RAAF Mueseum Point Cook.
http://www.airforce.gov.au/raafmuseum/exhibitions/tech_hang/walrus.htm

For an excellent photo walk-around go to the SeaWings Website:-
http://www.seawings.co.uk/ then click on Enter, click on Walk-Rounds, scroll down to Supermarine and click on Walrus (2)
(SeaWings has lots of interesting things to look at)

The Walrus/Seagull V (Shagbat) has always been one of my favorite aircraft - made a Matchbox model of one back in my younger days.

Regards SGV
Click to expand...

This explains a lot...

First; I know where you live now, give an take a few latitude/longitude degrees.
Second; It explains your pseudo...
Third; ... why you post at 4 AM...
Fourth; ... and your avatar, of course!

One of my favorite pass time is to read the Flight archives and, recently, I saw a few good articles about the Walrus, the catapulting and recuperating techniques and its jack-of-all-trades service. This one is very near my "to do" list. What can I say; I'm a softy for ugly duckling!

Great links btw!
 
Thank you No Dice for hosting my things so quickly.:ernae:

Chapter 4 is ¾ ready. Before the "attachment incident", it was already well advanced. It will cover the "old" transparency attribute 68. You may learn a thing or two in there; I know I did! Some of my preconceptions are being challenged, to say the least.

The new license I'm taking with HTML almost decided for me how things will shape-up. Some of the images in there would simply not pass the image-server/SOH rigorous limitations. So I will simply give here a synopsis, some would call it a "teaser", of the chapters. If you have questions or comments, leave them here.

Remember that the stupidest question is the one nobody ask...:kilroy:
 
No need to thank me Hubba, We thank you for the hours of work that you mass together simply to share and teach us.

Can't wait until the next release.

Cheers :salute:

Dave
 
Chapter 4 is now available at No Dice's The Free Flight Site.

For reasons that will be obvious to anyone who downloads it, posting it here would have been, to say the least, time-consuming and very challenging. But my first concern was to offer to those interested in the subject a complete palette rather than a truncated one.

Next chapter, number 5, will deal with attribute 69, the direct palette.

As, from now on, everything has to be "made from scratch", you will have to be patient. Apart from domestic chores, I would like to keep some spare time for my own CFS1 "production".
 
Wadayaknow! For once, things went easier than I expected!

I won't complain...:kilroy:

I've just sent chapter 5 to No Dice a few minutes ago. It should be available soon.
 
Chapter six. It is a brief look at RGB coloring introduced from CFS1 on.

It could have been much longer, but since I want this to be on a gentle learning curve, I kept some notions for future chapters.

Next time, we'll deal with textures.

As I realize that I've been neglecting works that have to be done on the house before winter sets in, this could take a while. And this time, I mean it!

Enjoy!
 
Thanks to you, No Dice

The chapter ends on a little practical exercise. I'm eager to see your good (or not so good) work.:jump:
 
A new instalment is available HERE. It is an addendum to chapter 7, hence numbered 7b, concerning haze files.

One of my reader, who wish to remain anonymous, pointed out to me that HAZ files are more than mere PAL files, most notably because they do contain a dynamic sets of masking colors. It is comforting to know that I have at least one reader.

On that subject; I fail to see anyone posting screen captures of his creations, as I ask in chapter 7. Don't be shy. By now, you know enough to start creating your own MDL if you're following this tutorial.

If I'm taking so long before getting chapter 8, it is because I wanted to see with my own eyes how FS95 and 98 were "reacting" to AF5 palette. Having both games in their jewel boxes, you would think it would be easy.

Not so...

It was a pure case of Murphy's Law in action. I thought, for a time, to make my peregrinations known by an a parte within the chapter, but I now think that this forum is a better place for such digression.

FS95 was bought after FS98, out of curiosity and, quite frankly, because it was cheap. But as cheap as it was, it would not install on my PC as it was detecting a more recent version of the game (duh!). At the time, I was not about to throw to the bin my perfectly working FS98 installation, with all the patches and addons, just to see "what it looked like before". So the disk went back into its jewel case and the jewel case went into my "stuff box".

I played for years with FS98, but then came CFS1. They first shared HD space, but came a point when one "had to go". Guess who went...

And now this tutorial. As I'm now into coloring and texturing, the historical aspect of the question came back to the surface and my curiosity was revived.

Since FS98 was no longer in the way, I thought, and secretly hoped, that FS95 install program would cooperate.

Well... it would not. I still had a more recent FS installed according to that French re-release. It was really starting to get on my nerves; If I wanted to install FS95 AND CFS1, it was for me to decide, not that stupid install.exe!

So I used every tricks I had in my bag; cleaning the registry of any "FS", "Simulator", and "Flight" occurrences, except those unrelated to Flight Simulators. Found many! Leftovers of precedent installations. FS95 was still resisting. Tried to install on my wife laptop but, unfortunately for me, I already had installed CFS1 and 2 and FS2K on it to test compatibility issues under Vista. It wasn't long before my FS95 installation program reminded me of all that. Then I tried to create a "phantom" C partition by renaming my CFS1 installations, it saw through me like crystal and flatly refused to accept that subterfuge.

So, rather than install, why not copy and paste? A few files renamed, displaced and, hallelujah, I had a working FS95... sorta. Only the Cessna flight from Meigs would go, but it was a start.

Then, it was FS98 turn. This time no "Sorry, I can't" message. Things were looking brighter.

But Murphy's Law was lurking at the corner. You see, both of these games are pretty buggy when "fresh", they need addons and patches... that would not install because they couldn't "find" the games. FS95 I understood; it was a "makeshift" installation. But FS98? Turns out that the game was improperly installed and had no entries... in the aforementioned registry. I had spend hours cleaning the place and now I was paying for my "cleanliness"!

The only solution, at least for FS98, was to re-install the game and hope that, this time, it would be done properly. At this point, I must tell you that my two CD reader (one is also a "burner") are quite capricious. They don't read inserted disks one time out of three and, when they do, they're very prone to dire blue-screens, frozen PC, or both. In the best cases, I simply had to reboot but, most of the time, it meant forcefully closing the game, restarting the PC, getting a message telling me that the PC had been improperly closed, and having to endure scans of various lengths. So, what I write in a few lines here was taking not hours, but days. All of that was accompanied by a few tears; some of rage, some of despair, and some of nervous laughing.

But FS98 was, finally, up, patched, and running. But not FS95.

I was in dire need of a "virgin" PC and, for once, coincidence worked in my corner. One of my wife's old friend mentioned in an impromptu conversation that she was cleaning her apartment. Among the things destined to be dropped at the curb was an old PC tower. So I asked, and obtained, first rights on that "garbage booty". She gave me the tower with "all the cables that came with it". Strangely, "all the cables" meant three PC power lines, still haven't figured that one out yet.

The tower, tucked away since last December, was too tempting not to try. So, crawling under the PC desk with that old thing, I took all the peripherals of the W98SE machine and plugged them into it, minus the speakers. Good gully! That old piece of dung is an XP machine with 32 bits color depth (the W98SE only having 24)! Even better; the previous owner was, not surprisingly, oblivious to gaming.

So FS95 was quickly installed, no question asked, patched, loaded on my USB key and, not without pain, installed bit by bit on the W98SE machine. You see, the "old" XP had USB2, while W98 only support USB1. I can tell you that they're is a world of difference between the two. I can tell you that this loot will replace the W98SE when I have the time and money to install a bigger HD (actually the only comparison in favor of the W98) and RAM sticks (both machines are on par). I will also need the hearth to let go of this one and re-install everything.

Anyway, you know now what is taking so long, and why this long-winded comedy had finally no place in the tutorial.

So, once you've stopped laughing, how about uploading a few screen captures here?:jump:
 
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