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So you downloaded In Defense of
Jorge and I thought that this page may well serve as a vehicle to answer any lingering questions about the project overall - or about the contents – or about the installation, or – you name it!
We will start off small and grow a
bit in content over the next few weeks.
We may share additional thoughts and
feelings that just didn’t seem to fit in the already rather long documentation
that accompanied the package.
Additionally, this page will serve
as a support page.
Questions are bound to crop up over
time and may be asked of us via email or alternatively, they may show up in any
of the popular Combat Flight Simulator
forums. We may choose to answer these
questions here and provide a link to this page from elsewhere. We will do our best to group the subjects and
index them with a linked table of contents if the discussion grows in scope.
But wait!
You say you haven’t downloaded the
project yet? Why didn’t you say so in
the first place?
Well then, ‘click’ on the image link
below:
O.K.
It is a relief to know that you have the project finally!
Table of Contents
How do I know I have the
latest version?
May I host the package as well?
May I install the
package to my computer wherever I see fit?
The Kittyhawk Ia 3D Modeling Considerations
Are you going to continue to
develop the Kittyhawk model?
What about those ‘teaser” images on
the JamCraft site?
The Kittyhawk Ia Flight Dynamics
Emergency
Landing Procedures
The New P-40E Panel
Fuel
Management Considerations
Fighting
the Betty and the Nell Bombers
They are
still pretty murderous. Didn’t you
adjust the damage Profile?
Campaigns and Missions
Help! I am
getting an error message!
Scenery Issues
Do you see yellow squares? No?
Why do I see them, then?
I think I may be “seeing double” at Port Moresby and
Dobodura?
May I keep my original Port Moresby and also the
new Dobodura scenery?
Let’s launch right in to a
discussion of one of the things that may turn up first. These would be questions concerning the
installation itself.
1.
There
is a rumor that RAAF_Expansion_V2b.EXE
is now up and ready for download.
Any truth to this rumor?
J&J The package has been up for a few
days now and . . .
No bug reports thus far, though
there have been a few questions raised that have been addressed here and
elsewhere.
For the few among you who may need
to upgrade from version “a” to version “b,” here is a “Do-it-yourself-kit.”
If I receive a request for an
auto-install version of the above, I’ll issue one shortly thereafter.
2.
I
understand there was a version up only for about 24 hours or so? After that, there was a version whose file
name is RAAF_Expansion_V2a.EXE for a
couple of days. What should I do if I have either
version and how do I know that I have the latest or “right” one?
J&J The previous version of the file was labeled RAAF_Expansion_V2a.EXE. The very first beta version did not have the
“a” appended to the end. There were a
couple of “bugs” reported and we temporarily “pulled” the file. RAAF_Expansion_V2b.EXE is now up! Future changes, if needed, will result in a
file appended with a later letter as in “c” or “d” if it is deemed necessary
and there will be an explanation provided right here!
If you had the beta version, please
uninstall it and download the “b” version.
This Version 2.0 installation is far
more complex than the original version 1.0 and we simply wish to be sure that
there were no other oversights.
3.
I
have the “a” version and it seems fine to me, do I really need to upgrade or
replace it?
J&J
The “a” version had two minor bugs and one problem that we had difficulty
duplicating. The guns origin point for
the Kittyhawks was off slightly (now fixed) and the editing of the country.cfg did not always update the
allegiances (now fixed.) We were left
with a condition where mission two occasionally crashed CFS2 back to the
desktop. Jorge has completely rewritten
mission two and it has passed initial QA/QC.
Thanks to Hermann (Krazy,) Peter
(GGolob) and George (CH_T-6) for good bug reports.
4.
Will
we be seeing the package appear in the usual places, such as Flightsim,
Netwings and Simviation?
J&J Nels, Jon, Pete and Doug and a few others
will be welcome to host the package this time around as they were the first
time around, but we are holding it exclusively to the Chaps and JamCraft for
about a week, just in case there are changes to be made. We don’t want to inconvenience these fine
hosts by sending them more than one release version of the file. Once it has a final stamp of approval, we
will send out the invitations.
5.
I
have a private site. May I host your
package there as well?
J&J This time around, we are going to further
restrict the number of private sites for reasons that may be obvious. We want to preserve the integrity of the
package and we want to make sure as many of the recipients “go through
channels” and get to read this FAQ page as possible. Also, if we update the package from time to
time, as is likely, we want to be certain that there are only a very small
number of places where notice and upload are necessary. So the answer is probably a very polite
“no.” We do hope you understand.
6.
I
downloaded the project, but I am a little nervous about just ‘clicking away’
and hoping for the best. Is there any
way I can see what you guys are doing to my computer before committing to the
installation?
J&J Thanks to a little nudging on the part of
Paul Hauschildt, Joe provided for the possibility of downloading the project
into a “dummy” directory. Instead of
accepting the default, you may direct the installation to any temporary
directory of file folder and examine the results after the installation
runs. This was a little tricky to
accomplish because a few files were actually edited or appended to during the
installation. What happens if they are
not there in the first place? The
installation could simply abort. What we
did though, was to provide “dummy” or temporary files for you airbases.dat, country.cfg, scenery.cfg
and mdlnames.txt to serve as
placeholders to allow you do install to this dummy installation. These placeholders will only install if your
original files are missing or if you install into a “dummy” directory. You will see appropriate messages to that
effect if you travel down this path.
7.
If
I am satisfied that the installation package is “good to go” can I use these
“dummy” files?
J&J In a word, “no.” If you are satisfied, you should go ahead and
uninstall the temporary installation using ADD/Remove
Programs first and then reinstall into one or more of your Combat Flight
Simulator 2® directories. The package should be smart enough to find at
least the first of these, but you may have more than one installation and you
may install into more than one by directing the package as appropriate.
8.
I
don’t really like your answer! I would
rather assemble the pieces and do a little editing on my own. How can I accomplish this?
J&J You are a “tough customer! You can certainly move the aircraft, gauge,
campaign, mission, objects_dp, scenedb, sound and UIRES files manually where
they belong. You will then have to edit
the four files listed above manually as well.
These files are nothing more than text initialization or “ini” files
that may be opened and edited with Notepad.
9.
How
do I edit these files? What are they
used for and why do I have to edit them?
J&J Simple question, but the answer is a little
involved. Let’s look at these files one
at a time, shall we? We’ll save the
tough one until last. This ought to be
the lengthiest and most involved issue in the FAQ.
Airbases.dat
is found within your Combat Flight Simulator 2/INFO folder.
This file is not actually needed in
this package, but eventually, you will be glad that it is there. The airbases.dat
is an index file used by Mission Builder® and it contains the starting
position and orientation of aircraft for take offs and for approaching the
runway of airbases. Mission Builder® uses this information, but so does the “M” and “I” keys while playing
the game. If you are in a mission that
uses these airbases and you ‘hit’ these keys and there are no appropriate
entries in the file, then the game could crash to the desktop.
The reason we say that these entries
are not necessary this time around is that Jorge designed truly exquisite new
scenery for the airfields or aerodromes around Port Moresby, but he does not
actually call them up or use them in the missions this time around.
So airbases.dat entries were provided by Jorge for future use and for
other third party folks to call up these new airfields. Future designers wanting to use these
airbases will not ever have to worry about the airbases.dat issue. Pretty
neat, eh?
The installation package adds 13 new
entries. Some of them are double entries
that allow two aircraft take off side by side.
The default number of entries in the game is 123. The installation package picks up where the
last entry leaves off and goes on from there.
In the case of a default installation only, this would mean entries from
124 through 136.
There is a list containing the data
for these entries in the documentation.
Look within the Combat Flight Simulator 2 ADDON/IDoA-42v2 folder.
scenery.cfg
This file is found in your Combat
Flight Simulator root directory.
This simple text file indexes your
scenery layers for you. For each new
scenery installation, there needs to be a scenery layer entry. Typically, when you install a new scenery
package, you need to manually activate the scenery layer.
Well . . .
We took the worry out of this issue
for you. We open up your scenery.cfg file and enter a few lines
of data and this has the same effect of activating the scenery, only this time,
we did the work in advance for you. The
actual entries are as follows:
[Area.015]
Title=DoA2
Local=SCENEDB\DoA2
Remote=
Active=TRUE
Required=False
Layer=15
The number “15” is merely used for
illustration. We actually parse the file
and pick the next available layer beyond that which is already there.
This file is found in your Combat
flight simulator 2 root directory.
Like the other files above, this is
another index file. In this case, mdlnames.txt contains a list of all the
peripheral weapons loadouts that appear in the game. For our purposes, we make a single entry into
this file to accommodate the U.S. 52
Gallon Drop Tank.
We sandwich the data here:
"wep_us_lightning_drop_gp"=U.S. 150 gal
Drop Tank
"wep_us_warhawk_drop_gp"=
"wep_us_corsair_drop_gp"=U.S. 175 gal Drop
Tank
Yes, you may add this manually, but
why would you want to bother to do so?
If this data were missing, then the
drop tank would show up as a choice called: “wep_us_warhawk_drop_gp. This would be far from an elegant
solution. This file is nothing more than
an alias file.
The country.cfg file is found in the Combat Flight Simulator 2 root
directory
We saved the “best” until last.
This file is very important to you;
take our word for it!
During the development of the first
version of this project, it was Jorge who discovered that the limitations of
having only four country listings, Britain, Germany, U.S.A. and Japan as
provided in the original Microsoft country.cfg
file would lead to a small disaster. If
third party developers were to willy-nilly pick their own numbers subsequently
from number five (5) on to the limit of only 19, then future work would be
negated or stepped upon by well-meaning developers who chose the same numbers
for to represent different countries.
This file is used to select the
language spoken, either English or Japanese, for each country as well as
allegiance, whether Allies or Axis and importantly, the set of “nationality
screens” called up during mission and campaign play.
You may guess at the mess if folks
started using the same number for different countries.
Jorge developed the list and
presented it to Microsoft for approval.
Eventually it was “blessed” and made part of an SDK (software developer
kit) data release.
When version 1.0 of IDoA-42 was
released, the issue was very simple.
Jorge and Joe just provided the file with the 19 country listings that
would eventually become the Microsoft standard.
So why did was it a bit vexing to
handle the file this time around?
Because the issue is no longer so
simple.
Since the early days of CFS2, other
third-party developers have used the proper designations, but they have
one-by-one appended data to this file to call up unique sets of nationality
screens or UIRES.
If Joe and Jorge simply provided the
original file this time around, the work of other developers would effectively
be disabled. Their screens would not be called by their missions and campaigns
files any longer.
So . . .
Though it caused a delay in release
of a couple of weeks, Joe, with consultation from Paul Hauschildt, was able to
effectively disassemble this file and edit it without removing any of the new
data.
One big word of warning!
If you have used a scheme that is
different from the original and you have data other than for
We think this is not very likely to
be a problem, but here it is laid out for you to consider in this FAQ.
Do you want to examine the original
reference file developed by Jorge that became the Microsoft standard? Click below to download it. It opens with Notepad.
If you know that you do not have
The Kittyhawk Ia 3D
Model Considerations.
1.
I
noticed right away
that the Version 2.0 model is more detailed than version 1.0, but there are
still some things “missing,” like visible propeller disk and landing gear in
the AI aircraft and parts aren’t flying in all directions either?
Joe
Schuftie and her sister are still FSDS-designed models that have been
animated with Aircraft Animator and SDLEdit.
I think I have brought them along as far as I can with these tools. Will I take the Kittyhawk/Warhawk family
further? Yes, given enough time.
At this point, it is possible that
Louis Sinclair will update FSDS to a version 2.0 and that he may include
provision for native animations. If this
happens, an update is assured. Most
likely, this will be version 2.5.
There are some in the community able
to do extensive manual editing with SCASM coding. I may get some help at some point? However, I may just bring the model through
gmax® and then the need for “custom”
editing will be obviated. When I do move
in this direction, there will be some notice here and elsewhere.
2. You’ve
teased us on this site with a few screen capture images of USAAC versions
of the P-40E, what can you tell us about that?
Joe
Well . . . I confess that I have
a number of other USAAC variants in my private hangar as well as a couple of
P-40K-5s and a P-40N underway. I can’t
say when these planes will fly or even if they will be available before CFS3 comes
out, but I can tell you that they will eventually be available one way or the
other.
Time marches on. Jorge and I have conceived of a project for
CFS2 some time ago even more ambitious than the present one, but CFS3 is coming
and we need to adjust our priorities to stay current with the fast-moving
technological changes.
Microsoft continues to leverage
available technology while trying very hard not to leave folks with last year’s
computers behind. It is no easy task,
but the down-side is that the third-party developer community cannot rest on
its laurels or remain too comfortable with the tools that were good enough six
months ago.
So do we continue to work on
CFS2-related matters or move on to CFS3?
We have to move on, no question about it.
I guess I may have digressed a
little, eh?
The Kittyhawk Ia
Flight Dynamics
1.
In
IDoA-42 version 1,
the P-40E could not crash-land. It is possible in version 2, I see. How do I best survive a crash-landing? And
when should I crash-land instead of jumping?
Jorge The flight dynamics scrape points have
been designed mostly considering the crash landing attitude during the run and
at rest once stopped.
To crash-land, release the drop tank
(actually this is realistic but won’t have anything to do with in CFS2, because
the drop tank has no scrape points). Approach the landing surface, flying it
barely a few feet from ground and reduce speed slowly until you contact with
ground. Do not raise or lower the nose more than appropriate to fly horizontal
over the ground. Once you touch down, throttle fully back and wait until stop.
Remember to get out of the cockpit
as CFS2 will always blow your aircraft after about 20 seconds from stopping.
Crash-landing can save your life
when you are low enough that jumping would kill you. And if you are in the
allied side of a mission you will return to fight another mission.
1. How do the fuel gauges work in the panel?
Jorge In my answer I assume that you are
flying with full realism as to fuel concerns.
The P-40E fuel system has three
gauges on the left part of the panel:
1- A fuel quantity gauge
2- A fuel tank selector
3- A low fuel warning light
The fuel quantity gauge measures the
total percentage (or fraction) of fuel onboard, without considering the drop
fuel tank capacity, that is F (full) corresponds to 149 gallons. If you are
carrying a drop tank you have 52 extra gallons, so you are carrying 201
gallons. The fuel quantity gauge will remain in F until the total fuel on board
goes below 149, where the needle will start dropping down.
The fuel selector allows you to
choose which tank you will be drawing fuel from to burn in your engine. If you
forget to switch the fuel tanks, your engine will stall and you will need to
switch immediately to a tank that has fuel (remember Lindbergh in the Spirit of
St. Louis movie?).
The fuel low warning lamp will light
when your fuel is dangerously low. If you are near your airfield do not loose
time and land immediately. If you are far from home get ready to land or
crash-land on a flat field in some valley.
Warping should take care of your
fuel selection.
2. So
how should I manage my fuel?
Upon take-off, be sure to select the
drop tank. Ranges in IDoA-42 missions are short. Over the target, release the drop tank with
Shift-3 followed by 3 and 3 again. Select a fuel tank in the fuselage. Leave
the wing tanks to return to your home airfield.
Fighting the Betty and the Nell Bombers
1. The documentation says
that the Betty has been changed to be less fire effective, but when I approach
the tail I get massacred as with the original DP. Can you explain what the DP
change is all about?
Jorge The first part of this is a little
technical. CFS2 introduced a bug that
was never fixed by Microsoft and that was the fact that the damage profile “dice
throw” can’t be changed from 1d1 no matter what you write there. Just as you would imagine, the “damage dice”
setting is supposed to control the probability or odds of causing damage from ammunition
hits. Normally, the effectiveness can be
altered by changing these settings.
So what did we did I do reduce fire
accuracy? I changed somewhat the ammo weight and restricted the gun sweep
angle.
The Betty has a tail gun. If you
place yourself right behind the tail, the Betty will be almost as effective as
it was in the original DP. The trick is to go a little bit below or to the
sides (better below). If you go a little bit above, the upper turret can catch
you!
The Nell does not have a tail gunner but has a pair of
deadly side guns aimed to the rear quarters. The best way to take out a Nell is
approaching it from the rear and below.
But if you are attacking formations, how do you approach? Manage
first the lower aircraft in formation, but take care in a Nell formation. The
side guns are aimed low.
Try this recipe and enjoy shooting down the bloody bombers!
Ah! And there is nothing you can do by changing the aircraft
type from 1 to 2 in the DP. This DP file ignores the aircraft type.
Campaigns and Missions
1.
When I start a mission, I am
getting an error message that is similar to “cant find model
aaa_gun” or similar. I
didn’t get that before installation of IDoA-42 in any of my missions, so what
happened?
J&J We are not sure why this problem has cropped
up on a few systems only now, but we do know how to cure it!
When any
new objects or scenery “bgl” files are added within the Combat Flight Simulator
2 “scenedb” directory, the game usually and automatically updates the filelist.dat
file under each category. We have tested
the package extensively on systems employing Windows 98SE, Windows Millennium
and also Windows XP operating systems, but still, there is nothing like
thousands of real-world installations to act as the final arbiter as to whether
one has achieved perfection.
If you
experience this error, you may delete the filelist.dat files located in
the Combat Flight Simulator 2/scenedb/INF/scenery folder as well as the filelist.dat
files in the scenedb/DoA2/scenery and scenedb/weapons/scenery directories.
Naturally,
be careful to only delete the files named “filelist.dat.”
Don’t
worry, when you start CFS2 again, the game is forced to rebuild these missing
files and this should prevent the error message from reoccurring. If we update the installation package, we
will do this automatically next time around.
Scenery Issues
1.
I never noticed seeing yellow squares with
fuel trucks before on some of the default airfield locations, is this part of
the IDoA-42 package?
J&J
In a word, No. The Port Moresby
and surrounding area airfields are just like the native CFS2 default
airfields. They do not have any modern
fixtures associated with them and certainly no yellow squares or refueling
boxes. The airfields do provide
rearm and refueling capability in multiplayer though, just like the default
fields.
If you are seeing yellow squares and
little green fuel trucks, most likely you have installed one of the Fuel/ADF
packages provided by other third-party developers. In all likelihood, you will have a fuel/ADF
sub-directory in your scenedb directory.
You may disable such a scenery layer, but you will also lose your ADF
capability.
2. I see airfields displayed
right in the same spots or very near to the new IDoA-42 Port Moresby or Dobodura airfields. How can I fix this?
Jorge If you see two airfields overlapped in
the same place or near, it means that you installed other airfields with a previous
add-on. You have two choices: either you remove the old add-on scenery or you
remove the IDoA-42 new airfields.
You may disable the IDoA-42 scenery
as follows: Go to CFS2 “Settings.” Look for and press the “Scenery Library”
button. In the Areas list menu, look for the DoA2 area. Uncheck the “Enabled”
box.
The IDoA
scenery will not appear in your next mission or free flight over that area and
you will get your previous add-on scenery displayed instead.
2.
But I wanted only to keep Dobodura and remove
Jorge Sorry there is nothing you
can do as they are included and combined as part of the same scenery (bgl) file. It’s an all or nothing proposition.
3.
IDoA-42
installed the New Strip at Buna but I can’t see the old default Buna strip.
Jorge It looks like you may have
removed that default scenery and this has nothing to do with the IDoA-42
installation. To fix this, you may have to make a full CFS2 reinstallation over
the old one. Upon doing this, remember that you will require to install IDoA-42
again and probably other add-ons as well.
More to follow, maybe . . .
May 9, 2002
The
Waltzing Matilda background midi file furnished courtesy of Tek-Worm of
the Sim-Outhouse.