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Falcon 4 Bridges Tutorial
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How To Create Falcon 4 Campaign Bridges Tutorial
Overview
Bridges are very important part of the campaign objectives, if you destroy bridges between you and the enemy objectives, neither of your ground forces can advance to the objectives to capture them. This is good and a bad thing.
How to create bridges
You need to use ObjectPlacer utility, first use File → Open L2 Terrain file to load up your 2byte L2 file.
Now select Actions → Place Bridges. This brings up a dialog looking like this:
The Search Map Area dialog X and Y coordinates when readin 1023 means its 64 segment theater, if you have 128 segment theater put there 2047. Usually you want to create bridges covering whole terrain so its in range of 0-1023 for 64 segment or 0-2047 for 128 segment theaters.
Sector Search Area dialogs positions are by default filled with Start at Sec Y coordinate: 63 and End at Sec X coordinate: 63, thats for the 64 segment theaters (0-63 is 64), again if you're using 128 theater you need to change the numbers to 127.
Starting Object ID is important, you should have Tacedit open and check the first free objective ID available at the end of the objects list. Make sure it really is the highest number of objects, then you can write that number plus one into this editbox. So by default ObjectPlacer offers number of 6000, it would mean that your last object ID in the campaign file would be 5999. The important part here is that you do not create duplicate objective ID numbers for the campaign.
Usually on the Dem2Terrain and CATE created terrains when setup correctly, you get thousands of brides, even on 64 segment theaters (not to mention the 128 ones). There have been discussions that these CATE autotilings from the feature files should be somehow reduced, but its quite complicated and might require manual work. All PMC theaters so far have been stock default CATE autotile terrains from the features, which for example in Iran theater produced like more than 4300 bridges.
Priority 0-100 is the campaign objective priority, the default 20 is okay for now. Same goes for Supply 0-255 so use the default 235.
Owner and Controller of Objects is the team number who owns/controls the objects created. Most likely you will change much of these in Tacedit so it might not matter much if you use the defaul US (team 1) or change it according to you preferred team(s).
When you have configured all the above options, you are ready to proceed.
Select Begin and ObjectPlacer asks CSV file to save, name this like <theater>-bridges.csv or something similar like that, often during development its nice to name the bridge objectives carefull with even date and so on, for example; Nevada_Bridges_Final_07-25-07.csv or similar, trust me it pays off in the long run when you came across this csv months later. After you committed begin button, ObjectPlacer will process the terrain for bridge tiles and when its done it should give you dialog like this:
Now you can use the <theater>-bridges.csv file to import the bridges into the existing campaign objectives in Tacedit. Just load up your campaign file in Tacedit and use menu Objectives → Import Objectives feature to import them. Remember that you cannot have duplicate ID numbers in there or you run into problems. Now just load a bitmap of your theater's map, then go through the country borders to change the ownership/control accordingly.
When you imported the objects, Tacedit just shows them as dots (red dots usually), this is normal and when you save and reload the campaign you will see the bridge icon displayed instead the dot.
ObjectPlacer Script
You need to configure the ObjectPlacer bridge script to succesfully place bridges. This means you need to give the program all the bridge tile offset numbers. The configuration file looks scary, really scary, but its doable with little thinking and careful editing.
The file that controls bridge placement in ObjectPlacer is called Object-BridgeScript.dat file.
Here is the huge ODS bridge script Object-BridgeScript.dat file:
; ; OPERATION DESERT STORM BRIDGE SCRIPT! ; ; jun 30th, 2002. ODS 128. 6385 first bridge, 5916 bridges placed :) ; latest update Feb 16th, 2007. ; these are the ODS settings, for ODS texture.bin ; updated February 16th, 2007. ; ; desert 1, 224, 1, 1, S, N, -, - 1, 225, 2, 1, W, E, -, - ; mountain light brown 1, 372, 1, 1, S, N, -, - 1, 373, 2, 1, W, E, -, - ; mountain dark brown 1, 272, 1, 1, W, E, -, - 1, 273, 2, 1, S, N, -, - ; irrigated 1, 913, 1, 1, W, E, -, - 1, 912, 2, 1, S, N, -, - ; grazing 1, 915, 1, 1, W, E, -, - 1, 914, 2, 1, S, N, -, - ; rough grazing 1, 917, 1, 1, W, E, -, - 1, 916, 2, 1, S, N, -, - ; arable 1, 1009, 1, 1, W, E, -, - 1, 1008, 2, 1, S, N, -, - ; green forest 1, 1313, 1, 1, W, E, -, - 1, 1312, 2, 1, S, N, -, - ;=====> DataType=0 used to check for tile on other side of bridge 0, 21, 1, 2, E, W, -, - 0, 22, 1, 2, N, S, -, - ; ;============================================================ ; Bridge OCD ID# and Placement Info: ;============================================================ ; Data OCD ID# Random Tiles Position Position ; Type List Spanned Offset Offset ; (2) ID# X Y ;============================================================ 2, 1074, 1, 1, 0, 0 2, 2001, 1, 1, 0, 0 2, 2002, 1, 1, 0, 0 2, 2003, 1, 1, 0, 0 2, 1075, 2, 1, 0, 0 2, 2004, 2, 1, 0, 0 2, 2005, 2, 1, 0, 0 2, 2006, 2, 1, 0, 0 2, 1983, 3, 1, 0, 0 2, 1985, 3, 1, 0, 0 2, 1977, 4, 1, 0, 0 2, 1986, 4, 1, 0, 0 2, 1987, 4, 1, 0, 0 2, 1988, 4, 1, 0, 0 2, 1071, 5, 1, 0, 0 2, 1989, 5, 1, 0, 0 2, 1990, 5, 1, 0, 0 2, 1991, 5, 1, 0, 0 2, 1073, 6, 1, 0, 0 2, 1992, 6, 1, 0, 0 2, 1993, 6, 1, 0, 0 2, 1994, 6, 1, 0, 0 2, 2008, 7, 1, 0, 0 2, 2007, 8, 1, 0, 0 2, 1054, 9, 1, 0, 0 2, 1996, 9, 1, 0, 0 2, 1997, 9, 1, 0, 0 2, 1055, 10, 1, 0, 0 2, 1998, 10, 1, 0, 0 2, 1999, 10, 1, 0, 0 2, 2000, 10, 1, 0, 0 2, 1136, 11, 2, 0, 0 2, 1145, 11, 2, 0, 0 2, 1146, 11, 2, 0, 0 2, 223, 11, 2, 0, 0 2, 1009, 11, 2, 0, 0 2, 229, 11, 2, 0, 0 2, 1008, 11, 2, 0, 0 2, 1139, 11, 2, 0, 1 2, 1197, 11, 2, 0, 1 2, 1198, 11, 2, 0, 1 2, 1214, 11, 2, 0, 1 2, 1215, 11, 2, 0, 1 2, 1216, 11, 2, 0, 1 2, 1137, 12, 2, 1, 0 2, 1121, 12, 2, 1, 0 2, 1127, 12, 2, 1, 0 2, 1128, 12, 2, 1, 0 2, 1129, 12, 2, 1, 0 2, 862, 12, 2, 1, 0 2, 1205, 12, 2, 1, 0 2, 1138, 12, 2, 0, 0 2, 1247, 12, 2, 0, 0 2, 1192, 12, 2, 0, 0 2, 1195, 12, 2, 0, 0 2, 1194, 12, 2, 0, 0 2, 1244, 13, 2, 0, 0 2, 1217, 13, 2, 0, 0 2, 1218, 13, 2, 0, 0 2, 1219, 13, 2, 0, 0 2, 1220, 13, 2, 0, 0 2, 1222, 13, 2, 0, 0 2, 1186, 13, 2, 0, 1 2, 1223, 13, 2, 0, 1 2, 1224, 13, 2, 0, 1 2, 1225, 13, 2, 0, 1 2, 1226, 13, 2, 0, 1 2, 1228, 13, 2, 0, 1 2, 1185, 14, 2, 0, 0 2, 1248, 14, 2, 0, 0 2, 1250, 14, 2, 0, 0 2, 1249, 14, 2, 0, 0 2, 1251, 14, 2, 0, 0 2, 1252, 14, 2, 0, 0 2, 1253, 14, 2, 0, 0 2, 1245, 14, 2, 1, 0 2, 1229, 14, 2, 1, 0 2, 1230, 14, 2, 1, 0 2, 1231, 14, 2, 1, 0 2, 1232, 14, 2, 1, 0 2, 1233, 14, 2, 1, 0 2, 1234, 14, 2, 1, 0 2, 1060, 15, 2, 0, 0 2, 1278, 15, 2, 0, 0 2, 1279, 15, 2, 0, 0 2, 1280, 15, 2, 0, 0 2, 1281, 15, 2, 0, 0 2, 1173, 15, 2, 0, 1 2, 1292, 15, 2, 0, 1 2, 1293, 15, 2, 0, 1 2, 1294, 15, 2, 0, 1 2, 1295, 15, 2, 0, 1 2, 1172, 16, 2, 0, 0 2, 1287, 16, 2, 0, 0 2, 1288, 16, 2, 0, 0 2, 1289, 16, 2, 0, 0 2, 1290, 16, 2, 0, 0 2, 1291, 16, 2, 0, 0 2, 1171, 16, 2, 1, 0 2, 1282, 16, 2, 1, 0 2, 1283, 16, 2, 1, 0 2, 1284, 16, 2, 1, 0 2, 1285, 16, 2, 1, 0 2, 1978, 17, 2, 0, 0 2, 1979, 18, 2, 0, 0 ; ; ;============================================================ ; Non-Road Bridge Tiles Rejection Criteria (Data Type = 3): ;============================================================ ; Data Number Inclusive Inclusive Set 1 Set 1 ... Set N Set N ; Type of Min Max Min Max ... Min Max ; (3) Sets ;============================================================ ;3, 5, 20, 1729, 192, 194, 864, 865, 1212, 1217, 1098, 1099, 1728, 1729 ;3, 1, 16, 435, 16, 435 3, 1, 208, 1815, 208, 1815 ; ; ***END***