Purpose of outline pictures?

Forum to share all game modifications
Post Reply
count_fuzzball
Posts: 44
Joined: Fri Jul 15, 2022 3:53 am

Purpose of outline pictures?

Post by count_fuzzball »

So I was delving into the files of the game to see what's editable and how and I notice that there's a folder called 'outline' with 360 degree top-down facings for each aircraft.

I edited one of them, the F-4B 100 file, to include various markings for each to identify them in-game. Curiously enough, only the 1st airplane outline (pointing straight up) seems to get used in the game, and is simply rotated around, not the other sets.

Ok, so I try in the editor, maybe it uses the other degrees for the facings in the editor? No, that's not it either, still using the first plane.

Could someone weigh in on this? I'm stumped!
User avatar
Hawk27
Posts: 25
Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2022 4:12 pm

Re: Purpose of outline pictures?

Post by Hawk27 »

It's old vs. newer engines. The game used to require all of them and changed notch by notch in a jerky manner. Now it smoothly rotates the first frame. If you look at the MAP demo, only a single aircraft is present in all of the outline files. The older games retain the previously used outline files, though all except the first frame are redundant. The intention is to clean those up whenever the first major patch for MAP goes out.
Last edited by Hawk27 on Fri Jun 30, 2023 6:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
parmenio
Posts: 232
Joined: Fri Jun 24, 2022 3:05 am

Re: Purpose of outline pictures?

Post by parmenio »

Naval Campaigns takes the same approach - one ship picture facing "north". DirectX takes case of rendering the image to the correct rotation with the best quality the GPU can achieve.
Andy Edmiston
WDS Lead Programmer
count_fuzzball
Posts: 44
Joined: Fri Jul 15, 2022 3:53 am

Re: Purpose of outline pictures?

Post by count_fuzzball »

Thanks guys!

Hawk27, ahh I see, thanks for the clarification. Looking forward to whenever the next patch gets released.

Parmenio, thanks for the info about DirectX, that's an excellent bit of info. I noticed Naval Campaigns does the same with a single ship, very handy.
Post Reply