BORT # on F-14

[Firebird1955]

Is anyone using the Bort #s on the HB F-14 or do they need to be fixed to the skin in the DDS?

[TheGuardian]

From my understanding, and from what Cobra said in the F-14 Skinners Thread it is not possible with the current texture templates. They are however trying to figure out how to do it. No futher updates that I have seen though.

[Nealius]

I'm hoping they can do it. Hornets have the same font discrepancies between jets/squadrons, and different names under the canopy. ED traded that small detail to allow for dynamic modexes, so I don't see why Heatblur won't do the same for the Tomcat.

[TheGuardian]

Oh no I am hoping the same thing. I've got too many squad mates for it not too work.

[DD_Fenrir]

Oh no I am hoping the same thing. I've got too many squad mates for it not too work.

 

LOL! Yeah me too. When I said to my squad I was working on some "DangerDogz" squad default schemes I could almost hear the collective thought: "Cool! I can have my own jet with my name painted on the side and a unique colour set or noseart!"

 

Having spent around 6-7 hours total (thanks to the huge size of the templates and the looooong loading times in GIMP) just getting the squad logo on the tail and the squadron numbers on the ventral fins I was obliged to vocally announce that any such expectations had to be flatly dispelled.

 

As a father of a toddler and holding down a full-time job I do want to spend *some* of my time with my family or actually in the F-14 pit flying and NOT tied to my computer waiting the 3 minutes for layer "x" to load or the 5+ minutes converting to a bitmap.

 

So Heatblur, whilst your attention to detail is admirable - even astonishing - and largely appropriate, in the case of the Bort numbers I suggest getting a good coverall compromise out there sooner, and bring the customised squadron variations out in a more as-it's-ready manner.

[Nealius]

"102, Tomcat, ball, 5.4."

 

"102, Tomcat, ball, 6.1."

 

....Wait I thought 102 already landed?

 

Is how I imagine F-14 multiplayer going on. Can't believe there hasn't been more work on the modexes.

[TheGuardian]

LOL! Yeah me too. When I said to my squad I was working on some "DangerDogz" squad default schemes I could almost hear the collective thought: "Cool! I can have my own jet with my name painted on the side and a unique colour set or noseart!"

 

Having spent around 6-7 hours total (thanks to the huge size of the templates and the looooong loading times in GIMP) just getting the squad logo on the tail and the squadron numbers on the ventral fins I was obliged to vocally announce that any such expectations had to be flatly dispelled.

 

As a father of a toddler and holding down a full-time job I do want to spend *some* of my time with my family or actually in the F-14 pit flying and NOT tied to my computer waiting the 3 minutes for layer "x" to load or the 5+ minutes converting to a bitmap.

 

So Heatblur, whilst your attention to detail is admirable - even astonishing - and largely appropriate, in the case of the Bort numbers I suggest getting a good coverall compromise out there sooner, and bring the customised squadron variations out in a more as-it's-ready manner.

 

I feel ya on the GIMP. I couldn't take it anymore and just got the $10 Photoshop. Made life so much easier as I can just layer in all my squad mate with their own layers and then save as a PSD, then save again as DDS in the CoreMods folder. I shaved a bunch of time of their custom skins that way. With the Intel plugin I was able to finish up all our skins in like 2 hrs.

[LanceCriminal86]

It would make sense to just use a Navy Stencil type font and standardize a location for general use, and allow the automatic bort #s to be disabled for historic skins with the # baked in.

[Nealius]

It would make sense to just use a Navy Stencil type font and standardize a location for general use, and allow the automatic bort #s to be disabled for historic skins with the # baked in.

 

There's that, and I don't believe the reasoning Heatblur gives about not being able to use separate fonts. The MiG-21 has a wide variety of fonts for the modex numbers, and some of the liveries even include specific font .dds files for them.

[LanceCriminal86]

There's that, and I don't believe the reasoning Heatblur gives about not being able to use separate fonts. The MiG-21 has a wide variety of fonts for the modex numbers, and some of the liveries even include specific font .dds files for them.

 

It may not be about "can't" use more than one font, but it may be more about deciding which ones to use or how to set up user configurable fonts, and then after that you come back to the modex locations issue. They seem more than capable of figuring something out, it's probably a balance of level of effort this calls for versus other objectives, like work on the A model, Forrestal, AI Intruders, updating the -B cockpit to have the correct engine gauges, etc.

[Nealius]

The locations thing is what I don't get. So what if it's 5cm higher on the nose than it would be in real life. No one would notice. Or care.

 

Having jets all with the same modex is incredibly obvious in comparison to placement.