Nice find Rocky. The longer I played EECH the more I preferred the Apache.

I thought the Apache was easier to fly and went almost as fast. The thing I disliked the most about the Comanche was the sweet sounding voice saying "Your Flying Too Fast" two nanoseconds before I blew up. This would invariably happen right after I finally shoot down some pesky jets that were trying to ruin my day after a perfect mission.

You boys can have my Comanchee when you pry it from my cold dead fingers!

I agree with you Smokin'
Every gunship has it's advantages and IMHO the Comanche is far better frying SAMs and paving the way for a strike than the Apache. On the other hand, once the SAMs are out of the way, an Apache is far better wrecking the site the SAMs was protecting.

Simulation - the technique of representing the real world by a computer program.

"The real world" did not want the Commanche and has such became an 'extinct bird' so to speak. The only place your going to see it these days is in a museum - a victim of 'new' Army aviation doctrine.

So being the true combat helicopter simulation enthusiast that i am, my logic lends me to pursue as much realism as possible. For me, this involves removing The Commanche from the EECH battlefield and refocusing on the Apache in all it's variants.

To each their own though..

simulation, the technique representing any world in a computer program. In the real world it is very unlikely that the Lebanese people are equiped as a Russian army attacking the US who has invaded their country...

anyway

here is a link to dumptextures.exe based on the code provided by Tamlin a while ago. (right click save as). This file unpacks textures.bin to a directory bitmaps, that is created as subdir to where you are. If a file contains alpha levels they are saved as separate textures with the indication "sa" for single alpha and "ma" for multiple alpha. These are indications for black and white and grey scales. Also a text file is made textureinfo.txt that has all the info such as mipmap levels. The mipmap levels are not saved to separate files and ignored.
syntax is:
dumptextures fullpath\textures.bin

dumptextures.exe

about MFDs, symbols (arrows, triagles etc) are created directly in the code, the FLIR is just the pilots view in BW and smaller, the TSD is based on the terrain map .... what else...

didn't see anything in the bitmaps looking like MFD stuff

so if these textures are dumped can they be used once edited....is the seperate alpha layer on extraction usable?

..tried the program but it errors out with failed to start because CC3260MT.DLL was not found...

i have no idea how to compile stuff -if that is required

sorry will recompile. I think the last eech version should just read dds files that are alpha blended. In other words if you have a texture and a matching alpha level put them together in a dds file and that should work...

download it again from the link above, does it work now?

textureinfo.txt gives you information on which textures have mipmap levels and alpha blending.

yep it works. just replaced the round tree with a pine tree! the dds file must be have ARGB format 32bit (with dxtex no problem)

awsome ..pine trees...now multiple textures on same model.


still does not work..

if you place them with the terrain textures, you can at least have a different tree type per warzone.

Rocky, about the yemen textures, you gave me a cool set of textures, if you can add the rest that is necessary (fields and so on) we can release a yemen pack. Maybe resample the textures to 1024x1024 for the lower end cards instead of 2048x2048. I'll keep my yemen textures for a revamp of the lebanon stuff I think.

Thanks for the tip, Rocky! That should help. And Pharoah1, thank you for encouraging us to try the Comanche. While I have in fact done so and do not much like it, I appreciate your enthusiastic attempt to help us expand our simming experiences.

Happy flying, all.

I don't really hate the Commanche, just that after only flying Commanche I tried out the Apache and found it much more suited to my needs than the Commanche. It's more in the "feel" of the helo, I "feel" more comfortable in the Apache.

Gotcha, will do...i cannot seem to find any field textures in yemen while flying..how about you?he tree .dds textures ..save me from looking.

oh can you send me

does the ARGB work for any textures?..can we make the polygon forest transparent?

you're probably right about the fields. I'll dump a list of textures used for Yemen tonight.

there are two alpha blended tree textures:
the side: GREY_TERRAIN_TREE_CROSS (which I changed to a pine shape)
and the horizontal: GREY_TERRAIN_TREE_OBJECT
which gets draped over the top to give the tree a roundish shape. For the pinetree I simply replaced this one with a blank texture.

note that alpha in eech means that white is blocked and black is transparent!

there are also palm trees somewhere, haven't looked for them yet

the ARGB works for any texture, but the game will not always do something with it. There is nothing under the forest so making it transparent in parts just gives you white

this is off topic, sorry for that

can you email me the textures any way...having display issues...

Rocky wrote;
"Simulation - the technique of representing the real world by a computer program.

"The real world" did not want the Commanche and has such became an 'extinct bird' so to speak. The only place your going to see it these days is in a museum - a victim of 'new' Army aviation doctrine.

So being the true combat helicopter simulation enthusiast that i am, my logic lends me to pursue as much realism as possible. For me, this involves removing The Commanche from the EECH battlefield and refocusing on the Apache in all it's variants.

To each their own though.."

I can certainly see our point. And I know it doesn't matter since we can each taylor the game to our own liking. But just to keep the discussion on track.
My point of view is that this sim aims to simulate the imediate future of Helicopter combat as of 1999.. And at that time the comanche was poised to become the most advanced and most deadly front line combat Helo ever. So imho from that perspective the Comanche definetly belongs here. After all would you refuse to drive the BRM, Brabham or Eagle in Grand Prix Legends because those marquise don't exist anymore? Or refuse to play F1 2001 because it doesn't model the 2005 season acurately?

This whole discussion brings up an interesting point though. And one I hadn't thought of before. If a developer were to take EECH & run with it like Shockwave is doing with Rowans Battle of Britain & B-17 the mighty eigth or like someone did with falcon 4. Would a game based on the Comanche fly in this day & age? My guess is it wouldn't. I think the developers in that case would have to shift the focus to the Apache. Maybe even replace the Comanche with the Eurocopter Tiger or Mangusta

sorry, ignore me, just off topic again
Roxky: get it here
[URL= http://webdisk.planet.nl/jette073/publiek/album/bitmaps.rar]bitmaps.rar[/URL]

not all of them, some textures seem to be 'reserved' whatever that means

and on-topic: I sure would like to see the European choppers in there. After all the comanche was far enough developed to get some of it right, I mean its not a science fiction machine. Have some smooth flying chopper doesn't ruin the game for me. The apache is a flying bathtub and doen't hold any special attraction for me.
My guess is that if anyone would bring out a serious heli sim, LB3 or EECH2, people would buy it, even with a Commanche.

Keep in mind the only thing missing in Comanche was American tax-payer dollars. It's still a formidible war-machine and quaterback on the battlefield.

I can't imagine the work needed to add this but: many of the redistributed funds from comanche are going into armed recon heli UAV's controlled by a host apache pilot. Imagine checking over the next hill with a very cost effective little robot then unleashing hellfire without ever seeing the other side for yourself. Comanche costs billions but a mass-produced robot is practically nothing.

The UAVs are controlled by the pilot but fully capable on it's own. Could the EECH engine handle a drone attached to a host chopper? Perhaps a secondary FLIR screen from it's point of view? At very least it could be under wingman commands and still realistic enough.

You damn right there's interest! I always felt the Comanche was overhyped anyway.

I'm with you! The Apache is also more rugged.

Okay, Rocky. I followed your advice, and indeed, all Comanches disappear (and all enemy gunships are Hinds!). However, after a few minutes, I get the ol' Campaign Lost screen, because of the loss of assets, meaning the Comanche.

How do we work around that?