FI Skin download/usage

Gurkesaft · Post by **Gurkesaft** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 9:50 pm

Do I understand correctly that you all make a custom skin for each and every plane in the game?

That is a LOT of design work for everyone!

:FI:Falcon · Post by **:FI:Falcon** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 10:16 pm

gurkesaft wrote:Do I understand correctly that you all make a custom skin for each and every plane in the game?

That's the goal. Every prop-driven, flyable ac in the game. Extras are special requests like the Ta-183 and Me-262. So far (w/some of the up-coming Axis stuff) that's just under 3000 skins.

gurkesaft wrote:That is a LOT of design work for everyone!

Uhhh ... yeah.

...

At least the pay is good.

F

Gurkesaft · Post by **Gurkesaft** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 12:59 am

Are there smaller emblem files you could edit and throw in, or do you always have to edit a small part of an enormous file?

I know IL2 has some skin-with-decals abilities, like the nationality, number, and maybe the tail art.

Has anyone tried the download yet?

:FI:Falcon · Post by **:FI:Falcon** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 1:24 am

gurkesaft wrote:...I know IL2 has some skin-with-decals abilities, like the nationality, number, and maybe the tail art.

Yeah, they look reeeeeeally fake, but they work in a pinch.

gurkesaft wrote:Has anyone tried the download yet?

The d'l works. Are they supposed to be extracted directly into the "IL-2 Sturmovik 1946" folder?

F

Gurkesaft · Post by **Gurkesaft** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 4:19 am

Yeah, the should overwrite the PaintSchemes folder, adding the new items. Does it look like I have all the planes necessary for the rest of pearl to Japan?

Do you have control over where the decals go or do they always just sit in a few fixed positions? If so, what positions are available?

The reason I ask about this is, if everyone made a skin for every plane, then everyone has to give everyone about 300MB. That is a problem of extraordinary magnitude. If everyone had a set of decals or something that can go on top of every plane, then we have ~100kB to send each other, since it would be one or two files that work with every plane. There is a lot of redundancy in tweaking a small part of every 1024x1024 skin.

Anyway, of course if it looks retarded, then it's a silly idea. I would like to play with it a bit, though--can you direct me to a how-to with decals?

Thanks!
-Jack

:FI:Sneaky_Russian · Post by **:FI:Sneaky_Russian** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 9:57 pm

This sounds like a possibility with Il2 mat manager, but it wont re-paint the aircraft or detail panels and rivets

:FI:TacticalS! · Post by **:FI:TacticalS!** » Thu Feb 01, 2007 9:09 pm

For those interested in this discussion please carefully read this thread here. Granted it is a bit old but I don't believe the game has been changed in this regard. I have posted over at SimHQ about using custom skins online but no one has yet been able to respond. What I have read countless times is folks warning hosts not to use them, especially for larger public servers.

In the cited thread the thread starter firmly believes placing custom skins in their correct skin folders DOES NOT address the server performance problems, since the game will always look at the NetCache directory.

What are the solutions? It would be ideal if we could change the default skins (those that come with the game) to include our custom skins. Then we could just send this modified game file(s) to all :FI: members (in addition to them installing the skins to their various skin directories). BUT WE CAN'T.

It appears the only solution would be for folks to take the files downloaded in their NetCache folder and distribute them to the rest of the group. But (you knew there was a but right?) if you had read that thread I cited you would know that ":FI:TacticalS!.bmp" isn't stored that way. The game always renames the file to something like (crazy example) 123456789.bmp . Soooo . . . considering all the possible personalized skins we are talking about and never knowing who will show up; and what's that we have a visitor?

BOTTOM LINE THERE IS NO WAY TO FULLY RESOLVE POOR SYSTEM PERFORMANCE WITH SKINS.

Where does that leave us?

Well for starters I don't wish to discourage our skinners in the least. It will still be wonderful if the Squadron can provide everyone actively involved with a custom skin for all flyable planes. We all can certainly download and enjoy our custom skins (especially offline where they pose no issues with regard to lag).

If folks want to still use a custom skin perhaps select a few flyables and someone distribute their "NetCache versions" to the group (with visitors and unprepared :FI: turning off Skin Download). I haven't looked yet but these generic skins have no markings right?

As for Historic Encounters I may be able to use DCG's paint scheme settings to "hard code" say the generic custom skin for La-5, IL-2 and Pe-2 human flights. I think then the game will grab them from the plane skin directories. This could be an option too for Sundays, but it would require editing your missions before to select these generic skins (and everyone would have to still install them). Waiting to hear if this actually works though!

Anyway please read that post and correct any misunderstandings I have made here. Needless to say it is a frustrating issue to tackle.

Regards,
TS!

Gurkesaft · Post by **Gurkesaft** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 7:13 am

Hello all,

I think my contribution to the skinning project is going to be helping to organize and distribute said skins. I've updated my all-in-one FI skin pack which now includes:

BuffaloMkI
F4U's (all)
F6F's (all)
Hawk81A-2
P-40B and P-40C
SBD-3 and SBD-5
TomahawkMkII's (all)

This is all the default and personal skins, and I believe it covers all the planes we're currently using for our Sunday missions. It also has the same folder structure as IL-2, so all you have to do is unzip it into your IL-2 directory.

This is all well over a half a gig of disk space. This single download, however is... drum roll...

28MB!

That's right. For just 28MB, you should be skin-ready for Sunday's missions.

http://www.businessfist.com/fi/FI_Sundays_Complete.7z" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Please let me know if the pack has bugs or needs some other planes for the upcoming Sundays.

Enjoy!

-Jack

:FI:Falcon · Post by **:FI:Falcon** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 8:13 am

Thanks Jack!

Good work.

We don't know who's campaign we'll be doin' after we finish Ardmore's excellent Pearl-to-Japan stuff so keep up on what we need and this will be a great help.

Maybe Genosse will make two buttons on the site some day. One for the whole shebang and one for your mission packs?

Falcon

Gurkesaft · Post by **Gurkesaft** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 4:48 pm

Well, if the skins are changing periodically, the who shebang would be pretty crazy. How many different kinds of skins are there? 7 types = 28MB, so 4MB per skin type, zipped.

I guess if the 7z archive for the whole shebang comes out to ~200MB (for 50 plane types), it wouldn't be so bad to download once every 6 months or so.

Do you guys have any interest in setting up a supplementary bittorrent tracker site or something? It wouldn't load the server down when you release new iterations of the skin pack, because swarms are good for bittorrent.

-Jack

:FI:Sneaky_Russian · Post by **:FI:Sneaky_Russian** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 5:33 am

:FI:Gurkesaft wrote: This is all well over a half a gig of disk space. This single download, however is... drum roll...

28MB!

-Jack

Impressive. How well will 7z handle mpeg2's? Cant do them justice on free hosting sites.

Gurkesaft · Post by **Gurkesaft** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 5:02 pm

I think mpegs are generally pretty close to zero entropy to begin with. 7-zip is just smarter than the rest. It recognizes mass-similarities between multiple files and only writes it once! That's why it's perfect for this application.

:FI:Falcon · Post by **:FI:Falcon** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 5:14 pm

Gotta link to 7-zip Pickledude???

I have about ...

~drum roll~

... ELEVEN gigs of skins and I could use all the squeezin' I can get!

Falcon

:FI:Sneaky_Russian · Post by **:FI:Sneaky_Russian** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 2:25 pm

rename the void skins "il2void" and name a generic FI skin "void".

I think it'll work.

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