untitled

CfsTmap

Elevated Mesh Scenery Creation Program for Combat Flight Simulator

Introduction
Acknowledgements
Requirements
Installation Initial Setup
Top ToolBar
Left ToolBar
Menus Choosing a Location
Creating a Scenery
Rotations
Adding Static Scenery Future
Updates
Copyright

Introduction

CfsTmap is a Program for creating Elevated Scenery for Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator utilising the default texture files included with every installation of CFS.

Bitmaps can be rotated 90, 180 or 270 degrees without the need to distribute any images with the scenery .

This program is not meant as a substitute for Misho Katulic`s TerraBuilder. TB is a much more powerful program capable of of much more detail. CfsTmap is intended as an easy Tool for creating areas of Elevated-Mesh terrain for placing in the "Un-Sceneried" areas of CFS

Users of CFSMap will recognise most of the program interface. Many improvements have been made, particularly to Bitmap-rotation, and some things are done slightly differently but a lot of the basic functions remain.

Acknowledgements.

Misho Katulic -- For showing what could be done with the Standard Textures (with the Terrabuilder 2 SynthWizard) and for the all-important information about the CFS texture naming convention that made the Matching routines possible.

Ralf-J Triebel -- For a constant stream of ideas and unending support.

Manfred Moldenhauer - For creating Scasm (without which there would be very little scenery created) and for giving permission for scasm 2.39 to be distributed with this program.

William Potvin II - For the original Information about the new CFS opcodes that provided the inspiration for extending the CFSMap concept into Elevated-Mesh scenery.

Requirements

CfsTmap is an MWGfx program and requires mwgfx.dll to run. This will either have been included in the Program distribution or can be found on the MWGraphics website. Regular updates for the Program and for mwgfx.dll can be found there also.

The program will run on any PC with at least a 486 processor and Windows 95. As with any Graphics-based program the more memory you have installed and the more advanced your graphics card the better.

Really requires a minimum of an 800x600 16 bit Graphics Display for reasonable functionality.

CFS is Required to be installed on your computer (or at least the Textures.......)

In order to Create any Scenery from you will need to have installed on your system the SCASM scenery compiler by Manfred Moldenhauer. The CfsTmap archive should contain the latest version (2.39) which will be installed in the CfsTmap folder. Ultimately, once problems have been solved, CfsTmap will include the option of using the new CFS Mesh commands which are not supported in earlier versions of scasm.

Installation

Unzip the archive to your chosen destination. This will create a "CfsTmap" folder in the location of your choice containing all the necessary program and support files

If mwgfx.dll is included then there will be a file "mwgfxdll.exe" present in this folder. If it is present then run it. If not then you will need to get hold of a copy from the Website unless you already have another MWGfx program installed (in which case you already have it!)

When installing mwgfx.dll you will be offered the chance to change the installation from the default (C:\Windows\System\) - Only change this if your Windows installation location differs from the usual C:\Windows\.

If you want to add a shortcut to the Start menu go to "Start"->"Settings"->"Taskbar & Start Menu"->"Start Menu Programs"->"Add" and browse to the Program.

If you want to add a Shortcut on the Desktop just right-click on a blank area of the desktop and select "New"->"Shortcut" and browse to the Program.

On first running the program it will attempt (by querying the registry) to locate your CFS Folder. The file "090909s1.bmp" will be copied to the "texture" folder in your main CFS folder. This image is used for blank areas in scenery maps.

Initial Setup

The first time you run CfsTmap all required paths and settings should be set up Automatically. If problems occur such as no textures being displayed then you should check the various settings in the Prefs menu and make sure they are pointing to valid locations.

The Top Toolbar

The Toolbar across the top of the Program Window contains the main gadgets for setting up and creating an initial scenery

Create Pressing this button will drop down a list of scenery types to use to create the base scenery. Selecting one of this will create a new layout in the main window based on the type selected. Selecting "Random" will create a totally random scenery then attempt to create a Match with the random textures based on the current Default Texture type

Perform Match Pressing this button will cause the program to try to match all the tiles in the layout to each other. Locked textures will not change but all others are liable to be substituded with a more suitable texture. Several passes are made through the layout in an attempt to create a 100% match of all tiles to their surrounding textures. This is not always possible.

Lat/Lon Position This collection of gadgets lets you set the location in the world to place the scenery. Set N/S and W/E using the drop down gadgets. Set the Degrees in the next gadgets and the Minutes (including fractions e.g. 34.7778) in the next boxes.

ALT In this box set the height (in Ft) above sealevel of the scenery when it is placed in the location. Free-Flight to the Area you are going to put the scenery then Slew to ground level (press 'Y' then 'F1' ) and read off the Altitude value. Don`t assume that areas covered in Water will be zero feet because they frequently aren`t!

Display Mode This gadget switches between "Map" mode (where the tiles are displayed as they will appear in the scenery) and "Elevation" mode (where the tiles are seperated from each other to reveal the Elevation settings for each corner). When in "Elevation" mode clicking directly on any of the displayed Elevations will display a gadget for changing the Elevation at that point.
Note that the Elevations you set are Elevations ABOVE the base Scenery Altitude

Scale This box sets the scale of the tiles when outputting scenery. Any suitable number can be used from 0.1 to 8.0. A scale of 4 corresponds to 1024x1024 metres for each texture. A scale of 1 is 256x256 metres. The normal textures you see on the ground in CFS are at an equivalent to Scale 4.

Max Rel Altitude This number is currently only used when the "Randomise to Max Altitude" function is run. To quickly fill a Layout with random Elevations set this to a suitable value then use the function from the Elevations menu.
Note that the Elevations you set are Elevations ABOVE the base Scenery Altitude

Move This cluster of buttons allows the shifting of the current location to the adjoining location (taking into account the size of the layout) in the chosen direction. When you have finished the Layout you are creating (and SAVED it!) you can click one of these buttons to start a new layout adjoining the current one. As well as changing the Lat/Lon location appropriately the program will flip the existing tiles in the given direction so that the edge adjoining the original layout will contain the last row or column of that layout (bitmaps and elevations) to ease the matching of the edged of the 2 layouts together. It will also Lock all the edge tiles. Once you have created a new layout that matches up to the "Carried over" tiles you can use the Shift menu to move the layout one row/column to remove the carry overs. This will just leave the opposite side to tidy up and you should have a perferct match up.
The recommended method is to start your multi-layout scenery with the Top-Left layout, Create the first row by stepping East and then reload the Leftmost map and step South to start the next row.

The Left Toolbar

Default Texture This gadget dictates which Texture-type is used during matching if no match is possible.

File List Use this gadget to select which Texture image to display in the thumbnail ready for insertion into the layout.

Thumbnail This gadget will display a thumbnail view of the currently selected image (selected either from the File list or by Right-clicking on a tile in the layout). To insert this image into the layout just double-click the desired layout tile. Holding down the mouse button while over the thumbnail will display a full-size version of the texture

Rotate This button will rotate the Texture currently displayed in the thumbnail in steps of 90 degrees. Alternatively tiles can be rotated in the layout by clicking the [<<] button that appears when the mouse moves over a tile.

Fill This will fill all the tiles in the layout (except those that are Locked) with the Texture currently displayed in the thumbnail

Random This will fill all the tiles in the layout (except those that are Locked) with a random texture and then performs a Match

Zero all Rotations This will set all tiles in the Layout to be Rotated 0 degrees

Adjoining Layouts Clicking this button will display the other Terrain files that are set to be adjoining each side of the current layout. Click on one to change it. The theory is (and it is not completely perfected yet) that the appropriate textures from the appropriate edges of the chosen Layouts are included in the Matching process when you "Match" the current Layout.

The Menus

File Prefs Shift Lock Elevations

File
Load Terrain File
Load a previously created layout into the program.

Save Terrain File
Save the current Layout as a terrain file. The saved file includes data about the location and scale of the layout and other details

Save Layout as BMP
Save a 256 colour Bitmap of the current Layout. This is a leftover from CFSMap but retained so that you can "overview" the layout. TheBitmap takes into account the scale of the layout so that the Bmp can be imported into Airport as a background (at 10 pixels/100m) for assistance in placing further scenery objects for seperate compilation.

View Saved BMP
Displays the last "Save Layout as BMP" bitmap in a seperate window.

Create Scasm File
Outputs a scasm SCA source file. Can be compiled with scasm from dos by invoking scasm on the SCA file.

Create BGL
Outputs a scasm SCA file and compiles it to a finished BGL scenery file. The file dialog will ask for the SCA filename to use. The finished BGL will have the same name but with the .bgl extension.

Copy BGL to CFS
Copy the last created BGL file to the CFS scenery folder you desire. Browse to <CFS>\Scenery and then to the desired scenery sub-folder. (\All\Scenery\ if you are not sure or have no Add-on scenery folders)

Run CFS
Runs CFS so you can test out your new BGL (providing you have set up a valid combatfs.exe path in the Prefs menu)

Prefs
Select Scasm Location
Set up the location of scasm.exe for compiling directly to finished scenery BGL.
Should be set automatically on first running the program.

Select CFS Location
Set up the location of combatfs.exe to enable the direct running of it from the program.
Should be set automatically on first running the program.

Select Texture Location
Set up the location containing the textures to be used for creating layouts.
Should be set automatically on first running the program

Allow Rotation..
If this is ticked then the Matching routine will also take into account rotated images and the Rotation buttons will be available. If not then only the default textures will be used to find a match and the Tile Rotation buttons will not appear.

Use Elevation Interpolation
If this is ticked then a simple form of interpolation is used when creating the Elevated mesh. This increases the Elevation points per tile from 4 to 9.
Note that if you are using multiple layouts in your scenery then they must all be compiled with the same setting or gaps will appear!

Shift

Use this menu to shift the whole layout by one row or column in the specified direction

Lock

Use this menu to Lock or Unlock various combinations of Tiles

Elevations
Randomise up to Max Altitude
This will create a random array of relative altitudes between 0 and the number set in the Max Rel Altitude box.

Set Water to 0m Relative
This will set all elevation points that have a tile containing any Water adjoining them to Zero (relative to the base scenery altitude). If all 4 surrounding tiles are locked (or not water) then the elevation will not be changed.

Use Tile Types to Randomise
Attempts to randomise Elevations with regard to the Type of texture. Experimental!

Double/Halve Elevations
Doubles (or Halves) all elevations in the layout

Import ... Edge Elevations
This will display a file dialog for selecting another terrain file from which to import the edge elevation for putiing on the selected Edge of the current layout.

Example - To set the West edge elevations of the current layout to be the same as the East edge of the next layout westwards.....use "Import West Edge Elevations" and select the terrain file for the layout that is immediately to the Left (West). Just think in terms of the current layout and Import the N,S,E and W elevations by selecting the terrain file adjoining in that direction.

Choosing a Location for your Scenery

The first thing to do when creating a scenery is to decide where in the world it is going to be.

In CFS there are 2 distinctly different Area types - The "European Theatre" that is fully covered with ground textures and lots of variations in altitude and......."The Rest" covered with a very basic coating of Water, Desert or Forest. You can tell which type you are flying over by the type of textures on the ground. Basicly the "European Theatre" extends from Northern England down to mid-France and across to the Eastern edge of Germany.

In "The Rest" you can create CfsTmap scenery anywhere - it is all pretty level over very large areas. In "Europe" you will need to locate an area of the of the right size that is roughly the same altitude all round the edge of where your scenery is going to go. CfsTmap is primarily intended for the creation of new scenery in "The Rest". There are problems when laying scenery over existing elevated terrain that can make scenery unusable. Elevated mesh within "Europe" will not be Hardened or Landable - the original underlying scenery will still be used by CFS for crash-checking.

While bearing this in mind you can place your scenery anywhere.

Start CFS and go to Free-Flight. Select the rough coordinates of where you want to go and Fly!. Switch to "Slew" mode by pressing "Y" and move around the area (watching the Altitude readout and frequently pressing F1 to keep yourself on the ground if the altitude drops). Once you have selected the rough area go to the SW corner of it and copy the Lat/Lon and Altitude figures down (for entering into CfsTmap)

Creating a Scenery

Start CfsTmap. Set up the Lat/Lon Location gadgets and the Altitude using the data you copied down when in CFS. Set the Scale (a scale of 4 is the right size to match existing CFS ground textures). Note that all Elevations in CfsTmap are "Relative" - they will have the base altitude added to them when creating the scenery.

Decide what type of basic texture the scenery is going to be (Water, Rural, Woods etc) and click the appropriate type from the "Create" button (or set the Default Texture to the appropriate type and click Random from the Create Button)

Browse the files listed on the Left and insert the textures as desired by bouble-clicking the tile in the layout where you want to put it. After inserting one or more textures click "Perform Match" to attempt to match the new and old tiles together. This may change or remove the inserted textures in the process of matching all the tiles together. If you wish to preserve particular tiles from change (and force the program to try to match the rest) then Right-Click on the Tile(s) so they are outlined in Red and they will be "Locked". To copy a texture from one place to another in the layout Right-Double-Click on the tile (to make it the current selected file) then Double-click in the place(s) you wish to put it.

Once you are happy with the scenery save the map file (File->Save Terrain File). To create a BGL file for use in CFS use File->Create Bgl. To copy this Bgl file into a CFS scenery folder use File->Copy Bgl to CFS

Rotations

Because of the nature of the CFS default bitmaps they will blend best with each other if not rotated. The main problem with non-rotated textures is the shortage of suitable coastline bitmaps. If you are creating a Water-based scenery (an Island or a Lake) then you will probably need to enable Rotation (at least while working on the coastlines) in order to get a reasonable variety of textures to work with.

If Rotation is enabled then the "Rotate" button under the Thumbnail will be enabled (for rotating the image before inserting into the layout) and also each Tile will have a Rotation button which will appear when the mouse moves over the tile.

Adding Static Scenery

There are problems with adding extra scenery to a scenery created with Elevated Mesh. It is best to place static scenery on to a level area so bear this in mind when creating the Elevated mesh . In order for scenery added using Airport you will need to use the Airport Sections->General settings to add a single Synth tile (farm.r8) under the static scenery and set the altitude of the Airport file to the Real Elevation of the mesh you are placing on (find the Real Elevation from Free Flight in the same manner as "Choosing a Location".

Example - You want to place an Airfield that will cover 3 tiles in the CfsTmap scenery. Set the Corner elevations of ALL these 3 tiles to the same value. Set the Textures to one of the "Grass" textures if you want. Now you can create a normal static scenery with Airport inside this area (3 km x 1 km at scale 4) by setting the scenery Altitude in Airport to the Altitude of these tiles (the "Real" altitude - you will need to find this out by Free-Flighting to the chosen area and slewing to the ground the same as when creating any scenery for CFS with Airport) - set the "Synthetic Scenery" in Sections->General to one tile of farm.r8 and everything should appear correctly.

Future

I am still determined to get the MeshWithTexList Elevated Mesh working sufficiently well to Incorporate it as an Option. It is actually included in the current program but disabled. MeshWithTexList requires a custom Classlist.bgl file to be created for each scenery. I have written a program to do this but there are major Visual problems in the finished scenery that require further experimentation.

Experiments with transferring created scenery (TexRelief and MeshWithTexList) into FS2000 have shown that it is perfectly possible but major differences in the Visibility Range operation currently interfere with consistent display of the scenery. More research may make an "Export to FS2000" option possible (possibly including remapping CFS textures to FS equivalents).

Updates

Updates to CfsTmap and mwgfx.dll will be made available on the MWGraphics website as they appear.

To view the list of updates so for see update.txt

Copyright

No Redistribution in whole or in part without Permission

Scenery created using CfsTmap may be distributed as Freeware.

Any and All Copyrights imposed by Manfred Moldenhauer for Scasm and its accompanying files must be fully respected.

Create	Pressing this button will drop down a list of scenery types to use to create the base scenery. Selecting one of this will create a new layout in the main window based on the type selected. Selecting "Random" will create a totally random scenery then attempt to create a Match with the random textures based on the current Default Texture type
Perform Match	Pressing this button will cause the program to try to match all the tiles in the layout to each other. Locked textures will not change but all others are liable to be substituded with a more suitable texture. Several passes are made through the layout in an attempt to create a 100% match of all tiles to their surrounding textures. This is not always possible.
Lat/Lon Position	This collection of gadgets lets you set the location in the world to place the scenery. Set N/S and W/E using the drop down gadgets. Set the Degrees in the next gadgets and the Minutes (including fractions e.g. 34.7778) in the next boxes.
ALT	In this box set the height (in Ft) above sealevel of the scenery when it is placed in the location. Free-Flight to the Area you are going to put the scenery then Slew to ground level (press 'Y' then 'F1' ) and read off the Altitude value. Don`t assume that areas covered in Water will be zero feet because they frequently aren`t!
Display Mode	This gadget switches between "Map" mode (where the tiles are displayed as they will appear in the scenery) and "Elevation" mode (where the tiles are seperated from each other to reveal the Elevation settings for each corner). When in "Elevation" mode clicking directly on any of the displayed Elevations will display a gadget for changing the Elevation at that point. Note that the Elevations you set are Elevations ABOVE the base Scenery Altitude
Scale	This box sets the scale of the tiles when outputting scenery. Any suitable number can be used from 0.1 to 8.0. A scale of 4 corresponds to 1024x1024 metres for each texture. A scale of 1 is 256x256 metres. The normal textures you see on the ground in CFS are at an equivalent to Scale 4.
Max Rel Altitude	This number is currently only used when the "Randomise to Max Altitude" function is run. To quickly fill a Layout with random Elevations set this to a suitable value then use the function from the Elevations menu. Note that the Elevations you set are Elevations ABOVE the base Scenery Altitude
Move	This cluster of buttons allows the shifting of the current location to the adjoining location (taking into account the size of the layout) in the chosen direction. When you have finished the Layout you are creating (and SAVED it!) you can click one of these buttons to start a new layout adjoining the current one. As well as changing the Lat/Lon location appropriately the program will flip the existing tiles in the given direction so that the edge adjoining the original layout will contain the last row or column of that layout (bitmaps and elevations) to ease the matching of the edged of the 2 layouts together. It will also Lock all the edge tiles. Once you have created a new layout that matches up to the "Carried over" tiles you can use the Shift menu to move the layout one row/column to remove the carry overs. This will just leave the opposite side to tidy up and you should have a perferct match up. The recommended method is to start your multi-layout scenery with the Top-Left layout, Create the first row by stepping East and then reload the Leftmost map and step South to start the next row.

Default Texture	This gadget dictates which Texture-type is used during matching if no match is possible.
File List	Use this gadget to select which Texture image to display in the thumbnail ready for insertion into the layout.
Thumbnail	This gadget will display a thumbnail view of the currently selected image (selected either from the File list or by Right-clicking on a tile in the layout). To insert this image into the layout just double-click the desired layout tile. Holding down the mouse button while over the thumbnail will display a full-size version of the texture
Rotate	This button will rotate the Texture currently displayed in the thumbnail in steps of 90 degrees. Alternatively tiles can be rotated in the layout by clicking the [<<] button that appears when the mouse moves over a tile.
Fill	This will fill all the tiles in the layout (except those that are Locked) with the Texture currently displayed in the thumbnail
Random	This will fill all the tiles in the layout (except those that are Locked) with a random texture and then performs a Match
Zero all Rotations	This will set all tiles in the Layout to be Rotated 0 degrees
Adjoining Layouts	Clicking this button will display the other Terrain files that are set to be adjoining each side of the current layout. Click on one to change it. The theory is (and it is not completely perfected yet) that the appropriate textures from the appropriate edges of the chosen Layouts are included in the Matching process when you "Match" the current Layout.

File	Load Terrain File	Load a previously created layout into the program.
	Save Terrain File	Save the current Layout as a terrain file. The saved file includes data about the location and scale of the layout and other details
	Save Layout as BMP	Save a 256 colour Bitmap of the current Layout. This is a leftover from CFSMap but retained so that you can "overview" the layout. TheBitmap takes into account the scale of the layout so that the Bmp can be imported into Airport as a background (at 10 pixels/100m) for assistance in placing further scenery objects for seperate compilation.
	View Saved BMP	Displays the last "Save Layout as BMP" bitmap in a seperate window.
	Create Scasm File	Outputs a scasm SCA source file. Can be compiled with scasm from dos by invoking scasm on the SCA file.
	Create BGL	Outputs a scasm SCA file and compiles it to a finished BGL scenery file. The file dialog will ask for the SCA filename to use. The finished BGL will have the same name but with the .bgl extension.
	Copy BGL to CFS	Copy the last created BGL file to the CFS scenery folder you desire. Browse to <CFS>\Scenery and then to the desired scenery sub-folder. (\All\Scenery\ if you are not sure or have no Add-on scenery folders)
	Run CFS	Runs CFS so you can test out your new BGL (providing you have set up a valid combatfs.exe path in the Prefs menu)
Prefs	Select Scasm Location	Set up the location of scasm.exe for compiling directly to finished scenery BGL. Should be set automatically on first running the program.
	Select CFS Location	Set up the location of combatfs.exe to enable the direct running of it from the program. Should be set automatically on first running the program.
	Select Texture Location	Set up the location containing the textures to be used for creating layouts. Should be set automatically on first running the program
	Allow Rotation..	If this is ticked then the Matching routine will also take into account rotated images and the Rotation buttons will be available. If not then only the default textures will be used to find a match and the Tile Rotation buttons will not appear.
	Use Elevation Interpolation	If this is ticked then a simple form of interpolation is used when creating the Elevated mesh. This increases the Elevation points per tile from 4 to 9. Note that if you are using multiple layouts in your scenery then they must all be compiled with the same setting or gaps will appear!
Shift		Use this menu to shift the whole layout by one row or column in the specified direction
Lock		Use this menu to Lock or Unlock various combinations of Tiles
Elevations	Randomise up to Max Altitude	This will create a random array of relative altitudes between 0 and the number set in the Max Rel Altitude box.
	Set Water to 0m Relative	This will set all elevation points that have a tile containing any Water adjoining them to Zero (relative to the base scenery altitude). If all 4 surrounding tiles are locked (or not water) then the elevation will not be changed.
	Use Tile Types to Randomise	Attempts to randomise Elevations with regard to the Type of texture. Experimental!
	Double/Halve Elevations	Doubles (or Halves) all elevations in the layout
	Import ... Edge Elevations	This will display a file dialog for selecting another terrain file from which to import the edge elevation for putiing on the selected Edge of the current layout. Example - To set the West edge elevations of the current layout to be the same as the East edge of the next layout westwards.....use "Import West Edge Elevations" and select the terrain file for the layout that is immediately to the Left (West). Just think in terms of the current layout and Import the N,S,E and W elevations by selecting the terrain file adjoining in that direction.