CFS1 M/Editing w/CFS Mission Editor by Cor Dikland

[DreamRyder]

Hi,,Im pretty new to CFS but I have been toying with flight simulators a little & find if you look hard enough I usually can find info on just about anything. Heres my problem. I recently obtained CFS1 from my son as a birthday present. I enjoy it alot! I then brought my FS200&2002 investigative,imagination,and need to tinker into the picture & now wanted to make changes to aircraft, missions etc. Missions seem to be what I want to create & improve the most. I downloaded a few Mission Editors & Creators. My first being the simple DOS program Quick Mission Creator. That was fine, but flexibility & deeper control of the missions soon drove me to the other editors. I got CFSme (Keith Bedford) & CFS Mission Editor v3.0.3 (Cor Dikland). Between both I found that Cor Dikland's editor was more to my liking. It was able to create the missions I wanted & with adaquate flexibility. Now I want to go deeper, but outside of Michael Brookshire's Tutorial on creating a simple mission---which helped me very much initially--I find documentation on this wonderfull (my opinion) piece of software virtually non-existant! I've searced on the authors name, the editors program name, & exhausting other search criteria & have come up with nothing at all!!!??? Is there no user support, by author or other users, available? It would be a shame if there wasnt.  :'(  Well, here goes :

Question 1- Does anyone know of other tutorials/documentation on this software? Do they exist? Im looking for deep stuff--well deep as can be found or that exists. At this point almost anything above the formentioned tutorial would help.

Question 2- If anyone has personally unlocked this softwares full potential Id like ask a few hundred questions---LOL---but simply the most pressing issue is this.  I know that pressing F5 brings up the A/C spreadsheet. It looks like you can update this aircraft list to assign aircraft to formation pilots. Everything seems strait forward, but the A/C 4 digit numbering system has me stumped. Do you need to use a number for an aircraft that is known within CFS, or is it any number the program assigns that will be recognized by CFS? Is there anything else needed to create a CFS understandable add-on aircraft list? Is there a set list of Aircraft numbers that can ONLY be used?

Please help me here..I would be eternially (Lucifer need not respond!--lol) gratefull . Thanks,,,Bobby

[Hagar]

Hi Bobby. I'm no great shakes at mission editing myself but I was involved with the popular Korean War series of campaigns posted here. The missions were created by my Fox Four colleague Mike Eustace. I'm sure he used the Quick Mission Creator combined with CfsMe for all the missions. He set up the basic missions with QMC & tweaked them with CfsMe. Most people found the Cor Dikland editor difficult to figure out. I seem to remember some bugs being reported with it & I'm not sure these were fully overcome.

Everything seems strait forward, but the A/C 4 digit numbering system has me stumped. Do you need to use a number for an aircraft that is known within CFS, or is it any number the program assigns that will be recognized by CFS? Is there anything else needed to create a CFS understandable add-on aircraft list? Is there a set list of Aircraft numbers that can ONLY be used?

I could be wrong but think you can use any unused number in a particular mission. Treat each one separately. If I recall correct the aircraft numbers vary even in the default missions.

I find documentation on this wonderfull (my opinion) piece of software virtually non-existant! I've searced on the authors name, the editors program name, & exhausting other search criteria & have come up with nothing at all!!! Is there no user support, by author or other users, available? It would be a shame if there wasnt.

You must appreciate that CFS1 was released some years ago. Many of the utilities were released soon afterwards. These might not be supported now as their authors have either moved on to other things or retired from the hobby. Unfortunately many of the websites supporting CFS1 disappeared long ago. Although CfsMe is no longer directly supported Keith Bedford's site is still up. Most of the links are dead now but I think he's still around & answering mail.

[DreamRyder]

Thanks for responding Hagar.  ;D

I agree with a lot you say. The CFS1 is old & the programs created to support it just as old. The only hope I have is that I've seen many "recent" missions that stated they were created with CFS Mission Editor 3.0.3, and they were excelent, so hopefully the masterfull creators might stop on by here & see my delema. I have been tinkering with work-arounds, but nothing would be better than using my program editor of choice. CFSme is decent, but many manual entries   :-/  have to be made regarding waypoints etc... that just more knowledge on CFS ME 3.0.3 would be more desireable..Thanks again for your input!  ;D  

[mikencfs]

Hi Bobby,

The Michael Brookshire tutorial is the only one I've seen.

Originally, I added aircraft to Dikland's editor but it wasn't worth the effort to me.
If I remember correctly, the next unused 3xxx number is assigned to each aircraft as you add them or you can assign any unused 3xxx number that you want.
But I had a problem with the editor changing allegiances of aircraft that were already installed.

I went to Richard Steele's system of using the existing 3xxx numbers while making or modifying a mission, then changing the name of the aircraft in unit types when I was satisfied with the end result.
Many of the missions that we download have numbers that are unrecognizable in the editor anyway.

Using a combination of Dikland's editor and cfsme2 works for me.
Cfsme2 is useful for refining waypoints since you can zoom in to maps around the world and waypoints can be imported.
The cfsme.ini file can be opened and items added in any case.
Maps, airfields, aircraft and ground units.

No matter what, it always seems there is a bit of manual editing to do at the end.

Mike

[tiger63]

I know how you feel. I just got into CFS about 3 or 4 months ago, and I've kept hagar quite busy answering my million questions, LOL  ;D

[mag_ddave]

Did you dl cmv3003d.zip ? That's the complete tutorial for Cors Dirklands program.
Ddave

[DreamRyder]

Thanks Dave for the info.

I already had that tutorial, but for anyone reading this and wanting the file you can download it at

[url][/url] http://www.simviation.com/files/2cfs/cmv3003d.zip

Its good, but still leaves much to be desired!

Thanks again Dave  ;)

[Straferr]

I never used CFS1 very much; but the four digit numbers in CFS2 never change per plane, as far as I can see. It might be true where you are working. It does seem that, if you take a third party plane out and then install it later that the number will change.