7. Now that your new shape and texture are found by the toolkit, and the shape points to the texture, let's actually edit them.

8. One option is to use Sick Puppy's Airbrush to change the colors of shape polygons and the texture. Simply copy your new texture and shape file from your Fighters Anthology/Toolkit/Projects/xx_your_project_name_xx/ folder, and into your airbrush folder. Open airbrush, and color the files. See the airbrush readme for more information. When you are done, simply copy the colored shape and texture back into your Fighters Anthology/Toolkit/Projects/xx_your_project_name_xx/ folder.

9. You can also simply export the texture file from the Graphics menu of the Toolkit. In the Graphics menu, select textures, then find your new texture, select it, and "Save As" it into a folder. Edit with your favorite graphics editor. It is usually desired to edit textures through this method after using Airbrush, so that the landing gear, cockpit, and afterburner textures can be brought back to the original color. An easy way to do this is to export the texture which your new texture was based on, and copy the original gear, cockpit, etc. areas from the old graphic file to the new.

10. From the Graphics menu of the toolkit, select import, browse to the texture you just painted, and select it. In the file type menu, select "Texture File". Remove the second "_" (underscore) from the front of the file's name. The toolkit automatically adds a second underscore in front of the filename, and this is usually unneccessary. The 1st underscore can't be removed, so remove the second.

11. Now, select the aircraft, vehicle, object, etc. which you wish to give the new shape/texture to. In the Shape Selection box on the main screen, browse to your new shape. For aircraft, it is only neccessary to create a new "XXX.sh" name, "XXX_A.sh", "XXX_B.sh" names are uneccessary if the edited shape file is from Fighters Anthology. There will be more info on using ATF/USNF, etc shapes later. When using a Fighters Anthology shape for an aircraft, just be sure that the "XXX_S.sh" (shadow shape) file corresponds to the original shape that your edited shape was based on.

12. Build the library and tryout the new shape.

FILE 04: GETTING AI SURFACE VEHICLES TO ATTACK EACH OTHER BEYOND VISUAL RANGE

The way I do it and it's the way I think works the best is to create a very long range visual seeker. To make one of these, edit one of the Vis180 or whatever files, renaming it to something else and giving it the range of what is needed for your ship/vehicle to fully use its weaponary. What I do is make a seeker that I can use for a lot of my ships/vehicles. Anyway, after you've created the seeker, give it to your ship/vehicle in their hardpoint menu, and give it the weaponary you want. Note this though, you have to make sure the ships can slew their weapons, and all weapons are given the secondary weapon checkbox except for one. What it does (secondary) is make it so the ship does not have to really think about targeting something and firing at it the way something normally does, therefore it will fire at a target without having to turn at it. BTW, for a s hip to fire a radar missile, they must also be given a radar seeker. This is to be an addition with the long range visual seeker.

FILE 05: ADVANCED SMOKE TRAIL TIPS

Excellent tip by Centurian!

How to get rid of the default objects in a map

• Short range missiles have low frequencies
• Longer range missiles have higher frequencies
• Bigger start size than end size for low smoke
• Same sizes for long trails
• DO NOT EXCEED 130 FOR EXIST TIME OR ELSE YOU GET AN ERROR
• Small missiles are under 300 lb.
• Medium missiles are between 300 and 750 lb.
• Large missiles are over 750 lb.

NOTE: This is based on my own system but it should give you an idea (i hope).

Centurian

FILE 06: SUBMERGED SUBS

1) Probably the easiest way to do it -- set the shape to either WAVE1.SH or WAVE2.SH. If you do that, it will look like a wave and will blend in with the rest of the waves in the ocean. Other objects will be able to damage it (depending on the damage points). If you use this approach, I suggest you increase the damage points, 'cause the explosion of weapons on the sea will be less effective against a submerged sub.
The shortcoming of that approach is that sometimes the "wave" is too noticeable.

2) Use the SUN.SH or MOON.SH. This makes the object totally invisible in the game, but it looks weird on the REFERENCE screen. These shapes do not take damage, so the object is effectively indestructible. But then again, submerged subs shouldn't be destructible in the first place... anybody here seen dasboot? (Depth charges...) whatever. just my two cents here.

FILE 07: SMOKE PODS

Making smoke pods for FA is very easy. Basically you'll want to make an inert weapon. By inert I mean non-moveable and non-destructible. You'll want to set all speeds to zero and set the maximum altitude to around 100K.  Don't worry about range. Set all damages to zero and then set its removal to a value of about 1 or 2. Then in smoke effects, select the color smoke you want (black, grey, white, transparent) and set its frequency to something between 20 & 30. Then set its exist time in this window to about 4, existing in the air for 1 second. Make its start size small, below 10 and its end size above 35. Then go into firing info and make it hold many projectiles.  Through the toolkit you can only set 255 but in the JT file itself you can go up to 32767. Make it have between 255 & 1000.  Set all the other values to one except the last one, set that to zero.  In ordinance parameters click loadable to hardpoint, continuous fire, and final collision check late.  Then just save and you have a smoke pod

FILE 08: MUSIC FILES (RARE TIP!)

First off, you've got to understand the music files of Fighters Anthology. Uh... there isn't that much to understand, actually, so I'll just get right to business and tell you how I modify them. If you wish to edit the music files, download the .MUS files from my downloads site. After you've got them, extract them to your FA toolkit. Use a hex editor to open the files up. You'll see I've named them
M_air.mus Dogfight
M_danger.mus Enemy detected
M_deck.mus On the deck
M_eject.mus Ejected
M_home.mus We're almost home
M_launch.mus Takeoff
M_normal.mus Normal Flight
M_succ.mus Success
M_valk.mus Ctrl+V (Hidden track)

Now when you open up the files, let's say you're opening M_air.mus, you'll find on the right side something that looks like ydogf, and the y's got two little dots above it.

FF 64 6F 67 66 00 FB 64 01 FE 06 00 00 00 01 02 ; ydogf. . .....

Should look something like this. Found it? Okay, I'll explain what it means.
Basically, you can ignore the y thingy, and focus on the four letter dogf. That means the .11k file that Fighters Anthology will look for after it sees this M_air.mus will have the name of dogf001.11k ...

Now, to get music into FA, you first have to convert whatever you want to put into FA into a 8 bit 11,025 hz wave file. Suppose you have a MP3 that you want converted to a wav for use in Fighters Anthology, that's perfectly fine. Use Goldwave, and excellent program for this job... All right, you've downloaded goldwave, and you've opened it up. Open up the .mp3 you want to edit, and in the effects menu, something on the way bottom says resample. Open that up. Change the number that you've got to 11025. That's 1-1-0-2-5... got that? When that's finished, click on save as, and then save your file as a 8 bit , mono, unsigned wave file. Still with me? Okay, that's great.

Open up the FA Toolkit, go to sound, then go to import. Find your file, and import it as whatever name you want,because as long as it's in misc format, it doesn't make a difference at all 'cause you're just about to edit it anyway. After you've succesfully imported, then open up your project folder. Find the file you've just imported.

Let's say it's &test.11k, then. Remember your M_air.mus file, the thingy that says ydogf? And remember how I said your file will have to be in the name of dogf001.11k? Well, that's simple enough. Simply click on rename, and then rename your file to dogf001.11k, removing the "&". But that's not it, you have to open up theitem.dat. After you've done that, search for the &test.11k you originally named your sound file when you first imported it. After you find it, change it to dogf001.11k. Save, and then you can exit. And that's it!

Keep in mind, all I did was just walk you through the procedure for M_air.mus, which is for dogfight. That means when you build the library, be sure to include both M_air.mus and dogf001.11k AT THE LEAST.

Remember, suppose you want to change the next one, M_danger.mus... nobody's stopping you. I'll first tell you the yxxxx name here, to save you the time of opening it up in hex editor... Keep in mind these are the settings I use, you feel free to edit them if you want.

M_air.mus ydogf (dogf001.11k)
M_danger.mus ydang (dang001.11k)
M_deck.mus yvalk (valk001.11k)
M_eject.mus ynorm (norm001.11k)
M_home.mus yvalk (valk001.11k
M_launch.mus yslam (slam001.11k)
M_normal.mus ynorm (norm001.11k)
M_succ.mus ysucc (succ001.11k)
M_valk.mus yvalk (valk001.11k)

If I did a real shitty job of explaining this complicated matter, send me a flame to My mailbox and I'll give you a hand here.

FILE 09: Editing Radar/IR signature

The parameters to edit an aircraft's radar and/or IR signatures can only be modified in the .PT file, which means you cannot edit it form the toolkit. The .PT file's in your Toolkit/Project/Projectname folder, and will have the aircraft's filename that you gave it in the FATK. Open up the file with any text editor. Below is the text from inside the file... scroll down and you'll see a few marked lines...

[brent's_relocatable_format]