Hello, I am a mildly experienced modder in search of help for my own personal mod. The mod I am creating is essentially a melting pot of cool stuff built on SWR's Rise of the Reds Mod. Contributing mods:
-Rise of the Reds
-Contra
-Enhanced
(Everything goes to its rightful creator, I take no credit for this whatsoever, I'm just a facilitator.)

Anyways, I have a few bugs I can't solve on my own.
1.
I used Contra's lenz flare for jet exhausts, and after beefing it up, it looks brilliant. However, on take off, landing, and terrain height changes, they look disconnected from the model. Are they not attached to the bones correctly?

(See screenshots 007 & 008)

2.
I attached particle systems to debris to give it a lovely, firey and smokey disposition. Unfortunately, I don't know how to code particles that well and once the debris lands, it creates a very unrealistic tall tower of smoke.

(See screenshots 011 & 012)

3.
Is there any way to change the resolution of the loading screen, main menu backdrop (The stuff around it, not the shell-map)?

4.
The game comes with debug commands, is there any way to convert these to work as regular commands? For example, the ability to change the camera height with the keys "8 and 2" on the number pad are included, however the ability to change the camera pitch remains part of a debug build. Any transfer of these files in the CommandMap.ini / CommandMapDebug.ini crashes the game.

5.
Is it possible to change the screen size (amount of game shown, not resolution) in game so it is always shown as it would be with the controlbar minimized. I attempted to add transparency to the controlbar, however it just shows the black rectangles.

6.
I transplanted Enhanced Mod's bloombox to the mod, and now games lag massively with it on, is this normal (I have an old pc) or is it just badly coded?


Anyways, thank you for helping! Any questions I can answer I will

-MarcusAurelius   sshot008.bmp (5,169kb) downloaded 11 time(s).   sshot007.bmp (5,169kb) downloaded 7 time(s).   sshot011.bmp (5,169kb) downloaded 6 time(s).   sshot012.bmp (5,169kb) downloaded 6 time(s).

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1. My theory: Check the model in RenX, make sure bones are attached to the base model (CHASSIS?) it looks like the plane is pitched by the game engine, but because that mesh is treated as the "root node", bones seem ignored since they are at the same level in hierarchy.
Here's what I mean:
Top plane (black line) is flat (parked or flying over flat terrain) - bone (red dot) is directly behind it
Bottom one is when it's getting off, with the model rotating, but bones are left in default state i.e. flat.


2. Either add fake wind (direction) in particle system
http://commandandconquer.filefront.com/info/mh_particle 
OR
change it so the smoke fades away after a few seconds so by the time it stabilizes itself on the ground its barely visible.

3. It's possible to rebuild the menu system, but its complex a *censored*, I believe it's kept in the window.big/windowzh.big. It's basically a wall of text I just ignored after few hours of tinkering with.

4. Games (well programs overall) have 2 versions: Debug and Release. Debug versions usually run slower and monitor the activity of the game on internal level, often showing additional information. Release versions are faster, but when they crash, unless well coded, they just crash. It seem that release version of C&C simply doesn't support certain controls to limit how much you can *censored* with the game as a user.
Side node. Debug versions are used by studios to hmm.. de-bug games. this looks like leftover files.

5. This ties into point number 3. You can edit the structure of the menus over there. If you have access to photoshop-like software, you can re-design the control bar to make it smaller and move all functionality down.

6. How old is your PC (specs)?

Thank you, The computer I run it on is a Dell Optiplex 745 dual core (Rubbish is an understatement). I'll work on correcting the issues with the bones. So far I've changed some boarders in the menu's and colors and transparencies, however I haven't quite got the hang of re-sizing and drawing buttons in different places. (it's all very overly complex)

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1. The game draws the effect relative to the center point of the chassis where the chassis would be completely horizontal. That's a hunch. And oh, newnightmare explains it well.

By the looks of it, the particlesystem seems to be drawn a bit late.
I don't know if its something the ParticleSystem or its the game drawing the effect AFTER(after a frame) placing a point on the world.

2. Use PingPong wind shenanigans. I personally don't like using these.

3. There is a specific image file you need to replace/recode somewhere I can't remember.
Same thing with the main menu's fancy borders.
You can also change the position of the buttons, that's something too long to explain here.

4 and 5... Stability-wise no.

6. I have tried ENBSeries, my game runs smoothly at max... An Intel Core i3. But I don't know 'bout everybody's builds.

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Yeah I just switched to a rediculous version of ENBSeries, it looks fantastic, however it does lag quite badly now, like 15 fps.

BTW anyone heard of QSN's Modern Warfare mod? I suspect It's been built with a ripper tool (Mod's based in China). He's done some strange things with the SAGE engine... However, I can't access his .big files which results in an error code and a visual C++ abnormal termination of the FinalBig Editor. Anyways, the mod is a mish mash of unaccredited stolen work, and a good amount of it too, way too much for one modder to implement by himself. And the download is pretty much a playable copy of the game, you don't need Generals.

6. What's your graphics card? Mine would be out performed by a rock I think...   sshot023.bmp (5,169kb) downloaded 8 time(s).

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Hey is there a way to resize the boarder around the menu so it is at a more native resolution than 600x800?

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