Modding Tornado

[Frankie]

203. Minor bug squashing

I always wanted to solve these 2 bugs but never found the time to. Until now.

Bug#1: When the Tornado is on the ground, pressing and holding down "1"  or "F1" would angle the viewpoint vertically but would lead to a broken sky due to overflow limit of a variable. This has been solved.

Bug#12 When the Tornado is on the ground, pressing "PgUp" to go to Navgator's cockpit and pressing "Shift D" several times would lead to some broken MFD graphics as the TIALD is not activated when the Tornado is on the ground. This too has been solved.

Cheers
Frankie Kam

[Frankie]

Who's still firing up DI's Tornado in October 2022? And more importantly, WHY!?

[snakebreath]

   I still play Tornado and have been off and on since it came out way way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth  lol....I love the mission planner and the terrain following radar. I don't even notice the dated graphics to be honest..

[Frankie]

Just a little Tribute post here to my 90-year old father who passed away peacefully in hospital this morning in Kuala Lumpur. When I was a kid, he would buy me model planes. Airfix, Tamiya and my favourite - tri-colored Matchbox airplanes. And we had that Tornado GR1 model plane that he helped assemble.

He also was an avid reader of WW2 non-fiction war books. The Wake service is tomorrow night, and the funeral service is Saturday morning. He accept Jesus as his Lord and Saviour. I will see him in heaven one day. Bye Pa!

[Rinix]

I'm sorry for your loss, Frankie.

[Asid]

My thoughts are with you and your family my friend.

[Frankie]

Still here.

[Asid]

Still here.

 

[Rinix]

 

[Mandjare78]

... of course, still here and rolling through the virtual sky of Tornado!  actually have all 3 major versions installed, Tornado.... Tornado DS and your modded version.

VERY VERY SAD to learn about the loss of your father, Frankie...my deeply condolence.

André

[Frankie]

Itching to get back to x86 assembly modding of Tornado, but looks like I've scraped the bottom of the barrel,.....unless .... it's a deep barrel.

[Frankie]

I just realised that I had, some time back, set the External View (F1) to Internal Engine Sound. Which is the same sound mode as the Pilot's and Navigator's sound mode. The External View in original FLIGHT.EXE of 1993 was set to External Engine Sound mode. So I've restored the External View (F1) to External Engine Sound.

Now the switch from External View (F1) to Cockpit View (Home)/Navigator View (PgUp) - and vice-versa - is more immersive. Especially when using the SoundBlaster sounds. As it should have been, following the original 1993 sound plan.

Cheers
Frankie Kam

[Frankie]

204. Flyby view Air-Ground perspective toggle

My first mod in 10 months!
I added a companion function to the existing modded fly-by view (F3). I added a ground-perspective key (Shift+F3).

The original Tornado game did NOT have a fly-by view. A fly-by view is actually considered as a standard view among flight simulators. I don't know why DI never implemented a fly-by view. Probably because they spent so much time on the game's avionics and aerodynamics that they figured that the gamer would be busy working out the controls from the cockpit. What I have done today is to enhance my modded fly-by feature by giving the gamer a choice of seeing the flyby from either the plane's or the ground's perspective.

When you hit Shift+F3, the Tornado fly-by is seen from ground-level. I.e., from the perspective of the ground.
You can also hit F3, and the fly-by will be seen from the plane's altitude at the moment F3 is hit.

An extra bonus feature is this: with your plane on the runaway, ready to take off, hit the F3 or Shift+F3 key. You will be treated to a cinematic view. This only works if the plane is on the ground and not moving.

Regards
Frankie Kam

[Asid]

Awesome 

[Frankie]

205.    Backslash invokes ADI. Bonus: FLIGHT.EXE in 3 color palettes (European, Desert and Winter)

I removed the credits screen (invoked by the backslash "\" key).
The backslash "\" key is instead being used to invoke the Attitude Direction Indicator (ADI) gauge. First go to Tracking View (F1), the hit the "[" key twice, followed by the  backslash "\" key. You will see the Attitude Direction Indicator (ADI) gauge pop out at the lower-left corner of the screen. Like so:

European (default) colour palette

In addition, I have also created the latest modded FLIGHT.EXE in TWO other COLOUR PALETTES. The pseudo-Operation Desert Storm version of FLIGHT.EXE with desert colors, and a winter version of FLIGHT.EXE with mostly snowy colours.

Desert colour palette

Winter colour palette

NOTE
====
Today, 22nd July 2023, I had to recompile and RE-UPLOAD all FLIGHT.EXE files inside the FLIGHT_Euro_Desert_Winter.zip. Reason for this was there was some visual bug in the ealier FLIGHT.EXE that caused the horizon gradient to not show up (yuck!). So this has been solved, but I have to repost this post. So there.