Smoke colour changes in flight?

Ells · Post by **Ells** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 1:06 pm

Thanks for the comments guys.

Re. The hotkey app, it's just a freeware one I'm using at the moment, but yeah I'll try a more sophisticated directx one and see if that works.

Re. Timer - this is the other option I was considering but using a missile object method but had the same thought as you Burner about timing the display to the smoke, doable but not ideal.

I'll still keep digging and trying things out when I get back from vacation on the 7th April and will keep you updated.

Have a good few weeks guys.
I know I will snowboarding in France. Oh I'll try and get some photos of the planes coming in at Courchevel.

Burner · Post by **Burner** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 1:40 pm

Really the timer method isn't all that bad b/c ultimately you're controlling smoke on/off in game. So as long as you had the timer changing the color in the turn arounds when the smoke is off no one would notice the switch being a little late or early. Still not the ideal solution though.

Post by **Lawndart** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 4:25 pm

I think the Reds change smoke at specific times during their maneuvers. For instance the moment, "Synchro" breaks away from the rest of the formation etc...

Burner · Post by **Burner** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 4:38 pm

Lawndart wrote:I think the Reds change smoke at specific times during their maneuvers. For instance the moment, "Synchro" breaks away from the rest of the formation etc...

Ahh true

Ells · Post by **Ells** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 5:41 pm

Yeah we do, so it's kinda tricky getting the right colors at the right times, but I'll keep digging.

Thanks for the ideas guys, really appreciate them.

Ells · Post by **Ells** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 6:48 am

Ok I've got a directX hotkey app and will be testing it tomorrow when working from home.

I'm still not sure if Lockon loads the RGB values at game load up (I just can't believe they would do it this way, but stranger things have happened lol). Again results posted tomorrow.

Ells · Post by **Ells** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 9:55 am

Ok, I tried the DirectX hotkey app which works very nicely from within the game and changes the RGB values of the drawinfo.lua file, but the smoke color doesn't change until the game is re-opened.

So it looks like it's read only once and not dynamically.

Back to the drawing board...

Thumper · Post by **Thumper** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 9:58 am

Well...at least one part of the puzzle is solved. Would you mind posting some info about the DirectX hotkey app you found just in case anyone else is needing an "off the shelf" solution for tinkering with Lock On?

Ells · Post by **Ells** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 1:00 pm

Sure thing Thumper.

It's called HotKey Control 6 from http://www.inchwest.com

I used the program within the 15 day trial and the program is 34.95 USD to buy.

It's very user friendly as has a lot of features available.

I also setup a macro to change my music in iTunes whilst flying, worked a treat.

I have another idea about the smoke changing where you limit the payload in the meinit.xml file to the smoke color, then change that file on the fly. I'm assuming an xml file will be read dynamically, but that is more a hope than anything else.

I'll try a few things when I get back from vacation.