


	In the April issue, We began "Unleashing the Power of Flight Sim Toolkit" to 
many users (and prospective users) with an introduction to two of the five editors in FST: 
the Shape and Color editors. In that edition, readers learned several previously undisclosed 
methods used to create ultra-realistic aircraft, as well as some tips on the best use of color 
in a flight sim.
	Last month, we looked in depth at the Model, Cockpit and Sound editors.  Various 
examples on how to utilize the functions of the Model editor to create realistic flight 
characteristics for your aircraft were provided. The Cockpit editor examples defined  useful 
cockpit instrumentation and how to place them appropriately on a panel. Sounds were 
easily imported into the sim using the basic Sound Recorder that comes with every copy of 
WindowsTM.
	In this final edition of "Unleashing the Power of Flight Sim Toolkit," we will 
explore FST's most powerful tool: The World editor. The World editor will bring to life the 
work completed in the past two articles. Here you are able to lay down terrain, determine 
where objects are placed, and determine what characteristics those objects will have. 
Enemy flight paths for aircraft and firing rates for ground forces are also selected here. 
Enemy supply lines can also be routed to add to the challenge and exciting gameplay of the 
sim.
	The scenario we are working with is a simple one. A U2 spyplane has been stolen 
by the Soviets and is being flown out of the country somewhere over the Aleutian islands 
of Alaska. A single Hornet (the Player) is being launched to intercept the U2. Soviet 
aircraft and surface vessels will be trying to down the Hornet, protecting the U2 and the 
secrets it holds. The U.S. can not let this happen.  
Islands In The Screen
	One of the unique features of sims created with FST is the virtually unlimited 
playing area that one can create.  As such, we begin in the World editor by deciding how 
large a playing area we want to use. I would suggest for our Coldwar  sim that we make it 
3 tiles high by 6 tiles wide. This can be set in the World menu item in the Project Manager 
box. This is also where we will select the Colors for the sim (COLDWAR.FCD).
	With the tiles of your world laid out accordingly, you will now want to start 
creating the Aleutian Island chain to be used as a backdrop for Coldwar. Move the highlight 
tile (the square box in the Project Manager) over a tile that you want to edit. Then click on 
the World editor tool in the Project manager (You want to make sure you are in terrain 
mode of the editor. Look to see that the "Terrain" button is depressed.  It's the firtst button 
in the left column). 
	We will begin with  a large expanse of sea. This "blue water" is where we will be 
creating the island chain. Go to the Terrain menu item and select Tool Action. Change the 
Height to 50 meters, and change the radius to 5 squares. Make sure that the selector is on 
"Add Height." Now using the Raise Point tool you will create small mountains 50 meters 
high and 5 squares wide, with sloping sides down to the water level. Each time you click 
on a particular spot you will raise that area another 50 meters. Click several places on the 
screen and create a mountain range covering most of the water. 
	With a newly created mountain range, we will want to randomize the terrain a bit. 
This can easily be done by adding Fractal Iterations into the terrain. Fractalizing terrain lays 
down random "fault lines." Select Fractalize Terrain (Last tool on the first column) and 
highlight the entire terrain tile. Do this two or three times to get a good land mass to work 
with in the next step.
	Our next step is to make islands out of our expanse of terrain. Select the "Lower 
Point" tool and smooth out the edges of the various islands by clicking on the range's 
perimeter. You will notice that this creates very convincing valleys and rivers, and if we 
take it a step further, islands in an island chain.
	Repeat this process for every terrain tile in the Project Manager. Once completed, 
you will have a very good looking chain of islands within which we will create the 
remaining sim characteristics.
	Since we must have an airport from which we can takeoff and land our jets, we are 
going to need to level out some terrain to build it. Select a terrain tile near the left of the 
screen, and choose one of the larger islands. Move the mouse over the island terrain and 
read the status bar on the bottom of the window. Try to get an idea of how high the terrain 
is in general. Go to Terrain on the menu bar and select Tool Action again. This time select 
the Tool Height to be the height that you determined was the average for the area.
	Now use the Raise Area tool to level the land for your airstrip. You want to raise 
about a 4 X 5 square area for your airport. This will assure you of having a level area on 
which you can place your runway.

Airport '94
	The first object we want to place on the terrain will be the US. Naval Air Station in 
the Aleutian Islands. We will start by putting down two Runways on the area of land we 
leveled in the previous step. This is the most important consideration regarding laying 
down objects in FST: never, ever, cross the grid lines with an object. Crossing the lines 
will "cut" the object in pieces, and not all of those pieces will be displayed in the flight sim. 
Many of our users call asking why their runways would seem to disappear on them in their 
sims.  It is because they are crossing the grid lines when creating the object.
	First get the World Editor into Object Mode (1st button, 2nd column). This will 
allow you to lay down objects and place them in appropriate positions, as well as give them 
properties.
	Zoom in on the island you leveled. This can be done by clicking on the Zoom In 
button and selecting the area you want to Zoom In on. Do this by clicking and dragging a 
highlight box over the area. If you want to get a better view of the area, Maximize the 
World Editor screen by clicking in the Maximize/Minimize button at the top right hand 
corner of the box. This will make everything a bit larger and easier to work with. To zoom 
in on one specific square, just double click on the square after selecting the Zoom In tool.
	When you have sufficiently zoomed in, select the "Place Object" tool in the editor. 
Click in the middle of one of the leveled squares. This puts down the default object 
"BOX.FSD". Since it would typically be a major challenge landing on a box the size of a 
postage stamp, we want to change the shape that is displayed. You can do this either by 
selecting Edit Object, or by double clicking on the object itself. This brings up the Object 
Properties screen. Here we can change what type of object it is, what it looks like and how 
it acts. For the runway, we want to change the Shape to RUNWAY.FSD, and leave the 
type at Cultural (Runways don't need to be anything else, but enemy runways might be 
Hangars, as they might be set to generate aircraft). On the right side of the properties box, 
there are three check boxes: Player, Runway, and Target. Selecting "Player" marks that 
object as a player, and it will be the point of view for the simulation (It is possible to mark 
any object as player, but you will not be able to move if you don't have the property of an 
aircraft - ie: Civil, or Military).  Selecting "Target" will allow Air-to-Ground missiles the 
ability to home in on the object. In the HUD, a square will appear over the target, denoting 
a lock-on the Target.  "Runway" is a property that allows a player to safely land and taxi on 
an object. Runway objects for the time being must be flat two-dimensional objects. In 
Domark's FST World War II add-on disk however, runway objects may be anything, 
allowing aircraft carrier landing.  Runways also have a hidden ability.  Should you come to 
a complete stop on the runway and shut down your engine, your aircraft will be 
automatically rearmed and for battle re-engagement!
	Place two runways side by side and then two in the square above the one you just 
laid out. This will make a large runway that is easily accessible for landings. You can also 
place some cultural objects around the airport. Hangars, other aircraft, etc. can all be laid 
down very easily. You don't even need to change any properties except perhaps the shape 
of the object.
	You may, however, want to place a beacon at your airport. This will act as a 
Navigation aid to help you find your way back for re-arming. Place down the Tower object 
and change it from Cultural to NDB (Non-Directional Beacon). You want to give this NDB 
some more defined properties, so click on the "Properties" button at the bottom of the 
screen. Change the NDB frequency to 110. We will also be putting an NDB along the 
flight path of the U2 that you are trying to destroy, so you will be able to use that as a nav 
point to help you find the aircraft after you do some dogfighting with Soviet Blackjacks 
(it's easy to lose your sense of direction performing a Split-S!).
	You can lay down more runways if you'd like (you may want one going East-West 
as well), just remember to mark every runway object as "Runway" in the Object Properties 
section. You can change the angle that any object is shown at using the Angle property in 
the Properties section.
	
Path  (path) n. |OE pĪth|
	Webster's New World dictionary defines Path as "1. A way worn by footsteps  2. 
A walk for use of people on foot  3. A line of movement." While 1 and 2 make sense if you 
are hiking or playing a computer role playing game, we are most interested in how FST 
handles the 3rd definition. 
	Paths must be associated with a Hangar (for aircraft) or a Depot (for ground units). 
After defining a path you must link it to one of the above object types, using the Link path 
tool. NOTE: A path does NOT need to begin at the object. A box on one side of the world 
can be generating an aircraft somewhere on the other side. If the box is destroyed, it will 
sever the link and aircraft will stop being generated. The most common use for this is a 
Hangar-object generating aircraft that begin on a runway. 
	Paths in FST can be laid down for one of two purposes. The first, and most 
common path, is Combat Air Patrols on which enemy fighters are sent. Enemy aircraft on 
this path will follow it until the player comes within 50 kilometers of their position, at 
which point they will break from the path and engage the player in Air-to-Air combat.
	The other type of path we will be dealing with is a Re-supply path. This is most 
often used with ground units re-supplying SAMs and AA guns that have run out of 
ammunition, but one effect you can do is re-supplying a Hangar or Depot that re-supplies 
something else. Lets take a look at a few examples:
	Example 1: The Bridge
	We can simulate an enemy supply line creating a Bridge as a Depot that begins with 
zero objects. We then create another depot that re-supplies the bridge with objects (trucks, 
tanks, whatever). This way we have one path that ends with the supplying of one truck by 
the Bridge Depot. The Bridge/Depot then sends out another truck. This way, should the 
player destroy the bridge, the supply line will be severed.
	Example 2: The Enemy Carrier
	In this example, we will have a path for an aircraft that re-supplies an Aircraft 
Carrier Hangar with enemy aircraft. This way we can simulate an enemy fighter landing, 
refueling/rearming and taking off again. The first path will be marked as supply, while the 
second will be marked as fighter. This way the enemy plane will not break off to attack you 
as it comes in to land. In Coldwar, we will be using this to simulate long range 
reenforcements.
	Example 3: The Civil Airport
	This is similar to the Enemy Carrier, except that the path will be a re-supply and 
circular, i.e. aircraft will take off from an airport, fly around for a while then land at the 
same airport, re-supplying the airport with one more aircraft which will take off and fly the 
same path in a continuous loop.
	When you lay down a path, it is not necessary to edit each point on the path to 
instruct  the speed of the vehicle or how high the aircraft is flying. If you do the first point 
on the path then the vehicle will use that data for every point after until it reaches a point on 
the path where something is different. Aircraft paths with very sharp turns will be executed 
to the best of that aircraft's ability. 
	In a civil simulation you will want several aircraft flying about on paths, giving you 
a little scenery in the sky to look at beyond that being viewed on the ground.
	In Coldwar, we are going to set up one simple path for the U2 to follow. This will 
be from one map edge to the other. To run the path along the entire length of the map, you 
are going to have to exit from the World editor, move the highlight box over, then reenter 
the editor, and drag the end point of the path to the edge of the tile. Repeat this process until 
the U2's flight path runs the length of the map. 
	The U2 itself has not been entered into the sim however. To do this we must create 
a hangar that generates one U2.  One possible trick is to create an object that has no 
polygons and save it as INVISIBL.FSD. This gives me the ability to create an object made 
literally out of "thin air."  Invisibl can be anywhere as long as the U2's path is linked to it. 

Bandits, SAMs, and Triple A...
	Now we come to the fun part of FST's World Editor. We now are going to 
determine what enemy forces we will use and how ferocious their firepower will be.
	We will start with the enemy Navy. We will probably want two aircraft carriers and 
several picket ships  to thwart the Hornet's progress. Near the middle of the map place one 
of the carriers and near the West edge place the other. Give each of these 1500 KP (kill 
points) which means that only  missiles will be capable of taking them out. Place several 
picket ships around the carriers, give these between 500 and 1200 KP. These will serve as 
the carrier's protective shield.
	Now there are two ways to get the picket ships to fire at the Hornet. The easiest 
way is to mark the ships as AA Guns in the Properties section. Then set their fire rate and 
reload time of the gun. This method has one advantage but several drawbacks. The 
advantage you have is speed. You can set down several ships of this type quickly. The 
drawbacks are that you can have more than one AA Gun firing per ship and that you can't 
destroy the AA gun itself.
	A better way to handle ships firing back at you is to place AA Gun shapes on the 
ship itself. Place them on the high points on the ship so it doesn't  blow itself up when you 
fly by. This way you can have several AA guns firing at you as you pass over the ship, 
and, if you want, you can pick off individual AA guns when strafing the boats. A cool 
effect, especially if you give them low Kill Power between  2 and 10.
	For the enemy air forces, we are going to use the Blackjck.FSD shape from the 
Library. Using the example of the Carrier supply line in the paths section above, we want 
to simulate these aircraft landing and taking off again. This means we have to mark the 
carriers as "Hangars" with an initial supply of zero (or maybe one or two depending on 
how vicious you are). Then you want to place an INVISIBL hangar on the West map edge 
that generates a Supply Blackjack. Create a path from the West map edge to the carrier,  
and then create a path for the CAP (Combat Air Patrol). The CAPs will most likely intersect 
the U2's flight path. This will give the player an additional oppositional challenge when 
engaging the U2.
	The flight models you denote in the Hangar Properties section determine what the 
aircraft are armed with in the game. A Jet  engine equipped aircraft will have guns and 
missiles, while a prop aircraft can have only  cannons.
	Once you have set up the AA and Aircraft, you may wish to put down the "dread of 
the fighter pilot. Surface-to-Air Missiles (SAMs) are fired and track down your aircraft 
based on the heat emissions of your jet. The only recourse a pilot has is to drop Chaff 
decoys when he hears the MAW (Missile Approach Warning). Place some SAMs on ships 
and a few on the islands to add increasing levels of difficulty to the sim. Don't put down 
too many SAMs though (they can turn the player's aircraft into swiss cheese if he's not 
careful!)  AA Guns can be placed with abandon as their hit ratio is pretty low in the current 
version of FST, but SAMs are deadly accurate. Make them more easily destroyed by 
marking them as "Target." This way the Air-to-Ground missiles can't miss. This can 
simulate Radar Seeking missiles like HARMs. You may want to make the scenario tougher 
by having only SAMs marked as targets, simulating the loading of only High-speed Anti- 
Radiation missiles. Or you can mark other targets (like the ships), giving you lots of targets 
to lock onto. SAMs should have between 10 and 25 KP.

The Player (NOT Tim Robbins)
	The final component involved in building your sim is placing down the Player 
object. Go back to the airport you originally set up, and zoom in close to one of the 
runways. Place down an object, then go to Object Properties. 
	Change the shape to "A-18" (the hornet shape included in FST, found in the 
Library sub-directory). Now mark this as Player. Change the object's class to Military, 
then select the Properties button on the panel. This brings up the Player Arming screen and 
properties section. The work we've done over the past two issues comes to fruition here, 
so lets input the variables!
	Change the cockpit to HORNET.FGD and change the flight model to 
HORNET.FMD. If you want a gear down shape, it should be no trouble at all to go into 
the Shape Editor and add a set of landing gear to the Hornet, then using the save as 
function, save the new shape as A-18GD.FSD (for Gear Down). The Hornet does not have 
Swing Wings , so we can leave the High Speed shape blank.
	Now we have to arm the Hornet with ammunition. What we decide on here will 
determine the level of challenge built into the sim.   One of the joys of working with FST is 
that you can build sims that match your skill level as a player.  You can load 999 Air-to-Air 
missiles and fire them continuously until you manage to engage the U2, or you can put 
only a few  on and make this scenario a REAL challenge!
	For a good balance of playability and realism, I suggest the following:
Cannon: 2000 rounds at 1 KP each
Air to Air: 6 missiles at 30 KP each
Air to Surface: 4 missiles at 500 KP each
Iron Bombs: 6 bombs at 10 KP each.
	With your variables set up you are ready to play!

Learning to FLY.EXE
	The FLY executable is  the command you run from DOS (or Windows, if you have 
over 16MB of memory) that starts the flight sim component of FST. There are numerous 
"switches" for the Fly executable that change the way the game is viewed and played.
	The most common switch is "-S", "-A", or "-V". These three switches set the 
screen size to 640x480 pixels instead of the default 320x200. The S stands for S3 based 
Windows Accelerator cards, the A stands for ATI Mach 8 or Mach 32 based Windows 
Accelerators, and the V stands for VESA compliant video cards (version 1.2 or later). 
Some S3 cards need the VESA  driver installed before the S3 chip can work to full 
effectiveness, so if you are convinced you have an S3 card, but the computer won't take 
the -S switch, try loading the VESA driver beforehand. Remember that you can only run 
the sim in the same resolution as the cockpit you have designed for the player. In the 
TOPGUN and PILOT simulations included with each FST product, Domark used a Batch 
(.BAT) file instead of the normal FLY command to start the game. This allowed us to 
maneuver around the issue of display choices on various machines.  The Batch file rewrites 
the WORLD.FST file into a new WORLD.FST file that has the variables inputted for it 
automatically.  Experienced DOS users may want to try this as well, as it allows many 
users to enjoy sims created with FST, as long as they have DOS-based PCs.  In other 
words, once a sim is complete, players only need DOS to actually play it.  As such, FST is 
the tool used to create sims but not to fly those sims.  This is because the Windows-based 
engine that FST uses doesn't run the sim portion of the game at acceptable fast speeds.
FLY.EXE requires very little conventional memory (330K), so virtually any computer has 
the capacity to enjoy FST sims.
	Another switch you may be interested in is "-P" for Optional Player. Used in the 
following manner: "FLY -S -PFALCON" where Falcon is the Name of the object you want 
to use as the player. Set this up in the World editor by creating a playable object (in shape, 
Object Class, flight model, armament, etc). Then, in the Name section of the Object 
Properties, enter a name that can be entered immediately after the -P (as in -PFALCON).
	One undocumented feature of FST is its ability to display a title screen before the 
game begins. This screen is a normal .PCX file called "FST.PCX" and FLY will 
automatically punch this up upon running of FLY.  NOTE: You need an SVGA .PCX file 
if you are running an SVGA sim, and a VGA one for a VGA sim.

CONTEST
	Michael: Insert whatever you are doing about a contest here.
In Closing...
	I hope you've found this three part series on "Unleashing the Power of Flight Sim 
Toolkit" informative and helpful in mastering the creative process used to build your dream 
sim.  Be on the look out for the high-flying World War II add-on disk featuring the Battle 
of Midway and D-Day scenarios.  FST WWII will be released to stores near you in May 
and will be followed soon thereafter by FST Helicopters featuring heart-thumping copter 
scenarios.  
	For the time being, however, test your newly honed sim building skills by 
participating in Domark/CGW's sim building contest:  A World of Flight featured on the 
following page and win lots of exciting prizes.

[Chris, the following section should be in a seperate text box somewhere near the end of 
the article...]
SHAPE EDITOR REVISITED
	After several conversations with FST's program leader David Payne, I learned 
several more secrets regarding the Shape Editor:
	You may find that you cannot "CUT" a polygon of a solid that you have built. For 
example, let's say you built a wing out of a cuboid. The edge of the wing is butted up 
against the fuselage of the aircraft, and therefore can not be seen. This may show through 
in the Viewer or in the sim itself (very tacky looking in my opinion). A solution to this 
problem is blindingly easy, but is undocumented in the manual. You need only to highlight 
the annoying surface and press the "Delete" key on the keyboard. It's that easy. You just 
eliminated 4 polygons and made a better looking aircraft in the process. I wish I had known 
about this ages ago, I could have kept my polygon counts down on dozens of objects I've 
created and sped up my planes, carriers, etc. that much more.
	
