19/10-2002  Konyaks Antonov-124 Addon:  

Please unzip the contents into your Addons directory.  It will put three PBOs in there, the flyable, open tail and static versions being seperate PBOs:

Antonov.pbo
AntonovTroop.pbo
AntonovOpen.pbo

Displayed names ingame:

An-124
An-124Troop
An-124Open

About the Plane:
I'm fairly proud to present to the OFP community, the AN-124 "Ruslan" or Condor.  It is in it's Antonov-Air colors, as it is a civillian aircraft, not operated by any army. 

About the Addon:
This is my first addon, so excuse the lack of flashy Config work :)
Making the model and getting it to work in flashpoint has been quite a struggle, partly because I know nothing about tweaking configs, and partly because OFP´s scale doesn't allow AI to operate such a large aircraft.   Early on I had to make a decision about what was more important: Ai operable, and thus easier to make nice cutscenes with, or fully realistic, which means even a human player couldnt really fly around, land and take off again.  I polled on this, and a surprizing number of people wanted it to be fully realistic.  I happy to say I totally ignored this, and I think once you try it out and watch the AI fly it, you will understand why. 
On the down side, it's geometry and collision modeling is very limited.  I have yet to find a serious practical drawback from this, apart from "unrealistic" things happening.

You can put 6 infantry groups into plane.  First five troops will show up in cabin. 6th troop will be sitting on the rear ramp with an excellent rear view :) Rest is sitting in strap seats in cargo bay.   


AI Flying:  
The AI flies it nicely, but it is still pushing the limit of it's landing pattern..  If the plane is not in the right position, it may not get into the right landing sequence, and circle endlessly to try again.  If it does this, and you are in command, tell it to fly to another point, other side of the runway, or make it fly downwind of the runway.  In my experience, it may make a missed approach (pretty cool actually) and then land successfully on another try.  Consider it hard to land on a much shorter runway than it really needs, and it shouldn't bother you :)


Human Flying: 
Not much to say here, she's very easy to fly, wants to stay in the air basically.  If you are in the cabin, do not eject when the aircraft is in a steep climb, or you will get keeled and die. 


Textures:
Here's what took so long.  There's plenty of pictures of this plane on the net, but none of them have any detail that would hold up if you stood next to it ingame.  Basically, if you want to feel like you are close to something, the texture needs to be crisp, otherwise you get that out of focus look and it doesn't look big. 
To be able to get that effect, I had to hand paint from scratch, in Photoshop, a 5000 pixel long picture of the side of the plane, and segment it into ten 512X512 textures, that arrange themselves one after the other.. Same for the bottom and wings.  No actual photo was used to do this, aside from visual reference. The only part that I used a photo, was the engine pylons, engine fan, wheels and cockpit windows and inside. 
I had no idea I'd eventually go to that length, so I had to remodel a large part of the plane to be able to place the textures that way.  Yeah, planning is crucial, and I learnt a whole lot :) (´xcept configging :) )



Known bugs:

1.Parts of the model pass through objects. See above in About the Addon.
2.When sitting inside the cargo area, the cargo bay doors are open, but seen from the   outside, they are shut:  If this bugs you too much, use the open tail version.
3.Open version doesn't show troops sitting in cargo bay, when standing outside. 
4.Instruments don't work:  I might add that later.. 
5.Antonov letters are reversed on right side: It doesnt show that much, bet most people didn't notice until they read this :)
6.Gear doesn't retract: OFP (as far as I know), only allows gear to retract forwards and up, but in this case it'd leave the wheels sticking out the side and the gear doors open.  I could very easily make a retracted version for cutscenes.. if theres interest for it.
7.Landing lights on front of wheelwells have the light flare ON, even if lights are off:  If someone could tell me what I need to do to turn them off, I'd appreciate it :)
8.AI will not drive vehicles up ramps into static version. Again, not sure it's possible, so any help appreciated. 


--- Wish list: ---
Things I'd have liked to do but don't know how:
Sound should be much louder outside, but more muffled and silent in the cabin.. Wasn't able to get that to work. 
Make the cabin crew another part of the crew, such as co-pilots, and only have troops in the back.  That way people getting into the back don't appear in the cabin, which I hate :) 
If you have the talent to accomplish any of the above, please feel free to drop me a message!


--- CREDITS: ---

I'd like to thank my testpilots, "Colonel Klink" and "PSC" especially, for their time and effort in trying out the flight model. PSC came very close to making it full-geometry AND AI operable, and that work still continues, even if I didn't use that version this time around. Thank you guys!
I'd like to thank Kegetys for making his Hawk which has tought most of us how things are done, and my dumbed-up config is based on :) 
I'd also like to thank Munger and again, PSC for getting my sound file to work ingame.
Lastly, BIS, for putting out such an amazing game.  



-"Copyright"- 

I do pride myself for not having used a single polygon or texture from anyone elses addon, and I would not like to see my textures or cockpits or any other part of my addon used in someone elses work, without my prior concent. 

Lastly, I hope people have fun with this addon, and I hope to see many missions come out using it!
Mods are free to use is, but contact me before doing so. 

Konyak  hh@despec.is







