Mission Editors for F-22 Air Dominance Fighter (ADF)
The following programs were mission builders for F-22 ADF. They can be found in the SVBS Downloads Database
Air Combat Designer (ACD) and Dynamic Mission Designer (DMD)
ACD and DMD are, respectively, freeware and shareware versions of mission designers designed by Game Tool Technologies (GTT) for ADF. Both programs generate random missions given entrance criteria, though DMD was more robust in its capabilities and selection of entrance criteria.
Once TAW was released, DMD was superseded by TAWBC.
Micro Air War (MAW)
MAW was a simple program for ADF that provided dynamically generated missions against a set order of battle, which was tallied and updated at the end of each mission. This provided the semblance of a dynamic campaign. MAW was created by Doug "MadCow" Cowan.
AME/AGE
The ADF Mission Editor (AME), along with its corresponding GUI ADF Graphical Editor (AGE), was created by Wardogz in order to create many of the custom missions available for ADF.
Mission Editors for F-22 Total Air War (TAW)
TAW Battle Commander (TAWBC)
TAW Battle Commander
Total Air War Battle Commander (TAWBC), designed by Game Tool Technologies (GTT) is a mission editor for the unmodded version of TAW. TAWBC is responsible for most of the custom missions created for TAW, and is also capable of dynamically generating missions for use with TAW.
Once you install TAWBC, it prompts you to select your TAW folder. Once you select your TAW program folder, TAWBC creates the following folders:
The folders MDL, PDL, UDL, KDL, and Briefing correspond to the extracted mission files that are used by TAW to run the mission. The MISSIONS folder is used to store the TAWBC custom missions as ASCII files with a TBC extension (where they are extracted into the TAW format by TAWBC). The Wizard folder stores the dynamically generated missions in extracted format.
The T and M folders each contain a single file: T and M respectively. These files are duplicates of the original simultor.txt and multipla.txt files (found in the DID.dat cabinet file) that tell TAW what missions are available to fly. The existence of T and M files cause a Crash to Desktop (CTD) when used with an extracted copy of TAW, and so at this time the original TAWBC is only compatible with an unmodified version of TAW.
The original TAWBC can be found in the SVBS Downloads Database.
Total Air War Battle Commander for TAW 2008 and TAW 2.0 (TAWBC 2008)
As of F-22 Total Air War 2008 release 1.54, a special, modified version of TAWBC has been included with TAW 2008 and its dynamic missions are integrated into the Single Player and Multiplayer mission menus. TAWBC 2008 does not create T/M folders, and does not change the mission menus in any way. TAWBC 2008 puts missions into slots reserved specifically for TAWBC missions, so no overwrite is necessary. Likewise, TAWBC 2008 automatically drops the missions generated by the Wizard into TAW 2008, so there is not even any need to use the mission manager if you wish to fly the mission you just generated.
The same version of TAWBC 2008 has been carried over to F-22 Total Air War 2.0 and integrated into the TAW 2.0 Launcher. The level of integration with TAW 2.0 has been increased from TAW 2008.
TAWBC and TAWBC 2008 missions are completely compatible.
TAWBC Hex Edits
TAWBC was modified for use with TAW 2008 and TAW 2.0 with the following hex edits:
- find the text string "_f22", which should take you to offset 0x00b9afd. We replaced "_f22" with "tbcp" to launch a shell exe for mission integration.
- just above "_f22", you will see "M\M" and "T\T". The first letters must be changed (we used A\T and B\M) to prevent a CTD with an extracted copy of TAW. Note that you also need to create new folders in your TAW folder with these letters (e.g. A and B), and place the "M" and "T" files in their respective folders.
- You will need to find all other instances of "M\M" and "T\T" and make the above substitution accordingly. This occurs at the following offsets:
- 0x000c00fc, 0x000c0100
- 0x000c017c, 0x000c0180, 0x000c0188, 0x000c018c
- 0x000a6a67, 0x000a6a6b
- 0x000a73d5, 0x000a7404
- 0x000a75a1, 0x000a75a5
- 0x000a7ace, 0x000a7ad2
TAWBC Mission Enhancement Utility (TME)
TME is a utility included with TAW 2.0 that takes a standard TAWBC mission (TBC file) and performs the following enhancements to the mission:
- Allows you to assign a title to the mission (it will also allow you to default to the TAWBC generated title, or the filename)
- Adds the mission title to the mission briefing so that the mission is immediately recognizable when selected
- For multiplayer co-op missions, enables the players' F-22s to respawn at the nearest friendly airbase, as opposed to kicking the player to watch the action from the sidelines
TME backs up the original TBC file and adds a comment that indicates that the file has been formatted by TME. This will prevent double-formatting the mission by TME on a later occasion.
TME enhanced missions are 100% compatible with the original TAW and TAWBC.
TAWBC Mission Repository
A drop box has been created for missions generated with TAWBC and TAWBC 2008. People are encouraged to upload their missions and download the creations of others.
http://www.box.net/shared/rpbgpb7xqm
This link is also available from within the TAW 2.0 Launcher under "Mission Editor."