DBR_ONIX

Easiest way to.. erm.. justify this somewhat random idea And I did Basicly, the non-pro version is crippled with the inabilty to export to 3D model formats.. Buut, the Pro version has "Access to the following 3D export formats: DWG, DXF, 3DS, OBJ, XSI, VRML and FBX." So, grab the Sketch Up Pro trial from Sketchup.google.com, and Anim8or from The anim8or.com site here I strongly recommend you finish off your model before you install the trial, since it's a stingy 8 hour trial.. To start.. Save your model in SketchUp, as a normal file Install and startup SketchUp Pro (trial or otherwise ), open your model.. Then, using the simple extra thing SU pro has that the normal version doesn't.. File > Export > 3D Model, and choose .3DS Then, start Anim8or.exe (doesn't get installed), File > New Click Model > Import, and find your file and open it Then, the important bit (and the reason you downloaded that huge 1.4mb application Anim8or), Check Option > Debug > Dummy 3DS KData Then, Model > Export, keep it as .3ds, and click save (I recommend adding _fixed or something to the filename so you don't get them muddled up) Load up O2, File > Import > 3D Studio If it's untextured, uncheck the Convert Textures box If you want to keep the textures, play with the settings.. I've never had much luck with the auto-convert options, and normally end up manually resizing to 2^2 dimensions (like 512x512) converting them to PAA/PAC, and manually setting the texture paths, which on models with anything over 10 textures is tedious.. Setting up Photoshop actions can speed things up, and if that mas OFP texture path changer would work for me it'd be good, but it's still fairly tedious.. Annyway, one you click okay, and okay any texture conversion errors (Manual converting time!, you shoould be looking at the same model you left behind in SketchUp I had to select everything and hit W to reverse the faces, and the faces were only 1 directional due to the quick/messy way I made it in SketchUp.. Bear in mind I've only used SketchUp since about 3 times, first time being yesterday, and I've only been working on the importing to O2 over the last hour, and I've not done much playing around (particularly with moving over the textures) You'll have to manually LOD the things like anything you made/import, but for simple buildings, espically if your just modeling the outsides of them should be simple enough, and just to show of soldiers running around your SketchUp village, you don't even need LODs, just well placed soldiers/waypoints Anyway, I think that covers it.. I'll try and work on converting over textures, but to be perfectly honest, I think SketchUp's texturing isn't great : It's just applying small, repeating, computer-generated wood/stone textures to surfaces, something thats done extremely easy in O2 (I recommend finding the Photorealstic Texture Pack on Filefront or somewhere) But, for quick texturing, SketchUp works not bad In short : Save your model, open in SketchUp Pro, export as .3ds Open in Anim8or, enable Dummy KData, resave as .3ds Import into O2 Closer-combat settings are something I fell is really missing in OFP.. Theres huge islands, with really sparse villages, spread out hugely over a map.. Something like CAT Afganistan nearly has it right, with only about 4 very tightly-packed "towns".. And after playing it, the other islands seem very.. empty.. *Hopes to see lots of small, detailed MOUT-type villages soon * Obviously any questions about this can be asked here, via PM, email or MSN.. Hope it's usefull to someone - Ben

A typo a friend, DaveP lead to me thinking up this.. Well, lets start by copying this typo here.. it was.. Okay, it was supposed to be .sqs, but would it work with a random file type? I shoved a Visual basic program I made in the User/Username/Missions/Test.intro file, this addaction ["blah","script.exe"], previewed and hit enter.. Hmmm, not exactly usefull, but, what if you use an external program to monitor that file, and see when it's opened with Visual Basic? (Ye I keep bringing VB up, but most similar program langugaes will work too, it's just the one I know ) So, you have a "script" (Anything) that is.. erm.. Opened/Run (in a way), that you can call from anywhere a normal script can be called from, addaction, INIT script, weapon firing, addaction.. From past "Nah, can't be done" threads I've seen (Mainly on OFPEC), I can think of these ideas.. : Combat Photographer A weapon that every time you fire the camera (Basicly gun that fires bullets that don't do anything), it triggers the EXE, that takes a screenshot My idea, the real intelligance photos, where a photo (screenshot) of enemy base is taken in quick cutscene, and put in mission PBO, where a projector screen uses the taken cutscene (always same name) as a surface texture The problem was getting something to take the screenshot, now with this idea, it's possible.. Just to clear up, I know OFP doesn't run the script, it opens it, and you could monitor the file, and see when it's run with a VB/Delphi/etc program, take the screenie, shove it in mission folder (un-pbo it, shove in texture, re-pbo it) It IS possible, I'm not sure of how you monitor a file being opened in VB, but a friend who knows should be online today, and I'll ask him Anyone got ideas/comments/suggestions/random donation/coders? Thanks for reading (unless you just skiped here, if so, shame on you!) - Ben [Edit : Stupid HTTP:// thing, shoo!]

I've apparently been around here for about 4 years, which means I first played OFP probably 5-6 years ago. Like many of you, I played OFP an absurd amount.. I remember playing 9 hours games of "Crime City" with RCIR. Spending entire afternoons (..and evenings) throwing together multiplayer-missions the Ocean Island map with Gandalf the White and DaveP (and mocking his helicopter-flying skills). Happily suffering perpetually-slowing games of games of Capture the Island (The only game where I ever put up with 2 frames-per-second! I spent scarily long with OFP. In-game times measurable in months (That sounds quite scary when written down..) When I bought ArmA, I didn't like it, at all.. The controls were weird (A step back from OFP, especially air-vehicles). The graphics didn't improve that much. Most of the OFP bugs were still there (clipping though solid objects for example). The action/inventory system was far slower than OFP's. The AI was as bad as OFP (They still all went prone the second they heard a sniper, instead of actually..err, moving). Then still managed to shoot the sniper in the left eye on their first shot. The AI still either shot you the second you ran around the corner, or stood and kindly waited for you to shoot them while they slowly-rotated to aim at you.. I prodded around the mission editor (Something I spent literally months in with OFP), and it hard hardly changed in 7 years.. Even the unit-rotation was still twitchy (it's was hard to select the numeric-box in the middle of the circle) And most annoying of all, there was no mod tools released, despite this being several months after the initial release of the game?! That was a complete joke, for a game that pretty much exists because of the mod community.. But that's another rant altogether.. Then it dawned on me. The version of OFP I had been playing for most of the time was version 1.94 and above.. I had gotten used to playing a fairly mature version of the game, with many mods (ECP, VME AI improvements, Y2K mod, FDF etc) which too were in fairly late versions... Going from v1.96 with very professionally made mods, to (effectively) version 1.00 of a new game is never going to be a good experience.. So I decided to put ArmA on a shelve for a while, and return after some patches. It's now been a year since the release, and there's been an expansion pack released. Not far of when I started playing OFP. And here ends my slightly over-elaborate setup for this question: What is the current state of ArmA? Has the AI improved since the initial release? (Do they still all go prone in open ground, despite being under fire? Do they still have either inhuman accuracy, or brain-damage?) Have the heli controls improved? Is the clipping problem improved at all? And, more importantly: What is the current state of the Armed Assault mods? Is there any ECP-like "improvement mods"? Have the mod-tools improved since O2-lite? To summarize: I want to give ArmA the best shot possible. How much have the patches improved playability, and what are the best mods currently around? Thanks! - Ben

Not posted on this forum for.. ages. Infact I'm not quite sure how I ended up back on this thread But, while I'm here.. http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1131/1237201593_baff76f874_o.jpg

Nixer6 : I shouldn't have to spend £2000 on a Current Generation computer every month, games have settings for a very specific reason - To scale the graphics down too work on non-Current Generation systems. At the lowest settings, the game should be playable. I have a machine that matches up (or higher) than the minimum specs. P4 2.8GHz, 1GB RAM, ATI Readon 9500. But the mouse-aim shouldn't be effected by lower-speced machines, there's a few things in the ArmA MP demo (Which I've only played for about 45minutes, admitedlly I've probably played OFP for hundereds of hours, so I may be slightly biased, but..) the controlls in ArmA seem less usable than the OFP ones. For example : The seagull-crosshair, in OFP I could rotate the mouse over a building, and the seagull would rotate to face it, in ArmA, I move the cursour over and it stays centered, but rotates the seagull (So I have no idea how far I just moved the mouse) Another more annoying "problem", in vehicles, the mouse-cursour seems to be gone completely, leaving me guessing how hard I'm turning. It's not "more realistic", if it were real, I would be psyically touching the wheel, and know how far I'd turned it. Games are *not* real, crosshairs, health-bars, respawns are all totally unrealistic (in the game-sense of things), but are very nessiary to make the game playable (Well, not in all cases, but you have to conpensate for the lack of human senses) I suppose it will grow on me with time, are OFP was quite largely changed with patches, and I'm expecting a similar thing with ArmA (Again, my view is biased seeing as how the first version of OFP I played was around 1.46, I'm currently playing with the 1.03 ArmA, so it's slightly less.. mature) And as you say, newer games play better on newer systems (Shockingly), so I imagine the controlls will be more usable on faster machines There are a few seemingly fundamental problems with the game how-ever, far too tired to remeber most of them, but one which is extremely annoying is the little loading screen when I exit the map view, and the little fade out when I switch from first-to-third person view, and to commander view. Other problem I can remeber is the helicopter flight model, which seems to be getting fiddled with, but if it was kept as it is, it'd fairly annoying (Again, I'm probably biased by the ammount of time I've been playing OFP, but then again, a *lot* of the people playing ArmA are ex-OFP'ers) Anyway, enough fatigued-ranting for me, - Ben

Shiney.. Is that Depth-of-Field in-game, or Photoshop'd? - Ben

(Links go to Flickr page, they are the "full" size images) All were taken handheld/slightly rushed (It was cold), but turned out not too badly - Ben

I was messing around with long-exposure photography tonight, got two decent pictures (~25 minute exposure, F10) And my favourite : (Taken at around 2330, ~25 minute exposure at F10.) It's probably quite high up on my favourite-photos-I've-taken list A photo I'd like to try, but can't (Don't have the right lens) is a picture taken directly upwards with a wide-angle/fisheye lens, at night (With a 30ish minute exposure). Will probably look best on the North/South pole, but it's a little impractical to shoot there - Ben

Yes you can.. It requires a custom-made island to place the units on Basicly, you have the island with a big hole where you place the model. Then, you model the house with the basement the same height as the hole you made, and a fake ground plane at that level Hornet done this a while ago on an Area 51 map, which was fecking cool (I played around with it, making things like a "nuclear bunker"). I may still have that map somewhere, if anyone is interested (And if it's okay with Hornet, of course) But, it's possible - Ben

Got a new (Sigma) flash-gun - Ben

I just read the Invasion 1944, when an interview pretty much insults people who have.. taken an interest in a mod, you have to think they might be doing something wrong... Flicking back to the first page, they say (somewhat indirectly, don't remeber it word-for-word) uninformed people are largely to blame for this - Which makes sense, rumours and such are bad.. What is the most asked, most annoying question a mod team can be asked? "When is it going to be released??" There is a lot of talent in the OFP modding community (If you disagree, look around these forums, or any other OFP site, there is a lot of impressive stuff, for such an "old" engine). If someone has a problem with a particular script, or can't get a texture onto a model right, I'm sure there are a lot of people who would be willing and happy to help. [i could go on for a while like thus, but I'll get to the point in a second..] Imagine if someone could just grab a p3d, remove a bug, or add something, reupload it for approval (Although some kind of archival system would render this unnessiary. Think how Wikipedia works, but rather than page moification, it's a new model being updated) I don't know how feasable this would be, but we setup a server somewhere. On this, we have something similar to CVS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concurrent_Versions_System ) server, possibly web-based. This allows people to check-out a model (Just warns someone who also checks out this model someone might be working on it, and their version may be overwritten if they check it back in) When someone checks out a model, or a script, they work on it, upload it to the server (checking it back in/commiting it) Obviously there would have to be some kind of way to go back to previous versions, should someone replace all the files with rubbish, for example. But hopefully the community would be mature enough for this not to be an issue. So, theres my idea. How will this solve the "problems" I stated at the start of this post? Simple : Obviously, if people can grab the models and work on them, they can help people with problems simply. If people can simply download the entire, if uncomplete mod, they can see how far it's progressed (No, people will NOT complain along the lines of "OMG WTF IT'S NOT WORKING!!11", like a lot of mods seem think, scaring them away from releaing beta versions and such) It'll also give the modders a new reply to "When will it be done" : "Not sure, why not help out and get it done faster!" I don't see why this wouldn't work. Okay it's hardly perfect for a very specific mod where everything must be completely realstic!! etc. But for a "fun" mod, it should work A smaller version of this idea. Someone starts of with a pbo containing a p3d, a config file, a texture, and a mission folder, with the mission.sqm file, a script, and breifing folder. The work on it for a few days, then transfer it to the next person on [a] list, who then works on it for a few days, who then transfers it to the next... etc etc. Each person just improves and adds to the previous person. Think chinese whispers, but with OFP modding. The open-source mod might be a little far fetched, maybe with Armed Assault? But hte chinese-whisper-mod seems extremely possible.. Anyone interested? - Ben

To be honest, if it's out in another country first (And I mean by more than a few days, I'm patient enough for wait for time-zone differences ), I'll download it ("illegaly"), if it's avalible, then buy it when it comes out. I'll buy it if I download it or not, so it's not causing huge loss of profits or kittens houses to burn down etc. Don't think I'd buy it download-only, if I pay for something, I'd much prefer to have the phsyical DVD with the shiney box and such. - Ben

No problem, glad someone found it usefull Got a screenshot of it in game yet? - Ben

That reminds me of an anti-smoking campaign that is on here in the UK (Random, everyday things, like a girl opening a purse to pay for something, and it's full of old cigarettes and other such nice stuff ) Hm, not really done too much photography lately, took photos at a few gigs I was recording, but thats about it. [Recording thingy] [big Brother and the Holding Company, with Kittie(?) singing, at the Bein Inn] [same as above, but their bass player] [simon Kirke (Free 's Drummer), with Larry Oakes (Forgiener), again playing at the Bein Inn] {Flicker page thing, since I don't feel like linking each one : http://www.flickr.com/photos/_dbr/ } Those remind me : I really need an external flash gun thing.. Any recommendations for a cheap flash? Don't need anything fancy, just something I can shove on the top of the camera (Canon 350D), and bounce of the roof, without having to use my hand to difuse the flash and half-blind myself and burn my fingers The built in flash is crap, and to get vaugly reasonable shots in dark-ish areas I have to spend ages mucking around either in the custom white-ballance thing, or Photoshop, and even still it doesn't often turn out right So, flash recommendations? - Ben

Forgive me for not wanting to read 10 pages of forum (Read first, and last page), but can someone clarify something for me : Along with the online distrubtation, will there be a boxed version in stores, or on places like Amazon.com? Also, will it be a Steam-like system, where it's pretty much tied to the account? Hopefully it'll be more like what Direct2Drive seems to be, or maybe closer to what Bittorrent seems to be (I.e simply a method of getting the data, much like buying a CD is just a means of getting your money, and transferring you the data. And less like Steam's method of an all-inclusive content delivery/tracking/monitoring/anti-cheat/subscription application) - Ben

Nice idea.. It's something I think should be done in films more now-adays.. With all the fancy 3d tracking/match-moving stuff, the "old" 2d titles could be made far more interesting.. The only film I remeber having "interesting", 3D opening credit-text was Panic Room (It had the main cast's name "incorprated" into the scene, with relfections and such) Anyway.. Wonder what other uses these can be put too.. "Capture the Word" game-play mod? - Ben

Hmm, I remeber playing the LFS demo years ago.. It's still not out of alpha/beta? - Ben

Best way is to walk around the outside.. The enemy AI are far far better than you can be in the forest.. If theres enemies outside the forest, chances are you'll die.. It seems like the AI outside can see in better than the team-mate AI can see out also - Ben

A large flashy neon sign would catch your eye better, but if it doesn't look right, or doesn't fit with the rest of the artwork, it sucks.. - Ben

I use wireless, and apart from a broken ariel, it's worked perfectly.. I've never noticed a slowdown on games.. They are designed to work over dial-up, and slow broadband, if your wireless can't transfer ~10kbs you need to get a better ariel, and/or move the access point around.. The only thing that sucks about it is moving files around, trying to move a 1GB+ file is horribly slow (around 800kbs average), compared to the normal-ish 10/100 ethernet speed of 8-10MB/s.. I'd like to be have this computer wired to the router, but the walls make that nearly impossible (the house used to be two, so theres an exterior wall between here and the accesss point), so the lower speeds are outweighed by the convienence.. I do run a crossover cable to an xbox (for Xbox Media Center, all the files are stored on this PC, and it plays it over Samba), and a few times I've plugged it into my laptop to transfer big files over, and it's a lot faster Buut, for gaming, wifi should be fine, theres no way a game should use more bandwidth than it has, as suggested, change the channel it uses, move the access point closer, make sure the access point isn't sitting on top of a microwave etc.. - Ben

Just make various versions of a texture, then edit the lods, changing the texture paths It'd be slightly tedious, but should only take 30mins.. I might consider doing it, bu I've not done any OFP-y stuff for ages, and I never liked doing unit configs - Ben

Not to repeat myself, bu- Ah screw it ::

Me and Codarl/Gandalf/Gladiator/whateveryouwanttocallhim decided to play CTI today, which lasted ~450minutes (Around 4hours).. Which reminded me of a Crime City mission I played with RCIR (First /previous squad ) which lasted.. either 6 or 9 hours.. Has anyone else played an OFP mission (or another game for that matter (no not World of War Craft)) that lasted that long.. Read a different way : Am I normal? - Ben

Using a minidisc player would be good, but ONLY if you use a half-decent external mic, or, even a fairly crappy one, wrapped up in something like a fleece-jacket, which'd cut down on the ammount of noise.. Not really possible to do that to the camera your recording on, although you could record the audio seperatly (as long as it doesn't start and stop a lot, which'd put the audio out of time), but an external mic would be a better idea, built in ones tend to suck - Ben

I was clearing out my Favourites menu today, and stumbled across my old My old "Triggering external programs from inside OFP" thread, which somewhat directly lead to Kegetys having a better idea on how to do such a thing, and thus making FWATCH.. But first, a little story on how it came to be.. To those not willing to read though 12 pages of forum, basicly the idea was to run a script, which would in-turn update the "file last accessed" thing in Windows, when the file was accessed, it could be used to trigger an external program.. Why did I come up with this random idea? Well, previous to that, I was asking around to see if around to see if a "Real-intelligence" breifing could be done.. Basicly at the start of the mission, a very short (hardly visible) cutscene is played, just after it loads, a program is triggered, that takes a screenshot, and stores it in a PBO (Later on it ended up using a folder in the OFP-dir).. Theeen, using SetObjectTexture, the acctual screenshots taken a few seconds ago could be applied to a breifing board (I did make a slide-show addon, which you could skip though several pages of sides, you could theoretically add the real-intelligence screenshots onto one of the slides), or a base's monitor.. Anything... ..unfortunatly, this was very-difficult/impossible to do, due to OFP not liking setobjecttexture-ing files created before the mission was started, it gave same strange results.. Testing on a flag, basicly what happened was when you were far away, the texture showed up as the sea texture, then closer the sand texture, then closer my customface.jpg file.. Odd Although, I did find out a few things, like you could use the FORMAT command to set the texture path for SetObjectTexture, you can use scripts and files from the root of the OFP folder by using varying numbers of ../ when referencing to them (Which later got used for me and Cherry's FlashStat project, which I'll get to in a second) Where FWATCH came into all this was simple.. There was a small script, that basicly waits till the player presses the H button (can be changed to any key), when this happens <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">call loadFile format[":file write takePhoto.db %1 %2", "take", 1] Basicly it creates a file takePhoto.db (it's content is just to make sure the file is created, it's not important).. The program checks for this file in a loop, if it exists, it takes a photo, and removes the file, it creates another file, with the number of the current screenshot, and then starts waiting for the file again.. The idea was to read the file the program created, grab the number, and do <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">object123 SetObjectTexture [0,FORMAT["../../../OFPCamera/screenshot%1",_curr_screen_no]] Simple, isn't it.. But as I've said, it didn't work due to a limitation in flashpoint, but I still belive it's possible.. Buut, the taking screenshots triggered by OFP was working perfectly, so, you could use a custom weapon, modeled like a camera, with an event handler, when fired, it takes a screenshot.. Combat photographer addon! I never got around to modeling it, and it was around the time I finished up with this little project.. Anyway, I've got the program (upto version 0.4), the source code and a bit of documenation uploaded on OFP.info here :: http://ofp.gamepark.cz/index.php?showthis=8570 :: Which has a short documentation, describing basicly how to use it About ~6months later, me and a friend Cherry/Khalid were thinking up a coding project, and came to the idea of, basicly, XFire for Flashpoint (XFire being a program that you run, and it tells you how long your playing a certain game, what your currently playing, what server your one, and lets you talk in game to the client, or any another supported game) The idea was : Servers sign up on the website, they'd give server info, the server IP (or hostname), and a username/password They'd get a flashstat_login_info.sqs file, which would go in the root of the Flashpoint folder (So it's not transfered to all the clients when the mission is sent to them) Then, when a player gets a kill (Detected by eventhandlers), using the CoC_Network stuff, the server would call an FWATCH wget command, which would grab a URL like.. <table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">[] loadFile FORMAT[":file wget http://flashstat.com/talk.php?UserName=%1&PassWord=%2&killed=%3&killer=%4&kAi=%5&kCiv=%6&krAi=%7&krCiv=%8",FS_username, FS_password, name vehicle _killed, name vehicle _killer, _ai, _civ,_krAi,_krCiv] The talk.php script would them simply check the username/password against the server IP (Though the IP checking is optional, bigger servers with static IP's might want to do this to stop people cheating their stats), if it checks out, shove the stuff in a database, and print("true"), or if there was an error, return false.. You could then use this in an ?(flashstat_return_code):hint "Success" type check.. Then these stats would be used to create dynamic signatures (much like my "The Next Person to.." signature I'm using just now) that players could use to show off, or servers could use to display overall stats for all players And, with a bit of work, be used as the foundation for a ranking/scoring system.. ..buut, theres a bug in Flashpoint that causes a crash-to-desktop if the callfile is over 128 characters, which mean the data had to be split up, which then involved getting an temp-ID from the site, then sending that, along with around 50 characters of data at a time.. Which was a pain to code, and due to that, and a general lack of interest, the project was put on semi-permanant hold (Might try again with Armed Assault, depending on what scripting improvements are introduced) Thats my story regarding the creation and use of FWATCH, in my opinion the most powerfull, opertunity creating, but unknowen addition to flashpoint's scripting engine -------------------------------------- This point in that (far longer than expected) story? Simple : The posibilties FWATCH creates are huge.. And to my knowledge, I'm only aware of 3 projects/addons/ideas that use it 1, Kegetys demo mission, which uses the key-grabbing thing to turn OFP into an old top-down racing game, it also had a top-score chart that was far to easy to cheat, so it was turned into a "Last 10 people to play" screen.. T'was a fun little mission, it even had recording/playback of races 2, The Tiberian Dawn mod was using the same key-binding thing to create an amazing looking build-mode, where you could select where buildings were build by using the keyboard, and (not sure if this was planned), you could move the view around by using the mouse, much like RTS games do.. Buut, I've heard nothing from this mod for ages, no idea wether it's still going ahead 3, The Combat Photographer addon, which was to create a combat-photographer (obviously), which could (or would) use FWATCH and OFPCamera (or atleast an improved version) to make the camera take screenshots (Although it was mainly planned to be used in recon missions and the likes, both are possible) But, much like the RTS-mode thing, I've heard nothing from the guy who was modeling all the stuff in ~a year Anyway, this post is around 1000 words now, so better finish up.. Why have more people not used FWATCH? Have most people even heard of it? As I've said, I fell it was an extremely important step with OFP-scripting, but for some reason, it was totally ignored.. For something coded by the same person who made DXDLL (Kegetys), which is running on a huge percetage of OFP player's systems, it seems odd FWATCH hasn't been nearly as wide-spread, despite revealing many many opertunities for inovative mods and addons (Compared to DXDLL which just make s OFP look a bit shinier, which goes some way in proving games are largley just about graphics now But thats beyond my point) My aim with this post? To show people what can be done with a bit of creativity, and FWATCH, increase awareness of FWATCH, and hopefully get people to start using it.. This is somewhat my soulution to the "10 million M4 addons"-rants.. Look at everything that can be done in/around the OFP engine, and all the things left un-done.. The M4's been done, do something original (Yeh that was pretty random, ah well) ..okay, this is 1300 words now *stops* - Ben