Lots of us, when making missions, use the given maps to represent other geographical areas, such as the Persian Gulf or the Falklands. Unfortunately, even though the land may look similar, the illusion is not always complete. Wouldn't it be great if you could put a label next to that city saying "Baghdad" or "Grozny"? Well, there is an undocumented way of adding labels to the briefing maps in NATO (probably works in ATF and USNF too - try it and see). The labels I'm talking about are of the type that say "Russia" or "Korea" on the maps (unfortunately, these don't show up on the in-flight map in NATO). Adding one of these labels requires a little tinkering with a text editor on your .m file. This is the way a normal object looks in a .m file:
obj
type FUEL.OT
pos 876170 0 907241
angle 0 0 0
nationality2 142
flags $11
speed 0
alias -3
name Texaco Reserve
.
Important things to note here are "obj" at the beginning and the full stop (period to you yanks) at the bottom. This block defines the object - almost all thing in the .m file are objects. The point of the exercise here is to insert a new type of primitive called a "special", which looks like this:
special
pos 1347582 0 315393
name King Khalid Military Base
color 48
icon -1
flags $0
.
(The special seems to be only for labels)
Essentially, all you need to do is find the right position for the special (described in the "pos" line), give it the appropriate text (in the "name" line), and off you go. Here's how to do it: (below is also the example NAME tag. NOTE: THIS ALSO CHANGES THE NAME IN THE GAME.)
name your title goes in here
1. To find the appropriate pos for the special, place a dummy object in the Pro Mission Creator which will be easy to identify later (I use a "Downed Pilot"). Save the file and exit NATO.
2. Load up the .m file into edit, notepad or your favorite text editor, and look for your dummy object (the "Downed Pilot" is called EJECT.NT). Copy or Cut its pos line to the clipboard.
3. After all the obj definitions, but before the waypoints, insert a special definition (copy from the one above, if necessary). Then, replace its pos line with the line of your dummy object. Fill in the right name. Note that the ^A's mean "control-A". In edit they look like little smiley faces - my policy is to cut the name line from elsewhere in the .m file (look for the line "name _Player_" which is always there unless you changed it). Once you have set this, you can also play with the other variables in the definition. "col" sets the color - 48 is the yellow that is usually seen. 10 give white letters with a black border. Play with the numbers and see which work best. Icon takes a number which is -1 or higher. -1 means no icon. 0-7 gives a series of cryptic looking icons, and higher numbers give more or less garbage. Experiment to see if there's one you like. Flags has, as far as I know, no effect.
4. Load up the file and check everything is OK. Be careful not to save the file in NATO, because if you do, you nuke what you did. When your mission appears in the briefing map, all the appropriate place names will appear, and the rest of us will believe we're in Lebanon, when in fact it's still the Baltic's. Adding a couple of these to your mission can really help set the tone and immerse the players nicely.
Cheers, and good USNF'ing
Dave "Sick Puppy" Nunez