Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Terrain editor uses dds tiles instead of pcx files that AF uses for terrain textures. Other than that, the terrain system used by all Falcon setups is identical. In order to edit your AF theater you need to follow these steps.

• Create a dds version of your pcx tiles or use the ones from seasonswitcher if you have installed the same theater to other Falcon 4 setups (OF/FF). Only H tiles are required (not M, L or T tiles).
• Create a folder named texture in <Program Files>\Lead Pursuit\Battlefield Operations\terrdata\<theater name>\texture folder (or where your theater's texture folder is).
• Copy the dds files into the folder you created.
• Open TerrainEditor and select MANUALLY OPEN PATH from the list.
• Navigate to your theater's tdf file (usually it is into the <Program Files>\Lead Pursuit\Battlefield Operations\terrdata\theaterdefinition).
• Click Edit Terrain.

All files saved by TerrainEditor should work just fine with AF. The only discrepancy is if you want to add a new tile or set into texture.bin file. To do that you need to have a dds version of the tile(s) you want to add. The texture.bin file will be saved just fine, but you have to manually add the new pcx tiles into your texture.zip (along with M, L and T tiles). Moreover you have to make sure that all pcx tiles that are in the same set, has a common palette (AF restriction).

Since you cannot start the program you cannot autoupdate but there is a workaround for this. First, try to fix the most common reason why the error occurs:

• Open the the file theaters.lst from your Falcon folder with the notepad.
• Check to see that all entries in this file correspond to an actual file in your Falcon setup.
• If an entry doesn't, delete the whole line, or mark it inactive by adding a # character in front of the line.
• Save the file and try again opening TerrainEditor.

If the above steps don't help, try the following:

• Download the TerrainEditor_UPD.zip, open it and unzip it in the installation folder of TerrainEditor (usually it is C:\Program Files\TerrainEditor).
• Run the TerrainEditor_UPD.exe. This is a 3.1.5 executable, with it's version set to 3.1.4 though. This way, you can start TerrainEditor and perform a autoupdate.
• After the update is finished and the program is restarted, exit TerrainEditor and delete the TerrainEditor_UPD.exe file you copied earlier.
• Now you can run the program as usual.

The third method (the preferred one) is to use the TE_Updt tool to update TerrainEditor:

• Download the TE_Updt.zip, open it and unzip it in the installation folder of TerrainEditor (usually it is C:\Program Files\TerrainEditor). It should be only one exe file (TE_Updt.exe).
• Run the TE_Updt.exe.
• Select to check for update from the server or open an update file.
• TerrainEditor should start automatically after a successful update. If it doesn't, run launcher.exe, found in the program folder.

Another issue that might happen is, your antivirus program might thing that the file Loader.exe that is downloaded with the update is a trojan and auto delete it. If this file is deleted, the update cannot be completed since, this file is responsible to replace the files that are opened during the update (exe and dlls). Try to disable antivirus during the update, or better, add an exclusion for this file (or the whole TerrainEditor folder) to your antivirus.

With v3.6.1 update a new feature was introduced that allows you to turn off tile rendering, in order to see other features clearly with a colored background. Unfortunately, the default value of this option is “off”, so just after the update, you should turn it on by checking the Show Map checkbox. After selecting it for the first time, it should stay checked afterwards.

Sometimes, in order to try and find out why a problem occurred, we need access to debug info. The latest TerrainEditor versions have a debug mode, which will output some debug information to a file.

To enable this mode, you need:

• Open the TE.ini file located in the program's folder (e.g. C:\Program Files\TerrainEditor) with a text editor (e.g. notepad) for writing (see info below).
• Find the line that reads DEBUG=0 (it should be under the SYSTEM section).
• Change the previous line to DEBUG=-1 and save TE.ini.
• Run TerrainEditor normally and do all the actions to reproduce the problem. After that, exit the program (or crash it if this is the problem).
• A file called Debug.txt should be created in the program's folder.
• Send this file to me (sakgiok@hotmail.com) explaining the problem.

The file TE.ini resides in a system folder, so to open it for writing, you'll need administrative rights (for Vista and later). You can do this in two ways:

• Press the Start Menu, search for notepad (or any other text editor you're using) and when the link appears, right click on it and select Run as administrator. Then from the File menu, open TE.ini.
• Copy TE.ini from the TerrainEditor's program folder to a common folder on your computer (e.g. Desktop). Open the copy with your text editor, make the changes and save it as usual. After that, copy the changed TE.ini back to TerrainEditor's program folder, replacing the old one.

Leaving the debug option active is dangerous, since all new debug info are appenned to the file, so it can get big really quick. As soon as you're done with debugging, disable debug mode by following the method above and setting the corresponding option to DEBUG=0. I recommend deleting Debug.txt as well to save disk space.