Introduction:
Aircraft have been added to CC mods before, with observers calling in air strikes that are really just a plane sound and explosions with no aircraft graphics. By editing explosion files, planes graphics can now be added to the mix, but the observer method of employing air strikes (as opposed to the point-and-click-when-available method of CC4/5) is still required.

Instructions:
First thing to do is read the readme for the above tools and understand what they do. Use zfx to extract (and later repack) all the files from Vfx.zfx, a file found in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Close Combat III\LocalFX. This files contain smaller files that, in turn, contain the graphics for game effects like explosions and muzzle flashes.

The explosion files are named Exp20 through to Exp60m. Each of these subfiles contains a series of images that, displayed in quick succession, make an explosion effect. The CCfx tool is used to extract and repack the graphics from these subfiles to .tga format.

Here are the first five images of more than 30 images that comprise an explosion subfile in Vfx.zfx.

To add aircraft graphics to CC3, images are added to these explosion graphics. If aircraft images are added after explosion images (they are numbered), then the aircraft will fly across the screen after you see an explosion in the game. Put the aircraft graphics in first, the plane will pass by before the explosion. The first technique is good for rocket attacks and the second is good for bombing effects. The trouble with the latter is that the impact of the explosion (infantry fall, vehicles get knocked out) will occur in the game as the plane passes, not when the explosion graphics follows the plane.

Finally, you can remove the explosion graphics and just have a plane fly by for machine gun or cannon attacks!

Each .tga has a number ID, starting at 001, which will appear in the game first. The next two numbers are co-ordinates, telling the game engine where the graphics should appear in the game. You must stick with this naming format.

To make an aircraft zip across the screen, multiple images with varying co-ordinates are added to explosion graphics. Adjusting the first co-ordinates from a high number (pixels) to zero and then into the negative numbers makes the aircraft fly across the screen left to right. The higher the first number and last (negative) number, the longer the path of the flight.

WARNING: Adding too many mages or making the flight path too long will result in game crashes or a rather odd effect of the plane flying across the screen over and over. A 1500 to -1500 co-ordinate range with 100 pixels between each co-ordinate works well and should result in a flight patch that covers most of a wide CC3 map. Starting with negatives numbers and moving into positive, so the plane flies right to left, can result in crashes. The second co-ordinate can remain constant (43 works well).

For a rocket attack effect, it's best to cut away a half dozen images near the end of the explosions graphics so the plane can whip across the screen as quickly as possible. Make sure you don't cut images that follow right after each other or the explosion will look bad.

Whenever you use up explosions for aircraft graphics, that leaves you with fewer explosions for regular gameplay. You need to isolate explosions for exclusive use with air strikes by manipulating the game data. Blast sizes should be adjusted in weapons.txt. The table below shows how blast size data relates to explosion subfiles in Vfx.zfx.

*There appears to be overlapping of the use of explosions 40 to 60m in the game

The best explosion subfiles to use for aircraft are Exp 20, Exp 30 and Exp30m. That would be Exp 20 for one side and Exp 30 and Exp 30m for the enemy. Using the others will cause all sort of problems, like planes flying across the map when there are secondary explosions in knocked out vehicles. Since you are editing two files for one side (30 and 30m), you can add two camouflage schemes for an aircraft or even different aircraft (though data would have to point to a generic air strike and not mention a single aircraft type).

If you want the same explosion setup as WF, use the WF Vfx file as a basis for your own mod. Unpacking these files, in fact, might help you understand how everything works with the aircraft graphics.

Now, for the data editing . . . In your weapons.txt data, all weapons except the observer aircraft weapon lines must be edited so 0 and 1 values do not appear in blast size columns for AP, HE, HEAT and SPEC columns. The SMOKE column can be left alone.