To create an art or sound file, first you need the individual art or sound
files, the makedat executable, and an editor which can generate files with no
embedded formatting information.

To generate an art file you need to associate each of the individual art files
with a 4 letter id which identifies the corresponding view direction.
Similarly to make a sound file you need to associate each individual sound
sample file with a 4 letter id which indicates the corresponding sound effect.

The makedat program creates a unified file which has each of the individual art
or sound files contained within it and an index which allows Air Warrior
retrieve the contents by the corresponding 4 letter id.  'makedat' takes one
argument, the name of a description file.  The first line in the description
file is the name of the unified output file.  All the following lines in the
description file are 4-letter ID/input file pairs.

Following are the unique 4-letter IDs for plane art views and sound effects.
Note that the case (lower or upper) of these id's is important.

The plane art view id's are as follows:

FORW - forward view.
RGHT - right view.
BACK - back view.
LEFT - left view.
DOWN - down view.
UPWD - up view.
BLNR - back and lean right.
BLNL - back and lean left.
BOMB - bombsight view.
ULFT - up and left.
URGT - up and right.
UBCK - up and back.
UBLL - up, back, and lean left.
UBLR - up, back, and lean right.
UUWD - up and forward.
DLFT - down and left.
DRGT - down and right.
DBCK - down and back.
DBLL - down, back, and lean left.
DBLR - down, back, and lean right.
DDWN - down and forward.
FLFT - front and left.
FRGT - front and right.
FULT - front, up, and left.
FURT - front, up, and right.
FDLT - front, down, and left.
FDRT - front, down, and right.
PCD0 - PC Dashboard.
PCG0 - PC Bomber gunner dashboard.

The sound effect id's are as follows:

PLAN - Vehicle engine sound.
MGUN - Gun firing sound.
STLL - Stall warning sound.
PHIT - Taking hits sound.
CRSH - Explosion noise.
SKID - Landing skid.
STRT - Engine starter noise.
YELL - Bail/Shot down yell.
OOOF - Parachute landing oof.
CANN - Cannon firing noise.
SHTF - Engine shut off sound.
GRND - Grind gears.

As an example assume we have three individual art files for the front, left,
and right views for a p51.  The individual plane art files for these view are
named view1.lbm, view2.lbm, and view3.lbm respectively.  If theses files
were in 320x200 16 color ega mode then the corresponding unified file should
be called 'p51S'.  The first step is to create a description file for makedat.
The first line of the description file is the output file name 'p51S'.
Following the output file name is the 4-letter plane view id's paired with
their associated plane art file name as follows:

p51S
FORW view1.lbm
LEFT view2.lbm
RGHT view3.lbm

Assume we put these lines in a file called 'mkp51s', the last step would be to
then create the unified output file by entering a 'makedat mkp51s' command.
A 'p51s' file which Air Warrior can then use should be created.

The other executable in this arc is 'covtoiff'.  'covtoiff' takes a Covox
sample file and converts it to Amiga iff which can then be bound into a
sound file using 'makedat' and used by Air Warrior.  'covtoiff' takes the
name of the Covox file and the rate in samples per second at which the sample
was recorded.  The output file will have the same base name as the Covox file
with .iff as the extension.

David Albrecht
