World Wide Guide to FS Scenery Design | Utilities | Special Task Utilities

ScLink - for merging scenery files

ScLink is a very handle utility if you have created several scenery files for an area and would like to combine them into a single .bgl file.

You could, of course, display your scenery using those multiple files, since FS scenery files are like overhead transparencies. You can lay one on top of the other and assuming there are no objects competing for the same spot, you can see all the items at the same time.

However, merging multiple files into a single file can have some speed advantages in some cases, because FS doesn't have to do as many disk accesses. ScLink makes it very easy to combine those files. It is distributed with the SCASM compiler (written by Manfred Moldenhauer), but a later version (ScLink 1.5) can be downloaded by itself (see buttons below). Although written by the SCASM author, it should successfully merge .bgl files from most other compilers as well.

You run ScLink from the DOS prompt or command line, and simply specify the name you wish to use for the combined file, followed by the names of the files you wish to merge. For example, to create a big file from three smaller ones:

sclink bigfile.bgl small01.bgl small02.bgl small03.bgl

Sclink now also allows you to specify a "control" file where you can list up to 100 .bgl files that you wish to link. If you do the operation more than once, you won't have to type out all those names on the command line.

Version 2+ of Pascal Meziat's Airport program includes Version 2.0 of ScLink, and incorporates the operation of that little utility directly into the Airport menus, so if you use Airport, you can simply point and click when you want to join two or more files.

Documentation:  Adequate.
Author: Manfred Moldenhauer
Distribution: Freeware, for non-commercial use only.
Version: 1.5
Date of main program file: 18 May 1996
Size of compressed file: 17 KB

SCLINK15.ZIP