A test of REA

[orsin]

I had a play with Deepseek Harness and REA over the last couple of days. The capability of the tool is shocking.

Within a few hours i was able to create a little hooker program that allows you to slew radar selection cursor and manually acquire target in SF2, instead of using the game's in built prev/next target mechanism.

I was even able to modify the button assignment menu so you can assign buttons for the new function.

I have attached this program for everyone to test and enjoy. Please note anything here is developed for SF2NA July 2013 patch level. Try other on your own risk.

 

Anti-Virus

At this stage, this sits as a hooker program, instead of a patch to SF2 EXE file. So your anti-virus will almost sure to classify it as a virus. However, it is not, and please trust my integrity as a 20 year member of the CombatAce forum.

Please avoid downloading this from other website, or from other members, because someone may truly tuck something nasty and use the hooker program as a disguise.

 

Install

1. extract the file to a folder you like. in it, you see a file called AcqHook.ini.

Modify the line "GameExe = " and add full path of your file to the line and save the file. Make sure your path has double quote around it. Your line should look like this

Quote

GameExe="E:\game\StrikeFighters2 NorthAtlantic.exe"

2. You need to run the little .PS1 file included to patch your Menutext.CAT in your SF2 installation folder.

   a) locate your file and create a backup. as this may damage your file.

   b) right click on the .PS1 file and select "edit"
  
   c) once open, edit the line below to reflect the actual Menutext.CAT location
 

Quote

    [string]$Cat = 'E:\game\Menu\MenuText.cat',

   d) run the .PS1 file by right click,and select "run with powershell"


Run
You no longer lauch your SF2 from your normal EXE file. Instead, you should launch it by running the AcpHook.exe
You will enter the game from there, and jump to options to set your radar cursor up/down/left/right key mapping at the very bottom of the key mapping menu.

Please note we have sacrifice animation key 7-10 for this mapping. If you want to revert back to have animation key 7-10, simply replace the backup version of Menutext.CAT. (But you will not be able to continue use this program)

 

Revision-C.zip

Edited Sunday at 04:41 AM by orsin

[orsin]

my next steps:

1. TV mode manual FOV slew and targeting

2. Fix HUD issue.

[orsin]

[orsin]

I never, never thought that I would be the one to resolve this problem. Not when I join CA, not when I release my 1st mod, not even the weekend before...

It is a complex problem. The HUD has 4 kinds of elements each going through different graphic draw calls/pipelines. Without AI, even TW will take a long time to resolve it, because their implementation burried under different DLLs.

Edited Monday at 01:39 AM by orsin

[orsin]

new revision. nothing hud there yet, just the radar selection function fixed an issue with button mapping.

Revision-0D.zip

[Stratos]

Do you plan to to create a patch everyone can apply to their Exes?

[gerwin]

Thanks for your effort Orsin.

I am modding SingleMission.dll this weekend. 
The method I settled for is also a hook/wrapper, but setup differently. 

The way I do it is rename the original Flight\SingleMission.dll to Flight\SingleMission_orig.dll, manually.
Then my hook/wrapper dll becomes the new SingleMission.dll there. My hook/wrapper dll interfaces with SingleMission_orig.dll besides it. 
It is automatically loaded by the game at every run, by nature. 

I will upload it in some days.

[gerwin]

Oh, I now get the REA term in topic. Always funny when people expect everyone knows every three letter abbrevation. 
https://github.com/morluto/rea

And if you use it in Claude you may get banned there? New hidden policy...

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/anthropic-confirms-new-claude-code-limits-to-prevent-game-cloning-users-report-opus-5-5-is-also-actively-blocking-reverse-engineering-tasks

Edited Monday at 05:25 PM by gerwin

[orsin]

i am using deepseek harness. I pay peanuts for what i developed.

[orsin]

11 hours ago, gerwin said:

Thanks for your effort Orsin.

I am modding SingleMission.dll this weekend. 
The method I settled for is also a hook/wrapper, but setup differently. 

The way I do it is rename the original Flight\SingleMission.dll to Flight\SingleMission_orig.dll, manually.
Then my hook/wrapper dll becomes the new SingleMission.dll there. My hook/wrapper dll interfaces with SingleMission_orig.dll besides it. 
It is automatically loaded by the game at every run, by nature. 

I will upload it in some days.

the reason why i took this way is because the avionics dlls have many call points and frequent call per frame. So a proxy will increase CPU load a lot. While missioneditor may be ok with the overhead.

[gerwin]

32 minutes ago, orsin said:

the reason why i took this way is because the avionics dlls have many call points and frequent call per frame. So a proxy will increase CPU load a lot. While missioneditor may be ok with the overhead.

OK that figures. 

I think it would be a good idea to ask Deepseek to write an end-user ReadMe for your mod, besides the one it has now, or instead of it.

Edited yesterday at 03:00 AM by gerwin

[orsin]

the gunsight/CCIP is the long-winding issue of the game going back to the day when this series starts. It is so isolated from the rest of code, so broken to fix.

We end up rewriting the entire draw logic and ditch the stock gunsight/CCIP.

Hard one to fix. but we have come close to the end.

in the new version of patch, we have implement the gunsight/CCIP reticle as part of HUD. (see the triangle on the screen) Such that i can be clipped with other HUD elements.

 

There is no perfect solution,  when you shake hard left and right the HUD still goes out of the glass. This is because TW doesn't draw HUD on a 3D surface on the cockpit, it simply is an overlay on the screen. As such it doesn't know if your hud is tilted.

[orsin]

21 hours ago, Stratos said:

Do you plan to to create a patch everyone can apply to their Exes?

too early. too many to be fixed. but I think eventually will if CA let's this post survive long enough.

[Stratos]

I feel is a start point, at the moment I cannot see any rule broken.

[Flanker562]

I'm with Stratos, it's not like you're not letting us know of the changes, and it seems legit in my eyes so far at least.

[orsin]

here, preview of the hud fix. Note it only works for the 1st mission you fly after you start SF2NA. If you want to play one more time. you need to quit and re-launch SF2NA.

also fix the radar cursor release 0D, which i forgot to include the PS1 file.

Revision-2D preview.zip

Edited 15 hours ago by orsin

[salvatorestupido]

 Hello,   This might help, giving you  a state of the game before the "problem", that is before the sept. 2008 patch.

 

Edited 13 hours ago by salvatorestupido