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 November 1 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 Tuesday 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 Tuesday at 12:23 PM 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 Tuesday at 01:51 PM by salvatorestupido

[orsin]

18 hours ago, salvatorestupido said:

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

 

Hi, thanks for the information. 

I am aware of this piece of history. that is why I released Better CCIP mod which fixed it, partially. the change related to it is the draw order and gunsight depth check. 

 

However, even before 2008, the gunsight flew out of the hud glass left right center anyways. It is the way the game drawing it being wrong.

[orsin]

HUD issue is technically resolved apart from links to avionics60 and avionicsF14. given the function is there (as available in the preview, available for download above). I am parking it temporarily as I want to develop the TV/EO manual target selection function first, and see if we can implement the TISEO in F-14.

Edited Wednesday at 08:57 AM by orsin

[orsin]

Free pan and zoom of TV/EO window.

Target acquisition not implemented yet.

 

Edited Wednesday at 10:26 AM by orsin

[salvatorestupido]

   Hey,    " However, even before 2008, the gunsight flew out of the hud glass left right center anyways. " .  No, before and after the patch :

        

 

 

 

[orsin]

36 minutes ago, salvatorestupido said:

   Hey,    " However, even before 2008, the gunsight flew out of the hud glass left right center anyways. " .  No, before and after the patch :

        

 

 

 

Hey. 

I understand exactly what you are saying. what i said is even the top picture. i.e. pre 2008,, the gunslght still floated off the HUD. and if you played the game back in the time, the gunsight also floated out on left/right/top side of the HUD, depending on what your roll position is.

If you check my "better CCIP" mod back 10 years ago. I already RESTORED the gunsight to the state in the top picture for SF2. 

But that is not a real fix, especially for CCIP. Because if you roll your flight left or right, CCIP will be at the transparent part of the cockpit where no dashboard available to block the reticle.  you will see ccip off the HUD on the left or right hand side of glass.

What I resolved now, is that the entire HUD will stay in the HUD glass. if it goes out, it gets clipped and you won't see the part fall outside. And i have made the gunsight/CCIP such as well.

The fundamental reason behind the issue of floating gunsight/CCIP, is because TW didn't code them as HUD object. They are actually handled as a flighobject that through a standalone shader they mix with the hud object at the end of graphics pipeline.

As such no matter what you do with HUD, you can't fix the gunsight/CCIP, because they are not even a HUD object.

What I do now, is completely disable the stock gunsight/CCIP draw. And draw a new gunsight/CCIP as a part of HUD. I can then influence, clip or cull the HUD and achieve consistent result between HUD and gunsight/CCIP.

Edited Wednesday at 01:43 PM by orsin

[salvatorestupido]

Ok, I eventually got it ...  I did not remember that before 2008 the gunsight could show on the transparent parts of the cockpit.

 I just downloaded and used your "better ccip mod", works fine. I can't believe it was there for 10 years, such a huge improvement !

  Many thanks for this and for the incoming work.

[Stratos]

On 11/4/2026 at 11:19 AM, orsin said:

Free pan and zoom of TV/EO window.

Target acquisition not implemented yet.

Does it work on all planes? Like the Mirage F1 with the As.30L? 

[orsin]

7 hours ago, Stratos said:

Does it work on all planes? Like the Mirage F1 with the As.30L? 

Currently work on all planes with Avionics70. I will later port it to Avoincs60 once all features are verified.
 

what you can do with it.

1. free pan and zoom when you have TV/EO onboard

2. Lock on target.