EECH Dev Progress for March 2003

[MadJeff]

Well, the dev group has made quite a bit of progress since work began and I thought I would give everyone a progress report. First and formost, there is a new test EXE to play with (v1.60X, download here). Download and test it, then be sure to report back here with any bugs or issues you might have with it.

 

So, what's new you ask? Well, just the little problem with bugs such as the FARP bug have been fixed, along with some great new feature additions such as:

 

Mouselook and TrackIR support

You can now control you view using the mouse or by using TrackIR. The TrackIR support uses enhanced mode which means that you will not have to bother about centering you view all the time. You enable these features with the command line option -mouselook:1. If you specified this option then a check will be made for a TrackIR upon startup, and if it is found it will be used to control the view. Otherwise the mouse can be used.

 

You can set the speed of the mouselook by adding -mousespeed:xx where xx should be a value greater than 0. If this option is not used, mousespeed defaults to 15. Pressing the left mouse button will recenter the view to forward.

 

User-configurable Field of View

Using the command line switches -minfov:xx and -maxfov:xx the user can specify different field-of-view values, which can be activated by the '7','8' and '9' keys. 7 switches min FOV, 8 switches to (fixed) standard FOV, 8 switched to wide FOV. Please note that higher FOVs currently mean lower LODs.

 

New FLIR panning

You can now use joystick axis to pan the FLIR display. You specify which axis to use for this using the following commandline options: -pan_joystick_index:0 -pan_joystick_horizontal_axis:5 -pan_joystick_vertical_axis:6. This means that you want to use axis 5 and 6 on the first available joystick to control the panning.

 

The old FLIR code only allowed three levels of zoom. This code has been updated to support any zoom levels. When using the keyboard, you still use the same keys to zoom, but you now have 5 levels instead. If you have an extra joystick axis available you can map one of them to the zoom and using for zooming. You specify the zoom axis to use using the command line options -zoom_joystick_index:0 -zoom_joystick_axis:8. This says that you want to use axis 8 on the first available joystick for zooming.

 

JoystickIdToDirectxNames

 

Ground stabilised FLIR

The Comanche now supports ground stabilisation for the FLIR. You toggle this feature using Control-S.

 

Infantry does not show up on ground radar anymore

Infantry can never be seen on the ground radar now. This behaviour is the default. If you want to restore the old behaviour, specify -invisible_infantry:0 on the command line.

 

Wideview cockpit

Activating "wideview" when you are in the cockpit retreats the head of the pilot so that you will view more of the dashboard. You can still look around although the downward look in the cockpit is restricted somewhat. Also the keys F1 and F2 are still functional. The exact position can be edited and the x,y,z coordinates are stored in a small text file in your cohokum directory, called "widemod.cfg". If this file doesn't exist it is created with default values.

 

 

Notes

a flight always starts in normal view.

the pilot is not rendered when you activate wideview because he would be blocking the view.

this mod works in conjunction with the mouselook mod (see above) with some funny effects...

the wideview does not work for the 640x480 resolutions of the Apache and Havoc because these modes use the old way of rendering.

for pictures go to http://home.planet.nl/~jette073

Manual

 

Press "" (slash) to toggle between wideview and normal view. The cockpit always starts in normal view. Be aware that some users will have to press '#' or some other key on the right of the keyboard because the layout for '' tends to change acoording to the keyboard brand.

Press "Ctrl-" to start the adjustment of the viewpoint

Use numpad keys 4 and 6 to change the Z-axis (viewers distance, retreating the pilots head)

Use numpad keys 2 and 8 to change the Y-axis (viewers height above the ground)

Use numpad keys 1 and 3 to change the X-axis (viewers position left/right)

Use numpad key 0 to reset the viewpoint to the default values

Press "Alt-" to save the changes in the file widemod.cfg in the cohokum dirctory.

 

Farp bug

The so called "FARP bug" is a bug in EECH that creates long lines of choppers waiting to allocated a landing pad at a farp or airport. The reason is that choppers that are landing do not stop: they keep making small jumps (called bunny hopping by some) and continue be designated as 'landing'. Therefore they are not freed for other tasks, the landing pad stays occupied etc etc. Based on work by DeStRo's Weapon and Units Tweaker the code has been changed to resolve that bug. If you still encounter it please send a message to one of the forums and attach the the skirmish or campaign in which it occurs. Behaviour that is not a FARP bug:

 

Choppers stuck at an electricity line (some other bug)

Choppers having to wait because they were transferred to a farp that has no landing pads free (possibly because some unit returned and landed before them, instead of being shot like they were supposed to ;-) ). This may not be a bug, just a free flowing game.

 

WUT mod

WUT = Weapons and Units Tweaker by DeStRo (Daniel Blazevic) http://www.aplus.ba/dblazev/wut/, a program to tweak loadout and behaviour of all 'entities' in the game (from bullets to comanches). It changes the official coholum.exe directly, but it cannot be used on the executable compiled from the source code (version 1.6.0 and higher). However, with the WUT program you can save all your tweaks in a text file. This text file can be added as a commandline parameter and the contents are read and parsed, and the changes are made. The most obvious change is that the cruise speed of the choppers has increased to over a 150 km/h. The commandline syntax is:

 

cohokum -wut:filename

 

where file name is the name of the WUT text file. These WUT text files are included in the Weapon and Units Tweaker download (see link above). You will have to rename them to a conventional DOS name first: e.g. "1.5.1 d.txt" to "151_d.txt". To create a WUT text file: start WUT, select "file->profile->load", select one of the wut files, make changes if you want, select "file->profile->save as" and type a name with the extention "txt" and save. This file can now be used directly in the commandline of the new cohokum.

 

Notes

The last category in the WUT text file "Weapon Config Types" is ignored because there is not enough information in the file to know where the tweaks should be done. For the 151d version this means that the A10 Thunderbolt, the SU25 Frogfoot, the AV8B Harrier and the YAK141 Freestyle retain there original values for the time being

if you do not use this commandline switch you fly the original version 1.4.7x in terms of 'entity' behaviour and configuration

this mod probably needs more testing, some changes are very subtle and it is hard to see if the mod functions correctly. All comments are welcome

the mod version is currently 1.2 (26/3/3)

 

Show framerate

The framerate is displayed in the top left corner and updates about once a second. The average of 30 readings is shown for stability. Activate with commandline option /framerate:1. Write the values to a file called framerate.txt with commandline /framerate:2. (not included in version 1.6.0X)

[Guest Jens Wegener]

Three issues (FLIR magnification, losing lock with FLIR, autopilot flies at excessive speeds) are being discussed here:

 

http://forums.frugalsworld.com/vbb/showthr...=&postid=371747

[+Armourdave]

I get an error message when I run the new exe:

 

create font returned NULL (120)

 

Screen goes black, I hear a ping, then that message.

 

Fully patched up version of EECH. 1.51D works fine.

 

Sys specs:

 

Win ME

P3 850

896 MB's RAM

GF2MX

28.32 drivers

[Bard]

dave,

 

i had to use the 1.6.0W2 version to get around that bug.