Fifteen Years of Trying

[CaptSopwith 23]

Well, it only took fifteen years, four computers, three more hours of work this morning, and a lot of guess work, forum searching, and teeth gnashing.

 

But this morning, after a decade and a half, I managed to get this classic working:

 

 

(Note: The video isn't mine, but a great example of Wings of Glory in all its well... glory.)

 

It works pretty well, and that trademark scream when you down an enemy is too good to pass up. It's also amazing to see how far we've come. After a few missions in the pixelated world of Wings of Glory, OFF feels like a true High Def sim.

 

Just wanted to share with my fellow sim enthusiasts.

 

I should also add that this was the sim that introduced me to WWI aviation and started the itch I've been scratching since I was 13 years old!

Edited September 19, 2010 by _CaptSopwith

[Olham 164]

First alien: "See this? That guy has got "Wings of Glory" running on his rig."

Second alien: "A fifteen years old simulation? On a modern computer??"

First alien: "Yes. They call that "good old memories" or such."

Second alien: "He spent hours to get this to work, when he can have 'Over Flanders Fields'???"

 

First alien: "Yes - it's irrational. I don't think we should land here..."

 

CaptSopwith, I also got that sim, back in the last century! I loved it!

When I hear the music, and see the funny pilots talk - it was so simplistic, now it would be trash, but oh, the memories!

Edited September 19, 2010 by Olham

[rabu 9]

Yep.. fond memories, but looking at the video there is no way I would want to play it again. Poor Lissette, I loved that girl, and the very British drunk, and the mechanic. The voice acting was actually pretty good and the music was great.

[CaptSopwith 23]

Yep.. fond memories, but looking at the video there is no way I would want to play it again. Poor Lissette, I loved that girl, and the very British drunk, and the mechanic. The voice acting was actually pretty good and the music was great.

 

Yeah, for its age the game play actually isn't terribly bad. The major issue is the incredibly antiquated control system. If I had 15 year old controls with serial port rudders, I'd have it made (for what that would be worth). As it stands the throttle and rudder control is done on the keyboard while the rest of the flying is done on the joystick. Which means in a dogfight, if you need to yaw the plane left or right to get a good firing position, you have to reach forward, press and hold the rudder control on your keyboard for the right amount of time, and continue firing while flying with the stick. It's a juggling act of joystick, mouse, and keyboard commands that more than keeps you busy.

 

Graphically, its blurry, pixelated goo that is difficult to distinguish. That said, for a 15 year old game, Wings of Glory had movable control surfaces, wired planes (something the original RBII did not have), and an early padlocking system. And for 1995 standards, the gameplay is actually pretty good and the AI isn't bad either. They managed to down me a few times.

 

That said, wow, have we come a long way.

 

A quick back story on why I wanted to see if I could get this thing working in the first place. In the summer of 1995 I picked up a copy of PC Gamer that had the then ubiquitous demo CD included, and sure enough, there was a one mission demo of Wings of Glory included. I got the demo running and for some reason, I became completely obsessed with WWI aviation. From that one mission, which I flew some 600 times, I started reading books on the topic, watching TV programs, and learning the odd names WWI planes had. Flash forward three years later (seems much longer than that) and I picked up Red Baron II. Six months after that, I became CaptSopwith on the old Flight Sim Forum and the rest is history. In short, I'm a professional historian and a flight sim fanatic all because of this one demo mission on one CD from one game.

 

It's nice to finally play the sim that started this long strange trip, even if it took nearly half of my lifetime thus far to get it working!

 

Ironically, I should point out that Red Baron 3D still refuses to run properly on my system. The First Aid kit actually got it working, sort of. The dgvoodoo setup included makes the game choppy but stable. Swap out dgvoodoo with Glidos and you get much better in game performance, but the game will CTD upon quitting a mission every single time.

 

Go figure... thank goodness there's OFF!

Edited September 19, 2010 by _CaptSopwith

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

The fact you could pan was quite a revalation!

 

I liked this game...but 'Wings' on the Amiga was my prefered personally

[Hasse Wind 46]

DOSbox is the easiest program you can use to make all these old classics work. Just install a game (Wings of Glory for example) and play it like you used to do back in the DOS era. DOSbox also supports modern joysticks, so you can use them to play old sims.

 

Though it must be said that time hasn't treated gently many of the old games everybody loved back then. There are some notable exceptions, of course - some games are still great after all these years, even though graphics and sounds are nothing to write home about if you compare them to modern standards.

[SirMike1983 3]

For WW1, I found no game able to top the Red Baron series. I had RB1 on my old 386khz machine, and then upgraded as time went on to newer machines with RB2 and 3d. I actually flew RB3d (HASP and FCJ mods) up until sometime during the Phase 1 era of OFF.

[Olham 164]

Not about flying, but a great sea battle, round-by-round game you can play vs computer or other humans:

"The Grandest Fleet"

[CaptSopwith 23]

DOSbox is the easiest program you can use to make all these old classics work. Just install a game (Wings of Glory for example) and play it like you used to do back in the DOS era. DOSbox also supports modern joysticks, so you can use them to play old sims.

 

Though it must be said that time hasn't treated gently many of the old games everybody loved back then. There are some notable exceptions, of course - some games are still great after all these years, even though graphics and sounds are nothing to write home about if you compare them to modern standards.

 

I actually use DOSBox and D-Fend to make things a bit easier. Even with that, it took a few hours of work to get WoG to work. For whatever reason, it was a touchy SOB to get working back in the day and still is now. You have to set EMS memory to false and set the core to normal / auto. And even then, I had to play around with the sound drivers, mount the CD drive in DOSBox so it could read the speech files, (copying them to the HD and pointing DosBox at it caused WoG to crash when you calibrated the joystick), and then I got it work.

 

Once I got a mission to load and realized I wasn't doomed to my hundredth "Dosbox has stopped working and will close" dialog box of the morning, I cheered.

 

I know, I'm a bit strange.

[OvS 8]

I actually use DOSBox and D-Fend to make things a bit easier. Even with that, it took a few hours of work to get WoG to work. For whatever reason, it was a touchy SOB to get working back in the day and still is now. You have to set EMS memory to false and set the core to normal / auto. And even then, I had to play around with the sound drivers, mount the CD drive in DOSBox so it could read the speech files, (copying them to the HD and pointing DosBox at it caused WoG to crash when you calibrated the joystick), and then I got it work.

 

Once I got a mission to load and realized I wasn't doomed to my hundredth "Dosbox has stopped working and will close" dialog box of the morning, I cheered.

 

I know, I'm a bit strange.

 

No stranger then me trying to get Syndicate or System Shock to work.

 

Syndicate was easy in DOSbox, but you have to change the IRQ on some sets... System Shock was the same as Wings of Glory.... funny... they're both made by Origin.

 

All the best,

 

OvS

[CaptSopwith 23]

No stranger then me trying to get Syndicate or System Shock to work.

 

Syndicate was easy in DOSbox, but you have to change the IRQ on some sets... System Shock was the same as Wings of Glory.... funny... they're both made by Origin.

 

All the best,

 

OvS

 

Origin made some amazing, under appreciated, and finicky titles in their day. But what they did release was generally quality stuff.

 

Sadly, WoG was actually too large for my first computer's hard drive. There literally was not enough space for Windows 3.1 and a minimum install of WoG. I was crushed. It's been nice to go back and see what it would have been like. Granted, I'm playing it on a 22" flat panel monitor, something not even dreamed of in 1995. But I like to think it's close.

 

Just out of curiosity, do you ever go back to RBII and have you had issues running it on newer hardware? I think the "old gal" is going to be in mothballs for the foreseeable future. After all, I have too many OFF pilots to kill... erm... I mean, train. ;)

 

Hope you get that PC issue sorted soon mate.

[Hasse Wind 46]

Funny, I was able to get System Shock (cd version) up and running without a problem. But in my opinion, unfortunately it's one of the old classics that are not very enjoyable anymore. SS2 is still great, though.

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

Strike Commander was an Origin Classic (as well as the Wing Commander series)

The Company was years ahead of its time

[Slartibartfast 153]

I remember Strike Commander... but my first WW1 flight was on the first or second version of MS Flight Simulator... where you could fly the Sopwith Camel and shoot down other aircraft... All wire framed... my next was Wings on the Amiga and that was a laugh a minute... okay feeling old now going to lie down in a darkened room to recover...

[Olham 164]

CaptSopwith: I know, I'm a bit strange.

 

No, Capt, that's enthusiasm - the really best fuel we can run on IMHO.

 

I remember vaguely, that a friend of mine, who is a computer buff, got sims like "Aces over Europe" only running on my system

by "shoveling free" some extra memory in the "high mem sys". I think it was something like 600Kb.

Then the sim would work, but now I'd soon get problems with my work programs. The guy who sold me the work computer

set up, had to come round again to check, and he was upset, cause he saw I had let someone else fiddle about it.

Those were the days, one Megabyte was a lot.

[JimAttrill 24]

Hi Captain Sopwith,

 

maybe I should try again to get WOG to work. I will (reinstall) Dosbox and start from there. I do remember I had problems like too much memory (which the installation program reported as not enough memory) and carried on from there. I couldn't get the joystick to work at all the last time I tried.

 

Could you publish the details of your Autoexec.bat and config.sys files? If you pm me I will send you my email address.

 

regards

Jim

[OvS 8]

Hi Captain Sopwith,

 

maybe I should try again to get WOG to work. I will (reinstall) Dosbox and start from there. I do remember I had problems like too much memory (which the installation program reported as not enough memory) and carried on from there. I couldn't get the joystick to work at all the last time I tried.

 

Could you publish the details of your Autoexec.bat and config.sys files? If you pm me I will send you my email address.

 

regards

Jim

 

Jim, it's not just DOSbox that you need, it's D-Fend as well. D-Fend allows you to set-up DOSBox specifically for a perticular game. I had it working a few years ago as well, but damn, I don't remember how. It has to do with D-Fend's settings.

 

I actually carry a portable version of DOSBox on my thumbdrive and about 15 DOS games as well. They're out there, you just have to find them. The Underdogs is a great place to start, but many if not all of the LucasArts games are a lot harder to come by.

 

Cappy... I am actually on the Red Baron 3D Redeux team that is currently working on a new MP version of RB3D. I only provide consultation when they need it, and I have donated all of my HASP artwork to the project. It looks good so far, well... from a RB3D perspective... but I have not had the time to play it. Quite honestly, I have not spent many hours in front of my PC at all, I'm simply too busy lately, plus the issues my set has been having..

 

I started WWI simming with FSII on the C64... then to Blue Max on the Amiga..... Wings.... Red Baron on Amiga was a nightmare of disk issues.... then I got my 386DX and Red Baron as well.... Knights of the Sky.... upgraded PC.... Dawn Patrol.... Red Baron II... etc.. etc.. etc... and on till now.

 

Scary isn't it....

 

OvS