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CaptSopwith

AI Planes Crashing with HPW EW Mods

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Sorry, been completely buried with my dissertation and some real life stuff. Interest is as strong as ever, and I hope to get back to OFF stuff sometime next month. So keep it up, HPW, you're not alone (although it often feels that way).

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Hej Herr Prop Wasche,

 

I do very much appreciate your efforts to improve the AI behaviour and am using several of your mods. If you are able to improve the AI skills at low level and to reduce their tendency to pull up/stall/crash that would be great...

So keep up the good work, I like it very much!

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Hey there HPW, glad you're back in business. I had to drop a comment to let you know that you should keep up the good work and don't give up. I've just been taking a long break from games in general for now and hope to get back sometime soon.

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Thank you, everyone, for the replies. I don't know what got into me; I have been slogging along on this mod for what seems forever now, and I guess I just needed some validation. The good news is that I am virtually finished now and all that remains is checking for errors and preparing a readme file...

 

BUT THEN, DISASTER!

 

Whilst working on tidying up some of the mod files, I got a wild-hair idea that I needed to clean up my My Documents folder. Now, I have had Win7 installed for a couple of months now, and I am still trying to figure out the folder structure. For the life of me, I can't figure out why Mr. Gates decided that certain files now have to reside in more than one place on your hard drive. So, I was poking around and noticed that under my Users folder, I have not one, but three My Documents folders. One was different from the others, but two appeared to be exact duplicates. Still being used to my XP days, I thought to myself, "Now why do I have two identical folders taking up disk space," so I resolved to delete the duplicate folder. Of course, when I started to do this, Windows dutifully told me that "The My Documents folder is too big for the recycle bin and the folder will be permanently erased, do you wish to continue?" At first, this gave me pause and I cancelled the operation. But then my tiny brain told me "but you have a duplicate folder--even if the one folder is gone, you will still have the other!" So, without thinking (and without pausing long enough to save a copy of the folder on my desktop just in case), I went back and deleted the folder.

 

Feeling proud of myself for being so efficient and smart with my computer, I then looked to confirm that the files remained on the "duplicate" My Documents folder. BUT NOOOOOO! Apparently, Bill Gates decided in his great wisdom to link the copies of the files and place them in separate, but identically named folders, so that when you delete them in one folder, they are also deleted in the other!!! CRAP!!!

 

Oh, but all is not lost, right? I'll simply use System Restore to go back in time a few days and restore the folder. Sure, I'd lose a week or so of work, but nothing too serious. But what do I discover when I start the system recovery tool? To my HORROR, Windows helpfully tells me "No restore points have been created on your computer's system drive." WHAT!!?? #@%! This makes no sense to me, because I can clearly recall seeing several restore points the last time I poked around in there--but, come to think about it, that was before I bought that little SSD drive to use for my Widnows files and moved most of my data to my 1 TB hard drive. Crap, crap, crap! Even though I had gone in and turned on drive protection for the system drive, I guess an additional step is required in order to activate system restore.

 

The good news is that all of my FM files are stored in my JSGME MODS folder, located in the OBDSostware folder on my D: drive and that I have not lost any of these files. The bad news is that ALL of my Excel spreadsheet files, which stored all of the changes I have made to the DM and FM since I first installed OFF, are GONE! The last time I backed up those files was a couple of months ago, when I upgraded to Win7. So, while not technically gone, the record of all of the changes I have made to the FM in the last few months have disappeared.

 

Now I stand before you as a lesson and a warning: BACK UP YOUR FILES EARLY AND OFTEN!! And make sure that Winblows is doing everything it is supposed to be doing to protect your data. Don't be caught with your pants down, like me.

Edited by Herr Prop-Wasche

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Problems with taking off is almost always due to mods, we spent half a lifetime testing take offs.

 

The occasional crash is actually realistic but yes generally they should work.

 

Landings in Phase 3 are bad because CFS3 is handling it, and we could not work on it. It's not "broken" just not made specifically for WW1 craft (and never worked too well for WW2 craft in CFS3 anyway!).

 

WOFF is completely different of course.

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Finally--it is finished! Uploaded and awaiting approval by the CombatAce moderators. Look for it in the Downloads section of the forum.

 

Although I have worked long and hard on this project, please consider this a work in progress. Although the AI crashing problem has been cured, I am still learning things about the FM, so please keep this in mind if you find that your favorite plane does not perform quite as you would like.

 

Many thanks go out to Pol, Winder, and everyone else at OBD for their help and assistance. I would also like to personally thank Hellshade, 33Lima, and Panama Red for their advice and comments.

 

Thanks guys!

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Excellent HPW! Glad to hear that your work is progressing. It's been oddly quiet around here lately - perhaps folks are on holiday or just incredibly busy at the moment. I'm looking forward to trying out the new addition.

 

Lothar: Do you think you could incorporate HPW's new updates into your fantastic OFFBase program? It's the only way I fly OFF!

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For those of you who were having trouble unzipping the FM 3.0 mod, here are three zip files in 7-zip format for you to try. These files also contain an updated and improved FM for the N28. The original mod actually used an earlier, incorrect version of the N28. This one should fly much nicer.

 

In the course of working on even more enhancements to FM 3.0, I have also made two significant discoveries which should substantially improve the responsiveness of all of the planes in the mod. I had noticed that the planes in my FM mod seemed to be a little too docile as compared to the stock FM. Apparently, this was due to a small change I had made in an earlier version of the mod that I had forgotten about. The next version of the mod will fix this.

 

The next version of the mod will also contain some major adjustments to the CoG and CoL values used in the game. Basically, in both the stock version and in the current version of the FM mod, most of the planes have their CoG in front of their CoL. I have found that moving the CoL slightly in front of the CoG for some planes has a substantial effect on the "feel" of the aircraft in flight, making them feel more like they are floating on air a bit more than before and making them somewhat more challenging to fly, as well. In general, I am finding that you need to fly with a lighter hand than before or you will be more likely to find yourself in a spin with the upcoming version. No ETA yet for the new version, but I expect it to be ready before WOFF comes out.

 

In the meantime, here are the replacement zip files for FM 3.0:

 

HPW FM and EW Campaign Mod 3.0.7z

HPW FM and EW mod for QC - German Enemies.7z

HPW FM and EW mod for QC - Allied Enemies.7z

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Greetings Herr Prop-Wasche as to those green drinks best keep away from them they make you head go funny and make you think you can see weird things... I will have a play with these this weekend as I did ask a couple of weeks ago about mods and these are what I would like to try...

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Moving COL/COG can have dramatic effects - also can badly affect the AI in various places

 

twitch twitch...

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Moving COL/COG can have dramatic effects - also can badly affect the AI in various places

 

twitch twitch...

 

Twitch indeed. :biggrin:

 

Yes, moving CoG and CoL can have some very dramatic and nasty effects, as I have already seen. Rest assured that I am talking about relatively small changes of tenths and sometimes even hundredths, of a foot. Furthermore, almost every plane is different, and as you said, we also need to consider the effects on both the human and also the AI pilot. So, lots of tinkering and testing. This also means that I could afford to have a few more people who would be willing to act as beta testers. Perhaps you might be interested, Pol? :grin: I kid, of course. I know you are a little busy right now with a bit of a project of your own. I sure hope it comes out well--and soon!

 

Sorry to hear about your stay in hospital. Did National Health Service treat you decently? More importantly, are you back up to snuff? I know you may be tempted, but please don't over-exert yourself. We can all wait another two weeks for WOFF. At least, I think we can!

 

I admit I feel a bit jealous when I see you and Windingman posting screen shots. It lets me know you are enjoying the game right now and I'm not! Of course, that assumes that developing, testing, tweaking, and testing again can be called "enjoying" WOFF.

 

Take care and good to hear from you again.

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