Selecting Heavies in EAWPRO

[VonBeerhofen 63]

It's come to my attention that some people do not understand how to select the previously none flyable planes which are not directly accessible through the plane selection screen. They can be selected and edited from from within any hangar by selecting the MISSION PARAMETER editor that sits on each desk in any hangar. When in the Parameter Selection Screen you then select the LOAD option at the bottom of the screen and a list of MISSION (.MSN) files will be displayed. You can select any of them, no matter which hangar you're in. The Default** ones contain your last flown mission for each plane, sadly they don't give much information about which number corresponds to which plane but they're sequentially American, British, German.
 
The ones which display their name were SAVED from within the parameterscreen, very usefull to setup planecombinations and targets that you like but can still edit after it's loaded. I could give you a list of the default numbers but I think you can also write each number down after selecting each and note the plane you've selected. If you want to fly Mosquitos you select Mosquito vs ******. You can also save the Default missions with a name yourself. To do this you start with loading Default00 and you save it under the name P38J vs WHATEVER. Having all planes there you can quickly navigate between planes and load any on the fly without having to go back to the plane selection screens.
 
When a mission is SAVED it'll store all your selections and you can store up to 256 mission files yourself, either before or after the mission is flown. It's more convenient to do things this way and has become a real timesafer when testing all possible combinations. The saved missions remain unchanged untill they're overwritten with a new one but every time you load one it will randomise the target location as part of a new airfield and target check to prevent CTD's when .MSN files are corrupt, don't work, or aren't at all present (which is the case in nearly all old addons). When a certain plane's selection has become corrupt you can still get to it's Mission file via any other Hangar and set it right again by editing the corrupt plane's mission parameters, provided you understand which one to select. Flying the mission will overwrite the old Default**.MSN file and things will work normal from there on.

Note that when you reselect the same target and/or airfield already present in a corrupt .MSN file, the selection can't be set since either of the two is an illegal choice. Just select another one which displays the target number on mouse over and the file should be fine from then on as the editor only allows legal targets to be selected. Illegal target locations are greyed out in the editor, an indication of a corrupt .MSN file. Sometimes they can still be flown and will allow take off from enemy bases or attacks on friendly ones, but being corrupt you may not be able to enter these plane's hangars on startup directly, except with this method.

VBH

Edited June 3, 2019 by VonBeerhofen

[rwatson 26]

Thank you for the advice M8..It's something I've never explored before but will attempt to get up to speed on it,,Really looking forward to flying a Stuka !!!

[RIBob 39]

 certainly don't want to sound demanding, but, to me, the User Interface of any electronic device, or even a game, is extremely important to me.  I have bought games whose needlessly complex set-up and almost unintelligible  instructions caused me to cast it aside.

Now while freely admitting I am not the brightest person, neither am I a full-fledged idiot.  That admitted, I suggest the following:

Modders should include README instructions concerning their latest offerings.

If available, Modders should offer a set of instructions for their creations, written so that a semi--computer-literate person can understand them.  These should be offered on a site that is linked for exactly such purpose , within the downloads.

Better yet, the Modders ought to make an effort to incorporate their changes either within existing game options,  or set up additional menus as required.

Now, I realize this mundane and time-consuming task is tedious compared to the creations that the Modder wants to offer.  

However, if the creations are not reasonably accessible to especially newcomers, they will seldom be accessed, and so seldom used.  the Art will be displayed in a museum that will seldom be visited.

May I ask this, in all humility:  If some Modder provides a version of the game, then for Heaven's sake make it easy and intuitive to set up and run.

If the GUI is not easily modifiable, then provide detailed, written for-simple-newcomers instructions somewhere easy to access.

We fans of EAW have become used to all sorts of contortions required to play the game.  Even playing th basic version of the game on a modern computer requires more effort than the usual person is willing to expend:  Hence the diminishing user base.

Now, there may be a way around that, but part of the solution is for Modders to do their part, and at least try to integrate their Mods into the existing GUI, otr, at least, provide reasonable documentation, sufficient for NEWCOMERS to use effectively.

VBH, I don't mean for you to take these comments personally.  There are other versions of the game far less user-friendly than yours.

Said with all good will, RIBob 

[VonBeerhofen 63]

No worries RiBob I won't. I'd like you to understand that without a doubt the remaining programmers are trying hard to improve things but even the smallest improvement comes with a lot of pitfalls and takes a boatload of time. We do have a personal life as well and our knowledge is limited, well mine is anyway, and in this resepect you may not really get what you want. Besides that, as you already mentioned, we all have our own priorities and may not be aware of some of the game's possibillites, after all we weren't part of the Microprose team and we're merely hobbyists trying to do whatever is within our power.

EAWPRO will not stray away from the standard v1.2 user interface and because of that all the relevant information on how to use EAWPRO is already in the user manual, which I think is available from Mark EAW's website. There are a few new features in the selection but I think those are self evident for the most part. For anything which isn't in there you best keep track of what's been reported in the forums but there's very little changed in the user interface which is important enough to rewrite the manual.

VonBeerhofen

Edited June 9, 2019 by VonBeerhofen