By
VonBeerhofen
Now what in heaven's name drives a person to upload someone else's creation after hacking his signature into it's EAW.EXE and removing all install help and identification files, and what can possibly be gained by such action? Now don't tell me that it is to improve the 3D plane shadows or to remove the rotating 3D waves simply because you or others don't like them, or to fix a Spitfire hangar animation. Such an 'upgrade' can simply be stored in a small .ZIP of just a few Mb's to be dropped into the game folder where the EAW.EXE resides. In other words, that person has a choice to offer such package himself and take credit for it! If you don't like the reticule, you throw in another or if you don't like the sky, you replace it with another one from Sandbagger's, I mean that's how it has always been done isn't it? EAWPRO is build the same way and as long as you provide the files in the right EAWPRO format things will work the same way too.
Having a central download location for my creation helps users to remain aware of pending releases, fixes and/or upgrades while other downloads elsewhere will only further muddy the waters at the cost of the EAW community. Without the apropiate instructions and identification vital feedback is withheld from the person who created it and forces that person to further restrict the package to what is essentially nothing more then a Demo and spend precious time on implementing extra routines or removing existing ones which have no other use then to stop this foolish behavior. I'd rather spend my time on making this game much more interesting but actions like these are severely hampering further development and in case of serious programming errors I have no control over fixing said uploads as they are not under my control and therefore unsupported. Besides that I'm getting pretty tired of it and when I get tired there's more chances for errors.
The person who undertakes such foolish action can not help you, as he never took part in the 20+ years of development of EAWPRO and it remains to be seen what other side effects this may have on EAWPRO players who encounter such bugs. I've seen many people throw in the towel when there were issues and I never saw them again. Things get worse when a version is flagged as dangerous and don't think that such versions do not occasionally slip through the mazes of my security net. It's not done on purpose but sometimes bugs can not immediately be linked to a change and tracking them isn't made any easier with multiple versions of which I'm not aware, you can see that in other versions too. Simply because of the complexity of the program it may take months to fully test it and in the vastness of the EAW world things may not be happening within your range of view, hence you may not even be aware of a developing issue in spite of knowing there is one.
Now this ISN"T just playing games with anyone or anything, these are real and serious issues which have to be prevented, i.e. such files need to be reported and removed for the safety of the EAW community, so please report them to the moderators or me so appropriate action can be taken and we can maintain a safe gaming environment. I'm sorry to say that further releases of my work have been postponed for now until I find a way to prevent more of such foolish actions by these irresponsible persons.
I understand people may have questions about EAWPRO's changes but just as with any program I can not always supply an answer as such knowledge is often reserved for the development team only. However I feel that sufficient knowledge has been given to allow players the best experience, especially since EAWPRO is a FREE upgrade. So if you think you have an answer to the initial question send me a P.M., maybe something can be done about it.
VonBeerhofen
EAW Launchpad janitor
By VonBeerhofen
By MarkEAW