Operation Desert Storm: 30th Anniversary Edition

[+Menrva]

View File

Operation Desert Storm: 30th Anniversary Edition

---

Welcome To Duty

Built with the extraordinary expertise and dedication of modders from CombatACE.com, Operation Desert Storm – 30th Anniversary Edition promises to be the most complete total conversion ever made for Strike Fighters 2 by ThirdWire.

Fly with more than 50 aircraft ranging from Cold War relics to the most advanced platforms. Gain air superiority in the mighty F-15C Eagle or challenge the Coalition with the agile Fulcrum. Support troops with the A-10A Thunderbolt II, bomb strategic targets with the stealthy F-117A Nighthawk, lead airfield denial operations in the iconic Tornado.

Enjoy a beautifully rendered scenario on a scaled and accurate terrain. Fly over the lakes and rivers of Mesopotamia, the oil-rich fields of Kuwait, the mountains of Iran and Turkey. Take-off from aircraft carriers stationed in the Persian Gulf to watch over Kuwaiti oil rigs. Perform landings and patrols in more than 90 airports and air bases in the Middle East.

Take part in different campaigns including the Iraqi blitzkrieg on Kuwait and the US-led liberation of the Kuwaiti Emirate. Discover how the Iraqi Army was one of the biggest in the world, through the eyes of American, British, Canadian, French, Italian and Arab pilots. Test your skills and abilities flying for the Iraqi Air Force during all stages of the conflict.

Thirty years after, Operation Desert Storm still remains the largest air operation of modern warfare to date. Modders and flight sim enthusiasts at CombatACE teamed up to bring you a unique product in the lite flight sim world. Exquisitely detailed aircraft and paint schemes are delivered in a well-researched and thorough order of battle.

The ODS 30th AE Development team would like to thank CombatACE.com, its admins, moderators and contributors.

We are sure you will enjoy and appreciate this high-quality freeware product. From the aviation enthusiasts, to the aviation enthusiasts... and for the pilots of tomorrow.

 

Minimum Requirements

Required products from ThirdWire:

• Strike Fighters 2, July 2013 patch
• Strike Fighters 2: Israel, July 2013 patch
• Strike Fighters 2: North Atlantic, July 2013 patch

Full support for:

• Mission Editor DLC
• Campaign Customizer DLC

System specs:

• OS: Windows 7 x86
• Processor: Dual Core 2.7 GHz
• Memory: 4.0 GB RAM
• Hard Drive: 17.0 GB Free Space
• Video Card: 1024 MB DirectX 10

 

Sneak Peek

 

Disclaimer

CombatACE.com shall at all times retain ownership of the Software as originally downloaded by you and all subsequent downloads of the Software by you. The Software (and the copyright, and other intellectual property rights of whatever nature in the Software, including any modifications made thereto) are and shall remain the property of CombatACE.com and of the respective developers/modders.

In no event, unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, shall CombatACE.com, or any person be liable for any loss, expense or damage, of any type or nature arising out of the use of, or inability to use this installer or program, including, but not limited to, claims, suits or causes of action involving alleged infringement of copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, or unfair competition.

The Operation Desert Storm: 30th Anniversary Edition modification does NOT comply with CombatACE's Freeware Licensing. Various contents of this modification are exclusive, as such you are NOT allowed to share, redistribute and/or make use of the mod and/or its contents for other purposes, without the consent of the mod's developers. Contents of the modification are the copyright of their respective authors.

 

Notes about the installer

Beware, the mod is available only in the ISO format. You can either mount it on a virtual drive, burn it on a DVD like in the good old days, or unzip it with 7-Zip or equivalent software.

The installer will automatically detect your installation of the required Strike Fighters 2 games by reading through the registry keys. Game folders that are copied from or manually moved from where they were originally installed are not supported. You need all three aforementioned Strike Fighters 2 games and they must be installed with ThirdWire's original installers, not manually copied from other sources nor moved elsewhere after installation to other folders or drives. If you do not meet any of these requirements, installation cannot proceed and you are on your own. If you install all required games properly, the installation of the mod will proceed correctly as intended. The installer then lets you choose where to install the mod folder; you can even install the mod on a different drive or partition than the one where Strike Fighters 2 is installed. No further user input nor manual edits after installation are ever required; the installer takes care of creating all proper links to your desired path for the mod folder. After installation is over, simply run the mod by using the created Desktop and/or Start Menu links.

If you have a previous version of the mod installed, please use the uninstaller to remove it completely. Clean installation is mandatory. You might want to make a backup of the Controls folder, so that you can easily restore your controller settings afterwards.

 

Suggestions on common issues

• Make sure that you are using your dedicated GPU. By default, Strike Fighters 2 usually selects the integrated GPU you may have on your CPU, which is much weaker in terms of VRAM.
• In case you have frequent crashes or black/missing textures, I highly suggest you download and install the DXVK graphics wrapper (x86 DLLs) into your Strike Fighters 2 game folder: https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk. You need a Vulkan-compatible GPU. The wrapper can greatly improve the experience with the mod. With DXVK I can play the mod on a mere Intel UHD 710, whereas without it the mod would always crash to desktop.
• Go to Sound and set Sound Channels to 32. We got reports that 16 is not enough and will cause crashes on some systems, due to the higher quality sounds included within the mod.
• The mod is pretty heavy for the game engine despite huge optimizations. Strike Fighters 2's engine is 32bit only and apparently does not manage VRAM properly; consecutive campaign missions might show black/missing textures on objects or cause crashes to desktop because the game does not release the occupied VRAM from the previous mission you played, thus the more missions are loaded consecutively, the more easily you may run out of memory. Set Ground Objects to Medium or Low, Horizon Distance to Near, and Shadows to Medium or Low. These are the most troubling settings. Avoid Unlimited settings as much as possible.
• If the mod used to work and suddenly crashes to desktop, updating or reinstalling video drivers should help. Make sure that DirectX June 2010 Redistributables are also installed, they are included inside the ISO disk image of the mod.
• Inside the mod folder, you'll find some extra text files. "(Coalition Order of Battle)" should be of your interest; the mod's terrain covers the entirety of Iraq, at the cost of not having all of Saudi Arabia; this means that a number of important units are based on airbases that are beyond the in-game playable area. With those units you always spawn near the target area, you'll never get to start from a runway nor to land on the assigned runway beyond the invisible wall. You have an entire list of the affected units in the aforementioned text file. By pressing ALT+N, the plane returns to base automatically.
• The mod is fully compatible with the Campaign Customizer and Mission Editor DLCs by ThirdWire. The Campaign Customizer might be an alternative way to experience those off map units I mentioned previously, since it assigns you to a random airbase of the in-game flyable area.
• Escort missions are often broken, this is not an issue of the mod, but a bug of the stock game; sometimes the AI flight you escort does not engage its target and keeps flying in a straight line instead of following waypoints, thus the trigger for mission success will never happen. Abandon the mission or retry it if the issue happens, sometimes it works.
• Pray for ThirdWire AKA Tsuyoshi Kawahito to work on a 64bit version of Strike Fighters 2, maybe even with support for DirectX 12. With that done, any out of memory issues should become an old memory.

---

• Submitter
  Menrva
• Submitted
  01/16/2021
• Category
  User Made Campaigns

 

[mono27]

Great mod! But one question...do I need a 1 month subscription or 6 months subscription plan to dowload it?

I ask because in the main post says "1 month minimum required" but when trying to download says "6 months plan or greater required".

[+Menrva]

@mono27 It was a mistake on my part. A 6 month plan is the minimum. By mistake I referred to it as the 1 month plan. The description at the announcement page has been fixed. My apologies for the misunderstanding I caused.

I was told by Erik that the download is meant to work also with 1 month subscription plans, as originally established. So I must correct myself again. The issue should have been fixed; should anyone encounter problems, let us know.

Edited March 15, 2021 by Menrva

[mono27]

15 minutes ago, Menrva said:

@mono27 It was a mistake on my part. A 6 month plan is the minimum. By mistake I referred to it as the 1 month plan. The description at the announcement page has been fixed. My apologies for the misunderstanding I caused.

OK. Thanks for the explanation

[Viggen]

Ok, the content of the goodies folder is well worth the dive into while the mod installs. I'm excited to try out the defense of Kuwait campaign!

[Hornet54]

Hi, I have a problem running this game under Windows 10. I downloaded, installed and set up ODS. But hen it´s  loading, it stops at a maximum of 80 % and then it shutdown. The other SF 2s work flawlessly.

Do you have any advice?

[+Menrva]

54 minutes ago, Hornet54 said:

Do you have any advice?

Just lower your graphics settings. This mod has a much higher quality fidelity than the stock SF2 games, with many high-res skins and high-poly 3d models, so you need a more powerful PC for it. Unlimited graphics settings are not recommended.

Also, the Persian Gulf War campaign is much more complex than any other campaign ever made for SF2. It contains hundreds of different aircraft and ground units, so the game engine will have trouble to deal with so many of them at the highest graphics settings.

Edited January 18, 2021 by Menrva

[Hornet54]

Thank you, but even the absolute lowest resolution didn't help. Please ask for more advice.

[+Muesli]

4 hours ago, Hornet54 said:

Thank you, but even the absolute lowest resolution didn't help. Please ask for more advice.

Whatever you do... DON'T set the "Effects Details" higher than "high". Only thing I can think of.

[Hornet54]

Set to the low, the result the same. Thank you for your efforts.

I'm sad ...

[crisisloaner]

IS there any particular reason why some nations and a lot of planes are unflyable ? I have figured out hot to fly them but don't want to ruin any upcoming surprises....

[+Menrva]

29 minutes ago, crisisloaner said:

IS there any particular reason why some nations and a lot of planes are unflyable ? I have figured out hot to fly them but don't want to ruin any upcoming surprises....

Nations are restricted to Desert Storm participants and to ones proper for the theater of operation; I don't see a reason to be able to fly for a wrong nation in the Iraqi theater, not to mention that each of the visible nations in the mod use custom made national counters for the planning map. It would have been a waste of time and resources to create 200 different national counters which would be mostly unused.

Cargo aircraft are not flyable because they are not supported with proper user-playable missions, they are meant for the AI. Heavy bombers have issues when are used by the player, there are instances where they would crash the game to desktop, and overall they are never meant to be used by the player in stock SF2. Other aircraft missing proper cockpits have been left out for quality consistency. Helicopters currently exist as additional AI-only aircraft for custom made missions, they are not properly supported by the SF2 game engine (too many issues and limitations in regards to missions, flight models, usage of weaponry etc., for proper helo behaviour).

[Viggen]

It's probably got to do with the game engine, but I noticed the parked aircraft at Ali Al-Salem were all in the dirt. Certainly not a game breaking issue, just thought I'd mention it. Only thing I've seen. EDIT: Might have been Al-Jaber. I'll see if I can replicate it. EDIT 2: Can confirm it's at Al-Jaber.

Edited January 18, 2021 by Viggen
Went back in game to get confirmation

[crisisloaner]

Thanks for the reply Menrva , I meant no criticism of this great add on and hope you were not offended by the question.I just wanted to know If I could use the Apache to open the conflict and now I know .

[+Menrva]

44 minutes ago, crisisloaner said:

Thanks for the reply Menrva , I meant no criticism of this great add on and hope you were not offended by the question.I just wanted to know If I could use the Apache to open the conflict and now I know .

Don't worry, I did not take it that way. I really want to portray the helicopters in the campaigns at least for the AI, but the AI does have trouble with them as well, not to mention that you need fake runways from which they can take-off. As long as they are treated like normal aircraft, they'll remain as additional objects for mission creators.

If you wish to make them flyable, you can. Most helos and cargo aircraft already contain proper cockpit files. Just keep in mind that I don't offer any support for them at this time. I hope TW gets back into the game and unlocks the hidden potential of the SF2 series, but until then we're limited to what the game can do.

 

@Viggen The issue you mentioned has been fixed, it will be included in a future re-release. Hopefully only a handful of bugs remain. The massive amount of content implies that more bugs can happen. Despite that, the team has done its best to reduce them to a minimum. With time we can only polish the product even further.

Edited January 19, 2021 by Menrva

[Viggen]

@Menrva Cool, glad to have helped. I noticed the same issue at Ali Al-Salem a few hours after I made that post. I don’t think I would have known had the Iraqis not redeployed a squadron of MiG-21s to it during the campaign. 
 

 

[+Viper63a]

On 1/18/2021 at 1:33 PM, Hornet54 said:

Set to the low, the result the same. Thank you for your efforts.

I'm sad ...

You can't even load "Scramble" ?

[Hornet54]

When Sramble stops loading, but the game does not crash.
The solution was to use a more powerful PC.

And the experience was great! Excellent work, thank you!

[+strahi]

Instant working fine, I just only edit ini file and adjust loadout line's and replace An-2 to An-26.

[+Viper63a]

@Menrva  I suggested testing "Scramble" because, correct me if I am wrong, it loads the least about of elements...and may be a way to tell if the issue is with the install or just amount of elements the game engine\PC was trying to process. I had issues with my 1080 ti rig, but after dropping to High, everything worked fine...

You would not believe the amount of work that went into the terrain, air fields and objects (infantry!!!)...its amazing...but it all comes at a cost...

=V= 

Edited January 23, 2021 by Viper63a

[+strahi]

Guys, who is the author of the campaigns and models of the infantry units?

Edited January 30, 2021 by strahi

[+Menrva]

@strahi please, write with normal font, there's no need to shout and write all in big letters!

I am the author of the campaign files, among other things. The infantry models were made by guuruu.

[+strahi]

1 minute ago, Menrva said:

@strahi please, write with normal font, there's no need to shout and write all in big letters!

I am the author of the campaign files, among other things. The infantry models were made by guuruu.

Thanks for the warning. I recently wrote from the phone so I didn’t have exactly the best review.

[+Veltro2k]

i know its something simple, but when I click the DS icon it brings up a regular SF2 screen

[+Menrva]

2 hours ago, Veltro2k said:

i know its something simple, but when I click the DS icon it brings up a regular SF2 screen

I don't know what to tell you, nobody has ever reported such an issue. I'd say something went wrong with installation on your end; the installer is simple, it installs the OperationDesertStorm executable and custom initialization screen in your SF2 game folder, and the relative mod folder in the usual "Saved Games/ThirdWire" directory.

Edited January 31, 2021 by Menrva