Leaderboard

As shown on my channel at https://www.youtube.com/@philipsabin1653, I still do most of my tactical air gaming using my own total conversions of air board games, since this allows me to focus in on and savour the formation tactics which are hard to appreciate from the brief flurry of first person aerobatics in real time computer dogfights. When I do play PC air sims, I like to fly entire missions as a wingman and spend most of the time practising formation flying to complement the far shorter and more frenetic experience of combat itself. It is a shame that SF2 and FE2 do not allow the player easy access to this 'wingman experience' as in EAW and some other sims. However, I have just discovered a simple workaround which fits the bill. I am sure that some users have already discovered this, but I thought I would mention it just in case. The first step is to create and save a single mission, either after aborting on the runway in FE2 or from within the mission editor in SF2. Then, exit the sim, open the MSN file in your Third Wire Saved Games folder, and copy the entire block for [AircraftMission001]. Paste it after the final Aircraft Mission, and change its number to the next in sequence. Change the Size in the original Mission 1 to 1, reduce the Size in the new final mission by 1, and in SF2 change the Name at the top of the new mission to an unused friendly call sign. Make any other desired changes, save the MSN file, start the sim and load the amended mission. In FE2, the leader of the new flight should start super-imposed with you and roar ahead as he takes off, allowing you easily to catch and formate with him. In SF2, the new leader begins flying over the airfield, but you just need to take off yourself and then select and padlock the nearest friendly plane, allowing you gradually to climb and catch him at full throttle and join formation. The new AI leaders fly at a stately pace, so you should not be left in prolonged and frustrating long distance pursuit as often happens in EAW. There is more risk of overshooting the leader if you do not cut your throttle as you approach. Formation flying is a fascinating and challenging endeavour in its own right, and it is well worth perfecting it as real combat pilots did as a matter of course during their prolonged journeys to and from the combat itself.

I believe that is the encryption that they use. More was accessible waaaaaaaay back in the day.

Hello everyone! Sorry for being absence for almost two weeks. It have been quite hectic weeks! Real life caught me, so I had to put projects down for time being. Aat the same time, i needed a short break, a fresh breath and many ideas for bothSF - CAP and Advanced modding (DLL editing). There is one video that shocked me, let me show you: X-wing: Tie fighter, got modernized through reverse engineering, which bought improved graphic, VR suports and other amazing feats! And please note, this sim is from 1993! This shows me that it is definely possible. However, what I have realized is that, as stated, by using Ghidra to reverse engineer and looking at the pseudocodes, there is one extra challenges: As stated, the SF2 engine is natively written in C++, not C. So therefore, by editing the C Pseudocodes, we nbeed to carefully codes while remain in the loop of SF2 with the calls and imports, so it will rrun well in SF2. But atleast, C and C++ are somehwere close toe ach other. C++ is deviated from C, so we have to use extra C codes that work the same way what C++ codes intended to doin SF2. Nextw eek I am going back working on SF2 - CAP and further exploring advanced modding. I will post an additional i nforamtion on what tools I use and how I managed to extract the codes out, so you can view it and edit it as well. I use the tool known as Ghidra 11.4 and scripts to help me extracting the codes. Cheers!

Wingman did a go-around and landed a few minutes later..

Your comment makes me feel a bit better, Rick! After all, you are getting in way more flight hours than most of us and if you struggle, it helps me feel a bit better. I think, at this point, the odds of getting a long term pilot through from 1915 to the end, with the possibilities of mechanical failure, being hit by flak, going down behind enemy lines, crashing on landing, falling prey to an enemy scout if you are playing as the observer and not the pilot in a two-seater... the odds would have to be pretty staggering. And it makes you marvel at the ones who made it. Cheers mate! Still enjoying your videos!

Light Flak is shooting.

'Shake rattle and roll,' "Beep Beep!"

I'll try to walk you through this. 1. Download all four parts of the file. I put them on my desktop so it's easy for you to see, but you could put these files anywhere you want as long as they are in the same folder (directory) on a drive. 2. Make sure you have the latest version of 7zip installed. Go to https://www.7zip.com/ and download what you need. Install or update as necessary. 3. Make sure you have all the required Thirdwire Strikefighters 2 games installed and patched correctly. 4. Go to the directory where you put the downloads. For this instruction set they are on my desktop, I can move the install files after I've installed the mod. Right click the main file ODS_30AE.zip and choose to Extract to "ODS_30AE\" ** NOTE ** My right click menus look like Win7 on a Win11 machine because I hated the new right click menus in Win11. Your Windows will not look the same as mine but should function the same. 5. You should now get a new folder called "ODS_30AE" in your directory or desktop like my example. 6. Double left click that folder to open it. You will get a view of the contents in the file explorer window. 7. Right click the ODS_30AE.ISO file. From the menu that appears you can you do two things. Mount the ISO which we will do in this example or Burn the ISO to a CD like we used to do in the old days. 8. Select "Mount" and you will see that your computer mounts the ISO just like it's a new drive on your computer. For me it appears as new DVD Drive (F:) Operation Desert Storm 9. Double left click the "installer.exe" and follow the onscreen instructions. 10. When you're done installing you will need to unmount the file. Open the file explorer window where you double clicked the installer.exe file. On the left right click "DVD Drive (F): Operation Desert Storm" and chose "Eject" 11. Now you can move the files anywhere you want for safekeeping. **Note we did nothing with the files ODS_30AE.z01, ODS_30AE.z02, ODS_30AE.z03. The installer needs those files but you don't need to do anything with them other than have them in the directory where the main download file is. I'm sure someone will do this differently than I do and if I need to update my instructions I can, just let me know. Be nice I'm not much of a computer guy. And just as I finish this tutorial you got it to work. Glad you were part of the 95% and the installer is fine, which I suspected. E