CaptSopwith

Not sure I've ever posted in the Wish List thread before but two items came to mind... they are a bit gamey but might be enjoyable / useful. These would also apply to WOTR as well. 1) It would be amazing to be able to save a mission mid-flight. Now that I'm older and RL is increasingly chaotic, I've had to abandon more missions than I can count due to needing to take care of something. A mid-sortie save would be incredibly helpful, or barring that, a way to abort a mission. 2) It would be great if we could listen to Matt's beautiful soundtrack mid-flight. I know it's not super realistic and I do enjoy making my flights as challenging as possible, but the atmosphere he adds is too good to pass up. Cheers guys!

Looks really promising, Shred. Added it to my wish list - thanks for sharing this one! PS: If you look at the reviews on Steam there are downvotes for "a strategy game that engages in one mindless charge after the next..." I suspect they may need a primer on how the Great War worked.

Just picked this up this afternoon. Can't wait to take it up for a spin. My congratulations to our fearless developers who keep creating these gems for us to enjoy. Cheers Pol!

Thank you for that Lou. I've lost count of the number of Stories of the Season I've read but I always look forward to them. Cheers

I've been doing something of a deep dive into the 1915 campaigns in WOFF. It's a completely different world from the one we come to know in the following years. Lots of long, empty flights in extremely fragile aircraft. The tedium of flying to the lines ends quickly when the enemy flak bursts begin. But I noticed on my French campaign tonight, that the observer in the Caudron G4 might have the worst job of any airman in the French Air Service. While I know he could normally sit, I hadn't noticed that the front gun requires him to be on his knees, which would be incredibly uncomfortable while being buffeted around in the air. Worse still, the propellers are horrifyingly close to his body! I'm trying not to think of what would happen if he slipped and fell towards either of the engines. Flying the Caudron is also a hair-raising experience. Thanks to the wonderful engine sounds that accompany the plane are intermittent sputters that sound like one of the two rotaries are going to cough themselves to death. Turbulence is also a jarring experience - mostly I try not to look over the side and notice that there really is nothing under me in the back of this flying bathtub. Truly not for the faint of heart!

So I've been splitting my flight time between WOFF and the new Microsoft Flight Simulator and my jaw hit the desk last night playing through my 1915 British campaign. As our patrol of Bristol's headed out I could see the cloud cover break and the small village below. MSFS uses a technique they call Photogrammetry, which creates some genuinely convincing images of the ground. It's surreal to fly over your own home as the sim models the weather just outside your door. But for a 20+ year old game engine to do the same thing - to essentially create 1915 Photogrammetry? I'm genuinely astonished! It's hard to complete missions because I keep pausing the sim to take more screenshots!

Hi Gents, Hope you are all doing well and staying cool! I just wanted to write a short note to say thank you to this community. I know the history of the EAW group is long and has it's friction points - but I genuinely want to say how grateful I am to each of you for keeping this sim running in your own ways. I got EAW in the summer of 1999, at just 17 years old, as a get well present from my parents after I almost died in a car accident. That game kept me company that year as I played through the Battle of Britain, imagining myself a young Spitfire pilot who was lucky to walk away from a bad landing. Years later I started modding the game, thanks again largely to the group here. I remember digging through Cord's EAW site, downloading STAB, and spending HOURS downloading skins on a dial up modem, so excited to see what new livery I could slap on a Fw190 or my favorite American plane, the P-38. And then... well time and technology marched on and EAW sat pretty much dormant through much of my Windows XP, Vista, and 7 days. Until around 2015 I saw that the game was still alive and running, now on Windows 10. I've been insanely busy in RL - moving, starting jobs, getting married - and it's been tough to find time to work with the old sim. But over the last week, thanks in large part again to your help, I've gotten the sim running solidly again. I have to say how impressed I am with the GoG patch that Mr. Jelly put together. I badly misjudged how much of improvement it would make, and after finally giving it a chance, I have to say that flying 1.29 in DirectX at fps I never dreamed of in 1999, let alone at these kinds of resolutions, is something to behold. I took your file structure and made my own home-brew Max188 inspired Classic EAW set to run with all of the benefits of 1.29 and man am I loving it. The sim seems more stable - though I do wonder if my mad ExtraSquads=5 didn't have something to do with the last CTD I suffered lol! So while I know this board is pretty quiet, especially so in the summer, I wanted to say thank you - you've kept a genuinely beloved part of my younger days alive and it's a real gift to be able to revisit it now. Thank you guys!

Hi VBH, I wanted to let you know that it looks like the exploding plane issue was an error on my part. I copied over several careers from a different version of EAW in order to continue them and that started the problem. Creating a fresh career sorted it out! CTD's seem far less common now that I've dropped ExtraSquads down to 2, I had been running at 3 or higher. Hope this helps sort out some of the mystery (really, it was just me!). Cheers guys!

Hey VBH, Hope you are doing well! So the issues I'm running into involve CTD's when running the stock campaigns in the GoG version of EAW. The exploding planes issue was my fault - attempting to run the stock campaigns with just EAWPRO and I had loaded a previous campaign from a different version, so that was my bad. Otherwise, no exploding craft. Just random CTD's - especially in the German campaigns with a large formation of bombers to intercept. Not sure if that helps but I wanted to give you as many details as I could. Cheers!

Any chance that this could cause CTD's during a campaign VBH? Say when you're in the middle of intercepting bombers on a target run? I've been having random CTD's across the stock campaigns in EAW, but I'm playing with the GoG version of 1.2 or I'm playing with 1.28.

No worries Mark! Your site actually had the answer - I just didn't look! " Intended for online play and offline single missions only, campaign mode wasn't adapted. " Really appreciate your site, mate. I've been going to it nonstop this week as I play around with the different EAW options available.

I am absolutely including you Mark! Your site is incredibly helpful! I'm also interested in setting up a separate EAWPRO install. I've tried dropping in the necessary files ( -(EAWPRO Core Download!) - EAWPRO1.0_Basic.zip and -(EAWPRO Update) - BASIC-update-2.zip ) into my GOG 1.2 install but I'm having some odd issues with planes exploding on launch in the campaigns. Wondering if you could provide any advice on how to set up EAW Pro on the GOG version of EAW. Thanks so much! Hope you're doing well and staying cool!

Thanks Trooper! Hope you are on the mend!

I don't blame you there Rick! I'm sticking with the squadron assigned Bristol Fighter for as along as I can... the parasol is a handful!

Hi Gents! Hope you are all well and getting in some much needed flight time. Here's another collection of photos from my most recent 1915 campaign. I have a whole new level of appreciation for Cecil Lewis wrestling the horrible Morane Parasol!

A few more from my 1915 pilot training with Captain Triggers

I think this falls under the category of "be careful what you wish for!" I've lost count of the number of crew I've sent to an early grave. Accomplishing any mission objectives while being blasted at by AA fire, hounded by enemy machines, worrying about mechanical failures on our own plane... it really shows you just how much the two-seater crews had to manage. It's a constant stream of worries from take off to touch down!

Beautiful images, everyone! Inspired me to toss in a few from my last mission. Hope you like them!

Hi Guys, Just flew a few sorties for the first time on 1.28 and noticing some weird ground texture issues. As I fly closer to the issue, it will eventually pop in the correct ground texture in place of the white blurry texture block you can see in the first two images. It seems isolated to a particular part of the front, so I've attached some screenshots along with a grab of the map location I was in at the time. All stock WOFF, no mods, no other graphical changes. Tried moving the terrain from 4 to 5 and still saw the same artifacts. Thanks, as always, for your help with this one. Cheers

Great idea to film some tutorials, Rick! Nice presentation too - I like it! We might want to make this a sticky for new pilots as they arrive.

Hi Chaps, I seem to have stumbled upon an issue with Jasta 2. Loaded up a September 1 campaign start date and had the following error - I appended the log below. Tried moving the date up to mid-month, when their aircraft swap out for early Albatros models, to no avail. Other squadrons loading fine and other campaigns seem to be running normally. No mods or other alternations - full stock 1.22. Log: Pilot Dossier Loaded: 7 Menu Startup All Done! **Slot1 RANK Break Point is: 6 **Slot2 RANK Break Point is: 3 **Player RANK is: Unteroffizier Pilot:1 Rank:Oberleutnant Ranknum:6 **Player Squadron Number Of Craft Available Slot1 From Pilot Dossier : 0 : IdenticalAsSlot2 **Player Squadron Number Of Craft Available Slot2 From Pilot Dossier : 2 : AlbDI **Player Squadron Number Of Craft Available Slot3 From Pilot Dossier : 0 : Fokker_DIII **Player Squadron Number Of Craft Available Slot1 From Pilot Dossier : 0 : IdenticalAsSlot2 **Player Squadron Number Of Craft Available Slot2 From Pilot Dossier : 2 : AlbDI **Player Squadron Number Of Craft Available Slot3 From Pilot Dossier : 2 : Fokker_DIII **Slot1 RANK Break Point is: 6 **Slot2 RANK Break Point is: 3 **Player RANK is: Unteroffizier **MissionBrief SetPlayerFacility - Global_layer.csv Instantiated with player facility: Homefield:Bertincourt **MissionBrief SetPlayerFacility - Global_layer.csv written **MissionBrief SetPlayerFacility - Mos Created: Original:airbase_ggeneric_1 New:airbase_gplayer_1 **MissionBrief SetPlayerFacility - Facility Created: Original:airbase_ggeneric_1 New Airfield:airbase_gplayer_1 **MissionBrief SetPlayerFacility - Global Layer gsl.lib created ok! **Opening Player Squadron File: Jasta 2 **Matching Ace Aircraft File FOUND!!: CampaignManager GetAceCraft : Ace Number GermanAce01 Ace:Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen Ace File Code: MvR Ace Craft: AlbDI !!!! FATAL ERROR!: CampaignManager SquadronAircraftData : File Error EOR Check = EOR Record Number 1 **Could not find matching Ace Rank File!: CampaignManager GetAceRank : Ace Number GermanAce10 Ace:Oswald Boelcke Ace File Code:Boelcke **Could not find matching Ace Rank File!: CampaignManager GetAceRank : Ace Number GermanAce18 Ace:Max Ritter von Muller Ace File Code:MullerM **Could not find matching Ace Rank File!: CampaignManager GetAceRank : Ace Number GermanAce53 Ace:Erwin Bohme Ace File Code:BohmeE **Could not find matching Ace Rank File!: CampaignManager GetAceRank : Ace Number GermanAce207 Ace:Otto Walter Hohne Ace File Code:Hohne **Could not find matching Ace Rank File!: CampaignManager GetAceRank : Ace Number GermanAce211 Ace:Leopold Rudolf Reimann Ace File Code:ReimannLR **Could not find matching Ace Rank File!: CampaignManager GetAceRank : Ace Number GermanAce367 Ace:Wolfgang Gunther Ace File Code:xx **Could not find matching Ace Rank File!: CampaignManager GetAceRank : Ace Number GermanAce668 Ace:Hans Reimann Ace File Code:xx **Could not find matching Ace Rank File!: CampaignManager GetAceRank : Ace Number GermanAce669 Ace:Herwarth Philipps Ace File Code:xx **Could not find matching Ace Rank File!: CampaignManager GetAceRank : Ace Number GermanAce670 Ace:Winand Grafe Ace File Code:xx **Player Squadron Slot2 Craft Role : Fighter **Player Squadron Slot3 Craft Role : Fighter **Player Squadron Service Type : Fighter **Player Squadron Pilot Service Type : Fighter **Player Squadron Player Rank Number : 2 **Player Squadron Player Craft Slot : Player Ranking sets Slot Used for Player Craft only to Slot 3:Fokker_DIII **Player Squadron Ace Craft Slot : : **Player Squadron Number Of Ace Craft : 10: **Player Squadron Number Of Reserve Ace Craft : 2: **Player Squadron Dual Role : False **A Flight Type : Single Seater **B Flight Type : Single Seater --CampaignFlight: Gun Setup Data reported as: Lewis ROF:9 Spandau 1916 Vickers ROF:6 -- !!Error Reading Squadron Data!! --Campaign: Exiting

I often find that the most dangerous missions I ever fly as a German pilot happen when we are not on active duty. It's the dull weeks of being out of operation, when I'm told to check out the new rigging on my wings, or the newly installed carburetor that my mechanic has just fitted, that I am either wiped off the face of the earth, or barely live to tell the tale. Tonight, freshly minted Lt. Bruno Stachel was assigned to Jasta 34b in March 1918. Starting his first mission after a week to settle in, he was told to take off, fly a few circuits of the field to check the new carburetor installed on his battered Pfalz DIII (the same type of plane he was assigned to in flying school...), then return to the field. Flying with labels and the TAC off (I have dots turned on for easier spotting), Stachel got airborne and I was admiring how beautiful the landscape was and how buttery smooth it now scrolled below me... and I should have known better. Glancing upwards, I saw several dots diving and closing range on me at a considerable rate of knots. The next six minutes was utter chaos. A flight of overzealous French aviators, consisting of a few Breguet 14's, a pair of Sopwith Strutters, and a lone Nieuport for escort, descended on me like a pack of ravenous wolves. Immediately pulling a split-s, I dived for my home base, hoping that the barrage of ground fire would deter them from trying to kill me so far behind our own lines. As the Strutters took turns attacking my Pfalz, the Breguet's unloaded their bombs on our field below, setting it alight. The Nieuport never appeared - I suppose he couldn't be bothered with one creaky old Pfalz. The two Strutters took turns in slicing attacks as I turned and cracked off a few well aimed shots as they passed by. It finally turned into a battle of attrition, with the Strutter's rear gunner locked onto my plane, and my hapless pilot unloading both guns (I imagine, while screaming in anger), at the French adversary. The machine began smoking, turned into a shallow climb, then descended where he crashed in the middle of our field. By this point, Stachel's goggles were splattered in oil (the new goggles, btw, are a brilliant touch!) and I knew the engine was about to conk out. And conk it did. I managed a 90 degree turn to final as the propeller turned into a windmill at the front of my shot up plane. As I made a desperate lunge over the trees, a flaming Strutter billowed smoke as he plummeted right in front of my machine, crashing off to my right. Desperate, I yanked the rudder, made contact with the ground, and dug the tail skid into the dirt. Down safe... And for the first time ever, actually got credit for a kill while my squadron was technically inactive. I mean, one would assume that replicating, almost shot for shot, the scene from the Blue Max would do the trick, but still, you know the old saying... unconfirmed and all that... It's good to be back. Stachel might actually make it this time...

Perhaps I'm getting rusty as I round 40 but it feels like WOFF is more dangerous than I remember it! 1.21 in particular has really amped up the difficulty. In addition to signing up for the truly suicidal work of being in the Reccy department, I'm noticing a massive uptick in flak concentrations. My most recent mission (which also ended in pilot death... I'm not on a particularly great streak so far lol), had us chasing a lone RE8 over the lines and you could walk across the shrapnel flying around it! As we crossed from our side to theirs, the flak transferred to us. I haven't really had to avoid Archie in WOFF before - I do remember flying the classic Red Baron 3D zig-zag over the lines back in the day - but it looks like I can add this to my list of things to worry about (enemy aircraft, mechanical failures, collisions, fuel leaks, fire...where does it end?). And being on a new rig that can finally handle 1918 in its default form, I'm finding that avoiding a collision is nearly as difficult as not being shot to ribbons by an enemy pilot! After surviving being nearly shot down over his own airfield, my Bruno Stachel (always my name for my throw-away action campaigns) met the same fate as Boelcke - a fatal collision with my flight leader as he peeled off to head into an oncoming swarm of SE5's. The sim really does, I think, fully model the WWI aviator experience from start to finish. From scribbling down notes in 1915 as ground crews take potshots at you with rifles to trying to just survive a full blown melee in 1918 with flak and enemy machines all around... I can think of no other sim that's ever covered the totality of the war on the Western Front like this. Just remarkable. And the old gal still makes for some pretty fine screenshots.

So sorry about Mark, hoping he makes a speedy recovery. Wife and I, and puppy (whose nearly five somehow...) are all safe and well. Busy working away, but happy and well! Cheers my friend.

Thanks Pol! I've truly missed my time with this sim and revisiting it reminds me that we also have a pretty awesome community. Hope you've been well in the midst of everything that's happened over the last few years and thank you again, for all of the tireless work you and Winder have put into this wonderful game. Cheers!