Jel

Two potential newbies are curious about UAW160,and they read threads that say it is difficult to install, and that the file-manager is difficult to use. The first believes that and does not bother. The second decides to carry on regardless, gets a successful installation and is able to select an exe, a planeset and a theatre and fly UAW160 with no problems. He wonders why those posts were made. However, because of those posts we lost a newbie who did not bother to try

Here we have the 1.29 file-manager in operation: It does exactly the same thing as the 160 version.

Just consider how 160 actually works The 160 exe looks for three files. 1. A "Dir.set" file in the root folder which is a list of places where it will find the files it needs for the theatre. This came into play when 1.28c was released. 2. A "PDir.set" file in the "Gamedata" folder which is a list of places where it will find the files it needs for the aircraft skins. 3. A "FMDir.set" file in the "Gamedata" folder which is a list of places where it will find the files it needs for the aircraft flight models. "PDir.set" and "FMDir.set" files were first used in 1.28E So, since 1.28E we have used file-managers to put these three files in the appropriate places to allow users to select different theatres and planesets. In my opinion the "PlaneSetExeTheatreSwitchV3.exe" is the easiest of all of them to use. Nobody is suggesting that any of the previous ones were easier, or that there are difficulties with them, so why are people raising ill-founded concerns about using the "PlaneSetExeTheatreSwitchV3.exe" ? Can anyone suggest a better way to put these three files in the right places?

Absolute garbage There are three lists. 1. Clicking a planeset lists the planes and loads the paths to the skin files and the FM files for the exe to read. 2. Clicking the exe list selects and loads the exe you want to use. 3. Clicking a theatre selects the theatre you want to use Clicking "Launch EAW" launches the game. Four mouseclicks, but you want a tutorial? Sorry Mark, but ill-informed posts like this require a response.

The 500x500 Solomons terrain, with the tile and height maps converted to "eaw32.tm" and "eaw6.hm". I was able to use their pilot map too I was using a hastily converted EAW ETO target map for what has been a successful test of my conversion software

Accepted. I posted from memory and on checking I had misinterpreted a couple of things that you wrote. The third 7-zip that you referred to installs the visual basic runtimes. Many users' PCs have them already installed, so it is not needed, and if a user only wants the ETO set-up from the first 7-zip there is no need for them at all.

Mark I have a problem with some of the things you have written in my threads at SimHQ which are simply not true You tell people that UAW160 is difficult to install for a newbie. Well if that is the case lets us compare what an EAW newbie needs to do to install EAWPro, and UAW160 UAW160: 1. Download a self-installing file from a link and run it. The user now has a working installation with an exe, an ETO theatre and a default planeset EAWPro: 1. Obtain a 1.2 installation and run it. 2. Copy the EAW folder. 3. Download a zipfile from a link and put it in the copy of the EAW folder. 4. Extract the files. The user now has a working installation with an exe, an ETO theatre and a default planeset. Neither installation process is difficult, so why do you keep telling people that installing 160 is difficult? If the newbie wants to extend his UAW installation he downloads another self installer, runs it in his "UAW160" folder, and now has several theatres, several planesets and the "PlaneSetExeTheatreSwitchV3.exe" file-manager which is a simple to use utility which allows him to pick a theatre, a plane-set, the version of the eaw.exe of his choice, and then launch the game.

I was not sure if the Old Person was me However, this whole thing was a simple experiment to see if I could extract the data from SF files, to produce a tile map, a target map, a height map, and a list of target names and create a theatre for UAW160. It entailed the writing of new software, but it was successful. That's all

Jel

I needed a break from working on Darwin, so I went back to further develop the SF1 Solomons theatre for 160 multiplayer fun With a bit more work I will have a beta out in a couple of days Jel

Cracked it- this is the Darwin tile and height map with the converted files made by the new editor Still using ETO targets to test, and the Autumn terrain For some reason the Darwin BMPs caused problems, otherwise I would not have needed to make this editor

Now this one is tricky I am making a utility to match SF1 tiles with EAW tiles and change the references in the "eaw32.tm" file generated from the SF1 files from the SF1 tile number to the EAW tile number. This morning I added the save and load the temporary file routines, which allows me to save what I have done. The cyan colors indicate things that have been done already It takes patience, as there are 104 tiles in the SF1 set

The Solomons one I used had tiles with EAW names like "BNRiver5.bmp". It was from an installation I downloaded shortly after getting Strike Fighters Gold years ago , and adding a number of WW2 planes and a few theatres. As our versions of EAW can read BMP files, and use flexible sized tile-maps I worked out the structure of the "TFD" and "HFD" files and wrote software to extract the values from them in order to create the "eaw32.tm" and "eaw16.hm" files. So I made the tile map, the height map, the tilename list and the pilotmap/target and home-base selection map all from the SF1 files. The targets and bases are not from SF1. They were added as a test from the EAW ETO theatre, and moved using the EAW target editor just to get them on land. Hence the colours on the map that you see are the EAW ones, not SF1 ones. It would be better to use the EAW South Pacific Air War targets and objects, and I may do that and make a much better job of it. However, the whole thing was to test if it could be done

Even with 512x512 tiles a pixel is 8 metres wide. Some TMods are in the order of 8 metres wide, so you have an entire TMod with detailed graphics sitting on one pixel. In reality there is little improvement. This problem will never be fixed, but the game-play is what really makes EAW

Sadly some EAW graphics remain out-dated and will never be fixed. The aircraft and TMods look great, but the problem is in the terrain tile system. Flying close to the ground you see the individual pixels, because a terrain tile has a side length which is equivalent to 4096 metres. With 256x256 pixel tiles that means that a single pixel is 16 metres x 16 metres. Compared to the much finer resolution in the TMods and the aircraft the terrain resolution is pathetic, and the TMods stand out like dogs' balls on a canary

The Allied Fleet in Carrier Air War Jel

Date and time setting, Multiskins and ETO seasonal terrains A multiskin plane-set was loaded and a single mission set up in the default ETO theatre It is the 11th of October (Autumn) and we should be over the target at 17:10 which is ten minutes before sun-set Spit IX multiskins and Autumn scenery: B-17 multiskins: Close to sun-set: 110 multiskins over the bombers: Re-set the month to January, and adjust the time based on the sun-set time which is 16:37: Neary sun-set and winter snow: Here come those 110s again: I really love those evening colours

The original is 20 years old, but it has a number of qualities that later sims do not have, so people are still flying it in its various forms, even online :)

Finnish Air War (winter terrain) Jel

Because 160 is slot free the old aircraft codes such as "262a" are no longer used by the exe in any routines. Four bytes of data were used for the old aircraft code in "plane.dat", and classified as text data. I have reclassified them as four individual bytes of numeric data, and different routines can be made to run depending on any one (or more) of these four bytes The first one that I have done is for the display of the rocket flare and smoke trail for the Komet. The edited "plane.dat" file has one of these four bytes with a value that displays the appropriate flare and smoke trail As a result of this the modified 160 exe can easily differentiate between the 163 and the V1: The normal V1 routine applies in this case Jel

I just checked out the abandonware download. It gives you an "iso" file to install V1.0 from a CD. That is the very first version of EAW. It also has a zip file which gives you the original 1.28 patcher. This was the very first version released by the code group, so I had a nostalgic visit We already had gun convergence, Allied and Axis selection screens showing flyable aircraft, on-screen frame-rate display and improved multiplayer selection with host only launch. There were other improvements too, but less obvious than these

Back to your problem. When you choose a theatre the name is saved in a file named "CurrentLongDirSet". Next time you run the DSP it reads this file and displays its name as the "Current Dir.set file:" so you know which theatre is currently loaded. When you ran yours it read "ETO with planesets for 1.29 ". Note in the tutorial how this changed after I had selected "Spanish Air War". So you need to select a theatre before you fly. Just do what I did in the tutorial BTW where are you located- I am in Southern France?

The "picpln" screens are also linked to "picpln" menu files containing the names of the planes, and editing them is a PITA. They only ever offered six US planes, six US planes and eight German planes for selection. Out of the 30 plane slots 10 were not selectable, even if they were flyable such as the Mosquito. In the 1.28 series the aircraft name comes directly from "pnames.str". The corresponding flight files are checked and if the plane is flyable it is shown for selection on either the allied or axis screens, neither of which are linked to a menu.

That's the point It is up to the modders to produce the screens such as these. The 1.28 series of exes have always been able to display them. The trouble with 1.2 and related exes is that although there are pictures of the planes on the three "picpln" selection screens they only allow you to select the fighters. The 1.28 series of exes display all planes that are flyable for selection. In the case of SAW the minipic file was not the best, and its limitation shows up on the parameters screen. With the multitude of planesets in 160 I cannot see any way of producing selection screens with pictures like this one, but to me that's a trivial disadvantage compared to the benefits of the "dir.set" and plane-set systems.

Catapult launches can also occur on carriers. There are a few here in The Japanese fleet in Carrier Air War Plenty of other ships too