Baltika

Hi Allan, 1. I included WW2 instant action files in the BoB d/l, should work, check out instantaction.ini (in the /flight folder) and options.ini (in the main install folder) and check that neither files are calling for planes which are not included in your ww2 install. 2. Single missions included in the BoB d/l have not been tested - I think they are included as part of Charles' WW2 formations mod, so you will need to open the .msn files in wordpad and check you have the right planes installed, also I think those missions call for the stock desert terrain, so you will need to change that too for a WoE install. 3. Sound levels of weapons - I know what you mean, I get that too. Will have to poke around a bit to see what I can come up with. The engines seem very noisy, and the MGs kind of, well, weak. Hmm. . . 4. Loading screens - Wrench has some great WW2 ones on his homepage. Also, I think scrapper's WW2 campaign "Fallen Angel" replaces the menu setup from WoE with various WW2 pics, so might be worth checking out (I confess I have d/led his campaign but have not got round to installing it yet - finalising BoB v0.60 for release, oh yes ) 5. Framerate issues with WW2 formations mod. Yup, got that too. as discussed above, you could try resizing the .bmp files which contain the bomber skins. As ever, it's a question of trading image quality vs performance. Tally ho! baltika

Love to see the Graf Zeppelin released Cheers, baltika

scrapper, Good man, great to have another WW2 campaign out there Keep up the good work Cheers, baltika

Hi Allan, Glad you got it going. Post your campaign feedback! (I have a lot of numbers still to go from 0.59 to 1.00!) Anything in particular you had to do to get it going in WoE? Wrench talks about changing the single mission dates in his "era specific" thread in the KB, but my base install is SFP1. It may help some folks to know how you got it going in WoE! Cheers, baltika

Anyone know what happened to Gramps' website? It seems to be gone Cheers, baltika

Wrench, I get exactly what you get, so looks like time to change my browser. However, I am glad to hear it is a local problem at my end and not that Gramps' site is gone. Time to sort this out, now that I know it can be sorted (cracks knuckles). Cheers guys

Hmmm, I'm getting an illegal poeration error code, and no access. Just my problem? Cheers, baltika

Hi Allan, Can you give a bit more detail on your install? What game (SFP1, WoV, WoE?) Clean install as per readme? Latest Wep back from Bunyap has everything, so try D/L & installing wep pack again. Let me know how you get on. Cheers, baltika

Tally-ho, chaps Apologies for my recent reticence - R/L matters have been occupying my attention as of late. But it's always great to pop along and see what's happening in the world of BoB - especially with such great work going on CA, your villages are simply eye-poppingly good and I can't wait to see them implemented. FAB stuff keith- In answer to a couple of questions you have asked, first, your problems with anti-ship missions. This has happened to me a couple of times as well, and I think CA has hit the nail on the head - the reason for it is, I think, the game engine can't find any suitable shipping targets - which would be explained if you had misplaced you GroundObjects folder. I take it you have it sorted now? Second, the vexed issue of changing groundobjectrole to CARGO_SHIP in order to get e.g. Destroyers as targets in anti-shipping missions. This was first suggested in the readme to the excellent WW2 Euro terrain available at MajorLee's site. Worked fine for me back then, detroyers and cruisers would show up, sail around, and, yes, shoot back at you. Over on the "Adding ships" thread here, people have run into problems with that change causing CTDs, which I now get when I try it on the BoB terrain. Try it out and see how you go - but, yes, the ships should fire back. CA - As to my armed cargo ships featured earlier in this thread, not yet available for download, but (you know what I'm going to say now ) they will be in v0.60, which is starting to take on the mythical status of Operation Sealion. Cheers for now, baltika

Wrench, Thanks very much for making this great skin S! baltika (Off to create a Kittyhawk1 folder to use it in )

Excellent Off to d/l now Thanks, baltika

Hi CA, Oh yes, those repaints are FAB, and if you are cool with them being released I would love to have them in the BoB campaign - S! Damnation, you guys never want to let me finish 0.60, do you Haven't heard about 4 Brownings as standard - the general view here has been for more firepower rather than less, but if it works for you, then go for it I'm interested, though - do you get bomber kills with 4x MGs? If so, how? Any .ini bomber edits, or stock? I confess I have tweaked my bombers as follows:- engine nacelle hitboxes (as described above) fuel tank FireSuppression=FALSE, but fuel tank SelfHealing=TRUE engine FireSuppression=FALSE Plus the [AIDATA] mod capun posted in this thread WAY back, and his ammo limitation. I still have a hard time bringing Ju-88s and He-111s down, which I think is as it should be, but I can get a fair number of engine "kills," which means stragglers to pick off, which also seems to be how it was. Just my view, and as ever, feedback appreciated. Cheers, baltika

Yes, any photo program you like, simple as that. Just make sure the image stays in proportion, ie 512x512, 256x256, 128x128 etc. Some bombers have more than one bmp for different parts of the plane. The Ju-88A4 has one, the Do-17Z has two, and the He-111 series and Stuka have about 4 different ones. You have to resize each one. Also, for the Stuka, make sure the .ini file has CastShadow set to FALSE, as per capun's instructions above. That made a big difference in my setup. As you don't see large bomber formations in Burning Sands '44, I think it's safe to say that those are the culprit in BoB. Hopefully the above will help. Heck, thanks for the info. B Bandy RFC has pointed out that the 109E3 included has a centreline nose-mounted cannon, which is not right for BoB, so people may want to edit out that entry if they like. The more you dig, the more there is to change Cheers all. Still plugging away on v0.60, so don't give up hope

Hi CA, On the subject of 110s, I think Bandy RFC mentioned that, in the BoB timeframe, the 110s did not have self-sealing tanks, so you may want to make appropriate changes to the aircfraft DATA.ini. Let me tell you, they go down a lot faster after you have removed FireSuppression and self-sealing tanks! Historically, the 110s came off so badly in fighter-to-fighter combat in BoB that they generally assumed a defensive circle formation and tried to dive for cover as soon as RAF fighters showed up, so making them easy to down for the BoB campaign seems OK. Loss rates for geschwadern equipped with the type were a major concern to the Luftwaffe. (Bungay notes the loss rates of 110s to Hurris & Spits as 4:1 - not exactly achieving air superiority for the Luftwaffe). To be even handed about it, you may want to remove the self-sealing from the Hurricane 1A's reserve tank, which was a major cause of serious burn injuries (and death) to Hurri pilots. Again, the problem was of concern to the top brass and self-sealing reserve tanks were retrofitted to Hurris at the rate of 75 per month, according to Bungay. And I agree, the 109 seems a little easy to take out - but I do not claim any expertise on the subject. However, again taking Bungay as my source, he has this to say, at p. 201:- "But the aircraft the most vulnerable of all to the guns of British Fighters was the Bf 109. RAF pilots managed to get a bead on 70 of them, and of those they destroyed 54, some 77%, a markedly higher destruction ratio than the 63% the Bf 109s achieved in return. This may be because the damaged machines had further to fly home and force-landed in England or dirched and so were lost. But it also looks as if Spitfires and Hurricanes were even more deadly than the Bf 109 itself, and that in FIGHTER combat their eight Brownings were at least as destructive as the two cannon and two machine guns of the Bf 109E." My emphasis on "fighter". The more I read about it, the more I reach the view that the bombers really were tough nuts to crack with MG fire, and that it's as hard as it should be in the BoB campaign to down them. Having said that, I think it was Typhoid who in an earlier post pointed out that the Engine nacelles of the various bombers don't have hit boxes, although the engines themselves do. I tried the simple expedient of copying the MinExtentPosition= and MaxExtentPosition= values from the engines to the relative engine nacelles in each bomber's DATA.ini, and I have to say it seems to be more possible to target the engines and knock them out, without making things too easy. Just a thought. Cheers, baltika

Hello everyone, but particularly the WW2 propheads I have a major upgrade to Burning Sands '44 in the works, including, but not restricted to:- -Revision of campaign timeline from July '40 to '45 -Addition of many flyable squadrons from Regia Aeronautica, SAAF, RAAF and USAAF, as well as revisions to the RAF and Luftwaffe flyables, including appropriate entry dates and upgrade paths for air units -Revision of non-flyable orders of battle to more closely approximate MTO air forces -Revision of stock desert terrain for many more WW2 era ground objects, static aircraft, target zones, airfields, etc. -Revision of ground war to feature appropriate army units, with upgrade paths to feature available ground unit types -Historical Campaigns (within certain unavoidable limitations) for Edward's North Africa and (hopefully, although maybe not in first upgrade package) Tunisia terrains Progress has been continuing, although slowed by the birth of my now 6 week old daughter, not that I would have it any other way She has proved her skill as a co-pilot already, and thanks to my trusty HOTAS Cougar set-up (bought for me by my wife, lucky chap that I am) I have now learned to fly one-handed whilst holding a baby Anyway, my question is this: With near on 850+ views, but only 160+ downloads, there is cearly a lot of interest in a WW2 campaign, but something is putting people off downloading Burning Sands '44 v1.0 - proportionately speaking, that is a high level of interest but a pretty low take-up rate compared to other campaign mods available. What is the showstopper, and what can I do to fix it for v1.1? All feedback greatly appreciated. Positive suggestions for improvement are preferred, but I am thick-skinned, so if you think it sucks I don't mind you telling me so long as you tell me why Cheers, baltika

Hi keith, Yes, on occasion, not just the Boston. I'm not sure what's going on there. Once BoB v0.60 is out I will be taking a look at this campaign. Cheers, Baltika

Hi there, keith - I am sorry to report that I get a bit of a slow-down as well - I think CA_Stary has hit the nail on the head when he says that the SFP1 engine isn't designed to handle the numbers of aircraft for BoB style engangements, especially given the beautifully detailed skins made for the bombers - the Ju-88A4 skin is 1500x1500 pixels and weighs in at 6.43 Mb! If you run into a flight of a dozen of those, it's going to slow things up! Thanks to capun for the flightengine alterations, and turning off individual plane shadows. Cheers I think this has been suggested already, but if you try re-sizing the bomber skin .bmps to something more maneageable, you should see a big improvement. Try 512x512, or even 256x256. You can go below that, but the "blurriness" of the skins at the smaller numbers may be unaccaptable to you. As ever, it's a trade-off between image quality and performance. OTOH, if all you want is a lot of targets to shoot up with minumum framerate hit, re-size the skins to 64x64 and see how it works. They still look like bombers from a distance. . . I have been playing around with this, with a view to scripting some single missions re-creating the big air battles over London, and by taking the bomber skins down to 64x64, I get playable framerates for this kind of interception - there are 18 Ju-88s and 18 Do-17s, and at least 24 109s and 110s out of screenshot as escorts, and a dozen Spits:- As you close in, the bombers still look OK:- But, as you can see, even on high detail settings, the small .bmps are not pretty close up:- FYI, my system is by no means state of the art:- AMD 64 3400+ 2.2GHz, 2Mb RAM, Gainward 7800 GS+ 512Mb (AGP). Those screens were taken at 1024x768, with game settings all to high, shadows off, horizon distance medium. keith, do you encounter large bomber formations in Burning Sands '44? Wrench- Thanks very much for the tip, I didn't know about that one. Cheers for now, Baltika

Fantastic S! baltika

Marvellous stuff CA Thanks very much for your hard work on this. I'm just off to upgrade my WW2 installs Cheers mate baltika

Hi all, Current working build includes additional Allied & Axis target areas offshore with "static" battlegroups, as per the examples in the BoB feedback thread. These are basically just ground targets at sea, but they do shoot back at you! Given the interest in carrier ops, I will take another look at it for the next release (but that is a while away). IIRC, my amended desert_targets.ini for Burning Sands '44 v 1.0 includes 3 carrier stations, Alpha, Bravo & Charlie, although they are not implemented in that build. To add carriers to them, add the following to the campaign data.ini (I put it under the groundunit section, although I'm not sure that matters):- // Carrier Units [CarrierUnit001] CarrierType=Victorious CarrierNumber=38 UnitName=HMS Victorious ForceID=1 Nation=RAF BaseArea=Alpha Station NumSquadron=5 BaseSize=MEDIUM Experience=100 Morale=100 Supply=100 [CarrierUnit002] CarrierType=Enterprise6 CarrierNumber=6 UnitName=USS Enterprise ForceID=1 Nation=RAF BaseArea=Bravo Station NumSquadron=5 BaseSize=MEDIUM Experience=100 Morale=100 Supply=100 Of course, make sure you install the HMS Victorious and USS Enterprise(CV-6) as well! They are available here at combatace. Then edit one of the flyable (RAF) units to look like this:- AircraftType=Seafire3C Squadron=807RAF <------------ Check this matches an entry in the Squadronlist.ini StartDate=9/14/1944 ForceID=1 Nation=RAF DefaultTexture= StartNumber=1 BaseArea=Alpha Station CarrierBased=TRUE CarrierNumber=38 RandomChance=100 MissionRate=1 MaxAircraft=16 StartAircraft=16 MaxPilots=16 StartPilots=16 Experience=100 Morale=100 Supply=50 MissionChance[sWEEP]=90 MissionChance[CAP]=90 MissionChance[iNTERCEPT]=90 MissionChance[ESCORT]=80 MissionChance=60 MissionChance[CAS]=0 MissionChance[sEAD]=60 MissionChance[ARMED_RECON]=60 MissionChance[ANTI_SHIP]=0 MissionChance[RECON]=40 UpgradeType=NEVER Supply[001].WeaponType=500lb_bomb Supply[001].Quantity=180 Supply[002].WeaponType=100lb_bomb Supply[002].Quantity=180 Supply[003].WeaponType=TANK075_P51 Supply[003].Quantity=80 Or, if you prefer US flavoured carrier ops, this:- AircraftType=F4U-1D Squadron=VBF10 <---------- again, check it matches an entry in the squadronlist.ini, it can be any squadron listed. StartDate=9/20/1944 ForceID=1 Nation=RAF DefaultTexture= StartNumber=1 BaseArea=Bravo Station CarrierBased=TRUE CarrierNumber=6 RandomChance=100 MissionRate=1 MaxAircraft=16 StartAircraft=16 MaxPilots=16 StartPilots=16 Experience=100 Morale=100 Supply=50 MissionChance[sWEEP]=90 MissionChance[CAP]=90 MissionChance[iNTERCEPT]=90 MissionChance[ESCORT]=90 MissionChance=60 MissionChance[CAS]=60 MissionChance[sEAD]=60 MissionChance[ARMED_RECON]=40 MissionChance[ANTI_SHIP]=60 MissionChance[RECON]=40 UpgradeType=NEVER Supply[001].WeaponType=1000lb_bomb Supply[001].Quantity=180 Supply[002].WeaponType=500lb_bomb Supply[002].Quantity=180 Supply[003].WeaponType=250lb_bomb Supply[003].Quantity=180 Supply[004].WeaponType=HVAR1 Supply[004].Quantity=240 Supply[005].WeaponType=TANK075_P51 Supply[005].Quantity=80 Make sure you have the appropriate aircraft installed as well. Now, when you select your edited squadron, you should get a carrier based unit. Bandy, sadly my plane blew up 9 times out of ten, not the other way around. I seem to remember a thread which spoke about a minor adjustment to the height of the carrier deck (within the carrier's _data.ini), to ensure that matched the height the plane appeared at, but it's a very long time since I looked at it. The above is obviously a very rough hack & slash edit to get carriers activated. Any problems, give me a shout, although I can't promise to be able to find a solution. Edward's North Africa and Tunisia terrains do a fantastic job of covering the Med, and Malta is a very attractive setting for a campaign. I'd love to do it, but I'm a tad overloaded right now - BoB 0.60, Burning Sands '44 v1.1, and a North Africa '40-'43 campaign all being knocked into shape for release. Anybody want to build a Gladiator? Cheers, baltika

Yup, me too. I'd like to flatten some parts of a terrain to add extra airfields. . .

My pre-release v1.0 had carrier ops - HMS Victorious (I think) and USS Enterprise, with appropriate squadrons, showing up late on in the campaign to give the Allies some much-needed assistance. However, there was a fair bit of fiddling involved to get the carriers working, and even then, 9 times out of 10, my plane blew up on take-off. So I pulled that part of it for v 1.0. It may have been that I was doing something wrong, but who knows? Since then (i.e. the release of v 1.0) WOLF257 was generous enough to re-release his planes (of which many are listed above) and I was in hog heaven flying them (many of which I missed first time around) and adding them in to the campaign. So getting the carrier ops working took a bit of a back seat. Then, as you know, BoB campaign was released as a beta and the response has been great, so all my modding time has been taken up with that. But Burning Sands '44 is still very much in my mind (v1.0 is a rough cut) and I certainly intend to get the carrier stuff together at some point. That's not a priority for the next release, however. As to more historic ships, well, as I have said before, I am a humble .ini editor standing on the shoulders of giants. If something is available, I will put it in. What, specifically, did you have in mind? More 110s, no problem. The main difference for the new release is that the campaign timeline is extended to cover the course of the war, and squadrons will transition up through early types to later types according to the historical information I can get my hands on. And, I have massively extended the strategic node network to poke into corners of the map we never got to see in stock Burning Sands. And did I mention that the USAAF are in it Cheers, Baltika

Hi CA, Current (working) builds of the Burning Sands '40 and Burning Sands '44 campaign files feature:- B-17G B-24D & J B-25B Beaufort Beaufighter family Bf109 E,F & G Bf-110E Blenheim MK1 Boston C-47A Do-17Z Do335A & B Fw190 a4, a5 & Wurger He111H6 Hs129B3 Hurricane family Ju-88A4 & C4 Ju 87b Mc-200, 202, 205 Me-262A & A1U4 Me-410A1U4 (family to follow) Mustang MkIII P-38H & L P-39D P-40E P-47D-20 P-51A P-51B-10 Re 2000, 2001, 2002 SM-79 Spitfire family Tomahawk No Seafires or Sea Hurris in this release, I suspect, but I haven't forgotten them. Just to be clear, I suspect I am a while away from a release date given everything that's going on with BoB just now. Oh, and the above are "featured", not "included in the download", just to be clear. All are currently available at combatace. OTOH, if you think I have missed anything out you'd like to see, I am open to suggestions - although I have tried to restrict it to things that look like they'd fit in the MTO, given the great skins that are available. Cheers, baltika

Indeed I can assure all concerned that the Home Guard will feature heavily in the event of invasion. Any 3d modellers care to rustle up long woolly scarves and pitchforks to re-equip the standard squaddie?

Looking good, CA