Winston DoRight

For the final Early Birds session of July, I'd like to try Fortiesboy's new DM 1.1 Myself, Vasco and sitting duck connected with it today and I think it would be nice to get everyones opinion on it. The damage is quite readily seen and could be a lot of fun. You can get it here: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showtopic=44688 Just make sure you have the hardcore damage model installed before installing and then just follow the instructions. Read the entire topic to make sure you understand the correct path to extract into. See you on Sunday, or sooner if you want to test it out.

It's nice if someones mod is so great that it's incorporated (by the devs) into a patch for the official game. In fact it's wonderful that they notice and listen, but who's going to improve multiplayer? I fear we're stuck with a level of "broken-ness" and it's not getting addressed. What we have is what we have to make due with and IMHO that's pretty weak right now. So much of our MP flying time now is used in finding bugs, trying to get everyone connected, and experiencing unpleasant things happening. We are not going to attract new MP flyers if this doesn't improve. Many people want to play a quality WW1 combat sim, and some have recently come over from ROF, and they are very disappointed. Multiplayers only hope is that a programmer will take the time and interest and look into the problems we've reported. If this doesn't happen MP in OFF will probably degenerate into an unplayable condition and eventually interest will die out. In time other MP games will steal us over to their side.

These new drivers worked well for me, (using XP SP3) allowing me to up my scenery and terrain from "3's" to "4's" with no framerate loss. Total framerate still hovers around 60fps due to my setting of vertical sync forced on. The best improvement is in the general look of all graphics. All colors looks much richer now.

Yes, that could have be a problem since I was not hosting sundays session. Due to lag and jitter issues we try to have someone host that is in a central location in the world, so some don't have to connect from too far away. Imagine a game with two players in the USA, one on the west coast and one on the east coast, and a player in the U.K. The UK player is hosting the game, and the east coast player has a connection latency of 120 to the UK. Because of the extra distance to the U.K. the west coast player has a latency of over 200. This makes for an unpleasant online session for the west coast player because the game problems, jitters, warping are more noticeable at higher latencys. The solution is to have the east coast player host the game because he is centrally located between the U.K. and the west coast. IP addresses are given out at the start of each game, and will probably be different than listed on the calendar, or if you pop on late just ask who's hosting and for their IP. Sunday's session was the most problematic we've ever had. It seemed that the program crashes and lockups were many this day as opposed to the occasional. Plus it was not fun to wait an hour after start time to begin playing. Most was due to the new damage model we were using and problems with how to get it working in the Vista OS. When this happens, PLEASE guys, do not offer help to Vista users if you're not actually using Vista yourself! This only adds to the extra time required to "try this" or "try that". People need to be familiar with their own OS to unzip, add, move, search, and delete files; or ask for help from other people with the same OS. An XP user is not going to have the right answers when it comes to Vista. We have both XP and Vista users that play regularly and use Fortiesboy's damage model, so it can be done. Anyone that is having problems connecting or setting up can get help on practically any day except game day. Please drop by teamspeak or PM sitting duck (XP), Vasco (Vista) or myself (XP) for a training session. We also had Big Jim join us this day. I don't think his first experience was a good one. He was used to multiplayer games that were designed to be multiplayer games. He's played Air Warrior and Aces High which were developed and tested with multiplayer in mind as opposed to OFF in which mulitiplayer was largely ignored during development and extensive testing was not done. No comparision here, and sorry about that, but we're making do with what we've got and hoping it doesn't get any worse!

There's another .rar archive inside this file, filename: Fortiesboys DM1.1.rar any use for this? Appears to be your previous DM version?

Use your Nvidia control panel to override your AA settings for CFS3. See the topic here: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showtopic=44430

I don't use vista, but it seems you're missing the ViewUI.xml that you need to change. Try a windows search and see if you can find another instance of it on your HD. Maybe someone with Vista can give you the correct path to the file?

Since you're using an old hard drive (perhaps used?) you should run a chkdsk and check the tick box to look for and mark out bad-sectors. Possibly something essential was written to a bad or going bad sector? If you have any it's very possible that other similar problems will reoccur in the future.

I will be glad to join in when ready. I'm making a point of capturing some shots in whatever aircraft I'm currently flying in campaigns.

Would really love to see someone drop that off at the ROF forum.

You can edit the size in your ViewUI.xml file. It's located here: C:\Documents and Settings\[your user name]\Application Data\Microsoft\CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields\ Make a copy of your original file before continuing. Open the ViewUI.xml file with notepad. Look near the bottom and you'll see the following text: <TacticalDisplay BGIMage="tactical_display.dds" BGPos="0 0" BGSize="512 512" BGScale="0.30" BackColor="0x1f0000FF" Mode="0"/> <TacticalDisplayMetric BGIMage="tactical_display.dds" BGPos="0 0" BGSize="512 512" BGScale="0.30" BackColor="0x1f0000FF" Mode="0"/> <TargetCone/> <TargetConeMetric/> <HUDPipper BGImage="reticule.dds" BGPos="0 0" BGSize="64 64"/> <HUDPipperMetric BGImage="reticule.dds" BGPos="0 0" BGSize="64 64"/> <LabelDisplay BGImage="brackets.dds" BGPos="0 0" BGSize="32 32" ShowRank="0" ShowKills="0" ShowType="0" DrawBrackets="1"/> <LabelDisplayMetric BGImage="brackets.dds" BGPos="0 0" BGSize="32 32"/> </HUD> </Settings> I've marked in bold red text what you need to change. Just experiment until you find what you're looking for. ADDED BY SANDBAGGER: Excuse me for adding to this post. I use Vista 64 operating system and here's how I did the change: C:\Users\<YOUR USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields - open ViewUI.xml file. If you find you can't change the data exit and right click for Properties. Then change the Open With to Wordpad or NotePad, apply and exit. Now you should be able to change the data. On my rig I was also able to do this at the following path: 'Your name' folder/Application Data main folder/Roaming/Microsoft/CFSWWW1 Over Flanders Fields - open ViewUI.xml file. I set my display to 0.15 for both entries (on a 24 inch monitor). You can move the display around the screen as you wish.

You could always use an offsite image host. I've been doing this for quite sometime as I realize that space here is not infinate. Just upload your pics to a image host like tinypic.com and use the bbs code they give you or the image button here. One drawback is that they may delete your pics after awhile, but so far I have pics uploaded for years and they're still there.

I've often wondered what some of the unmarked towns/cities are on the OFF maps. Just today I was forced to land on the outskirts of this one and it got me wondering again. Can anyone identify this city/town?

Perhaps a bug in the skins? I get Heldmann's skin when trying to select Lothar's for the standard DVII. Can someone verify this? Fokker DVII of Jasta 10 1918 Alois Heldmann Fokker DVII of Jasta 18 1918 August Raben

Thanks for the clarification. It makes perfect sense now. I'll be trying it today, and hopefully be able to test it in MP with Vasco to see if this one works.

A wonderful story! Use something like that in your claims form and I'll bet you'll get confirmations with ease.

Fortiesboy, there are questions on this mod posted in section: 3rd Party File and Mods Release Announcements could you answer there please?

OK, so if you sucessfully install your new DM according to the instructions above and then later want to go back to the OFF hardcore damage model, do you have to again delete the .bdp files to regain the original hardcore DM? Also you said: Starting with the Fortiesboy DM1.1 zip file, extract to your OFF root directory, (usually OBDSoftware)\CFSWWl OverFlandersField\ aircraft but that isn't the root directory, the root directory would be OBDSoftware)\CFSWWl OverFlandersField\ so which do you extract to,the root directory or the aircraft directory?

The Red Baron-2008 for technical achievement. If the sloppy love story was replaced with more flight....... well that would have been epic!

Is the remainder of your text on the next page in your logbook? Rather than putting the airfield name as a witness, try to explain where the dogfight took place or the enemy planes crashed in relationship to the airfield. Example: "The enemy planes all crashed northwest of Douai airfield."

There's two train missions in Matmatts essential files for multiplayer download. You can also play them in single player or join us for a MP session. They're very difficult as some of the train cars have flak guns x 4.

Yes, I'm looking forward to continuing with this. Seems like we have still a few that haven't been flown yet? Maybe even testing the new Fortisboy DM?

Nope, were talking about Fortiesboys' ver 1.0 DM for campaign different from Herr Prop-Wasche's DM for campaign ver 2.0 I've just used this all day today in my Jasta2 campaign and I like it. I don't see the wings coming off quite so often as Herr Prop-Wasche's version but they still fly off quite often. I've used both the standard and strong gun models and this is usable with both although the strong guns setting is clearly overkill. Use the strongest gun settings and it's "wings off" or "flamers" each and every time. I'd like to test this in multiplayer missions, and some multiplayer dogfight testing as well, to see if this is suitable for online play.

IMHO, OFF multiplayer is quite problematic. It seems with each wonderful improvement made to create OFF, little or no testing was done with multiplayer and now the problems are many and perhaps deep inside the code. Actually CFS3 and the ETO mod play quite nicely online, but the "level of detail" of those cannot match OFF. We have asked the devs to look into several multiplayer issues, but it's possible that the major problems cannot be solved at this point. Some of the nasties are: 1. Engine smoke exiting at strange and unrealistic angles. 2. Jumping, jittering and warping of enemy aircraft in dogfight and mission modes. 3. Selecting certain aircraft crash the MP session, or are invisible when playing. The focus of the OBD team when producing OFF was and still is single player. It's possible that some multiplayer fixes will be done, we can only hope. Frankly I'll never be satisfied with OFF multiplayer unless item 2 in the list above is fixed. Actually I'd celebrate if that and only that was fixed as it's the most annoying of all the issues. Again, these are my personal opinions. There are several members here that participate in our regular online sessions. All have experienced these problems and I'm sure have their own opinions on what is important to them and what it would take to make MP a pleasant experience instead of an exercise in frustration.

Not necessary. Just something like "southwest of Douai airfield" will do nicely.