Lothar of the Hill People

At some point interface consistency becomes retarded: toss out your joystick and pedals and fly OFF by touching your screen! Millions of us simply can't get much actual work done with a phone OS. And the irony is there's no consistency at all across apps themselves in iOS, so consistency of experience has nothing to do with Apple's success in the first place. Apple is growing in mobile--phones and tablets--not desktop comptuters where it only has 7% of the market. Killing the desktop computer ecosystem doesn't get you ahead in mobile. So I guess time will indeed tell.

Windows 8 deprecates DirectX 9, and AMD/ATI will no longer support it with their drivers. NVIDIA may continue DX9 support in its desktop drivers for a while, but not mobile graphics chips in laptops and such. Since CFS3 requires DX9, you may be able to run OFF under Windows 8 with a NVIDIA desktop graphics card until they drop support, fingers crossed, otherwise you're SOL. As to why you'd want to install a phone OS on a desktop computer in the first place, I have no idea.

Everyone's waiting for my update to OFFbase?

Sorry, been completely buried with my dissertation and some real life stuff. Interest is as strong as ever, and I hope to get back to OFF stuff sometime next month. So keep it up, HPW, you're not alone (although it often feels that way).

Hey Cody Coyote. Bletchley's mission mod does only assign Lone Wolf flights for German fighters in those two months of 1916. You may be interested in trying Buddy1998's mission mods, which fix some of the waypoints and don't have any Lone Wolf missions. Get OlPaint01's Realism Bundle, which contains both mission mods and a bunch of other goodies. The OFFramp mod manager built into my OFFice incomplete campaign editor lets you easily choose which mission and other mods to run, activates the right ones for your squadron and date in the war, etc., among its many features.

Good to hear Panama Red's on the case, Andy. If he uses my JSGME installer kit everything should work perfectly. I'll try to build in proper support for the next release of my OFFramp mod manager, so let me know if there are any dependencies or conflicts with your previous sound mods. And good luck in Berlin. I'm sure if you make it home in one peace all will be forgiven with your wife, but it never hurts to bring back a gift or something!

Hey Hasse Wind, while we wait for WOFF the latest version of OFFbase reworks how BHaH and HitR handle claim and log forms, so you can write claims/reports after every mission. Especially great for bomber campaigns where the missions aren't about kills. A couple of bugs in the last release but I hope to have a fix out this weekend.

I haven't heard from OlPaint either (or HPW either for that matter), but have been buried by real life myself. Those of you waiting for replies should hear from me today, hopefully, as I'm still working on bug fixes for OFFbase. Last time I talked to OlPaint he was really excited about the sound mod. I can build a JSGME package for the sounds, or you could give it a try yourself using the JSGME installer kit I put together.

Seems Amazon.de has both the anniversary gold and the rereleased classic. Gold is cheaper! Does seem to be taking them a while to expand distribution outside Germany. Looks like we crossed in the ether, VP!

Thanks VP, glad "They’re back!" But where can people buy them? Ah, here's the page for what I've taken to calling GoldTrigger. I've bought from AmigaKit before and decided to give them the business--just snatched up their very last one. But geeze the shipping to the US is almost as much as the joystick! Evens out not paying the VAT I suppose.

Seems the only version available is just a little gaudy:

Thanks for bumping this, "Cinemaware". The journal Creaghorn posted alone is worth reading for those who don't want to bother with emulators to actually play Wings. I suppose it's no big secret that OFFbase is at heart my go at making a spiritual sequel to Wings. The addition of a journal should help: If your squadron's cook and chaplain end up boxing after squabbling over the food, I shall have achieved some small victory in life.

You're right, Hasse Wind, not quite the same. The 2D graphics such as the strafing and bombing missions in Wings are pretty jittery on my GTX470, the software emulation lacking the hardware-driven smoothness of the Amiga's custom chips. And it's tough to control those planes with my analog Saitek--does anyone even make digital joysticks for PCs? But yeah, a lot of crap games. Some of the stuff we used to consider "gameplay" just makes me shake my head.

Sad, but inevitable. Casual gamers aren't going to pay hundreds of dollars to download additional planes and scenery like simmers who take their hobby seriously. Yet they basically told simmers to piss off, not just with the lack of realism and sim features but also with a closed ecosystem that cut out the giant commercial and freeware FSX mod community. How they ever expected to make any money on Flight with that business model confuses me. Anyone try X-Plane 10? It'd be cool to try a wing-warping Eindecker with their “blade element theory” flight model.

Not silly, I just know way too much about that crud. Getting that Amiga 500 for Christmas in 1987, age 10, completely changed my world.

8-bit 4-channel PCM audio, VP, I know my Amiga. Though clever coders were eventually able to coax 14-bit two-channel stereo out of Amiga's Paula audio chip. CDs are 16-bit, and DVD-Audio supports up to 24-bit audio. See this article on audio bit depth at Wikipedia. This is different from the architecture of the computer itself. The Amiga's was always 32-bit internally (32-bit registers), but early models (MC68000 and MC68010 processors) had a 16-bit data bus and could only address up to 16MB of RAM.

Hey Matt. It'd be brilliant if the WOFF score included a little homage to Wings' haunting score by Greg Haggard. Break out the accordion? You can find MP3s of the soundtrack here. Amazing how these tunes stick with you more than 20 years later, in all their 8-bit glory.

While we're all waiting for P4, I've written a program that will revolutionize your Over Flanders Fields campaign experience. If you've yet to try OFFbase, or even if you have, I've posted a massively-expanded new version. - OFFbase features squadron-based play. Take turns flying multiple pilots in a squadron while sharing the same roster and more. Separate wingmen are assigned and flights split as much as possible. See your other squadron pilots in the duty roster with you! Fly as a rookie pilot in your favorite squadron while taking your long-time veteran out on the occasion you work up the nerve. If your pilot dies, you can start a new pilot to take over for him with the same squadmates and everything, and continue your squadron's story throughout the war. - OFFbase puts you right in the Squadron HQ, where you can visit the Adjutant to manage your career, kick back in Lodgings that you may share with a roommate, go down to the Mess for food or drink and see how your squadmates are doing, or head out to the Airfield to fly campaign missions. - OFFbase implements Bletchley's Pilot Personality Profiles (3P) to give each pilot in the squad individual character that informs how they behave and relate to each other. This enhances the squadron-based gameplay by structuring social interactions between pilots as well as your squadron's infrastructure, all of which affect the development of your pilots' reputations and careers. Engage in many different types of social encounters, and watch your squadron's airfield and lodgings improve over time. - OFFbase builds on 3P with academic game theory to make social encounters richer, more intuitive, and more rewarding for different play styles. Will you try to out-do other pilots, enhancing your reputation at their expense, or try to build both your reputations through friendship and social support? Your success at playing different strategies depends on the rank, personality, and social skills of your pilot character. The effectiveness of different strategies depends on the strategy of the opposing player... - OFFbase gives pilots in your squadron artificial intelligence. They remember how you and other pilots have treated them in the past and form social strategies to pursue their own goals based on their own rank, personality, social skills, and history. Some may try to boost their careers by bullying subordinates to make themselves look better, others may focus on building peer networks, while some may do a bit of both depending on who they like and who they don't. This makes encounters a true strategic game where your strategy depends on not just what you hope to achieve but also what you think the other pilot is after. - OFFbase features a full dynamic squadron simulation: Non-player pilots have daily encounters with each other, developing their own prestige and goodwill to develop their reputations and earn their own promotions, while periodically going on and returning from leave. All this goes on even as you advance or skip time due to weather, injury, whatever. Watch non-player pilots in your squadron share a drink, talk politics, make friends, get in fights--building relationships that affect how their careers develop, and yours. - OFFbase makes completing missions more rewarding, with additional benefits and costs to your career from shooting down enemy aces, friendly fire, pulling a hat trick by shooting down three or more enemy planes, and taking out ground targets and balloons. If a fellow pilot steals your kill, you can chew him out once you're back at HQ and try to take back some of the prestige he earned instead of you; or apologize and give back prestige if you steal someone else's kill. - OFFbase brings additional features to the game such as transfers between squadrons, player input on promotions, care packages for POWs, and funerals for dead pilots. The deeper investment in building each pilot's career not only further customizes and enriches the campaign experience, but makes death in the air all the more terrifying, and thus OFF even more fun. Who'll carry your casket to its final resting place? Play OFFbase and find out!

JSGME isn't required (yet) but future versions may. The installer version will automatically put it in the right place, no worries just double click and run. The same is true for installer versions of JSGME mods themselves, such as my names mod and German music mod. You don't have to worry about any paths or anything. Same thing for installing OFFice. Instructions are on the download page, but it's pretty simple: You can choose to install the full documentation as well.

These are not even remakes, just the originals running on an Amiga emulator for iOS. Wonder how they're dealing with the ROMs (they better be paying a license to Cloanto!). While I loved Cinemaware, I'm not sure this is them in anything but name. Seems like just another cheap attempt at cashing in on their old IP. Too bad. Wings of course got many of us into WW1 flying. It Came from the Desert is the best graphical RTS adventure game ever made. And their TV Sports franchise was the model for every modern sports game. Still have most of the original 3.5" floppies for these--doubt the disks still work, even if I had a disk drive that could read them.

Version 0.8.3 of the OFFice incomplete campaign editor, including the OFFbase role-playing simulation, is now available for download. This is a massive update with new features and bugfixes for everyone, but a couple items bare special note for pilots of two-seaters: So now you'll really get to know that fellow who's always up in the air with you. And to help keep track of your adventures together, I've completely reworked how OFF handles its flight and claims logs: While the journal is automatically populated with the text of your claims, now even pilots of two-seaters who rarely fill out claims forms will be able to keep a record of their missions--and anything else they want to write about. And it's pretty keen, if I do say so myself: You should also get my updated names mod so your squadmates, including your gunner/observer, have more unique and interesting names.

Yep, all the path problems are sorted and everything's automatic. Everything "just works." The OFFramp mod manager's pretty amazing, you should try it. Version 0.8.3 is now available!

Just a tease of one of the many new features that will be in the next release--a complete overhaul over how OFF handles its flight and claims logs: This is just one new feature that pilots of two-seater campaigns will especially appreciate--now you can actually report your observations of troop movements and enemy activity and such and document what happened on your missions just like those kill-happy fighter pilots. Screw "two weeks"--give me two more days.

You can change it in the Adjutant's office, Mr. Lucky. The next version will keep track of changes automatically so you won't have to worry about it.

Hey Waldemar Kurtz, the mod community's been quite busy in the year you've been away. My OFFice incomplete campaign editor lets you reportwhat happens to your AI wingmen so OFF no longer makes them live or die at random. You can even witness claims on their behalf, or report where they were downed or went missing. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Check out the OFFbase role-playing simulation that takes the game off the field and into the lives of your pilot and his squadmates between flights: The next version which I hope to release tomorrow will give you more control over crash outcomes so minor crash-landings aren't so fatal, for example. Also included is the OFFramp mod manager, which supports a host of new advanced mods from OFF's best modders. Links to downloads of these mods can be found on the OFFbase download page. The wait for WOFF doesn't have to be so bad... have fun!