Lothar of the Hill People

Just to update on HPW's problem for future reference. The most recent version of JSGME must be installed, which is located here.

Do you have XP Service Pack 3 installed? Dude XP's over a decade old, you really need to upgrade to Win7. The memory-handling and process-scheduling improvements will make your modern machine so much faster to use. Have another idea what's causing your problem, HPW. I'll PM you a link for a new version to try in a bit.

To give those of you who haven't played OFF with OFFbase an idea of what it's like, here's a screenshot-guided tutorial of sorts. After the initial settings, the main window opens where you select a nation and squadron to play. In this case I'll ignore my existing German pilots and click the Create Pilot button. This launches the OFF Manager so I can create an American pilot in the 94th Aero. After creating the pilot, I Leave OFF Manager to return to OFFbase, which detects the new squadron. I select it in the list, and click Play Squadron. OFFbase supports multiple pilots in a squadron, here I have just one. I can edit his background directly here, or just continue on with the Play Pilot button: This button is green like saving changes to your background because it makes changes to your pilot files, synchronizing all your pilots in the squadron to the most recent roster, date given in the lower left. For example, if you have two pilots in the same squad but one in 1917 and 1918, it will put the 1917 pilot On Leave until 1918 when it will rejoin the squad alongside the other pilot. All pilots in the same squadron share a common roster, which persists beyond the life of any one pilot. This squadron-based gameplay is a key feature of OFFbase. OFFbase needs to know your squadron's Operational Rating (or Status) which isn't stored in the pilot files. You can enter the OFF Manager from here to check in the Campaign screen if need be: You'll only need to set it again if it changes. On the first run, OFFbase will simulate 30 days of squadron activity so your squadmates have on-going relationships and career troubles when you arrive: OFFbase is not just a simulation but a role-playing game. All characters have a Background Trait, which must be set before play: As a lowly 2nd Lieutenant in the prestigious "hat in the ring" 94th Aero, some higher-ranking officers will take a little pity on the Schoolboy type--but bullies may give them a little extra attention as well. Schoolboys are relatively nicer to Cowards than other types, and gullible to Gamblers. Higher-ranking pilots will get to choose additional traits when starting an OFFbase campaign, so characters grow more unique with rank. While there are only thirteen distinct 2nd Lieutenant personalities--making rookie pilots fairly disposable--American Lt Colonels come with hundreds of millions of different combinations of traits. Initial set-up complete, it's time for the introductory sequence as my new character arrives. The quality of the airfield is a random dice roll. Now it's time for our first Encounter, the basic gameplay element of OFFbase. When you first meet someone, you do what officers do: Salute. The text lets you know what kind of encounter, a little about the mood of the other pilot, and how your character feels about the encounter. Schoolboys are more submissive in a Salute than other types. As a player you can influence your pilot's attitude in the encounter. Your pilot character's Artificial Intelligence (AI) chooses its default attitude based on its overall mood and memory of past encounters with the other character. If both pilots are submissive, they become more friendly. If both are aggressive, they'll dislike each other more. It's the combinations in-between that are interesting (25 possible outcomes to each encounter), each changing how both pilots will behave in the future as both AIs learn in response. In this case, I decide to push my Schoolboy into being extra-submissive to the Captain, hoping he'll be nicer to me in the future. Well that worked, I guess. I've now met Captain Bingham, and it's pretty clear he's the boss of me. Sometimes Salutes will be continued into another encounter. Since I've just arrived at the field, perhaps I can get some information out of the Captain: Schoolboys are excited at asking for directions, making them naturally more aggressive at it. My AI wants to be forward after getting put in place by the Salute, but I'm going to make him even more aggressive. Meanwhile the Captain is more open to me after winning last time. Maybe I can exploit him a little for once? I got back a little of my prestige and some valuable info on 94th Aero's Adjutant, who I'm about to meet: My pilot is still a little cranky, having lost more prestige than gained from Captain Bingham, so I'll roll with his forward attitude. Didn't get shown up quite as badly, but still it's clear these Captains don't respect lowly 2nd Lt. Luther Hill. But now that I've met the Adjutant, I'm in his office: The description of the mess depends on the Adjutant's personality. Here I can change the Operational Rating if it changes in-game, get a promotion when I've earned enough prestige, or transfer to another squadron. But he doesn't have time for me now, so I leave. On to the mess as he said... The text in the mess depends on the time of the day, the mood of other pilots, and your relationships with them. Prestige is earned not just through encounters and achievements in the air, but from the support of your squadmates in the form of Goodwill. This is what makes it worth sacrificing short-term prestige to make friendships which pay prestige in the long-term. Learning whom to befriend and whom to exploit, and indeed when to exploit your friends, is only part of the fun, as you're also teaching the AI of other pilots to cooperate or defect There's one more Encounter to go in this introductory experience: OFFbase will try to assign a wingman close in rank to you. Maybe this is someone I'll be able to make friends with? He did seem upset, guess he wasn't in the mood to make friends. But there's a 50% chance we'll share quarters together: Hope I don't find Lt MacKenzi's practice disruptive, but maybe he'll brighten up the mess in the evenings with his play... That's it, the end of the introductory sequence. I'm deposited at the Squadron HQ: What I do next is up to me. Notice how little prestige I have left after all that. I'll have to be careful, if it falls to zero and the Adjutant catches me, he'll have me transferred out of the 94th! For what happens next in the career of 2nd Lt Luther Hill, stay tuned... More interested in your own career? Download OFFbase!

Bumped for the poll since more folks are trying OFFbase.

Thanks for the detailed report, CaptSopwith! I'd love to include pictures of your squadmates, but there are some issues with the particular alpha version of the language OFFice is written in. Hopefully the problem's solvable in the future.

Yeah it's pretty funny. I wonder how many complaints about mods not working over the years have been due to this simple thing. Seems all the people reporting the FM/EW mods worked just fine with their skins didn't actually have the FM/EW mods correctly activated. So much confusion! Glad we're finally sorting it out. JSGME should always be installed in the ODBsoftware folder or its equivalent in order to support all mods. HPW's version 2.2 FM/EW mods have been corrected to work there right off the bat, and OlPaint's bundle versions of the DM and Arc Mods are good to go as well. Hopefully the community can standardize this so we don't need to worry about it for future mods. Also remember, mod authors, in the future don't put version numbers in your mod folder names either so new versions can be updated transparently. You can stick a readme text file with the version number in the title inside your mod folder to make it easy for people to see which version they've downloaded.

Olham, try exiting the OFF manager completely, not just leaving the flight, before going back into the campaign and reflying the last mission.

REBOL the most flexible, powerful, mind-blowing, and fun language I've ever used. It's from the guy who designed the Amiga operating system. But unfortunately development of R3 alpha seems to have crapped out a year and a half ago, after I'd already been working on OFFice for over two years. The version I'm using didn't yet support image files for example, to display pictures of your squadmates and such. So I'm kind of in a bind with it at this point. But I'm glad at least someone can get their head around the mod rules so they can be updated even if I'm not around.

Nope, you don't want any of OlPaint's JSGME.ini files. The main JSGME.ini alongside JSGME.exe in your ODBSoftware folder sets which mod folder to use, which OFFice reads to know where to look for mods. The JSGME.ini inside the mods folder specifies the active mods and dependencies, and is rebuilt by OFFice, but could cause problems if doesn't match your actual installed mods. Open JSGME and deactivate all mods. Your .ini files should be good to go. Then just activate your CreagBullets and HPW front/rear guns mods. That does help, thanks. OFFice calls JSGME to save a list of currently activated mods, so it can turn on your CreagBullets and gun mods, but it's not finding this file to read it. This backup.mep should be created in your OFFice\temp\ directory but isn't there. Can you spot if it was created somewhere else? Check your ODBsoftware folder. If it's failing to create this file, it could be .ini problems as above. Or it could be a file permission issue? Seems JSGME needs to run as an administrator, so try running OFFice as an admin too. Open the OFFice\rebol\ folder, right click on r3-a97-3-1.exe to get properties, and on the Compatibility tab check 'Run this program as an administrator."

Looks good, Capt! 16:10 is the only way to go, IMHO.

Does it say anything in the console, HPW? It might just be taking a few minutes to activate all the mods, can be slow for all the FM stuff, but you should see the JSGME window open while it does this. If you never get the JSGME window the first time, it might be having trouble with your particular install, which probably is a bit of a mess. OFFice will deactivate all of the mods it supports directly, then only activate the appropriate ones. It will also keep any unrecognized mods you have already activated, moving them to the top so approved mods overwrite. You shouldn't have to do anything in JSGME unless you're turning on/off other mods besides your FM mods and OlPaint's bundles.

I use NoteTab Light. The problem is on that WIndows has inherited all the way from DOS. Most operating systems use either a carriage return (CR) or line feed (LF) character to indicate a new line. DOS and Windows and the included Notepad require BOTH characters to render a new line, and can't properly display text documents from other systems. 30 years and we're still dealing with this crap from Microsoft. But once you have a proper text editor the format of the JSGME.config file is fairly straightforward.

2.2 works as is, and the future version without version numbers will work as well.

Cool, the version of OFFbase I just uploaded has already been preprogrammed to work with "Main FM and AI EW Mod", "FM Sopwith Pup 100 HP", etc. and use these instead of the 2.1/2.2 versions if available.

Thanks for the report, CaptSopwith! I've just uploaded the new version 0.7.5 of OFFice with OFFbase and its new built in campaign mod manager. Might take a little while for admins to approve the upload, but when they do, get 0.7.5 here. You're going to want to redownload as well, Capt, as this official release fixes a couple of other small bugs.

That would be awesome! Think I'm going to have to add another rule for mod authors to be compatible with OFFice: no version numbers in your main mod folder. Every time a new version is released, this creates a new entry in JSGME and thus requires new rules to interact with all the other campaign mods but also previous versions of the mod itself. This makes updating support for newer versions a mess. If you leave out version numbers, so the new version of your mod replaces the old version, this allows automatic upgrades. For example, if HPW wants his FM and EM mod to be able to auto-update, the mod folders should simply be "Main FM and AI EW Mod", "FM Sopwith Pup 100 HP", etc. No 2.1 or 2.2, so OFFice would automatically support the update or to a new version 2.3 in the future. Otherwise someone (me ) would have to write a bunch of rules about when to use which version in conjunction with other versions of other mods--a real mess. Hate to ask you to repack your stuff again, HPW! Not just picking on you though. This could cause issues if you no longer want to mod an OFF file, removing your replacement file from your distribution. Users would have to delete the old mod first instead of simply copying the new mod over the old. But in general should be pretty transparent. If you really still wanted to be able to run different versions of the same mod, you could set up multiple JSGME installations for each. But is there any reason to have an older version around still? If you want to make it easy to see which version of your mod it is, just include another file in your mod indicating such, something that won't write over a real file. For example, directory structures could look like this: Main FM and AI EW Mod\ CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields\ aircraft\ Main FM and AI EW Mod 2.2.txt The .txt file could even be the readme for the mod, or just an empty placeholder indicating the version. Thoughts, modders?

Thanks, HPW, maybe that'll help. For now, it's something you report to your Adjutant along with Operational Status, just let him know when it changes. Try it out at this temporary link, if I get a couple of thumbs-up I'll post it officially. Works with JSGME and its mods folder installed alongside your "CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields" folder, not inside it. Name of the mod folder doesn't matter as it reads your JSGME.ini to find where it's set.

Guess that's another thing the player will have to report to the Adjutant when it changes just like Operational Rating. Unless I can find how OFF manager is storing this info? Easiest thing to do would be to set it automatically based on workshop settings, RegionalAirActivity being Light would be quiet, Heavy would be active, and Medium would be a random selection of the two. But if that's too jinky let me know and I'll put in reporting it to the Adjutant.

Also, what determines whether you're in an 'Active' or 'Quiet' sector for all these mods?

I'd attach the fixed version to this post, but I've used 3.08MB of my 3MB global upload quota. I've put it here temporarily. Olham, just move your JSGME.exe, JSGME.ini, and MODS folders out of the "CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields" folder and into the parent folder, usually "ODBSoftware." You may have to redo any shortcut to JSGME on your desktop. Replace the FM folders with the ones here and it should work. I have a feeling people who were reporting no problems with their skins didn't actually have the FM mod activated because of the wrong folder. HPW, can you just upload the fixed version to update your previous version here? That way all the links will go to the correct version and hopefully we can stop people from putting JSGME in the wrong place.

Hey HPW, in order to be compatible with other JSGME mods, especially mission mods, JSGME must be installed in the parent folder, usually "ODBSoftware", and not inside the "CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields" folder. This means your FM/EW mods need to be repackaged, moved from just the "aircraft" folder to the "CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields\aircraft" folder. Pain in the butt, but the community needs to standardize that JSGME is installed correctly so it works for all mods. JSGME and its mods folder must be alongside the "CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields" and "WW1Scenery" folders, not inside the former.

Thanks OlPaint! That helps a lot. What about the "Winston-Elephant Spandau sound" that's in the bundle? A couple of other issue's I've run into: "Andy73 Gun Sounds_1.1 for Sound Tweak II" has the wrong path set, "CSFWW1 Over Flanders Fields" instead of "CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields". Thus it fails to be loaded into OFF. Not sure if this is just a problem with your bundle or a bug in Andy73's original release so that it never worked. All these sound and weather and mission mods assume JSGME is installed in the "ODBSoftware" folder, or whatever root folder contains "CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields" and "WW1Scenery". But HPW's FM mods all assume JSGME is installed inside the "CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields" folder. Since they're not on the same level as all the other mods, either the FM mods only or everything but the FM mods will work depending on where JSGME actually is. HPW's FM/EW mods need to be repackaged in a bundle-compatible form, moved from just the "aircraft" folder to the "CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields\aircraft" folder. OFFice will insist that JSGME is installed in the parent folder, usually "ODBSoftware", as this is the only way to support mods that also affect "WW1Scenery". I'll leave a note in the FM/EW thread about this. Oh, can you stick a note in the JSGME download about where it must be installed to work correctly for all mods? Thanks!

Your compilation will certainly help, Doyle! You didn't include the full activated OFFMODS/JSGME.ini file which sets the load order and dependencies. Can you tell me what order exactly the sound mods need to be activated?

Version 0.7.4 has been posted. The goal of the last couple of releases has been to improve the presentation of the underlying gameplay stuff. To that end, character personalities are summed up by six Attributes: Aerial Skill, Aggression, Charisma, Intelligence, Physicality, and Professionalism. These measure in general how a character performs in a given dimension, given their unique combination of underlying personality Traits: As this is an alpha version, the Help button in Squadron HQ in this version lets you view the personality info of all the characters in your squadron: Wow, MFJ V's Munitions Officer is one bad hombre. Don't mess with him: I pity the Allied soldiers dumb enough to mount a ground attack on Nieuwmunster. But don't get used to exploiting this full detail for gameplay, I'll disable it in future versions. But the textural descriptions of other characters in encounters has been enriched to describe their attributes as well as their status and traits. As an extra incentive to upgrade, once the Adjutant was in it was easy to add other Ground Crew. Along with the Munitions Officer you'll find a Chaplain, Chief Medical Officer, and Mess Chief. Don't make him mad or your meals will suffer.

Thanks OlPaint! Just heard from JoneSoft and they emailed me the manual, but no word yet on a place online for support. But it looks like it'll be possible to have OFFbase automatically trigger the right Weather, AA, and Mission mods depending on timeframe and such. That probably won't happen for a while though, gotta focus on other stuff for a while. But I just uploaded version 0.7.4 which takes care of the active pilot for you (just a setting in the registry), along with lots of other cool fun stuff. Hopefully the mods will approve it soon.