Lothar of the Hill People

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO! Please, having two separate versions out there with different names and different install procedures is going to cause vast amounts of the kind of havok I have worked greatly to avoid. Seriously, please do not do this. The installer version works fine for EVERYBODY automatically whether they use OFFbase or not. If anything you should stop providing the manual .7z version. It's fine to put the version number in the installer file name (HPW FM and EW Mod 4.0.0.exe) so people know what version they're installing. And I've talked to Robert about a metadata format that is a good compromise (did you see that message?). We're both happy with it, and it can be expanded in the future to do more stuff like handle mod dependencies.

That's because the documentation doesn't really make sense within the individual mod folder itself--forces JSGME to copy all the documentation into the main OFF install folder every time you activate a mod, and delete it on deactivation. This slows down activation/deactivation unnecessarily (slowing down OFFramp and OFFbase) and litters your main OBDSoftware folder with all the mod documentation. That's why my installers haven't been putting version numbers in the documentation files either. Thus updates don't litter your JSGME mod folders with multiple versions of documentation--only one version of both the mod and the readme occur in the JSGME mods folder, and both go together, and you can read the documentation to check the version. So never mind, going to leave the installers as is, putting a version-free readme in JSGME mods alongside the version-free mod folder. If you use the installer .exe versions of the mods, you'll only have one copy of the mod and its documentation in your JSGME mods folder at a time--whichever version you've installed last. The above only applies to stand-alone installers of the mods. The versions packed with OFFice include the documentation in the OFFice\docs\ folder so they're all readily accessible in one place and OFFice can link directly to documentation from the OFFramp interface. And if you keep your OFFice up-to-date you always the latest version of the mods without having to worry about any of this. But I haven't actually gotten out the OFFice update because of all this worrying about versions when the whole point of OFFice is to end the worry about versions! ARGH!!! So really, last I have to say on the subject.

Epic rant posted here at SimHQ, my last word on this subject. In short: supporting multiple versions is a nightmare on a number of levels and the very thought makes me want to never touch OFF again. People who "like to compare different versions of a mod" can muck up their systems with no help from me.

Actually, that's the last thing you want to do. If you rename the folder, OFFice will no longer recognize it. JSGME mods should absolutely NOT include version numbers in the folder name so they can be upgraded transparently. The documentation installed alongside the JSGME mod folder indicates the version.

Hope to get out the update to OFFice/OFFbase with version 4.0.0 of the FM (and a ton of other improvements) soon, wrangling a few bugs.

File Name: OFFice: Skin in the Game File Submitter: Lothar of the Hill People File Submitted: 29 January 2013 File Category: Aircraft Skins ‘Skin in the Game’ is a custom skin pack for the OFFice incomparable campaign engine for Over Flanders Fields. It includes historically appropriate custom paint jobs for player aircraft in the OFFice campaign from the OFF community’s best skinners. Most of these are already available for download at Combat Ace, but this provides a single, easy-to-install package. Installation: The installer will automatically extract the mod into your OFF JSGME mods folder if OFF and JSGME are installed correctly. The ‘OFFice - Skin in the Game’ folder can be manually activated with JSGME if this pack is used without the rest of the OFFice suite. OFFramp will activate the mod automatically for your OFFice campaigns, so when you next launch OFF from OFFbase any additional skins will selectable in-game for your aircraft type. If the Bletchley’s RSS Ammo mod is enabled in OFFramp, your Munitions Officer will let you know in the hangar if custom skins are acceptable. Contributions: Bullethead: DFW C.V Realistic(?) Naval Hex After a lot more research, I totally re-did the paintjob of my naval DFW skin. Now it looks (I THINK) about as realistic as possible, per Dan-San Abbott's information. Hand-painted, symmetrical hexes in hopefully the right colors, and the correct colors on the fuselage and rudder. nbryant: SPAD VII – Spa.26 1917 No. S 1042 (14) of Spa.26 crashed on nose at St. Pol. This plane was wrecked on 14 September 1917 by M.d.L. Quellec. The serial number indicates that the plane was constructed by Blériot but it appears that the upper wing had been previously replaced with one constructed by S.P.A.D. or Kellner as the cocardes are of a larger diameter than found on Blériot-built planes. Also note that the nose appears to be painted in a dark color. A darkish color extends over the fabric surfaces back to the fuselage band. Olham: Albatros DIII early Burgundy - Jasta 24 1917 Albatros DIII Red Yellow - Jasta 28w 1917 Albatros D.V "Windrose" - Jasta 17 1917 Inspired by the 3. Albatros D.Va built by THE VINTAGE AVIATOR, I made this skin. The plywood of the TVA craft was varnished with a clear laquer with a warm redbrownish tone added. It looks like a darker honey, or amber. Together with the mauve and green upper wing camo, it goes very nicely. Albatros D.V Haifisch - Seefrosta 1 1917 Sopwith Triplane Blue & Silver - RNAS-8 Sopwith Triplane "Silver Bird" - RNAS-8 RAF_Louvert: Bristol F2b – RAF 139 #D8084 flown by Capt Sydney Dalrymple of 139 Squadron RAF, based at Villavera aerodrome. Robert_Wiggins: 4 historically accurate skins for Captain William George Barker’s Camel B6313 while he flew with 28 Sqn RFC OC, C Flight, October 1917; 28 Sqn RFC OC, C Flight, March 1917; and Major William George Barker’s Camel B6313 while he flew with 139 Sqn RAF OC Summer 1918; 139 Sqn RAF OC September 1918. http://combatace.com/files/file/13489-william-barkers-camel-b6313-4-personal-skins/ UK_Widowmaker: Sopwith Pup – 66 sqd 1917 Flown by s/Lt W.C. Heathcote Additional Credits: Many thanks to the OBD Sofrware skinners--OvS/James Romano and Paarma/Arto Karttunen--who created the immense output of over 3,400 skins for OFF that serve as basis for all modders’ work. Additional Contributions? Made a historically-appropriate campaign aircraft skin you think should be included? Contact Lothar of the Hill People at Combat Ace. Click here to download this file

Custom player skins prevent setting individual fuel and ammo loadouts in the briefing room--see the option in the Workshops.

Unzip and run the attached .reg file. Sets the App Path for Wordpad to "%ProgramFiles%\Windows NT\Accessories\WORDPAD.EXE" which should work on Vista and Win7. WordPad.zip

It's only recent versions that include all the documentation and use Wordpad, so that would explain why OFFbase used to work for you. The location of the WordPad.exe itself moves from version to version of Windows, which is why MS set up the App Paths in the registry so developers can find this and other included utilities. Very odd it's not there. Have you run any "registry cleaner" programs? I know lots of people including OBD recommend these from time to time, but I've never seen them cause anything but trouble. Just to verify: Instead of using the search box, try the Run dialog. Click the Start button, then "Run..." Then type in Wordpad and hit enter. Without the App Path set, this should fail, unlike the search box which still found it. Also, does the following key exist? It's a legacy of pre-Win 95 but should also point to WordPad.exe for backwards compatibility: "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\WRITE.EXE\"

What version of Windows (or Windoes ) are you using? Did you use anything like nlite to strip out stuff from your installation? Can you run Wordpad from the search box? If it's Vista or Win7, try just clicking the start button, typing Wordpad and hitting enter.

Looks like it can't find Wordpad, which it uses to view the included RTF docutmentation. Which is weird, as pretty much every Windows comes with Wordpad. Do you have it on your system? Aha! Just noticed the "Windoes" rather than "Windows" in the path. Weird, as it should check the following key: "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\WORDPAD.EXE\" Or is that just a typo from typing rather than copying&pasting the error message? You could open regedit and manually see if the key exists.

Have you updated your OFF / HitR install with the latest patches? Any error messages in the REBOL console?

Give it a try, Hasse Wind. This version should at least print out where it is looking for the CFS3 ConfigOverrides.xml, so with that extra info perhaps I can get it working for you.

So this was a bug, but it kinda freaked me out after reading what you'd written here. I'd just gone in to the briefing room to test a mission had been generated correctly, but avoided flying. When I exited, instead of returning to the main Squadron HQ window as I'd expected, I found myself dragged into the Adjutant's office: Should only end up in his office leaving OFF if there are results to report from OFF's own simulation of your squad, but in this case only a few minutes had passed and nothing had changed. Normally you have to go into his office yourself while a mission is assigned and uncompleted to get him yelling at you like this. I looked into fixing this "bug"--my pilot was marked as "Returning", but it only happens sometimes, not sure why, and I'm going to leave it. Chest full of medals like that, who's to argue!

Looks like we'll have to wait for WOFF for a fix to the ace skins issue. OFFbase could be programed to delete 0-minute missions from the log, but that doesn't stop OFF from advancing time in the process so you'd end up actually flying your Dawn Patrol in the afternoon. Flying the DFW I never get close enough to other planes to appreciate the fancy skins anyway, but I know how much others enjoy them. Can anyone confirm the "Flay Last Mission!" trick actually still works with version 3.1 of the FM?

Sure, and thanks James. I can see you've given a lot of thought to the possibilities here. More realistic, sure. One of the things I wanted to do though was give players more control over the clock. Ultimately I'd like the current freedom to be something earned in game--high-ranking aces would be able to go hunting on Lone Wolf missions whenever they please while that Flieger's got artillery spotting to do come hell or high water. The new mission system that's been in testing will ultimately make it possible to attach timers and encounters to missions with rules for various conditions. For starters... Still grappling the the possibilities that've opened up now that the next version of OFFbase completely takes over the mission files. These two go together. I'd like to use the lead ace of a squadron as the leader, whom the Adjutant aids by handling flight assignments, discipline, etc. It'd even be easy to pre-set the personalities of famous aces in your squadron, so MVR has a background in the cavalry and served on the eastern front etc, and behave accordingly. The reason aces haven't been OFFbase-d along with the fictional squadmates is because the extensive historical data of ace movements exhaustively collected by the OFF team is protected from snooping around in the game files from the likes of less savory types than me. I now have some of this data, but won't use it in OFFbase until I'm confident it's secured. But eventually, squadron aces will be mulling about intimidating the rookie pilots, while one of them runs the show. That would be cool. CFS3 basically just tells OFF Manager if you crashed or not (severe enough to damage the plane). By setting Dead Is Dead in the Workshops, OFFbase basically passes this info through (ignore the dead pilot end of campaign message in OFF Manager) and trigger it's own crash-handling code, but there's no way to track any detail about the damage. OFFbase just does a roll based on the self-reported severity of the crash (and things like your pilot's Aerial Skill) to determine damage severity and how many days off, if any, result from a need for repairs/replacement. This system is bare-bones at best (only spent a few minutes on it), and definitely could be extended with more detailed damage modeling. Time is the only constraint. Sure does. The set of events that can be reported for your squadmates is small, but what happens to them (and your own character) on missions such as crashes or injuries, being captured, going missing or being presumed dead, all affects their mood. Not only that, but friends will be upset by the happenings as well--though one's enemies may relish such struggles. The behavioral model is the heart of OFFbase. The procedurally-generated rule-based AI allows far more complex, unique, and dynamic behavioral responses to emerge than are currently expressed in OFFbase's admittedly limited interface. There are a number attributes besides the basic six displayed in the interface--reflecting stability, sociability, and other factors that are used internally. Rooted in behavioral economics, agents have reference-dependent risk preferences, and thus feel losses more than gains. The result of all this is that stress is cumulative, affects everyone uniquely, and spills over through the social networks that develop within your squadron--all dynamically and naturally. But once a character is Fuming and Disrespected pretty much all they do is piss everyone off until they're forced out with a transfer, hopefully for a better go of it with another unit. Adding encounters with the chaplain and medical officer that are triggered for characters in dire straits is a great idea, and with the new encounter system it's easyto trigger changes in status such as leave as a result of encounters. It'd even be possible to add more mental "injuries" and maims like stressed, shell-shocked, whatever (right now there's only a Brain Damage maim and a Vegetable disability). There is such an interface but it's only enabled for debugging for me. I don't want to give everything away--actually learning details about your squadmates bit by bit and having to use your memory is an important part of caring about what happens to them in the air. But I'm working in the direction of making more detailed info more often available to players of more socially-intelligent characters. That way if your gameplay style is to focus on micromanaging managing your men and the morale of your squad, you'll have more encounters, more choice in who you encounter and what you do, with more detail on your squadmates displayed frequently. Whereas if you play as an anti-social introverted slob that people leave alone so you can concentrate on the killing, you'll rarely seen any detailed info on your 'fellow' pilots. It would be useful to be able to have file or something for each of your squadmates with their picture, detailed psychological profile, and notebook to write entries about them. Perhaps this is something that could even be earned if you rise to become Adjutant yourself (something I'd eventually to be possible when the mission system is advanced enough, letting you actually build your own missions and assign individual members to flights). As for an automatic record, that would be do-able but a much lower priority. Such a system's in place already, actually, but it's a bit cumbersome and needs to be updated for the new encounter system. Basically traits are attached to each photo, and when characters need to choose a photo they randomly draw an unused pic, then are rated how they feel about the picture with the same system that rates how they do at individual encounters. This score feeds a modified dice roll to keep the pic or toss it back and try again. But as I said, it's cumbersome, and very little metadata's been entered so far (more-so for the Germans). If you can help, great! I've also added a button to the next release which you can click to force another character to draw another pic, at a small prestige cost (higher for high-ranking npcs, lower for player characters with good people-management skills). That would be excellent, James. I'm not going to have much time to work on it myself, and it definitely needs more encounters and other such content. The possibilities for the game are endless, but each individual encounter has 36 possible different outcomes of how prestige and mood are affected--though very little is expressed in the text because writing all that is so time-consuming. But the new encounter system allows much more dynamic results, which will be seen in the next release. So I'll be in touch!

The installer version doesn't require OFFice, just JSGME, so it's for everyone. There's really no need for the manual install version, unless for some reason someone without OFF and JSGME wants to extract the files.

Hey folks. Finally got an update out for the OFFice suite, including the OFFramp mod manager, OFFset settings manager, and OFFbase role-playing game. The changelog tells the story: mostly updated support for recent releases by OFF modders and inclusion of new mods implementing the deep institutional wisdom of the OFF community, as well as fixes for reported bugs. Links to the supported mods are included on the OFFbase download page. Here are a few OFFramp screenshots showing off some of the new mods: Version 0.8.4 is available now at Combat Ace. Hopefully this will breathe a little life into OFF while we wait for WOFF. And I suppose I should wait for the bug reports...

The installer version I slapped together for SimHQ will only install if it finds JSGME is in the right folder, and if not will tell you exactly where it should be found: It includes corrected documentation as well: Sent the installer stuff to you during your break from OFF, HPW, so I'm not surprised you missed it. Your work on this thing is indispensable and I wanted people to be able to use it while you were away. You're welcome to add the installer package to the downloads at CA alongside your manual version. My JSGME installer kit is really easy to use (seriously takes just a couple of minutes to throw these together), and I encourage all OFF modders to use it so files always go in the right place, with no chance of user error. That makes users and modders happy.

Do you have HitR and all the latest patches installed? Pardon the pun, but there's something off with your OFF install (either system registry or CFS3Config) if you're getting the intro-setup sequence at all, let alone to have it stuck in a loop. My software is detecting the problem but for some reason can't fix it. When you first run OFF Manager after a new clean install, it runs CFS3Config to initialize the ConfigOverrides.xml first. But this isn't fool-proof--users might not follow the FAQ and close CFS3Config before the "CFS3 has been configured" message finally arrives, or might just close the window instead of saving settings with File->Exit. Then OFF Manager will just bomb out. So the only reason you're getting this message and having OFF Manager and CFS3Config run, and getting stuck in a loop, is because your CFS3Config is not creating the ConfigOverrides.xml where OFF Manager's system registry settings have referenced it. OFFset and OFFbase are looking for your ConfigOverrides.xml but can't find it, so are trying to create it so your OFF works properly, but to no avail. Hit your start button at type 'regedit' into the search box to launch the Windows registry editor. Expand the KEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > "VB and VBA Program Settings" > OFFManager> Settings tree. There should be an "ApplicationDataPath" key, and the value should go into your user profile, something like: C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields If that's not the right path for your user current profile, you've got problems. Try browsing to the folder in Windows explorer, make sure it exists and see if there's a ConfigOverrides.xml there that is updated when you save your CFS3Config (does the file date refresh when you save your settings?). My software's trying it's best to help you, Hasse Wind, but doesn't know how to deal with an OFF install messed up quite the way yours is.

The issue is that when JSGME is inside the "CFSWW1 Over Flanders Fields" subfolder it's unable to mod the "WW1Scenery" folder, which a number of mods from myself and Bletchley do. As HPW mentioned, I put together an installer than automatically places the most recent version of JSGME in the correct version for all modern OFF mods. The link to it at Combat Ace is right on the OFFbase download page (I know it's long but read it, guys!). It's also now available at SimHQ. Just run the JSGME_2.6.0_OFF.exe and you're good to go. It's okay to leave old copies of JSGME in other folders unused.