VonBeerhofen

I've been able to activate damage modelling for all planes in EAWPRO. It was very limited for the previously none flyable aircraft but now is on par with all other planes as far as I can tell. In fact these routines were further enhanced by introducing more unpredictable behaviour when planes get damaged and the pilot is not dead (yet). Normally one would need to use an additional randomisation routine to make this happen, but in assembly coding there are many memory locations which already generate a random value which only needs to be read and then can be used at will. Such use will save app. 100 bytes from the game loop, every time a random value is required. and since the game uses this routine about 1000 times speed can be dramattically increased by not using it and just reading the value directly from a memory location, like for instance the stack pointer or Windows clock timer's microseconds. I've used it on numerous other occasions to save speed and space in the program and from here on, or actually from a while back on, I will usie this approach rather then calling on the randomisation routines where possible, after all the results are not any different but it will definately speed up the game a little. VonBeerhofen

Mark, it's a bit more work to add those ledges but it's making it harder to obtain a proper rendering sequence from the R/S calculator. This object has it's own peculiarities which needed solving as it wasn't working right off the bat. That's where a lot of time is spend, on figuring out the problem and finding solutions. It's still not entirely there but I know what the problem is and will fix it, next I'll use the remaining space in the model to add more detail and/or appropiate objects, which should add a little more to the realism aspect. This again depends on how much room my drawing still has to add such items, and may potentially interfere with the R/S calculator again, as every polygon added will change that outcome. There's no need for these additions right now when the object works as it should, and they can always be added at a later stage, it all depends on the energy I have to work further on these things. For now I'm pretty pleased that I am 100% certain that I can solve it's issues given the current situation. VonBeerhofen

Historic building Nr, 2 just got finished and took 5 days to build, fulltime, so people interested in modelling have an idea of the time invested in these. VonBeerhofen

The Italian theatre is slowly getting the right atmosphere. This is the first of two special historic models. VonBeerhofen

Hi Claudio, great to finally meet one of the founders of the EAW modding community. I'm a great admirer of your work and I thank you for the insight you've given me personally with your notes and explanations on the workings of EAW. A big S! to you Sir! VonBeerhofen

You tell me m8, perhaps they're incapable of creating something themselves. I'm just saying that it's dangerous and irresponsible and that steps have been taken to prevent it, as a service to the EAW community. VonBeerhofen

Yep, since I have more time now I'm working very hard on implementing code which should prevent irresponsible and unauthorised use of my work. Fact is that anyone hosting a program of which they were not part in it's devellopment and therefore also have no idea how it will behave in a certain environment, are putting their own and other people's computers at risk when hosting it against the author's explicit and multiple warnings. It's a very sad thing that such warnings were taken as a threat. It is inevitable that progress will not stop because of this behaviour and with every step I make the program will get further and further away from anything which relates to v1.2 or even older versions. This is a new game and it works differently, I wish it wasn't like that but it just comes with the territory, like it or not. VonBeerhofen

Some people may not fully grasp the idea behind EAWPRO so here's an explanation. EAWPRO started life as a pure hack into the EXE's hexadecimal code before the release of any source code and early versions were meant to work with the OAW filemanager. At some point an assembly listing was created, which just happens to be my preferred programming language and with the Source Code in my posession things really began to take off. During the Launchpad's existence many pilots came by to fly with us and for years I tried to help them with installing but due to limited computer knowledge and/or intelligence more and more pilots gave up inspite of my step by step guidance develloped over a period of at least 5 years. We're talking dozens and possibly close to 100 pilots who gave up. So a different approach was needed to allow those pilots an easy way to come on board, which is where the idea behind EAWPRO was borne. A simple means to upgrade to a better version of EAW and compattible with both older and newer operating systems and an unchanged user interface to allow a seamless transition from one to the other. Nothing was changed in the selections or anywhere else which needs further explanations, pictures or manuals as it's all still the same as in v1.2. Inspite of this many enhancements were incorporated which are controlled through the standard user interface and a few less obvious changes were made to the EAW.INI, which when not changed have no real influence on the game's performance. These are like the hidden features which had been present in v1.2 untill they were discovered round 2000. Their default setting is probably best but explanations to these alterations are available on Mark's website. Install instructions do not differ from a v1.2 install other then that the EAWPRO upgrade needs to be added to a clean copy of EAW and you just start the game as you always have. No additional software, choices or regestring Visual Basic components or anything else. You don't have to learn anything extra in order to get the impovements EAWPRO provides. Hence there's no further directions needed other then those which relate to getting the game to work with various operating systems and/or hardware which is the same as for any version of EAW and well described at Mark EAW's website. A short recap, extract the EAWPRO addon into a clean version of EAW and enjoy! EAWPRO is tested to work with computers dating back to the year 2000 and minimum requirements are the same as described in the original EAW manual but a PIV @ 1Ghz, 256MB memory and a 32MB videocard will result in very acceptible framerates due to the optimised assembly code. VonBeerhofen

Today EAWPRO broke the 10.000th freed bytes barrier and celebrates 15 years of uninterrupted online flying! Current bytecount: 44.442 bytes changed of which 10.092 were removed from the gameloop by means of optimising code in Assembly language. VonBeerhofen

Huh? Nothing to add to my comment either, :) VonBeerhofen

What current environment? This guy is just asking for help and offering his for free ! VonBeerhofen

Right, there'll be plenty of differences in the roofs and shapes of buildings when finished RiBob. 6 entirely different city block models go a long way in terms of diversity, :) Just look at the above pictures. VBH

Hi RiBob, Plants are no problem in general but when on buildings it usually just on the drawing and not fully 3D to save framerates and memory. Often they come with the photographs I use but sometimes the drawing scale doesn't leave much detail. For those still interested here's an altitude shot of Rome as it stands now: VBH

Pictrures shown only relate to the object itself, not it's placement in the picture or the used sky sets or terrain tiles or other visible obkects. There's just too much stuff in my game at once which may be still experimental which has caused quite some controversy in the past elsewhere. You may understand that I'm not going to remove these things and portray the most ideal situation, it's simply too much extra work, so don't pay attention on it. It only shows how hard I'm working on getting things done and make it all come together nicely. How's this for you RiBob, just to show one of the possibillities of this new Italian city block, which is still using the stock textures but will soon be transformed to my own drawings. It's about the 3D model, not the drawings, or the people running around, :) VonBeerhofen

Hi RiBob, Rather then testing the objects where it belongs I used a tree slot for it and that's not where it's supposed to be. It's a city object and is supposed to sit on a city tile but it saves time when a tree is replaced. You don't have to search to find the object as cities are sometimes hundreds of miles away. Hope that explains it. VBH