VonBeerhofen

The Launchpad and it's members wish a Happy New Year to all it's friends and the Combat Ace community. Let's hope that this year will be the turn around for the virus and we'll slowly start seeing improvements in our lives. Don't give up hope and make the best of what's to come, all the best to all of you. Stay healthy and safe! VBH

Hey RiBob, hope you're doing well and good to see you're still around. I've never been away myself but I'm just not posting much but I try reading all interesting stuff in most flightsim forums. As for reading books I think it's a bit too much to ask from devellopers as there's good information available through Google's search function. However, since you seem very interested in the subject yourself it wouldn't hurt to see this information verified from your books, preferrably in neat and easily comparable format. That would make it a lot easier for devellopers to obtain the right information they need and will save a tonne of work. I hope you understand how much time it would require for people who're more in devellopment then gathering data, besides that, since you play EAW, have you ever come across any weapons deficiancy or noticed weapons ranges and weapons impact power to be incorrect? Let us know if you do and we'll try to fix it! Ofcourse this offer only applies to EAWPRO but we've done a lot of research already to get it right so it won't be easy to find anomalies. Thanks for bringing it under our attention inspite of this. VBH

Hey Mark, not all is that difficult but some stuff is, however the main problem now is to find the energy to do it. I had a bit of energy to change the current pilotmap to what I've shown previously with the Suez map and uploaded it to my FTP. The .ZIP can be extracted into the latest EAWPRO version while allowing older files to be overwritten. Sorry it took so long, hope those remaining will find it a usefull upgrade. The files are available here: http://rabartel.home.xs4all.nl/PILOTMAPv3.0.zip VBH

Not going anywhere anytime soon if I can help it Sky High, :) There's just very little progress due to life's challenges right now. VBH

OK, Got it, :) VBH

Hi Mark, I'll see if I can still add something to your version, the one I'm using is not ready for release. It'll take some time though as I have to isolate these changes and copy them in. VBH

Hi Mark, we're still actively flying in the Launchpad every other day, with just a few diehard pilots. I'm still trying to be creative too but it's usually just a new terrain tile or UHR skyset. Got a bit stuck with programming but occasionally I'm stil trying new ideas. Italy and PTIV are on hold for now but the plan is still to finish it using proprietry file formats. So the game isn't dead and I hope nobody else is either. Just hang in there, I have faith that better days will come sooner or later, preferrably sooner! VBH

Thx RiBob, I think that searches in Google automattically include searching it's own library, as I've seen many quotes from such books. I'll read anything that's free and WWII related though, you never know if any new ideas will spawn from that. Don't really have much interest in ''What If' scenarios but I'm sure other people do. VBH

It's taken quite some time as Covid-19 stagnated manufacturing of 3D models and anything EAWPRO, but I'm not about to give up and finally found some extra energy to start work on the 4th citymodel for the Italy addon. Shown here still using lores textures and not entirely a 100% model yet. There's still about 35% unused space in the model which allows for dreaming up some extra nice details. Devellopment is carrying on, although somewhat more in the background, sorry. VonBeerhofen

Hi Mark, I've started work on a few new 3D models but other then that not much else to communicate, all I have to show is a few tiles of the Harvest riverset. The virus situation isn't particularly giving me much energy to continue. I'm trying to keep my online group motivated and do whatever I feel needs doing. Hope all you guys are still OK, hang in there and stay safe! VBH

Hi RiBob, I'm sorry to hear that, my condoleances. Got a bit trapped in the Covid-19 situation myself but I'm still alive. Just not very active right now. Hopefully there'll be more to show in the future, stay safe. VBH

Always willing to test new stuff or give info on the old, :) VBH

Nice one Mark, thx a lot for the effort! VBH

The road tiles are used as well but in a more generic way, in a way nearly every tile is a road tile and can be used as such. The road tiles don't appear very often in stock EAW and are essentially a waste of precious resources. I use them as standalone tiles besides road tiles, so they appear much more often. The only properties in EAW are water or land, roads don't have a special property but they're normally used to have interdiction convoys driving on them. The convoys can be placed on any land tile though but I haven't stepped away from the game's normal use of convoys other then that they can be larger and have a more interesting mix of vehicles. The extra placement of standalone roadtiles can also spawn way more convoys then the stock game, so the chances of running into one is way higher in all mission types. It's the same with trains if you create more rails in the game. VBH

These tiles started out as a new approach to EAW map tiling and the first experiments in devellopment in 2010 culminated in a hires set I named BENELUX. It's primarily goal was to get rid of the annoying tileseams visible in most other sets and a lot of work went into develloping a method to get matching borders on all sides of the tiles. In the following 10 years I worked on improving the basic design of each tile and finding a better way in creating tilemaps which made better use of the low number of tiles stock EAW and EAWPRO can use. As I wrote previously, these tiles don't really need the BNROAD set, each tile has it's own design of main roads and secundary paths. The same is true for the BNALCTY set, as each city/village tile was made into a standalone tile which can function as a village or city component. This allows much more freedom in building cities and villages as there are no border tiles anymore, each tile can function as a border or perhaps better each city is just a collection of village tiles. Borders have been hampering map design and by doing away with them it's become much easier to create new theatres from scratch. Besides that, each tile has at least a few farms or small farming communities on them, simmilar to the stock EAW village tiles. Many of these farms now sit on various corners or sides of the tile and small villages appear where the sides or corners meet. City and village tiles can be used to further diversify the tilemap, simmilar as was done with the bridges, roads, mountain and forrest tiles. They can appear 100'ds of times more often in any combination with the other tiles which results in a much more natural looking terrain. When groups of mountain tiles are placed in a specific area you still get a predominantly mountainous terrain but you can also use each of those tiles in other areas which are not meant to look predominantly mountainous. Ofcourse the same goes for forrest tiles too. To show this improvement better here's a few pictures of my latest creations in the BENELUX set, i.e. these tiles are stock EAW format, 8 bit and just 256 x 256 pixels and all have a mix of roads, village, forrest, field and mountain in them. Ofcourse mountain tiles have more mountain drawings and forrest tiles have more forrest drawings on them, but there's total freedom in choosing how much of each nature is used. EAW is just not a unified collection of a single approach to theatre building, if you stick to old fashioned methods you just can not get the best out of each theatre which is so very different from stock EAW. What's the use of river tiles in a desert terrain or why have fields in a predominantly jungle terrain and uninhabited islands? VBH