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VonBeerhofen

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Everything posted by VonBeerhofen

  1. EAWHS Files Section Updated

    Yep, they were the first Code Group and Paolo had some good knowledge about programming. It's too bad I didn't get to meet him in person as he left soon after I was invited by Capt. Kurt to join them. He also was an assembly language programmer and could have helped me to get going in 2000. Couldn't make much sense of hes source code for Studio, too much Spanish remarks. It also remained vague to me which Macro Assembler he was using, without that program you can't do a thing with the code. I might be able to do more today but the later version in Visual Basic is already more advanced and probably much easier to reprogram too. Not saying I will have a go at it though, too busy with EAWPRO right now and it would take a lot of work to figure that code out too. VBH
  2. EAWHS Files Section Updated

    Wehey, you're probably right there Mark. That stuff is slowly fading I'm sorry to say, but it's cool to see those old masters still getting recognition eh? VBH
  3. EAWHS Files Section Updated

    Great, I have a few ideas for Studio. That DOS version is probably Paolo Morais's version written in assembly. It had some text in Spanish if I recall correctly. As for loosing any of those programs, I have multiple backups here should there be a problem at some time. I would however print out a full directory, or copy it's text into notepad so you can still retrace what was were but perhaps you already have done so. VBH
  4. Outdated graphics?

    The card isn't as bad as you think lol. It's capable of displaying EAW at 1920 x1080 but it's not very fast by design that's for sure. The screenshots were taken with it but it doesn't display as good on that card as it does with the computer I'm using now. VonBeerhofen
  5. Outdated graphics?

    Gerwin, It's a personal choice, it's not set as it would slow down my old gForce2MMX when we're battling it out online. My view is that a tileset shouldn't have 3D objects drawn on them at all, that's what the 3D models are for. Still, with these models being switched of at not too far distances it does help immersion a little. It's not close to a realistic world and merely a game. Being a modder from the C64 era, I agree with Jelly's view that graphics don't really always improve gameplay. I've played many C64 games which were later graphically enhanced but those games were still the same as the old C64 version, they only looked a little nicer but didn't bring anything else to the table. EAW is about flying over continents and essentially it's possible to shrink the EAW world into just a small theatre which is crammed with all the objects and tiles this game can handle, thus improving it's graphics. But such a small theatre would be like a kind of IL2 and take away what EAW is all about. There isn't anything wrong with that approach and several attempts have been made already, to me they're boring and I quickly run out of interest when I polay them because you can only revisit such addons again and again but you don't have sufficient choice to keep you interested. EAW kept my interest for nearly 20 years now and a small theatre rarely kept my interest for more then 2 missions. I never revisited them either. It doesn't change anything in the fights themselves, but it's OK when people have fun with them for two days or even more, but it just doesn't have my interest unless there's a real difference with the 308 taget locations the stock game is capable of and where each one has it's own strategic challenges. Besides that, all full addon worlds have another 308 of such targets and I'm still interested in playing those after 20 years, if only for the various flightmodels they use and the impact of them on both AI and human skills, but they have way more then just that. VonBeerhofen
  6. Outdated graphics?

    There are tilesets which are 4 times higher in resolution Stratos and use 512 x 512 or UHR textures. Add to that the capabillity of true color and those problems should no longer be much of an issue. There is a downside though, first of all loss of FPS, depending on the power of the system in use and how an OS deals with the program, since true color tiles in 512 take up app. 16 times the space of most 8 bit sets. Another issue is distance shimmering, which depends on the GPU's power and the way it reads the tileset. Lores tiles in the distance aren't always used by all videocards but they can cure that problem partially and improve FPS when in use. So it's a bit of a trade off really. A huge tileset may well be a good solution but then again who's going to create a world using 1000 tiles or more and make the drawings for it. Maybe in a few years from now such a set could be finished and a TM created for it. I'm not going to create it for sure, even though by now I have around 1000 tiles ready for various purposes. I guess I'm used to these issues and it has never bothered me much, my weight lies on dogfighting and groundpounding in EAW, plenty of choices to fly other sims which make use of more modern technology but I never found one which gave me as much fun as EAW does, also ofcourse because I do not have the source code for them, which is 75% of my fun. VonBeerhofen
  7. EAWHS Files Section Updated

    Thx for the hard work and your relentless effort to help the EAW community Mark, nice one! VonBeerhofen
  8. Just a scary picture

    EAW is still the best for me! Here's what followed next: VonBeerhofen
  9. Just a scary picture

    While anihilating an Me410 my Mosquito got caught in the resulting blastwave causing damage to my hydraulics and left engine! VonBeerhofen
  10. EAWPRO upgrade for the adventurous!

    Another use is this animated impeller effect on jets which is illuminated at night! VonBeerhofen
  11. Alt_N/autopilot to homebase bugfix On screen HUD info was spaced out more for better readabillity on high resolution monitors View Objects horizon fix with closer zoom Runway line up spacing based on planesizes Parameter selection fix for all operating systems New NoCD drive version (original Microprose code) More agile and agressive AI Further integration of previously None Flyable Aircraft Further expansion on ACE skill level New Invader, Attack-Bomber, Figher-Bomber capabillity JU87 (Stuka) new FIXED GEAR entry in PLANES.DAT New cockpit gunflash A few other changes and fixes and more optimised code for improved FPS Current count: 42.833 bytes changed in comparison with v1.2 of wich 9.511 were removed from the gameloop! Work in progress: Raised bridges not fully working yet! JU87 brakes fix Gunflash positions Engine sounds The upgrade is available here: http://rabartel.home.xs4all.nl/HOTLINK.zip Requirements: A standalone and original EAWPRO version, available from Mark EAW's Helpsite, extracted into any official Microprose version. https://eaw.neocities.org To install: extract the .ZIP into your EAWPRO gamefolder (where the EAW.EXE resides) and allow overwrites. I hope you guys like, :) ! VonBeerhofen
  12. New animation codes in EAWPRO

    Good info RiBob, knowing how things work will always be of use, :) Is there any knowledge you have about propellors flying off aircraft? VonBeerhofen
  13. Next to the added control surface animations and added animations on groundobjects, I've managed to add two new animations, bulletholes and oil leak, and created the possibillity for 4 more to be used for other plane damage or whatever comes along. These are not really animations in the true sense of the word but more a state change of a textured polygon. Some of these animations can use multiple states making them a true animation, but most only use one or two states. The new ones only use a single state, so on or off, but their placement on the 3D models can be anywhere and for instance turn the front canopy into a partially blackened window with bulletholes, which will make it harder to see properly. It can also be used to blacken the engine area or cowlings, remove plating and show underlying struts or add tearing or cracks in the windshield, etc. These animations work both inside as outside the plane but there are a few snags. First of all the cockpit can be switched on or off with a key pressure, unless this feature is disabled in the EAW.INI, but when switched off the animation is also switched off and you'll have a clear view inspite of the animation being active. A huge advantage is that the realtime event triggers for these animations have always been there already, so there's no additional cost to framerates. Ofcourse new plane and cockpit models have to be created which will use these animations, 30 planes is probably doable but it will take a long time to get them all working. Besides that none of the default cockpits have glass panels in them and adding them is another tough job which requires proper knowledge about the Rendering Sequence and the use of 3DZ parts. However I have a few new cockpits which do have glass panels already, so these are most likely to get these new animation codes first. I can't see any issues for the stock planes but I can't say how far it can be taken, they need sufficient room in their textures to add new drawings, plus new polygon overlays and possibly a recalculated R/S, which is always a pain. So further devellopment is on a plane to plane basis as there is no easy bulk solution yet, but there are a few old tricks I may be able to use. VonBeerhofen
  14. New animation codes in EAWPRO

    Here's trick Nr. 1 a very quick and easy way to implement a cockpit oilleak. Two simple oil drawings placed over the front windshield. In these pictures only one drawing is active, the other one on the right had the bullet holes animation in it but it remained unactivated since the right criteria for it weren't met. one step zoomed out There are various possibillities but I think this one probably gives the best result as it's using a standalone 3DZ and can easily be added to a number of planes. Each plane can have it's own drawing, or cheaper, all can use the same drawing with variations in te 3DZ's texture mapping. Sorry for the dark screenies, it wasn't easy to get myself shot in the right spot to activate the animation, by the time I got there it was dusk and the sun was sinking behind the horizon VonBeerhofen
  15. Stuck. EAW on windows 7

    Forgot to mention this, do NOT run SETUP.EXE which is the CD installer, start EAW from a shortcut to the EAW.EXE. VonBeerhofen
  16. Stuck. EAW on windows 7

    To reitterate a few things re EAWPRO, Don't install the game but copy the CD contents onto your drive to prevent annoying registry entries to be created EAWPRO needs a US or UK version of the game, it did work on other langauge versions (German) but there can be discrepancies in these different releases of v1.2. If it works it will replace part of the shown text with English text. Don't run the copy of the game, but drop a NoCD/NoOS version like EAWPRO or v1.26 into your gamefolder where the EAW.EXE resides and allow overwrites. These versions have an already build in EAW.INI file with the main basic settings. By default their resolution is set to 1024 x 768. Check if your videocard is capable of using that resolution and wether the card can do 8 bit colors (= 256 colors). The 256 color capabillity is essential, if the videocard doesn't have that capabillity you will probably need a workaround for the 8 bit screens like a Glide wrapper or the DX Windower program. These rules go for v1.2 derivatives only, which use the v1.2 game as their basis. Do NOT use any gaming keyboards as the game thinks they're a joystick and can't asign continues contollers like throttle and rudder to most of these fancy keyboards. Use standard keyboard only (PS2 or USB are both fine). Hope this helps, VonBeerhofen
  17. EAWPRO NoCD version

    the original Microprose NoCD version from the Source Code is now implemented, making the the old NoCD hack redundant. It allows the game to run on newer operating systems, even when a CD drive isn't present. This change will be in the next release. VonBeerhofen
  18. Stuck. EAW on windows 7

    Have you tried EAWPRO on top of a full 1.x install? It's available from Mark EAW's website: https://eaw.neocities.org VonBeerhofen
  19. EAW has got a number of user options in the .INI file relating to AI behaviour which are obviously quite usefull for beginners, intermediate or advanced players. To improve the game further and make the game harder and the AI tougher, there's obviously a choice to add more options to the .INI or to change how the game deals with these entries in the AI routines themselves. As a diehard player I'm ofcourse more interested in more skilled AI and more dangerous events have researched and changed both options. I find it however near impossible to change all level choices and have therefore concentrated on changing the highest selections only. Fact is that as these choices are used in real time, it's not a great idea to add more choices and decisions for the AI, as well as users, which will slow down the game considerably. However there are jump tables which won't cost anything extra, since they simply load an offset value and then jump to the routine in question. It's mainly these tables I'm targetting when adding more options and where an .INI might have an extra useer choice I prefer to implement multiple choices which are automattically made by the game itself. The clarify this, a user can select skill level 1 or 2 but I for instance will give that choice to the game where possible. What I've done however doesn't relate to skill level 1 and 2 but to level 2 (expert) only, giving the game an extra level 3 choice in real time. This affects AI behaviour throughout the game without having to change any of the AI routines themselves. Ofcourse I did mess around in those routines too but those are just minor changes, like the aim moment or the moment to fire weapons or when to start moving etc. which are usually based on enemy distance and position. I hope you will understand that taking away the benefit of an extra user choice in the .INI gamespeed is not hampered in any way but the AI are more unpredictable in their choices and responses. I also noticed that some routines didn't handle all .INI skill levels, in that they for instance set skill 0 and 1 being the same for certain decisions. Where possible I changed this to make the so called dumbest AI pilots in the squadron a little dumber then level 1 or in other words, I gave em their own level as should be. Now since the introduction of the ACE level in the parameter selection screen activates the extra skill levels but also allows the lower skill levels to use the skills of one level higher it should essentially compensate for this extra dumbness of the lowest level and make level 1 sometimes as skilled as a level 2 AI, in real time ofcourse. As I wrote previously, this elevated level has no influence on the decision making speed of the default AI's skill level, meaning they will make better choices at times but not as quick as the higher skill level it's temproraily using. I hope you can still bare with me but the Betatests have shown that occasionally the slower reaction time, while performing a higher skilled action, is sometimes not fast enough to perform the move successfully, causing more areal accidents, like the one's I usually make myself when flying online, like misjudging approach speed or not noticing another plane by my side going for the same target. Planes may accidentally fly into a bombergroup and collide with one of em, because they're usually large planes flying at low speed. Such accidents can trigger adjacent planes in the group to explode too, sometimes killing 3 or 4 planes at once. The chances for this are set pretty low so it doesn't happen too often, perhaps one plane in 100, exact numbers are hard to give as it's subject to a randomness calculation, so sometimes it may not happen for weeks and sometimes you get 5 in one mission. I haven't seen any fighter collisions but they have an equal chance if it wasn't for the fact that they occupy less 3D space and are usually chasing eachother, but with intercepts planes may come from all sides. Since the skill levels also control the speeds at which the AI are flying (dumb AI usually fly slower) there's the same possibillity with ground impacts, however previous changes prevent AI to start new moves when under 500 feet and start pulling out of any dive they're in to avoid ground collisions. Now this has worked beautifully well, even in very mountainous areas, but this new behaviour will change things, I just don't know by how much. Thusfar I haven't seen any abnormal ammount of ground collisions but one is not always aware of these happenings when the battle area is app. 100 KM2. I hope this will give you an idea as to what to expect with the next release of EAWPRO in terms of more visble AI changes. VonBeerhofen
  20. Making selections and user choices

    RiBob, I think v1.26 is the perfect game for newcomers and when they master that version then there's plenty of choices to move on to something harder. The new AI skill levels still have 3 user selections in the INI and configuration screen. All 3 are tougher then the highest skill level in v1.26 which makes EAWPRO the perfect addon to take it to the next level without needing to learn a new user interface, the transition is seamless. VonBeerhofen
  21. Making selections and user choices

    With some extra work I was able to influence the lower skill levels in the .INI to perform the same way, so players aren't immediately thrown into the deep end but can train lower skill levels first before entering the major league. It just seemed a bit silly to stick to the original AI behaviour in these lower choices after all the hard work done and I found a switch which allowed me to call my new routines in the same way without impacting FPS at all and making this uniform behaviour throughout the game. It's not something I'm going to test extensively though with 30 planes and all possible mission types and skillsettings, it would simply take too much time. Instead I'll just keep playing the game a lot as always and keep an eye out for anomalies. It's unlikely that it will cause problems though, since only higher skill levels are used which can not exceed the lowest or highest possible AI values. It will influence AI behaviour for all planes except the ones which were already attributed with the highest level. An additional note, ofcourse the flightmodels also influence the described events, but their influence is somewhat tempered by the program itself in most situations, to prevent enormous differences between planetypes which might lead to inbalanced battles. VonBeerhofen
  22. EAWPRO NoCD version

    RiBob, Please note that other versions besides 1.2 or lower are incompattible with the EAWPRO addon. VonBeerhofen
  23. EAWPRO NoCD version

    Mark, I hope there's still someone around in 30 years to help people at all. You can't be of much help if you haven't read all the stuff relating to this game's problems, and even after reading it you may find your knowledge is still inadequate. If there are no trainers then there will be no trainees either. VonBeerhofen
  24. Been there, done that and it took two years before my Dell 8100 got close to working properly. Dunno how many sound drivers I tried and videocard drivers but they just didn't like eachother. Pretty crap if you buy a 3000$ computer from a reputable manufacturer for your home recording studio. It didn't even run EAW untill two years later. I must say one other thing though, it's still working today once it was more or less working but it ruined the fun with homerecording. Pretty disappointing to see the soundcard manufacturer having a message up saying that any issues with the card should be taken up with the Dell company. VonBeerhofen
  25. This screen's horizon has always been a problem and was showing black areas on the left and right. The screen became pretty important to me to quickly check objects from all sides to identify any R/S issues and fix them, without having to fly the game, altough that would work as well but you'd have to concentrate on not getting shot down. The introduction of EAWPRO's HiRes skysets and UHR horizon posed yet another problem in this screen, but have already been partially fixed a long time ago. However the horizon problem stayed and always kind of atracted attention away from the object or plane I was watching. I finally found a solution which fixes this problem in D3D mode (Glide is still incapable of using my UHR Horizons) and the fix was tested with various resolutions on two different machines using different monitors and was verified to work with both traditional monitors as well as HDMI. I couldn't check any other monitor types but my HDMI monitor accepts nearly all possible resolutions up to 1920 x 1280 and they all worked fine, with standard skysets as well as EAWPRO's HiRes sets. I can't test XVGA mode, just don't have the dosh to buy one, and besides that I'm very happy with what I have already and have no room for anything more anyway. These screens were taken in my most commonly used resolutions on either machine, not very important but educational. VonBeerhofen HDMI in 1280 x 768 SVGA in 1024 x 768
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