VonBeerhofen

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

No worries RiBob I won't. I'd like you to understand that without a doubt the remaining programmers are trying hard to improve things but even the smallest improvement comes with a lot of pitfalls and takes a boatload of time. We do have a personal life as well and our knowledge is limited, well mine is anyway, and in this resepect you may not really get what you want. Besides that, as you already mentioned, we all have our own priorities and may not be aware of some of the game's possibillites, after all we weren't part of the Microprose team and we're merely hobbyists trying to do whatever is within our power. EAWPRO will not stray away from the standard v1.2 user interface and because of that all the relevant information on how to use EAWPRO is already in the user manual, which I think is available from Mark EAW's website. There are a few new features in the selection but I think those are self evident for the most part. For anything which isn't in there you best keep track of what's been reported in the forums but there's very little changed in the user interface which is important enough to rewrite the manual. VonBeerhofen

It's come to my attention that some people do not understand how to select the previously none flyable planes which are not directly accessible through the plane selection screen. They can be selected and edited from from within any hangar by selecting the MISSION PARAMETER editor that sits on each desk in any hangar. When in the Parameter Selection Screen you then select the LOAD option at the bottom of the screen and a list of MISSION (.MSN) files will be displayed. You can select any of them, no matter which hangar you're in. The Default** ones contain your last flown mission for each plane, sadly they don't give much information about which number corresponds to which plane but they're sequentially American, British, German. The ones which display their name were SAVED from within the parameterscreen, very usefull to setup planecombinations and targets that you like but can still edit after it's loaded. I could give you a list of the default numbers but I think you can also write each number down after selecting each and note the plane you've selected. If you want to fly Mosquitos you select Mosquito vs ******. You can also save the Default missions with a name yourself. To do this you start with loading Default00 and you save it under the name P38J vs WHATEVER. Having all planes there you can quickly navigate between planes and load any on the fly without having to go back to the plane selection screens. When a mission is SAVED it'll store all your selections and you can store up to 256 mission files yourself, either before or after the mission is flown. It's more convenient to do things this way and has become a real timesafer when testing all possible combinations. The saved missions remain unchanged untill they're overwritten with a new one but every time you load one it will randomise the target location as part of a new airfield and target check to prevent CTD's when .MSN files are corrupt, don't work, or aren't at all present (which is the case in nearly all old addons). When a certain plane's selection has become corrupt you can still get to it's Mission file via any other Hangar and set it right again by editing the corrupt plane's mission parameters, provided you understand which one to select. Flying the mission will overwrite the old Default**.MSN file and things will work normal from there on. Note that when you reselect the same target and/or airfield already present in a corrupt .MSN file, the selection can't be set since either of the two is an illegal choice. Just select another one which displays the target number on mouse over and the file should be fine from then on as the editor only allows legal targets to be selected. Illegal target locations are greyed out in the editor, an indication of a corrupt .MSN file. Sometimes they can still be flown and will allow take off from enemy bases or attacks on friendly ones, but being corrupt you may not be able to enter these plane's hangars on startup directly, except with this method. VBH

With the bombers becoming more usefull a new calculation for their positioning on the runway became necessary and has been successfully implemented. The new routine now uses the various planetypes in the calculation to offset their location in the grid. All planes are now using this new routine and spacing is in 3 categories for now, single engined, twins and quads. The two rows were seperated a bit more to make room for the B17 and other quad planes. VonBeerhofen

A complete install is against the agreement the coders have with Atari, if someone would give me the official go ahead then there's nothing in the way of what RiBob wants. It would however make EAWPRO freeware which may cause online play complications wit6h diferent versions. Another problem as Mark has described is that it's pretty inconvenient to have to remake the package every time changes are added, like the one's just now. Personally I think it's much easier for players to download a small .ZIP with the latest changes and dump it into their EAWPRO folder. It has been done this way for nearly 20 years and it has always worked, quick and easy most of the time. VonBeerhofen

It has always bothered me that several twin engined planes performing in a bomber role were sitting ducks, so some pretty observable changes were made to this behaviour. They will now be more evasive and may actually even start fighting back, after all they're heavily armed and why not use this feature for a more challenging fight. Ofcourse their main objective is to bomb the target and they're still pretty successfull at that, even when under heavy attack. Their behaviour was enhanced without compromising the original routines, in other words they will still do as was programmed but with an additional chance to do something new. In most situations they will try to regroup but it may not always be possible when for instance these planes are under constant attack or suffer from target fixation, which is not abnormal in the game. Planes with extra (dorsal/tail/turret) gunners may try to bring down the enemy or at least try and slow them down so the rest of the group can make it out of the battle area safely, even when they have no primary weapons or these ran out of bullets. I programmed a distinct difference between Axis and Allied aircraft, in that the Axis planes tend to be more agressive, which I think is in line with reality and since I think there are more Allied pilots still flying it also serves as a purpose to make it a bit tougher for them, but it will also not be easy when you fly the other side. These changes will be in the next release of EAWPRO! VonBeerhofen

I don't think bombers were too squeemish about dropping their load but their objective would always be to get to the target and drop em there. One thing is certain, you didn't want to fly home with them as it made you less maneuverable and would cost extra fuel and obviously the last thing you'd want was to land a heavily damaged plane with it's bombs still on board. Even if you couldn't make it to the target there must have been plenty of oppertunities to drop em elsewhere, any place where flack is coming from would be a good spot. If you weren't sure you'd probably drop em in open country to do the least ammount of collateral damage, that is if you had such oppertunity. VonBeerhofen

After an intense week of testing and finding out what's possible here's a few pictures of the fun I had: Bombing mission, the Heinkels are under heavy fire and I have an enemy plane padlocked Interdiction mission, While I went down to destroy the train my group dropped bombs from high altitude causing the secondary explosions in the background, close but no cigar! Escort mission, my B24's coplemented B17's en route to the target and I tried to stay in formation with them while under heavy enemy fire. In all missions fighters were fighting fiercely in the battle area, in total around 100 planes were smoothly doing their job on my ancient WinME Pentium IV with an old 32MB gForce2 and 256MB memory, haven't had this much fun in while, it was a blast! I tried all the altered planes as well, mainly twins, and they obeyed every command and in bombing missions focused on their task, unless they got hit and dropped their loads to attack the enemy. In one mission my group got through the enemy fighterscreen, destroyed the target and I regrouped as the enemy was landing. I flew back and told my group to start attacking while I strafed the airfield. One enemy plane was still eager to fight and I had to deal with him myself, but I got shot down trying to eliminate enemy gun positions on and around the airfield. My group was reluctant to leave after I made an emergency landing between the smoking planes, captured but still alive! VonBeerhofen

Almost forgot, a big thx to Mark EAW for testing it's funtionality! VBH

Some planes just don't have landing gear, like float planes and the Reichenberg, or fixed gear like the Stuka. V1.2 had no provisions for these, hence the gearswitch was always active. The gearsound would play and a gear message would display on screen. That problem is now solved and the keys for this action are no longer active for such planes. VonBeerhofen

A new filter was programmed which allows more diverse maneuvering for the lower AI skill levels. Expert planes remain unaltered by the new filter. The lower skills now have a 10% chance to do expert moves when the enemy is within 2000 feet. Expert planes are programmed to enter this phase when the enemy is closer then 1000 feet, simply because they react faster then lower skills. Additionally, the lower skills can still optionally follow the original game's maneuvering phases when not selected by the random routine. This essentially seperates rookie pilots from the more skilled and asigns them to their own maneuvering phases with a newly added phase for the greenest, which wasn't there previously. In short, the lowest skill, which in v1.2 was set the same as medium, now has it's own maneuvering phases and criteria for carrying them out and with the medium skilled they have an additional random option to do expert moves if the enemy is closer then 2000 feet. An additional benefit of this is that planes are less likely to get stuck in a repetitive or endless loop, like endlessly flying circles around each other because the game only allows that one option for a particular skill level under certain circumstances. The random expert moves will make em do something entirely different. Another benefit is that these lower skill levels are more likely to react sooner when an enemy gets close, i.e. within 2000 feet. This behaviour changes real time and makes it much less predictable as to when the none expert planes will start using expert maneuvering or when they stop doing that. The routine doesn't influence the preprogrammed reaction times for each skill level, so inspite of being able to detect the enemy sooner their moves will remain as sluggish as in v1.2. You can't become an ace pilot in a single battle but you can occasionally do the right thing either by accident or by learning from mistakes. Furthermore the criteria calculation now also allows higher skill levels to be introduced (Advanced Criterium Emulation or ACE for short, :D), EAWPRO already has many provisions for this but it's only partially active due to a limitation in the cofiguartion screen to select only 3 skill levels. I hope full implementation will follow. How this will play out in the end is beyond my prediction but anyone with advanced knowledge on AI behaviour is welcome to write an essay about it, :) VonBeerhofen

RiBob, new versions must undergo extensive testing in the Launchpad as well as with a few Betatesters. The release will be announced seperately in due time after testing. Just hang in there my friend, patience is a virtue. VBH

intended for higher operating systems then XP. I managed to fix the lightning speed selection without compromising how it works on older systems, the only downside to it is that you need repeated mouseclicks to change the selections, holding down the mouse button will no longer incite the next successive selection. It applies to all keyboard input which uses this routine, possibly keyboard throttle and such too, but who's still using that option anyway? (retoric question) A big thx to Mark EAW who was so kind to test it's functionality! VonBeerhofen

Wehey! VBH

BTW Mark, I did try to edit in a very elaborate answer as to behaviour in the standard missions but it'became too technical and too long and probably too boring to post too. The short answer is to give it a try and see what you think, if something's not right I'm always willing to try and change things but I can not always do what people want as requests may be too timeconsuming to program or my time is needed for another project. I'll send you what I didn't post by e-mail but I don't think it's very usefull knowledge for anyone VBH

Mark, the commands menu in the game remains unchanged thusfar, however it's possible that heavy bombers may ignore certain commands which may conflict with their mission. When you don't want to fly them as fighters the attack enemy command is useless because they can't aim pilot operated guns. In the game anything is possible, in v1.2 they would just behave like fighters and go after the enemy, which is obviously silly. In EAWPRO they can no longer do this but AI behaviour changes after their bombs are dropped or when no loadout is selected for the mission. They may turn on their enemy like in v1.2 (low probabillity) but when they do their main objective is still to head home when the enemy is killed or looses sight, but most of the time they get damaged and don't make it. In other words they won't go after the fighters but the enemy fighters will be going for them. As Ribob requested, they will also drop their bombs if the situation demands to do so, irrespective of their location. Usually it's because they're too heavily damaged. What ever else the AI routines tell them to do is not changed and almost impossible to predict. The command menu may change to give the human player more control over them but I'm not working on it right now. VBH

It changes a lot of things Russ, but it's effects are hard to describe on a single page. One thing which I was after was to keep the bombers together in human controlled missions but differentiate between bombers and planes carrying bombs. I've flown escorts in heavy bombers but the game doesn't really have mission types for such and it is quite useless when your group of heavies start attacking the enemy fighters only using their defensive guns. You can't aim or shoot yourself as these planes have no offensive guns, except for the B26. Now you can fly missions in which you must try and remain with your escorts to enlarge their and your combined defensive fire poser, while controlling your own group and try to keep em out of harm's way. They will follow you where ever you go and if you fly a bit evasive they will do too. Still you need to stay with the escrtees and the fly very slow (app. 100Mph in the approach). The new routine allows AI in your group to get away from harm on their own, AFTER they dropped their load or when they don't cary any. You can try to regroup them as such will improve your defensive capabillities but they sometimes get hit and slow down. Your option is to also slow down to help them but more often it's a lost case. The AI will NOT engage enemies and for now the attacking command has no influence because of this new bit of programming as far as I can tell. The AI want to get back to base asap but may get drawn into a squirmish where they try every trick in the book to get rid of their attackers. Their defensive guns can still bring the enemy down and when the coast is clear they head back again following the programmed waypoints. It just makes more sense to fly the heavies this way, it gives the missions a purpose. For the other bomber types, invaders, divebombers, attack-bombers and fighter-bombers things have changed too, they're more free to engage the enemy since they have offensive weapons but when things quiet down around them they will still head to the target, drop their bombs and try to get back to base, as those are it's main objective. After dropping their bombs they're free to do whatever the game has programmed for them, if necessary fight to the death. These are just initial observations with a few planetypes, and I'm sure there are a few surprises in store, perhaps a B17 trying to loop out of trouble and finding out that it can't do it, that's not new behaviour when flying heavies in v1.2 and I kept all of that just because it looks awesome when they try and fail. Mind you they're very good at getting back in control after a stall, :) Here's a picture of my escort of B17's in a B26, notice that the enemy in twins (410's and 110's) are all over us, but my group remained calm, except me as I was keeping an eye on enemies closing in and lost contact with the B17's. I had to find em again to stay protected but one of my planes got seperated and had to go it alone. There's another routine for seperated planes and it did what it had to do, try to get back in formation and get thell out of there after delivering it's payload. VBH ]http://rabartel.home.xs4all.nl/BomberMixUp.jpg

I've build a new plane filter for EAWPRO and it's working great. The filter allows a better use of the current PLANES.DAT switches which control AI behaviour and I now have additional strike-fighters, attack-bombers, fighter-bombers, and invaders which can easily be set by the players, that is if they understand how to edit the PLANES.DAT file with or without Jelly's tools. Needless to say that with these changes the PLANES.DAT has become more version specific but remains backwards compattible. The older versions of this file will merely activate this new behaviour when any of the switches are set, which I believe will only result in more interesting and definately different mission types in which bombers play a more intelligent role and stick to what bombers usually do, focus on delivering their payload. Once that's done they become more free to make it harder on the players to kill them but their objective from then on is to try and leave the battle area asap. There's now also a possibillity for an automatic night-fighter version selection, which is obviously selected when it's dark and I may filter out the Quad planes to always stay in formation, irrespective of what mission type they're used in. I found it a challenge to fly these planes in an escort mission and try to stay with the other bombers to have more defensive fire power. The group just followed me where ever I went, so I filled up a gap in the bomber formation. With that I performed the exact same role as the bombers themselves. The only snag is that I can't tell my own B17's to attack, disperse or break away yet but they did listen to the formation orders to loosen or tighten formation. It'll need a lot more flying to find out what else is possible. As I wrote before it's a whole new ballgame and the full effect of this still have to be discovered, so I'll be doing a lot of flying to see if things can be further improved. It's all working the way I imagined it would and I may still add some extra features, like the night-fighters and commands which aren't in yet. I just don't want to do too many checks on all planes which could compromise framerates. In my experiments I also found that it's possible to program conflicting behaviour where my new AI behaviour is overridden by another routine elsewhere, telling the plane to do something else. Both commands are executed in the same loop which led to nervous behaviour, much more throttling up or down and/or planes seemingly changing their minds. For now I didn't incorporate this behaviour and the attack switch is also temporarily disabled. Although it worked great it seemed to cause an intermittent CTD late in the mission, so I'll see what's been causing that and hopefully fix it. I liked what it was doing and I want it. It mainly caused a small chance for planes under fire to turn against their agressors and go into full fighter mode (even B17's but it can be made optional). Basically it's the same behaviour as what happened when you flew bombers in the original game, but this will now only happen to an individual plane under fire and not the whole group, so that's usually the planes in the rear which get hit first and fall back. They attract attention from the enemy and kind of fight to the death making them eligible for a heroic posthumous medal giving the rest of the group a better chance to get away after fullfilling their objective. It's not all there yet but the basis for it is programmed and tested to work. Bombers are less easy to shoot down and will break up into two formations when attacked when the proper switches are set in the PLANES.DAT and each group will be more or less evasive depending on the situation they're in. Still a long way to go but it's getting there. The number of missions I already flew is staggering and the game is running from dawn till late at night, selecting all kinds of missions and planes, due to a lack of beta testers who know what to look out for or what to test. There's no quick and easy way to make this work good, you have to fly, try and observe. It was fun to see the Stuka try and attack B17's or even P38's, hell they even killed a few of em. P38's would pull up steep and the Stuka would try and follow but usually got into a near stall situation because it's way too slow and heavy. Hey you do what you can right? Even if you happen to fly a postal plane into the battle area with a pilot who's only got a handgun to defend itself, lol. I realise that what I've done may not be to everyone's liking but I like it a lot and I need new approaches to keep the Launchpad squadron happy and flying, which is my main objective and I think it will incite them to fly the bombers more often, if they don't then I will as I'm always happy to be the target. They'll be testing things further and occasionally give some feedback. A release of this just has to wait untill a few other issues are fixed, like the new pilotmap lead plane's colors for which a new palette will have to be created. I'm sorry for this delay but there's a lot of work involved. VonBeerhofen

Hi RiBob, I think it's all taken care off and as close to realism as I can make it for now, untill I can spend more time on this. In bombing missions as primary planes under human control they used to start fighting as soon as they spot the enemy but regroup when the command is given by the human pilot. The Attack Groundtargets command doesn't help in this when these planes are under attack, something which these new routunes now also fix. It was as I suspected and with a minor addaptation to the new routines, bombers will no longer engage, irrespective of what mission they fly wether it's a human controlled group or not. However in human controlled missions all tactical commands remain operational, i.e. commands to attack, and they may well follow those orders. When damaged they will release their bombs to lighten the plane and try to maintain sufficient lift. Obviously bombers are not meant to fly an escort with other bombers but they still can and will stay in close formation unless ordered otherwise. I think the fun of it is that new strategies have to be develloped in order to accomplish the mission and keep the group alive. The AI will follow the leader and as such human pilots need to keep an eye on attacking aircraft and fly evasive when necessary, after all most of the bombers don't have human controlled guns and their strength lies in staying in formation. In short, bombers now behave as bombers should when they have no real fighting capability. When bombers are on their own, after for instance the initial attack on ground objects or having been crippled and slowly loosing connection, the human player can try to slow down too to maintain a coherent group and perhaps save the crippled plane from getting destroyed. As far as I can tell from these few missions it's a whole new ball game. Bombers can seek the protection of the escorts in human flown missions but that may lead em straight into the turmoil as the escorts will be fighting enemy AI and there's no telling when they'll head back to base. All in all there's no telling how the AI routines will handly this new stuff but I think I kept all original behaviour intact except where I felt this behaviour wasn't appropiate and they will only kick in when everything else fails. The routines were written for easy addaptations and tweaks when necessary but there's a tonne of new possibillities which simply can not all be tested but I'll be keeping an eye on how it behaves during the Launchpad's online sessions and tweak things further when necessary. VonBeerhofen

Hi RiBob, Thx for your comment, which touches a number of problems relating to addons. EAWPRO is a specific scenario and changes will take the theatre into account. The battle with the Japanese is an entirely different scenario and requires a different game engine with different AI behaviour. For instance EAW has no provisions for kamikaze planes but EAWPRO can mimic this behaviour. It's not appropiately used when fighting the Germans over Europe though, as to my knowledge the German suicide squads never really became active. Perhaps Pacific Tide III may see the changes in AI behaviour some day, your comment seems very appropiate for that scenario. A lot can be accomplished now with these new AI routines and tweaks are easily done. Certain bombers already release their bombs when attacked but others don't. Planes which can carry bombs are not necessarily bombers and will behave differently and so can planes which got seperated from the main group. But there's a new option available now which can be assigned to any planetype in EAW and with that your described behaviour can be turned on or off at will depending on the scenario. Even B17's can be made to drop their bombs before reaching the target but it's not the setting used in the EAWPRO scenario. VonBeerhofen

The code was already there, it just had to be found and implemented. Took me a while though, :) Texture may still change. VonBeerhofen

Hey Russ, secondary groups are not under human control, they just do as programmed, but you can give commands to your primary group and specifically your wingman and go on autopilot and watch the game in battle view mode. As long as you stay alive you can control views and switch to specific planes or groups. The viewselection by the game is quite complex and at some points during the battle, for instance when an objective is accomplished, focus might be more on planes leaving the battle area. However the fight could still rage and when still alive you can force the view back to the battle from within or outside your cockpit view. I can watch the game for hours that way as it's almost like watching a movie and very entertaining. Mind you I have no autocombat switch yet when on autopilot and there's no radiocalls anymore in external viewmode, so you won't get any warnings your plane is under attack, so just keep an eye on that or land somewhere safe first. VonBeerhofen

Erik, I may have some stuff I could upload here but they'd be already kind of obsolete by now. The problem is that devellopment goes rather rapid and I have my own website to maintain as well. A big problem is that for instance my spritesets change the old ones will no longer work. Thye're all very nice pictures and may serve someone else to start modifying them but the latest ones are just the best IMHO. Besides that it is very timeconsuming to upload hundreds of drawings and I probably have a few thousand, ranging from crappy to hmmmm as my drawing skills are constantly evolving. I wouldn't mind uploading theatres but they're also under revision. Having copies here would only benefit the community but I'm sure Mark would like to have them as well. Theatres are pretty large downloads, mine are about 50MB, which isn't particularly much nowadays but I feel they're not quite finished yet. However whn they're ready for release I won't mind uploading it here but I just can't say when I fell they're ready or when an interim stage is reached, this stuff changes by the minute. I'll see if I have something to contribute, possibly Pacific Tide III can be added. VonBeerhofen

RiBob, Anyone who means good to others can call me a friend. I have my reasons for sticking with my ancient computer, one is to stay aware of possible framerate and memory limitations, another is to stay in the same ball park as my online group of pilots who're also using old XP machines. EAW proofed to be a PITA to install on my much better Vista computer and although it was working there were a few things I didn't like, even though I particularly bought it to be used exclusively for EAW. The creative tools I'm using don't work very well in Vista either and besides that I'm tired of learning new operating systems and spending my much needed savings on something which I know will not give me a better experience, especially not in our online games. My needs for enjoying EAW aren't excessive and have never been very important to me, however I do have all the stuff which are being displayed in the many screenshots you see in seperate installs of the old addons, from which most of it came, but it's not even close to my own creations for The Final Cut addon which is tested by the online group of pilots I fly with dayly. Sadly my standard is much higher then most people when it comes to 3D models and there aren't many who can produce what I want, in fact there isn't anyone anymore really. So I satisfy myself with what I do have without dimished enthousiasm due to having to use a low end system, it works great and does what I need it to do. Besides I'm more of an EAW programmer then an EAW gamer but the two are complimenting each other nicely and provide me with sufficient amounts of fun and that's what it's all about right? VonBeerhofen

Each object in EAW has it own hitbubble, size and armour values. There can be ammunition or oil carrying ships which can produce a larger explosion when destroyed, there is however no parameter for the cargo they're carrying or wether such cargo has been unloaded already. If there would be troopships or one of the existing models would have been designated as such dead bodies and lifevests can be made to appear floating in the water, such has already been done long ago in Pacific Tide III. It wouldn't be easy to incorporate all possible scenarios into a single addon though but it can be done. The big question though is if anyone is willing to take on such a project. VonBeerhofen