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

For those who have kept track of EAWPRO devellopment there is a new EXE for download. Just overwrite your current EAW.EXE with the new one. All others need to download the full EAWPRO addon at Mark EAW's website and when installed and working you can add the new EXE by overwriting the old one. Main changes: rewritten fire routine to get rid of the sky fires and incorporated more fires into various effects new elevation calculation with additional offset for raised hitbubbles (no objects programmed sofar) damage model fix on twin engined various other minor fixes improved FPS by optimising the code and removing some 500+ extra bytes from the gameloop Some other improvements The file is available here: https://rabartel.home.xs4all.nl/ProUpdate.zip Hope you guys like, :) VonBeerhofen

The challenge was to give RiBob control over AAA and Flack in his alternative scenario, if you can teach him how to use the target editor then that's fine with me. If my posts discourages him from doing so then I'm sorry about that but I think a warning that it's not as easy as portrayed is not out of place. It's up to Mr. Jelly to take on the challenge because I won't. VonBeerhofen

You only mentioned that the problem was in the hitbubble table, there was no follow up explanation on how it got really fixed. Raising a carrier is merely an adaptation of the Z value in a 3DZ or the hitbubble table, and with that any object can be raised to what ever level. At some point I created an early 3D cloud TMOD and raised it 10.000 feet into the sky. Besides that you're making assumptions about what I can do or not without knowing anything about what's possible in EAWPRO. Sure enough the PTIII carrier used for landing planes is an optical illusion but it can be raised and have objects on it too. Trucks and tanks and other vehicles are readily available but will only work properly as targets, not as a mere ground TMOD, as that will invoke negative scoring points, unless switched off ofcourse, in wich case there would be no penalty for collateral damage. Obviously having targets on deck will prevent the use of the carrier as a base but I think it makes for a nice target if not used as a base. Anyway, stacking objects isn't more difficult in EAWPRO and just as feasable, just as it is in v1.2. EAW has no problem with having various objects in the exact same location, proof of that were the doubled AAA locations under Ray's objects, recently called a bodge. They work fine in all versions of EAW but EAWPRO no longer needs them as each object can have AAA capabillaty without the bodge. But all that and your above post are besides the point of the discussion which is about wether editing targets to control AAA is easy to do for newbies or not. VonBeerhofen

Mr. Jelly is not a newbie we're trying to teach how things work, he made these tools and should know better then anyone how it works. Editing the hitbubble table to fix the ships is about the easiest thing I can think of in EAW, I already said that about asigning AAA and Flack to objects in EAWPRO. Your last remark is a two way street and you're proofing nothing to me. I could say the same thing about your view but I won't, I respect your opinion and don't think it's worth quibling over. I'm just responding because I think my opinion has at least as much value as yours. People are free to take it to heart or leave it. VonBeerhofen

Sorry but I don't agree with your views and there's nothing daunting about hexediting, especially not with hexeditors which allow people to format columns and select a numeric system to display for each column, but perhaps it's my background which makes it look so easy. I agree that the editors make life a little easier but there's still a lot of knowledge required to learn how to use them, not only about the editors but also about how EAW functions. I'm sure you're well used to it all but ships in the sky aren't particularly proof of how easy it is, more like how easy it is to overlook things. I'm not criticising the tools you use but I am trying to convey a fair representation of the knowledge required and can't see the benefits of painting a more beautifull picture then it is. Ofcourse you're entitled to your own opinion, which I respect, but it just doesn't agree with my opinion. It's also useless to start a debate about how easy hexediting really is for me, but it bypasses how hard it might be for someone else who has no further experience with it. Simmilarly my explanation on how to make good 3DZ models will differ from yours but I'd still tell em how hard it is and timeconsuming to do it right, as I see no use for lying about it and to be honoust I'd rather find out sooner that people don't have the stamina for it then later, after spending weeks trying to explain things. It's tough, believe me, and If my views deter people then that's too bad but I'm always willing to help. Thanks to such help Modred learned how to reslot planes, with a hexeditor, and it didn't take him very long. VonBeerhofen

The reason is to warn newbies that learning to mod EAW isn't easy and requires a lot of knowledge, time and an experienced tutor who's willing to spend his own time on teaching. VonBeerhofen

Let me be a little more precise RiBob, a TMOD is the groupname of 3D ground objects, each groundobject consists of a number of TMOD**.3DZ files which usually have a texture pointer in it which points to the *******.TPC it will use. Both files are needed in EAW, if one's missing weird things may happen and can even crash your game. Each object has 4 states which are switched by the game and each state is an actual 3D object. These different states have their own letter added in the 3DZ filename and are TMOD**D for destroyed detail TMOD**H for high detail (for nearby view) TMOD**L for low detail (for far away view and using a simpler model and 128x128 pixel drawing in v1.2 to speed up FPS) TMOD**S for shadow detail The *******.TPC is usually a compressed *******.PCX drawing in 256x256 pixels and in stock EAW always 8 bit. If you modify the drawing (also known as a skin) you essentially change the obect's looks. Editing these files isn't straightforward but can be learned if you have the proper tools installed. Easiest is probably reskinning objects but requires some experoence and some skill with paint programs. Editing 3DZ files is a lot harder to do if you want to do it right, but we have a nice tool for that too. VonBeerhofen

It wasn't that much of an effort really, I just ran into the right routine and saw it's possibillities and I can only say it looks pretty impressive but yes it's mainly eyecandy in that nearly everything new in EAW is just eyecandy to me. Those who're not interested in eyecandy can stick to v1.2 which totally lacks this feature. As for using the target editor, I've been involved in it's devellopment and used every program released since, including the splitter program, which saves individual targets so they can be imported or converted into other targets. Can't say if that's the newest version, it just doesn't alter the fact that I wouldn't advice others to get involved in using them, irrespective of how easy you say it is. VonBeerhofen

RiBob, The answer is that in terms of programming nothing is impossible and as such hitting a bomb with a bullet, be it on board or in the air can be programmed. Wether it's a usefull feature and if I want to spend my time on it with still so many other things waiting to be taken care of is another. You suggest an idea and I take it as such, just an idea. VBH

Observations are based on 20 years of modding experience and merely my opinion. However when it's as easy as you describe then I wish you good luck with teaching RiBob the ropes of installing and using those programs. For editing the hitbubble table I personally only need a few minutes with a hexeditor, teaching inexperienced people how to use a hexeditor and explain the hitbubble table will need significantly more time. FWIW I find it just as annoying to point out everytime that things aren't as easy as some people think they are. I would like nothing better then seeing RiBob edit the EAW world and create an addon of his own making. He can then give his own opinion on how easy it was, :). VBH

I wouldn't advice anyone to use Jel's target editor, it has a steep learning curve not only to learn how to edit the targets and place objects but also because of the relation between various files like tardata.dat, targets.dat and airfield.dat etc. We both know it would require at least several months to even start grasping how things work. Ofcourse anyone is welcome to give it a try but I've seen many give up. The hitbubble table is a much easier thing to edit and easily explained too. With a few notes it would probably take a week or so to understand how to edit it in a hexeditor or with one of Jel's tools. The question is wether it would result in interesting improvements as much time was already invested into getting the most out of it in EAWPRO. Personally I believe that various theatres will have enough diversity to keep people interested without saddling them up with learning what you and I learned. To RiBob I can only say that there's nothing easy in EAW except perhaps loading a complete addon/theatre and you don't want to spend years of your life to figure it all out if you're not totally committed to doing so. VBH

In EAWPRO it's easiest to control Flack and AAA capabillity by editing the hitbubble table and asign this capabillity to any object. Besides that it can be asigned to a target as Rotton describes too, however it requires specialised knowledge on how to control it properly and isn't for the faint hearted. Editing the hitbubble table is reasonably simple and can be done directly in the eaw.exe by means of a hex editor or by loading a .LDR scriptfile which can also be edited the same way. No extra tools are necessary for editing either but .LDR's make things more versatile as various scripts can be created and activated at will. The kill ratio of AAA is directly linked to the number of AAA positions, for light additionally the distance to these positions also have a big influence, the closer you are the better their aim. VBH

Hi RiBob, It shouldn't be too hard to implement such features into the game as there is no reason to make things harder then it can be. At present EAWPRO already has many simmilar happenings. I'll have a look if I can add this idea somewhere. It may take some time though before I can get to it. VBH