VonBeerhofen

I can't be positive about something that doesn't work on my machines. As for the computer specs and visiting old threads in HQ, I doubt wether anyone has any interest in them but you. I recall the same questions being asked about a month or so ago, also in a thread which had nothing to do with v1.60. Why are you repeatedly trying to draw a positive release thread, which may help this community survive, into a negative one. I haven't said anything negative about you or v1.60. That it's not working is just a fact but further unrelated to the topic of the 1.2 version. You obviously doubt my findings relating to v1.60 as has happened on numerous occasions, but you keep dragging that version into anything I say, at moments which have nothing to do with it. When I then reitterate that it doesn't work you try to turn me into a bad guy which isn't particularly helping with me trying to remain productive for this community. Can't you be positive for once, if only for those who now have an alternative? I encourage anyone to play the version they like and I don't care which one that is, as I've also said on numerous occasions. Once again v1.60 is totally offtopic here, so are EAWPRO or v1.1a. 1.2 update is released and there's nothing more to be said other then that I hope it will solve some people's issues. I hope that's positive enough for you. VonBeerhofen

We've been through these questions several times since 2010, I suggest you reread those threads in HQ. They're still the same computers and I hope you'll find the answers to your questions, which are obviously your concern. My concern is those people who have simmilar systems as mine, or lack the knowledge and understanding on how to make their games work with those legacy machines or even newer ones. I hope the patch will get them going again so they can continue playing the game when revisited, the same way they were used to. In that respect v1.60 is totally off topic as it's no longer comparable in any way with v1.2 VBH

The patch is available here: https://rabartel.home.xs4all.nl/DownLoad/EAWv1.2_NoOS_NoCD.zip Mark feel free to host and/or edit the contents if you think the ReadMe isn't entirely up to date. VonBeerhofen

Does it matter how legacy? Fact is that they can't run v1.60 and that there are probably a large number of players who find themselves in a simmilar situation, or just want to revive their stored versions of EAW. The patch will alow them to do so, irrespective of Operating System. Possibly a few old time modders will be energised to finish the work they've started, without having to learn new ways. It wouldn't be the first time that oldtimers pick up an old hobby to keep themselves occupied, after all their knowledge doesn't disappear, unless they're struck by Altzheimers or another scary desease. VonBeerhofen

I'm afraid that v1.60 doesn't work on legacy computers with limited resources. It doesn't work on my WinME or XP system. The patched addons do however work flawlessly, inluding OAW, :) The patch is not only very small but easy to install too and provides an alternative to cumbersome upgrades, without altering the game's behaviour in ANY way. VonBeerhofen

It's not about the other thread Mark. I can't fix the issues you've described in it, but I can fix issues with the addons for v1.2 and setting things up. Many addons were missing files on which there wasn't sufficient knowledge in the days they were created, tools weren't very develloped, not even mentioning the issues related to differences in D3D and Glide behaviour. For this reason these addons may have worked or not, depending on the system it was running on. Some addons appearently seemed to work untill people dug in deeper and found that there were things that weren't working, because for instance no savedata files were created, mission files were missing or other files which weren't properly understood at the time were edited wrongly. The sharing of information wasn't working very well either and often lacked detail or were written in to cryptic forms for average users to make sense of. I'm sorry to say that my personal experience was that I found there to be very few addons which didn't have mayor issues. It's hardly surprising really when you know that to create good working and complete addons would take several people 3 years or more, and many therefore kind of stranded, as people lost interest in fully completing them. So you see it's not only about fixing hardware issues in the EAW.EXE, it's also about preserving EAW's history and keep it's old addons working, preferrably as intended by their creators. Minor fixes can bring em back to life again. In this respect EAWPRO won't do the job unless these addons are converted, since it's an addon in it's own right, and there's just not enough time for that. They wouldn't work as intended anyway. I've been working on a clean v1.2 which can be installed the same way as EAWPRO, add the ZIP to any 1.x version of EAW and use whatever historic addon created at their own risk, including old versions of OAW. In OAW it will require that it's EXE is also replaced, but it should then work as anything else from there on, with or without the wrapper, whatever is required. I feel for many the need is there to stay with the original game, and your website is probably the best location for such a version. VonBeerhofen

With the reorganisation of the sprite table I was able to introduce 4 new animations when bullet hits objects. The animation takes calibre and object armour into acount for the animation selection. These animations may also be randomly used elswhere, for instance in explosions or as debris flying off planes or objects. Other animations have also been activated to mix randomly with the selections. VonBeerhofen

Many more dangerous situations were incorporated into EAWPRO. One is the possibillity of AAA and flack capabillity on ANY groundobject, target or none target, static or moving. When a target location has a single AAA or Flack position, the maximum number of flack and AAA will be divided between all the objects which were given attack/defense capabillity. When one of the positions gets destroyed another one will take it's place untill there are no more objects available which were asigned this capabillity. In other words, the destroyed position simply moves to a new location and becomes active again. A new routine also gives the watersplash destructive capabillity when planes are directly over it and within 100 feet. Because of this effect belly landing on water has become much more dangerous as the splash is generated multiple times each time the plane hits the water. Exploding ground objects were given a simmilar but slightly different capabillity and even exploding planes can destroy your plane when you're within it's explosion radius, so it's prudent to stay at a respectfull distance when shooting up stuff. The explosion radius is linked to the exploding object's size, the larger the object the larger the blast radius. Planes in tight formation may actually cause a chain reaction with other planes and cause damage to an entire group. They will not immediately explode but damage points are given as with bullet impacts. Here's two pictures which show what happened to a low flying bomber which just came too close to an explosion, notice that there are no fighters around or any tracers visible, the explosion happened as the lead plane crashed into the ground. VonBeerhofen

Here's an impression of what EAWPRO's new effects look like. Many new animations were added and most animations are now twice as long (16 frames) in 4 times higher resolution ( 4096 pixels) and played at twice the speed as in stock v1.2. Besides that effects are randomly combined to allow hundreds of different mixes instead of just the same repetitive animations from v1.2. Obviously rendering this stuff comes at the cost of framerates, which is why most routines dealing with animations were highly optimised to run much faster. What you see here is the result of a bombing attack by B17's and watching the event devellop on my ancient 1.6Ghz PIV with a 64MB gForce2 showed only a neglectable drop in FPS when the event was visible on screen.

Further tests shows that the download url is fine, but browser may use the cached browser information on their own computers when the url was already visited. When the cache is erased the new download becomes available. VonBeerhofen

Combat Ace downloads files to it's own servers to which I have no access. The file on my FTP site has been fixed and people are advised to copy/paste the shown url into their browser instead of using the direct link to the combat ace server. It's doing the same with any pictures I post. Sorry about that but it's beyond my control. VonBeerhofen

Problem solved, :) VonBeerhofen

With the help of Russ Watson I was able to fix a none transparent Glide trails issue which slipped through the net when effects detail is set to high. Here's a few screenies which depict the current status of effects in EAWPRO on both Russ's machine using a wrapper and my own machine without the wrapper using D3D mode. VonBeerhofen https://rabartel.home.xs4all.nl/FX06.jpg https://rabartel.home.xs4all.nl/FX07.jpg https://rabartel.home.xs4all.nl/FX08.jpg https://rabartel.home.xs4all.nl/FX09.jpg https://rabartel.home.xs4all.nl/FX00.jpg

Just a test how to embed screenshots from my FTP. VonBeerhofen

Stratos, my FTP usually allows embedding of the pictures. My last pictures with the shadows didn't need BBS code, they showed immediately when I entered their url's, the same way I did above and the board simply showed them. Should I use [ I M G ] [ / I M G ] to display them properly? I can't edit the previous post either. Is there a way to edit after logging out? VonBeerhofen

Some people may be aware of what happened in SimHQ due to me posting a link to a discussion about me in a public forum, which was about blaming me for ongoing disruptions in that forum, and another call from a single person to the EAW community and the SimHQ moderators to take action against me. This person, who had just received a year ban himself, had shown time and time again that unsustained allegations, brutality and repetitive abuse to various members of that forum is proof of my misconduct. It's forum moderator accused me of violating a public forum's security in order to retrieve this information, which was said to be confidential. This has been disproven by this forum's moderator and various members of SimHQ. Since I was the subject of discussion I felt I had the right to post the link which showed how my adversaries operate behind my back, but nonetheless in an open forum. As a result of that I can no longer post there and to be honoust I no longer want to. All I want is to be able to post my findings and show the result of 18 years of research and modifications I've made to EAW with the help of the source code, gernerously made available by Atari. I feel I have the right to do this in peace and without the constant intervention from those who do not like what I've achieved and/or lack the same knowledge. It's doubtfull wether these people will let me work in peace, as they're also members in this forum and my creation is competitive with theirs, but it's my hope that the moderator of this forum is unbiassed in fact I know he is, because we've been in contact for a long time now and he's been very much aware of what's been happening in that other forum. Let's just say that not a single post I made in there was met with any friendlyness, inspite of me trying to share information and help others. I'd like to stress that I'm not looking for an audience but I believe that there may still be a few people left who can have some fun with my creation, how many that will be is of no concern to me, especially since I've done all this work for those people I call my online flying friends, who'll obviously benefit the most from it. I'm too old to fight over a hobby which has given me and my friends immense pleasure, so I hope that this community will accept me with an open mind and allow me to continue what's probably going to be the one and only hobby I will be capable of persueing, which is to have some fun with EAW the way I want. There's nothing prestigeous in what I've accomplished and it's probably never going to get fully finished but I have given it full time in the last 18 years and I think there is an interest amongst the EAW community in what I have tried to do with this game. I'm open to reasonable requests and or suggestions but I can't promise anyone that any proposals can or will be carried out, as it depends completely wether things are within my capabillities, after all this is just a hobby. VonBeerhofen

Let me assure you that there's nothing ''buggy'' about them, but I guess that some people just lack the skill to create them as they're not easy to create and require quite a bit of time. Sure enough they're different then the flat shadows which simply don't have a perspective view. Ofcourse they're not true shadows, just as the default shadows also aren't true shadows and are lacking certain aspects we all associate with shadows. For instance 2D shadows are incapable of showing the tailfin because it has none, nor is it capable of showing a sideway view of the fuselage and a topdown view depemding on the viewangle, as opposed to the 3D shadow. They're just flat and boring, at least that's my view, and I wouldn't call them buggy for that reason, they're just one solution to add shadow to a game which is incapable of doing the real calculations we see in more modern games. The 3D shadows are another solution which I and many others feel is much more interesting and possibly can be properly animated one day with the roll or dive of airplanes showing the model at appropiate angles, something which is impossible with the 2D shadows. So that leaves the question which is more buggy? Ofcourse the shadows can easily be replaced by their 2D counterparts, which are still in the game's 3D CDF, I mean you don't have to like them just because I like them but calling them ''buggy'' seems a bit over the top. VonBeerhofen

Welcome to the ''buggy'' world of EAWPRO, in which you're very likely to hear certain people describe the addon as such, inspite of it's intentional differences with v1.2. All I can say that in this respect EAWPRO has boatloads more of such ''bugs''. Illuminated airfields, streetlights and searchlights, which come on at night. Glass and transparent shadows on groundobjects, new cockpits, bullet flyby sounds, relocating enemy positions, double length animations in 8 times higher resolution, just to name a few. It stands to reason that due to the difficulty of reprogramming EAW, certain issues are unavoidable and often take time to solve, but the 3D shadows don't belong in that category. Still, this shouldn't hold back any releases, because if it did there wouldn't be any. I'm willing to make it easier to control any annoyances but EAWPRO will not be turned into a custom version for each person who has a problem with what I've created. As has been customary throughout the years of EAW, the motto is still the same, if you don't like it, don't play it. My goal is to introduce even more of such ''bugs'', which reflect my view on the game and how it can be improved. I'm sorry if it's not what you expect or think what should change, but perhaps the next release has more for you to like then to dislike. You can please some people sometime, but you can't please all people all of the time. Warning! When you're afraid of getting hammered or being bothered with 3D plane shadows, it is adviced to NOT ENGAGE in flying EAWPRO, there's plenty of much less dangerous, less ''buggy'' and much more cumbersome versions of EAW available. VonBeerhofen

Here's an idea, I'll take the shadows, waves and seaweed out of the CDF and put them into the gamefolder again. I'll add a list of the 3D slots and write an instruction on how to erase them and how to add new models. I think everyone already knows but it's easy enough for me to do. That way people can experiment as much as they like (or not) and have fun again building their own EAWPRO world and be happy. It's a bit of a shame really because after your initial complaint of a messed up folder and finally cleaning it all up, it's going to be a bit of a mess again but maybe some people will find it easier this way after all. VonBeerhofen

Yes it's true, I have better stuff then what you portray, better waves, better trees and forrest, runways, ground objects etc. etc. but I've not heard anyone complain about models which are in nearly every addon I've seen and which anyone can replace with what ever is available. The procedure is quite simple, if you want to replace the pillboxes you download a .ZIP with for instance Per Von Oben's version and you extract it into the folder and voila. Per has the Supertrees mod on his website, which works exactly the same. There's a huge range of objects available, to add them to EAWPRO would only unnecessarily increase the package and eat my time which I need for other things. I only added a few things because there were no objects in EAW for the new slots, and it was done in the same way as described above and anyone can do it. These objects came from various sources, when not there EAWPRO may not work properly. It's been done like that for ages. Whatever I have is not important, as I explained several times before, the good stuff is for the Final Cut addon and other addons I'm working on since I do not want to use the same things that everyone else uses. The Basic version can be dressed up just like we did with EAW in the past and as you're doing with v1.60 VonBeerhofen

It's perhaps not an important detail but in EAWPRO you can jump from plane to plane and you will notice the shadows when you're 3rd or 4th on the runway or all the way at the back of the group. They're also noticable when you're diving towards ground targets or low flying enemy planes. From higher up they're practically indistinguishable from the stock shadows. Not that I care how they look or which ones are used, but they're just not ''Buggy''. VonBeerhofen

EAWPRO has no problems with transparent shadows, in fact the 3D shadows can have both transparent and none transparent parts. That way the cockpit glass can be portrayed tranparent while the fuselage is none transparent. However those who prefer transparent or none transparent 2D shadows have a choice. Even groundobjects can have transparent shadows in EAWPRO. VonBeerhofen

The only place where the stock shadows are realistic are on the equator at exactly 12 noon, all other times and locations they're wrong in my opinion. Still, there's no reason to call either ''buggy'' if you'd leave the opinion to the reader. VonBeerhofen

ALL eaw 3D models are flawed, except, for a few simple shapes and those which came from other Microprose games and remained unaltered. Now this statement is NOT an attack on anyone's endeavors in 3D modelling, it's just a simple fact. All modified planes are stuck together with spit and string, as Moggy so aptly described in another forum. In 18 years of flying EAW I haven't encountered one single 3D model which wasn't stuck together like that. As a result of lack of knowledge on the subject of calculating and understanding the rendering sequence, nearly all models show bits and pieces randomly switching on/off at certain viewing angles or distances or 3D parts being visible when none should be visible. Perhaps I'm spoiled but this fact has always annoyed me, simmilar to the viewdistance switch which happens between lores and hires model when aproaching an object. I find it distracting and it takes away much of the immersion EAW provides. For this reason I've visited many websites dealing with the subject and read whatever I could find on the topic. It's taken me 10+ years to understand, plus I spend a lot of time dabbling with other commercial 3D packages used for other flightsims but most of these are not comparable to how EAW deals with a 3D world. I had to revert to a more hands on approach using the tools made available by some more knowledgable people then me. I learned that there are no shortcuts and very stringent rules for creating 3D models and that not a single 3D model will allow the same approach in order to get it to work. However, more important was that after very slow progress I verified that Gurney's R/S calculator is working 100%, as long as you stick to the rules of 3DZ modelling. This again means that there is no need for flawed 3D models, they can all be fixed provided that someone will spend enough time on figuring out why some polygons cause the calculator to screw up. It is a painstaking process which requires a lot of ingame testing, but there's always a solution even though the solution to the problem is different for each model. Often there are multiple solutions, which is where decisions have to be taken as to which one is the best. Now the sad part is that a solution may remain illusive for months or even years and it's useless to stare yourself blind on it, it's like finding the right pieces of a puzzle or like Rubic's cube, where a single polygon change can cause a cascade of errors in the model which will always cause Gurney's R/S calculator to get stuck. I want to reitterate, that the calculator is fine and when it locks up there's something not right in the model. When it's not right it can cause the game to crash, which is obviously another indicator that it's not right. I can't teach people how to solve such issues, it would take too much of my time, only trial and error will bring this understanding. I also hope you will understand that fixing every flawed 3D model from the past, that's nearly all of them, is a herculean task which I'm not going to take on. It's more fun to create your own models, as you're in charge of what you're doing when you build it, then it is trying to spot where others have gone wrong in their endeavours and you can only use the current tools available for doing so. On a personal level there are some simple good working models which are flawless because of their simple design, but everything flawed is total failure in my eyes and proof of not understanding of how it works. I know it's a harsh judgement but in doing things right there simply is no compromise. Even I do have models I have been unable to fix up till now, which started 10 years ago. They just didn't make it because I can't see what's wrong, and untill I find the solution it stays under the heade of total failure and will not see release untill it's been fixed. I know there is always a solution so I come back to it to see if I can solve it that time. Any other approach is useless, wether you can see the model in game or not. I hope some people will rise to the challenge and have the determination required to truely become a 3DZ modeller, it's about not giving up or trying to take shortcuts, no matter how much time it takes. Start small and work your way up, study the Microprose models as some of the answers are in there. Its the only advice I can give. VonBeerhofen