VonBeerhofen

Almost forgot, the garden underneath is an old separate shadow model which can be swapped with any other I've created so far. VBH

A new control tower for my Suez addon derived from the one in the Habbiya area. Sofar this is just a mock up for testing and if all goes well it will end up looking like the B/W photo on the right. You heard it first at https://combatace.com More of my creations at https://rabartel.home.xs4all.nl/test/Gallery/image/ VonBeerhofen (Launchpad Janitor)

Added a few more bits to the backside of the model which I believe to be a manhole to an air raid shelter and a toolbox or something. I'm thinking of adding semi transparent glass to the windows, plenty of room for that in the model but this is it for now: VonBeerhofen

Another experiment with connecting orchards on two tile corners. Notice how various tile rotations create various shapes when two or more orchard drawings connect. Nothing new really but fun to experiment with. Made a minor mistake though by putting the two orchards on a single side of the tile, I think it's better when the sides are opposite of each other, less in line. I'll rectify that later. Of course these two orchards can be on separate tiles too but this one fits the agricultural division of the terrain in EAWPRO better and it's less work too, :) VonBeerhofen

Once in a blue moon the EAW Launchpad changes it's online game to keep players interested and flying. This time I decided that the recent Blood moon was a good opportunity for a new enhancement on our BENELUX terrain set by incorporating a random selection of my 600+ Harvest tiles. These are all 8 bit versions of normal 256 x 256 pixel drawings to maintain the highest possible frame rates for our missions. It's a bit of an experiment and depending on demand the selection may change in the future. Here's a few screenies which I hope our readers will like. More screen shots of our missions will also regularly appear on my website https://rabartel.home.xs4all.nl/ You heard it first on combatace.com! VonBeerhofen EAW Launchpad janitor

A few more examples of the Overcast possibilities: clearing up a bit: and with the 3D clouds activated: VonBeerhofen

Showing how much pastel colors can contribute to the game's atmosphere with EAWPRO's all transparent cloud layers: As you can see the effect is still very overcasty but with the additional layers multiple stunning effects can be generated as all layers are fully interchangeable with each other as well as with other sets created for EAWPRO. VonBeerhofen

Updated and nearly finished, :) (may need a page refresh due to previous cached picture) VonBeerhofen

The obligatory teaser with the adapted wall texture derived from the photograph: More to come! VonBeerhofen

Bonus tile GRASS. Here visible as two mirrored and slightly different versions, mainly to test the effect of larger areas with one nature and the long and winding road, which will come in handy in my Italy addon. VonBeerhofen

Thanks Mark, hope it will help the few remaining players setting EAWPRO up. Things aren't as easy nowadays as it was in 1998! VonBeerhofen

Doing some more tests on the latest EAWPRO release and checking compattibillity with a newer version I found that an old gunsight from 2006, which I used in the B26 to give its nonsensical free floating reticule a bit more meaning, was using a full custom palette from another PRO version. I converted a new drawing to the B26's palette so the thing will display properly, even though it's a bit of a monstrosity due to it's age. It was my first try and I know some planes have no use for the gunsight since they don't have human controlled guns but at the time I thought this to be the best solution for this annoyance. Don't think the obscured dials are of much help to anyone though. Today I have better models which may be incorporated at a later date. Flying these beasts usually turns into an evasive struggle and trying to get the enemy to target your wingman or somebody else so you can stay alive. Pretty brutal tactics but when lucky you may actually make it to the target, but without a tool for high altitude aiming you're often forced to go down real low to get a chance to hit the target, but then you're normally pounded by enemy crossfire which in EAWPRO can be devastating. Ofcourse I had to have a bit of extra fun in a mission after all the hard work and my target was to bomb and airfield near Paris. Now here's a hint for the perfect drop, drop your bombs when your distance to the target app. matches your altitude and you won't be far off target. Here's the result of my drop at 10.000 feet altitude/distance, absolutely spot on, don't you love it when a plan comes together! Good luck, good hunting, VonBeerhofen

OK Mark, NP. Sorry Stratos, I was editing and briefly saw you commented as I resaved the tekst which erased your comment. No disrespect intended and I have nothing more to say.

Now what in heaven's name drives a person to upload someone else's creation after hacking his signature into it's EAW.EXE and removing all install help and identification files, and what can possibly be gained by such action? Now don't tell me that it is to improve the 3D plane shadows or to remove the rotating 3D waves simply because you or others don't like them, or to fix a Spitfire hangar animation. Such an 'upgrade' can simply be stored in a small .ZIP of just a few Mb's to be dropped into the game folder where the EAW.EXE resides. In other words, that person has a choice to offer such package himself and take credit for it! If you don't like the reticule, you throw in another or if you don't like the sky, you replace it with another one from Sandbagger's, I mean that's how it has always been done isn't it? EAWPRO is build the same way and as long as you provide the files in the right EAWPRO format things will work the same way too. Having a central download location for my creation helps users to remain aware of pending releases, fixes and/or upgrades while other downloads elsewhere will only further muddy the waters at the cost of the EAW community. Without the apropiate instructions and identification vital feedback is withheld from the person who created it and forces that person to further restrict the package to what is essentially nothing more then a Demo and spend precious time on implementing extra routines or removing existing ones which have no other use then to stop this foolish behavior. I'd rather spend my time on making this game much more interesting but actions like these are severely hampering further development and in case of serious programming errors I have no control over fixing said uploads as they are not under my control and therefore unsupported. Besides that I'm getting pretty tired of it and when I get tired there's more chances for errors. The person who undertakes such foolish action can not help you, as he never took part in the 20+ years of development of EAWPRO and it remains to be seen what other side effects this may have on EAWPRO players who encounter such bugs. I've seen many people throw in the towel when there were issues and I never saw them again. Things get worse when a version is flagged as dangerous and don't think that such versions do not occasionally slip through the mazes of my security net. It's not done on purpose but sometimes bugs can not immediately be linked to a change and tracking them isn't made any easier with multiple versions of which I'm not aware, you can see that in other versions too. Simply because of the complexity of the program it may take months to fully test it and in the vastness of the EAW world things may not be happening within your range of view, hence you may not even be aware of a developing issue in spite of knowing there is one. Now this ISN"T just playing games with anyone or anything, these are real and serious issues which have to be prevented, i.e. such files need to be reported and removed for the safety of the EAW community, so please report them to the moderators or me so appropriate action can be taken and we can maintain a safe gaming environment. I'm sorry to say that further releases of my work have been postponed for now until I find a way to prevent more of such foolish actions by these irresponsible persons. I understand people may have questions about EAWPRO's changes but just as with any program I can not always supply an answer as such knowledge is often reserved for the development team only. However I feel that sufficient knowledge has been given to allow players the best experience, especially since EAWPRO is a FREE upgrade. So if you think you have an answer to the initial question send me a P.M., maybe something can be done about it. VonBeerhofen EAW Launchpad janitor

No files were uploaded to SimHQ, however links were shown to a person's Mediafire account where the bad version was offered first, incorporated in a file manager. After what I would call a battle for ownership, the file was seemingly removed but had just been renamed and uploaded here. I have no problem if the file remains, after all it's those who install it who also run the risk and the person who hosts it is responsible for any resulting issues. If you think that restoring a few stock 3D models and repackaging with another person's name, hard coded into my work is a mod, then yes it is a mod, but I must stress that due to the many hard coded changes in the program there is very little room for modding by people who were not involved in it's development and makes it much more likely to increase the danger. However that doesn't take away the fact that this version is bad, where as a good version is freely available from Mark EAW's website. You're welcome to your opinion but I do not intend to proof the danger this version contains, it's my creation and my documentation says it is, but you don't have to take my word for it. Any decent assembly programmer can verify that it's true. Mistakes just happen and aren't always immediately caught in the testing process, which is why feedback is so important. Besides, wouldn't it be more prudent to replace that version with the latest, nothing wrong with that me thinks. I can't undo the 500+ downloads though. I'm very happy with the locations to show my work, thx, but I don't see what that has to do with reiterating a warning about a dangerous file to keep people safe. What seems more significant is that a person went ahead with uploading that file in spite of such warnings. I'll replace the word disputed with another, maybe the word discussed is more suitable but I don't think it's the right word either, sorry for being Dutch. I see that Mark EAW managed to delete the offending ZIP and I'm pleased it's no longer an issue, for me that is. My excuse to anyone who were involuntarily dragged into this but I didn't know how else to describe this threat as my English vocabulary isn't great, especially not without translation programs or regular Google searches. VonBeerhofen

I investigated it a bit further and found that all it's doing is to indicate where the reticule is when you rotate the view in the cockpit. It's only active when the game isn't using 2D cockpits, i.e. in resolutions above 800 x 600 in the stock game. Maybe it's useful for Track IR or similar controllers. It's of no personal use to me as it's much easier to reset the cockpit snap view and faster too. VonBeerhofen

OK, show me the picture, maybe we're not talking about the same thing. As far as I can determine it's controlled by the HUD value in the INI, together with all the other targeting info. I did change something there, maybe what you see is the result of it. VonBeerhofen

It's called the front_director and it's only visible when the reticule is not or only partial visible. No buttons are asigned to it and in WinME there's no action visible when I press mouse or stick buttons. It's noted that it's not very useful at present and that it can easily be given a function, perhaps lead position of the bullets when fired under heavy g-force or as ILS. Not really thought about it but it can even function as a new bomb sight, like the Norden and help aiming in bombing missions, I like that idea as I do have a bomber pilot in the group who loves doing bomb runs but can't hit the broad side of a mountain as it stands now, unless it's a carpet bombing mission. I've added it already to my list of ideas.

A new field tile(Nr.475 so a bit of a jubilee version): VonBeerhofen

I ran JelFixV2.exe and it is the in SimHQ disputed version of EAWPRO which he also tried to incorporate into an OAW version. VonBeerhofen Launchpad Janitor and Creator of EAWPRO

Not much left of my plane, :) VonBeerhofen