VonBeerhofen

Here's 4 tiles in the set in a mountain configuration, which in stock EAW also happens to contain a set of 4. Notice that these tiles have not been randomized yet so this is how it would also look in stock EAW. These tiles can be used in any configuration or order as they're not subject to stock EAW border transitions, which limits a tile's use, but will fit anywhere, even in an EAWPRO City. Another tile is still under development as an extra spare, after all it's never enough! VonBeerhofen

I think to maintain reasonable frame rates. Memory back in the days wasn't particularly large, computers were slow and as a result my WinME machine couldn't have more then 50Mb addons or very weird things started happening. Ofcourse it depended on each individual system. VBH

A new tile type in EAWPRO, the Spacer. No it's not about flying into space as in MAW but it's a set of tiles which will add a bit more rest to the Harvest terrain if desired. Some people who've been following this thread may think that it's the same as a Breaker tile and in a way it is but there's a significant difference. The Breaker tiles don't come as a set and have signs of cultivation or habitation, whereas a Spacer set doesn't and can be used as standalone or replace an entire nature, like for instance a forest or a mountain or grass set. You could fill an entire island with it and give it the impression of being uninhabited. You can see one of these in a group of 4 behind the left wing of this Me110, directly left of it's tail. 4 or 5 more are under development so stock tile arrangements can simply be copied into this terrain when required to quickly adapt visuals in our on line missions in the EAW Launchpad. VonBeerhofen (EAW Launchpad Janitor)

Don't thank me Mark, it's you that people should thank, just let me shake your hand there, lol. I think it's best to leave it as is for now, as I said nothing has changed. I only wanted to put the 3 patches together to make it 'easier' on players, you already have all the information on your site. However there's a few more things from my own version which I would like to add but I first need to compare the 2 different versions and figure out what's different and what to keep or not as it's not all finished. I hope I can find the time for it, so no promises. Thx again! VonBeerhofen

Absolutely brilliant Mark, Thx for being so persistent. Perhaps the main difference with Stock is that I bypassed the CD and OS check entirely. I'm also curious as to how Windows can ask for the CD when the check was bypassed. Is there perhaps a failsafe routine, I mean we've all happily been moving the game from one system onto another, including the mods we installed and it's never ever bothered us with that question ever again (fortunately). Anyway, it's almost impossible to answer that question to the fullest satisfaction, I mean there's hundreds of changes and it could be anyone of those. Glad it's working again though, that's all that really counts. Good Job, you earned the prize after all! VonBeerhofen

Sorry I didn't want to give you a price for your previous comment but was hoping to copy the mad laughter icon into my own thread somehow by linking it. I'm now going to pull my hair out and wait for the straight jacket to arrive. VonBeerhofen

It's called progress Mark, I think. I gave it one more try and deleted the INI to allow the game to create it's own but I think it's Windows which prevents me from setting the Key Bindings. I selected Quick Start and had time enough to see the landscape and the cockpit and the planes that were hurtling towards my group, I think I could even have taken a Windows screen shot but what for. I've had this same issue when I bought my Vista machine with the only known video card still capable of running the game, took me app. 3 months of messing with it and some 500 hours of tampering with the OS and EAW. I still have no idea what made it work but the pleasure was short lived and I was 2.500$ worse off with a Dell XPS which stood silently in the corner gathering dust for about 10 years. I'm no longer the nerd I used to be so I won't try any further, my WinXP and ME are still working fine for me and my friends and that's good enough for us. Progress, humbug! The laptop is already informing me that it's not capable to run Win11, who cares, I just want my game to work. VonBeerhofen

I removed Read Only attribute in folder properties and applied it to all files and subfolders to make sure EAW can write to it's respective files and folders but after trying the attribute switches itself back on. In all tries I ran the game as an Admin and next I tried the Windows compatibility feature and here is where the game asked me for the CD, which this little machine simply can not provide due to the lack of a CD/DVD drive. I tested keyboard functionality by setting up a TCP/IP game, which surprisingly worked well and I changed the game's shown name to some gibberish which was happily accepted, but I still couldn't swap keys in the configuration screen. I had also changed the View Camera control to keyboard since the function was grayed out, the change was accepted but when I ran the game again it had sneaked back to it's original gray spot. Can't fight without a proper viewing system or keys to control your bail out or gears and other thingies which don't work. It all reminded me of 1998 when I had acquired the game and tried to run it on a Win95 office machine and decided to put the CD back in it's case and try it again 2 years later after purchasing my own computer and ran into problems again when Dell had to revise it's video drivers 4 or 5 times before the sun finally came out and blew me away, and I lived happily ever after. The end! VonBeerhofen

OK, got it. The application error is pointing to DINPUT.DLL in System32, so I checked the INI and set it to default keyboard settings. Ofcourse this little Asus doesn't have a normal mouse and thinking it would need one for EAW I attached a remote mouse via USB but it didn't change anything. It should run without a joystick using keyboard alone and the extra mouse, but it doesn't. I did identify a few possible issues though, if you remove the INI to allow the game to create a new one then the game will default to 640x480 and if your videocard can't produce that you're pretty much screwed. That's why I added the MINIINI which sets resolution to 1024x768. I don't know if all graphics cards can do this but removing the INI isn't a very good option in many modern machines either. I also tried the objects viewer and it runs but the screen remained black so escaped back out without a problem, i.e. it didn't CTD. I see now that the configuration screen crashes as soon as I want to swap a key, maybe the game can't see the keyboard, so here's my old USB thing, will see what it'll do. Same thing, keyboard is working, i.e. typing nonsense but still can't swap a key in INI. Coffee! VBH

I borrowed my brother's Win10 laptop to see what it will do. Difference: I copied a fully working install into it but I'll have to learn about the OS as I go. I forgot to mention that your first error report wasn't about the removed OS check but the offset mentioned in the report pointed to the HD caching routine. However it doesn't mean that that's where the error is, it's just where the programmed stopped. These routines were never touched and with the OS check my version will reject anything beyond WinXP. An option is to add the newer OS identifiers into the OS check so it doesn't fail at this point. Windows 10 had to install Direct Play stuff and after that it now shows me the main screen but framed, haven't changed resolution yet. Going to hit Quick Start and pray! Lost Direct Draw surface, try restart or reboot. 2nd run resolution not supported, no surprise there it was still set for WinXP, so I changed to widescreen 1280x768 and I was on the runway for a moment, at night with all searchlights showing in the cockpit but as I was typing this the game stopped. Trouble shooting compatibility now, I matched resolution settings to the desktop values. All screens work even the Pilotmap but no flying. Looks like an issue I've had before, brief flash of the runway and CTD, no messages. Maybe I can find error reports somewhere but don't know where to look. Taking a break now to wipe the sweat off my forehead. TL VBH

I used the ZIP in a completely new clean version of EAW on my WinXP machine, largely unrelated to the one I used for testing in WinME although the file dates are the same coming from the CD and it worked like a charm. Don't worry Mark, I'm not going anywhere and of course I'll keep an eye out for your developments and anything else interesting and you can always contact me if you need help, even though I'm not always capable of providing it. Thx for your energy, help and support!! VBH

Cool find Mark, I hope there's still a few who can use it, Thx! VonBeerhofen

Sometimes Windows will prevent changing of system files, I've seen it happen that certain files weren't added from a ZIP because they were invisible or Windows didn't allow overwrites. Add to that the taking ownership of folders, wrappers and other actions needed hasn't made things any easier. Since this is a completely fresh install I guess you've run into the same issue as hundreds of others have, including me. It's beyond me why packages which were fine for you and several others since 2018 all of sudden no longer work but I had it happen with Vista also after an OS update. I haven't got anything else to give you Mark and I'm sorry for not being able to be of more help due to my own ancient Operating Systems which go no further then Vista and if you can't make it work then that's where it ends. All I can try is to see how it behaves this evening online in XP but that's hardly going to be of any help to you. You can remove the download at your website or leave it, it's up to you what you do with it. I'll keep working on things for as long as I have players in my group and offer any new stuff via my own FTP for as long as it's still up and keep the community informed. Thx for your hard work anyway and all the best! VonBeerhofen EAW Launchpad Janitor https://rabartel.home.xs4all.nl

The new EXE was in the 2nd download and the pilotmap graphics in the 3rd. I uploaded your 1st original ZIP here: https://rabartel.home.xs4all.nl/MembersLP/EAWPRO0.0_Basic.zip Don't load it on top of your current wrecked install as it contains files which belong to that later version. If we get it to work I can take it from there. VBH

Can't be different as it was constructed from the 3 download versions at your website, but it could make sense if you didn't install the new pilot map changes. I sent you a previous version of the EXE by mail which should work on top of your new install. I tested it in my own and it too works fine here. VBH

Sorry to hear that Mark, I still have the previous version and will upload it so you can give it a try. VBH

All I did was to take the 3 zips from your site and loaded each one subsequently into a single ZIP, so people with a working install need not to bother with it as nothing was changed. I did the same as you, used a clean v1.2 after verifying it ran OK first and copied it to my C drive. It ran fine but in 640x480 and no key bindings were present in the INI after I exited. I tried a 2nd install on a different drive but omitted the EAW.INI and let the game create it's own. It also ran fine, result same as above. I then extracted the ZIP a 2nd time into that install and it also ran as above, so no problems here. I also added the INI from the ZIP at later stage and it ran as above but in 1024x768 and I then changed that to my preferred wide screen setting. Have you tried running your clean v1.2 before adding the ZIP to make sure it's not damaged? The stock game requires the game to be run first too, maybe there's a difference for a version which wasn't run first. I also always tell people to reboot after dropping in the ZIP to allow Windows to finalize the install. VBH

Did you add this new version to an old install? VonBeerhofen

New pictures with new tiles showing the use of "BREAKER" tiles. These are tiles with not much on them and as such easy and less time consuming to create. They open up the crowded areas, which are obviously not everywhere as populated as some pictures suggest. So by replacing one or two 'crowded' tiles a bit more open space is generated. Of course such tiles can also function as a standalone nature and create a more desolate looking terrain. All tiles initially start out as a 'breaker' in Photoshop and allow them to be easily changed at will by moving, rotating, adding or subtracting layers, the one's shown here are new and will be turned into more populated versions at a later stage, the pictures were made for determining how the transitions to adjacent tiles work and to get an idea on how they can best be used. I also found this picture, on old gem from the past when I created the sky for Moggy's Dunkirk and had just begun investigating how to best create these tiles. Sadly I lost my border set which also provided the ground's irregularities background on top of which everything else was drawn so I reverted to using borders from previously created tiles instead to keep border colors as identical as possible, this to get as little seams as possible. To be honest they're not as precise as when I started as I had to make minimal changes for each new tile and those changes accumulated over time due to the new process I started using. Notice the alternative coastline and glasshouses I tried to mimic in my first attempts. I was very happy with the coastline as it contains the connecting road of the Atlantic Wall which ran from Spain all the way to the North of Holland, part of which is still present in my village, as are some coastal defenses. P.S. of course the lake color was later changed after I saw the result in this picture, in game things can look very different due to the ambient lighting, you learn as you go. VonBeerhofen

Way to go, works for me too. Hope you'll have a pleasant flashback with the old girl! VonBeerhofen

Hi Pips, Installation notes are included with their ZIP's but it's questionable if that stuff can still be made to work. Still works on my old legacy machine though, :) VonBeerhofen

Wow Mark, pretty elaborate review, nice one! Great to see all the information bundled, hope it'll attract a few more players. VonBeerhofen

People may have noticed the poor looking city models in EAW where it is actually possible to have at least twice and sometimes even three times as many buildings in a city block. With this knowledge I set out to create new 100% city blocks, to make EAW look more populated. Here you can see the difference between an original EAW block in the foreground vs a newly created block with the tower behind it. Notice that the original textures were replaced with the cleaner looking demo versions with replaced red roofs, so old and dirty black and new clean red can be mixed freely as required. The plan is to turn these models into flat roofed variants which can be used in my Suez addon as well, with appropiate modifications ofcourse and complementing the buildings I already created for it. A mediterranean set is already in the works too and nearing completion. You heard it first on combatace.com! VonBeerhofen

Regularly my terrain editor comes across this coastal situation for which the standard EAW tile set has no solution. It concerns a narrow passage between two land masses. Ofcourse you can simply widen the passage and use two corner tiles but I think this is sometimes more elegant when there's a large number of this situation, like for instance with a large number of islands close together. I think it serves a few more purposes so here's an example of the tile I use in 2 rotational states. VonBeerhofen

The Gameranger server is in Australia and will only cause delays when you're flying from elsewhere, let's say France or UK. Best find a few guys who're willing to fly through DirectX IP Multiplayer, as data travels directly between connected players through a central host when set up properly, and doesn't have to travel all the way to Australia and back again to all connected. VonBeerhofen