VonBeerhofen

You're welcome Polundra, glad someone likes it. VBH

The Launchpad and it's members wish a Happy New Year to all it's friends and the Combat Ace community. Let's hope that this year will be the turn around for the virus and we'll slowly start seeing improvements in our lives. Don't give up hope and make the best of what's to come, all the best to all of you. Stay healthy and safe! VBH

Hey RiBob, hope you're doing well and good to see you're still around. I've never been away myself but I'm just not posting much but I try reading all interesting stuff in most flightsim forums. As for reading books I think it's a bit too much to ask from devellopers as there's good information available through Google's search function. However, since you seem very interested in the subject yourself it wouldn't hurt to see this information verified from your books, preferrably in neat and easily comparable format. That would make it a lot easier for devellopers to obtain the right information they need and will save a tonne of work. I hope you understand how much time it would require for people who're more in devellopment then gathering data, besides that, since you play EAW, have you ever come across any weapons deficiancy or noticed weapons ranges and weapons impact power to be incorrect? Let us know if you do and we'll try to fix it! Ofcourse this offer only applies to EAWPRO but we've done a lot of research already to get it right so it won't be easy to find anomalies. Thanks for bringing it under our attention inspite of this. VBH

Hey Mark, not all is that difficult but some stuff is, however the main problem now is to find the energy to do it. I had a bit of energy to change the current pilotmap to what I've shown previously with the Suez map and uploaded it to my FTP. The .ZIP can be extracted into the latest EAWPRO version while allowing older files to be overwritten. Sorry it took so long, hope those remaining will find it a usefull upgrade. The files are available here: http://rabartel.home.xs4all.nl/PILOTMAPv3.0.zip VBH

Not going anywhere anytime soon if I can help it Sky High, :) There's just very little progress due to life's challenges right now. VBH

OK, Got it, :) VBH

Hi Mark, I'll see if I can still add something to your version, the one I'm using is not ready for release. It'll take some time though as I have to isolate these changes and copy them in. VBH

Hi Mark, we're still actively flying in the Launchpad every other day, with just a few diehard pilots. I'm still trying to be creative too but it's usually just a new terrain tile or UHR skyset. Got a bit stuck with programming but occasionally I'm stil trying new ideas. Italy and PTIV are on hold for now but the plan is still to finish it using proprietry file formats. So the game isn't dead and I hope nobody else is either. Just hang in there, I have faith that better days will come sooner or later, preferrably sooner! VBH

Thx RiBob, I think that searches in Google automattically include searching it's own library, as I've seen many quotes from such books. I'll read anything that's free and WWII related though, you never know if any new ideas will spawn from that. Don't really have much interest in ''What If' scenarios but I'm sure other people do. VBH

It's taken quite some time as Covid-19 stagnated manufacturing of 3D models and anything EAWPRO, but I'm not about to give up and finally found some extra energy to start work on the 4th citymodel for the Italy addon. Shown here still using lores textures and not entirely a 100% model yet. There's still about 35% unused space in the model which allows for dreaming up some extra nice details. Devellopment is carrying on, although somewhat more in the background, sorry. VonBeerhofen

Hi Mark, I've started work on a few new 3D models but other then that not much else to communicate, all I have to show is a few tiles of the Harvest riverset. The virus situation isn't particularly giving me much energy to continue. I'm trying to keep my online group motivated and do whatever I feel needs doing. Hope all you guys are still OK, hang in there and stay safe! VBH

Hi RiBob, I'm sorry to hear that, my condoleances. Got a bit trapped in the Covid-19 situation myself but I'm still alive. Just not very active right now. Hopefully there'll be more to show in the future, stay safe. VBH

Always willing to test new stuff or give info on the old, :) VBH

Nice one Mark, thx a lot for the effort! VBH

Thx to Erik and Stratos a special EAWPRO club was erected where further devellopment of my work can take place without unnecessary interruptions. Anyone is welcome to read it's contents which remains uncensored, but discussions are limited to members only and admittance to the club is exclusively under my control. Ofcourse crticism about EAWPRO can still be posted in the General EAW forum and when possible will be taken to heart. I'm sorry that there is no other way to present my work but it will not hamper further devellopment in any way. You can find the club through the forum's main page or by selecting CLUBS in the top from any page in the CA forum or by clicking the picture below:

The road tiles are used as well but in a more generic way, in a way nearly every tile is a road tile and can be used as such. The road tiles don't appear very often in stock EAW and are essentially a waste of precious resources. I use them as standalone tiles besides road tiles, so they appear much more often. The only properties in EAW are water or land, roads don't have a special property but they're normally used to have interdiction convoys driving on them. The convoys can be placed on any land tile though but I haven't stepped away from the game's normal use of convoys other then that they can be larger and have a more interesting mix of vehicles. The extra placement of standalone roadtiles can also spawn way more convoys then the stock game, so the chances of running into one is way higher in all mission types. It's the same with trains if you create more rails in the game. VBH

A few pictures of this mixed set which was randomly contructed from some 400 terraintiles. UHR stands for Ultra High Resolution and consists of 512 x 512 tiles as opposed to hires which are 256 x 256 and lores which are 128 x 128. In this set 4 hires tiles are combined into a single UHR tile giving the game the equivalent of 256 tiles instead of 64 and puts the terrain in a more appropiate pespective and scale. This new set made many hardly used tiles in EAW redundant by using them instead as field, grass, forrest, city, river, coast or mountain tiles. For instance, the BNROAD tiles only appear some 700 times in a 204.800 tiles terrain. This is hardly economic use and besides that the field tiles in this new set already have roads drawn on them resulting in a much more elaborate road system then the stock game. The result is a much more diverse terrain which are essentially all field tiles, except for the river and coastal tiles (when in use). Even City tiles have field transitions and each city tile therefore lends itself to construct an entire city which can also use village tiles or can be used as individual village tiles too. It's number of used tiles is variable depending on the need, allowing for 10, 20 or any number of tiles to be used to construct cities. This again has a great influence on the diversity of cities, but with a limited number of 64 tiles available in total also limits the field set somewhat. The same was done with forrest and mountain tiles, which can be constructed into large areas or just sit individually in between the fields, again greatly enhancing their use. One could call this set the neverending terrain. New tiles are being created constantly and can be grouped in coloration, nature type or shape and as a group can replace other tiles to create inserts in the terrain which have a specific purpose, Industrial, Rural, Agricultural or Urban areas can be constructed at will. The approach even allows incorporating other tilesets with very little work, and conversions are fun to do. Tile borders will fit ANY terrain, swamps, lakes, islands have already been created and await importing and like every terrain tile's creation can be further enhanced or changed depending on one's imagination. Stick bits and pieces on from other tiles or use cutouts from satelite photos, once you get going it's hard to stop, when bored or don't like it, just replace a few tiles and change the view! VonBeerhofen

These tiles started out as a new approach to EAW map tiling and the first experiments in devellopment in 2010 culminated in a hires set I named BENELUX. It's primarily goal was to get rid of the annoying tileseams visible in most other sets and a lot of work went into develloping a method to get matching borders on all sides of the tiles. In the following 10 years I worked on improving the basic design of each tile and finding a better way in creating tilemaps which made better use of the low number of tiles stock EAW and EAWPRO can use. As I wrote previously, these tiles don't really need the BNROAD set, each tile has it's own design of main roads and secundary paths. The same is true for the BNALCTY set, as each city/village tile was made into a standalone tile which can function as a village or city component. This allows much more freedom in building cities and villages as there are no border tiles anymore, each tile can function as a border or perhaps better each city is just a collection of village tiles. Borders have been hampering map design and by doing away with them it's become much easier to create new theatres from scratch. Besides that, each tile has at least a few farms or small farming communities on them, simmilar to the stock EAW village tiles. Many of these farms now sit on various corners or sides of the tile and small villages appear where the sides or corners meet. City and village tiles can be used to further diversify the tilemap, simmilar as was done with the bridges, roads, mountain and forrest tiles. They can appear 100'ds of times more often in any combination with the other tiles which results in a much more natural looking terrain. When groups of mountain tiles are placed in a specific area you still get a predominantly mountainous terrain but you can also use each of those tiles in other areas which are not meant to look predominantly mountainous. Ofcourse the same goes for forrest tiles too. To show this improvement better here's a few pictures of my latest creations in the BENELUX set, i.e. these tiles are stock EAW format, 8 bit and just 256 x 256 pixels and all have a mix of roads, village, forrest, field and mountain in them. Ofcourse mountain tiles have more mountain drawings and forrest tiles have more forrest drawings on them, but there's total freedom in choosing how much of each nature is used. EAW is just not a unified collection of a single approach to theatre building, if you stick to old fashioned methods you just can not get the best out of each theatre which is so very different from stock EAW. What's the use of river tiles in a desert terrain or why have fields in a predominantly jungle terrain and uninhabited islands? VBH

Here's a few more screenshots of the set, which I think gives a better view of the diversity of the 400+ tiles which are available to it. VBH

Naaah, unless you're talking about an earlier version then the one I have. I've thought about using those screens but they're too detailed for EAW. I'd say their graphics level is about 10 times higher then EAW's. Nice compliment though, and in a way it was those screens which got me into creating these. VBH

Having found a good way to get this new planetype working it is now fully activated. The plane is programmed with one nose engine and one engine on each wing. I'm aware that there may be pusher variants which have one engine in the tail and if so I'll try to add this variant too. It's AI behaviour is a hybrid of multiple plane AI and all possible AI choices can be used, i.e. Fighter, Bomber, Fighterbomber, Strikefighter, Divebomber, Waterplane etc. This is NOT just a modified Quad or Twin plane, which used to have just one less/extra engine nacelle in the 3D model but would behave like a Twin or Quad with perhaps an optional flightmodel for 3 engines (not sure if that's been done really). It's an entirely new planetype with it's own (damage) charactaristics and flightmodel. It is available for all sides and all available PLANES.DAT switches can be activated on it, like multi crewed, slats, armour, defensive guns and gear type. This isn't really new in comparison with the older versions, new is their specific AI behaviour and apropiate damage routines, which are different in comparison with other versions of this plane. A plane with NOT 4 or 2 engine controls and engine damage locations, but 3! Hope to show some proper Tri engined pics soon, sofar the testing was only done on a modified Quad and pics from that wouldn't be very representative as it only shows a B17 with one engine off. A new 3D model has to be build or an existing one needs to be properly modified in order to fully test functionallity but I can't see any problems surfacing with the choosen method. VonBeerhofen

Yeah that's what I gathered. In fact the smoke isn't disipating at all, a calculation diminishes transparency the longer the trail gets, currently the highest transparency sits at the start. Perhaps it helps when tranparency increases towards the tail end of the trail. There's a lot of options really and prior to this version dozens of drawings were tested and like cloudlayers each one had it's own charme, sadly I can't put them all in at the same time, lol. Experiments will continue but I realise that some may like the older versions better. Therefore EAWPRO allows each effect to be changed individually and all previous created versions can be used at will. It won't look the same in my other addons as I feel a different effect will only add to the atmosphere of the addon and the use of other smokesets gives people a large option to experiment themselves. Even the transparency files are interchangeable, so the same drawing can be used with various transparency depths, however when used in combination hundreds of possibillities become available and it can become quite timeconsuming to find the best combination of files. VonBeerhofen

Wasn't very happy with the dual purpose dual smoketrail I created long ago so I created a more substantial one with 3D effect which works better in all situations when active. OK, that's perhaps a little biassed observation but I hope you guys agree with me after seeing these pictures. Hope you guys can see which one and that the effects detail setting is working again in high mode, :) BTW , have you noticed the EAWPRO club recently expanded by 25%! Not bad in such a short time for EAW standards eh? VonBeerhofen And here's the Super Smoke Trail

The Suez theatre, dragged from a dusty corner of my harddrive, where it sat unfinished since 2004 due to Moggy's work on a simmilar theatre. I don't think he ever finished it so I pulled it out again to see what else I could do with it. The map isn't the same scale anyway and lends itself more for the battle of El Alamein which is just on the map. It covers a pretty large area and I created a new desert terrain set for it already. New though is a true elevationmap, which it never had because I had no idea how to convert such maps into EAW, but I've learned since then. With it the Suez region becomes a fully flyable theatre and is a step closer to turning it into an interesting new addon. Work continues! VonBeerhofen

Mark, the thinned out bit at the end is actually what remains of the contrail. There are a few options to truely thin out the end but I haven't decided yet on which one is best. One option is to remove smoke from the last frames in the drawing animation and another is to extend the inner smoke trail so it trails the main smoke. That animation is already more open due to it's dual purpose to function as a trail or a smoke. Perhaps there's another possibillity to draw less smoke frames at the end which should also help and change transparency depth, a combination of all is probably best and I'll see what I can do to thin it out when I've got some spare time. Getting it right is very timeconsuming though, I mean you can only see the effects of what you've done in battle but I'll keep trying! VBH