VonBeerhofen

I created a bonus tile since it's such a therapeutic happening, and because it's always nice to have a choice. Of course this isn't the last one, :)

VBH

No more repetitive borders or center tiles and more different villages. With this randomization all village and city tiles can be used at will where ever in the game  in any possible rotational state, and it's a lot less mapping work. I already showed the idea some time ago but not with the Harvest City Set. There is still some work to be done to narrow some borders and create the right impression I'm after but I think it's slowly getting there.

Here's a few screen shots, as an experiment a few village tiles were replaced with breaker field tiles and two different city/village layouts were tried, which means that the randomization for each layout is entirely different while the cities and village sizes and positions weren't changed. 

You heard it first on combatace.com

VonBeerhofen

updated pictures. A few more pictures of the latest tiles will replace the above at a later date.

VBH

Here's a compilation of the 12 latest tiles for the 'Harvest' set. I created a temporary map where all other tiles were removed from and randomly filled the EAW world with these 12 tiles only. 12 screen shots were taken of which 6 are displayed now. The remaining 6 will replace these pictures at a later date as I may not have captured all 12 tiles in these screenies and to safe on page loading times .

VonBeerhofen

Well done Mark,  glad you're on the job of figuring this stuff out and I admire your patience.

I don't fully understand the different behaviors either but a big problem throughout my research has been the differences between video cards, drivers and how the game assigns various graphics routines to them. So what you see is not necessarily what others see and it's self-evident when people don't experience any problems with their setups or used wrappers, to not further experiment and stick with what's working until they run into problems.

VonBeerhofen

Neither have I and there's hardly any information on it's workings with any EAW version, so keep us updated with your progress as it may help others in the future.

VonBeerhofen

Seems to me that your only option is to get v1.2 or perhaps v1.26 running through the use of a Glide wrapper, or the DX Windower or something similar. EAWPRO isn't available as modular addons, it's all or nothing. Another option is to use a legacy computer with a legacy OS, which I think is the safest bet. I used various OS, Windows 98, Me, XP and even used Vista for a while, anything later may proof to be a pita, but you might be lucky!

Good luck and be patient,

VonBeerhofen

It appears you're right Mark, too bad. 

VonBeerhofen

Doesn't Steam and GoG versions allow IPX play through their own multi player gaming servers? Hope he gets something going, don't think there are easy solutions nowadays, not with high security protocols required for modern computers. IP connections require quite a bit of knowledge on router ports and firewalls. Good luck to him anyway and while I'm at it HAPPY NEW YEAR to you and all!

VonBeerhofen

Good luck to him! If it doesn't work right off the bat then he should try the 3D Windower workaround or go for the Steam or GoG version.

VonBeerhofen

13sq_Axe,

EAWPRO is an independent development of v1.2 in optimized machine language by using the game's original source code. This results in a significant shorter gameloop which speeds up FPS, in spite of the incorporated enhancements. You can read what it is capable of at Mark EAW's helpsite here:

https://eaw.neocities.org/fxexe-patches

It has some improvements over most other versions  to make it work with modern hardware and operating systems, like the newly implemented NoOS check. It no longer checks if the operating system is supported or not, which in the past prevented the game to run. It's however no guarantee. You can find universal workarounds on Mark EAW's help site should you run into trouble but the patch install is a piece of cake as it can be added to any official version of EAW by allowing overwrites when the files are extracted into the game's root folder (where the EAW.EXE resides).

VonBeerhofen

Well, good luck figuring that stuff out!

VBH

Many multi part archives came from Sandbaggers and had sequential numbering, like 000, 001, etc. They have to be put into a single folder and inside the first archive there's a recombine batch file which when run will recombine all archives into 1. No idea if this still works in newer operating systems.

VonBeerhofen

Can't remember if I activated this myself or not but I had this happen twice now in the past month. I made a note though to give it a random chance to bounce off with an appropriate sound. Pretty sure they didn't always completely wreck a plane when hit. Pretty scary though to see this massive thing suddenly fill up your whole screen, made me actually duck for cover as has happened many times when colliding head on with enemies.

VonBeerhofen

No, that's not my X-mas wish to all of you but what happened in a recent on line mission in the EAW Launchpad. As my squadron approached the enemy I decided to do my usual head on attack trying to come in from a little lower. As if controlled by a single entity all enemies released their tanks just as I pulled up from underneath and bombarded me with a hailstorm of drop tanks. One of the tanks came at me so fast that it filled my whole view area in just a second and entered my front windscreen. Well there's the result of this happening which ended my career before it had even started. Behind me you can still see a few tanks which barely missed me.

Anyway, perhaps a bit early but before I forget, I hope you guys have few festive holidays coming before the year is out!

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

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

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

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)

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