Stephen1918

Any comments? This is a learning experience for me, so your input, positive and negative, will be welcome.

The Ansaldo A.1 "Balilla" has been uploaded. This is my first plane made in Blender, I would like to see your comments regarding the quality and overall appearance of the model, download, etc. I have not yet learned animation in Blender so motions of the flaps are rather simple. My thanks to Ojcar for making the FM, test flying the plane, and suggesting improvements to the cockpit. My thanks to Mue for making the exporter for Blender. This would not have been possible without this utility.

View File Ansaldo A.1 "Balilla" This plane is for FE2 only. The Ansaldo A.1, nicknamed "Balilla", was an Italian single seat fighter introduced in July of 1918. It was developed from the SVA.5 with a more rigid wing structure, a more powerful engine, an a fuel tank which could be jettisoned in case of fire. Italian pilots were impressed with its speed and maneuverability, but thought it was difficult to fly and inferior to the Nieuport 17. The Ansaldo A.1 was mostly used for home defense with only one confirmed victory before the end of war. After WWI, the A.1 was purchased by both Poland and Russia and served on both sides in the Polish Russian War. Polish and Russian pilots had a better regard for the A.1 and liked its speed, high fuel capacity, and maneuverability. The Ansaldo A.1 continued in service until the late 20s. I have included two skins, one for the Italians and one for the Poles. I have included a set of flight number decals for the Polish plane. My skinning templates are included in the download. I have included two versions of the Hangar and Loading screens - one for wide screen (16:9) and one for standard screen (4:3) Credits Thanks to Ojcar for making the data file for the Ansaldo A.1, for test flying the plane, and for suggesting tweaks to the cockpit. Thanks to Mue for making the LOD exporter plug-in for Blender. Installation Instructions For FE2 - Unzip the file, The "Ansaldo" folder contains files to be placed into your "Aircaft" folder and your "Decals" folder. Copy the two folders named "AnsaldoA1" into the appropriate folders in your mods folder. Submitter Stephen1918 Submitted 03/09/2026 Category Other Entente Aircraft  

Thanks for your comments and support. The Ansaldo is coming along. The cockpit is nearly finished. Still working on skins and tweaking the model. Every time I do a test run, I find something else that needs fixing.

After my copy of 3D Studio died, I started learning Blender. Mue has made a utility that will make Lods from Blender, but it only works with FE2. So, besides learning a new software, I've also spent a lot of time getting my install of FE2 up to speed. I have rebuilt the Ansaldo A-1 from scratch and it will be ready to upload soon. Ojcar is working on the FM, I am still working on the cockpit, and tweaking the plane. I made a Polish and an Italian version.

I miss this stuff too. Has First Eagles come to an end?

Yeah, a hard drive crash would be easier to recover from. In this case the software itself died. My copy of 3D Studio Max was about 15 years old. It started shutting down unexpectedly, then it started throwing error messages, then it refused to start. Autodesk stopped supporting it years ago, so no help there. I contacted everyone I know and tried everything I could think of, including reinstalling it from scratch. I finally gave up. This happened more than a week ago. I am over the bitching phase, and the feeling depressed phase, now I'm in the "Let's carry on from here" phase. I'm making good progress with Blender. The biggest downside is that I lost a huge library of components that I had created - but if I did it once, I can do it again, it's only a matter of time...

Bad news. My copy of 3DS Max has died and I am not able to resurrect it. So all the 3D models I've done for First Eagles are gone. However, Mue has made an LOD exported for Blender. I'm starting to learn Blender and hopefully I'll be able to make planes for FE again soon. Mue's exporter only works for FE2. I'm going to have to dust off my copy and get FE2 set up.

I've enjoyed working with all of Mue's utilities and have found them extremely helpful. I have a question about the LOD exporter for Blender - When I was working with 3DS Max, the exporter made LODs that worked in both SF1 and SF2. Now that I'm working with Blender, the exporter makes LODs that only work with SF2. My question is: what is the difference between the LODs for 1 and 2 and is it possible to convert down to 1?

I'm back to the Polish-Russian war. Finally started working on some new planes - Ansaldo Ballila for the Kosciuszko squadron.

All of my mods include complete installation instructions for both FE1 and FE2. Planes are probably the easiest to install, I would begin with some of them.

Also - Strike Fighters and First Eagles have different kinds of guns, bombs, pilots, etc. so after you bring an FE plane into SF, you would have to do some modding to the data files, and to the system resources to make it work.

I'm still playing from time to time. Mostly on the Eastern Front and the Spanish Civil War. Still modding a little bit too.

Sorry it took so long to answer, I've had health issues - in and out of the hospital, etc. If you want the Ford FT-B to operate as a tank, showing up in ground attack missions, simply drop the folder into your GroundObject folder. If you want to place static vehicles around the terrain, you need to have in your GroundObject folder, then add some lines to the Types.ini in your Terrain folder. I used the data for trucks in the stock game and modified the code. Add this to the end of your Types.ini - [TargetTypeXXX] Name=FordFTB DetailLevel=1 FullName=Ford FT-B TargetType=TANK ActiveYear=0 TargetValue=0 UseGroundObject=TRUE GroundObjectType=FordFTB RepairRate=0.555 StartDetectChance=0 StartIdentifiedChance=0 IncreaseDetectChanceKey=0 MaxVisibleDist=8000.0 DestroyedEffect=MediumFire SecondaryEffect=SmallRocketGroundExplosion SecondaryChance=100 Change the "XXX" to the next consecutive number in the Types.Ini. list Then you have to add the vehicle to the Targets.ini in the places you want it to appear, like any other target. I hope this isn't too late to be helpful.

I discovered a problem with the Nieuport 21. There were differences between the various LODs which caused the wings on one side of the plane to disappear as the plane moved into the distance. I tracked down the problem and fixed it. A new version has been uploaded, I highly suggest you get the new version. All skins, decals, and loadouts are unchanged. The only difference is in the LODs, so you can just swap the old ones with the new ones if that's easier for you.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Seasons Greetings, to all my friends at Combat Ace!

View File Polish-Russian War - Russian Tachanka A tachanka was a horse drawn wagon or cart with a heavy machine gun mounted on the back. This made it possible to deploy machine guns quickly, especially on the wide, rapidly changing, Eastern Front. It was used by Russian cavalry in WWI and by Bolshevik, White Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish cavalry in the Russian Civil Wars. Germany used a similar vehicle on the Eastern Front during WWI. My tachanka is a troika (three horse carriage) with a Vickers machine gun facing the rear. It functions in First Eagles as a Truck; drop it into your Ground Objects folder and First Eagles will assign it to some of your Armed Reconnaissance missions. The machine gun is set for AA and will fire at enemy planes that come within its field of fire. The download includes three LODs and a destroyed version. My thanks to Gepard for suggesting this interesting vehicle. Installation Instructions For both FE1 and FE2 Unzip the file and open my "GroundObject" folder. Copy the folder named "Tachanka" to your FirstEagles/Objects/GroundObject folder. Then copy the file named "TachankaDestroyed.bmp" into your GroundObject folder. Note that the "TachankaDestroyed.bmp" file should not be inside any other folder. Submitter Stephen1918 Submitted 12/17/2021 Category First Eagles - WWI and Early Years - Object Mods

The tachanka has been uploaded, currently waiting for administrator's approval. The file is bigger than the trucks included in the stock First Eagles. I have included three LODs to help manage frame rate. I'm getting a decent frame rate (low 20's) on my computer. There is a destroyed version, just the wagon. Sorry, no bloody horses.

I don't see nor did I intend any anger there. I'm sorry if you took offense. Are you saying that I should stop uploading files because they're made for a slower computer?

Yes, we've talked about this before, and as I've said before, I make everything to work well on my machine. For me, playing the game is more important than showing off how much detail I can make. I include as much detail as I can without slowing down my computer too much, and that's what I upload. Of course, when you make yours, you can make it the way you want. The tachanka will be ready to upload later today.