Tony_Spike

i guess no one has a clue then ..lol

but herein lies the problem ........i dont want to buy strike fighters 2 ..nor do i have any interest in it ...im quite happy running the old versions ....and they work fine on my machine ...so why would i want to i mean whenever i mention im running version 1 i am surprised at how many people tell me to do this ...but the fact is if i want to spend time manualy doing that then its my choice ......especialy since i am the one thats going to be playing on it .........i happen to enjoy doing the work and i dont feel its a waste of time ..or effort ......i feel the rewards for completing this undertaking will more than justify it to me having said that i of course understand that most people dont play series 1 anymore ......hell i see the merits to this but i just dont want to risk buying 2 only to have it not work on my machine ..its an older vista laptop with a s**te dual core processor and s**te onboard ......so im making do with what i have and doing rather well with it its not through my ignorance of 2 ..but more my needs right now that i do this ......and as i say im enjoying it .....so its no biggie .....i would consider getting 2 series when i get a better machine but for now ....make do and muddle through as is the yorkshire way lol as for historical accuracy well .....im not a historical nut ....im just looking for simple immersion not a dedicated historical sim so thats the reason why the merged install (and to save disk drive space) i wont be playing it online cos i dont have a good connection , and i only use single mission mode for testing mods ....so in my eyes its a good way to go .....i can easily get accuracy in campaign mode witch is what i play the most so yes i look crazy in some peoples eyes .....but perhaps you will see their is method to this madness lol after all since the only guy who is going to get any enjoyment out of this is me then its me who needs to be happy at the end of the day ......thats the key word here ..im using these platforms more to suit my needs than anyone elses i do admit though .....what i have achieved so far feels like a crowning moment of awesome (you have to admit the mod enabler to get around the f***ing with the base install was a good idea).....im that pleased with it naming blocks and decision blocks aside ......but im mostly pleased with it cos i have managed it asking minimal questions lol im not a guy that likes to pester the more knowlegable without it being something that truly stumps me ....i preferr to try out for myself and look for the answers lol EDIT ...incase anyones wondering why this hasnt gone in the series 1 section ...its cos i understand 1 isnt the game played anymore ...and i genuinely wanted to find out what people played (weather it be 1 or 2) .....getting someones veiwpoint on my next game decision (the one about my newest folder) is a bonus but i figure since WOI is as close to the 2 engine as 1 gets i figured 2 nuts might be able to speculate better lol

i saw the 90s re releases at the cinema ...i was only born in 1984 so the originals were already on tv by the time i was old enough to remember first watching them i didnt realy get the story but most of the time i would be playing with the lego bricks whilst they were on so it is not surprising lol.. so the special edition releases were the first time i had properly sat down and watched em though i knew i liked them enough to want to see them at the cinema when my mother suggested it ....so amazingly the whole i am your father line actualy came as a revelation.... funny thing is .. ....i never saw the prequels at the cinema either though i have seen them before on DVD ......i only just saw episode 1 in 3d recently .....so im gonna be seeing 2 and 3 in 3d just to say i have seen em all at the cinema at some point lol i dont realy care much for the prequels over the original but i liked 2 better than 1 (witch sucks balls) and 3 is the best of the prequels simply cos it finaly puts stuff into motion ..im not gonna say its awesome but its my fave of those 3 films (my fave all round is return of the jedi) im not a big fan of the expanded universe either ....but i do like the young jedi knight novels .....and a few of the characters that have been created ..like mara jade skywalker and kyle katarn so naturaly im playing a modded empire at war lol

ok im asking this because im curious plus i figure finding out what other people run might help me decide what is best for me ok i will start currently i am running ...on vista no less ...(this is gonna be hard to believe) mostly the SF1 series (strike fighters,FE+expansion,WOE,WOV,WOI + operation kadesh) but im not running them on their own as standalone installs im running currently 3 versions of the game in a directory entitled History of Flight Part 1 - The Great War (1914-1918) is first eagles and its expansion pack Part 2 - WW2 and Korea (1938-1955) is WOE patched up to 10/06 as per the tutorial ..but it has no planes or campaigns as of yet - also encompases spanish civil war Part 3 - The Cold War (1955 - 1991) is WOE with WOV/WOI and Strike Fighters Gold in a manualy merged install, - merged cat files and everything ...the job lot i am currently pleased with what i have, i have added JSGME to the games and each game has a mod folder ..the idea is i have put any graphical update mods (green hell, IL2 clouds ect) in these files and if i ever experience slowdown i can switch in/out the ones i want quickly using the mod enabler and retain the original files ....i also have a section here for addon aircraft that will add them to the game and update certain campaigns ..yet again retain the original files so i can switch em out easily ......trust me its less of a ballache lol my next stage of the project involves adding 2 more areas to part 3 because at the moment it contains 2 real campains (vietnam and israel) and 2 fictional (dhimar and central europe) it is thus my intention to get 2 more real ones ...so im currently adding the falklands conflict and operation desert storm ....but to a limited degree im not one for 100% historical accuracy i just want to get the feeling .....witch is why vietnam and israel are left as is im then going to be working on getting my WW2 and korea part of the sim working ..but recently i hit a somewhat snag / possible saviour to an old problem see i have always had trouble placing korea ....do i place it in the cold war era age .......or the WW2 install i have had it as cold war era before .....but doing this screws up the physics on the Corsair then i got Operation Kadesh and had a bigger problem .....i couldnt get it to add to WOI without it f***ing up my cold war era sim then it hit me ......Operation Kadesh and Korea could go in their own era together entitled Early Jet Age (name is currently up for grabs though ....suggestions welcome winner gets a cookie lol) i would simply use a copy of WOI and its expansion pack for the base game then remove the 3 operations in the original (cos i have those already in the cold war era) and remove any planes not used in operation kadesh, then add korea to it the only questions now are .. 1 do i use this as a base install for the WW2 era sim aswell ......i used to have the korean war as part of this ....mainly to keep the ammount of games i have to a minimum ..and i could easily have spanish civil war, WW2 and the early jet age as one file (the meteor debuted in WW2) ....and if the physics in kadesh are more tailor made for this it might work better do i keep them separate and delete my WOE based WW2 install ...with the intention of replacing it with a WOI operation kadesh based version or do i keep my originial WOE based WW2 install ...hmmm choices choices lol

ok after trying this and simply moving over the operation kadesh files ....it dosnt work if i install the expansion pack over my merged sim i just end up with WOI updated ......damn ..i ......new plan needed methinks

my one great love lol i was brought up a few miles from finningley air base so i got to see the airshow from my bedroom window lol

sod it ...i have made a backup of my game i might as well try it for nothing lol

so trying to add them to a merged install of first gens is gonna be imposible? ..or doable? i dont have strike fighters 2 israel so i cant compare ...i only have the first gen games

pretty much the same as me ...but realy started in the early 90s (i was born in the 80s but 1987 is my limit of rememberance so i class myself as a 90s kid ...it was when i did all my gaming anyway) i was a big fan of jets at the time though ...solidified by movies like top gun and wings of the apache, iron eagle, blue thunder, flight of the intruder, ....also films like battle of britain and dambusters caught my attention ......i was a scribbler ...i would draw aircraft for my other plane mad freinds at school (one was an air cadet) from memory i started off playing the commodore 64 but i never had any flying games exept top gun ...my real interest in sims started when i got 3 games ......LHX attack chopper on the mega drive, F117 Nighthawk & Wings on the Amiga 1200 (though i got these in 1998 rather than when they first came out ....we were a poor family and i didnt get chance to buy the latest releases) immediatly i was hooked on wings ...its story and gameplay are awesome ...i was on it all the time...but i played LHX every day i could and played nighthawk at least once a week, ......ever since then i have loved flight sim games ......i even managed to get hold of an old NES with ultimate air combat ......then i snagged a playstation around 2000 and a copy of Air combat and ace combat 3 ....so yeah ...fanboy but it wasnt till a few years ago i got a old PC and then a laptop when that broke (it came with a 3 internet package from carphone warehouse)........i managed to find a few sims for it i like ...mostly old abandonware dos games like red baron ...but i did buy from gamestation a decent WW1 flight sim called wings of honour battles of the red baron (or something similar)........i was back looking for that wings fix you see i been hooked on WW1 sims since despite my love of jets .....then one day last year it broke .....i was rootin round on amazon for a replacement and found a game called the history of flight it contained Battle of Britain 2 ...i had tried the first on my old pc and it wouldnt work properly cos you had to chuck coal in the pc it was that old .......and unfortunatly whilst this one worked the graphics card on my laptop wasnt good enough for my full enjoyment, .......it also came with F/A 18 hornet, .......that wouldnt even install, the 3rd game it came with was strike fighters gold i tryed it ......and i would love to say the rest is history .....but it wouldnt install either ...something about not being able to locate the installer despite it being on the disk i turned to the 4th game hoping to god it would justify the tenner i spent on it, ....the whole reason i bought it in the first place ......i had tryed the others first out of simple curiosity before i put on my love .......a little game called First Eagles and now the rest is history ...........i found it was the best i had played on in a long time (and decided that even though BOB2 didnt realy work that both games were enough to justify my purchase ....i just had to get a faster comp) and looked for more info on it ..i read the game was moddable from wikipedia and also found that the aforementioned strike fighters was part of the same series....... searched for mods and found this place instantly signed up and bought a months membership then later on i bought WOE and my jet love has been rekindled .....so i got vietnam and SFG just to see if i could get a working version and im happy to say that i do now (btw their is nothing missing on my origional copy file wise ...if my original had worked i would say my purchace definitly was justifyed) ..then i downloaded israel from the thirdwire site and now i have a merged first gen, and i love em enough that if i ever got a newer pc i would shell out for the second gens aswell ...i seriously do not begrudge TK my money when its on something this damn good i just downloaded FE and WOI expansions too so .....im gonna be a busy little bunny lol

if WOI expansion pack updates the game with the mustang and spitfire does its base fix the flight model on these craft ...........and if i add them to my merged install should i be moving the game engine files over aswell or should i leave them as is see i have my WW2 install seperate as described in the creating an era specific install topic ...but if this model has been fixed now wouldnt it be possible to use a expansion packed WOI as a base for WW2 installs?

ok after doing some studying of the files i have come to the conclusion it only updates campaign 1 with the new aircraft (6 day war) ....the rest it leaves as is (or seems to) so it might not be a problem as i have not changed them in any way the thing thats puzzling me is the propeller aircraft physics ......obviously i still have work to do to move them over (extracting their stuff from cat files) but i wonder if they changed anything and should i move any of the game files so they work properly you see in my WW2 install to get the physics to work properly in these aircraft i had to only patch it up to the first version, ...but with the modern day install i patched all the games up to the final versions) ..i hope this info helps im crap at explaining things

i didnt use anything i was trying to use WOI as a base as it was the newest game .....i was trying to transferr all the other content over, turned out it works if you merge everything ....including the cat files i dont have anything added to strike fighters its just a baseic install ...or it was ..i now have merged all the games thanks anyway

ok i just got the WOI expansion pack but i have a merged first gen install (yes ..manualy done ...i know some of you have expressed disbelief at this before but still ..) so i can better integrate it into my install i need to understand whats changed between the origional WOI and the addon i know it adds new aircraft and a new campaign but i need to know 1 .....does it update the old campaigns from WOI to use the new aircraft (i know it wont put the spitfire on any of them cos that was obselete by that time) or are the new aircraft exclusive to the new campaign the update adds 2 .....how does it change the propeller handling physics .....i was told it was best to only use WOE patched up to a certain version for WW2 installs because the prop physics changed between patches but WOI expansion adds two of these prop aircraft ....the spitfire and mustang .....does this mean it rectifys that problem if i add them could i theoreticaly (im not actualy going to) ditch the WW2 and korea install i have (i know it will f*** with single mission realism but i dont care i only play campaigns anyway) ........what else does it add i need to know about (aside from the obvious new decals and the like) cheers for any help everybody

you know how on top gun you got the fictional MiG-28 yeah its not Soviet and its not any middle eastern country in the real world (though you know its supposed to be) well you know paran, the fictional nation from strike fighters well i created a new campaign set in 1988 dhimar with the idea that like the gulf war, the dhimar paran conflict restarted again, i then added the MiG-28 (F-5e) to the paran aircraft fleet and set the americans to fly tomcats and F-5s (as well as the usual A-4s) i also changed the paran insignia to this one and created some black paran skins for all the other migs (changing them in the campaign file) and by golly i got myself a kind of top gun campaign (its incomplete yet i still have more i wanna do to it) ......im just wondering if anyone else ever thought to do that since i havent seen anything on here about it lol

ok a quick update ..i have managed to finish most of the skins ..screencaps coming soon

coool ....i have no interest in the 2 series ...... they probly wont work on my graphics card anyway and the old ones run just fine on my vista machine so i havent seen the point not when i got a merged thats this good anyways lol thanks for your help anyways

oh ....can i just add (sorry for the double post) ......the sparrow is still in service ....the sparrow in question is the AIM-7E-2 .....the only sparrow in the F-14As loadout ini .... since this is on single mission mode the problem occurrs (a mode i probly wont play on anyways) im assuming if this was a campaign that it would be set to auto upgrade the missile at the end of its service life to the next sparrow in line? ......or that if the F-14 was ever added to one that i could set it to do this?

yes ......manualy merged installs i used cat extractor to extract all the like named cat files from each game to a directory ....then used cat pack to put them back together again with all the extra peices from each game intact .....then placed them in an empty file structure did this for every cat file over the 4 games .... then i moved over each games planes/ground objects and missions/terrains merged the sound folders of all 4 games used wings over europes game files (main folder) and WOI exe ....it all written down somewhere on these boards (though dont ask where i kinda stumbled on it lol) its not that hard if you remember to merge them in the order they were released in

merged install .......SFG, WOV, WOE, WOI cat files and everything merged ................works a dream ......beutiful install ......i spent ages unpacking and re packing the cats as in the tutorial i found ......and it runs off the Wings over Israel EXE ......its an abslute beast aside from that though nothing new ............ the only things im using that arnt stock are the F-14/F16 blk 1 and F/A-18 all from mirage factory/column 5...... and the mirage factory weapons pack ...to witch i have added the argentina falklands weapons pack so i can create a working falklands campaign http://combatace.com/files/file/8130-mirage-factory-weapons-pack-01252009/ http://combatace.com/files/file/11092-pack-de-armas-argentino-malvinas-1982/ but what i mean by the missiles being out of service .....i mean in game .....i might have to change their dates since its the weapns editor file that says they end in the 70s and 80s ......what im saying is thats the solution change them ...........since i know that not to be true

HA HA HA HA HA HA ....HOW DAFT AM I ..............i forgot about the mission start date ....... i had it set at 1992 and the sparrow went out of service in the 70s ......and the pheonix the 80s ..christ sake what a plank lol

ok i have spent 3 days puzzling over this problem and looking for solutions .......i have the F-14 from mirage factory (column 5) i installed it right and it worked fine with the sparrows selectable as a weapon ........untill i tryed combining the wep data with the rest now this worked fine on the F-16 and F-18 .....infact it was the only way i could get my install to show the droptanks on these aircraft .... but now i have done the same with the F-14 and for some reason (even though the loadout.ini is left as it came with the weapons their ...and the weapons are obviously in the game) the sparrow and Pheonix dont show in the weapons loadout screen anyone got any ideas why this is

yes ...damn our oily hides to high hell lol i have to say we do make the best telly .......i love being human but i wathed the american version and it lacked a certain i dont know what .....i think it was the vampires wit if im honest

yes i know that ....what im saying is they wernt showing up even with the desert terrain added .....anyways as you can see im using past tense now as for some reason it now works i just followed the merged install procedure on here instead of trying myself .....but i cant think for the life of me why they wouldnt show up in WOI

i just bought WOI from thirdwires website ... it works fine but for some reason it wont pick up the campaigns from strike fighters gold .....does anyone know why this is ....do i have to tweak them in some way ..i have searched for the solution and not found it yet

yeah the carriers placed properly ......or should i say ..it should be...........its the default kitty hawk from the linebacker 1 campaign witch is the campaign im editing.........all i have done is set the squadron to be based on the one in the campaign thats numbered 65 (the one thats supposed to represent enterprise) .....i should assume since it was already in the linebacker campaign it should work but i will take a look EDIT......i HAVE tried changing the carrier number to 63 though just to make sure but........still no joy i have even tried changing the finish date of the campaign to see if it was that ........i have spent a day searching....and i am completely stumped i have even made sure the units are in the right place in the file ...............i read on here somwhere it could be a problem so i checked it lol