rotton50

Mark, here's the problem with that approach. Basically there's two guys who know how the editors work. What you're asking is for us to spend quite a bit of time putting together help files WITHOUT knowing if anyone will ever use the editors. It's not like we've just recently put out the welcome mat for the community here and at SimHQ to see if there are any takers. So far in the five years that Jel and I have encouraged new modders to step forward, I can't think of a single inquiry. That doesn't mean we've given up but we're also not going to spend time working on something that will probably never happen. I hope you understand.

meh, nothin' new, Jel. Some people are just afraid of competition. Recall the claims of hard drive crashes about 15 years ago? This is just more of the same. But I think we've made our point and the members are free to make up their own minds. FWIW, I'd love it if one or two would step forward and tell us they're interested in learning to mod.

THAT it really crappy advice. We're trying to keep a 20 year old game alive. Dissuading guys from joining the modding community is NOT the way to to that. Plus, as Jel and I have made clear, over, and over, and over and over again, the editors take 80% to 90% of the effort out of learning how to mod. Hexediting is a different deal. That is daunting, even for those of us who know what we're doing, but we don't do things that way anymore.

As stated a couple of posts back, TMODs have nothing to do with the terrain they're placed on so "Terrain Modification" would be an incorrect assumption. Terrain Model (TMOD) would be the correct designation.

Sky, indeed the targets will show up no matter the terrain. However, many of the TMOD's were placed in relation to the default terrain, mostly in the towns and cities. So a factory placed on the corner of two roads in a city might not look correct with a different terrain set. Same for roads, beaches, airfields and seaports. Really, everything was placed very carefully in relation to the default terrain in both SPAW and the ETO so it's probably best to stick with those. That said, it would be interesting to see how much different an addon terrain set looks with the new target sets. Might not be that big a difference. One thing Jel forgot to mention is that the 1.6 development line has the ability to display different TMOD's depending on which side of the front line you are on. You can see this in SPAW if you look closely at the ships as you pass over them. They will display correct flags depending on which side of the line you are on. There's a lot of nice touches like this scattered about the new target sets. Besides the ships, vehicle convoys and aircraft situated on airfields change from Axis to Allied but there are probably others I've forgotten. All of the placement was done with the target editor and the individual characteristics of each TMOD was set using the TMOD editor. There is no comparison between hexediting and the editors. Hexediting is what you do when you want to fiddle about the edges of the EAW world while the editors allow you to make major improvements that greatly enhance the player experience in EAW. So to anyone interested in doing a little of their own modifications, ignore the advice to avoid the editors. They are quite easy to use. Take it from the guy who, by far, has the most experience with ALL of them.

I am floored by this comment. Serious question. What possible reason could there be for this advice?

FWIW, there is nothing the least bit contentious about pointing out false statements. Nor is it contentious to discuss the merits of a proposed modification to the game. The definition of contention is " likely to cause disagreement or argument". We've seen none of that in this thread. In fact, compared to EAW's history, this has been a downright joy to engage in. Freely exchanging thoughts about what might be possible and what's worth doing. Very much like our discussions on the back board at the GEN, I might add. So, if this comment is considered contentious then frankly the forum has an serious problem in that all discussion about improvements to the game are curtailed if one person doesn't like what's said. Is that what the community desires? A shutdown of ideas? A closing of debate over the worthiness of proposed changes? I doubt that's the case for the vast majority of members so let's not let the tail wag the dog.

THERE IS NO NEED TO BLOCK THE THREAD. This is not the start of an argument. It is a continuation of the conversation about what can be reasonably be added to EAW. There have been no pejoratives thrown about, no insults of any kind and some of the same misinformation we're always fighting about was quickly corrected without rancor. So. Seems to me we'd be putting a lot of effort into something with very limited returns. A level bomber having it's bomb load blow up due to a direct hit is basically eye candy. As it stands now, you see plenty of level bombers going down in flames during an intercept. How in the world would a player know OR CARE if a particular plane was hit by a flak round versus blowing up from a rocket attack or some well placed 30MM cannon rounds? ( FWIW, if you spend that much time admiring the action, you are going to get shot down) If we're going to add immersive things to EAW they should be things that the player affects directly or experiences in the cockpit , like when we added skip bombs, large caliber weapons, torpedoes, moving barges on rivers, dive brakes and distinct engine sounds For instance, oil spattered windscreens, flames coming from the engine and bullet holes in the gauge cluster are all things we don't have in EAW but were included in SWOTL and PAW, twenty years ago. Heck, SWOTL even limited the max speed you could achieve with a full fuel and ammo load. These additions are within the abilities of our one remaining programmer. In fact, I think some progress was made in these areas before things started to slow down due to lack of manpower and that paucity of manpower is the problem.

In your haste to argue you completely missed my point and you continue to do a disservice to the community by making things sound harder than they are. There's no doubt that hexediting is not for the faint of heart. I would not dispute that point. However if you've tried the editors you have first hand knowledge that they take most of the effort out of modding EAW. In fact, they add to the fun factor. Nothing better than trying something in the game that you've done yourself. So that leaves us with two possibilities: 1 - You haven't used the editors, in which case you should bow out of the conversation for lack of knowledge on the subject. 2 - You have used them and from experience know that they work well. In which case you are not telling the truth. There is no third option.

Second part first. It was your suggestion to look at the gauges that led me to reworking them for greater visibility. The feedback from a couple of BETA users has been overwhelmingly positive. Pretty soon the entire aircraft package will be released to the general public. So don't discount your contributions. Now on to the first part. The assumption that modding EAW is difficult to understand has been perpetrated by one guy. NOTHING could be further from the truth. The various editors that Mr. Jelly produced plus a couple of older ones by unknown contributors ( to me anyhow ) are pretty well polished. The flight, loadout, weapons and string editors are flawless in operation. True, early on some of them were rough around the edges but intrepid souls like me were willing to help smooth off the rough edges. The programmers are to be commended for their ability to take constructive criticism and work with the modders to improve their tools. Any time you or any other member wants to get involved in basic modding just say the word. Jel and I would be thrilled to have another worker bee. ============================================================================================= FWIW, it is irksome to have to constantly come in here and clear up the misconceptions scattered about by one member. Been going on for close to two decade now, to the detriment of the entire community.

Seriously, where do you come up with this stuff? The latest version of the target editor is a piece of cake to use and the learning curve is one day, NOT a couple of months, Plus, the relationship between the files you mention are automatically dealt with by the editor, the user doesn't have to do a thing. The REALITY, is that it's a lot of fun to use your imagination and come up with new configurations for the targets. And as I mentioned, you can share your efforts with other players. Surely you can agree, sharing things among EAW players is the best way to keep the game alive. C'mon, a week? Well, maybe for hexediting but not with the TMOD editor utility. The hit bubble editor is built into the individual TMOD.dat editor along with a number of other data points. One look at the way it displays data and even a newbie could be making changes inside of an hour. I don't think you realize your comments are elitist in nature and could very well discourage new players from attempting to add something new to the game. Personally, I think it does the community more service to encourage people to explore the world of modding and NOT make it sound like such a daunting task.

Or................... Players could use the full suite of editing tools that Mr. Jelly has produced to edit the targets and the individual ground models thus bypassing the need to learn hexediting. All they have to do is ask and the tools will be provided, along with instructions and real time assistance. And added benefit is that each target and ground model has it's own file set so when completed a player can share the finished product with others.

There is a way to edit the number of AA sites at airfields using Mr. Jelly's target editor and it's been done. Try scenario ETO2015 in the 1.6 series. I think you'll find you wish you brought an extra flak jacket when you are assigned to attack an airfield. Stay fast and jink, especially AFTER you fly over the field. The gunners are DEADLY shooting from behind.

No there's nothing in the damage models that would allow for that. There are 12 damage sections that can edited - Hydraulics Pilot Fuselage Tail Right wing Right aileron Left wing left aileron engine 1 engine 2 engine 3 engine 4 The values range from Zero to 255. There are corresponding hit bubble sizes for each section. The problem is, if you set the damage value very low then the plane will be too easy to shoot down from another aircraft. I suppose that if the fuselage damage value was set very low and the fuselage hit bubble size set to very small you could compensate for that. You could then set the surrounding hit bubbles to a higher value to sort of "cover" the soft spot. Seems like a lot of trial and error wold be needed to get it right though.

Apples and oranges. I was referring to light and medium AA, You are referring to heavy AA. Also, I don't agree with your observations on heavy AA but we're work in very different environments so there no point continuing the discussion. You do you. The problem for scenarios producers like me is that we strive to make our virtual world as much like the real world within the limitations imposed by programming. So, for instance, my first attempt at target improvement was done way back when we only had 70 ground models (TMODs) to work with. I loaded up all the major target sites with all sorts of AA, among other things, and was then forced to remove most of them because of overkill. Live and learn. It took the release of the source code and the efforts of some fine amateur programmers to get us where we are today. Which is the ability to have 4000 ground models and AA active on any of them. Of course, scenario producers still have to be careful not to overdo the AA. The release of the utilities to modify the AA functions helps greatly with this. It still takes some trail and error but way less than before. We lived and learned.

Couple of things. 1 - The 1.6 series is not slot specific so we can actually have actions specific to one plane. For instance, we recently added a long smoke trail to the Me163 to simulate the rocket exhaust that we've all seen in videos. This ability makes for a nice improvement in variety. Same goes for engine sounds and gunsight sprites. We can assign over 100 different sets of sounds for everything from WWI rotaries to WWII jets and each plane can have an historically correct gunsight. 2 - Indeed I did a lot of work on the AA for SPAW. Generally I found that the default flak was way too accurate so if I put a lot of AA guns on the ships the players couldn't complete a mission. Now, I did want a lot of flak splashes and "bings" against the plane when on a torpedo run but I still wanted a better than 50-50 shot at surviving. What I was able to do was give the guns less power yet still have a fairly high ROF. Combining these numbers with a vast increase in the number of guns on the ships and doing a lot of testing, I ended up with some decent aural and visual immersion for the players.

The jets in EAW already have a much slower throttle response rate than piston engine planes. There is some room in the flight model to slow it down even more but personally, I think the original designers got it right. I have the tools to do the editing and I'd be happy to share them with anyone who wants to get involved. The warm up period for the jet engine planes is already much longer than the piston engine ones. It's been "baked in" since the beginning of EAW. Also, though Mr. Jelly is an EAW programming genius I'm not sure he can set an airfield afire. Of course, I shouldn't say that, he may take it as a challenge. :-) Try the ETO2015 target set. There is a huge increase in airfield AA among a million other things, including all sorts of aircraft lined up at the fields. FWIW, the AA can be adjusted for caliber, range and firing rate. There was a thread no too long ago over at SimHQ as to how to go about adjusting them. If you can't find that thread, let me know and I'll post the procedure here.

Far as I'm concerned there's no flame war here, hasn't been any name calling, or disparaging of other people's contributions, just a discussion about the best way to edit EAW data. Why not see if it stays congenial? A congenial discussion would do the EAW community a world of good and who know, it might get a member or two to give EAW modding a try. You can always shut it down if it goes off the rails.

FWIW, I've been hexediting since about 1993, it is a perfectly fine way to make changes to all sorts of data. However, in Jel's defense, his editors are just the ticket for speed and ease of use compared to manipulating data in base 16.

You are correct. Sorry, I wrote in those captions from memory and well, the ole memory is not what it used to be.

Bunch of large caliber aircraft are available in the 1.6 development line. Some saw service, some were prototypes and some were "paper planes" which never got off the drawing board but you can fly them all in 1.6: German HS129B3 ( There are also B1(37MM) and B2 (50MM) versions - Italian SM91- German Me410 B2 - German Ju88 P4- Italian Ro58 - German Me110G3 / R5 Mosquito Mk18- Gloster Reaper - Hurricane MkIID- Beaufighter Mk IX- Whirlwind MkIII B26E - A-20F -

Jel, These have been in the Mediterranean inventory for a couple of years and there is a plane set called Mediterranean Tankbusters to go with them.

Like 'em low and slow, 1.6 can accommodate you too: German B354 - Czech BH33 - Italian Cr32 - French D510 ( I know, not a bi-plane, what ev ) British Demon - British Fury - British Gauntlet - British Gladiator - German He45 - German He51 - Japanese An4 - Japanese AXH Type H British Swordfish - Italian Cr20 - Japanese Ki-10

What is also amazing is the evolution of aircraft during the 8 year period from 1938 to 1946. You can experience this evolution for yourselves if you use the 1.6 development line since we have everything from 150 MPH biplanes to 650 MPH manned rockets. And speaking of weaponry, we have everything from light machine guns up to X-4 unguided air to air rockets, to Dam Buster bombs, to torpedoes, to naplam. Sorry no hand grenades.

Not too bad, that's for taking the time to help me demonstrate the superior abilited of the 1.6 line. It almost makes one wish for a WWI scenario. Almost. I'm sure everyone, well the SimHQ crowd anyhow, is aware that I am wholeheartedly against turning the best WWII flight sim ever produced into a halfway decent WWI flight sim. Biggest problem is that none of the WWI models come close to being R/S compliant, with wheels and struts showing through wings and fuselage. I have solved the problem on the pre-WWII models but I just don't have incentive to tackle all the WWI models. That's not to say it isn't a lot of fun and I guess if you squint a bit you could see the Red Baron in that B354.