European Air War - The Gen

Chaps, I've been thinking about the lot of the stuff I have for a number of projects, and I've been thinking that it will take time to finish most of these. Meanwhile there are worlds in some state of playability and aircraft and some screens that players could be using.

In CAW we have a map, a theatre layout, and virtually all of the planes done by Kurt. It will be a long while before the project as originally envisaged could be finished. Could we just release what we have as a sub alpha for players to use it what ever way they like? Just seems a shame to have this stuff sitting doing nothing when a lot of work has gone in to it and a final release date is not even to be imagined. Might even encourage others to work to fill in the gaps.

What do you think?

Well,
I have promised lots and delivered painfully little in this area, so I don't feel that I have much right to prompt anyone else into a course of action, however, for my part, I think it's quite understandable, and in fact it could be a wise move, to open up the CAW archives to the public at large, as you mention yourself, Peter, there could well be some additions supplied from sources further afield.

Call this an "Aye" I guess.

DeanH

Hi Moggy,
Yes, IMO. You probaly could best serve EAW and those who worked on this by doing so.
I haven't really done anything in CAW except a small thing to brief on the files.
I doubt I will have time for this project anytime soon, and even if so would need a lot of extra help anyway.


p.s. I took the liberty of uploading my CAWdatastate.zip to the CAW files, CAWworld folder.
The .zip contains some analysis of the existing mission related .dat files and misc. stuff, like a version of my BaseView program.

-S!

Hi Moggy,

my view is that we should be willing to release those elements that can be used in other scenarios, such as the planes etc, but a disfunctional world map and target set would be of dubious value outside the modding group itself. That said, letting others know what we have available here if they want to develop the project would be no bad thing...


cheers,


Pobs

Hello Pobs and others,

The world is not dysfunctional, in fact it works well, each airbase including the carriers and seaplane bases, has an appropriate runway from a list of selected types including the very basic jungle strip which has no airfield buildings. However no other local site tardata.dat editing has been done, and there are no mission or career files. But it is already certainly playable.

It looks we could therefore certainly release any planes that Kurt hasn't already released and call attention to the fact that the project needs any and all assistance to complete. We could announce at SimHq and I could put the files up on an interim CAW web page.

The main jobs as I see it are this:

aircraft selection screens
hangar screens
any other screens
career files
additional tmods
local base/town tardata editing
aircraft: Kingfisher 3dz and skin, skins for wildcat/dauntless light carrier group

We could use the flat carriers that Col G/Dean are producing for the Midway upgrade as an interim measure, other than that we can go with Pobs 3d US carrier and similar 3d Japanese carriers as developed.

What say you?

Moggy,

please don't misunderstand, by disfunctional, I wasn't being critical, I meant that with the tardata not done there are likely to be ctd's in campaign mode and the like so the map is likely to cause a lot of adverse comment if released as a working mod.. but I don't mind if the rest of the team want to release it, but we would need to stress it can currently only be used in single mission mode until a set of campaign files exist, and it is possible that some plane/target combinations may ctd isn't it, even in single mission mode, without the squad and campaign files done ?

cheers,


Pobs

Good point Pobs, there are a few bases and town locations not used and CTDs are possible.

As announced at SimHQ I am working up what we have for a "Lost Worlds of EAW" release. My aims are to at least have the scenario working for single missions. Accordingly:

(1) I have put together a selection of planes for the slots originally settled by Charles Gunst and Captain Kurt - with a couple of ammendments as noted in another post. We have all the 3dz models except a mkI Firefly, and Kurt's Fulmar is standing in for that. Charles already completed a complete fm/guns/ordnance setup for these planes.

(2) done some some quick hangar and aircraft selection screens

(3) The terrain tiles and target locations are already laid out. I am doing some quick tmod layouts with Jelly's editor to provide the carrier fleet and land base locations. I am hoping to squeeze out the CTD issue p[obs refers to in the post above

(4) I am using the two part PAW distance models for the US and Japanese carriers, and the one part PAW distance models for the battleships, cruisers, and destroyers.

(5) I will do a throw-together of what we have for the remaining ground object list.

This will then be release as a "par-baked" scenario so that anyone with the time and motivation can enhance and complete it.

There will be things for anyone to contribute - from aircraft skins and screens, making and skinning ships and ground objects, to a campaign setup for the operations set out in the chronology post.

There is a modified approach that may work.
Put out more public calls at SimHQ for unfinished work before releasing your "Lost Worlds".
Don't be general. Be specific. One needed thing at a time. (I learned posts with more than one subject don't work).
It's a little nudge. We all have current projects.
I approve of what you have done so far along this line. Keep pushing gently.
The recent discussion on flying against Zeroes helped bring a lot of "Midway" downloads, I believe.
Seeing the ship (or especially the carriers) about to sail without us may stir actiion.

I'm doing some work to improve the theatre - mainly as a break from Iraq - I'll see what else I can do before putting together the package.

Having now started this, I'm improving the theatre by completing Neira's terrain tiles, adding locations, adding towns and rivers etc to the land masses, have used three of the PAW distance models to stand as proxy for the US Fleet, small and (with some editing) escort carriers (will use similar models and the part completed fleet carrier from the new Midway for the IJN carriers) and working on a Kamikaze mod that has the actual kamikaze aircraft so far as the game is concerned as a piece of ordnance carried by another aircraft. Want to get this to work so that I can have incomming Kamikaze attacks on the carrier fleets.

I'm thinking the British aircraft are wasted in the British slots in this 1944-only CAW package, so am thinking about having aircraft from the 2nd and 4th Marine Aircraft Wings (Corsair, Avenger, Dauntless, and B25 Mitchell) the Navy Fleet Air Wing 2 (Ventura) and 7th Air Force (Thunderbolt and as the non-flyable, Liberator) instead. All these aircraft were involved in the attacks on Truk or the Marianas, or the Palaus, or the Phillipines along with the Carrier Air Groups.

But I need to find the bases they operated from.

This was supposed to be a rest from Iraq