MOGGY--(and anyone interested)
I have almost completed an unusual add-on.
It's "Just for fun" but shows what's possible with EAW.
Because Moggy was my kindly host for my first mod, I want to offer it here first, not necessarily for Midway alone, but as a general mod.
Working Title: "ET TU, MAGOO?" --after the nearsighted movie character.
Intended to make aircraft more visible at longer distances. It is meant to give an "up close and personal" feeling to the game as the planes are easily seen and identified more than sufficiently.
This is a small mod--about 350 kilobytes, and is applicable NOT JUST to Midway, but is meant to apply to all scenarios. It uses the aircraft already chosen by whatever scenario through batch file replacement. It will include a MAGOO UNDO to go back to normal quickly.
It will need to be tested on other machines than mine, and to make sure all aircraft are included. I do not anticipate any problems.
The second--and fun--part of the mod is NOT SMALL. I've cut it from 89 megs to about 75 megs and wish I could do more.
It uses WAV files freely available "for educational, etc. use", though copyrighted. These replace, or add to, the sound and radio files in standard EAW, providing music and humor.
Like the viewing mode, a set of batch files will replace (and save) the standard files, and then undo the mod when desired.
Unfortunately, because of size and time it takes to modify the .wav files(more than I dreamed), it is currently limited to American voices. British can be added, but that is not yet complete.
How close is this?
It's done.
Except for one thing: the mainscreen. I'm unable to solve the pallette problems. It's very puzzling to see other mainscreens using thousands of colors and I cannot. I've tried VonBeerhofen's palettes at 256 colors and the results are disappointing.
I also would like to replace the standard "word" sprites such as "configure game, view objects, etc.) with others, but don't know where they are located or how to change them.
Before sending these to THE GEN, I would appreciate a response on its suitability (and any help I can get on the Mainscreen).
--Wudpecker
MAGOO at MIDWAY
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Moggy
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Hello Woody,
If these are files for general distribution you'd be better announcing them at SimHQ and getting Sandbagger to host them. I would also be quite willing to host them on the Midway website as another set of alternative files for the Midway addon.
Give a few days to see if my current computer overhaul is done!
The text strings are found in various str files. The only way to find them is to take all the str files out of text_engine.cdf, render them all into plain text files using Paulo's dumpstring utility, and then searching for the one you want to change. Paulo's buildstring will then make your new string file.
If these are files for general distribution you'd be better announcing them at SimHQ and getting Sandbagger to host them. I would also be quite willing to host them on the Midway website as another set of alternative files for the Midway addon.
Give a few days to see if my current computer overhaul is done!
The text strings are found in various str files. The only way to find them is to take all the str files out of text_engine.cdf, render them all into plain text files using Paulo's dumpstring utility, and then searching for the one you want to change. Paulo's buildstring will then make your new string file.
Moggy
www.mogggy.org
www.mogggy.org
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Wudpecker