European Air War - The Gen

Well, I did a bit of poking around and I can confirm the OP is correct. The campaigns seem to be stuffed, right across the board. Not only that but a lot of things aren't working properly.

I tried April26th old map, April26th new map and Sept23rd old map RADAR, with ETO2015, Ray'sETO Target Set, SPAW final cut and standard EAW. Nothing works right. Mostly I get CTD's upon entering the cockpit, both in campaign and single mission mode (yes, I cleared out the gamedata folder), sometimes there's a CTD when finishing a mission, sometimes when selecting loadouts. There doesn't seem to be rhyme or reason. Plus, more than half the time the instant missions CTD's.

Lots of other stuff too. Like the "standard" terrain included with ETO2015 has changed. It's nicer looking but everything is shifted a bit so all the carefully placed TMOD's, like docks and ships in port are now on dry land.

The SPAW music stays in place after a different scenario is chosen and.......................THE REVOLVER CANNON SOUND IS MISSING FOR THE UMPTEETH TIME!!!!!!!!

I have to wonder, how many players have tried to use the game and gave up because almost nothing works as it should. It may be that someone with the expertise to suss out all these problems MIGHT have a working game but the average player is just going to walk away. I know I would.

Try it yourselves and see if you concur.

Basically, we took our collective eyes off the ball once we stopped major modifications and now we're in the deep end because there are so many variables it's going to be hard to isolate the problems. I don't care about excuses or reasons, I want EAW back on track whatever that may take.

I haven't run campaigns for some time, my work has exclusively been with single missions, so I've certainly had my eye off the campaign ball.

Isn't the answer to find which version (128 to 150) does work properly with campaigns, and make that the standard campaign version?

Ray, I'm assuming when you were testing SPAW you must have had a definitive setup which worked okay. Why not make that the definitive setup for users to download, whichever version of the exe you used.

Later ....

I just ran the UAWMarch27th2023 1.6 setup which I keep carefully to one side, unmodded and untouched. I loaded April5thOldMap100 as the eaw.exe, the "Default European Theatre" and the "EAW-default" planeset. I started a BoB career, and then a 1943 career, RAF and Luftwaffe. I got all the right maps showing waypoints and targets, and flaknests. The only oddity is that I got a medal for the first mission.

Later still ....

The oddity is that you get a medal for each mission. Can this be sorted?

Even more later ....

Ran a BoB career in 1.5 using UAWOldMap(26Sep2016)V9.exe, the "Deafault 1.2" theatre and "ETO Planeset 5" which is the default EAW aircraft (albeit up to date models). Career setup fine, career missions setup fine with waypoint and flak maps. Mission flew fine. Shot down enough enemy to get mission success message from the controller, ordered squad to return to base, ended mission, but did not get the medal problem. No medals dished out with the eggs and bacon Then flew it in 160OldMapV32 (13/4/17) and got the same results.

I think we should coordinate our selections, run the same campaigns with the same plane sets, same execs, same individual aircraft and see if the results match.

However, as noted in my last post, this goes beyond campaign issues. There are multiple problems spanning all facets of play. Misaligned terrain set, wrong music, instant mission CTD's, missing gun sounds and loadout screen CTD's are all unrelated to campaigns.

I'm wondering if the problems are not problems of packaging, and trying to run very different campaigns/theatres off a "standard" setup.

For example, I'm working on the Italy/Balkan/Ukraine theatre in an entirely separate 1.6 setup. It has the files I want (terrain, tmods, sounds etc) because I put them there. There are 30 different scenario setups and accompanying planesets. It doesn't have anything else. I need to do this to see the wood from the trees.

If I then try to accomadate this within the "standard" setup it gets very unwieldly with the over 100 planesets already there.

I'm thinking we would be better off with separate West European, Asia/Pacific, Med/Desert/, and Balkans/East front setups. Disk space these days for old timer EAW is scarecely an issue.

We also need to retrieve the non-default full campaign setups. These are only Spain, Malta/Desert, Finland, and your SPAW. Jel has done various setups of these for online play - but we need to restore them properly for offline campaign play. I am fairly certain there will be one or other of the 1.6 exes (even if an early one) which will work properly with the campaign mode.

By all means let start with some tests.

OK, here we go.

Theater - Default European Theater
Exec - Sept 23rd Old Map RADAR
Planeset - ETO 1940 BOB

In career select No.1 Squadron (Hurricane).

Ist mission medal even though I aborted the mission after enemy sighted.
2nd mission CTD.

rotton50 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 29, 2024 4:07 pm Theater - Default European Theater
Exec - Sept 23rd Old Map RADAR
Planeset - ETO 1940 BOB

In career select No.1 Squadron (Hurricane).

Ist mission medal even though I aborted the mission after enemy sighted.
2nd mission CTD.

I get the same. And I note the Hurricane has no gun sight.

Ray, do you still have a 150 setup?

This uses UAW150V4

Set up as follows:

Exe: UAW150OldMap(26Sep2016)
Theatre: 00-Default ETO Theatre
Planeset: 10-ETO Planeset 5

Run default BoB campaign for Hurricane.

I can start next mission with no problems, and there are no instant medals.

Same result with 160OldMapV32.exe in that setup.

However, if I repeat with 160OldMapV32.exe in any of my 160 setups I get CTD on going to "next mission". Though I don't get instant medals.

Moggy wrote: ↑Sat Mar 30, 2024 11:13 am Ray, do you still have a 150 setup?
This uses UAW150V4
Set up as follows:

Exe: UAW150OldMap(26Sep2016)
Theatre: 00-Default ETO Theatre
Planeset: 10-ETO Planeset 5

I don't have 26Sep2016 exec in 1.5 so I ran Oct24th instead. Theater and plane set are the same as yours.

1st mission - OK and no medal.
2nd mission - pitch dark on take off (never seen that before in campaign mode), mission OK
3rd mission - pitch dark on take off, CTD after using Alt /N to get to enemy aircraft.

rotton50 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 30, 2024 1:18 pm I don't have 26Sep2016 exec in 1.5 so I ran Oct24th instead. Theater and plane set are the same as yours.

1st mission - OK and no medal.
2nd mission - pitch dark on take off (never seen that before in campaign mode), mission OK
3rd mission - pitch dark on take off, CTD after using Alt /N to get to enemy aircraft.

I've dropped a copy of UAW150OldMap(26Sep2016) into your folder.

With this exe in the 1.5 setup I don't get CTDs either on "next mission" or by using "alt-N"

With that exec l get no planes on the selection screen. If I switch to the Oct24thOldMap exec I do get the planes.

That suggests our 1.5 setups are different. I'll package mine up and let you have it.

Ray, I've put UAW150V4Copy.zip in your folder. It's a stripped down version of the 1.5 theatre that seems to work fine for me with the default campaigns. It only has the default 1.2 theatre and ETO planeset, and just the one 1.5 exe.

Can you see what results you get with the various default campaigns?

I'm going to see if I can find an early 1.6 setup that works similarly.

It came to me last night that we might be two problems intertwined.

1 - Screwy execs
2 - Problems with the PSM program. Some of these problems we're seeing may be due to files not swapping correctly. For instance, the music from SPAW does not unload when another theater is selected when using the 1.6 version of PSM yet in my 1.5 setup the music is correct. And then there's the supposed EAW default terrain which is NOT the original EAW terrain set but something that looks quite a bit better but unfortunately isn't aligned exactly the same thus throwing off the TMOD placement in ETO2015.

I'm going to put the 1.5 PSM program in my 1.6 setup and see if my theory is correct.

The problems Iseem to be getting with 1.6 exes flying default carreers are these:

(1) CTD on clicking next mission
(2) instant medal awards
(3) gunsight 3dz and spt not displaying.

From experiments done this morning, the last 1.6 exe I have which does not exhibit one or other of these problems is UAW160 Old Map 2018 V7.exe dated 7/5/18 - but that only works when flown in a 1.5 setup (using the 1.5 selector) modified with savedata renamed gamedata .

For what it is worth, Alt-G might fix the gun-sight problem. I haven't had it recently but I seem to recall that occasionally for some reason it defaults as off instead of on.