Changing screen size and more - basic configuration changes in EAW

[Moggy]

There are two ways to make basic setup changes in EAW.

But first make a copy of your original eaw.ini file, so you can easily swap back to it.

(1) In the game click on "Game Set-Up" from the opening menu.

First look at the top of the screen. If you are flying 1.6 there are a number of additional settings you can make. For the moment just look at "Extra Squads" and "Quick Mission Type".

"Extra Squads" was first introduced in EAW 1.2, and expanded through the various Code Group releases. It can create extra-large battles in most missions. It does tend to make encounters bigger and more intense. You can reduce the value by clicking on it. The value can range from 0 (normal amount), to 17 which can produce a sky filled with aircraft, always an EAW specialty, with massive dogfights called “furballs”. Up to 256 aircraft seen at once. Play Speed (Frames-Per-Second) may be affected, however, when large numbers of aircraft are in view. Changing your view or using a lower number of extra squads will speed up the FPS. The possible settings are:

"0" No extra squad.
"1-3" normal extra squad.
"4" all Bombers get two escorting fighter squads
"5" all US Bombers get two escorting fighter squads
"6" only 1940/43 US Bombers get two escorting fighter squads
"7" only 1944/45 US Bombers get two escorting fighter squads
"8" all US+Brit Bombers get two escorting fighter squads
"9" only 1940/43 US+Brit Bombers get two escorting fighter squads
"10" only 1944/45 US+Brit Bombers get two escorting fighter squads
"11" all Brit Bombers get two escorting fighter squads
"12" only 1940/43 Brit Bombers get two escorting fighter squads
"13" only 1944/45 Brit Bombers get two escorting fighter squads
"14" all Ger Bombers get two escorting fighter squads
"15" only 1940/43 Ger Bombers get two escorting fighter squads
"16" only 1944/45 GerBombers get two escorting fighter squads
"17" Fighter squads can have up to 64 planes, always two Bomber squads will appear, instead of one.

"Quick Mission Type" enables you to choose what type of mission you get if you select "Quick Mission" from the main menu. The types are Random, Sweep, Intercept, Protect, Interdict, and Last Type. Just click to change.

Now, looking at the main part of the menu, this gives you four options: "Difficulty" - "Control" - "Graphics" - "Sound"

Under "Difficulty" you can change all the various gameplay elements (under the headings "flight", "combat", and "display") that graduate how you are able to fly, from "Novice" to "Ace"

Under "Control" you are able to to set up joysticks, throttles, pedals, etc and in the advanced section you can edit the keyboard commands.

Under "Graphics" you can set level of detail and special effects.

Under "Sound" you can set sound quality, volume, distance, and subtitles (if you are using a non-native language pack you might want to use these!)

For more detail on the in-game setup menu, download the original EAW Pilot's Guide HERE. But remember it was written for EAW 1.0 back in 1998.

With the more modern machines, faster and with more memory, you might want simply to max out most of the options. However, if you are using a older retro games machine, you might want to consider toning some of them down.

When you are done making changes, just click on "Exit" to leave the Setup menu. EAW writes any changes you make into the eaw.ini file in the EAW root directory

(2) Manually edit the "eaw.ini" file

More experienced users might like to do this. It gives you fine control over all your EAW settings.

The eaw.ini lurks in the EAW root folder, where the eaw.exe also resides. Open eaw.ini with any plain text edito - Windows Notepad will do the job. Do not use any sort of word processor, because this will insert odd characters into file which you don't want.

As you will see, there are many, many, settings in the ini file, most of which you are probably never going to need, or want, to edit manually. But there a few settings which you will want to edit here, and some are more convenient to edit here, and some which (if you really want to edit them at all!) can only be edited here.

We'll concentrate on just a few basic things. Let's start with the most basic setting you might want to edit here, your game screen size, which you can't do in the in-game setup menu because higher resoloutions were only introduced in EAW 1.1

In the eaw.ini file find the section that looks like this:

[GRAPHICS]
Width=1920
Height=1080

That's setup for my screen. You should set it to what screen size you like to use. Suppose you wanted the trad size of 1024x768. You would change those settings to:

[GRAPHICS]
Width=1024
Height=768

And then save the file.

Suppose you wanted to change the keyboard controls for EAW. You can do this through the Game setup screen, in the game, but sometimes it's easier to come to the ini and see how everything is laid out. In eaw.ini find the section headed:

[Remappable Keys]

under this is the complete list of control keys. Suppose you wanted to change the key combination to take in-game screenshots. You look down the section for

ScreenCapture=DELETE

So currently EAW would be using the "delete" key to take a screenshot. Suppose instead you wanted to use the keyboard combination "Shift" and "Z"? You would change the setting to

ScreenCapture=SHIFT Z

And then save the file.

You get the idea.

One thing to remember - if you already have a working EAW setup and you download a new EAW version, copy the eaw.ini in your established set up into the new setup. Might save a lot of time!

The Readme for EAW 1.2 notes that there is a nuclear option if you mess-up your eaw.ini file and don't have a backup: "That's okay, it's easy to fix. Simply delete it, and the next time you start the game, a fresh new eaw.ini will be created. [Note that this will erase all of your personalized configuration settings.]"

In addition. UAW 1.6 can be fine tuned by the use of .mpf files and presence files.
see viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6205