Hi Ralf.

Only on TNT were 256 slot pallets available. Currently the slots are stuck with the EAW default pallets. 24bit will come into it's own when we go to 512 or 1024 textures. At that resolution 256 colours would look horrible, because of the limited colours.

I'm going tonight get my compiler up and running and look at the sprite code. From what I remember it was a question of changing the animation calls from reading 4 points on a texture in sequence, to reading a sequence of textures, either 128 or 256.

But, that would be a waste of time too then?

16 times anisotropic filtering slows the game down to unplayable in hardware accellerated D3D mode, do you think this works better in a software emulator? How should we deal with the distortions the wrapper creates on widescreen monitors? I mean the reticules are flattened ovals and planes and objects look like an elephant sat on em.
I don't understand why you're telling them that the Glidewrapper is cool. I guess you're still on one of those old fashioned type of monitors running 1024*768. No wonder you have decent framerates.
Technology has allready moved on Ralph and it seems to me that your advice doesn't take that into account. It also doesn't take into account what low end machines are only capable off.
I'm a bit saddened to see this game reverting to the same old problematic approach which led to so many difficulties for modders as well as for players in the past. Glide and D3D.
I expect the same questions, why does my plane have such weird colors or there are black spots in my sky or terrain and my game has blocky propellors.
There's just not an easy way out is there? One which works for all and solves all problems all at once for everyone and maintains online compattabillaty inspite of hardware differences. Ah well, perhaps something for the future.

VonBeerhofen

Hm, one second, its you telling us that all the LP players use very old systems??

I run a flat screen here and once again its only you who claim that the glide wrapper cause strange things.

Of course if you, or someone else, run a old system, the glidewrapper is not that a good solution, but on a new system it must work, or you have messed up something.

If the glidewrapper show black spots, the system must be very old, but this again dont fit to your statement regarding new monitors and time is marching on etc.

For now i dont saw ANY bad results with the glide wrapper. The pictures are exact the same like in 3d, only a little more smooth in many cases.

Strange that its ONLY you who experience such things.

Only you cant run EAW1.28 same good as EAW1.2.
Only you did destroy your PC by using OAW.
Only you get disorted pitures using the glidewrapper.

Slowly i think you dont know what you are doing and what you are talking about.

Well, lets try to leave the fights aside...

I think that any eye candy for any game will be always wellcome even if it is sometimes that small or just saw for few seconds...the idea is that EAW or any other game only will stay for long time if it have both: good playablity and good/reasonable eye candy. I like very much all the work that all modders did for this game: it's now better in playability with all the community fix and also looking much better, IMHO. Obviously we have different taste and habilities, then some modders will like more to work on playability and others will make the same for eye candy stuff. Both are essential.

Now, back to the topic:

After some days testing a lot of EAW community stuff, I'm playing EAW using 1.28D, ETO terrain, 24 bitmultiskin, d3d in WS aspect (awesome!!!), etc. So, my explosions are from 1.28d. Then some questions/suggestions (as I don't have the knowledge to make mods for eaw):

1. Is't possible to make the bomb dusty cloud (present on 1.28x) with more mix colors - I mean from all brown to some brown/grey mix to seem more real mix of dusty and smoke?

2. Is't possible to make the bomb dusty cloud stay for more time as in real life?

3. And to finish, the sound of the explosions is in truth ok, what is not good is that EAW only plays the bomb explosions IF you are at some bomb camera (f11,f12), I mean, if you are very near but the camera is the cockpit or any plane external you will not listem bombs even if you are very near them. Is't possible to fix this?

Cheers!

Hello,

1. yes, you need to edit or replace the "HITGRD.SPT". Maybe there is one that you like in one of the effect packs.

2. Thats hardcoded, so not realy. You need to be aware that as longer the smoke stay with same quality, as more the PC performece will suffer. One possibility to get longer standing smoke is to adjust the weapons in the weapons.dat. By giving them a higher explosive power, the explosition and dust will be bigger and so the dust will stay longer.

3. Cofigure game-> sound -> increase the external sound volume.
I can hear the sound from inside the cockpit when i throttle back. I doubt that you would hear anything else than your engine apart from maybe a nosemounted cannon between your legs. The combat planes miss any sound absorber and the exhaust in most cases points right to the cockpit. Even when throttle back, this is very loud. Not to talk about the wind sound.

Another possibility might be a louder "bomb" sound.

Greetings,

Knegel

I seem to recall, we wanted to add ambient sounds, for the f12 button, near the ground, but we could not agree on the bird songs. Others wanted people screaming, air raid sirens for the cities, chuffing trains, and lots of other cool stuff, which might have blown the valves in the EAW, 78rpm sound system.

1. Thanks!I will look for it, seems easy.
2. Uhnnn...ok, I have no idea where to look, then I will left this as a suggestion.
3. I already tried to raise the sound but don't work, also the same with external sounds...seems that some type of ambient sound needs to be added or at least some adjust on the bomb sound properties...but again i don't know if this can be done in EAW, then i left it as a suggestion too.

@Knegel and Col. Gibbon,
Perhaps the above could be added on the next 1.28x if doable, anyway EAW is already so good. Thanks!

I'm sorry to be the one with a different computer Ralph, but then again there's also the people with Voodoo cards which can't run D3D or the way their textures are created. And then you have the people who have a 7217 error and those who're on very old computers and old operating systems and if I remember correctly RAF_Roy who could only run this game in software mode and new cases show up regularly, remember the guy with his 7217 error on Win98, running 1.28d?
Why can't you accept that there are so many different systems out there, each one with it's own perks?
Yes most people in LP do have very old machines and we have pretty old members also (72 is currently our most senior member and if Tosh is still alive then it's 73), but I allready told you I have more then one computer, in fact I have 5, ranging from PI to Quadcore. I also have different monbitors.
I'm not the only one who mentioned this, as you keep suggesting time and time again, a very recent post also mentioned the flattened view with the Glidewrapper in widescreen mode. Once again, I'm only telling you what happens here and once again your only reaction is to turn me into an idiot who doesn't know what he's doing. I think the pictures I show tell a different story though.
Black spots are caused by wrongly created textures which use the zero index as a color. This index is reserved for transparency on most videocards but when used show black pixels. I guess that tells me that you have no idea what you're doing because this information dates back to around the year 2000 when these problems first started showing up and has long been explained through the research I did on different videocards and the differences between Glide and D3D textures.

VonBeerhofen

Geforce FX/ ATI Radeon9600 and newer dont suffer black spots anymore, they all support Tier2.
Older cards, but even the early cards that support Tier2, run EAW better in 3dmode(faster fps), so there is no need for glide at all, as long as the fog work in 3d mode.

If you encounter black spots and disorted graphics with a newer card, you made some sort of mistake in the glidewrapper config.

Otherwise i only can repeat myself:

Strange that its ONLY you who experience such things.

Only you cant run EAW1.28 same good as EAW1.2.
Only you did destroy your PC by using OAW.
Only you get disorted pitures using the glidewrapper.

You don't really seem to be interested in others people's problems as long you don't have it. Here's Rubini's thread on the subject, I guess you didn't read it. It's exactly the same observation as I'm having.

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/2947080/1/D3d_is_really_more_slow_FPS_th.html

Yes my preferred card is an oldie, FX5500 256MB in my old machine. Just lets make things clear here,
there are many people still flying this game with old setups and very likely simmilar problems.
You just don't care about their problems, or mine. Yes, I may be the only one posting about this as I think these people allready found it's not working on their machines and as usual that's normally end of story, let's go do something else then.
If you don't read about other people's problems then ofcourse I will be the only one who reports this, in your eyes. But I've seen about 5 of these posts in the past allready, you just didn't read em.
Ah well, for me it's more important that I know and keep notes, so I can take these problems into account, as you obviously will not.

VonBeerhofen