Another attempt: I've been searching and searching to get this gem running again. Quite frequently I hit upon guides or even my own posts and searches from years ago. I even build a Win98 - voodoo5 - Athlon XP 2600+ rig to run this game again.

But to cut a long story short, I managed to get a 1.28e Version running on my main machine at last. What a joyful moment that was! Thanks to this forum, I read about the 3dWindower which cured the last big trouble - the completely garbled screens in every menu of the game. I use zeckensack's glide wrapper: With a 560ti and a Q9550, the game finally beats my V5/Athlon XP in frames - sometimes ;-).

What I found most intimidating about this whole "revival" is the incredible amount of outdated guides and stuff in the net. Even the sticky in the forum soon leads into dead links. There is so much stuff, but it is all kinda useless to me cause I don't know if it still works or is meanwhile integrated in the 1.28e version. As an example, I liked the more distant plane detail reduction (called render mode iirc). Is it now incooporated or does the 'patch' still work? I really don't know where to start these days.

So I need to get a few questions off my chest:

1. How do I get the old style/look back in 1.28? I tried copying the terrain.cdf from an older install, but that didn't work. I'd like to play the old game too.

2. Where do I find a really up to date guide on what I need to get or should get THESE DAYS.

3. What other advise do you guys have for me?


And somewhat OT, what other games get rescued by that amazing cure 3dwindower?

Hi Tiefflieger.

Nice to see another old hand up and running.

EAW has been a WIP game ever since it came out in 1998, and nothing stands still as you must have noticed.

Even now, 1.28e will soon be obsolete, as you'll have 1.30 to play with, which will have a load more cool things in it, and that will not be the end.

Check out the latest terrains, but to run them in 24bit you'll need to run the game in D3D not Glide. If you can't run D3D you'll be restricted to 256x256 textures in 8bit, but the skins are so good these days, the old HR format look quite good, just the 512x512 24bit look much better.

Check out Iron Mike's page on Tally-Ho for Multi Skin sets, and Saggbin's page for the best terrains for ETO.

We are so few here, still working on this game, you are welcome to sort the things you found to be wrong.
We know about most of them, but we just dont find the time to fix this, you know, also we have a real life.

Regarding your questions:
1. Install EAW1.28e and run it, almost all graphics are the default EAW1.2 graphics(skins, terrain, water, citys etc). If you have ETO_01 installed, this is already a addon!! Unload the related dir.set file with the dir.set-picker or OAW1.28 from your EAW root, then EAW1.28e is default.

2. Since EAW1.28 is work in progress and cause noone know what is your need, there is no guide. The best you can find for EAW1.28 is in Mr.Jellys signature. Other want to play EAW1.2, or VonBeerhofens version of EAW. You are welcome to ask specific questions, of how to handle things.

3. To get the most recent EAW1.28e, download all things from Mr.Jellys signature and get used to OAW1.28(the addon manager).
Its also worth to take a look onto the EAW1.28a-c readmes to get an idea of the new features of the EAW1.28 series.

Actually, I was mainly interested to get it back up and running. With XP, there were so many hurdles, that I was quite content to only get the original running on a 256MB retro crate.

When I start up EAW 1.28e, D3D is not even an option I can choose from. I wonder why that is so? The machine reverts to DisplayDevice=0 if I start with 1. I have seen screenshots where it is run in windows mode.

I am also struggeling with the throttle. It is mapped to the scroll wheel of the mouse and not to the joysticks throttle. I have to check that one.

From what I read, EAW on Win7 gives less trouble with Nvidia cards than XP?


Indeed I have some Expansion ETO_01 installed. I just followed a guide on how to patch to 1.28e. Obviously, I overpatched slightly.
So I need only install one file (the 1.28e patch) into the folder with the CD stuff then, and get the retro look. I'll try that.

I also wonder how close the next update is. It might not make much sense to figure the whole manager-stuff out, only to redo everthing in a few weeks. I have waited almost 10 years for this, I am not in a hurry. My kids were born in 97 and 99, so I had little time then, and the machine was barely capable. By the time it got better, it would not run anymore without complications, but played so much better. Soon it would not run at all anymore, thanks to Nvidia's later drivers. With 1.30, it will require oAW1.30 (or was the version just coincidence?)

As to the many many old guides on the net, I guess there is nothing one can do about it. The same fate goes for the internet as a whole. When the net was rather new, information could readily be recovered. By now the net is a swamp in which much got lost by hiding it within tons of trivia.

I'll have to check out about the dir.set picker and OAW 1.28. Does one need both or is one a subset of the other?

If you use glide card(voodoo5) EAW might not show 3d3 as option.

If EAW run better under Win7 depending to the vid card and driver.

To make the mouse wheel working as throttle you must have adjusted the EAW.ini. Delete the related entrys, restart EAW, then set the wanted controller under "Configure-Game -> Controll"(be sure the Joystick is plugged).

Actually, on the retro machine, the voodoo5 does work both in glide and in D3D. It is the 560ti that only runs in glide (via zeckensack).




The mouse wheel is currently working as the throttle, while the throttle of the joystick is without function. Rudder and stick got mapped to the joystick correctly though. I'll try your suggestion.

Thanks for all the help.

Joystick problem is solved, was mapped to port 0, now to port 2.

Is it possible to run EAW in a form of wide screen mode?

I'm holidaying in Australia, but back in France I have a 1920x1080 monitor and I can run in full screen in d3d by editing the width and height to those values in the "eaw.ini" file. I use a slightly smaller resolution 1680x1050 using the d3d windower. Read my recent thread on that topic.

Jel

I searched for widescreen and found a screenshot of yours showing the lack of fog in D3D

As I said, I don't even get D3D as an option. And I have not yet found a way to run the in flight game windowed either. I will have to pick glide. Since glide seems to demand 4:3, which could be streched to 16:10, I wonder if it is possible to make the game render a distorted picture to glide output, which then would be streched fullscreen (by the screen itself) to the correct value.

Or is there a way to get this via Zeckensack's glide wrapper?

I have not come across a card which only uses glide in win 7.
The glidewrappers are usually used to emulate glide on cards which only allow d3d.
If your card can only use glide what happens if you set your width and height to your screen's natural resolution?
You would need to uninstall the glidewrapper first in order to test this.
The other possibility is the use of nGlide which is more flexible than Zeckensack's.
I'm also curious regarding your inability to use windowed mode. What did you try?

Jel