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#4364578 - 06/18/17 08:04 AM Re: Attending a Wake [Re: JACKSPRAT]  
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Brit44 'Aldo' Offline
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Now that I think of it, why not have VBH give you his version of the code and his assembly breakdown of the exes? Sorry VBH, just pointing out the logical, legalities of Marks statement. Hex editing the exe is against the end user agreement that accompanied EAW..


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#4364579 - 06/18/17 08:16 AM Re: Attending a Wake [Re: JACKSPRAT]  
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Brit44 'Aldo' Offline
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wink and just to be a sharp stick in the eye.

Is Tommo Inc (which has such grand resources) so unskilled that they can not convert assembly language to C++? Yes you are correct. I am being a total ass with that statement.


TPA who TWI
"The 10th Amendment simply says that any powers that aren’t mentioned in the Constitution as belonging to the government belong to the states themselves."
#4364691 - 06/18/17 10:53 PM Re: Attending a Wake [Re: JACKSPRAT]  
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Personally i would pursue trying to get some if not all the mapped out effects of the FXEXE. I mean that's the down side of not using C++ to code it, there is no real code available. Just what VBH knows and has notes about.

So your saying hex editing the exe is against some the EUA?

and for a tick barred under the skin...

What about making the exe not require a CD, or the so called standalone versions that have game data from the original game. Or what about all the data from previous modders of EAW.

You all are hypocrites. lol

Anyhow I still think the best thing to do is get Tommo the src and let them make the game dx9c and code the frontend upto 32 bit. Then the old D3D slow downs won't be a problem anymore and the drop down menus can finally be added to the frontend.
Of course only if the code is open sourced tho for v1.2 by Tommo.

#4364929 - 06/20/17 12:44 AM Re: Attending a Wake [Re: MarkEAW]  
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I really want to post some stupid pictures but I don't want to get in trouble again. I'll just watch from over in the corner...........


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#4365643 - 06/23/17 05:19 AM Re: Attending a Wake [Re: JACKSPRAT]  
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Brit44 'Aldo' Offline
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Stick around dBeav. This is a discussion not a war.

Mark,
The no CD hack should be removed from every version of the source code, in my opinion. This hack was created before the code group was given the code by Atari (if my memory is correct). I believe that VBH's hex editing is in violation of the EUA of EAW. That does not diminish my respect for his skills. I also believe that Gibbo's link to a playable EAW 1.26 is an IP theft. It is a requirement of the copyright owner to defend there IP. I have not seen any defense of the IP from the current owner.

If Thommo.inc wants to make the code open source, they can simply release the non compilable code that was given to the code group and also forwarded to them by a member of the code group when they requested it.. It is my recollection that the code group were the ones that made the source code compile in VS6 from the source obtained when Atari purchased the rights to EAW.

If I remember the Tommo email and postings correctly, it was 'Give us what you have and we will take it to the next level'. The responce was 'here is what was given to us'.

I do not see the code group members as hypocrites, I see them as hobbiests defending there efforts against the latest owner of a product's name and good will to make a fast buck from the modding community that kept some value to the IP of an elder game.

PS. You did not respond to my question for why you thought the EAW community is owed a full release of the modders knowledge. I repete my offer to supplying code that contains both DX6 and DX9 versions for DX rendering, providing they are willing to work within the code group agreement.
Al

Last edited by Brit44 'Aldo'; 06/23/17 05:39 AM.

TPA who TWI
"The 10th Amendment simply says that any powers that aren’t mentioned in the Constitution as belonging to the government belong to the states themselves."
#4365693 - 06/23/17 04:53 PM Re: Attending a Wake [Re: JACKSPRAT]  
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The source code standalones still contain original game data regardless if the cd check is there or not, including un credited work. I was just stating facts.

Tommo Inc. doesn't have the src.
The "give us what you have..." statement from them, is BS aswell. You wouldn't need to give them anything but v1.2x src. There would need to be an agreement that the 1.2x code be used as open source by them as so the improvements can be added to the existing source code mods. Also The modders don't need to defend anything, other than their lack of crediting the original others of the add-ons they used in the first place.

You guys clearly have "sides" and you clearly are holding back modder knowledge and tools, hence why it helped the number of players and new modders to dwindle to nothing. This was all denied, but now your admitting to holding back , finally. wow. Your making progress. If you don't document anything, nothing new (including people) will come from it. But your group or "side" has seen to that. Why you think you need to hold back on something you never can profit from is startling. But controlling.

The original agreement is to the EAW community not some boring , communist, code group, that over sees nothing, but holding everything from the other people that wanted to play and mod something., that now left. I tried to explain it, I can't be going over every detail over and over, some things need to be learned for you selves, but i think your fully aware of the conditions you spew, thats all, its not really the situation of you not knowing.

#4365713 - 06/23/17 07:17 PM Re: Attending a Wake [Re: JACKSPRAT]  
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MrJelly Offline
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Mark you have just shot yourself in the foot brilliantly.
.
Over two years ago I gave the company contracted by Thommo.inc the source code we originally received.
They were unable to compile it.
I also gave them a working 1.2x setup, but they did not want their clients to have to use a the d3d windower program to circumvent 7217, so they were not prepared to release it..
I am not giving them any material made by me, or the code group. It is our intellectual property, and is not available for others to make a fast buck from.
Only two days ago I contacted them again, as my email reply from two years ago has not been answered. So far there has been no response.

From now on I will only be posting online game sessions and updates in this forum.


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Mark Twain: I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.

I am now of an age at which I no longer need to suffer fools gladly
#4365733 - 06/23/17 09:18 PM Re: Attending a Wake [Re: JACKSPRAT]  
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MarkEAW Offline
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How did I shoot my self in the foot Jel?
Sounds like your just waiting for something to happen? are you looking for a change in activity then?
For people that feel EAW should go on, you do everything you can not to let it.

If you gave them the v1.2x code you didn't help them at all to compile it, maybe they need a list of files that only need to be included. They clearly need help if that's the case, so why not? Why are you so hard pressed to not help, your little group is.
Did you intentionally give them a #%&*$# code and start laughing afterwards? Help them get passed the intentional setup, you got help to fix up the code.

no one said to give them your so called intellectual property. Who cares anyhow. They just want 1.2 working really, A simple compatible exe that they have to make cause it can't be provided to them.

#4365819 - 06/24/17 09:02 AM Re: Attending a Wake [Re: JACKSPRAT]  
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MrJelly Offline
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I did not want to respond, but there are factual errors in your post.

Quote
you got help to fix up the code
The only external help we received was late in the play by Zeus who fixed the code so that we could use Glide3 and BMP files in Glide.


Quote
A simple compatible exe that they have to make cause it can't be provided to them

You seem to be confused about what Tommo/Nightdive want to do, which is to release a 1.2 exe which runs via steam on modern PCs, without a glidewrapper or a windower.
I cannot compile any exe that fully meets their requirements, so I sent them one that may require the GlideWrapper, the d3d windower, or both.
It worked in Vista, Win7, Win8.1 and Win 10, but they were not prepared to release something that may require external files.

Last edited by MrJelly; 06/24/17 09:09 AM.

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Mark Twain: I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.

I am now of an age at which I no longer need to suffer fools gladly
#4365825 - 06/24/17 10:46 AM Re: Attending a Wake [Re: JACKSPRAT]  
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MarkEAW Offline
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You didn't want to reply? thats the whole purpose of the forum is to reply, reply???

eh, I'm referring to when the code was first being worked out to be compiled and fixed. You had MPS EAW Team memeber (s) helping then...
But you why won't you help them compile the code? Just to get them started?

I'm not confused, I said all they really want is a working v1.2 exe. I meant to say 'compatible' with the newer Windows OS.
The Steam overlay is separate from the game.

#4365948 - 06/25/17 11:12 AM Re: Attending a Wake [Re: JACKSPRAT]  
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MrJelly Offline
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This is who we are dealing with: http://www.nightdivestudios.com/games



The original contact I received contained this:

So you are a part of the group? That's good. I have some nice news for you.

I work for a video game company and we specialize in re-releasing old games on modern platforms. We are currently contracted by a company who owns the rights to European Air War. The company bought the rights from Atari a few months ago and we have been tasked with putting the game out on Steam.

Instead of just putting the game on Steam and that be the end of it, I was wondering if you and your group would like to come together and work on something special for the Steam release of the game.

I can't really say much more than that right now. The release date of the game is set for the end of this month.

If you are interested, please let me know and I can and get something worked out.


Note that this is for a Steam release.
As a result their company received a full working 1.2X installation with the 7217 fix and Ctrl-G framerate display included.
They also received the source code from which I compiled this exe.

To make sure I have just recompiled it It runs in Windows10, but needs the windower to avoid a garbled map screen in Windows 7. I no longer have Windows 8 or 8.1

Later in the proceedings I received this

And I don't know if we can ask customers to go through the process of having to assign an exe to a global dll hook. We need a fully modular system that allows the game to be installed anywhere and the user just clicks Play. We really can't ask them to do complicated stuff after the purchase of the game.


The final thing I received was this from the CEO on April 7th 2015:


Greetings Tony,

I believe you have been in contact with one of my employees, a number of months ago regarding the source code for European Air War. I wanted to reach out to you personally and see if you had any interest in helping us re-release the game with the numerous fixes/patches/improvements you and your community have made to it.

We currently have the rights to re-distribute the game, but as you know the retail version does not function on current operating systems. We'd really appreciate your help on this so please let me know what your thoughts are on this and we'll go from there.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Stephen
.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

My reply:

Greetings.
Luckily I checked my junk mail folder before emptying it.
I think that it is important to outline some critical issues with the way EAW runs.
The released game crashes immediately on most systems because the exe checks if the player's graphics card/driver combination can handle 8 bit graphics, and nowadays it cannot. The dreaded 7217 error message is generated, and this became a real problem when players started installing better cards and drivers back in about 2001. The background to this is that the EAW selection screens are in a compressed form of 8 bit PCX files, which the exe decompresses.
A friend of one of the original programmers did a hack to make the exe believe that a 16 bit card could handle 8 bit, and this fixed the problem for several years. One annoying side effect is slow and stuttery mouse movement and reaction to mouseclicks, but this is far better than 7217.
The game runs well once selections are made and it is launched.
However, the problem is re-emerging because many card/driver combinations cannot handle 16 bit graphics these days. I am getting the 7217 with the Windows10 tech preview.

Another alternative is the d3dwindower program that runs games in a window. I just ran the 1.2exe with the no CD crack in Windows10 using the windower, without the 7217 error. However, the windower is ancient, and some features do not work in operating systems later than Vista. One key feature for me is that in Vista I can set EAW as the "current program" in the windower and If I fly online at GameRanger EAW runs in a window via the windower. In later operating systems this does not happen, and the game runs in full screen, but generates the 7217 error for me in Windows 10 because it is not running through the windower. So, playing online at GameRanger is not possible in Windows 10 for me. I play online at Gameranger in XP, Vista and Windows 7. Windows 8.1 works too, but there is a slow frame rate problem.

We have never been able to replace the compressed 8 bit PCX screens with other graphic forms such as 24 bit BMPs, or jpg files etc, and this is the crux of the problem.

Another issue is that the game uses DirectX 6, and nobody has the skill to make it run using the full features of DX9 or later.

So although we have improved the game incredibly in a number of areas these issues remain, and would need to be addressed before we even start.


Best wishes


My last sentence implies that I was prepared to help, but the email remains unanswered. As a result of this thread I re-contacted him again a few days ago, but no response at this juncture.
The ball is in their court and has been for over two years.


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Mark Twain: I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.

I am now of an age at which I no longer need to suffer fools gladly
#4365950 - 06/25/17 12:10 PM Re: Attending a Wake [Re: JACKSPRAT]  
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mikew Offline
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Fascinating! I love the 'release at the end of this month' optimism. smile

Getting these early Windows games into a consumer-friendly state in a Win10 environment is a mammoth task.
Having the source code may even be counter-productive as there's be a fair amount of effort getting it to even compile without the original Watcom (or maybe VS6...I don't know what EAW used) dev tools.

#4365975 - 06/25/17 02:55 PM Re: Attending a Wake [Re: JACKSPRAT]  
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MrJelly Offline
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Most members of the code group compile in VS6. These days I have to use Win XP in an Oracle Virtual Box on my W10 drive in order to run VS6. The compiled exes run fine, but need the windower program in Win 7 to overcome the garbled map problem. My current Windows 10 installation runs all versions well smile


Fly EAW online at GameRanger: GameRanger Site

FaceBook Pages
UAW 160 downloads
EAW Club

Mark Twain: I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.

I am now of an age at which I no longer need to suffer fools gladly
#4366023 - 06/25/17 10:24 PM Re: Attending a Wake [Re: JACKSPRAT]  
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MarkEAW Offline
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Thanks for explaining it out in detail.

If they do get back to you, make sure they modify the v1.2x code as open source, like on github, so you can apply those fixes/improvements if you so wish to. Just a thought.

#4366207 - 06/27/17 04:09 AM Re: Attending a Wake [Re: MarkEAW]  
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Brit44 'Aldo' Offline
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Nice fishing trip there Mark. This reply will take a while.

smile Jelly, you ruined some of my fun of playing at Mark. But, you did make Mark show his true colors and his only desire that EAW be named open source by hook or crook.

"Watcom" smile now we are talking about early source access to modders.

Mark, You never answered my question for why you 'feel' the 'community' deserves open source EAW.

Quote
The source code standalones still contain original game data regardless if the cd check is there or not, including un credited work. I was just stating facts.

You are correct. By law, all mods should require the CD until the code owner makes it public that they support a no CD version. By default, all mods contain original code. I fail to see your connection.
Quote

Tommo Inc. doesn't have the src.
The "give us what you have..." statement from them, is BS aswell. You wouldn't need to give them anything but v1.2x src. There would need to be an agreement that the 1.2x code be used as open source by them as so the improvements can be added to the existing source code mods. Also The modders don't need to defend anything, other than their lack of crediting the original others of the add-ons they used in the first place.


Realy, my opinion of the history is BS if it does not match your desires? They were given the "v1.2x src" and You still want more. Your showing your desires for open source with that statement. Modders always need to defend there work against Johny come latelys and third party hijacks. I agree, all work should be credited.


Quote
You guys clearly have "sides" and you clearly are holding back modder knowledge and tools.


Yes, we do have sides, but I fail to see where any modding knowledge has not been shared publicly in this forum, the same goes for modding tools.

Quote
finally. wow. Your making progress.

wink Jelly, there is where your responce ruined my fun at being evil to Mark. smile I could have driven him mad with how long I strung that info release.

Quote
If you don't document anything, nothing new (including people) will come from it.

Mark, you are correct. The code changes do need to be commented if the intention is to pass on the knowledge. One can also pass on the knowledge by posting how the changes work for the end user/modder.

Quote
Why you think you need to hold back on something you never can profit from is startling.

Defence against unlawful copyright access and IP thief's.
Quote

The original agreement is to the EAW community not some boring , communist, code group, that over sees nothing, but holding everything from the other people that wanted to play and mod something.

Your statement is only true if the agreement was to make the source code open source.

Quote
I can't be going over every detail over and over

I'll be your hulckelberry.
Quote

its not really the situation of you not knowing.

Really? I am the mastermind of keeping a modern EAW from the "Community"? wink your correct. send the lawyers.
Quote

If you gave them the v1.2x code you didn't help them at all to compile it.

Now we reach the core of the argument. Purchase of IP in bankruptcy does not give you rights to modder IP. The new owner is an example of exactly the wrong way to approach modders.
Quote

you got help to fix up the code.

Contact those people, rather then expect us to #%&*$# on there legacy.

Quote
But you why won't you help them compile the code? Just to get them started?

Trust must be earned.

Quote
I'm not confused, I said all they really want is a working v1.2 exe. I meant to say 'compatible' with the newer Windows OS.

So tell your experts to make it so.

Quote
If they do get back to you, make sure they modify the v1.2x code as open source.

I support the code group in what ever there decisions are.

Last edited by Brit44 'Aldo'; 06/27/17 05:21 AM.

TPA who TWI
"The 10th Amendment simply says that any powers that aren’t mentioned in the Constitution as belonging to the government belong to the states themselves."
#4366209 - 06/27/17 05:01 AM Re: Attending a Wake [Re: JACKSPRAT]  
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MarkEAW Offline
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I'm not phishing for anything, nor am I playing a game with you. Nor am I going to be a part of a game.
Your clearly becoming ignorant, and it's intentional too.
I've never seen such childish behavior in adults. I realy haven't.
If you can't have a conversation without it being a some sort of distorted childs game, then why have it.

As soon as some real programmers (not just self made hobbyist) can program the code, we'll have a Flight Sim game to play without problems.

#4366210 - 06/27/17 05:06 AM Re: Attending a Wake [Re: JACKSPRAT]  
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Brit44 'Aldo' Offline
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I will still finish editing my post. I wish you luck Mark. You should send your expert programmers to Tommo so they can make 1.2x compile. wink untill then, us hobbiest will continue to mod and share with people we trust.


TPA who TWI
"The 10th Amendment simply says that any powers that aren’t mentioned in the Constitution as belonging to the government belong to the states themselves."
#4366212 - 06/27/17 05:37 AM Re: Attending a Wake [Re: Brit44 'Aldo']  
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Brit44 'Aldo' Offline
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Quote
If you can't have a conversation without it being a some sort of distorted childs game, then why have it./[quote]
IP rights

[quote] As soon as some real programmers (not just self made hobbyist) can program the code, we'll have a Flight Sim game to play without problems.

You have been waiting on those "real" programmers since Y2K. Learn, make, and find an open source project. They want your knowledge.


TPA who TWI
"The 10th Amendment simply says that any powers that aren’t mentioned in the Constitution as belonging to the government belong to the states themselves."
#4366213 - 06/27/17 05:48 AM Re: Attending a Wake [Re: MrJelly]  
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MrJelly Offline
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Sorry Allen wink

Originally Posted by MrJelly
Mark you have just shot yourself in the foot brilliantly.
.
Over two years ago I gave the company contracted by Thommo.inc the source code we originally received.
They were unable to compile it.
I also gave them a working 1.2x setup, but they did not want their clients to have to use a the d3d windower program to circumvent 7217, so they were not prepared to release it..
I am not giving them any material made by me, or the code group. It is our intellectual property, and is not available for others to make a fast buck from.
Only two days ago I contacted them again, as my email reply from two years ago has not been answered. So far there has been no response.

From now on I will only be posting online game sessions and updates in this forum.



Because you refused to accept it I had to spell out what I wrote in this post by including content from what were private emails. which I did not want to publish in a public forum.
That should have been the end of the matter


Fly EAW online at GameRanger: GameRanger Site

FaceBook Pages
UAW 160 downloads
EAW Club

Mark Twain: I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.

I am now of an age at which I no longer need to suffer fools gladly
#4366706 - 06/29/17 09:00 AM Re: Attending a Wake [Re: JACKSPRAT]  
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453Raafspitty Offline
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Always thought EAW was about the flying.I was wrong so very long ago..:(

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