It has always bothered me that several twin engined planes performing in a bomber role were sitting ducks, so some pretty observable changes were made to this behaviour. They will now be more evasive and may actually even start fighting back, after all they're heavily armed and why not use this feature for a more challenging fight.

Ofcourse their main objective is to bomb the target and they're still pretty successfull at that, even when under heavy attack. Their behaviour was enhanced without compromising the original routines, in other words they will still do as was programmed but with an additional chance to do something new. In most situations they will try to regroup but it may not always be possible when for instance these planes are under constant attack or suffer from target fixation, which is not abnormal in the game.

Planes with extra (dorsal/tail/turret) gunners may try to bring down the enemy or at least try and slow them down so the rest of the group can make it out of the battle area safely, even when they have no primary weapons or these ran out of bullets. I programmed a distinct difference between Axis and Allied aircraft, in that the Axis planes tend to be more agressive, which I think is in line with reality and since I think there are more Allied pilots still flying it also serves as a purpose to make it a bit tougher for them, but it will also not be easy when you fly the other side.

These changes will be in the next release of EAWPRO!

VonBeerhofen

Few questions.

Is this dependent on the AI experience level? Meaning, is it more likely to occur with experienced AI pilots than with green pilots?

How is this different from the "Attack plane" setting in the planes.dat file?

"Planes with extra (dorsal/tail/turret) gunners may try to bring down the enemy" - Are you saying you have added extra guns to some of the aircraft in a formation?

No it's currently luck of the draw, but it easily can be. I think it's not a bad idea though.

Enemy AI bombers in Intercept missions and friendly AI bombers in Escort missions don't care about the Attack plane switch, not even the twins. They rely on their escorts to protect them, their objective is to drop bombs and get the hell out, they will not fight in v1.2 but they do now.

No, it means that it will use whichever guns were given to the plane unless those guns are out of bullets.

VonBeerhofen

Sounds interesting. A nice enhancement. Looking forward to taking a look. Thanks

Ah, OK. I'd forgotten about the limitations in the older versions of EAW.

Off memory do the Me110,s do the defensive wheel when under attack?

No planes will attack when performing bombruns in Escort and Intercept missions, they're not primary airplanes and not under human control. In EAWPRO the Mosquito, P38J, 110G and 410 do for now, but any plane can be assigned to do this behaviour. It's essentially part of designing EAWPRO's slotfree system.

In other bombing missions as primary planes under human control they will start fighting as soon as they spot the enemy but regroup when the command is given by the human pilot. The Attack Groundtargets command doesn't help in this when these planes are under attack, something which these new routines can possibly fix too but I haven't looked into that yet.

VonBeerhofen

It is as I suspected and with a minor addaptation to the new routines, bombers will no longer engage, irrespective of what mission they fly wether it's a human controlled group or not. However in human controlled missions all tactical commands remain operational, i.e. commands to attack, and they may well follow those orders.

Obviously bombers are not meant to fly an escort with other bombers but they still can and will stay in close formation unless ordered otherwise. I think the fun of it is that new strategies have to be develloped in order to accomplish the mission and keep the group alive. The AI will follow the leader and as such human pilots need to keep an eye on attacking aircraft and fly evasive when necessary, after all most of the bombers don't have human controlled guns and their strength lies in staying in formation. In short, bombers now behave as bombers should when they have no real fighting capability and it feels realistic to me.

When bombers are on their own, after for instance the initial attack on ground objects or having been crippled and slowly loosing connection, the human player can try to slow down too to maintain a coherent group and perhaps save the crippled plane from getting destroyed. As far as I can tell from these few missions it's a whole new ball game.

Bombers can seek the protection of the escorts in human flown missions but that may lead em straight into the turmoil as the escorts will be fighting enemy AI and there's no telling when they'll head back to base. All in all there's no telling how the AI routines will handle this new stuff but I kept all original behaviour intact except where I felt this behaviour wasn't appropiate and the new routines will only kick in when everything else fails. They were written for easy addaptations and tweaks when necessary but there's a tonne of new possibillities which simply can not all be tested but I'll be keeping an eye on how it behaves during the Launchpad's online sessions and tweak things further when necessary.

VonBeerhofen

I've build a new plane filter for EAWPRO and it's working great. The filter allows a better use of the current PLANES.DAT switches which control AI behaviour and I now have additional strike-fighters, attack-bombers, fighter-bombers, and invaders which can easily be set by the players, that is if they understand how to edit the PLANES.DAT file with or without Jelly's tools. Needless to say that with these changes the PLANES.DAT has become more version specific but remains backwards compattible. The older versions of this file will merely activate this new behaviour when any of the switches are set, which I believe will only result in more interesting and definately different mission types in which bombers play a more intelligent role and stick to what bombers usually do, focus on delivering their payload. Once that's done they become more free to make it harder on the players to kill them but their objective from then on is to try and leave the battle area asap.

There's now also a possibillity for an automatic night-fighter version selection, which is obviously selected when it's dark and I may filter out the Quad planes to always stay in formation, irrespective of what mission type they're used in. I found it a challenge to fly these planes in an escort mission and try to stay with the other bombers to have more defensive fire power. The group just followed me where ever I went, so I filled up a gap in the bomber formation. With that I performed the exact same role as the bombers themselves. The only snag is that I can't tell my own B17's to attack, disperse or break away yet but they did listen to the formation orders to loosen or tighten formation. It'll need a lot more flying to find out what else is possible.

As I wrote before it's a whole new ballgame and the full effect of this still have to be discovered, so I'll be doing a lot of flying to see if things can be further improved. It's all working the way I imagined it would and I may still add some extra features, like the night-fighters and commands which aren't in yet. I just don't want to do too many checks on all planes which could compromise framerates. In my experiments I also found that it's possible to program conflicting behaviour where my new AI behaviour is overridden by another routine elsewhere, telling the plane to do something else. Both commands are executed in the same loop which led to nervous behaviour, much more throttling up or down and/or planes seemingly changing their minds.

For now I didn't incorporate this behaviour and the attack switch is also temporarily disabled. Although it worked great it seemed to cause an intermittent CTD late in the mission, so I'll see what's been causing that and hopefully fix it. I liked what it was doing and I want it. It mainly caused a small chance for planes under fire to turn against their agressors and go into full fighter mode (even B17's but it can be made optional). Basically it's the same behaviour as what happened when you flew bombers in the original game, but this will now only happen to an individual plane under fire and not the whole group, so that's usually the planes in the rear which get hit first and fall back. They attract attention from the enemy and kind of fight to the death making them eligible for a heroic posthumous medal giving the rest of the group a better chance to get away after fullfilling their objective.

It's not all there yet but the basis for it is programmed and tested to work. Bombers are less easy to shoot down and will break up into two formations when attacked when the proper switches are set in the PLANES.DAT and each group will be more or less evasive depending on the situation they're in. Still a long way to go but it's getting there. The number of missions I already flew is staggering and the game is running from dawn till late at night, selecting all kinds of missions and planes, due to a lack of beta testers who know what to look out for or what to test. There's no quick and easy way to make this work good, you have to fly, try and observe. It was fun to see the Stuka try and attack B17's or even P38's, hell they even killed a few of em. P38's would pull up steep and the Stuka would try and follow but usually got into a near stall situation because it's way too slow and heavy. Hey you do what you can right? Even if you happen to fly a postal plane into the battle area with a pilot who's only got a handgun to defend itself, lol.

I realise that what I've done may not be to everyone's liking but I like it a lot and I need new approaches to keep the Launchpad squadron happy and flying, which is my main objective and I think it will incite them to fly the bombers more often, if they don't then I will as I'm always happy to be the target. They'll be testing things further and occasionally give some feedback. A release of this just has to wait untill a few other issues are fixed, like the new pilotmap lead plane's colors for which a new palette will have to be created. I'm sorry for this delay but there's a lot of work involved.

VonBeerhofen

A new filter was programmed which allows more diverse maneuvering for the lower skill levels. Expert planes remain unaltered by the new filter. The lower skills now have a 10% chance to do expert moves when the enemy is within 2000 feet. Expert planes are programmed to enter this phase when the enemy is closer then 1000 feet, simply because they react faster then lower skills. Additionally, the lower skills can still optionally follow the original game's maneuvering phases when not selected by the random routine. This essentially seperates rookie pilots from the more skilled and asigns them to their own maneuvering phases with a newly added phase for the greenest, which wasn't there previously.

In short, the lowest skill, which in v1.2 was set the same as medium, now has it's own maneuvering phases and criteria for carrying them out and with the medium skilled they have an additional random option to do expert moves if the enemy is closer then 2000 feet. An additional benefit of this is that planes are less likely to get stuck in a repetitive or endless loop, like endlessly flying circles around each other because the game only allows that one option for a particular skill level under certain circumstances. The random expert moves will make em do something entirely different.

Another benefit is that these lower skill levels are more likely to react sooner when an enemy gets close, i.e. within 2000 feet. This behaviour changes real time and makes it much less predictable as to when the none expert planes will start using expert maneuvering or when they stop doing that. The routine doesn't influence the preprogrammed reaction times for each skill level, so inspite of being able to detect the enemy sooner their moves will remain as sluggish as in v1.2. You can't become an ace pilot in a single battle but you can occasionally do the right thing either by accident or by learning from mistakes.

Furthermore the criteria calculation now also allows higher skill levels to be introduced (Advanced Criterium Emulation or ACE for short, ), EAWPRO already has many provisions for this but it's only partially active due to a limitation in the cofiguartion screen to select only 3 skill levels. I hope full implementation will follow.

How this will play out in the end is beyond my prediction but anyone with advanced knowledge on AI behaviour is welcome to write an essay about it,

VonBeerhofen

After an intense week of testing and finding out what's possible here's a few pictures of the fun I had:

Bombing mission, the Heinkels are under heavy fire and I have an enemy plane padlocked


Interdiction mission, While I went down to destroy the train my group dropped bombs from high altitude causing the secondary explosions in the background, close but no cigar!


Escort mission, my B24's coplemented B17's en route to the target and I tried to stay in formation with them while under heavy enemy fire.


In all missions fighters were fighting fiercely in the battle area, in total around 100 planes were smoothly doing their job on my ancient WinME Pentium IV with an old 32MB gForce2 and 256MB memory, haven't had this much fun in while, it was a blast! I tried all the altered planes as well, mainly twins, and they obeyed every command and in bombing missions focused on their task, unless they got hit and dropped their loads to attack the enemy. In one mission my group got through the enemy fighterscreen, destroyed the target and I regrouped as the enemy was landing. I flew back and told my group to start attacking while I strafed the airfield. One enemy plane was still eager to fight and I had to deal with him myself, but I got shot down trying to eliminate enemy gun positions on and around the airfield. My group was reluctant to leave after I made an emergency landing between the smoking planes, captured but still alive!



VonBeerhofen

It's come to my attention that some people do not understand how to select the previously none flyable planes which are not directly accessible through the plane selection screen. They can be selected and edited from from within any hangar by selecting the MISSION PARAMETER editor that sits on each desk in any hangar. When in the Parameter Selection Screen you then select the LOAD option at the bottom of the screen and a list of MISSION (.MSN) files will be displayed. You can select any of them, no matter which hangar you're in. The Default** ones contain your last flown mission for each plane, sadly they don't give much information about which number corresponds to which plane but they're sequentially American, British, German.

The ones which display their name were SAVED from within the parameterscreen, very usefull to setup planecombinations and targets that you like but can still edit after it's loaded. I could give you a list of the default numbers but I think you can also write each number down after selecting each and note the plane you've selected. If you want to fly Mosquitos you select Mosquito vs ******. You can also save the Default missions with a name yourself. To do this you start with loading Default00 and you save it under the name P38J vs WHATEVER. Having all planes there you can quickly navigate between planes and load any on the fly without having to go back to the plane selection screens.

When a mission is SAVED it'll store all your selections and you can store up to 256 mission files yourself, either before or after the mission is flown. It's more convenient to do things this way and has become a real timesafer when testing all possible combinations. The saved missions remain unchanged untill they're overwritten with a new one but every time you load one it will randomise the target location as part of a new airfield and target check to prevent CTD's when .MSN files are corrupt, don't work, or aren't at all present (which is the case in nearly all old addons). When a certain plane's selection has become corrupt you can still get to it's Mission file via any other Hangar and set it right again by editing the corrupt plane's mission parameters, provided you understand which one to select. Flying the mission will overwrite the old Default**.MSN file and things will work normal from there on.

Note that when you reselect the same target and/or airfield already present in a corrupt .MSN file, the selection can't be set since either of the two is an illegal choice. Just select another one which displays the target number on mouse over and the file should be fine from then on as the editor only allows legal targets to be selected. Illegal target locations are greyed out in the editor, an indication of a corrupt .MSN file. Sometimes they can still be flown and will allow take off from enemy bases or attacks on friendly ones, but being corrupt you may not be able to enter these plane's hangars on startup directly, except with this method.

VBH

With the bombers becoming more usefull a new calculation for their positioning on the runway became necessary and has been successfully implemented. The new routine now uses the various planetypes in the calculation to offset their location in the grid. All planes are now using this new routine and spacing is in 3 categories for now, single engined, twins and quads. The two rows were seperated a bit more to make room for the B17 and other quad planes.

VonBeerhofen

At last, and well done

Thx Mr. Jelly. Things just tend to take a bit more time without an entire codegroup to help, it's a one man operation here but it's getting there. First things first right? How's your illuminated airfields coming along, any progress?


VonBeerhofen

We have flarepaths if needed but I cannot run EAW on this laptop here in Rochefort, so I cannot post a screenie.
As far as coding goes it is a one man band here too

I wasn't going to say anything because, well, you all know why, but this is the truth.

At it's peak the Code Group had two very good amateur coders and a few others who made important contributions, lets say second tier programmers.

Then there were probably 4 to 5 modelers who took advantage of the improvements the Coders produced. There was some crossover in this group because some of them could code AND model.

And there was a separate group, The ModSquad, who worked with the coder group on a number of projects but had their own management structure.

Now it's just Jel coding, Iron Mike skinning and me working through the various scenarios, adding improved aircraft and targets. ( We do hope to get Moggy back in the mix at some point but he's deep into some real life, pay the bills, projects.)

Putting things in perspective, the small group that makes up today's Code Group has produced an incredible variety of functional improvements to the game as well as a vast array of new aircraft.

For the most part only available in the 1.6 development line, I might add.

Well that explains why things don't always immediately happen, doesn't it? It's all a matter of importance. I've seen Moggy's little illuminated blocks and they're a pain to place a few hundred on each airfield in the airfield.dat. There's some 150 of those, that's 15.000 edits and you'll run out of room real quick in the target files, not much room for anything else after that. I think you'd better look for some other way to do it, I know it's just eyecandy but still. I guess you have other things on your mind too, so all in due time eh?

What I show is only available in EAWPRO,:) and was done without anyone's help I might add.

VonBeerhofen

It has been very calm and polite for a good while.

Let’s not start things up. Small comments results in more pointed responses which then escalate into a conflagration.

Sorry OG but this comment suggests that I am using Moggy's little illuminated blocks for the flarepath, which unfortunately needs a correction. The effect is achieved by a completely different method.

Jel

I'm cool OG no offense taken, the time needed for new creations is an interesting topic which I think may interest a lot of people, especially since we're not doing things the same way and have different objectives.

I remember now, flat polygons at regular distances in a single 3DZ. It still needs manual placement on all 150 airfields and reduces the edits to some 500, not even mentioning the ones in other addons. I know Rotton is pretty skilled in placing such things, but after placing 5 or 6 of those I'm pretty sure he'd like to move on to something else. Haven't heard any further news about them since then, are things progressing well or have you stopped after doing one for proof of concept, like the searchlights?

Not particularly a timesaver and with only 256 nodes available in each 3DZ only 64 square lights go into one strip. So it will still need some 10 or more for each field, a massive job, even if you have an airfield shape tool to trace it's outlines and place the lights correctly. I think my advice still stands but if you think it's good enough then it's probably good enough for others too. There is however a huge advantage with the airfields in EAWPRO, inspite of it's hundreds of lights per airfield, they're much lighter to render as each field doesn't even come close to the filesize of a 64 polygon 3DZ using all 256 nodes.

These airfields can be copied and pasted into ANY EAWPRO addon and require no further work, unless people want to create new shapes or new textures for them. By now I've created around 50 new ones, using templates from real existing airfields in WWII, 1/2 of which were incorporated into PTIV, with appropiate runway textures ofcourse. Creating them is a fun relaxing hobby and not really hard. BTW, I liked Pobs's and Col. Gibbons versions too but they were just too expensive in rendering time, just like my first highly detailed 64 tile airfield of Pearl Harbor, which was never released. It may still find a use though in the Pearl Harbor addon, which only uses a couple of airfields anyway.

Simple lightweight solutions are still the best I think.

VonBeerhofen

Eh, no.

Placing multiples of ANY TMOD is a snap using Jel's excellent target editor. Wouldn't take 30 seconds to add as many flares as the exec would accept at any one target.

In fact, with the target editor you could place an unused target right on top of an airfield and then add 255 flares to that target.

I'm very much aware of Jelly's target editor but it doesn't display airfield outlines. Placing the centre runways only will do I guess. Are you sure the tardata.dat can hold that many objects per target location and in it's entirety? Still seems an expensive way in terms of sacrificing valuable targets for a few runway lights. I seem to recall there's a definate limit on nearly everything in EAW, planes, bullets, bridges, airfields, explosions, smokestacks and so on. But as I said, you'd probably only need some 10 per airfield to get a reasonable effect, but that's just one and only 149 to go for one single addon. If it's that easy and fast I'll keep an eye open for any pictures of your efforts, Good luck with it and have fun!

VonBeerhofen

You should look at some of my work in the ETO2015 target set before making one of your "fake news" declarations. OK, you aren’t getting the message. I just cautioned everyone (including you) about starting the ball rolling. If you have a problem with what someone says don’t respond in kind. Let me know and I’ll make the call. If you take it upon yourself to respond you lose any high ground you may have had.

This is a warning to you. Next time it won’t be a warning.

You see, I worked out a fairly simple way to see the outlines of the various airfield models. So I have all sorts of ground objects lines up perfectly around the edges of the airfields. Hangars perfectly aligned with tarmacs, airplanes lined up next to runways, fuel trucks running down the perimeter roads and loads of other stuff.

You'll just have to take my word for the ease of adding TMODs because I have no plans to add flares. I don't like the effect but I'd be happy to coach anyone who would like to get involved in such a project.

Using the term "fake news"seems a bit over the top to me, As I said don’t respond in kind. Let me know and I’ll be the referee unless you claim that the target editor in fact can show the outlines of airfields. I can't take into consideration the personal methods you have deviced and such was never part of the discussion. I have portrayed the issues fair and honoustly but I'm glad that inspite of the ease you''ll not be incorporating the runway lights, in which case they will remain only obtainable in EAWPRO. When people don't want them, I can easily design a set which doesn't have them, they switch off at distance anyway.

VonBeerhofen

Why can't you ladies just play nice and advance or girl,,Your differences are killing our hobby and serve no purpose Grow up and leave the egos behind..guess I'll get banned now

No, but don’t stoke the fires. Notify me and let me referee. What you did was no help in deescalating the issue. You had a good point to make, but used a sledgehammer.

For the record, you said "I'm very much aware of Jelly's target editor but it doesn't display airfield outlines. Placing the centre runways only will do I guess."

My response was "I worked out a fairly simple way to see the outlines of the various airfield models. So I have all sorts of ground objects lines up perfectly around the edges of the airfields."

So you introduced the issue into the conversation and now that I've pointed out that your comment was "fake news" you want to declare that it's not part of the discussion.

Once again we end up in a dumpster fire because you have not "portrayed the issues fair and honoustly".

If you look for offense you can either find it or create it. Don’t let the past overwhelm the present. I’m not judging on the past. You could have made a clear factual statement without dragging it down in the gutter. And that’s what you did.

I'd be happy to, Russ, but once again Jel and I are forced to refute incorrect declarations.

How that's considered an ego thing I just do not understand. Heck I don't even see how using facts to destroy false info can even be considered inflammatory. When did we become so thin skinned that we can't stand to accept facts? Delivery, it’s in the delivery. You delivered poorly.

There is no falseness in that statement, it's a mere fact that the target editor doesn't portray the outlines of airfields and as such I draw the conlusion from that. I understand you may have designed methods to show the outlines but I've not been aware that you did. A response that you had designed such method would have sufficed, without the fake news bit, as that portrays me as a liar, which I'm not.

I repeat myself.


VonBeerhofen

Egos Ray are the assumption every modder as the right approach to what is best for EAW I respect both Mr Jellys work and VB's and have gotten tired of the sniping .but now there are two camps competing on who's version is the best approach.Get your crap together and advance our hobby..Iv'e flown both and each has it's merits it's merits and it's best to decide what we fly

Good points, but improve your delivery. Use less of a sledgehammer.

Understood OG and i will step aside and not fan the flames

No need to step aside. You had good input and valid observations. The delivery was a bit heavy handed.

Because of past grievances, slights, hard feeling, etc there is a tension here that makes things go Nova quickly. Add to that the two somewhat divergent development paths and the disagreements as to which is better and where they can/cannot overlap, coexist, or conflict creates conditions where techniques of modifying make for contentious discussions. Everyone is rightfully proud of their work and since they did it painstakingly step by step they know what they did and why. That often makes for misunderstandings of why and what can be done with each way.

Very talented men whose skills and knowledge I can’t even get started on with understanding.

I would like to take this opportunity to explain that my runway flares (which appear to have brought up the comments about the use of my target editor) are not TMods, and they are not placed by the target editor.

They appear when the 160 exe reads the special "AIRFLDxy.3DZ" files which contain flags which trigger their display during hours of darkness.

The flares themselves are small triangles placed in straight lines at the runway edges. However, the exe places a small random offset to each one so that there is a bit of an irregularity, as with "FIDO" in WW2.

Jel

So it's using a regular .3DZ with a special name, using all 256 nodes with 85 flat illuminated polygons, of which a certain number are automattically placed on top of an airfield.3dz, using the appropiate orientation of any airfield in the game? You use that 3DZ, how many times, 2 on each side of the main runway? That makes 340 lights (polygons) using 1024 nodes when only 4 of these are placed, plus the nodes and polygons in the airfield.3dz. In total it's a lot of stuff to render, plus an extra routine to make it work.

That's still not far from my previous estimation and app. 5 times heavier then the ones in EAWPRO which use even less then the stock versions and have around 10 times more lights. Not that the number of lights is important to me, but the freedom to place them and where is, as is the weight of the models in terms of FPS. The automation is a decent way to place them but still unnecessary as EAWPRO shows, as it only uses what's been there all along. Besides that the EAWPRO versions can handle any number of landing strips on an airfield, irrespective of their direction, placement and orientation and won't cost anything extra in terms of nodes or polygons.

Such things are important on any computer, but even more important on legacy machines with 32MB videocards, 256MB memory @ 200Mhz and Pentium IV's @ around 1.5 Ghz. That's what EAWPRO is all about, to gain speed where ever possible, to improve AI reactions and compensate for the loss of the 10 times heavier graphics and other extra events. It just shows that v1.60 is NOT superior in every way, as Rotton claims, and that EAWPRO has quite a number of advantages over it and is rapidly gaining ground too.

BTW, EAWPRO is nearing 50.000 changed bytes, of which app. 10.000 bytes were removed from the game loop! With that the game loop is faster then any 1.1 version, which was known for it's notoriously agressive AI, just because of the size of it's EXE. Comparing screenshots, shows more colorfull and more complex explosions, UHR skies and horizons, more realistic people running around in many more events and it has more sound effects then ANY other version and is more user friendly, because it still uses the default user interface from v1.2 which needs no extra explanations for most veteran players. It can use nearly any .3DZ model ever created for EAW in history and was made to be compattible with the early UHR plane models from Col. Gibbon, which I personally think have a tendency to screw up the game because of R/S issues and are therefore not included untill I can fix them.

Still people have a choice to use them if they like, and with a few minor adaptations the old campaigns can also be made to work. Don't be fooled by framerate counters, which may be influenced by the newer operating systems, or believe that someone can actually distinguish AI behaviour between versions in terms of offensive or defensive moves or agressiveness by playing the game a few times. Fact is that since both versions aren't exact copies the AI will simply not behave the same as there are millions of different situations where AI have millions of choices to make. Framerates depend on the gameloop length and the ammount of graphics you throw at the GPU and CPU and it must be clear to anyone that there's a huge difference between EAWPRO and v1.60. I'm not claiming superiority, as that depends on what you're looking for in the game, but I think it should be made clear to players that you won't find what EAWPRO has to offer in ANY OTHER version, except for what was copied from it.

VonBeerhofen

No it is not so we have another post based on a false assumption

Wether it's a .3DB or other file which places polygons or sprites requires nodes in 3D space. Your polygon uses 3 nodes and you place a number of those on top of an airfield, so the number of polygons you place is the ammount of lights visible and the number of nodes is the number of lights times 3. There are no other ways to portray polygons in any game, no polygons or sprites, no lights or objects. You can't make something appear without them.

Whether the polygons were incorporated in the airfield.3dz itself makes no difference on the extra weight they will have, they're still extra polygons and extra nodes. I respect you not wanting to reveal the approach you've taken but how programs and computers work is not based on assumptions but on facts, they're just sophisticated calculators.

Using flags in an airfield 3DZ will only take more extra time to read wether they're present and on or off and require more programming to create something which wasn't there from the start already. In that repect using regular .3DZ's is undoubtedly faster as it's illuminated polygons have been present since 1998. Switching these polygons on or off during day or night time requires more work and is totally unnecessary, since the illumination of polygons only happens at night already and the flags for that have always been present, as can be seen with the earliest illuminated hangars.

And with that knowledge I can safely say that it's not as lightweight as EAWPRO which required no programming at all, only a small adaptation in the airfield.3DZ's drawing and redirection of the illumination pointer from the standard .3DZ's. That difference in approach is clearly visible in the filesize of the EAW.EXE, where v1.60 uses multiple EXE's which are nearly twice as large as EAWPRO's single EXE minus 10.000 bytes. I told you assembly language is much more powerfull and efficient then any compiler.

VonBeerhofen