There is a tradition over at the EAW forum of members drawing attention to significant and worthy mods and patches that have fallen by the wayside in the march of time. I would like to do this for 1918 Air War.

Released in January of 2002 by Todd Comeau, 1918 Air War was the result of 2 years of work on models, paints, terrain, FMs and AI to recreate the WWI air war from April 1, 1918 to the Armistice. Those who installed it at the time were thrilled by the intense combat and graphics that the patch offered.

But 2002 was a banner year for SP patches. Shortly thereafter, Pat Wilson released his Western Front Patch, (though players were impressed enough with 1918AW's FMs that Pat later offered a version of them for 1918 in WFP). And in late summer of that year, J1Kessler released his long-awaited Promised Land All Seasons patch, which became the hands-down favorite, much as his later Full Canvas Jacket UOP would receive even more popular acclaim. 1918AW was eclipsed by these developments. Then Mr. Comeau pulled the patch from his web site and devoted himself exclusively to WWI aircraft profiles .

Back from a vacation, and with a few days at home to myself this week, I cast about for a mission to fly. I have lately been flying a campaign with Mark Munro's Eastern Front patch. But my eye settled on the 1918AW shortcut, which has lain neglected these many months on my desktop. CM indicated that I had a campaign in progress, Jasta 79b, (my online squad with JGS4), in the Verdun theater.

So I fired it up. Barrage Patrol, Sept. '18, with two Albatross D.Va's, (Bavarian Jastas get new planes last, it's a challenge). I am only a Lieutenant in this mission, so I can't reassign pilots, but I am flight leader. One of the treats of 1918AW is that you can often arm yourself with bombs. I did so, but did not end up using them.

As we climbed toward the lines, I noted that 1918AW's terrain is really very good-looking. It is more like Rabu's OTE than PL/FCJ's "photorealistic" terrain, but it is very crisp and well-blended, and the trenches are well-delineated. One could take the 3Dpatch folder from 1918AW and use it with other installs, though there is no winter in it.

Mr. Comeau built his patch to be playable with a 400mhz machine, so he was conservative with his plane models, (not including 3D wheels, for example), to keep fps up during the large furballs he designed into the patch.

As we completed one round of our patrol, we spied four Spad.13's, and dived away quickly to the east before they could see us. When they had gone, we returned to our patrol. Reaching the southern waypoint, a German infantry position, I saw 6 Spads of SPA.23 coming in low for a ground attack. Curiosity got the better of me, and I put myself on auto to watch the action.

These Spads were gorgeous! If you have checked out Mr. Comeau's site, ( http://www.wingstrut.com/ [now inactive, BB 2006] ), you will know what I mean when I say that they were like "flying profiles", meticulous models of SPA.23 Spads. None of the "dirty birds" effects of WFP. Not realistic, perhaps, but striking nonetheless, and a special treat.

I do not normally engage scouts on barrage patrol if I can avoid them, but when I had done with my voyeurism, I found that we had dived on them, so what the hell, I said, let's go!

We ended up with an advantage, the Spads being low over our gunners, and forced into a turning fight. RB can't really fly Spad.13's as they are meant to be flown. In RL, I imagine they would have simply taken advantage of their speed and gone home. We out-turned them, and between us downed five of the six. My wingman crashed, and I ran out of ammo, forcing me to land in the mud to escape pursuit by the sixth.

Flybert has gotten permission to offer 1918 Air War for download at his RedBaronPlayers site. ( http://redbaronplayers.net/uopmods1.htm , bottom left). Give it a whirl! 1918 Air War deserves some recognition as a real work of art.

Hey,

Don't forget Flanders Fields. Another lost classic.

Yes, AW1918 was a wonderful UOP! Todd did things to that mod that still has not been reproduced. Random placing of MG's, more of them, different models than we've ever seen. That patch has it all. It is dated and looks that way (amazing only 2 years later) but it's still a classic by every right.

I agree with vK... if you are looking for more out of RB3D, Wingstrut's patch will get you there... also, Mark Munro's Eastern Front and Russian Civil war are two not to be passed up either.

Enjoy them all! Beauty is not everything... I should know.. I'm ugly as hell! LOL!

OvS

Thanks for the heads up on both of these, downloading now!

Flanders Fields can be found here:-

http://www.wargamer.com/Hosted/CloseCombatFuture/FFpatch.htm

Thanks very much for the link. One of my most memorable campaigns was using 1918AW, right after Wingstrut released it. I recall a 1 V 1 in a Spad against a red Albatross in which we actually GAINED altitude as we jockeyed for position. We found ourselves playing cat and mouse in the best clouds I've ever experienced. The fight ended when the Alb sufferd structural failure after taking minor damage from several passing shots. I am grateful for the opportunity to download a new copy of the game.
S!
Hex

VonK
Thank you for the post about this addon.Since starting to work with this sim the last couple of weeks I'm amazed at what I've been finding...Theres a lot of work here for me to study some of the historicial background of the men,aircraft and battles depicted in this sim but I'm enjoying it immenseley and so far its taken over my free gaming time but damn its all good stuff!!!!

I'm glad that I've stirred some interest in 1918 Air War. I felt bad when Wingstrut, (Todd Comeau), removed it from his site. He had put so much work into it and received so little appreciation for it.

I was pretty much a newbie at the time, and was flying mostly MMP. The mechanics of SP patches, CM and all, were still mysterious to me. I would not become comfortable with SP patching until the end of 2002.

OvS, thanks for your additional comments on the features of 1918AW. Yes, Mark Munro's Russian, Italian and Mid-East patches are also neglected masterpieces. The Eastern Front Patch is the only patch, (I think, haven't done the Russian Civil War yet), that includes the amazing Murometz bomber. Maybe I will write further on these patches.

Morgul, thanks for the link to wargamer.com. Flanders Fields is also available from RedBaronPlayers as a single download, but the link to "Historical Data for RB" led me to information I had not seen before, such as who was responsible for the addition of Belgian units to RB.

Heureux, well do I remember a vivid report by you of 1918AW, written in the style of Nordhoff & Hall's "Falcons of France". I think that was where I first learned of the patch, so I'm happy that the link was useful to you.

Russ, RB3D can be very absorbing. I bought the game when it came out, knowing as a WWI aviation enthusiast that I would want to play it. But I had no time for it until the end of 2001. By then many players had already devoted countless hours to researching and developing improvements to the game. It was my first flight-sim, actually my first computer game of any kind.

I see you have a low member number, so you probably have a lot of experience with flight-sims. Nothing got my attention until RB3D came along. When I was young, (I am 50), war games were played with miniatures or with board games. RB3D blew my mind!

VonK
I came to computer sims pretty much the same way you did by way of the old board games played Ace of Aces using the two books to fly.I fly most of the sims around and RB is the first one that has gotten me immersed in the men and the machines involved in it.I'm 55 a former Marine with a lifelong interest in military history but never looked much at the air war of WW1 this sim has gotten me interested in that aspect of it which makes it a great and fun tool to learn something...When my grandson comes over I can get him flying in it ,,We used Sid Meiers Gettysburg to learn about the Civil War for the younger crowd you need a spark to light the fire and RB is a great start.

Happy Birthday USMC & RWatson

One of my favorite WW1 stories (If I recall it correctly) is attributed to a USMC sergeant who while advancing through the Belleau Wood in 1918 was advised by a French officer that they were falling back. His reply was,

"Retreat HELL! We just GOT here"

I work with a number of Marines ranging from Viet Nam to newly discharged and to a man they are sharp guys to have on the shift and especially good in a scrap. Some are truly awesome.

Hex

Well if he is a reader, and I know not everyone is, that Falcons of France book by Nordhoff & Hall that I mentioned above is a great one for a boy. It's what started me off on this at about his age.

Unlike the CW, WWI doesn't make for a very interesting ground-war game, the lines being so static. But now that I think about it, if someone were to make one just for 1918, like 1918AW, beginning with the Spring German offensive, there would be a lot of movement.

Heureux, I got up high in the clouds in 1918AW last night, and you are right that they are very different from Kess's or Rabu's clouds. Hard to describe, but more nebulous and, well, "cloudy" and less layer-like.

Can someone give me a little guidance here, please. I had not heard of this patch till I read this thread.I play RB3d with PL UOP terrain( the free one!) I have CM11 loaded and use it a little. Can I use it to load this 1918 Air War, and how exactly do i do that please.?

PS Cannot get the redbaronplayers website- "page cannot be displayed" comes up
TIA

S! Cas 141,
Yes, it looks like redbaronplayers is down at the moment.

1918 Air War is very easy to install. It comes as two self-installing executables, 1918 Air War v1.exe and 1918 Air War Date Patch v1.exe, (Like WFP, 1918 air war uses CM's date function to swap out files as the game goes forward in time).

There is one little kink. The executables are set by default to load the files into your CM Patches folder. But when they were made, we were using an older version of CM, "CM10beta", so they want to use the path, ~RedBaron3D\CM10beta\patches. You will want to point them to your patches folder, which now would be ~RedBaron3D\cm11\patches.

Unload any other patches you are using before you load the 1918AW. There are several small update zips that you will want to install to 1918AW's Simpatch or shellpat folder, (as per their readmes), before you load 1918AW. [Edit 01/01/07: Flybert's download at RedBaronPlayers is a single zip including the updates.]

When you load 1918AW, it will put its own terrain in your 3Dpatch folder that will override your PL terrain. Give it a chance, (a couple of nights ago, I saw a convoy of trucks crossing a bridge), but if you don't like it, I suppose you could unload 1918AW with CM and remove the 1918AW 3Dpatch folder, and then load it again to have PL terrain instead. But I haven't actually tried it.

As with WFP, when you create a campaign, set the game date with CM, and open the campaign in CM before each new mission.

Have fun! If the site doesn't come back up, maybe I could mail it to you if you have a big enough mailbox. It's about 28mb, but I could split it.

P.S. (11/12) redbaronplayers is back up.

I cannot imagine anyone seconding VonK's recommendation of Falcons of France any harder than I will. The book is terrific and remains my all time favorite even at age 49. The same authors wrote Mutiny on the Bounty and its sequels and both were WW1 pursuit pilots. Hall was also a British army soldier in Kitchener's mob, if I recall correctly.

I THOUGHT I recalled the clouds in 1918AW as being better than anything else I'd experienced. They add a real dimension of realism. I wonder if anyone has (or could) put them in a stand alone patch.

Thanks again - I have got the zip from the website now. Cheers for all your help.

PS Sorry for bad editing

Originally posted by Cas141:
>Sorry - don't understand this. What small update zips,please, Names and where from? TIA<

They come in the big zip from redbaronplayers.

>I'll make a back up of the 3d patch folder, to swap if I want to?<

Couldn't hurt to make a back up. But if you remove the files 1918AW puts into 3Dpatch by just blowing them away, you won't be able to use CM to unload 1918AW. It won't find those files and give you an error message.

It would be better, if you don't like the terrain, to unload the whole patch, remove 1918AW's 3Dpatch folder from ~cm11\patches\1918AW\, and load it again. I think that would work.

Yes, use CM11 to load and unload patches. If you manipulate ANY of the DATA and/or subfolders, CM11 WILL LOSE THE PATH AND YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO UNLOAD CM11 Patches that are installed in them!!
Here's what to do:
First, copy your current 3DPatch files into a CM11/Patches/("oldpatch" or whatever)/3DPAtch folder. Install 1918AW.
COPY the 1918AW 3DPatch files to a CM11/Patches/("1918" or whatever)/3DPatch folder.
Now you can safely load/unload anytime you want.
NEVER re-name or MOVE folders used by DATA when using CM11!

Thanks chaps- much appreciated.

This thread was mentioned at the SWWISA forum, so I am bumping it.

Was looking around in the old threads and found this piece from 2 years ago.

It's still available, so I'm bumping it in case anyone would like to try 1918 Air War or any of the other great old UOP's at RedBaronPlayers, courtesy of Flybert.

BTW, I used to be von Kesselberg, or vK, or vonK, as I am addressed above. It was my handle when I flew online with JGS4.

Thanks BB, I missed this thread when you first posted it. I didn't even know of the 1918 AW UOP.

I'll pop over to Flyberts and d/load it and take it for a whirl.

S all, I've downloaded it (thank you!) an am ready to start.
I know that it is supposed to be a self installing program, but I wonder, is it possible to use it without CM11?
I had the program before and it messed up my installs. Probably me making a setup mistake.
Can somebody help me?

Thank you in advance
sebastian pons