I have been putting off repainting the skins for the Ki-21 but with the Pre-Release List getting down to low double digits, it was time. It only took the entire day but it our main IJAAF bomber. A few bugs and some scrapes and it will again be the terror of the skies.

Here in 12th Sentai colors...from Phnom Penh I think.



Cowl flap axis wrong.







Here's a shot of Eightlein's generic bombsight that really works. Even on a village on a hillside (Here, Lamphu, Thailand). Look at the bottom of the picture. See those two yellow lines? You just pick your altitude AGL, set whatever speed he keeps telling me and I keep forgetting...



...and when that altitude's crossbar hits the target, let them all go.







Here's a little 20th Century nation building. First you bomb them, then you say howdy.





Hit the smokestack and knocked out the engine. Some of the effects are really fun. Streaming fuel. Smoking engines.



A few things did not go as planned. Here the crew of the Akagi does not look at all like Japanese
deck hands. In fact, they look a lot more like happy burn victims dancing a jig.



And these feet. If I raise him up, his head sticks out. Maybe I should make Geo's Texas-sized pilot into a more Japanese-sized navigator.



Happy Friday the 13th.

Banzai!

Friday update. We are down to details and there are a lot of them. And this is before the testers get hold of it, too. I think the list is down to 23 items to go. None of them are difficult to solve.

We though you would like to see the good, the bad and the ugly in this week's work. It is very revealing.

Not just another Tomahawk picture. We are toying with different pits to increase the visibility. Most pits are made for themselves without the player in mind. Only one airplane had visibility as bad as the game pits give you. That was the Spirit of St. Louis. Everyone else can see or the don't fly.



Our bungalos on Ford Island. They will look better when we park the cars beside them.



Fake Japanese Destroyers.



Uh...no. It looks like my mother's kitchen curtains.



Deck guns used to defend Wake Island.



Some GO's (our shorthand for Ground Objects) at Wheeler. Putting them into the hangars to assure the LargeOilFire effect will happen. Game priority will not allow smoke from the buildings with all those planes on fire...and you have seen the picture of Wheeler.



Killing time. We have an IJA soldier on a bike also. You may have seen those shots also. They look very realistic in motion...in your way...on the runway. My father said that the Chinese would run across the runway at Kunming while his bomber was taking off...and the closer the better. This was to ward off invisible bad luck "dragons" that were following them. Apparently, sometimes the dragon would pull them into the prop blades which would be good luck for the B-25 crew if they had room to abort with a full load of bombs and fuel and bad luck if they did not. They would rely upon the Japanese to chase off their dragons.



This is our successful experiment to get the ship's AAA to hit the water when an attacker comes in low. And, again, you have seen the pictures. If we increase the lead to match, you will never make it.



Uh...no.



A bunch of GO's lined up for DM (again, our shorthand. this time Destroyed Model) testing.



I knew there was a reason I painted that firewall.



Repulse Destroyed Model.



Prince of Wales DM. Toying with the idea of putting men on deck and in the boats. Not sure yet.



Oops.



Arizona Destroyed Model. Pretty close to the pics.



Battleship Row post-attack.



This one IS just another Tomahawk picture.



Wheeler Hangars. They burn fine without the airplanes on fire nearby.



All the aircraft wounds. Skin holes. Fuel leak. Engine out. And, I see the tailwheel is missing.



Wheeler attack 411207 Akira Sakamoto is ready to go.



Details. Who wants to see MiGs and Phantoms before they were born? This is 411207 Tsuguo Matsuyama in a mission to suppress aircraft at Bellows.



AI take off at Bellows. If you have never programmed an E-W runway to work in AI, you have a steep learning curve to climb.



Tester (me) sitting in AD's Zero pit (excellent viz BTW) closing on P-40.



I think he was going the opposite way in real life. Just switch the wind direction and he will go the right way.



"The Haoles are at it again, bro."



Uh...no.



Short list. Pits. Some paint. Parameters for the torpedo. Rewrite all the missions. Out to test. Then sell this puppy.

Banzai!

Blimey ! looking really good John.

Awesome job guys, look forward to it.

The "to-do list" is down to one page. A few days then out to test. Mostly INI work now. Not many photo opportunities until the mission re-writes. Buying music royalties. Eightlein is hanging bombs in bomb bays where they look right and aiming guns so they point where they are shooting. Dozens of variations of cargo ships sorted out. All determined by the stories they are in.

Here are a few shots.

Final on the F4F-3 in USMC colors. Most of the models were UV mapped to show detail and it worked.



Landing at Wake.



Wake is being twisted a little to allow for an AI take off from the runway heading...which means everything has to move.



Final A6M2 paint for all 6 IJN carriers at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese planes were not getting the proper attention to detail since there are so few examples but we managed to find places for rivets and brackets and other detail. We are pleased with them now.



Two of the Akagi.





Two of the G4M1 in paint we won't use until Guadalcanal. Camo version to attack the Prince of Wales. Torpedo parameters are set, armor set, Destroyed models done.





One warning: This is not going to be a shooting gallery. If you don't know how to attack a bomber, you will not last long. Same for attacking a ship. It's all very revealing.

More as things pop up during INI work.

The old YAP site is semi-broken so we will be changing it. There may be two paths...one YAP and one Rising Sun. Not sure yet. I think we are going to do most of our show and tell on SimHQ and have the sites be just a place to click the "buy" button.

We can do Mauritius for you but then we have to blow it up.

Some shots of todays tweaks.

A day of torpedo tests. Parameters for CAS missions and for ANTI-SHIP missions.



The new Mk17 depth charge needs some refining. The tail fins are too large.



Here we used a beta mission to test a lot of things. The actual mission might be put off to the Solomons but it can be done out of Oahu except that sub might not have been sunk.

Catalina outbound on patrol saying hello to destroyer inbound to Pearl.



HMSS Hinchinbrooke has a surprise in store off the starboard bow.



This is the surprise. A torpedo from a submarine.





Here's what it looks like to the player.



And here's the freighter. Now to find and kill the sub.



Blister gunners fire on the sub (using a YAP trick).







Depth charges.



Splash.



On final at Pearl Harbor NAS or Ford Island.



Taxiing in.





Shut down.



A fun mission but I am not sure if Ensign Brady's Christmas mission will be the one we use.

In the screenshot it looks a lot like the A bomb Little Boy to me.
http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p306/yap05/826b.jpg


Wheels

Nope.

Little new to see now that we are almost entirely doing INI work but Rising Sun goes out to testers next week...finally.

Here are some shots from this week's mission testing.

Bomber formation as the IJN an IJAAF flew them.



Where you are in that gaggle.



Post strike. Coming around to let the waist gunners strafe.



The aforementioned strafing pass.



Just a Cat taking off from the lagoon.



Making the sea battles and land battles match what was happening. It's hard to do an air battle if they do not.



You taking off as #4.



Trapping. Checking over the IJNR01...that's the group of planes on the bow. It's skin changes to match the ship.





It looks like everyone has a flat tire.



Soon now. Have a nice weekend.

Banzai.

Hi zerocinco,

very nice pics indeed. Seeing those Nells over Wake reminds me of my own attempt to create the Wake Island campaign in Il2, but with fake G3M bomber. Your work is getting better and better. The last Wake pic shows a Wildcat with bombs under the wings. Do you plan to attack the invasion force?

The tentative missions for Wake Island are:

8th Daisuke Miyazaki: G3M2's bombing Wake from Roi in the Gilberts.
10th Henry Elrod: F4F attacking the bombers from Roi.
11th Henry Elrod: Attacking the invasion force and covering destroyers.
11th Carl Davidson: Attacking the bombers
13th David Kliewer: Attacking a submarine
22nd Herbert Freuler: Attacking the B5N2's from Soryu.
22nd Isao Yahara: Zero from Hiryu fighting the last two F4F's.
23rd Kishichiro Yamunda: Dive bomb attack on Battery 3.
23rd Yohioka Hiroshi: Close air support of second invasion force.

Still running down some Japanese names so these may change.

Not a lot of drama in the shots during this final clean up but here are some that show where we are cleaning up. The first phase contains three terrains: Oahu, Wake Island, and Burma. We are going through them in that order.

Wake is out to test. This is from the land battle.


Final tweaks on Naval Battle Off Malaysia or the Sinking of the Prince of Wales. Finally figured out the parameters for the torpedo in most situations...at least the ones where we will use it.









Very nice effect watching the AAA splashing in the water in front of you as you bore in with the fish.







New P-40B pit. Hurricane almost done. That's it for pits.



Final run-through on Pearl Harbor. This is from George Welch.



So is this but the D3A1's keep going to Pearl instead of Ewa where the event took place. Plus, they are too easy to kill but when hit, they usually go into a spectacular spin.



Burma missions are just about right. Some historical clean up required.



These last pieces will ship out to the testers once I get the men aboard the ships without screwing up their mapping. Then I am going to get some sleep.

Final run through on Oahu missions. Flying with a stick in one hand and a pencil in the other cleaning up the little errors.

Here are some shots taken before sending them to the testers.

It's great to see this Sim has evolved from a rather oddball looker to a full blooded sim. With an enjoyable friday update, getting better and better all the time.
I must admit it looks really good now. I just wonder is there any plans to involve japanese ships in the future?
Could you explain a little about your developing plattform, is the modelling Max based? If so are you limited to older types like Max5 or 6 like IL2 used to be? Also are there plans for including third party builders here on similar basis as for IL2? (I deliberate say IL2, and not PF)

Nils,

We currently have all the Japanese carriers modeled and painted.



We have some other Japanese ships in the works as targets later on that will need to be highly detailed. We have Hinch's Fuso and Kongo as escorts but they are not fully UV mapped yet nor are they at the same level as what he is doing for us now. He would have to work on them a while.



We are using substitutes (aka fakes) to fill in for cruisers, light cruisers and destroyers. We just don't have the time or money to create them in high detail. There are a few places that this will pinch us but not many. As far as freighters, we are using 4 painted differently for Japan and Western users. There are a couple of "Maru's" I would like to have but don't think we will get to them in time.









Damn! All the time I spent making the American torpedo inaccurate and it nails the freighter!


We decided that we cannot compete with dedicated naval games anyway so we will use whatever we can to direct the player to be in the cockpit as much as possible. We are stuck with the water we have. It is designed for an air game and gets worse the closer we get to it.

Not bad.


Not what it looks like and Hinch hates for us to dip his ships into it. We will keep the player so busy that he usually doesn't notice in-game what is apparent in screenshots.


All models are created in Max 9. Later versions can export LOD files to the game but we want to hold the model ourselves so we must go through the OBJ-MAX reconstruction process...or just do without.

There will be other glaring omissions. We did not do the Brewster Buffalo. It was a total flop. (Or in the words of Greg Boyington, "It was a $%^&*$#$ DOG!") To show the RAF at work in Burma, we chose the Hurricane. It was successful and the model is as good as there are in the game (YAP's model, Sundowner's paint, our dirt and grease). We will bring in the B-17 later but in almost all the stories, it is a non-event except as a target. The B-24 is more useful to us. The Martin B-26 has one mission and it gets its butt kicked so we skipped it. We will let the player fly the TBF out of Midway and there will be plenty of masochism to go around anyway.



Right now we are engrossed in all the fine details we ignored while building the big parts...like hours spent yesterday on bringing YAP's correct flak colors around to looking like WWII flak.



As far as 3rd Party builders, we have been too busy to give any thought to anything but getting Phase One out. If someone has an idea or a model, they should contact us. Everything we do is story-based so it would need to fit into the story or generate an episode that we have ignored. Yankee Air Pirate always sought out people who wanted to tell a tale and created it for them in the Vietnam War. Here we have history and are always interested in entertaining. One thing we should have done is the H6K to bomb Wake and other places. There isn't time for us to do it before release. With the ability of the player to take off and land on water, it would have been fun. We would welcome any props that will fit in: landing craft, tugs, cranes, cars, support ships, etc. It would have to be at about the same level of detail as our stuff. Not too much. Not too little. We try to maintain continuity in detail and colors.

We cannot tell every story and should not try. We will list the episodes we intend to tell to give people ideas and also tell them the equipment available. I would like to see someone do the Indian Ocean Raids, some of the island battles we skip, and some of the surface battles. (My nano-hobby is to set up land battles and watch the stiff little robots fight it out like ants.) Our customers are all over the Earth and the history belongs to us all. Our intention is to tell tales about the uncommon acts of common men in airplanes relying mainly on three books. There are certainly other ways of looking at it. I would also like to see a Japanese customer (YAP has many) take these toys and tell it how he sees it. Aside from the Japanese, British and Americans, we involve the Soviets, the Chinese, the Thais, the Indians, the Australians, the New Zealanders and the Burmese. We could not include the Dutch (in many ways, the whole point of the war from 7 Dec 41 onward) but all the toys are there to play. We will include the templates for anyone wanting to paint what we did not.

zerocinco

Cool Z, thanks. Now, about that inaccurate torpedo.......

Thanks for a good brief Zerocinco. Interesting read and oh, a very nice update, again.

Pearl Harbor is done. The stories chose to tell take the player throughout the attack from beginning to end. We did not try to tell them all. We just wanted the view from the cockpit to be shockingly real and cause the player to think about all those old black and white pictures.

We are doing:

Shiga A6m2 Combat Air Patrol. Strafed F4F's at Ewa.
Sakamoto D3A Dive bomber. Attacked Wheeler Air Field
Takahashi D3A Dive bomber. Attacked PBY's on Ford Island
Mori B5N Torpedo bomber. Holed the California.
Shimazaki D3A Dive bomber. Attacked Kaneohe.
Kusumi B5N Level bomber. Bombed the Arizona.

Chihaya D3A Dive bomber. Attacked the Nevada as she was making her run.
Kawada B5N Level bomber. Bombed Hickam Air Field
Matsuyama A6M2 Combat Air Patrol. Attacked P-40's departing Bellows.
Welch P40 US fighter pilot. Along with Ken Taylor attacked D3A1's at Ewa.

And our last two are the only US P-36 missions in the game. The plane will be back at Imphal with Indian pilots at the controls but that's a long way off.

Rasmussen P36 Took off with 3 other P-36's to fight D3A1's and Zeroes over Kaneohe.
Brown P36 Took off with another P-36 to engage departing attackers on Hawaii's north shore.

Here are a few shots from the Pearl Harbor episodes:

These are some damage shots.



DD destroyed model.



Then there is the flight of Phil Rasmussen. We could not start him off at a field not yet attacked.



The simplest solution was a YAP trick...the time bomb. We just blew everything up and let it become its destroyed model.



It's an exciting taxi to takeoff.





Now that's how Wheeler is supposed to look.



and a shot of Pearl flying by



And this is our last PH mission: Harry Brown.



We had Haliewa all built up until photos showed it to look just like this. The Buick convertible was $200 so we skipped it.







You must join on your leader to get to the right place to fight. The timing is perfect.



You fight both B5N2's and A6M2's. For years, it was thought he shot down Kates but Japanese authors say only Zeroes disappeared on the North Shore headed home and that was confirmed by divers. So take your best shot.





Then back to the turf strip on the beach to land. New pit. I have two more to paint this weekend.







And that's it for this week. I am now working on the story presentation and not the game. We need to get this thing out and onto the computers. I also need to shoot some video. These still shots don't do anything for the game. In motion, it's amazing.

Banzai!