When we first started this stuff, a detractor said that missions were easy to create and that you could make one in a few minutes. In reality, a recreation of a real event takes a very long time to do. There are missions in Yankee Air Pirate that took a month and others that took 6 months.

We are working on Phase Two which will start in Darwin, Australia but will spend most of its time in the Coral Sea, north of Midway and in the Solomons.

I thought a couple of shots of the building of Midway might be interesting.

First, Edward makes the basic scenery from aerial photos from the time, not Google Earth.



You may notice in-game that the longest runway is not lined up the same as the photo. Making runways work and objects appear where you want them is a mathematical equation that is a lot easier if the runways are N-S or E-W.



Then we place the objects from contemporary drawings. The colors? They come from walking around Pacific atolls while my cargo plane was being unloaded and refueled. Coral sand, mangroves and coconut palms are pretty much the same everywhere.



Then Sand Island is laid out according to drawings from the time of the battle.



And, finally, the island is populated correctly.



It takes just a little more than "a few minutes" do to it right. Considering that most of the Battle of Midway will be out at sea, it is tempting to just put something together but we will stage the attack on the island and several missions from it, too.

Looks very nice zerocinco.
Populating the maps in IL-2 with the stock objects on it is time consuming enough. I can't imagine the difficulty of starting from scratch with a blank template.


Wheels

If you want to give the player the view of a Japanese dive bomber pilot had, you have to put things where they were.






Building the Other WWII on the Other flight sim might seem to be a wrong call but it allows us to do this. It could use higher resolution on the terrain tiles to match the high res buildings in these screen shots. I never notice this sort of thing in motion or when I am supposed to be hitting a target. But that's just me. I suspect a lot of people judge their gamplay on Pause.

Now back to Edward who will pull trees out of the runways with tweezers and it's ready to tear up.

Yes plz get the Seabees to chop the trees down. I have palm leaves in my gear.

This is what I luv about this sim. The incredible, almost fanatical, drive for accuracy. Brilliant!! Hearty congratulations.

Taking some CAT tests and positioning around Midway off the Fighting Lady.

Awesome. Are there going to be any Cat missions? What about Lady Lex?

There are several Catalina missions planned. The Lexington will be at the Battle of the Coral Sea. The Saratoga and the Wasp will be at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons.

New toy.





Need to make a bomb. Done in a couple of days.

Fantastic! The "Slow But Deadly" lives!

Need a bomb? That is "da bomb!"

:-)

Test shots.

Now that's an SBD skin.

I always seem to hit there too. I never lead enough to hit the front end or the middle of the ship.


Wheels

(slips in slightly winded to add perspective, fashionably late...)

You're not kidding. Using Jane's old mission builder tools years back built more than missions.. it built character. I did only two historical missions for Battle of the Bulge era and that was exhausting enough.

What folks need to understand is that if you're trying to recreate history, the slightest detraction or perceived inaccuracy can ruin the show. There are many cuts and retakes required while sitting in the director's chair. However, it's quite rewarding if you're able to reach a satisfactory notion of what it might have been like at the time.

I just worry that Phase 2 is a bit too ambitious. I would think that if they ended Phase 2 at Midway, what with the Darwin Raid, Burma AVG Missions, Doolittle Raid, Coral Sea and Midway, THAT would provide plenty of content. Guadalcanal and the carrier battles about could fill an entire phase to itself!

keep 'em coming,

Kevin

Funny you say that. As we start to assemble things and theory gives way to stories, it seems you are right. The place to stop might be Midway.

A logical set of tales might be:

First Darwin Raid: one or two missions frin AKAGI, KAGA, SORYU and HIRYU
LEXINGTON in action off Rabaul. two missions
ENTERPRISE attacks Wake Island. two missions
Flying Tigers attack Chiang Mai. two missions
Doolittle's Raid from HORNET. one or two missions. maybe ENTERPRISE fighters strafing pickets.
Battle of the Coral Sea.

TBD's/SBD's sink Shoho
D3A1's sink Neosho...maybe
Wildcats defend fleet...a couple of times
Zeroes defend fleet
SHOKAKU hit
ZUIKAKU loses it's aircraft
LEXINGTON sunk
YORKTOWN hit

Battle of Midway.

TBF torpedo attack from Midway and CAP defense.
Zeroes fighting Wildcats over Midway and vice versa
Bombing of facilities on Eastern Island
Bombing or strafing of facilities on Sand Island
Zeroes defending fleet against USN torpedo attacks
Zeroes defending fleet against USMC SBD attack
TBD torpedo attack on KAGA or HIRYU.
SBD attack on the AKAGI
HIRYU attack on YORKTOWN
HIRYU torpedo attack on YORKTOWN
HIRYU bombed

We think we can put on the battle without boring players with repetition or too much open ocean. What we want to do is let the player see what happened in the eyes of the pilots that books cannot show...like having your carrier sunk while you are on patrol, or facing massed firepower from SBD tail guns. Preliminary test missions diving from 15000 feet really gets your attention as does facing AA while skimming the ocean on a torpedo run. There are so many myths attached to the story that they hide the more interesting truths. Here's one: Everyone knows that the decks were crowded with aircraft about to launch to destroy the American fleet with bombs and fuel everywhere...except that is not true.

We have to tell the Big Picture story in two paragraphs and then let the game do the rest.

After that, Guadalcanal should be a separate tale...maybe combine the whole Solomons/New Guinea missions into one South Seas phase. We just don't want this to go on forever with too many Phases. I think we can trim some in the later years when Japan was so far behind in production that the story, in many cases, is better told from the Japanese side.

Looks like a good list.

I few possiblities is you had the time:

PBY search for Japanese Fleet (Strawberry 5)?
SBD Attack on Soryu (Best vrs Gallagher?)
SBD Attack on Mikuma/Mogami?

ok, I'm trying to sneak in a few more SBD missions, what can I say :-)

Kevin

We are looking at those. The PBY is in the next set. We just haven't settled on a story that is exactly right. You take off and land in the lagoon but we would like for the player to do more than just fly around. Going after the Akebono Maru with a torpedo at night, while good in real life, so far is lousy in game play.

We think having Lt. Best pop the Akagi makes the most of what the engine will allow so that one is set. After that, it's McClusky on the Kaga or Leslie on the Soryu.

We do all the missions then perfect the ones that show promise. If it wasn't such a job making them work, we could send all of them out as bonuses without making the "official" list too repetitious. I agree that the SBD missions, once you are flying them, are a lot of fun and I don't think people would be bored with it as easily as some other mission types.

And, we had the Mogami on the list but might be forced to cut back some. It all depends on time, money and if the mission is too much like another mission.

After reading "A Dawn Like Thunder", we moved the pilot's gun to the nose as a .30 cal,



made the ball gunner rotate with the ball



and put the bombardier/radio operator down in the tail.



Torpedo 8. Amazing tales.

Also, we got an eye witness view of what was on Eastern Island the day of the battle. We were close but not exactly right.

Busy now. Painting Yorktown, Hornet and Enterprise and SBD, soon B-25B, then Saratoga, Lexington and Wasp.

Sorry it took so long, Hinch. They are going to be beauties. Separate map just for the bridge and gear.





Perfect scale.

It's snowing in LA. May as well paint a ship. Big chunks done.

Hinch, what color are those walkways around the flight deck?







8, this third wire stuff isn't going to work with this TBF. The ship needs MORE WIRES!

Zerocinco. I love the dedication you show to historic detail. When you're done with the whole series, in a year or two,
I hope you and Maddox can get together and work something out. From what I understood there's going to be an SDK for third party
developers. CoD engine and your work ethics...priceless! They dropped the ball with Pacific Fighters. I'm not a big fan
of your underlying game engine. I'm going to buy it anyway. Just to support you guys. Immersion, especially in the carrier
battles, is going to be great with all those detailed ships, aircraft and Islands.

To be perfectly frank, while I was a big fan of the Thirdwire engine, I am disappointed with the way it has not kept up. I say "disappointed", not disgusted. I cannot imagine that TK is making enough money any longer to justify major investment. Plus, my guess is that we passed the point of diminishing returns about 3 patches ago. From here on out, a huge investment will net a very small increase in the look of the game and almost no inroads against his competitors.

And thanks for buying it.

Only four days and the basic Yorktown CV-5 is done.

Looks like the captain forgot to turn into the wind to recover.








Now for the Hornet camo and Enterprise. Should have the Saratoga and Lexington back from mapping this week.

Get that 3 wire.

It needs a wire at every place there is a wire. And you know who does the carrier INI's. You should be able to knock that out in a couple of dozen hours.

First go on the Hornet.

Nice ship.


Wheels

"Main force."

We went to a better artist of the all-important SBD-3. This is it in near final form (but not final paint). We still need to punch the holes in the flaps. After some experiments with canopies and guns, etc. it will go into paint. These are shots of the FM test we thought you would like.

This is what 10,000 feet straight down looks like. And that's the Akagi down there. (She did not actually have these aircraft on deck at the time.)



I think this is about 2500 feet where the more experienced Enterprise pilots released. Things are moving too quickly to do much more than glance at the altitude.



A couple of views looking up right after pickle during pull out.



You can tell, can't you?



Yep. Missed. Flew all the way from the Enterprise to drop a bomb in the water.



Put in some clouds, AAA, Zeroes, smoke and dirty up this plane and it's going to be a classic Third Person Shooter mission that really happened.

Awesome stuff! Can't wait.

All the last details worked out.

First, we didn't want to just paint on the holes in the dive brakes and flaps so we had to work around TGA overlap problem. And we couldn't afford the poly hit it would take to model all those round holes.



This is the Akagi from 8000 feet through one of the dive brake holes.



And we needed to determine how we wanted the canopies to work with the gun stowage animation. Also, the bomb trapeze needed a tweak.



Now, it's the SBD-3 from the Battle of Midway and it needs paint. Should be done by next week.

The B-25's are on the boards now. I think we will be ready for Darwin through Midway and Phase Two in time.

Very nice looking SBD.


Wheels

Finished.





Next up: Doolittle's Raiders, Lexington's paint and we are ready to go.

NICE!

VF-6 aboard the Enterprise. Everyone is the right color now.









Still screwing around with the Lexington model...has a glitch. Darwin's in. Awaiting B-25B and Japan final.

Very nice. Those F4-F's are top-notch and the carriers look awesome.

Every time I see an F4-F I have a slight feeling of pity I love flying them all the same.

Cheers

Deadline: June 4th.

These are some random shots from the Battle of Midway. Two more missions to rough out: Hiryu hitting the Yorktown and the Hiryu itself being hit.

We are going to set the battle up as it was and rely upon your own scouting to locate and direct your own strikes.

Test bed. Actually, this is the Arizona but we needed the catapult


If you dead reckon correctly, that will be you up there recording the location of the USN.


While this PBY makes a water take off from the lagoon at Midway to find the IJN.




Langdon Fieberling takes VT-8's new TBF's into battle.


Japanese dive bombers arrive at Midway...


...and begin to take the place apart.




Torpedo 8 is intercepted by Zeroes from all four carriers.


Myths dispelled. By the time these were in the air, the die was cast.


Flagship of Kido Butai, the Akagi.


We need an effect in the water around that ship. All this work and that looks like Ms. Pacman.


Next: Hiryu's Revenge and the battle's end. Lots of tweaking. Lots of work but it will be ready by the anniversary of Midway.

Nice preview.


Wheels

Nice.

Let me know. Plan on getting this up pretty quickly. This should be some real fun.

June 4th. Midway Day.

The deadline is approaching. It's going to be close but I think we will make it on time.

It is important to all of us that this Phase of Rising Sun be more than a bunch of missions. It is history that is still alive and the story of an epic sea battle that ranks in importance with Salamis and Trafalgar...very different, but in the essential ways, exactly the same. We try to give meaning to phrases in books that the words do not describe sufficiently.

Here are a few teasers.



We start with Butch O'Hare then go to the Doolittle Raid: 3 missions



Raid on Tulagi and Battle of the Coral Sea: 13 missions











Battle of Midway:

Start by flying patrols to locate the enemy. Your results determine where you fly the strike.







Launch from the Tone to find the US Fleet. Then send the strike to that location.



The famous story of Torpedo 8 but through the eyes of the men defending their carriers against it. Wild!







Lt. DeWitt Shumway finds the Hiryu.

Looking like a very sweet add-on. The credit card is twitching to be used

What game do you need installed before you can install and play this.

For WinXP its either Strike Fighters Project 1 updated to Oct 08, or Strike Fighters Gold same update.

For Win7 or Vista, its Strike Fighters 2.

So on the US Side will you have squadrons with the meatball decal and some without? I forgot which squadron still had the red meatball on the star???

The striped tail and star with the red center were on at Coral Sea and off by Midway.

Here's something we are putting into the Battle of Midway missions to make it more interesting.

At dawn the morning of the battle, both sides sent out scouts. The Japanese were skeptical about there being an American fleet nearby. The USN knew of the Japanese plans and only had to locate Kido Butai. They also knew that 320 was the most likely radial of approach.

So the US Navy sent 10 Catalinas aloft from Midway. You will fly one looking for the Japanese fleet.



And the IJ Navy sent float planes on search patterns to the east. They flew by dead reckoning (Distance = Rate X Time) to their turn around and returned. They could not type M to see where they were.



In Rising Sun Phase Two, you cannot skip these missions...because like every naval aviator on either side, plotting where you were going (on our plotting board) did not just mean victory, it meant you would find a friendly deck rather than a deep lonely ocean at the end of your flight.

As you know, on the game map (M key) there are coordinates. On these scout missions, you must do two things: Dead Recon and find the coordinates on the map. (Hey! You want a flight simulator or Donkey Kong?)

See the numbers along the margins? Those are Latitude and Longitude.



PLOT 1: In this shot of the plotting board, we will take the US Navy problem. You know where your ships are. That is the blue dot. You know where the PBY reported the Japanese fleet to be. That's the red dot.

Draw a line between them...or just line up a pencil or the side of a piece of paper.



PLOT 2: Then keeping it oriented the same, move it down to the compass rose at M for Midway. That's the heading from Enterprise to the enemy fleet.



PLOT 3: Then turn the line so it is vertical. Use the lines of latitude to measure the length of the line. Each division is 5 nautical miles. That is the distance.

Time to send the strike. Their course is 295 for 70 miles.

But how do you know when you are there? Dead reckoning. If you are going 120 knots, that is two miles a minute. In 35 minutes, you should be seeing smoke from the stacks. (or that's 4 minutes and 20 seconds at X8)



So, why are we doing this? First, it's fun. Second, it gives you something to lose...your time if you screw up. Third, it brings home what was really going on. Nobody was being vectored in to lock on. The GIB wasn't thumbing the camera around to select a target. These men on both sides were navigating over huge distances without any course guidance to find and strike targets then return home with only enough fuel to get it right. Sometimes they had to find their ship in the gloom of night in horrible weather...or die in a raft on the sea.

If you don't know the story, it's just a game. There's plenty of violence and short flights. You can count on that. But we think if you know "who" you are simulating and not just "what", you will appreciate the mission more.

Here's the blank one for those missions.



and a better picture of the Jake spotting the Hornet.

Neat stuff zerocinco. I hate to admit it but I never understood how plotting for navigation worked.


Wheels

Now you will. It will take you twenty seconds. Then set the heading, wing leveler, throttle at ~60% and crank it up to X8. Watch the clock. (We put one in every panel for this reason. Also, it's easier for me to write missions if I know the mission time.) When it's close, come out of hyperspace and get ready to fight.

But...remember the heading. The reciprocal is the way home with some deviation for ship movement. Try figuring the recip when a Zero is shooting your tail feathers off. It's not easy.

We'll get the plot board jpeg straightened out. Its rather fun and for a change takes you using your noodle. I got lost first time out flying Howard Ady's route.

I can see them on this computer but not on my iPhone.

zerocinco says "Here's something we are putting into the Battle of Midway missions to make it more interesting...In Rising Sun Phase Two, you cannot skip these missions...because like every naval aviator on either side, plotting where you were going (on our plotting board) did not just mean victory, it meant you would find a friendly deck rather than a deep lonely ocean at the end of your flight. As you know, on the game map (M key) there are coordinates. On these scout missions, you must do two things: Dead Recon and find the coordinates on the map."

The artwork is flat out gorgeous! Just to clarify (yes I have been away from the hobby for almost a decade), your goal to be historically accurate means a player cannot progress through this campaign as strictly a Zero pilot or as a Wildcat pilot, correct? I think I know the answer, considering the time frame and the paucity of carrier battles (5 total) in WWII. But I imagine one could enjoy unlimited single mission setups? (Yes/No)

Again your artwork looks superb!

Yes...in fact, you will have all the pieces needed to do whatever you wish. We are leaving out a lot of things for continuity that will have to be worked in later. We could do every mission of one pilot if you have descriptions of them. In a small way we do that. We used the same people that fought at Pearl Harbor and Wake Island as possible.

I can't see the plot pictures jpegs in the posts either.
(I tried using two different computers and internet connections and I can't see the jpegs on either of them.)
I was able to download them by putting their links in a post and right clicking and using the "save target as" feature.

http://simhq.com/forum/files/usergals/2011/06/full-4804-13134-full_4804_13126_plot1.jpg

http://simhq.com/forum/files/usergals/2011/06/full-4804-13135-full_4804_13127_plot2.jpg

http://simhq.com/forum/files/usergals/2011/06/full-4804-13136-full_4804_13128_plot3.jpg

http://simhq.com/forum/files/usergals/2011/06/full-4804-13137-full_4804_13129_plottingboard.jpg


Wheels

Testing the effectiveness of the Japanese AAA. Between that and the Zero's, good luck. Note the second and third shot, left side of the pics where the AAA is also going after my wingmen. I got in ahead and dropped too late, missing. I figured the AAA would be busy with them. Surprise, got some nice holes for my efforts.

It looks like you still might make it home though.


Wheels

I think we should cut back on the carrier defense for the IJN since they were notoriously weak. We can put a DD nearby for AAA and move the screen way out like they did. The main defense was the Zero if we can get the AI to cooperate. The USN will be a wall of bullets, though, as that is an accurate portrayal.

I play "1946" with some mods and my game looks a lot better that this.

Are you going back to IL-2 graphics as it looked like when it was published 10 years ago?

Cheers,

I have 1946 and is nowhere near this level. Want to see?





We aren't in a war with Oleg just like the Royal Navy didn't have battleships at Pearl Harbor.

I would suggest if you want great graphics, try World of Warcraft.

Good for you. Why don't you go fire it up.

priceless m8.......

Is it soup yet? We're ready for Midway ! Throw some cherry sauce on it then we can eat it.

In the midst of getting Torpedo 8's TBF's from Midway acclimated.