New EXES 23rd August 2021

Unless you use a hard difficulty setting you can select an enemy aircraft that is visible on-screen by pressing "T" or a key set on your joystick.
This puts the plane's ID and range with a little red target box where the plane is.
Although it is helpful the text and target box can obscure parts of the plane itself, and it is even more of a problem when you are closing in to shoot.
The new exe reads a file named "VisRange.mpf" which just has one number in it.

The one supplied has a value of 1000.
This means that when you get closer that 1000 metres to the selected plane the target box and the text disappear.
This gives you a clear view for aiming, and allows you to target things such as engines in multi-engined planes.

If your eaw.ini has the distance setting in feet the value in the file is multiplied by three. This is a rough, but good-enough approximation for the purpose, so the value of 1000 is 1000 metres or 3000 feet.
If there is no "VisRange.mpf" file the default value is zero, so the target box and text are not turned off.

Run the downloaded 7-zip ("Aug23EXES.exe") in the UAW160 folder. It will add the new map, old map and multiplayer only versions of the new exe to your "EAW Versions" folder and put the "VisRange.mpf" file in the root folder.
The "VisRange.mpf" file is a text file, so you can change the "1000" to a different value using notepad. Once you are happy with it you can copy the one in the root folder and paste it into "GameData" as the default version.

New exes for August 24th:

August 24th EXES

This is an extension of yesterday's idea.
It does not need the "VisRange.mpf" file.

When you approach a selected enemy aircraft with the target box, ID and range showing you can press F8 when you reach the ideal range.
This will set the maximum range for the display of the target box, ID and range at the current range value.

It is a toggle switch, so pressing F8 again will set the value to zero and you can re-set it whenever you want to

It allows you to set different values for small fighters and large bombers

Download the "Aug24thVersions.exe" and run it in your UAW160 folder.
It will add the three versions of the exe to your "EAW Versions" folder:

24thAug2021NM.exe
24thAug2021OM.exe
24thAug2021MPOnly.exe

Jel

Wow, that's a great idea. Wonder why it took us 23 years to think of it. Just shows what life there is left in the game.

Another subject if you don't mind the intrusion.

In my installation the very heavy cannon gun sound and the revolver gun sound are missing. They exist in the folders but they do not work in the game. We've been down this road 4-5 times already, not sure why it keeps popping up.

Could you and your players confirm this is the case with their installations? Maybe try various execs?

Thanks in advance.

Just remind me again. Which planes use these weapons?

I have tidied up a couple of things and made a new set

August 30th 2021 New "EAW Versions"

At GR now for a hour or 2 trying new exe's

Thanks for the game Jelly , was a lot of fun

Very clever !

An example

Initial approach with nothing set:


F8 clicked to set the range. The ID, range and target box disappear:

The target bomber was shot down in this attack.

Second approach after downing the first bomber:

The ID, range and target box are visible at this range.

Getting closer:


Even closer:


And close enough to make the ID, range and target box to disappear:

I found a bug
In a tidy-up which removed some remmed out code in the August 30th version a couple of real code lines were accidentally deleted.
This affected ground target selection, particularly the one that moves to the next ground target when you click "E" on the keyboard.

I have fixed the problem, so there is a new set of three exes to download (New map, Old Map and Multiplayer only):

September 4th targetting fix

Enjoy
Jel