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#4609283 - 09/22/22 10:32 AM The pedigree of UAW160  
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 12,497
MrJelly Offline
Veteran
MrJelly  Offline
Veteran

Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 12,497
Montagnac, L'Herault, France
The UAW160 pedigree

When we received the source code and the right to further develop the game the first public release was 1.28
All sorts of things had been added that people wanted, including gun convergence and improved multiplayer.
EAW 1.2 always had its backup files in a set of 23 CDF files, and the 1.28 release was a patch for an existing 1.2 installation, which included some edited CDF files.

As further things were requested, and other ideas came into our thinking 1.28a and 1.28b were released.

In order to load a mod such as a theatre the user had to copy files into the root folder. In order to load a different theatre the files had to be deleted from the root folder before the new ones could be loaded.
This system could eventually lead to disk defragmentation, so we came up with a better one.
We produced an exe that read a "Dir.set" file in the root folder. This file contaned a list of paths to the files that the exe needed to load.
It was included in the release of 1.28c.

During the time that 1.28c was being devloped, Crashin' Jack released 1.28d. It used 1024x768 selection screens insted of the old 640x480.
Those earlier screens were beginning to look distorted when stretched to fill the screens of the newer and larger monitors.
The upshot was that we released 1.28e which was 1.28c with 1024x768 selection screens.

The "eaw.tm" file is the one that the exe reads to get the tile-map for the game. Its structure meant that there could only be a maximum of 64 different terrain tiles.
Will Gee had already worked on a system that allowed for millions of terrain tiles, not that anyone needed that many.
1.28f included his work, with the exe reading the "eaw32.tm" file and not the old "eaw.tm".

EAW had always used a 640x320 tile-map. The 1.29 release had the ability to read tile-maps of different sizes.
A different map file was needed, with the "TargMap.pic" being read instead of the "Europe1.pic" file.

EAW had always worked on a slot system of 30 slots. Any skin 3dz files containing "p38h" were in the first slot, and any containing "V1V1" were in the 30th.
This meant that the files were locked into slots. Not only that, but the flight model system was basically stupid.
There were 30 individual "flt" files from "p38h.flt" through to "V1V1.flt".
Unfortunately other files such as "planes.dat" and "pnames.str" covered all 30 slots. It was a PITA for modders.
Knegel came up with EAW1.30 which had a slot-free system and the "30 plane" files broken up inti 30 single plane files.

EAW1.40 was released. Effectively it was 1.29 with Knegel's slot free planes. The ability to make your own "plane-set" was born.

The first 1.40 releases still used the CDF files. It was a PITA to edit them, and it became apparent that some of the editing programs would not run in later versions of Windows.
This prompted us to produce a version of 1.40 which had the back-up files in the "SaveData" folder, and the CDF files were no longer needed.

At that stage we had plane-sets in theatre folders. Ray suggested that it would be great to have them independent of each other.
This was done in EAW1.50 and it meant that a player could select the ETO theatre, and choose the default planes, or have a bit of fun flying the Pacific planes in the European theatre.

1.60 occurred because a new weapons system was released. Apart from including the new weapons, the back-up files we stored in a "GameData" folder and not the "SaveData" folder.
A heap of things have been added to the system, such as stackable objects on the decks of ships, catapult launches, and the ability to change the "EAW wall".
The exe is still "eaw.exe" and we only release it as "UAW160" (Universal Air War) because we include several other theatres in the package, and not just the European one.


Fly EAW online at GameRanger: GameRanger Site

FaceBook Pages
UAW 160 downloads
EAW Club

Mark Twain: I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.

I am now of an age at which I no longer need to suffer fools gladly
#4609357 - 09/22/22 11:43 PM Re: The pedigree of UAW160 [Re: MrJelly]  
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 7,427
Moggy Offline
EAW Old Timer and Bodger
Moggy  Offline
EAW Old Timer and Bodger
Hotshot

Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 7,427
A slit trench at RAF Gravesend
Great survey of a lot of hard work Jel

Here is a chronology, so far as I have it:

1.2x, which was the granddaddy of them all, the first code we got to compile with fixed sound was August 2007, with 1.28 the first releaseed version quick to follow.

1.28A January 2008
1.28B June 2008
1.28C November 2009
1.28D December 2009
1.28E August 2010
1.28F February 2012
1.29 March 2013

1.3 2012
1.4 2014
1.5 2017
1.6 2020


cheers

Last edited by Moggy; 09/22/22 11:51 PM.

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