homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation Rise of Flight - The First Great Air War ROF Campaign Released

10.2 is also available on Wings Of Honor -> http://www.wingsofhonour.com/forums/ipboard/index.php?/files/file/8-rofcampaign/

Hi Pat, I have a request for you regarding the structure of missions in your CG.

One thing that I've noticed in RoF is that the AI members of the players flight take to the air very rapidly upon spawning and leave the player no time to get organised in relation to checking controls, wind, calibrating the head-tracker, starting the engine and allowing time for the RPM to settle so that the mixture can be adjusted adequately for take-off. I find that, by the time I've done all of these things, my flight is long gone and it becomes very hard to reacquire them and subsequently more difficult to maintain contact with them during a patrol.

What I was wondering is, would it be possible to add a series of way-points to a flight after take-off so that the AI remain near the airfield to form up and gain a little altitude before heading for the front? This would give the missions a greater level of realism and allow the player to carry out the appropriate pre-flight procedures so I would greatly appreciate it if you would consider adding this as a feature to your superb campaign generator.

The first thing that came to mind are those three gawd-awful circles of the airfield you have to make in OFF each time. Yes, you can time-warp through them but that sort of detracts from the experience, no? IMHO I do not want to see that.

But yes, I do agree that AI wingmates do their best to try and loose you from the get-go. There used to be a dog-leg in the waypoints but that was deleted some versions ago.

Best would be to make the takeoff timer longer and also make it configurable.

Great idea, Pat!

Whatever works mate, so long as take-off doesn't resemble the first 5 seconds of the Melbourne Cup then I'm happy. Can I do this myself in the config or is it a mission planner thing?

I have not yet coded it in, so it is not available yet. When I do it would be a configurable parameter with a default of say 30 seconds. I think that most people play with engine warmed and 30 seconds is usually enough time to do the necessary. The parameter would be configurable for any who wished to change it.

That is fantastic Pat, I know it will make a lot of guys very happy.

Now with the upcoming new Mods On mode...
Is it possible for RoF CG to save missions in binary code as well,
in order to take benefit of the new feature?

PS: Yet another tiny request...
Is it possible to omit the rank of the pilot in icons?
as it seems most of the times the name of the pilot appears cut out...

PWCG missions load faster than career missions mods on or off because they're stored on the computer and don't use the master server. At least that's my understanding of it I could be wrong.

I'm not sure as there are varying factors to load time. I have written a great deal of code to exclude the unnecessary and thereby reduce load time and optimize mission performance. I am sure that 777 campaign missions have their own optimizations.

Elefant: I have no idea how to generate binary missions, but if possible I will definitely do so. Binary missions are obviously the result of some post processing routine. If that routine is available to me it should be a simple matter to invoke it. If it is embedded then it will not be available.

If your missions have an .MSBIN file after creation than you have the binary version. But I don't think you are using the ME to create your missions so this could be the reason.

Now with 1.022 version all modes of gameplay with Mods On look for the Binary version first instead of the text file to speed loading. If no binary is found then it looks for the Text file.

Pat - send an email to Viks and ask about the binary file if you don't see them with your missions.

Jason

The binary file will definitely exist when you save from the mission editor. I am also pretty sure that it exists after the first time that you either load the mission in the game. I think that what Elefant is looking for is for me to create the binary file as output from my mission generator to make the first load faster.

I'll email Viks and ask. It's a good idea if it's possible.

With the release of the RE8 I'm trying my best to get the next release out. Code is done but testing will take a few days. Hoping for release in a few days. There will be boatloads of RE8s in the sky since it is now the earliest Allied two seater as well as being such a long lived type. It stands in for everything from BE2s to AWFKs to Dorands and other early French types.

features will include:
- Increased takeoff timer for engine management
- Combined claims with automatic mission results for new claiming system
- Added RE8

Thanks for your hard work. The claims sound fantastic.

Sounds great Pat.

I bow...thanks Pat!

That is awesome Pat. I do hope you are taking some time to enjoy the fruits of all your labours, i.e. that you enjoy your campaign mission generator as much as we do.

Many thanks!

Any word on the next update? I'm getting my flight stick back on Wednesday, it would be awesome to have a new version of PWCG then

Been down and out with a cold for the past week - and, as usual, the update is harder than I had hoped. The simplest changes are the ones that affect only a small, localized piece of code. As I was coding it I found that the new AAR caused changes that carried into the other AAR methods. Not a big deal but I didn't want to do it while my head wasn't in the right place.