homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation European Air War Desert Air War question

Checking what I think came from my original download of DAW but set up for 1.28c I see this:



The flight models for the Saetta and Falco are American



The Marauder is German.

Was this ever fixed other than in my own modifications of DAW?

The reason I am asking is that a number of recent posts relate to career issues. Once again I am trying to ascertain which campaigns were released with campaign files and unless corrected this problem could give strange results.
I have the campaign files for the default ETO, Spanish Air War and South Pacific air war. Did Malta have careers?

Jel

Only career and campaign files I edited were for SPAW.

FWIW, lot's of opportunity for messed up files in campaign mode. Could take quite a bit of work to straighten out.

My 2002 128C installation of Malta includes a number of 1940 and 1943 campaign files dated between January and April of that year.

These same campaign files are in my 2011 128E installation of Malta.

I have always steered clear of making edited campaign files (as far as possible - sometimes it was necessary to edit the msnXX.dat and sqname files) and stayed with saved single missions.

I just checked the unaltered 1.28E versionand it too has a changed data set. Furthermore it shows that all targets seem to be resequenced but the campaign files remained unchanged as in stock EAW. I checked it with a file comparison program and it shows over 1000 differences in GRIDDATA alone. Some 200+ targets were no longer in their original location or modified as well and the airfield.dat was larger then the stock file, which indicates it's been also changed. When the target set is resequenced it also requires all campaign files to be edited to make sure the called targets sit on the proper side of the frontline and has the target available which the line in the camp**.dat wants to attack. If it is for instance a bombing mission and an attack on airfield, the resquenced target value used may no longer have an airfield when it's moved to a new line in the target editor or the current vale may sit on the wrong side of the front line, etc etc.. The campaign files don't have any error checking to my knowledge. This is true for practically every campaign ever created, i.e. anything derived from these files will have exactly the same problem as they all used resequencing with the one and only target editing tool available. File dates are NOT an indication of altered files, any opened files which are resaved will get a new modification date, only a file comparison will show the differences. I'm sorry to be the bearer of such bad news.

VBH

I have just checked my 128C version of Malta using UltraCompare, and it shows significant differences between the 1940/43 CAMPXXXX.dat, SQXXXX.dat, and MISNXX.dat and those of stock EAW.

The 1940/43 SQXXXX.dat files are also much smaller than the default EAW files.

Emil did not offer any amended files for 1944 or 1945 (at least in the 128C version) because that scenario did not use the 44/45 moving frontline campaign.

These also appear to be the same campaign files which are in my 128E Malta setup, and therefore have the same differences to stock EAW.

Emil's original 14th April 2002 Readme for Malta makes it plain that he has edited the 1940 and 1943 campaigns:



Malta is not, as with Emil's earlier scenarios, simply the stock 40/43 campaigns played with different planes and screens. This was after we learned how to edit to target and campaign files. Malta was derived from the original DAW setup which, as did my Midway, Spain, and Jim Farmer's original Pacific Tide had a completely new tile map and target locations. Like DAW, Spain and Pacific Tide it also had new campaign structures.

The 1.28c release had the addition of the Allied Carrier in the North Sea to the default ETO files. This affected the "targets.dat", "tardata.dat", "griddata.dat", airfield.dat" and "tarnames.str" files. This extra target was inncluded in the 1.28E, 1.28F and 1.29 releases, and the default theatres in 140, 150 and 160.

There is no real problem with 140-160 because they can load an ETO theatre with the 1.2 default target and campaign files, and the 1.2 default plane-set.
If the correct theatre and plane-sets are loaded then careers should be possible in any theatres which they were designed for originally

Jel

I gave that exact same response to CaptSopwith and Dr Aquinel in the Combat Ace forums but it's not curing the older campaigns, or my own creations which were meant for single missions only. I know v1.2 works fine, always has but you can't use it's files in those nor in anything newly created. It'll take years to check all that old stuff and create new files from scratch. I mean I don't mind flying single missions as I'm flying on line mostly, but I think most people would like to do real campaigns, the fully edited ones not another 20 years of v1.2. I did check most add ons in the past already and found that there wasn't one in my possession which had edited campaign files. Some ancient ones didn't even have a changed target set either so they might work. I also recall Rotton mentioning he edited the SPAW campaign, does that relate to the target locations in relation to their front lines and the address pointers in the data set?

VBH

I do not think that many campaigns were ever made. Ray did a proper one for South Pacific Air War, and there was another proper one done for Spanish Air War.





The problem with other theatres is that careers appear to be available in the default menu files even when they are not

Checking my 1.28c folder I have found that DAW, Malta and Russia have career screens.
I will fix the problem with the DAW nationality issues in "planes.det"and then make a 1.28c careers pack

In my 128C folder, the following have edited CAMP files (though some use default target lay out):

Spain,
DAW,
Malta,
Pacific Tide (both Solomons and Guadalcanal),
Russia,
Aces over Europe (Modred's 2003 original),
1943-45 Free French (Typhomil),
Fading Sun (RockHPI),
SWOTL,
1945 Final Battles (Fabio),
1945 TA 183 (Mosi)
1947 The General's War (Rotton50)
Nachtjaeger (Tonester)

There is an installation here:

1.28c Careers Special





There is a reasonable selection of theatres. I have not included the 1.28c New Map exe as the old map version is needed to display the career briefing maps.
No files have been modified other than "planes.dat" in "Desert Air War" to fix three nationality errors.

Jel

I just found (rediscovered?) this thread after wondering and doing a word search as to whether a campaign geared install had ever been made. Just downloaded it.