40th Anniversary Edition

[mikew]

With the recent-ish discussions about Dosbox on Discord, I've been thinking about what it might take to produce a new version of this but this time including the game. Back in 2013 I was dead against that, but there don't appear to have been any repercussions with TAW2.30.

EF2000 came out in late 1995, so we've got over 3 years to meet the 30th anniversary deadline.
Anyway, I've started a thread about it at least.

EDIT: The first post with the download link ought to be stickied in case more threads get started.

[Krishty]

Excellent idea 🤩

[Scorpion82]

Sounds good, albeit I'm satisfied with the current version. I have thought about writing a dedicated flight manual for EF2000. Not the manual, not the strategy guide, but something that's more akin to a real flight manual.

[mikew]

Thread title edited to give me a bit more time.
...but Scorpion82 is right. I'm not sure what can be improved...or at least improved substantially.

[Scorpion82]

I have a few things in mind concerning the avionics and weapons, but most of it is probably not feasible.

[Scorpion82]

Maybe adding the option to the Front End UI to choose the roundles to be used.

[mikew]

Yes, the roundals (or lack of them) is annoying. I suspect that aircraft desiganted as 'NATO' are using the US markings.

[Krishty]

Most rounels are controlled by a shape parameter (or semaphore as we now know). If we found it in memory, overriding the roundel would be a matter of just changing a byte.

Not that I would volunteer to disassemble; just saying 😁

[mikew]

If.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconic_phrase

[Scorpion82]

Is it known where the roundle files are located? A possibly simplier solution would be to simply swap the files, so the player may select the roundle before starting the game and it's managed through swapping the files in and out.

[mikew]

They are all on this texture:

markings.jpg (16.77 KiB) Viewed 111 times

We could just swap them about, but then if you specifically want UK or USA markings, they'd come out wrong.

[Krishty]

Wait … if you swap out the texture, doesn’t this mean that markings on enemy planes are replaced, too?

[mikew]

I meant swap the US and UK symbols on that texture. As they are different sizes, the way to do it would be to swap the semaphore values in the .3 file instead....but this isn't the way to do it.
I've already had a quick look at finding where NATO is defined in the exe using IDA and Ghidra, but it's not much fun when you're not making progress.

An alternative would be to get the European DOS version patched with everything.

[Scorpion82]

So it's merely a position on a texture file that is being defined. Probably a kind of X/Y position. I have the German TactCom shall I upload it to have a reference?

[mikew]

At the end of the line, yes, it's just texture coordinates.

But we start with the mission configuration file, which for the 'Icebergs' scenario in the 'Free Flight' section of the 'Simulator' menu is called 'icebg.cfg' and contains this line:
MISSION PLANE NORWEGIAN CAP OK 0 0 1
Running this mission gives Norwegian markings, so we could just change the text in these files, replacing 'NATO' with our country of choice.
But that would likely affect the game behaviour depending on the allegiance table. Also, the files generated by the campaign system would always have NATO defined.

[mikew]

...oh, and I'm definitely interested in the German Tactcom. so maybe you can upload it here as a zip file (if Krishty doesn't mind).
I wonder if it use Luftwaffe insignia for NATO...

[Scorpion82]

I'll directly upload the installed game. Yes in this version the iron cross is the default one for NATO. Same with my German SEF2000.

[mikew]

That gave me an idea, but my Euro SEF2000 CD doesn't give the choice to choose the language...even though the French and German help files are included. Could you upload just the game exe (It's called _superw.exe on mine) of the German EF2000 as well?

[Scorpion82]

Here is the complete TACTCOM install. I have to checkout whether I can find the _superw.exe on the CD, as I have only the v2.0 Win95 version installed and want to avoid the hazzle of somehow getting SEF2000 installed.

[mikew]

Thanks! I have downloaded it now, so, for me, it's OK to delete it if it's taking up too much space...