MAW Revisited v 1.31a

[Daiwilletti]

Its a wet winter's day so I decided to reinstall MAW. There is so much that is good about MAW. Also some highly frustrating glitches causing unexpected crashes to the desktop, which I suspect are caused by the complex spawning arrangements. But with some fiddling I've reduced the crashes, which are worst in campaign mode.

Great things however far outweigh the glitches, like:

Beautiful aircraft models and flight models
Great scenery
New spawns sets like doubled up columns of vehicles
A terrain mesh that renders smooth hillsides with good meshbuilderbudgets.

Everything looks really good on my new Windows 8.1 setup, using a shaders.xml that allows for reflective textures.

Love the desert rats logo on the dr_b_Grant_Mk1!!

[HouseHobbit]

In MAW I discovered one has to set the sliders for the scenery at level 3 and the terrains at level 3 also, or MAW will Crash
in certain areas of the map..
Learned this while building missions..

[Daiwilletti]

In MAW I discovered one has to set the sliders for the scenery at level 3 and the terrains at level 3 also, or MAW will Crash
in certain areas of the map..
Learned this while building missions..

Aha, thanks for that, HH

[Daiwilletti]

I have been trying to play the Greece 1940 and Malta 1940 campaigns. These are plagued by crashes.
What I have found is literally dozens of faults with the spawn files associated with these campaigns. I am referring to the spawn files created for use by the spawn "configurator". So far I have modified over 100 spawn xml files.

For the air spawns alone typical issues are (using the spawn configurator files for Axis campaign):
- the random spawns call for aircraft that do not enter service until after the campaign start date;
- aircraft under a country=britain spawn file often include Britain_FAA aircraft
etc etc

Then turning to the ground spawns, there were similar entered service issues for these 1940 campaigns. It is really important to have a full complement of all the standard vehicle types available at the start date of the campaign.

I do not know enough about spawn glitches to tell if these sort of faults would cause the game to crash in the way I experience on almost every mission. I would appreciate comments from anybody with an opinion.

I had a look around and could not find an active forum discussing MAW, probably not surprising since I guess most active remaining Desert Rats would be working on things like Rising Sun??

Hence the default to good ol' SOH

[Talon]

MAW has never crashed on me.All my sliders are at 5.The Malta_1940 camapaign I changed to a Hurricane campaign starting in Audust 1940 with no problem.

Hopefully one I'' ;earn how to do a campaign and do a Spitfire campaign for 1942.To bad the spawn selector only goes to 1941.

[Daiwilletti]

MAW has never crashed on me.All my sliders are at 5.The Malta_1940 camapaign I changed to a Hurricane campaign starting in Audust 1940 with no problem.

Hopefully one I'' ;earn how to do a campaign and do a Spitfire campaign for 1942.To bad the spawn selector only goes to 1941.

I'm flying for Italy over Greece and Malta in 1940. Sounds like you are flying using the Allied spawns. So maybe the campaign can handle Britain_FAA aircraft spawning in formations controlled by Country=Britain? Anyway thats given me another idea of what to look for.

Loving that smooth mesh around the Med!

[Daiwilletti]

Flying out of Malta in a 1941 campaign. So I decided to take a look at the Italian ship xdps. Quite a number have errors. I'm not too sure what effect the errors would have on spawning activity.

For example, Ita_destroyer and Pancaldo destroyer both specify 120mm_50 guns, a type not found in the Guns folder (although readily sourced from ETO and referencing the 5in_38 round found in the Weapons folder)

Cruisers and battleships almost all share a problem in the gunstations where the trainable parameter for the guns is often "20". Trainable, according to the SDK, is addressed by a boolean expression where "y" or "n" are applicable. However, judging by the majority of xdps I've seen, "0" or "1" will also do the trick. Ships affected include Fiume, Gorizia, Littorio, Pola, Roma, Veneto.

In the Systems section, references to 3 guns are missing for some battleships. I.e. there are 17 guns listed in the gunstations section, and only 14 listed in the systems section.

Of the above three issues, I would guess that only the missing gun (120mm_50) would prevent the ship from spawning. I started looking at the ships after flying a mission where an Italian battleship had its secondary guns (probably 152mms) blazing away at surface targets and the main guns were not firing which seemed odd to me.

Wondering if there is any interest in my uploading the 10 or so modified Italian ship xdps for MAW?

[gosd]

Yes please do

[Capt. Winters]

Hi Daiwilletti,

I would like a copy of any work you do for MAW. every little bit helps. thanks,

regards Rob.

[gecko]

I wonder what the chances are of getting permission to do a major update on MAW with some of the new things we've come up with and of course the new aircraft.

[Daiwilletti]

The other thing I forgot to mention is I found a duplicate set of effects for the 16in gun in the effects.xml. That might explain why the main guns on the Italian battleship were not engaging their target.

I've deleted one set of effects but have not as yet found an easy way to test the Italian battleships. However when reading all the related secondary effects lines, I think I deleted the more recent version of the 16in effects. Having not backed up (doh!) I won't offer to upload the effects.xml as would prefer a version utilising the more modern effects line for the 16in guns.

Will go back and double check all the modified ship xdps before uploading. For example, I note that a lot of the warships are utilising basic wake effects from merchant ships. But I've also seen an Italian destroyer in MAW with the Brit_Ger_destroyers wake effect. I would prefer to change some of the wake effects but this will involve a bit more fluffing around, double checking what wake effects are in the effects.xml, etc.

Like Gecko I think there is now scope for a major upgrade (all those lovely new planes), but also as Rob says we can make incremental changes now, as who knows when and if a big package can be produced.

[gosd]

Daiwilletti,
Be advised that I have made major changes on all of the cfs3 ships concerning the wakes and also the effects file pertaining.
I also added the abandonShip horn effects from ndicki.
So before you start to work on this subjet I would gladly share my findings and we could see what kind of post it would make.

[gecko]

The reason it hasn't been done yet is that the ETO team is not the same as the Desert Rats who produced MAW. I suspect that anything like an official update would need to be sanctioned by whatever original team members are still around.

[Daiwilletti]

Daiwilletti,
Be advised that I have made major changes on all of the cfs3 ships concerning the wakes and also the effects file pertaining.
I also added the abandonShip horn effects from ndicki.
So before you start to work on this subjet I would gladly share my findings and we could see what kind of post it would make.

Hi gosd, that sounds very interesting. Just PM me your email and I'll send you the files if you like.

However I guess my preference at the moment is that I do things that are possible within the existing effects.xml, to keep things simple. I've found there are new lines of effects for wakes already within the effects.xml, which are not utilised by many ships. If we start asking people to add strings to the xml file, we'll end up as a fulltime help desk

David

NB @ gecko, very much agree we will need to be lucky to find enough original Desert Rats who want to look at another MAW upgrade package. However there are a number of really simple changes to some xdp files that will make improvements to the environment (ie. more things to shoot at!). I am happy to upload these modest tweaks to vehicle, ship and spawn files.

[Kodiak]

Hi Dai,

Thanks for sending me to this thread. If you have already uploaded a "package" of your changes could you please post a link here. If not could you please upload them or I'll send you my email and I would certainly appreciate them.

MAW is just great, and I love the SM.79 even though I can't finish a campaign mission in 1940 flying for Italy...lol

So any changes you have would be helpful I'm sure. I'm wearing MAW out right now, so I'll be getting a lot of misisons under my belt and I'll post any feedback I can offer.

Thanks!

[Daiwilletti]

Thanks, Kodiak

I've kind of stalled on this, so thanks for the reminder. If I do upload all the tweaked xdps, it will have to be on a "user beware" basis because it is hard to fully vet them (the old story of fixing 20 typos and introducing 1 new one).

cheers,
D

[Kodiak]

Thanks, Kodiak

I've kind of stalled on this, so thanks for the reminder. If I do upload all the tweaked xdps, it will have to be on a "user beware" basis because it is hard to fully vet them (the old story of fixing 20 typos and introducing 1 new one).

cheers,
D

I would certainly be fine with that, as right now I can't complete a single mission flying for Italy in a 1940 campaign. So it can't get worse...lol Maybe call it a "beta" or something like that. If your changes just cut down the CTD's it would be an improvement for sure. Others also posted their interest in them, so I'm sure folks would understand. I'll install them using JSGME so I can easily back them out if I get worse results, but I doubt that would happen.

[gosd]

The other thing I forgot to mention is I found a duplicate set of effects for the 16in gun in the effects.xml. That might explain why the main guns on the Italian battleship were not engaging their target.

yes there is a duplicate effect in the effects.xml file:
<ship_main_gun_exhaust_sg ClassName="GroupEffect" Effect0="ship_main_gun_exhaust_1" Effect1="ship_main_gun_exhaust_3" Effect2="ship_main_gun_exhaust_4" Effect3="ship_main_gun_exhaust_5" Effect4="ship_main_gun_exhaust_7" Effect5="ship_main_gun_exhaust_8" Effect6="ship_main_gun_exhaust_9" Effect7="ship_main_gun_shockwave_water" Effect8="ship_main_gun_sound"/> <fx_gunblast_16in ClassName="GroupEffect" Effect0="ship_main_gun_exhaust_sg" Effect1="ship_main_gun_shockwave_1" Effect2="ship_main_gun_shockwave_2" Effect3="ship_main_gun_light_flash" Effect4="ship_main_gun_shockwave_3"/>
<torp_water_splash_sound ClassName="SoundEffect" Sound="explosion/water/torpedo_splash" InitialDelay="0" MinDistance="1" MaxDistance="5000" Volume="100" Loop="0" OneShot="1"/>


<fx_blue_smoketrail ClassName="GroupEffect" Effect0="blue_SmokeTrail_Air_MED_main2END2" Effect1="blue_TR_SmokeTrail_M_fire_1"/>
<fx_gunblast_16in ClassName="GroupEffect" Effect0="gunblast_16in_exhaust" Effect1="Shockwave_16in_gun_1" Effect2="Shockwave_16in_gun_2" Effect3="Light_16in_gun_flash" Effect4="Shockwave_16in_gun_13" Effect5="ship_main_gun_sound"/>
<fx_gunblast_5in ClassName="GroupEffect" Effect0="G_Smoke_5in_gun_exhaust_1" Effect1="G_Smoke_5in_gun_exhaust_3" Effect2="G_Smoke_5in_gun_exhaust_4" Effect3="Light_5in_gun_flash" Effect4="G_Smoke_5in_gun_exhaust_5" Effect5="G_Smoke_5in_gun_exhaust_6_black" Effect6="Shockwave_5in_gun_1" Effect7="G_Smoke_5in_gun_exhaust_6" Effect8="Shockwave_5in_gun_2" Effect9="ship_main_gun_sound"/>

One of these seem to be more ship oriented, how doe the game choose wich one to use?