Hard Coded Scenarios and Exe's

Norm Koger's The Operational Art of War III is the next game in the award-winning Operational Art of War game series. TOAW3 is updated and enhanced version of the TOAW: Century of Warfare game series. TOAW3 is a turn based game covering operational warfare from 1850-2015. Game scale is from 2.5km to 50km and half day to full week turns. TOAW3 scenarios have been designed by over 70 designers and included over 130 scenarios. TOAW3 comes complete with a full game editor.

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*Lava*
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Hard Coded Scenarios and Exe's

Post by *Lava* »

Hi!

Just a couple simple quesitons here.

Will any of the scenarios be hard coded? It was a bummer not to be able to use the editor with some of the large scenarios that were included in the games.

Second, will you all maintain the duel .exe files (Opart and Opart300) or will there be a single .exe file. Believe it or not, when I first started playing the game I didn't even realize that there were two until I read the "read me."

Thanks,

Ray (alias Lava)
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golden delicious
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RE: Hard Coded Scenarios and Exe's

Post by golden delicious »

ORIGINAL: Lava

Will any of the scenarios be hard coded? It was a bummer not to be able to use the editor with some of the large scenarios that were included in the games.

In TOAW? I'm not aware of any scenarios which cannot be opened in the editor. Which ones are you thinking of?
Second, will you all maintain the duel .exe files (Opart and Opart300) or will there be a single .exe file.

This is a lesser concern now that computer power has increased, but as I understand it, the point of having two .exes is that, for example if there is a limit of 1,000 units rather than 4,000, every bit of code that refers to a specific unit can use two less bits of data. Not a lot- but it all adds up.

Today, the overhead needed for the 300 .exe isn't significant. However, if we see the limits jumping up much higher, then the question has to be looked at again.
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JAMiAM
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RE: Hard Coded Scenarios and Exe's

Post by JAMiAM »

We are focusing all of our efforts on a single executable, which will have some increased limits. The Opart 300 executable will be the basis of TOAW-MGE.

Currently, the minimum and suggested system specs are undergoing a reevaluation. Likely, you guys will have to ditch all of your old P1-166 machines and upgrade to something a little more modern. Say an AMD K6 - 400, for example...[:D]

But seriously, we are looking at what the effects of the enhancements are, with respect to memory usage, etc. As many of you know, TOAW ran much better on Win98, than it does on XP. However, we, like every other software company on the planet, have to keep in mind the "evolution" of OS's that Microsoft forces on the market. Thus, we have to "futureproof" the program to a certain degree, and may very well come up with significantly higher system specs than Century of Warfare had, simply to accommodate the fact that most gamers have long since migrated to XP as their OS of choice.
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RE: Hard Coded Scenarios and Exe's

Post by *Lava* »

ORIGINAL: golden delicious
ORIGINAL: Lava

Will any of the scenarios be hard coded? It was a bummer not to be able to use the editor with some of the large scenarios that were included in the games.

In TOAW? I'm not aware of any scenarios which cannot be opened in the editor. Which ones are you thinking of?

Off the top of my head, the original Barbossa scenario could not be opened by the editor. And I believe the Desert Storm scenario from TOAW II also could not be opened.
ORIGINAL: JAMiAM
We are focusing all of our efforts on a single executable, which will have some increased limits. The Opart 300 executable will be the basis of TOAW-MGE

Thanks, I figured as such, just wanted to confirm.

Ray (alias Lava)
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golden delicious
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RE: Hard Coded Scenarios and Exe's

Post by golden delicious »

ORIGINAL: Lava

Off the top of my head, the original Barbossa scenario could not be opened by the editor. And I believe the Desert Storm scenario from TOAW II also could not be opened.

Are you sure this wasn't just a consequence of you not being aware of the Opart 300 .exe? All the scenarios provided with the game are just .sce files, same as user-made ones.
"What did you read at university?"
"War Studies"
"War? Huh. What is it good for?"
"Absolutely nothing."
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*Lava*
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RE: Hard Coded Scenarios and Exe's

Post by *Lava* »

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

ORIGINAL: Lava

Off the top of my head, the original Barbossa scenario could not be opened by the editor. And I believe the Desert Storm scenario from TOAW II also could not be opened.

Are you sure this wasn't just a consequence of you not being aware of the Opart 300 .exe? All the scenarios provided with the game are just .sce files, same as user-made ones.

Nope, I would startup the game using the Opart300.exe and then go to the editor. Sounds like maybe my system was screwed up.

Arrghhh..

Ray (alias Lava)
DanNeely
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RE: Hard Coded Scenarios and Exe's

Post by DanNeely »

Were you trying to open them on an NT based (2k, xp) OS? toaw was much more prone to bomb out with an 'out of resources' error under NT than 9x. Exactly what the limiting resource is, isn't known. It's not ram since I've gotten it with over 100 megs of physical ram and a gig of swap free.

My new system (dual core A64@2.4gig, 1gig ram, XPPro) is much less prone than my old one (athlon 1400, 512meg, 2k) was. On it I can open 2 copies of acow300 at once (game and editor) with all my normal apps open. THe old one often required me to kill everything else to load a scen during hte eidtor. After loading the scen I could rerun my other apps although there would be graphical glitches (title/menu/toolbar's not being painted).
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Fidel_Helms
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RE: Hard Coded Scenarios and Exe's

Post by Fidel_Helms »

Lava is correct that some of the original scenarios for both TOAW and TOAW II could not be opened in the editor. The Flashpoint Kosovo expansion unlocked all TOAW II scenarios, and WOTY and COW both shipped with all scenarios unlocked.
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RE: Hard Coded Scenarios and Exe's

Post by golden delicious »

ORIGINAL: Fidel_Helms

Lava is correct that some of the original scenarios for both TOAW and TOAW II could not be opened in the editor. The Flashpoint Kosovo expansion unlocked all TOAW II scenarios, and WOTY and COW both shipped with all scenarios unlocked.

Perhaps I'm being dim here, but I just opened up volume I and was able to load all seventeen scenarios in the editor without any difficulty. Of course, this is with version 1.07.
"What did you read at university?"
"War Studies"
"War? Huh. What is it good for?"
"Absolutely nothing."
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RE: Hard Coded Scenarios and Exe's

Post by Fidel_Helms »

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

ORIGINAL: Fidel_Helms

Lava is correct that some of the original scenarios for both TOAW and TOAW II could not be opened in the editor. The Flashpoint Kosovo expansion unlocked all TOAW II scenarios, and WOTY and COW both shipped with all scenarios unlocked.

Perhaps I'm being dim here, but I just opened up volume I and was able to load all seventeen scenarios in the editor without any difficulty. Of course, this is with version 1.07.

My recollection is that a patch retroactively applied this back to TOAW I also.
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