F117A - Great game, weird things.

[Steve T]

I used to play this a lot on a stock 1200 with a digital joystick, such a great, really atmospheric and unusual flight sim, its great but I have a couple of problems with it.

I'm having issues with the audio - the engine noise seems to cut off when i bank right, and there's very little other audio present.

Maybe its just how the sim works, but the aircraft really drifts, i feel like I'm flying sideways almost at times, is just just a crosswind simulation - there's some nice turbulence modelling at low alt that i don't remember from 20 years ago - but no surprises there.

Anyway I'm really curious if anyone else has this audio problem, I'm sure there used to be more background 'chatter' too, of electronics etc.

(btw I'm playing a cracked version today on an expanded 030, its not silky smooth, but its pretty good, and especially using an analogue joystick

Finally Does anyone know where I could get an un-cracked copy? Thinking this might be the cause of the issues, I long ago lost the box and manual but I'm enough of an aircraft geek i really don't need the manual to tell what aircraft silhouette I'm looking at

[BarryB]

In the Zone! You can get the copy protection sheets from HOL!

[Steve T]

Hey thanks Barry, appreciate it

Wish i still had my old boxed copy, the documentation was great and really detailed.

[Galahad/FLT]

There are no copy protection side effects...... i should know

[lesta_smsc]

Without copy protection would this be the IPF format?... as my understanding, likely incorrect, is that ADFs were generally the cracked versions. If IPF, I presume the only way to write back would be to use Catweasel or Kryoflux?

[Arnie]

Not all IPF's have a custom bootloader. In the case of F117a the copy protection is the manual. For instance, you could use WinUAE to copy the IPF to ADF, then transfer the ADF to the Amiga and copy the ADF to a real disk.

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by Arnie

Not all IPF's have a custom bootloader. In the case of F117a the copy protection is the manual. For instance, you could use WinUAE to copy the IPF to ADF, then transfer the ADF to the Amiga and copy the ADF to a real disk.

I thought that was not possible because of dense copy protections that might be affected when converting between formats (to my recollection, the RAW format is the intermediary)?

[Arnie]

F117a isn't copylocked, padlocked or dreadlocked, It's just a dos copy. If it had some kind of copy protection then, yes, you would be right.

F117a even allows you to make copies of the disk from a utility on disk 1.

[lesta_smsc]

Lol... shows they wanted distribution of the game! Why was it cracked if no protection lol.

[Arnie]

Probably to add a trainer or cheat or just to remove the Game manual protection.

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by lesta_smsc

Why was it cracked if no protection lol.

There was no disk protection i.e. disks can be copied without problem. The game has a manual check which was cracked.

[Steve T]

Its meant to be run from HDD by design, though I used to play it from floppy just fine when my old zappodrive thing was playing up... I think you were encouraged to make backups, good ol' Microprose.

The manual protection is also *very* simple in this case, just choose one from a handful of easy to recognise aircraft, it's almost like they knew there was no point in punishing their customers. So I'd prefer the un-cracked version even if it fixes none of the issues

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by StingRay

There was no disk protection i.e. disks can be copied without problem. The game has a manual check which was cracked.

Ah... makes sense. I recall hating manual checks. Could never get it right lol.