Volunteers needed for Air Combat missions

[Angus]

Tornado
Okay for this first foray, I decided on a systematic approach, and following the manual's instructions, I selected the in-game simulator and spent some time getting familiar with the aircraft's automatic pilot, in particular the AFDS.

A point to note, the key for cancelling the alarms is the * key on the keypad. This is also the defult key by which WHDLoad quits the game. Okay, technically, it does stop the alarms :-) but it is not an ideal arrangement. In order to solve this, i used the following tooltype on the game icon

QUITKEY=$99

That basically removes the Quitkey, but as the game offers a quit option anyway, it seems a reasonable solution.

On the subject of keys, can anybody confirm that the autotrim function works. It's supposed to be numeric pad 5 or \ but I wasn't convinced either were doing anything. :-/

Still in the simulator, I went through the stall sequences at the various different wing sweep angles, 25, 45 and 67. By the way, if you recover your stall by slamming the throttle twice (engaging full afterburner) remember to drop down to normal thrust after you have recovered or be prepared for a low fuel alarm shortly afterwards. :-)

Hey, this stuff is easy - what else you got?

Landings....
Okay, a bit more pressure. And this is using the AFDS in Approach mode so you might imagine it offered no challenge at all.

The thing is, while the AFDS sets you up for your landing brilliantly, shortly before you touch down, you have to turn it off and there's several thing you need to do manually to get down safely. You have to put the wings fully forward, adjust the flaps, lower the undercarriage, and just before you hit the deck 'flare' by pulling up on the stick and/or increasing thrust. I managed a "Heavy Landing" on my first attempt, which I was quite happy with thank you very much (any landing you can quit to Workbench from, right?) I got a "Good Landing" on the second attempt.

Oh yes, after you touch down at about 150 mph, you deploy the thrust reversers, cut your thrust, cancel thrust reversers and hit the wheelbrakes. I'm sure I had plenty of runway left (probably) but from a low viewpoint, it's easy to think you don't - and it adds a certain jeopardy to the proceedings. I actually found it all very satisfying in a sort of mindfulness kind of way. Goodness knows how I'm going to cope when they start shooting at me!

Okay, I think that's quite enough excitement for now.

[Angus]

Originally Posted by TommyTomorrow

I used to play Combat Air Patrol a lot on my A500 in 90s.

Same guy that coded Armour-Geddon I believe. Although that was exactly my kind of game, I could never get into it. What did you thin of CAP, nice fast graphics and it had a land campaign you could direct, I believe?


He also produced a modern version of CAP which is on Steam, I think it's supposed to be quite playable but apparently he stopped developing before it was finished.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Angus

Same guy that coded Armour-Geddon I believe.

Looks like it was two people that coded both games: Ed Scio & Paul Hunter

[Captain_ Kal]

Originally Posted by Aardvark

Paraj's patches are not needed in WinUAE as there's no chipset speed bottlenecks.

I know!! But I used the original slave from 2004. Just to check it!!

But I couldn't get the plane in the air!! I can't get the game to recognize my joystick!!

[Angus]

Originally Posted by Captain_ Kal

I know!! But I used the original slave from 2004. Just to check it!!

But I couldn't get the plane in the air!! I can't get the game to recognize my joystick!!

If you use the tilde(?) key, just above tab, it should take you to the kneepad screen, where you can adjust settings. I think 7 on the numeric pad cycles through devices. Default setting is keyboard, I think.

[copse]

Originally Posted by Angus

Same guy that coded Armour-Geddon I believe. Although that was exactly my kind of game, I could never get into it.

What about amourgeddon didn't work for you out of interest?

[Angus]

Originally Posted by copse

What about amourgeddon didn't work for you out of interest?

Well.... I could definitely be a bit impatient in my younger days, and I recognise that the problem may have been down to my own attitude....


It seemed (on paper) like it was something like an updated Carrier Command, only set on land. But the few times I started the game, I found that I had to work like mad to stave off my own destruction. It seemed really hectic, with no time to plan and strategise. And my guys inevitably got shot down (or up) in very quick succession.



It seemed like an early playable demo from a cover disk, that gives you a taste, but they haven't really added the gameplay yet.


Or I might just have been rubbish.

[Captain_ Kal]

Originally Posted by Angus

If you use the tilde(?) key, just above tab, it should take you to the kneepad screen, where you can adjust settings. I think 7 on the numeric pad cycles through devices. Default setting is keyboard, I think.

OK!! I will try it!!!


Early Access is hit or miss, but you might like this:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1..._Combat_Arena/

[Angus]

****************NEWSFLASH!!!***************


The very skilful Paraj has released a WiP slave for Tornado. It's not supposed to be a finished product yet but it makes a huge difference to the framerate of the game on Amiga hardware. Why not take a look and post any feedback for the man, himself. What a guy!


https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=117092&page=2

[Angus]

Anybody have any experience using an analogue joystick with Tornado? My adapter has arrived and the best response I've had is uncontrollable downward spiral. :-/

[Daedalus]

It was many, many years ago but I remember there was a calibration option in the settings and then it just worked. Have you tried to calibrate it?

[Aardvark]

Originally Posted by Angus

Anybody have any experience using an analogue joystick with Tornado? My adapter has arrived and the best response I've had is uncontrollable downward spiral. :-/

Select analog joystick in prefs. Recalibrate and center pot trims. Save prefs.

[Daedalus]

Just to clarify here, I would say it's important to centre the trim controls *before* you calibrate, as these controls will influence the results of the calibration.

[Angus]

Thanks guys, I seemed to have completely missed that screen and was trying to run things from the in flight "kneepad" screen. Just tested one stick and it seems to indicate that while Tornado is doing what it's supposed to, my stick won't roll left - I think it's the stick because if I keep on moving it to the left it turns in very small increments.

More sticks to test.

Oh, for the record - it seems you can dynamically recalibrate (kind of) by hitting "Y" in flight with the stick in the central position.

[Daedalus]

I've just given it a test and rolling left seems to cancel if the X value ever drops to zero. So on the calibration screen, make sure the readings never actually reach zero by adjusting the trim, then do the actual calibration. I guess the game treats zero like no input or something...

[Angus]

I've got 4 (very) old pc joysticks. I don't think any have trim controls, except one which has 2 plastic sliding switches on 2 sides of the joystick's base.

Update:

The Gravis Blackhawk continues to have major issues rolling left.
The Wingman doesn't respond at all - worked well with MechWarrior 4, maybe too highly featured for the Amiga.
The Top Gun Thrustmaster worked quite well, although intermittent issues rolling left.
The PC Raider (funny little stick) works great and then get a problem trying to roll left, which sometimes improve with gentle movements.

[Daedalus]

Hmmm, check in the calibration screen what sort of values it gives when you push those sticks to the left. I'm guessing they all hit zero, and the game rejects it. Perhaps that's something that could be patched if so...

They should all have some sort of trim function because those sorts of sticks didn't have their own internal calibrations the way modern ones do.

Update: I've done some more testing, and it seems to be a bug in the game itself. My stick is responding correctly, but at about 75% left deflection the game stops rolling, and the same in the Y axis when I pitch down. Additionally, and maybe related, the maximum values for the axes seem to be 104 and 106, meaning that shuffling the trim across leaves a very short throw to the right or back. Again, this isn't a limitation of my stick, which will show movement beyond those positions in other software.

I played Tornado a little bit back in the day and don't remember these issues, but that was from floppy - most of my flight sim time back then was spend on Birds of Prey, which also supports analogue but has its own issues (no dead zone for example). I wonder if there's something different with the existing (old) WHDLoad slave for Tornado? Either way, I suspect these would be relatively easily fixed for someone who knows their way around the code, but it's beyond my expertise.

[Aardvark]

The above described bug triggers when the pot travels below the minimum calibratred value, not when it hits zero.
Also, the in-game calibration has mixed up X and Y positions in the prefs.dat file. MinX gets saved to $0C and MinY saves to $0E, but after hex-editing these values it's obvious it should be other way around. Changing both values to zero fixes the bug.

[Daedalus]

Ooh, that's good info! And makes sense now that I look, because my stick here has a round gate instead of square. I'd have thought a better behaviour would be to limit the values to the calibrated values, but hey... I don't suppose you are aware of a way to alter the maximum calibratable values?

[Aardvark]

Looks like X/Y calibration values for Max and Center are also swapped in the prefs.dat. So better just to not touch the in-game calibration and use hex editor instead.

Correct calibration positions in the prefs.dat file:

MinX=$0E, MinY=$0C, MaxX=$12, MaxY=$10, CenterX=$16, CenterY=$14

I didn't notice any issues regarding maximum X/Y values. WinUAE config settings "input.analog_joystick_multiplier=128", "input.analog_joystick_offset=-36" gives 0-255 pot range analog joystick, and works perfectly in Tornado using $00-$FF calibration values.