And now for the PR...

Just posted on m4t - TheFew_1940 Campaign

http://www.mission4today.com/i...file=details&id=3711

RAF Fighter Campaign based upon 'The Few' by Alex Kershaw.

This is a 30 mission campaign (with 6 bonus missions) is based on an amalgamation of missions flown by the 601 and 609 RAF squadrons during The Battle of Britain.

RAF Fighter Campaign based upon 'The Few' by Alex Kershaw.

This is a 30 mission campaign is based on an amalgamation of missions flown by the 601 and 609 RAF squadrons during The Battle of Britain. July 1940-Sept 1940. Actual date, time and weather conditions and missions are represented as closely as possible as recorded in Kershaw's book. Though to fill in gaps, ‘typical’ (though not historical) missions and patrols of the period are thrown in for completeness.

Follow the first group of green American RAF pilots as they skirt the USA neutrality laws and find their way out of the USA through Canada, to France, and eventually to fight with the RAF. After just barely escaping the Germans in France, several of 'The Few' eventually get into the RAF in July 1940. Amazingly many of them only had 2-4 weeks of flight time in fighters before going operational! The RAF held on by a slim thread to blunt the German onslaught during the early days of the war. Through their bravery, Radar technology, tactical advantages and German strategic mistakes, the RAF somehow held on to cause Hitler to eventually postpone Operation Sea Lion (the planned invasion of the British Island).

Fly the Spitfire MK Vb, to defend England as the first and last stand between democracy and the Nazi onslaught.

What a harrowing trip! You had to sneak out of the US, through Canada. Col. Charles Sweeny had promised you travel expense, stipend, and entry into the French Air Force if you could make it to France by July 1940. So far you've barely seen a dime of travel expense, let alone any salary, and you've barely escaped with your lives. You and your friends Shorty Keough, Gene Tobin and Andy Mamedoff made it over to France, but the French Air Force was non-existent and totally in disarray. You've spent several weeks trying to convince the French to let you help, meanwhile, all their planes remained grounded while the German Luftwaffe marched straight through France. You barely escaped the Nazi advance, by migrating along with a mass of refugees south through France by train. Just ahead of the German advance all the time. Finally, left with no other choice, Col Sweeny arranged passage on a ship out of France, The Baron Nairn, to Portsmouth England. The Baron Nairn was the last ship leaving France, and literally the town if left from fell to the Germans only 2 hours after it sailed from port! Having arrived in England on June 25, 1940, the three of you then knocked around London several more agonizing weeks, and talked with various RAF officials attempting entry into the RAF. It was looking very bleak, after having been instructed to go back to the US in no uncertain terms by several British officials. Under the current state of laws of both countries, entry into the British military will mean swearing allegience to the thrown of King George VI. Doing so, in effect, means actually renouncing your US citizenship, and puts you outside the USA's current neutrality laws! Should you return to the US you are very likely to be arrested by the FBI. Are you prepared to go this far, just to fly fast planes? Fortunately, Lord Lothian, British Ambassador to Washington, and seveal other high-ranking British officials believe that the propaganda effect of using some high-profile US pilots, like your well-known contemporary, and olympic athlete, Billy Fiske, could be used to help leverage the US into the war on the British side! These same influential contacts have now gotten you a try-out with the RAF! So, after months of waiting, and thousands of miles of travel, here you are, near Liverpool, England. The RAF training officers want to see your basic flying skills. If can pass their tests, they just might admit you to the RAF. Don't mess this up.


Installation:
1.) Extract the contents of the TheFew_1940.zip file to the Missions\Campaigns\GB folder under the IL2 installation home folder. Extract the contents to the Missions\Campaigns\GB folder and it should automatically create a new ‘TheFew_1940’ sub folder with all the campaign fils in it under \GB
a. After extraction, you should have a directory structure which looks something like this…

C:\Program Files\Ubisoft\Il2 – Sturmvik 1946 {il2 installation folder}
\Missions
\Campaigns
\GB
\TheFew_1940\
{ all campaign files go in this folder…}

2.) Launch IL2, 1946, 4.08M to begin play
a. Select Pilot Career (from the main menu)
b. Select New (button)
c. Select Airforce = RAF
d. Select Rank = Pilot Officer
e. Select Career = TheFew_1940
f. Select Difficulty and set options from the Difficult Screen (to taste, but see tips below…)

Game PlayTips:
1.) This campaign is build and setup to run on IL2, Forgotten Battles, 1946, build 4.08m (unmodded). No mods are necessary, or welcome, this campaign is setup to run on ‘stock’, off-the-shelf IL2 1946.

2.) I setup the campaign for maximum ‘playability’ on low to mid-level machines. I don’t have a blazing machine, only a 2.0 Ghz dual core laptop, and all missions play on it very well. I attempted to maximize Frame rate at the expense of volume of aircraft.

3.) In difficulty settings, be sure to turn on and allow use of the mini-map paths, and map-icons... these will serve as your Radar vectors given by your RAF Radar controllers for intercepts.

4.) Start the campaign with your Rank = Pilot Officer, this equates to the rank posted by most of the initial RAF Americans. You will likely start flying wingman to others in your squadrons, but through hard work and skill hopefully you will eventually be promoted to lead a squadron.

5.) The Crimea map is used to represent England with the Channel and France to the east and south. Simferopol, is the large central city which is used to represent London. I’ve included two situational/campaign maps in the extract folder (TheFew1940-CampaignMap.jpg, and TheFew1940-CampaignMap.bmp) These might be useful to print out and have around to help you acquaint yourself with how I’ve mapped the location of key BOB places and mission events against the Crimea map. I know that some locations are not exact, and some are way off relative positions from the real Britain, but go with it anyway, it seems to work. The Crimea map is far from a perfect reflection of Britain, but its got a general island feel, a sea channel and an airfield to the east to represent France. It seems to make it a good enough substitution – while we all anxiously await SOW/BOB!

6.) This campaign is designed for maximum playability and to not be super hard to complete individual missions. The main goal of each mission is to engage the enemy and return mostly in one piece to a safe RAF base to fight again. Also to assist your squad-mates in doing the same. Most of your flights will be over friendly territory, however ditching in the Channel could be treacherous. In reality very few channel rescue resources existed for the British during that time. Several RAF airfields exist all over the area for use if emergency landings are required. RAF pilots did this frequently for refueling, rearming and emergencies. You will get extra points for returning and landing safely at home base for each mission, so remember, ‘discresion is the better part of valor’, live to fight another day, and return home safely.

7.) The campaign is meant to be historically 'representative' of the types of missions flown by at least two of the RAF squadrons (601st and 609th) which contained some of the few Americans during the BOB, as well as provide a lot of fun through the wide variation in strategy and tactics used during the time.

8.) After passing muster, and being assigned, your main base will be RAF Middle Wallop in south central Britain.

9.) At the end of the actual 30 mission campaign are added 6 (bonus missions. While not at all historically accurate, they are just thrown in for fun and visual appeal.

a. One V1 Rocket interception mission
b. 5-6 Night London Bomber interception missions.


This Campaign is dedicated to 'The Few'
(and the entire of the RAF for their gallantry and sacrifice during the Battle of Britain)

Pilot Officer Arthur Gerald Donahue, 64 Squadron, killed Sept 11, 1942
Pilot Officer John Kenneth Haviland, 151 Squadron, survived the war
Pilot Officer Vernon 'Shorty' Keough, 609 Squadron, killed Feb 15, 1941
Pilot Officer Phillip Howard Leckrone, 616 Squadron, killed Jan 5, 1941
Pilot Officer William Meade Lindsley Fiske, 601 Squadron, killed Aug 17, 1940
Pilot Officer Andrew Mamedoff, 609 Squadron, killed Oct 8 , 1941
Pilot Officer Hugy William Reilley, 66 Squadron, killed Oct 17, 1940
Pilot Officer Eugene Quimby Tobin, 609 Squadron, killed Sept 7, 1941

~S Salute
(callsign) Dadio!

Hmm, sounds cool, I will check this out. I've always wanted to try a BoB campaign, too bad they didn't put an England map in Il-2. Crimea does sound like a good compromise. I flew the "White Sun Blue Sky" campaign a little while ago which uses the Kuban map to represent Burma and it worked out well.

Thanks Ba5tard5word,
Please do, I hope it works well and installs cleanly, and I hope you enjoy it. Its my first campaign, but I've had a lot of good examples to follow, and I worked on it pretty hard. I played and tuned it myself at least two times start to back. On m4T, I tried to look to several other good BOB campaigns for examples to follow for completeness.

I'd highly also recommend, by the way, Spit 'n Fire, and also the Luftwaffe BOB figher campaigns. I don't pretend to think mine's nearly as slick as these two, but if its at least close, then I'll be proud of the work done.

Looking forward to trying it when my wife and 2 daughters go away for a few days next week. in he meantime, how's about some pictures to get us all interested?

Yeah,
My PR's a little weak. I haven't mastered the art of movie making yet, and also don't have a lot of screenies yet. I did post 3-4 screenies up along with the campaign on M4T, but I'll see if I can put a couple more together for posting here.

Well I got "Rise of Flight" this week and abandoned Il-2 for a bit.

But I think I will drop ROF for now and get back into Il-2 and try this campaign out...


ROF is visually pretty but the mission editor is way too complicated and the other offline content is dull. I might pick it up again if they patch some of the glitches, provide some kind of manual for the mission editor, etc.

You need to rework your files Dadio.
When I downloaded the campaign the files were extracted outside of TheFew_1940 folder.
Here is a thread at M4T where someone else was having a problem.
The Few not appearing, but does

I put the files for the campaign into the TheFew_1940 folder and it worked.
I have only flown the first two missions but I am liking it so far.

My first mission landing attempt in the Gladiator:


I did survive and was able to go forward in the campaign.


Wheels

Wheelsup_cavu ,

thanks for the feedback... sorry to you and anyone else who might be having trouble with the extraction! I'll look into it, its probably a setting I had wrong when I built the zip file so it didn't unzip using relative pathing on the files contained within. The PC I built the zip on had PKZip instead of winzip on it, and that probably threw me off.

Sorry again for the inconvience.

The campaign is up to almost 600 downloads now, so it must be getting some airtime out there!

Also, glad to hear you're getting on with it.. yeah I found landing the Glad in mission 1 can be tough as 1> its into a glaring sun which is right in your eyes, and 2> not many folks fly the Glad, so its a baptism by fire (so to speak)

Hopefully you'll like mission #3 next after surving the two 'check-flights' - you'll get to start doing gunnery practice in the Spit using a live towed target plane..which is a german glider, its kinds fun.

PS - Tip - I found it very easy to fly into the glider since its going sooo slow and the closing speeds are relative high... so watch out.

thanks
Dadio

quote:

Originally posted by Dadio2009:
Wheelsup_cavu ,

thanks for the feedback... sorry to you and anyone else who might be having trouble with the extraction! I'll look into it, its probably a setting I had wrong when I built the zip file so it didn't unzip using relative pathing on the files contained within. The PC I built the zip on had PKZip instead of winzip on it, and that probably threw me off.

Sorry again for the inconvience.

The campaign is up to almost 600 downloads now, so it must be getting some airtime out there!

Also, glad to hear you're getting on with it.. yeah I found landing the Glad in mission 1 can be tough as 1> its into a glaring sun which is right in your eyes, and 2> not many folks fly the Glad, so its a baptism by fire (so to speak)

Hopefully you'll like mission #3 next after surving the two 'check-flights' - you'll get to start doing gunnery practice in the Spit using a live towed target plane..which is a german glider, its kinds fun.

PS - Tip - I found it very easy to fly into the glider since its going sooo slow and the closing speeds are relative high... so watch out.

thanks
Dadio

I ran into it a few times already.
The closing speed keeps fooling me.
I am having fun though.


Wheels

Cav,

I've just updated (at least tried to), the TheFew_1940.zip file posted on M4t last night. In an attempt to fix the relative pathing extraction problem, that you so deftly debugged for me. Thanks, I saw your debugging advice, and it was spot on. I think that PKZip fooled me, and that perhaps it wasn't honoring the relative paths during the extract. At any rate, I tried to update it last night to hopefully head off others having the problem,

Re: the pratice gliders... amazing, isn't it, that you want to 'kill' them so badly, and they are such a big slow, lumbering target, that its so easy to just fly right into them! ;-} Glad you're enjoying it so far.

Dadio

I got sidetracked and I am still on mission three.
Those darn gliders are a bugger to kill.
Just about when I line up on them they are released and spoil my aim.
I put it into my single mission folder to practice.

I am still having a lot of fun with it though.


Wheels

Wheels..

Good, thanks! Better get crackin' theres lots more missions to do! We gotta get you outta basic training and assigned to your base - the RAF needs you... the BOB is just starting!


Towing gliders is kinda a cool feature of the FMB, I always liked that feature. Shooting them is even more fun....

Glad to hear you're havin fun on it ... its up over 1200 downloads now, so I think folks are having fun with it.

It could be better, to be sure, in that I didn't invest any time in assigning special skins and recording movies, perhaps I'll invest some time later and upgrade the campaign to add these little tidbits as well..

thanks
Dadio

I ran mission 4 yesterday.
I have some comments/questions about it.
Off to mission 5.

Check your PM please.


Wheels

Hi Dadio

I downloaded your "TheFew_1940.zip" a few days ago and didn't find and executable (.exe) file to install the package. I'm reading on the forum that you updated your last tried to your M4t,could you give me a Link to download it.
I'm also confused as far as how you install M4t
do you have to create a Folder and manually install the N4t files. (Please Help !!!!!)

Thanks
Chuck

quote:

Originally posted by Dadio2009:
Cav,

I've just updated (at least tried to), the TheFew_1940.zip file posted on M4t last night. In an attempt to fix the relative pathing extraction problem, that you so deftly debugged for me. Thanks, I saw your debugging advice, and it was spot on. I think that PKZip fooled me, and that perhaps it wasn't honoring the relative paths during the extract. At any rate, I tried to update it last night to hopefully head off others having the problem,

Re: the pratice gliders... amazing, isn't it, that you want to 'kill' them so badly, and they are such a big slow, lumbering target, that its so easy to just fly right into them! ;-} Glad you're enjoying it so far.

Dadio

Chuck,

There is no self-extracting EXE with this campaign, but if you look in the .Zip file you downloaded there's text file with instructions on how to install the campaign - the file is: TheFew_1940_ReadMe.rtf.

In this file it will describe the installation procedures. Basically you just Extract all the contents of the zip file pointing to your c:\program files\Ubisoft\Il2 – Sturmovik 1946 folder - as the extract target.

It should have relative pathing setup inside the Zip to Extract the contents of the TheFew_1940.zip file to a new folder under the Missions\Campaigns\GB folder under the IL2 installation home folder.

It should automatically create a new ‘TheFew_1940’ sub folder with all the campaign files in it under Missions\Campaigns\GB
After extraction, you should have a directory structure which looks something like this…

C:\Program Files\Ubisoft\Il2 – Sturmovik 1946 {il2 installation folder}
\Missions
\Campaigns
\GB
\TheFew_1940\
{ all campaign files go in this folder…}

If it doesn't automatically create this structure for you when you extract the zip, its safe to unzip the contents to a target folder of your choosing, then manually move/copy all the files to this structure folder above. The campaign presently has no related skins, so all the contents of all the files simply belong in a new \missions\GB\TheFew_1940\ subfolder.