Lowengrin

There's a rare case in the official 3.49 release where if the player has selected "air starts" as an option, when escorting a bomber group, the player's squadron will start in the air and if there's more than one flight in that squadron, they'll spawn on top of each other. Kaboom! If this happens to you, try increasing the action radius so that your flight doesn't start in the air.

I created a bat file as suggested and it works great.

Nice!

That's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how practical it would be to code. I'll give it some thought.

I mean that it ignores the difficulty setting and allows you to move forward - in fact, it insists you move forward. There's no going back in time (well, unless you retrieve a backed up version of the campaign).

That's too bad. I miss the old site.

Yes, 3.49 will work with the older versions no problem and 3.50 should also. If the modding community remains on 4.12.2 and 4.13.4, I'll ensure that new versions of DCG will continue to work for them going forward.

Additions to Version 3.50 (Build #1) Due to the issue in the latest IL2 patch (4.14m), the back up of DGen and NGen has been motified so that these files are renamed DGEN_bak.bak and NGEN_bak.bak (from DGEN_bak.exe and NGEN_bak.exe). The change is because unknown .exe files in the main game folder cause the game to abort. As .bak files, they are ignored. Prior to playing a DGen/NGen campaign using DCG, uncheck the option to use them before running the game. Once the game is open, alt+tab out, run DCG and check the option to replace DGEN or NGEN. Uncheck the option when you are done (or before you play again). In other words, this first beta for 3.50 is an imperfect fix for DCG for use with the 4.14m patch. [Edit: attachment removed.]

Daidalous is now aware of the situation so maybe they'll have a quick patch to make it right. Or let me know of a better way to work around the issue. Stay tuned.

I take that back. The new IL2FB.exe doesn't seem to like other unrecognized .exe files in the main folder. The work around is to take your stock DGEN.exe (and probably NGEN.exe although I haven't checked this one) and move them somewhere else. Run IL2 and then alt-tab out to run DCG, use the "replace" option to copy DCG over as DGEN.exe and play. When you're done for the day, delete the imposter DGEN.exe from the IL2 folder.

Okay, it appears 4.14m doesn't like DCG replacing DGEN. And it even doesn't like the DGEN_BAK.EXE sitting in the game folder even after unchecking the option to replace DGEN with DCG (where it automatically copies DGEN back over the DCG imposter). I got around this by deleting DGEN.EXE, starting IL2 and then clicking replace DGEN with DCG. It'll work, but you'll have to do this every time you start IL2.

Actually, I've found the same thing now. After giving it one test, I went and had dinner, came back after dinner to find it wouldn't run. So reinstalled the patch, played again for a bit, then closed it, and it wouldn't start again. WTF?

No, I don't think DCG is the matter.

I downloaded and installed 4.14m and gave it a try with DCG. No problems from what I could see.

Here's the official link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1d6VcBGUx46RlEsElBQVs2AhjKWxM6M7O Let me know if there are any issues with it. Thanks!

4.14m released too? Seriously???

Bad copy and paste on my part. Thanks for letting me know.

I've posted an official build at: http://il2dcg.blogspot.com/ It includes a few tweaks from the last beta including some fixes to the A6M2-n mission generation, the fix to the missing plane type in the class file (which will create the dreaded "" is not an integer error. And it has the first three stages of the Solomon Campaign (Guadalcanal). Thanks, everyone for your comments, critiques and encouragement over the past few years of betas.

Thanks! I did find one (very old) bug related to using a plane not found in the class.dcg file. Rather than swapping in another plane and completing the mission generation, it would crash. Not so bad for manual mission generation, but it'd lock up DGEN/NGEN type missions.

Latest (and hopefully last) build before I post an official build. This one has more tweaks to mission creation. I also lifted a very old restriction about statics spawning outside the action radius. Most computers have way more power than the ones I wrote that restrictive code for. il2dcg349beta30.zip Any comments, bug reports are greatly appreciated!

Given the news about the old website (see the new website announcement), I think it's time to wrap up this extended testing and post a new "official" build asap. So I'm going to post one more build and then wrap it up as an official build...if there are no pressing issues reported.

It's just been reported to me that the old address at lowengrin.com (which current (non beta) and past versions of IL2DCG.exe has as a help link and website link) has been picked up and may now have malicious software. My web browser/virus checker blocked my test access of it. Please do not use the links (unless it's from the beta and then it will take you here and to blogspot). Thanks!

So the problem with the existing structure in DCG (at least the offline campaign) is that payloads are determined by usage and not by nationality. At any one time, an aircraft can only have one payload for use against low level/dive bombing, one for level bombing and one for anti-shipping. I'd have to substantially rewrite the code (and data structures) to change that. You have got me a little curious about trying, but I think it'll be too big a job to reasonably attempt (for something most players won't be all that interested in).

There's no way to ban payloads based on nationality. That's just a bit more detailed than I'm willing to go.

When I first started programming DCG way back, I set up DCG campaigns to use the stock DGEN campaign files so (unless there are new ones that I'm not aware of) they should all work. While I'm interested in the European Theatre, the Pacific campaign is a bigger draw right now just because the campaign design can be improved more (than it can with land campaigns) with tweaks to the code. And I finding coding more interesting than campaign design. I did spend a bunch of time creating a new Crete campaign (because I got caught up trying to optimize gliders - which required tweaks to the code). And I did some testing using the Norway and East Prussia campaigns. My current tinkering is the Solomons. And I am looking at Bessarabia because there's some interesting stuff with river monitors on the Danuabe between the Russians and Romanians...but the ship models don't really exist in the stock game so I may not do anything. BTW, if there was a stock map of the Netherlands, I'd do a Market Garden campaign in an instant.