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ELF 2001: Day 1 & 2 Update
By Peter "Zhukov" PawelekArticle Type: Feature
Article Date: July 09, 2001
Prologue
ELF 2001 is the first fly-in convention of players of MicroProse's European Air War (EAW). The convention is taking place at David "Mane Raptor" Joyce's farm just outside of Lincoln, Maine, USA. Participants have flown in from as far away as Britain and South Africa for the occasion. ("ELF" stands for European Air War Liberation Front.)
Field Report 01
Well, the wilds of Maine have never heard such an unlikely combination of sounds: the steady chatter of .50cal MG's, the heavy roar of Pratt & Whitney engines, and screams of "Ja! Ja!" and "Bite me!" ELF2001 has landed and so far it's been a three-pointer.
We managed to setup our five rigs in a rough-hewn LAN such that within about a half-an-hour all computers were talking to each other. Of course, Mane Raptor's WinME box had to be the tempermental diva of the lot (the rest are all Win98 boxes), but after threatening it with a good thrashing with Bilko's stick we managed to get it singing in harmony with the others in short order. Basically, we set them all up with the Client for Microsoft Windows protocol, made sure each NIC had an IP address associated with it, and then named each computer appropriately (Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno, and Sword, of course).
Setting up the LAN
Getting EAW to run on the LAN took a bit of black magic, however. We had no trouble getting three of the rigs connected with EAW via TCP-IP, and within a predictably short period of time, Mane and Bilko were desperately jockeying to get on Rommel's tail.
After everyone blew up a sufficiently satisfying number of times, we decided to get serious and get flying on all five boxes. This is where the trouble started. For some reason, when we tried to connect all four computers to the one we designated as host, we started getting 'incompatible data' errors like the kind we used to see on Kali when people didn't have their ECAPanel settings harmonized. After trying to debug this for about an hour or so, your humble correspondent decided to pack it in and sleep on the problem. Needless to say, it was reported to me the following morning that as soon as I left the room all five systems were up and running with no connection errors. Go figure; must be my magnetic personality that was causing interference or something.
Rommel and Bilko square off!
Today we've been goofing around more with some other sims that have been allowed to grace the hallowed halls of ELF. Me and Cobra got into a pretty sweet little Steel Beasts game in which he was the gunner to my TC. Cobra got some pretty fast on-the-job gunning experience and we actually managed to stop Red force's advance down a valley before we became canned barbecue spam. Steel Beasts is great for multiplayer action, and we were able to connect our computers with no problems whatsoever.
Rowan's Battle of Britain also made a 'special guest star' appearance, and I got to take it out for a serious test spin for the first time. I must admit that I actually am starting to warm up to it. Once you get used to the different feel that this sim has compared to EAW, it is quite engaging. And I've never seen so many planes in the air at one time in ANY sim I've flown! At times, it's a bit choppy on my rig (a K6-3 450 GEForce2MX with 512MB of RAM), but quite playable nonetheless.
I had ordered Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis from CompuExpert, but was sorely disappointed when it hadn't shown up at my doorstep before we left for ELF. So, we've been playing around a bit with the demo instead and the general consensus is that this baby has potential. Would've been nice to see how a fully networked multiplayer game of Operation Flashpoint would've played out, but that'll have to wait for the next ELF I'm afraid.
We're still waiting for the last of the guests to trickle in, and have some serious EAW competition flying planned for the evening. Who will remain the last one standing? The one with the biggest STICK, or the one with the camel that can spit the farthest? Whoever it is, rest assured that your humble correspondent will be there to immortalize the gory details!! Stay tuned!
Zhukov, out!
The deadly view from Mane Raptor's bathroom
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