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OAW Installation Tutorial

OAW Basic 5 and Selector V. 135

Introduction:

There have been a number of tutorials written regarding the installation and use of OAW, however, it seems none have taken a beginner's approach. In this tutorial, I will cover the installation of OAW into a clean EAW folder. Also, as the English language is not the primary language of the authors, I hope to make clear the most important points covered in the readme file.

OAW (Online Air Wars) was originally conceived as a method to make flying online easier by providing a system to make sure everyone involved was using the same modifications, and thus prevent false starts or game crashes. Users quickly realized that this utility would be equally handy as an offline game manager. This approach has affected all of the recent versions of OAW, and I believe it is used quite a bit more offline nowadays than online. OAW is the brainchild of Mr. Jelly (he does all the coding of the program, I believe), Knegel (he has created most of the realism patches in use today), and RAF Roy ( he has created several missions for use online with OAW).

The Runtime Files

Jelly's page lists quite a few downloads pertaining OAW, but if you are new, the first file you need is called OAWrtinstall.zip. (Zip files are a method of compressing files into archives for smaller storage and quicker downloads. If you don't have it, you can get it here). OAW was written using Microsoft's Visual Basic, and these are the runtime files needed regardless of the OAW version you are using. Copy the file "OAWrtinstall.zip" to a temporary folder, and right click it. If you have Winzip installed, you should have an option called "Extract Here". Choose this one, and all the files will be extracted to the folder you are in. You should have the following files in your folder:

OAWRTI.txt contains the instructions to install the runtime files. Basically, it says to double click on the setup.exe file, and say yes or agree to everything. Go ahead and do this. Once this installation is done, you don't need these files anymore and the folder can be deleted. I do suggest that you keep a backup of all the zip files you download. This is a good habit to get into, as the site may be down for some reason at the critical time you just need to have that file again!

Okay, now we are ready to begin the initial setup to prepare for the install of OAW itself. I am going to assume you don't have EAW installed, and I'll take you through from the start. Do a FULL install of EAW into any directory you like, but I like to put it into one named "EAW-OAW". There are a few campaigns like Dunkirk that don't work well with OAW, and this keeps my feeble mind from getting confused. Once the install is complete, patch it to version 1.2. Here is another point of confusion. There are many differ ant versions of the EAW executable. There are only two files that can properly be called the official patches. The one listed above is about 5.8 megabytes, and it affects more than just the eaw.exe file. The patches created by Andy, for example, assume the proper patch for version 1.1 or 1.2 is already applied. He then made a new version of JUST the eaw.exe. So make sure you use the file from the link above.

Now you should download the "No-CD" fix. Unzip this file to a temporary directory and you will find these files:

Eawcrk.txt contains the instructions for installing this "update". IMPORTANT!!!! Before doing anything with these files, you MUST run EAW once after the version 1.2 patch was installed!!! Run EAW and make sure you go into the "Configure Game" screen, and set up EAW the way you prefer. This includes all the Video, Audio, Difficulty, etc. This creates a file called "eaw.ini". This file must be in place for the no-cd fix to be applied. (Note: the file EAW-no_cd.txt contains information on modifying an existing eaw.exe and is for advanced users only. Ignore this file). Now, after running EAW once, copy the eaw.exe file from the temporary directory into your "EAW-OAW" directory, overwriting the existing eaw.exe. Now open the file "eaw.ini" with Notepad or Wordpad and look for a section called "Miscellaneous". If it does not exist, add the following lines. If it does exist, modify them so they read like this:

Save the file as "eaw.ini". You are now ready to add the OAW files. (The file "Movies.cdf" replaces the original movie file to save space. I like the movies, and I have a 40 gig drive, so I don't use this file. Up to you, EAW runs fine either way.)

As an aside to this tutorial, at this point you have a clean, patched, no-cd version of EAW sitting in front of you. Many people like to burn this copy to cd for a backup, or copy it to a folder called "Clean EAW" or some such. I highly recommend this. If for some reason your install becomes corrupt, or if you want to install Dunkirk for instance (which doesn't work well with OAW), you have a ready-to-go version.

OAW Install

I think the greatest amount of confusion for beginners is which file to download and use. If you have never used OAW before, you want what is called the "Basic" version. This includes a lot of files, which we'll get into in a minute, and a file called "OAW Selector". The Selector is the critical file for the program, the one that does all the work. This is updated frequently; for subsequent updates, you will need only this file unless a major change to OAW is made. A lot of people get confused on this issue, downloading only the selector and not the additional files included in the basic package. You MUST have this basic package for your first install.

First things first. You need to get the program. OAW is available at two places I am aware of. The Online Air Wars page at Sandbagger's, and Jelly's OAW Downloads. I will use a combination of the two sites for this tutorial, as the way the sites are set up now, neither one will give you a complete, up to date install with a minimum of hassle.

While writing this tutorial, I did an install of OAW to test everything out, and I found a glaring problem. When using the files from Jelly's page only, I got the most recent version of OAW, but the critical file structure of where to put all the mods I wanted to use wasn't there. I also had a runtime error, but I am chalking that up to a bad install issue. Also, it requires you to make a LOT of folders on your own. So, I suggest you go to the Online Air Wars page at Sandbagger's and look for the heading "KNEGEL's OAW FILES". Under this you will find a file that says "This download contains the OAW Basic 5 files (+ 2 MEG file size)." Download this file, and unzip it into your "EAW-OAW" folder. As of this writing, this will install OAW Basic 5, using "OAWSelectV100MY.exe" as the executable. It will also create all the files for mod storage you will need to get you going.

At this point, I would suggest making a shortcut on your desktop for OAW. Look in your "EAW-OAW" folder. Right click on the file OAWSelectV100MY.exe in your "EAW-OAW" folder, select "Create Shortcut". Right click on the file now created called "Shortcut to OAWSelectV100MY.exe", select "Cut", go to your desktop and right click, and select "Paste".

At the moment, we are going to run this older version of OAW to make sure everything is okay.

Running OAW

Click on the OAW icon you now have on your desktop. This brings up a screen called the "OAW Directory Locator". It should have your "EAW-OAW" directory selected for the EAW folder. Double click on the "OAW" folder located inside "EAW-OAW". This should select your OAW folder and the grayed out button "OK Launch the selector!" should become active. Click on it. This should hopefully launch the OAW program. You can stop right here and play around with OAW, leave it as is, or continue on and I will help you update to the latest version.

If you click on the various tabs across the top and examine the contents of each page, then compare this with the file structure inside the OAW folder, it will quickly become apparent how to set up all of the mods you would like to use. Everything is fairly self explanatory. I suggest you look this over carefully so you understand this concept. It isn't quite as intuitive in the latest version, and it helps if you get a good grasp of it here.

If you are having problems at this point, I suggest going to SimHQ and posting your questions there. Also, on Jelly's OAW Downloads page, there is a utility there for creating a diagnostic file which you can send to Mr. Jelly, and he'll help you sort it out.

Once the newer version is installed, you can go back and forth between the two versions as the newer selector doesn't overwrite anything. So let's move on to that, eh?

Installing Selector V 135 E

Now that you have Version 100 up and running, go to Jelly's OAW Downloads and download the latest Selector. At the writing of this page, this is Version 135 E. Download this file and unzip it to your "EAW-OAW" folder, and create a shortcut to your desktop as before. There is a little problem at this point, however. This newer version of Selector requires an oaw.ini file that wasn't present in the older version. You can get this file by downloading the "OAWSelector V135 Mini-pack", or create it yourself, it's very easy. Open a new page in Notepad, and copy the following text to it:

Flight and damage models: F
Versions of the eaw.exe: E
Graphics (Multiple Selection): G
Career campaigns: Q
Terrain Sets: T
Skin Sets: S
Sky and horizon sets: H
Gunsights: O
Game sounds: N
Land Height: L
Online M folders: M
Non-career complete sets: W
Cockpits (Multiple Selection): X

Now go to File/Save As, and save it as "oaw.ini" in your (this is important!) OAW folder WITHIN the "EAW-OAW" folder. So, for me, this was "E:/EAW-OAW/OAW/".

Now, go to your desktop icon, and startup OAW. If everything is installed correctly, you should be good to go. Again, if you have problems, go to SimHQ or use Mr. Jelly's diagnostic program.

I hope this tutorial helps out some of you, and encourages everyone to use this very fine program. I wouldn't be with out it, and has saved me a great deal of disk space. If I have missed anything, or something in this tutorial is incorrect or missing, please contact me at bakerinnodesign@aol.com . Please put OAW Tutorial in the subject line.