Installing BOB2

Battle of Britain "Wings of Victory"
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hedge
Airman Basic
Posts: 3
Joined: 09 Jan 2019, 22:56

Installing BOB2

Post by hedge »

I remember BOB2 from years ago; it's a great game. I've lost my BOB2 CD - where can I get another copy? Since the source code was released to the public by Rowan, I assume I can download BOB2 for free. How many patches should I install?

Thanks

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PV
BDG
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Joined: 13 Nov 2004, 08:21
Location: Lost in the tundra, Canada

Re: Installing BOB2

Post by PV »

hedge wrote:I remember BOB2 from years ago; it's a great game. I've lost my BOB2 CD - where can I get another copy? Since the source code was released to the public by Rowan, I assume I can download BOB2 for free.
No, BoB (1) by Rowan had source code released in 2001, I think (it is still out there floating around somewhere);
and it was never a simple GNU-style open release; the code was made public, but Empire, who had the rights to
Rowan's code, retained them.

BoB2 was created after GMX acquired actually just a license from Empire, I believe, and hired A2A (then called
Shockwave) to create it for them. GMX subsequently folded, and A2A acquired the rights to the code from Empire.
So BoB2 is an A2A property now, and can be had from the store section of this website as a downloadable package,
for $20 bucks, last time I looked.

Note however, that

1) the last official BoB2 from A2A was v2.06, released in around 2008. It will run well only on
Win XP and Win7.

2) after that release, the BoB2 code was left in the hands of the BDG (BoB Developers Group), who had been tweaking
BoB since the BoB1 code was made public. BDG has released further updates of the BoB2 code up to v2.13, released
January 2016. These later mods (after about v2.09 or 2.10) are optimized for Win7-64, and will overwhelm XP. They also
cannot run on Vista or Win8, and are dodgy on Win10 (failure modes seem to depend on the machine, but I don't know
if anyone has been able to get a fully functioning game including the full strategy campaign to work under W10; single
Instant Action missions have much better success). Basically, whatever changed in Windows after Win7 was beyond the
knowledge of our volunteers to compensate for. It seems to be in the way later OSs handle the DX9.0c that BoB2 uses.
How many patches should I install?


All BDG patches are complete overtop of any (lower numbered) working BoB2 version. For a good modern hardware with gamer
card system running Win7, install the v2.06 download from A2A, run once to confirm function, then load the BDG v2.13 patch on
top and you're done. See the Docs folder for the best flight sim manual of any currently available combat flight sim.

hedge
Airman Basic
Posts: 3
Joined: 09 Jan 2019, 22:56

Re: Installing BOB2

Post by hedge »

Thanks for your detailed reply, and thanks also for all the work you at BDG do to preserve these amazing flight sims! I would like to try running the original Rowan's Battle of Britain. Do you know where I can get the last BDG patch for that game, which I believe is patch v 0.99?

Boreas
Technical Sergeant
Posts: 500
Joined: 07 Jan 2007, 21:45

Re: Installing BOB2

Post by Boreas »

The patches and code seem to be here https://github.com/gondur/BOB_Src. There’s a separate mig alley download but a malware scan didn’t like that one so I didn’t take a look.

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