bartbert

Yes, it can be played solitaire and you can play both online and offline games.

The problem with Vista is that Microsoft decided to drop support for certain DirectX functionality on the Vista platform. I have heard from a couple of people that say they were able to get everything working on their Vista machines, but I can't get it to work on my machine. So, as far as I know, there is no work around except the VirtualPC option.

There is no way to do that right now, but that is probably one of the most often requested features. Maybe someday.

If you are still having problems getting connected, send an e-mail to difadmin@battlefront.com and we'll try to figure out what the problem is. Thanks.

The question about Russian pilots has come up a few times in the past. Most of the time, the problem is that you must first create a set of Russian pilots by going to the "Manage Pilots" screen, clicking "New Leader", and then selecting "Soviet" as the nationality. Once you have a set of Soviet pilots, you should be able to select one from the list when creating a mission. The second most common reason for not being able to run a mission with Soviet pilots is that the Eastern Front add-on has not been properly registered.

On my computer, I go to the Windows "Start" button, then "All Programs|Battlefront|Down in Flame|DIF Manual". The file is physically located in "C:\Program Files\Battlefront\Down in Flames\help\DIF Manual.pdf"

The PDF manual comes with when you purchase the full version of the game. As far as I know, it is not available separately, but maybe the powers that be at Battlefront know otherwise.

Every time your pilots fly a mission, they will get a certain number of fatigue points. If they were damaged or shot down, they will get more fatigue points than if they made it through the mission unscathed. The way to recover fatigue is to "rest" the pilots by flying a different set of pilots within the same nationality. The game allows you to have four sets of pilots for each nationality, which allows you cycle through your pilots to keep them from being overly fatigued.

If you're talking about creating local pilots, I think the game starts with one "generic" leader/wingman element for each nation (UK Leader, German Leader, US Leader and Japan Leader). In this case, you would only be able to create three additional leaders per nation unless you deleted the default ones. Other than that, I can't think of why you wouldn't be able to have four leader/wingman pairs per nation. I just tried it on my machine and it worked fine.

I think Vista comes with DirectX 10 installed, but the game requires DirectX 9.0c. You can find out what version you are running by clicking on the Windows "Start" button and then the "Run" item. Type "dxdiag" in the dialog window and click "OK" to display a screen with all your DirectX info. Somewhere towards the bottom of the list of info is the version.

I think you are right about the Vista SP1 fixing the problem. I have heard several people report that they can connect just fine with Vista now.

No, it hasn't been solved. The only workaround that I'm aware of is to install Microsoft's Virtual PC and run the game within a Windows XP environment. Probably more hassle than most people are willing to deal with, but it is a free download for those who want to try it. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=04d26402-3199-48a3-afa2-2dc0b40a73b6&displaylang=en

Local pilots are saved to "C:\Program Files\Battlefront\Down in Flames\bin\pilots.db". You probably should back up all of the "db" and "config" files in that folder, as well as the file "DiFOUpdater.exe.config" that is located in the folder "C:\Program Files\Battlefront\Down in Flames".

As some of you have already noted, there have been persistent problems connecting to the server to play online games. Right now, it appears to be a problem with the router locking up and not forwarding connections to the server. We have some new hardware on order and it should arrive by next week. Hopefully, once we install it, the problems will be resolved. In the mean time, connectivity will continue to be a problem. Sorry for the inconvenience, and we'll keep you posted on this as the situation evolves.

If you have an FTP tool, you can download the Aircraft.zip file located at downinflamesgames.com/DiFDownload If you unzip the files to the folder C:\Program Files\Battlefront\Down in Flames\images\Aircraft, it will restore your Buffalo graphics (as well as a few other aircraft).