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).

There did seem to be a problem, but it is back up now.

Jack, We haven't been able to find a way to push out these changes automatically, but if you'll send an e-mail to difadmin@battlefront.com I will send you the updated files with instructions on where to place them on your machine.

It's one of those things that we have on the "To Do" list, but it's been hard to find the time to work on it. I've done some of the initial work, but it hasn't progressed much lately. I don't have a date for when it might be done, but once it is available it will go out as a free update.

It seems to be working for me.

If you are only seeing the Dunkirk campaign, then you need to register your game. Once that is done, then you should see all the other campaigns show up. If you need assistance in getting your game registered, send an e-mail to difadmin@battlefront.com

Campaigns can definitely be played single player (against the AI). When you go to the web page where you create a new campaign to play, you can choose to play against the AI or another player. I would recommend that you get the hang of playing regular dogfights before you dive into a campaign, though. About 20% of the deck is Maneuvering cards, so once every couple of turns sounds about right if you are drawing 2 or 3 cards per turn. I don't know if any tutorials are out there or not. Maybe some of the other guys on the forum will know. If you haven't done so already, I'd read through the posts on the "Tips for newbies" topic.

No good news to report so far. I have tried a couple of things, but they haven't fixed the problem. I'm starting to look into adding the ability to play offline campaign games. This doesn't solve the Vista problem, but it does fill a major void for those who cannot play online.

We're still trying to track down some server issues, but it is back up now.

Playing two Maneuver cards against a Wingman will give you +2 to your available bursts, but if you played those same cards against the Leader you would get a +3 to your available bursts (assuming you started Neutral). Each Maneuver card played against a Wingman simply adds +1 to your available bursts, while playing them against the Leader improves your relative position by one.

Try doing the following: 1. Find the file "C:\Program Files\Battlefront\Down in Flames\bin\lobby_app.config" and open it up in a text editor such as Notepad. 2. There should be a line if the file that looks like </font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"><StartupDelay>4000</StartupDelay></pre>