Contents:
Flawed
Beginning
History
Begins
Early UOP's
"The Dr.1 is Porked!"
SWWISA
The Last Classic UOP
To
the East!
Revolution
of CdT
A New Breed of UOP
Pat Wilson and WFP
Stachel's Hell's Angels
The Promised Land
The End of the Road
The Giant Leap Forward: A New
Breed of UOP
Karel opened the floodgates for patch makers to come. The new models, however, had to be installed one by one, often leading to crashes and headaches for anyone not intimately aquatinted with Red Baron’s quirks. I recall spending many hours trying to update each model within the game one by one, but to no avail. I personally didn’t realize it at the time, but a revolution had begun. Karel had found a way to create new models from scratch that broke out of the Red Baron mold. Because of this discovery, the community now had a way to create models for planes not originally in Red Baron, and this opened up a new world of possibilities. One can say that Karel saved the community. In late 2000, most of the chatter on the respective forums used to keep in touch with other members had fallen almost silent. There was little left to do by all accounts as the community appeared to hit the limits of what they, and Red Baron, could do together. When his models began to appear, life flooded back into the efforts made by new and daring patch makers. It is unfortunate that 1918 Air War, a brilliant patch in itself, was doomed to be largely overshadowed by this revival. However, the changes that were to come over the next four years would be nothing short of extraordinary. This period can largely be considered the high water mark in Red Baron’s history.
(The
Giant Leap Forward: A bitmap file from Pat Wilson’s Western Front Patch
compared with a Beery 2.0 bitmap file. Both model the Fokker EIII)
Pat Wilson and The Western
Front Patch
After
SWWSIA had been officially formed in early 2001, work began on a new kind
of UnOfficial Patch that would incorporate these new models. The three
authors were Pat Wilson, Panama Red, and Beck. Pat explains the advent of
The Western Front Patch in his own words:
“With
the fact that paint schemes could be swapped in and out over time came the
idea, why not whole planes? The Western Front Patch was started by Panama
Red, Beck and myself. The original intent was to address the glaring
weaknesses of RB, [such as] no French early war two-seaters. Panama Red
did the Flight Models, Beck did the squadron updates, and I did most of
the rest of the data files. Beck and I were both 3d modelers. We had done
several of SWWISA models and continued to do them for WFP as needed. The
skins came from a variety of sources, a lot of them done by myself and
many done by others.
I
was pushing for a smaller project to start with but Beck and PR wanted to
go bigger. WFP started at around 65 planes. The project was too large to
be accomplished in one shot so we started with 1915/16, then released 1917
and 1918. Over time planes were added as time and ideas permitted. WFP now
stands at 100 [planes]. SWWISA figured out how to do individual cockpits
and they were added. Reconnaissance and Bomber campaigns, and how to
transition from them to a scout career were added later. Now Mark
Hutchinson has completed the moving front patch for WFP, which will be
made publicly available soon.
PR
dropped out after the initial release and Beck disengaged about a year
ago. Since then I have retained ownership. We have gotten lots of help
from people over time. Panama Red's original Flight Model was replaced by
Royce's which was in turn replaced by WvW's. Greybeard has a current
alternative FM. Zintech came along with a great DM and has been doing them
for quite some time. OvS came out with HA and there has been constant
sharing between our patches. Skins have come from all over, Walther Wever,
Andreas, OvS, WingStrut, ... too many to mention. Pretty much everybody
that has ever done a 3d model contributed to WFP. Go look at the SWWISA
page and you will see most of the contributors. Beck, Steve Fabert, and
Shredward have been instrumental in getting the history right.
I
know that I have not named everybody that has contributed. This project
has been ongoing for over three years and we have taken bits and pieces
from everybody, and as the Moving Front Patch shows, it ain't over yet.”
(Two
aircraft unique to the early war portion of The Western Front Patch)
By
the time of its latest release in 2004, The Western Front Patch version
6.4 would model the war in the air from late 1915, a full six months
earlier than the original Red Baron II campaign, through 1918. Utilizing
date based file swapping, WFP would model every conceivable change to
every possible aircraft on the Western Front. In the end, Pat estimated
100 types of aircraft are modeled in WFP, compared to the 40 aircraft in
the original game. French reconnaissance squadrons now flew French
aircraft, engine upgrades to the SE5 were modeled accurately down to the
month, unusual planes like the twin Spandau Fokker EIV and others were now
modeled with complete historical accuracy.
The
list of historical and gameplay improvements in WFP cannot be
underestimated. In addition to the improvements of the patch itself, Pat
built a utility called MissionGen which altered the mission parameters
created by Red Baron, allowing the game to accurately model the sparse
skies of 1915 along with the large scale flights of 1918 with
almost-perfect accuracy. The comprehensiveness of SWWISA and Pat
Wilson’s work on WFP and MissionGen is stunning and it is considered by
all in the community to be the ultimate historical recreation of the air
war along the Western Front that is possible within the confines of Red
Baron.
Another
major contributor to the Western Front Patch legacy was DeltaK. DeltaK
holds a unique place in history. He created a series of skins for all of
the aircraft in Western Front Patch. Yet, while Pat and the gang were
striving for what became known as Dirty Birds (aircraft that looked
weathered and beaten), DeltaK made aircraft that resembled very high
resolution versions of the skins featured in the original Red Baron. While
they weren’t photo-realistic, they were beautiful in their own right;
holding crisp, clean lines that were pleasing to look at while being
historically accurate in their markings. Sadly, DeltaK retired his patch
about a year before the latest release of Western Front Patch 6.4, though
many within the community continue to beg him to make a new version of his
classic patch.
