    
                              
                                 AoE DATES

     The Dating scheme used by AoE is a little strange. The
     dates as found in the various files are a two-byte number
     starting from the date 1 Jan. 1900 (hex value 00 00).
     Since AOE has been announced as being part of the Great
     Warplanes series, this makes sense - a continuous time
     line through the series can be maintained. Red Baron does
     not at this time use this dating scheme. It may be that
     RB will be changed at some later date to accomodate this 
     scheme. This is the same scheme as used in AotP.
     
     For those of you wishing to hex edit the ROSTER.DAT file
     in order to bring a favorite pilot back into play (the
     necessity of this escapes me given the "Replay this
     Mission" feature), you will need to edit three (3) sets
     of bytes and you will need to know the dates of the start
     of the current segment of your Tour of Duty/Campaign and 
     the date of the last mission.
     
     The first byte that you must change is the 37th within the
     pilot's record in ROSTER.DAT where the 1st byte in that
     record is the first letter of the pilot's name. Change the
     value of that byte to 00 to reflect the status of alive
     and well. For the curious, the values that this byte may
     have are 00 (OK), 01 (POW), 02 (Retired), and 03 (DEAD).
     
     The second thing to be changed is the date of the beginning
     of the ToD in which the pilot was lost. Table 1 below
     contains the hex values of the 1st of every month throughout
     the war. These hex values are in the standard hex format
     used by the program - least significant byte, most significant
     byte. To get the value of your date, locate the value
     representing the 1st of the month and add the value (in
     hex) of the day of the month in which the ToD started.
     Now subtract 1 from that result and you have the hex date.
     As an example, suppose that you are flying for the USAAC
     in the St. Lo Surprise ToD/campaign and that this campaign 
     began on 20 July '44. Looking in the table you will find the
     hex value for 1 July '44 to be 7D 3F. Adding 13h (19 decimal)
     to that you would get 90 3F. This is the value that you would
     put into bytes 42 and 43 of your pilot's record. BTW, if you
     can't add in hex, you have no business doing hex editing. 
     
     The last thing to change is the Date of your last mission
     which is found in bytes 45 and 46. The procedure is the
     same as used above.

     Examples:   The date for 14 Feb 44 would be E63E + 0E - 1
                 = F33E.
                 
                 The date of 19 Jan 45  would be 4035 + 13 - 1
                 = 4740.
                 
                 Christmas day 44 works out to 1640 + 19 - 1
                 = 2E40.
                 
              
      

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                              Table 1
                              =======
                    Hex Dates for 1st Day of Month
                    ______________________________

     Month    1941    1942   1943   1944   1945   1946 
     _____    ____    ____   ____   ____   ____   ____
      Jan      xx     ED3B   5A3D   C73E   3540   A241
      Feb      xx     0C3C   793D   E63E   5440   C141
      Mar      xx     283C   953D   033F   7040   DD41
      Apr      xx     473C   B43D   223F   8F40   FC41
      May      xx     653C   D23D   403F   AD40   1A42
      Jun      xx     843C   F13D   5F3F   CC40   3942
      Jul      xx     A23C   0F3E   7D3F   EA40   5742
      Aug      xx     C13C   2E3E   9C3F   0941   7642
      Sep      xx     E03D   7B3E   BC3F   2841   9542
      Oct      xx     FE3C   6B3E   D93F   4641   B342
      Nov      xx     1D3D   8A3E   F83F   6541   D242
      Dec     CE3B    3B3D   A83E   1640   8341   F042

      NOTE: All dates are given in the format used in the game
            files (i.e. LSB, MSB).
       * - dates beyond the month of August 1945 are included
           because of the scope of the AOTP 1946! expansion
           disks (and perhaps an AoE 1946! expansion disk). 

      The beginning of AoE is 1 April, 1945 (22 3F). The last
      date in AoE is 7 May, 1945 (B3 40).

      If you have any questions about this, drop me a note and
      I'll try to come up with an answer.
           
                                                 J.W. Johnson
                                                 aka  Jaybird
                                                 74020,1734





                                     





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