WW FLYERS

Quick Start

← Download pageWatch the videoInstallControlsCannon gunnerReading the HUDScoringMultiplayerHosting

1. Install

Run WWFlyers-Setup.exe (Windows 10 / 11). It installs just for you - no administrator prompt - and adds a Start Menu entry and an optional desktop shortcut. If Windows SmartScreen appears, choose More info → Run anyway; the installer is code-signed. To remove the game use Windows Settings → Apps.

Mac: download WWFlyers-Mac.zip (works on Intel and Apple Silicon Macs) and double-click it to unzip. Drag WWFlyers.app into your Applications folder, then right-click it and choose Open the first time - the Mac app is not notarized by Apple yet, so a plain double-click says it cannot verify the developer. Choose Open again in the dialog and it starts normally from then on (if there is no Open button, use System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway). If macOS asks whether to allow incoming network connections, click Allow. To remove the game, drag the app to the Trash.

2. Your first flight

1. Choose Single Player, pick a side (Allies or Axis) and an aircraft - the preview turns so you can see it, and the bars compare speed, agility, armour and bomb load - then Take Off.
2. You start high over your own trench line, heading for the enemy. Push the mouse to steer - the plane follows where you point.
3. Hold the left mouse button to fire the guns; right-click to drop a bomb. Bombs fall forward of where you release them, so let go a little early. A dropped bomb whistles on the way down - you will hear other pilots' bombs coming too.
4. Damage shows: the more a plane or tank is hit, the more it smokes - a faint wisp at first, thick black smoke when badly hurt, and flames when nearly gone. Planes are tough and can take a lot of hits - but two aircraft that collide are both destroyed, so keep your distance in a dogfight. Tanks are tough too: they smoke first and go up in a huge explosion when finally destroyed. Use it to spot who is about to go down - yours included.
5. Shoot down enemy aircraft, strafe infantry, bomb tanks and artillery. Every kill scores for your side.
6. Watch the ground (tanks fire slowly, but every shell counts; armour and guns shoot back at each other as well as at infantry): tanks and artillery fire flashing, smoking shells at clusters of infantry. You can follow the smoke trail back to the gun, and each shell lands in a huge fireball that kills every soldier in range and throws them into the air. Each kind of blast looks different so you can read the battlefield: plane bombs burst yellow-orange, tank shells land in a napalm fireball, and artillery shells go up in the biggest orange fireball. A tank or gun destroyed by a bomb goes up in a giant napalm-style blast. Keep your altitude up over enemy tanks. Every artillery piece has a gunner standing beside it.

3. Controls

4. Cannon gunner

Prefer artillery to aircraft? On the side screen, under Choose how you fight, click Cannon Gunner instead of Pilot (Spectate just watches the battle). Pick your side, then press Man the Cannon in single player or a hosted game, or Enter Battle on the public server. It works in single player, in a hosted game and on the public server. You take over a field cannon on your side's artillery line and there is no plane to fly. Pilots and gunners fight in the same match.

• Aiming. A yellow arc previews the shell's flight and a marker shows where it will land, with the range. The panel at bottom left shows traverse (degrees left or right of straight ahead), elevation, range and reload. Shell power is fixed, so range comes from elevation: about 1,700 m at 45 degrees. The barrel moves from 5 to 80 degrees up and 85 degrees either side.
• Shell camera. When you fire, the camera rides the shell all the way down, then stays at the crater for a few seconds so you can see what it hit. You can keep aiming while it flies; fire again and the camera follows the new shell. Right click (or C) goes straight back to the cannon.
• Hitting things. The cannon reloads for 4 seconds. A shell's blast kills every soldier within about 26 m and hurts tanks, guns and aircraft near it. A shell takes many seconds to land, so lead anything that is moving.
• Staying alive. Enemy tanks and guns shoot back at your cannon, which can take 90 points of damage. If it is destroyed you respawn at a fresh one after a few seconds. Your kills score for your side exactly like a pilot's - see the scoring table.

5. Reading the HUD

• Blue = friends, red = enemies, always from your point of view, whichever side you picked.
• Tags float over aircraft with a name and distance. Red tags are enemy planes (and enemy tanks that are close).
• Minimap (bottom right): your side is always at the bottom. Yellow is you; enemy aircraft pulse when they get within 400 m. Tiny dots are infantry; squares are tanks; diamonds are artillery.
• Top bar: your side's score, the clock, and the enemy score. Left panel: speed, altitude, power, bombs, hull and your kills.
• Kill feed (top left) lists aircraft kills and crashes.

6. Scoring and winning

How the score works. Every kill adds its value to your side's total - whether you, a bot pilot, a tank or the infantry made it - and your own kills and points show on the left panel and as a +150 TANK popup under the crosshair. Bombs are the best way to earn big points on the ground; guns are best against aircraft.

How a round is won. The first side to reach 4000 points wins at once; otherwise the side with the higher total when the 10-minute clock runs out wins (equal scores = stalemate). Shot down? You respawn after a few seconds. Friendly fire is off by default; switch it on from the single-player screen, the host screen or the pause menu.

The Esc menu and the help card

• The Esc menu is laid out like in You Are the Missile: Enter Game (only while you are watching), Leave Game, Spectate, Quit to Desktop, sound and music sliders, and tick boxes for Mute Music, Show Player Names, Invert Dive / Climb and Friendly Fire. In single player it also pauses the game.
• Press H at any time (menus, cockpit, spectating) for the help card: six pages covering the match, getting in, every key, the cannon gunner, the armies and scoring, and the server. ← → or the page numbers turn the pages; H or Esc closes it.

Display and sound

• Full screen: the game starts full screen. F11 or Alt+Enter switches between full screen and a window, and the Esc menu has a Display button too.
• Sound: the Esc menu has an Audio panel with a Music slider, a Sound Effects slider and Mute Music. Settings are remembered. Explosions are loud close up and fade with distance, and are quieter while you are spectating. The title screen plays "Fate of a Generation"; each match starts a different random track.

7. Multiplayer

• Lobby: pick side and aircraft - or choose Cannon Gunner under Choose how you fight - see who is connected (gunners are marked) and chat.
• Spectate: press Esc → Spectate (or choose it in the lobby). Drag to look, scroll to zoom, WASD fly the camera (Shift faster). F is the only key that picks players: the first press follows the best score, each further press moves to the next player. The top of the screen shows who you are following with their score, kills and hull. Esc stops following (a second Esc opens the menu); to fly, press Esc then Enter Game. Choosing Spectate on the side and aircraft screen takes you straight into watching - no need to press Enter Battle. If you are still watching when a battle ends, you start the next one watching too.
• Chat: Y anywhere in a match or the lobby. Messages fade out slowly; @name talks to someone (the line turns gold on their screen). The bot pilots trash-talk, congratulate and answer back - in single player too.

8. Host your own game

1. Host Game from the title screen, enter your name, optionally switch friendly fire on, then Open Lobby.
2. Friends use Join Game and your address. On a home network they need your IP; for internet play forward UDP port 7778 on your router to your PC.
3. When everyone is in, press Start Match. Latecomers can still join mid-match.

Run a dedicated server (Windows or Linux): launch the game with -batchmode -nographics -server and optionally -port 7778 -teamsize 4 -matchlength 600 -friendlyfire. Put a server.cfg next to the program to set the options permanently:

# server.cfg
port = 7778
team_size = 4          # pilots per side; bots fill the rest
match_length = 600     # seconds per round
score_limit = 4000
friendly_fire = off    # on / off
respawn_delay = 4

Troubleshooting

• Can't connect: check the address and that UDP port 7778 is open (firewall / router). The server is also unreachable if a match crashed - try again in a minute.
• Controller not working: the menus show a line at the bottom left naming every controller the game can see ("No controller detected" if none). Xbox, PlayStation, Switch Pro and most USB pads work; plug it in before starting the game or move a stick / press a button, and use the d-pad or left stick to move around the menus. If it still says none, tell us the controller model.
• Choppy frame rate: close other heavy programs; the game is light, but a hosting PC runs the whole simulation.
• Something broken? Tell us what you were doing and roughly when - the game keeps a log at %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\3wcircus\WW Flyers\Player.log on Windows, ~/Library/Logs/Unity/Player.log on a Mac.

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