Expanding the content of CoD?

[NedLynch]

First of all let me say I was very much on the fence about buying the sim.
However given IL2 1946's history I decided 1C should by any means be supported and it seems the guys are truly passionate about the IL2 series.

I am rather happy I got the game, via steam, it runs very well for me (knock on wood, don't want to jinx it) and I am very much enjoying learning how to fly with CEM (very different from IL2 1946).

Now I do appologize if this has been posted before and maybe it's a bit early to bring this up, but I do think at some point the game content needs to be expanded, since right now for SP it is arguably rather meagre.

Like I said, I trust 1C will do this, either with expansions or add-ons, but it might stear the sim in the right direction if enough people express their desire for added content and what kind of content.

I would very much love a career mode IL2 1946 style, you choose your unit, your aircraft and your area of operations. In the end something like "European Air War" ( yes it is an old game ) paired with CoD would be a sim that will be ideal imho.

The option to map a key to lower your arrestor hook gives me great hope that much more is in store for this sim.

Btw, patience and reading and learning how to fly the aircraft is key to keeping frustration away in a sim like this.

Again I am very happy I got CoD, keep it up 1C :grin:

[White Owl]

Yes, a dynamic campaign generator is sorely needed here. I'll be surprised if we get one anytime soon, though.

Single missions are still fun.

[Ataros]

Try campaigns and missions posted here http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/forumdisplay.php?f=203

and at airwarfare.com

There is some great SP stuff already there.

[angst1974]

I know I am in the minority , but SP is most important to me . I have two kids , a full time job , and another hobby . I simply have not fun in MP flying against people that can dedicate 20+++ hours a week to flying.

[robtek]

When one looks into the key mapping for the engines, there are up to eight engines mappable.
When i hear "eight engines" i see a B-52 bfore me :D
But a B-36 has 10 engines, mmmhh??

[swiss]

Spruce Goose?

[White Owl]

I know I am in the minority , but SP is most important to me . I have two kids , a full time job , and another hobby . I simply have not fun in MP flying against people that can dedicate 20+++ hours a week to flying.

Any surveys I've ever looked at for various flight sims revealed you are not in the minority. Most of us fly single player most of the time, even in games with fully functioning non-buggy multiplayer.

I'm not saying multiplayer isn't important; it is, and I hope it gets fixed. But multiplayer has never been the majority.

[JG53Frankyboy]

The playable cojtent came in IL2'46 from the community.
"dynamic" Missiongenerators, singleplayer missiojs/campaigns, online servertools, dogfightserver events, COOP onlinewars and so on.

Give the community time - i belive it will come. But i dont expect much from the official side.....just the ecperience of the last 10 years ;)

[NedLynch]

Indeed there is so much content from the community for IL2 1946 that you cannot even explore everything....and that is a good thing.
CoD feels as if it is layed out the same way, a haven for modders and people who would like to write new contend or mission/campaign generators....and that is a good thing as well.
However from the official side there were expansions to the original IL2 and I am hoping that they will come trhough here as well in time.

Does anyone have any experience with the "semi-dynamic campaign generator" on airwarfare? To me it looks like something I am a little hesitant to download just yet. Of course people have just begun to explore what they can do with this sim, in part maybe due to the delayed US release, which was not an unwise decision.
Like I wrote the game plays rather nicely for me, win7 x64, model and textures to high, everything else on medium, ssao off (though it didn't really cut my fps when I turned it on either)

And IL2 1942 had a dynamic career mode all by itself. I used to use in addition to that the genius dynamic generator from Lowengrin, that was really something nice.

[Blackdog_kt]

Actually, the dynamic campaign in IL2 was also made by an external programmer, the very first version i got back in 2001 only had static campaigns, just like the ones we have in CoD.

I'm generally in agreement with you though, it's only a matter of time before the community manages to learn the new tools and starts supplying the content. Already there's an offline campaign with randomized missions and there are also multiplayer missions with moving frontlines and moving spawnpoints for AI ground units. If someone combines these two we have a dynamic campaign generator ;-)

Then it's a matter of adding more parameters to it so it's giving more realistic outcomes and mission taskings over time, in other words something like what DCG does, and the good thing is that while it takes persons who know how to code in C# to do it, it's completely open to the community and we don't have to go through official approval to get it into the game. Someone might make a campaign generator with a heavy ground component (lot's of CAS missions and AI ground units), another guy can modify this to make it focus more on strategic bombing and so on, until yet another guy comes along and makes an in-game interface that adjusts these parameters.

The fact that CoD can accept coding input from the players means that much of what we used to have in IL2 will also become part of CoD and better still, it might be part of the in-game menu and we won't have to fiddle with external programms. It's just a matter of time like you said.

As for the expansions, the plan is the same to the IL2 series, we'll be getting expansions focusing on different theaters of operations as time goes by, which the community can use to expand their scenarios with.

In other words, it's exactly the same deal as the previous IL2 series. We're just at the "rocky and slow start" point for now, but there are some knowledgeable people that already provide very interesting results.

I might know some things in general about how programming works but i'm sadly not a programmer, otherwise i would be working on something like this already if i had a good prior knowledge of C#.

It's entirely doable to create a Falcon4 style dynamic campaign, integrate it within the sim with your own custom interface and options/parameters, make your own .dll files for the campaign and all of that without even having to send it to the developers for approval and inclusion in a patch, you can do it on your own and then distribute it among the community, i just don't know where to start with it.:-P

[adonys]

I've already started

[Vengeanze]

First of all let me say I was very much on the fence about buying the sim.
However given IL2 1946's history I decided 1C should by any means be supported and it seems the guys are truly passionate about the IL2 series.

I am rather happy I got the game, via steam, it runs very well for me (knock on wood, don't want to jinx it) and I am very much enjoying learning how to fly with CEM (very different from IL2 1946).

Now I do appologize if this has been posted before and maybe it's a bit early to bring this up, but I do think at some point the game content needs to be expanded, since right now for SP it is arguably rather meagre.

Like I said, I trust 1C will do this, either with expansions or add-ons, but it might stear the sim in the right direction if enough people express their desire for added content and what kind of content.

I would very much love a career mode IL2 1946 style, you choose your unit, your aircraft and your area of operations. In the end something like "European Air War" ( yes it is an old game ) paired with CoD would be a sim that will be ideal imho.

The option to map a key to lower your arrestor hook gives me great hope that much more is in store for this sim.

Btw, patience and reading and learning how to fly the aircraft is key to keeping frustration away in a sim like this.

Again I am very happy I got CoD, keep it up 1C :grin:

Someone started a poll here some time ago asking forum members where the focus should be sp or mp. It ended up apx 50/50 so you're not in a minority.

1C will release a SDK soon and when they do community made content will explode in volume.

[Rather peeved]

I always thought the ultimate aim was to introduce user generated content - allow the community to build new cockpits and aircraft?

Like the ARMA series - it would surely be the best way of moving the series forward and improving it quickly.

[NedLynch]

I didn't even know the original IL2 was just like this in the beginning.

Unfortunately I am nothing of a programmer either, just a user of community generated contend. But one that highly appreciates additions to the game and someone who just looks in awe at the miracle of a nice dynamic campaign generator, wondering "how did they do that?"

And yes it is the slow and rocky start, but like I wrote I think it is a good start, it's a sim with absolutely super potential.

Here as well you have a gamer who's working all day and has a family, so at least during the week I am not very inclined to jump into MP. Plus you need a place to hone your skills anyway, i.e. SP, might as well be an engaging and enjoyable place.
Got to learn a lot here, while in IL2 1946 I never managed to overheat a Me109, in CoD the first flight with temperature effects on and within 5 minutes I had oil all over the cockpit windows, doing much better now though.

Having a dynamic campaign that ties into the game/ingame menues would truly be more than awesome.

[Blackdog_kt]

That would be easy to solve, i guess it's the main reason they went with Steam: each server can decide what kind of mods/3rd party content to allow, even if you have that 700km/h 109 you won't see it in the menus plus you won't need to have multiple installations for each mod pack. ;-)

I'm not very fond of having to use steam but i'm not going to discredit its good points either, running a list of approved mods from a pool of many without needing separate installs for each individual server is one of its strong points.