Friday 2010-10-15 Dev. update and Discussion

[KOM.Nausicaa]

Many thanks for all your answers Oleg. It was great to spend part of the saturday with you.
And also many thanks for your compliments on my art.

[jamesdietz]

I'm gittin' so as I can' stan' da wait!!!!!

[Splitter]

Originally Posted by pupaxx

..So we got a publisher!!! Great news

Yes, great news, but I found something that was possibly disturbing to a degree. Oleg said that they were integrating the MP at the request of the publisher (read his post to see exactly what he said). So here is my concern:

In another game where my gaming clan ran several servers, a fee from EA was passed along in the monthly charge for operating the server. It was simply a way for EA to get residual income and the fee was high enough to keep a lot of groups from running their own server. As a clan we operated on donations only but several times some of us had to kick in personal money to keep the servers up for the next month.

What did we get for the monthly fee? Nothing from EA that was positive.

I hated the way EA implemented the fee. It made running servers considerably more expensive, lead to compatibility problems, and actually ended up retarding the growth of the game online.

I am no longer in the business of running servers for a gaming group so maybe my information is a few years old. Things may have changed OR maybe this has become the accepted practice by publishers.

So if there is a fee (and I don't know if there will be one or not so don't flame me) I hope there is at least some "value added" benefit from the fee besides lining the publisher's pocket. I don't mind paying as long as I am getting something in return.

Splitter

OMG. Hopefully it's not the DRM stuff they are including.

[Osprey]

Originally Posted by Oleg Maddox

Current limit is 128 players.
It will be finally decided later to cut the amount for the beginning or keep 128. Will let you all later.

Everytime I am away from the thread you are posting! I have such terrible luck.

128 players is a lot however in several years time, the increase in internet development and with your plans for theatre and genre expansion I would like to ask if this is a fixed limit or possible to increase? If a Tank or Sub/Ship sim was realised and could be integrated then there would undoubtedly be far more players......may want to cluster those servers I'm probably getting way, way ahead of myself here

I have a separate question too. Is the speed of sound going to be implemented? In IL2 you drop a bomb from, say 5000ft, when the bomb goes off you hear the explosion as you see it. The explosion sound would be delayed. I have faith in your eye for detail Oleg

The updates are great, thank you for talking to us.

[Flanker35M]

S!

I think the sounds are better than in IL-2. I read the speed of sound is modelled so you should not hear instant boom if a bomb explodes far from you, Osprey.

About 128 players. That is a nice figure. It is hard to get a lot of ppl to get a good gameplay. Same is seen in EVE Online when there is like 200-700 players shooting at eachother in a fleet fight. There is lag and even sometimes server nodes crash. But the server has at peaks over 50.000 players online..on ONE and only server.

[jippy13]

Hello Oleg,

Maybe my suggestion has been already mentionned, but I d like that Bob includes a statitics module with graphical interface, giving you statistics with detailled information, at the end of your mission, to help you to evaluate.

Thus, for the same mission (coop or dogfight), we ll be able to know if we improve our accuracy of shooting, our flight strategy in dogfight (position etc).

In short, this statistics module will be very useful to progress and would help you to know your rank in the grading of the pilots of Bob

Thanks for reading me Oleg

And thanks for the update

[mazex]

Originally Posted by Ailantd

I think the problem is the "blue" and "violet" colors in some of the parcels.
I also live in a green land and that colors are never in the country here.

original:


whit only green parcels

I really like your edit Ailantd. Even though this latest batch of shots is getting close to what I had hoped for in my dreams I also think that there is to much blue and violet like you say (and you show that with your edit in a great way - an image says more than a thousand words). As I'm already nit picking I also think that the landscape also feels a bit "over exposed". Go down 1/3 EV maybe?

Oleg - please take our comments with a grain of salt as I really like the improvements you have made - and you have said many times that the textures and lighting is not final so...

Maybe the textures will be "open for modding" so we can download "Aliantd Greener Fields mod 0.1" a few weeks after the release? That would be a great way to handle it as there are so many different opinions here

Thanks again for taking the time to answer so many questions here! /Mazex

[Osprey]

Originally Posted by Flanker35M

S!

I think the sounds are better than in IL-2. I read the speed of sound is modelled so you should not hear instant boom if a bomb explodes far from you, Osprey.

About 128 players. That is a nice figure. It is hard to get a lot of ppl to get a good gameplay. Same is seen in EVE Online when there is like 200-700 players shooting at eachother in a fleet fight. There is lag and even sometimes server nodes crash. But the server has at peaks over 50.000 players online..on ONE and only server.

Good information, thanks.

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by Oleg Maddox

I will soon tell it. We integrating interface now. But its not a time to anounce. We are doing by reqest of publisher.
Anyway there will be still the possibility to integrate to another systems by creative users and third party.

Current limit is 128 players.
It will be finally decided later to cut the amount for the beginning or keep 128. Will let you all later.

Interesting.

On one hand, it seems that the multiplayer interface is decided by the publisher. I'm just theorizing here but i guess it will probably be integrated with a copy protection method and to be honest, i dislike mandatory online requirements unless they are a "once in a lifetime" online activation, or i get something worthy in return that enhances the gameplay experience. I want to be able to play a game i paid for whenever i want, not whenever my ISP or some cables allow me to.
On the other hand, since it will be possible to add 3rd party tools for online server browsing, maybe i'm totally mistaken (hopefully) and things are not that hard-coded. Maybe it's not DRM and multiplayer rolled into one, but just an integrated lobby browser for multiplayer, which would be fine.


The most positive note of course in all the above is the player limit. Having 128 players with that level of detail will be an immense experience