Friday 2010-12-03 Dev. update and Discussion

[House M.D.]

Originally Posted by zaelu

The FMB should be more "available" to new players or players with less time to study it thoroughly.

IL-2 FMB had many many limitations that were bypass by experienced builders only or even with external tools.

BoB shouldn't have this. BoB should have an explosion of new missions created by as many players as possible. And this is not possible with a FMB that looks like the insides of a nuclear bomb.

Let me make a comparison,

First 3ds max versions were pretty capable in pro's hands... but a lot of creativity was held off by it's hard interface. Once the interface had became more intuitive a lot of new creations had appear from the hands of people that normally would do nothing in the first versions.

FMB should have more appealing interface... those old WIN95 style windows can be changed in few minutes by an artist so they look more 2010 and not like a "oops... this looks dangerous, let's close it".
FMB should have a lot of buttons visible for quick access and not the necessity to click 2-3 menus and tick cryptic options. Contextual pop up menus, buttons, etc.

Take a look at modern game sandbox editors... many are a pleasure to work with and inspire creativity... sure a craw bar can beat nails in the head like a modern colorful rubberized handle hammer... but the kid that would help you normally is just not attracted by the job.

A good starting point would be a merge between DCS "FMB" and IL-2 FMB.

A lot of valid points by zaelu, a man who knows what he's talking about.

I won't say more, because these screenshot don't tell us everything and maybe the release product is something different than what we think at this moment.

But yes, I think that all of us who've created missions in FMB know its problems and hope to see them solved in BoB.

Of course, we all know (and maybe Oleg and team use this advantage) that there are a lot of people who would spend hundreds of hours in FMB or developing 3rd party tools, in order to bypass original FMB's problems.

All in all, even if we only get the same 10+ years old FMB, there will be people willing to spend their time for the good of the community.

But, closing as started, we have to wait because these assumptions are based in a few screenshots and not a detailed analysis of new (hopefully) FMB.