Mods discussion, links, etc

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by EJGr.Ost_Caspar

Fantasy repaints and frankenstuff = lame!

I really don't understand all the fuzz about mod packs.
Only real benefit is the different sound IMHO.

Yeah, mod packs are so lame. All you get are:

1) All planes flyable, albeit many with "borrowed" cockpits and gunner stations.

2) Scads of new maps.

3) New variants of existing planes - some quite well researched.

4) Complete historical loadouts for existing planes.

5) Small fixes to mistakes on stock planes.

6) Loads of new planes - some with new 3D models, DM and FM. Yeah, some are "frankenplanes" but even then, they're often quite well done.

7) Lots of new ground objects.

Corrections to AI which fix "sniper gunners" and engines which never overheat.

9) Improvements to AI which make enemy planes tougher, more aggressive opponents.

10) Additions to AI which allow you to control up to wing-sized formations of bombers and give additional commands to wingmen.

11) Additions to AI which allow forward observers, target marking, ground controlled radar.

12) Better default skins.

13) Lots of little corrections to things which 1C was too busy/lazy to fix over the years. Like better sounds, better smoke and fire effects, better ground textures and corrections to dumb mistakes in FM coding well before the "official" fixes.

Basically, modders are telling 1C and DT where they want the sim to go and are taking steps to make it go there. If mods were junk nobody would use them.

If DT is smart, they would do what computer security companies do - recruit the best hackers to work for the "good guys." In this case, recruit the better modders onto their team, or ask to use their mods.

Also, DT's web presence has been minimal, to say the least. You guys need to communicate better, and not just on inherently "mod unfriendly" sites like this one. Set up a web page that lists formal requirements for mods (i.e., polygon counts, areas that are off limits) and tutorials on how to add objects, planes, ships, etc. to the game. Maybe have an "official" TD presence on mod forums to steer promising modders towards contributing to official patches. Basically, encourage people to work through DT and to build stuff that is up to official standards.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by SaQSoN

1C might had reasons not to pursue the violators, DT might have reasons to do so.

I didn't know that DT had its own multinational legal team. Anyhow, I wish them best of luck.

[WWFlybert]

SaQSoN

With respect sir, you are mistaken regarding copyright, intellectual property regarding game mods, at least regarding USA law

In USA, to sue you must show monetary damages, so while if anyone were to take 1C or UbiSoft copyright material and resell it without permission, 1C and Ubisoft would certainly be damaged .. if anyone were to distribute the core game and it's files, even for free, that would indeed be theft and damage 1C and Ubisoft

Mods as distributed, do not work without the player having a copy of IL-2 1946, presumably legally purchased .. if anything, an argument could be made that many more copies of IL-2 1946 have been sold because of mods, than if the game had not been cracked and modded

If game mods could be stopped through legal process, then why did not 1C - UbiSoft do so at the first chance ? ..

I will tell you why .. because this issue has existed since at least 1996, and no software company to my knowledge, much less a PC game company, has successfully sued to prevent distribution of mods or additions to a software. Since Half Life was modded to become CounterStrike, quite a few Game companies have encouraged modding and distributed the tools to do so, because it increases sales and can sometimes allow the company to acquire new content inexpensively and increase sales .. sometimes those mods become a *new* game like CounterStrike

TD does not own the rights to IL-2 1946 .. UbiSoft and 1C do .. if you have not been properly compensated for your work .. you can not sue modders over it .. in fact ...

I find it odd that TD claims it gains no compensation from 1C - UbiSoft for their work, that would likely be against labor laws in all 50 states in USA

I presume you get permission for any unique user content added "officially" to IL-2 1946, any unique textures, 3d models .. anything .. and permission from any user created hacking tools you may have used .. because not to do so would clearly be a violation of those authors' copyright

And while I'm not giving a legal opinion, I have protected authors' rights in another flight sim / game, and have lead 2 mod groups that dealt with IP rights of flight sim / game rights holders ..

I both greatly respect developers rights and software user / modder rights , so please don't misunderstand .. I greatly respect 1C and TD and the work you have done that is IL-2 1946 today

However I can say with complete confidence that TD would get nowhere attempting legal action against mod groups for adding or changing content of IL-2 1946, and to make threats accomplishes nothing except alienating most of those that read this forum

I am not, BTW, an IL-2 modder, however as a player of the game, I find your attitude objectionable, despite greatly enjoying the work TD has done for the game.

I also find it objectionable that the UP 2.01 splash screen does not included the TD logo .. 4.09m includes your work, and I always believe full credit should be given in any compiled work, and thanks given to all authors' work in readme files

[SaQSoN]

Originally Posted by WWFlybert

SaQSoN

With respect sir, you are mistaken

Thank you for your advise. We are not concerned about 1C or Ubi-soft financial losses due to piracy. And this is not a topic of this discussion. May be, you should read my posts more carefully to find out what it is about.

Originally Posted by WWFlybert

If game mods could be stopped through legal process, then why did not 1C - UbiSoft do so at the first chance ? ..

Because no one, including 1C, Ubisoft, or DT doesn't care about mod existence. Obviously, this is the reason why no one would do anything to stop them. I can not even imagine, what a crazy idea makes you think, DT wants to destroy unofficial modding.

Originally Posted by WWFlybert

I find it odd that TD claims it gains no compensation from 1C - UbiSoft for their work, that would likely be against labor laws in all 50 states in USA

TD does not work for 1C, and is not it's subcontractor.

Originally Posted by WWFlybert

I presume you get permission for any unique user content added "officially" to IL-2 1946, any unique textures, 3d models .. anything .. and permission from any user created hacking tools you may have used .. because not to do so would clearly be a violation of those authors' copyright

You don't have to presume that. Everything, that is added into official add-ons, produced by DT, is added with permission from the respective authors. There was a small misunderstanding with author of flares, which has been settled long ago.
All tools, DT is using, are either created by DT members, or licensed from 1C.
Any person, that may tell you different story - is a deliberate liar.

And we know, there are certain people in the "unofficial mod community" who spread this lies with only aim to discredit DT's hard work. I wouldn't be surprised, if this is the same people, who did stole our work before and threaten to do that in the future.

[SaQSoN]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Yeah, mod packs are so lame. All you get are:

I could go through each of your points and explain in detail, why each of them is lame. But I will not. Because a) I know, that if not you, then most of the mod users will not listen to any reasons, so it would be a pure waste of time and effort; b) I respect your preferences and your desire to use mods - in no way I will try to prevent you from having and using them.

I just say, that all that lame stuff will never get into the official add-ons. That's all. At the same time DT is happy to cooperate with people, who produce really high quality stuff and are willing to include it into DT releases.
The IL-4 cockpit, shown in one of the DT updates, is a good example of such cooperation. You may also ask Sita (one of the SB cockpit authors) on this forum: I bet, he would have a lot's of good words for us.

[Viikate]

Originally Posted by bf-110

If wasn't because of them,IL2 would be still on 4.08

Perhaps is time for a little IL-2 history lesson, because many new players probably have no idea how the sim was developed. I've seen many people saying that 1C MG did stupid thing by not utilizing the works of modders and not making the IL-2 moddable in the first place. Well little do they know that there was a long period of so called 3rd party development. Sort of "legal modding". It started right after the very first IL-2 was released. Here is little blast from the past:

http://replay.web.archive.org/200211...il2center.com/
http://replay.web.archive.org/200112...il2center.com/
http://replay.web.archive.org/200211...il2center.com/

Anyone could make a reservation of some plane for himself and model it according to the sim specs. If it was done properly and sent to MG, it appeared later in some free patch or commercial add-on. If it was in add-on, the modeller got paid for his work.

My estimation is that probably half of the currently existing plane external & cockpit 3D models were made by the community members. The "first generation of modders". Called 3rd party members back then. The whole initial idea of TD was to gather these 3rd party guys back together and continue the old style quality development and ask some of the most talented modders to join.

This means that TD has many guys that were these old 3rd party guys and these guys have created just huge amount of 3D content for this sim. Planes, cockpits, ships, ground objects and even maps. I find it always pretty funny when some modder speaks crap about TD without realizing that is was some guy in TD who actually made his own mod possible.

Without the 3rd party guys (including several TD guys) there would be about 50% less raw materials for the "new" mod planes and lot less ships & ground objects, etc. So I think that it is pretty big middle finger aimed towards the old 3rd party guys if the 3rd party efforts are ignored and mods are raised on pedistal because they have made hundreds of "new" planes (from which the most of are variants of the existing planes). It takes 5 minutes to put wrong cockpit to old AI planes. It takes easily 6 months to model a historically correct pit.

I would even say that 4.09 & 4.10 was pretty much nothing compared to the full efforts of 3rd party. But at least TD is trying to maintain the same standards set by the best 3rd party work such as Tempest & Gladiator. Which means that TD won't put wrong cockpits to AI planes to make it flyable or release CR.42 as Hs 123, etc.

Bottom line: Thanks to the 3rd party efforts long before any modding, IL-2 now has huge amount of raw material that modders can recycle as new planes and use as objects in their maps. And not a single mod has ever given credits to a 3rd party guy who made the mod possible in the first place. These guys are all mentioned in readme files, but the average modder just doesn't care.

[|ZUTI|]

I much prefer to be passive observer but I have a simple question: why do you, TD members, argue here, in MODS section? Don't you have your own section one forum above this one? Make your statements there and leave this forum for mods discussion. But I guess that some of you just need your voices heard, no matter what. And argue till your fingers bleed. What a shame. Instead of being a true beacon for the IL2 community, you are here just to stir things up, it would seem.

If you are so much better than modders, this does not show that. I know why the TD was ORIGINALLY started and I am 200% sure that it was not for this purpose. Some of you might know, some of you know for sure. Not what your mission statement is NOW, what it was AT THE BEGINNING. Some members on your team surely have the knowledge, but their attitude... in a lot of eyes it just hurts you. And promotion of paid projects... absurd. Perhaps the best way for you guys to go would be paid add-ons. It would make you so desirable money and would also bring you much desired legal advantage.

And for the conclusion, I would like to ask something of you, TD. I read in your forum here that the old RRR thing was brought up once more. While some of your members are telling community that it was left out because it was flawed and was missing for that reason and others were arguing that it was arcade(ish) (while refly is so much more realistic...), would you do me one last favor and not include it at all? Since that is your opinion about it. The catch here is, naturally, that you can implement it on your own, sure. But then again, modders can also implement what you do on their own also. A nice loop. Specially since coding is such a wonderful world where one thing can be done on so many different ways.

Thank you.

[Sita]

Originally Posted by SaQSoN

At the same time DT is happy to cooperate with people

confirm ... from the DT we get a lot of support, advice and materials! and clearly see a desire to cooperate with us and help us)

[_1SMV_Gitano]

@|ZUTI|:

It has been asked if mod will get into official patches. The given answer clearly states what kind of material will never be in. You can like it or not. You can still mod your game.

Promotion of paid projects? Where?

RRR? Again, where?

[Pursuivant]

[QUOTE=SaQSoN;283630Nevertheless, there was clear and strict order from Ilya and earlier by Maddox, that DT should not touch any US ships, or NG related planes and cockpits.[/QUOTE]

So, what does this leave on the table? Is it possible to mod the smaller or older U.S. ships that weren't built by NG corporate precursors.

Personally, I don't really care about the big capital ships. I'd like to see more smaller, cargo and coastal craft which made up the bulk of the various national fleets and which accounted for most of the shipping sunk during the war.

If I'm flying a strike fighter/light bomber over the Bay of Biscay, Port Moresby or Norway, I'm going to stay the heck away from anything with serious guns on it and try to take out something that will sink if it takes a single torpedo or bomb hit, like a coastal steamer or frigate.