Oleg Maddox's Room #1

[igitur70]

Hello Mr. Maddox, thx for the great work.

I'm very impressed by the amazing level of detail on all the ground objects and vehicles. I can hardly figure out how it will look like on the 1:1 scaled map you're creating. Now I'm thinking that it would really be a shame not to be able to walk around and discover that beautiful environment from a first person perspective. Even more, I begin to dream about a tactical FPS, using that huge map and the new AI to issue orders to our squad members, just like we currently do to our wingmen.

Dont get me wrong : I know that you're doing a flight sim. I dont expect it to be possible at the release date. My question is : does the game engine allow it, and how far would you allow some 3rd party developpers to work on the non-flight aspects of the sim.

Thx again to you and your team.

[Thunderbolt56]

Personally, I hope the non-flying aspects of user inter-activity are kept to a bare minimum. Manning AAA emplacements has already been said to be included, but I feel if additional interactivity on the ground is added, it will be more of a BF1942 instead of a detailed, high-quality flight sim.

[igitur70]

Originally Posted by Thunderbolt56

Personally, I hope the non-flying aspects of user inter-activity are kept to a bare minimum. Manning AAA emplacements has already been said to be included, but I feel if additional interactivity on the ground is added, it will be more of a BF1942 instead of a detailed, high-quality flight sim.

Ok, you're welcome

But I dont get the argument though. As far as the accuracy of the flying aspect is not in question, I cant see anything being lost in such a development. The realism of the sim experience would not suffer at all from it, but on the contrary would allow the player to evolve in an world of intricated events, just like it was in real. But ok, that's just me.

[KG26_Alpha]

Originally Posted by Thunderbolt56

Personally, I hope the non-flying aspects of user inter-activity are kept to a bare minimum. Manning AAA emplacements has already been said to be included, but I feel if additional interactivity on the ground is added, it will be more of a BF1942 instead of a detailed, high-quality flight sim.

Personally I hope 3rd party development, if not 1c, take the land and sea elements of the "sim" to the same level as the Aircraft eventually.

There is far more potential for this not turning into BF1942 style of "game" if done right, in fact some dogfight servers on HL are not far off BF1942ish "air quakes" at present

Originally Posted by KG26_Alpha

, in fact some dogfight servers on HL are not far off BF1942ish "air quakes" at present

Too true

[Antoninus]

Originally Posted by Thunderbolt56

Personally, I hope the non-flying aspects of user inter-activity are kept to a bare minimum. Manning AAA emplacements has already been said to be included, but I feel if additional interactivity on the ground is added, it will be more of a BF1942 instead of a detailed, high-quality flight sim.

I second that. Oleg and his team needed 5 years to cover most of WWII in Il-2. If they want to redo all theaters with BOB engine featuring a much increased level of detail plus include controllable tanks, ships and infantry it will either take forever or will become arcadish at some point.

[mazex]

Holy cow! That map making tool looks just awesome. To bad that we are not allowed to do full size maps ourselves. At the other hand, I understand that with a tool this easy - someone would do a full map of the med in quite a short time etc...

Another interesting thing is naturally that OpenGL still seems to be the favoured API Now that OGL in Vista has become quite OK in SP1, I don't feel bad about that.

/Mazex

[dflion]

Originally Posted by Oleg Maddox

You would like to know to much and too early.
Right now I would say that most of requested by you features are used for internal tools.
For the end user some of them will be removed due to many commercial reasons.

100% answer can be done for the size of map. For the end users it will be limited in size. Because the great size map will will keep only for us, as a developrs of the next after BoB new sim or/nad map + objects addons on a payware basis.
So in general enduser will be able to make own maps say for online gameplay in proportions like it is done for Il-2.

Oleg, thanks for your answer to ‘Asheshouse’ excellent questions. (see above)

It looks as though the map making tools will be very comprehensive – you will have a basic set of tools for ‘end users’ and a more comprehensive set of tools for ‘developers’. The ‘end users’ will be able to make their own maps to the size of our current online maps for free and the ‘developers’ will have access to create much larger maps to on-sell on a payware basis.

I know that most of our community would always want to fly (including me), though I have enjoyed making some quite realistic ‘ground action’ to fly over –or attack, in some of my campaign missions using our current FMB.

Question 1. With much more realistic ground vehicles/objects in SOW-BOB, will you be able to create more accurate ground battles – artillery placements, troop movements, tank movements etc while you are fighting the air battle? – will this eventually lead to some alternative ground fighting simulation play with the air battle doing an ‘AI’ above you?

Question 2. Can you divulge any more information about the airfield environments in SOW-BOB? I am very interested to know if you can get ‘AI’ aircraft to taxi from their dispersal points to their take-off points and on return from the mission, taxi back to their dispersal point to rearm and refuel.

Question 3. Will you be able to change skins on static parked airfield aircraft?

Question 4. Will there be some ‘AI people animation’ during rearming and refuelling.

Question 5. Can static airfield aircraft be modelled with panels removed/raised for service or repair.

Question 6. Will there be a comprehensive set of animated/static airfield service vehicles?

DFLion

[II/JG54_Emil]

Dear Mr. Oleg Maddox,

since I saw the extremely detailed moddeling of ground objects, I begin to wonder if it wouldn´t be a nice feature to fight(armed with a cute little pistol) ones way back to friendly lines when shot down over enemy territory?

I know it rarely happened in history but was possible.

I bet many of us thought of that scenario when reading XY was captured by enemyforces.

Thanks for answering,
Emil

P.S.: If someone else already asked the same question, I´m sorry. But I couldn´t find it anywhere.

[Igo kyu]

Originally Posted by II/JG54_Emil

Dear Mr. Oleg Maddox,

since I saw the extremely detailed moddeling of ground objects, I begin to wonder if it wouldn´t be a nice feature to fight(armed with a cute little pistol) ones way back to friendly lines when shot down over enemy territory?

I know it rarely happened in history but was possible.

I bet many of us thought of that scenario when reading XY was captured by enemyforces.

Thanks for answering,
Emil

P.S.: If someone else already asked the same question, I´m sorry. But I couldn´t find it anywhere.

In the offline situation I wouldn't want that, but I would like some (10%? 5%? 2%?) chance of making it back to base if shot down over the enemy lines. Otherwise there's no point bailing out or landing on the other side of the front line, you might just as well crash, it's probably quicker. It may never have happened on the Eastern Front, but in the West it was occasionally known to happen, and given all the subs at least crossing the "front lines" in the Pacific, I would imagine that some pilots were occasionally recovered there. Perhaps if you did make it back to base, it might be that in a career that would sometimes mean the start of a new campaign.