Friday 2010-08-27 Dev. update and Discussions

[major_setback]

It would be nice if earth/soil thrown up from an explosion could hit the plane if you were too low. I imagine that soil will be thrown in the air, so you would just need a few sounds added.

[BG-09]

Originally Posted by Insuber

This kind of "realism" is better left to sick people.

Sick of what? Sick of War? War is not a game or simulator - everything happens. Of course I do not mean intestines rotating over the air screw! Ugly but realistic, ugly but historic.
I am meaning only equipment to fly in to the air.

Here is what I have found - the same IL-2 Veteran memories:

"It happened on January 18th 1944 when I received an order to seek out and attack in two ship formation by any enemy means of transportation on the road Volosovo-Narva. After we took off I got separated from my wingman due to heavy snowstorm. Trying to locate him I opened canopy, so it froze in the open position. What’s worse – I was unable to find my wingman. To make situation completely awful I found out that the right undercarriage leg is not working and sticks out into the wind stream. Still, there was no other option for me but to try and accomplish the mission. So I flew at airspeed of 320 km\h, with an outside temperature - 18°?. Snow easily filled my cockpit, ice covered the instrument panel and I couldn’t feel my legs anymore. To be able to fly I had to clear most important gauges by fingers. This all seriously distracted me from keeping situational awareness at appropriate level.
When I noticed first trucks it was already too late to attack. I begun turning to set an attack pattern, but first trucks had disappeared under the trees. I even became upset – the target escaped! But then I flew out of the clouds, and in front of me I found a long snake of infantry column. It was a gift from God!
Infantry was not covered by AAA, soldiers had to fight strong wind blowing them into the faces, so they were not looking at the sky, and that same wind did not allow them to hear my engine. I simply pressed the trigger and saw blue traces disappearing in the column. When first soldiers disappeared under the nose of my Il I released bombs. That time my bomb bays were loaded with 16 AO-25 fragmentation bombs with a delay set for 5 seconds. I kept firing, but there was no end to this mass of infantry, so I fired all eight RSs. By this time I flew as low as tops of telegraph poles. I had to abort the attack.
When I begun gaining altitude with a turn, my engine begun stalling, from the sides I could see the traces of awakened small caliber AAA.
With great caution I piloted my airplane by the shortest route to our airfield. The good point – my engine seemed to begin recovering, it sounded more and more stable, the bad one – German small caliber traces were getting closer and closer. As I got to the home base it was clear that there was no way for me to land on Gora-Valday – the right leg did not lock, so I would get dragged from the runway right into other planes parked along narrow airfield.
Borki had a round appearance, so I had more freedom trying to land there. With lots of luck I landed safely. I tried to stand up, but couldn’t. Then I noticed some hands searching through the cockpit, and someone said:
— You idiot! You forgot to lower landing gear as emergency procedure says. You crippled the plane!
I wanted to say that airframe is not so seriously damaged, but then I suddenly was engulfed by undeserved insult.
I took out my TT pistol, and tried to hit the source of the voice. Somebody grabbed my hand and took away my pistol. I was escorted to the HQ. There I ripped off the face mole mask. Usually it protected our faces from frost, but this time it froze to my skin, so I took the mask with bits of skin. I reported to the 7th regiment commander Major Karasev that I attacked the infantry column, that AAA cover lagged 800 meters behind, and that the weather was getting better. The Major asked me to show on the map where I caught the Germans, and ordered to prepare 9 Ils for the mission. Meanwhile somebody called the doctor, he checked me out, but there was nothing but mortal tiredness and little frostbites. The regiment commander ordered me to go to the canteen and then to rest.
In the canteen girls gave me 100 grams of vodka with pepper as a medicine against flu. As I ate, Ivan Bezhanov, a pilot I knew, told me that their engineer was not too keen on trying to send me to the court martial.
When two girls guided me to the dug-out, where I was supposed to have some rest, they brought me to the newly-formed crater. As a passing by seaman described:
— In this crater you can see all that remained from the German ace. Some time ago four FW-190 tried to strafe the airfield. An ace from the 14th Guards fighter regiment Konstantin Kovalev shot two of them down. One fell right there.
In the crater I saw man’s “device” with no trace of the rest of the body.
It was warm in the dug-out, but I was still shaking under heavy fur coat. Then I got all sweaty. For a long time I was unconscious. I woke up from poking:
— Comrade Commander, the regiment engineer ordered to give this to you as a present... We recovered it from the cowling of the engine and from the wing of your plane.
However sleepy I was, I still understood that he showed me pieces of soldiers’ overcoat, belt and one German shoulder board. But I was too tired to think about it and dozed off again.
In the morning I woke up as good as new. I carefully examined my “souvenirs” in the daylight. After breakfast I was told that my plane was ready, examined it and flew home. But I forgot the “souvenirs”.
While I was resting after the flight thinking of the «trophies» that I left behind, I recalled events described in the brochure that I read in the flight school before being assigned to the Baltic’s. This brochure was about combat activities of the Black Sea aviation ground-attack pilot Captain Suslin who arrived to our flight school and spearheaded forming of our regiment. In Odessa area Suslin lowered his landing gear to pretend he is flying German Ju-87 and strafed a column of Romanian infantry. It became clear that it was Romanian infantry column only back at the airfield, where pieces of Romanian uniforms, a helmet and a scalp with hair were recovered from the wheel wells! At that time I did not believe that such an episode could be real. Any impact of the wheel creates a strong roll-over moment and the plane would be drawn to the ground. This is a 100% risk. But these bits were actually raised into the air by explosions of RSs, through which my plane flew.
Now we are flying with Akaev with a task to strafe Klopitsy airfield. He flies at an altitude of 400 meters in a straight line. It was shocking but I maneuvered to avoid the AAA explosions..."

These Il-2 Sturmoviks have been busy with the dirtiest job...
The rest is here - very interesting:
http://mig3.sovietwarplanes.com/pilo...batievskii.htm

[philip.ed]

The thing is this; if a simulator was bloody enough to make you feel bad, then that is good. I will explain. You see, in il-2 I always try and aim for the cockpit when I can and I don't feel bad about seeing a cartoonish character get killed. If, in SoW, the effect of shooting an enemy gunner/pilot was realistic and gruesome enough to make me feel bad about taking someone's life like that, I may be more chivalrous in my fighting in the game. So by this i mean that I may think twice about aiming for the pilot to at least give him a chance to bail-out.

[Insuber]

Nice read BG, thank you! Don't forget nevertheless that Oleg expressed very clearly his position on blood and gore, and for very good reasons by the way.

Cheers!

[philip.ed]

I agree though that blood and gore are the last things to worry about modelling in a sim like this

[Aviar]

Originally Posted by philip.ed

The thing is this; if a simulator was bloody enough to make you feel bad, then that is good. I will explain. You see, in il-2 I always try and aim for the cockpit when I can and I don't feel bad about seeing a cartoonish character get killed. If, in SoW, the effect of shooting an enemy gunner/pilot was realistic and gruesome enough to make me feel bad about taking someone's life like that, I may be more chivalrous in my fighting in the game. So by this i mean that I may think twice about aiming for the pilot to at least give him a chance to bail-out.

How about if you just witnessed your wingman's head being blown into a million pieces from that same 'enemy gunner/pilot'. Would that still encourage you to be 'more chivalrous'...?

My real point is not to forget that this is just a computer game. Although I personally like a lot of realism in my simulations, I do think that some people get a little carried away with their requests. Just my opinion, of course.

Aviar

[RCAF_FB_Orville]

+1 Aviar, its not necessary at all IMO, and it beats me why people would want to see things like that.....Strikes me as a bit freaky and Ghoulish. Watch a Freddy Krueger film or something if that kind of thing floats your boat lol.

If cockpit hits were 'realistic' in IL-2 dogfights would end a lot sooner, I'm sure Oleg was on record saying that in the past.

[Madfish]

Hi all,

I just registered to get more details on the game as it's progressing in development.

To those who say that blood would be unnecessary and ghoulish / too brutal; I must wonder why do you play a game where you shoot down planes at all?

A plane exploding means death in the same way as a cockpit kill with the plane plummeling to the ground. Where is the difference between an explosion and blood? Both mean certain death. Would that mean explosion effects have to be taken out of the game as well or is it just a double moral here?

Also don't forget that in pilot view the screen turns red as well when you get injured. Red... the very same color and we all know it's blood. If it wasn't intended to be that way the screen could turn pink or green.

In the end shooting down a plane means being aware of the fact that you kill. I'd even go so far that taking part in any conflict means knowing you might have to hurt or kill people, no, that you even want to hurt and kill people. Even more so with bombing runs - these are always, like mentioned above, a gruesome deal for the receiving party and sometimes even pilots.

I can certainly understand when the developers don't want to add blood as it may cause issues with certain youth ranking systems (especially in Germany, my home country) but then again, pretending that blood doesn't belong there isn't right I believe. In Germany swastikas are banned as well, another sad thing. I'm not a nazi at all but see, what is realism for you guys is banned here because of the history. Isn't blood the very same?

Let me say it differently: it doesn't even matter if any lifeform out there bleeds if you kill it. Even if it doesn't bleed at all, and there are ways to kill like that e.g. gas or poison or whatever, it's still a kill! Everything else is just visuals. We can take them out of the game one by one (fire from burning, explosions, shockwaves, craters and bomb effects, bullets and ricochets etc.) and even make the games look like funny bubbles - it'd still mean you kill someone. So adding >some< realistic effects isn't gory, ghoulish or overly brutal - it's nothing else but what really happens.

Just my 50cents on that topic.

The game looks really nice though. Is there any way to get a decent DRM free pre-order deal of it outside of steam? :]
Regards,
Madfish.

[Dozer_EAF19]

Originally Posted by philip.ed

The thing is this; if a simulator was bloody enough to make you feel bad, then that is good. I will explain. You see, in il-2 I always try and aim for the cockpit when I can and I don't feel bad about seeing a cartoonish character get killed. If, in SoW, the effect of shooting an enemy gunner/pilot was realistic and gruesome enough to make me feel bad about taking someone's life like that, I may be more chivalrous in my fighting in the game. So by this i mean that I may think twice about aiming for the pilot to at least give him a chance to bail-out.

I don't understand this idea that combat pilots should be chivalrous. They're not up there for fun and games, they're there to defend their country from the invader! (Or, to help conquer another country to get the resources needed to defend the fatherland from the big country that's about to become the invader.) (Or, to bomb the other country so they can't defeat your country and destroy it.) If you're fighting for your national survival, which I think the pilots of all nations thought they were, then you don't deal in niceties. You shoot to bring the other plane down, you don't try to aim to avoid harming the other crew and reduce your chance of a kill, that'd be ludicrous, possibly even traitorous! Are you a traitor, Philip??

[Madfish]

This has nothing to do with survival or treachery. There have been many incidents or humanistic behavior and especially pilots aren't the murderous being you describe. There was in fact a lot of chivalry in the air and even bombing crews didn't tell the gory tales but usually they took pride in just downing planes. I believe that air combat is just not as involved as ground combat when it comes to really see the brutality. You usually just fought against "machines" and "pilots".

This said I might repeat that I wouldn't mind a little blood effect or two but things don't have to be overly gory just to show what happens. Also things don't have to be overly gory just to not be a traitor.
In fact downing a pilot and capturing him can be MUCH more useful than killing him mindlessly. A plane down is a plane down. What you describe, dozer, is only feasible in the act of attacking another country and thus fighting over enemy territory. Then it'd be reasonable to try hard and kill everything in side as they might go back home and get into another plane again.

Regards,
Madfish.