SOW: two versions.

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by Feuerfalke

Original view on hackers, Blackdog.

Hackers do not crack a game because they want to mod it, but because they want to cheat. So if you have an open game for flying for fun and a closed one for competition, it's still a large motivation to crack the game in order to provide cheats for competitions.

Maybe for IL2 there was an additional motivation, as some people felt cheated by Oleg for some porked favourite aircraft. The outcome is the same: To give yourself a benefit, either against opponents or against the original thing.

And the comparrison to FSX? Well, I doubt there's much competition in FSX, so nobody is hurt by a pegasus passing by your cockpit. But in SOW?

I never mentioned hackers and two versions. All i'm saying is that a single version is enough, as long as it's a modular design that can easily be expanded in the future with new flyables, new aircraft subsystems and more realism in everything as the PC technology progresses and allows for more things to be handled by the CPU.

As for FSX, i clearly stated something about control by the dev team, but you got me thinking into a certain direction by talking about lack of competition. I think all of this issue has blown up in our faces because some IL2 fans either feel their favorite ride is porked and want to cheat, and some others care too much about their online stats. You want to know what the problem is with IL2 modifications? It's the fact that it's a competitive game, even if we suppose that somehow magically all cheaters disappeared.

Silent Hunter 3 had and might still have an enormous modding community that made the stock game about 10 times better and more realistic that it initially was. Why? Because it was mostly single player and its limited online functionality was on a coop basis.

But with IL2, there's too many stat babies around who polish their virtual records to see that we could have a positive outcome out of a negative initial incident. What's funnier is that most of these people are the same people who deny developments in functionality for certain aircraft while they pump a load of cash into peripherals, HOTAS, rudder pedals, TrackIRs, touchscreens, triple screen setups and countless other gadgets to ensure guess what? An unfair advantage over the enemy.

It's bad for someone to run a high res cockpit with easily readable gauges, removed forward bar and gyroscopic gunsight on a late war 190 (some marks had ascania sights, D9 late or Ta152, can't remember), but it's ok if i can track him with less than 1/10th the effort he makes because i pumped 150 euros into a TrackIR4 and another 400 Euros into a widescreen 2ms response time monitor? Isn't the playing field upset by our respective hardware and wallets? of course it is.

There is no level playing field in general because we all run different systems with different peripherals. The closest you can get to quantifying things like that is ensure that the playing field will be level when comparing identical simming PC setups, ie you have to test stuff in an office filled with 10-20 identical PCs.

So, that's why the best course of action is to
a) make the game easy to mod with officially supplied tools that create files recognizable by the sim instead of modifying files manually (ie hacking)
b) use this recognition ability to judge and either approve or dismiss new content on a company level and
c) use it to create efficient checksum routines that allow each server,online war or competition to enforce part of the list of 1c sanctioned mods for everyone in the particular online session.

If a server wants to run N. Africa campaigns and there are the tools to create maps, some people will create a map, others will create tropicalised variants of the aircraft involved, they'll submit it to 1c for tweaking and approval and voila, the company has a new theater for their sim that not only satisfies their high standards but they also didn't have to work for themselves.

I'm sure the game will be awesome when it ships just like IL2 was, but as technology advances we'll want more and more. If i were a software company i'd be delighted in having a bunch of enthusiasts creating content for free, content that enhances the longevity and sales of my products. So, instead of locking everything up and waiting for someone to hack everything and risk the emergence of cheats, i would give them the tools to create content that could be submitted back to me for approval and keep only the important stuff locked. This way, changes to the software can be made in a controlled, sanctioned environment.

The important stuff is the way the FM/DM is calculated, not if the B17 is flyable or not. As long as the B17 has an accurate FM/DM then yes, someone make it flyable please and include a cockpit too while you're at it, thank you very much.

I think Oleg realises all this and that's why he said numerous times that they'll take 3rd party communities into account. For example, clickable cockpits are not in their plans, but it will be possible for a modder to make them clickable.