Thinking about a Community Patch

[Chivas]

Modding the standalone COD is an option, and it would be very interesting to compare COD as it improves with each new patch and Sequel from the devs, and improvements made by modders to the Standalone COD. The devs should certainly have the advantage early considering their organized development team, with assigned tasks, and not to mention the people modding the devs series work. I'm sure some of the work done by the standalone modders could also be used in the devs series, and vis versa.

[Anders_And]

I say... lets start modding the easy things like the landscape colours and trees...
and then when we find a way to mod the FMs we should do that!

[major_setback]

Originally Posted by Feathered_IV

No need to take that tone.

The Sequel is years away. In the meantime creative members of the community might like to explore ways of adding a few small fixes, optimisations or improvements.

FM changes and new 3D may not be a realistic goal at this time, but smaller fixes are well within our reach. Trees can be tweaked for colour and performance (2048x textures seems a bit much). Spelling errors in German cockpits can be corrected. Landscape textures can be easily worked on. Sounds can be altered. GUI could be reskinned. Clouds can be tweaked etc. the list goes on.

When the Sequel comes out (2014 if they remain on schedule, 2015 or beyond if they do not) then we can drop the mods and enjoy a brand new merged or standalone game.

I honestly did not intend to imply anything. No 'tone' was intended. I was genuinely curious as to how you were thinking.

Hopefully, with this latest Beta patch being ok, (as it seems a the moment) development will move a lot quicker than it has until now, with everything being held up by bug searching.

I would like to state for the record that I don't think BoM will be a magic fix. I remember that couldn't even run Pacific Fighters when that first came out as the next part in the Forgotten battles series. On the whole everything turned out well in the long run. And I will stay around this time too, hoping it will be kept alive long enough for that to happen.

Sorry for any misunderstanding.

[*Buzzsaw*]

Originally Posted by JtD

Straight from Il-2 1946. Was bad then, still is today.

Salute JtD

Are you saying the way the FM is modelled in CoD is no more complex than in IL-2? Or that the Hurricane's modelling is the same?

[Feathered_IV]

Originally Posted by major_setback

I honestly did not intend to imply anything. No 'tone' was intended. I was genuinely curious as to how you were thinking...
Sorry for any misunderstanding.

Ah, no worries mate. My mistake then. I think after swimming with sharks here for so long, one expects to get bitten at every turn.

[Verhängnis]

Originally Posted by JtD

Straight from Il-2 1946. Was bad then, still is today.

But there is some complicated mathematics going on inside for each of those, it's not great, but considering what they had, it works well.

Originally Posted by Liz Lemon

We need a working .msh converter for the cockpits to work.

I managed to get the existing one to work and convert the meshes, mostly, to text and readable. And then I tried to no avail to track down the original creator Mr.Jones and found every existence of his on the internet down to his last employer but I think he had even moved on from there. Not to mention that the 3d view doesn't even work in Windows 7.

[Liz Lemon]

Originally Posted by *Buzzsaw*

Salute JtD

Are you saying the way the FM is modelled in CoD is no more complex than in IL-2? Or that the Hurricane's modelling is the same?

Comparing IL2 vs COD flight model shows that they are largely the same variables used in the fmd. There are a few variables present in COD that aren't there in IL2 if I'm remembering things right, but its been a while since I compared them.

Of course what really matters is how the game is using those numbers, which may be significantly different in COD... or the exact same.

And that is the real problem. If we don't know how the engine is handling the variables then building an accurate flight model will be hard. Take the 150kmh Vmin for the hurricane for example. Is this how the stall speed is set or do other variables play a role?

Anyway, whats the general consensus on the most "accurate" modded fmds for hurris in IL2?



As for some of the other suggestions.

Bumping down texture resolution shouldn't do much if the game is handling mipmaps and the in-game texture settings properly. Of course testing will be needed to verify this.

[jimbop]

Originally Posted by Liz Lemon

Comparing IL2 vs COD flight model shows that they are largely the same variables used in the fmd. There are a few variables present in COD that aren't there in IL2 if I'm remembering things right, but its been a while since I compared them.

Of course what really matters is how the game is using those numbers, which may be significantly different in COD... or the exact same.

And that is the real problem. If we don't know how the engine is handling the variables then building an accurate flight model will be hard. Take the 150kmh Vmin for the hurricane for example. Is this how the stall speed is set or do other variables play a role?

Could you use RL flight data vs. the SU-26 file variables to understand the game engine calibration? For example, file variable says stall speed = 75 (or whatever) vs in-game stall speed = 80 gives you the correction factor.

[maxwellbest]

Interesting thread. My impressions of community mods for IL2 1946 are very positive. Particularly the FM mods by Aaken. However, I doubt if UBI or 1c would allow the source code to be released as such. My hope is TD would get the rights to patch, don't know whats in it for TD, whether they are a bunch of uber geeks who get satisfaction from playing with source code or the like. But they have done very impressive things with IL2 '46, kudos to them.

[Liz Lemon]

Originally Posted by Verhängnis

I managed to get the existing one to work and convert the meshes, mostly, to text and readable. And then I tried to no avail to track down the original creator Mr.Jones and found every existence of his on the internet down to his last employer but I think he had even moved on from there. Not to mention that the 3d view doesn't even work in Windows 7.

Yeah, that is stuff that is way beyond me. The xentax would probably be the best place to find someone who could make it go. I know that other games use the .msh format similar to il2, and people on that site have made working converters for other games.

Currently its possible to get .msh files into il2 by adding, I believe, a thing for materials right at the start of the file.

The problem is dealing with the way the game handles hooks. Maybe its just my lack of experience with making models for IL2, but it seems that a .msh converter will be necessary to get cockpits for the un-flyables since the camera location is based off of hooks.

And the cockpits as is would be, imo, acceptable in the short term as well as offering a decent jumping off point for making better detailed cockpits.

Originally Posted by jimbop

Could you use RL flight data vs. the SU-26 file variables to understand the game engine calibration? For example, file variable says stall speed = 75 (or whatever) vs in-game stall speed = 80 gives you the correction factor.

That an obvious way of going about it that I haven't thought of. Now added to the list of things to dig into this weekend.