Oleg Maddox's Room #1

[150GCT_Veltro]

Originally Posted by Kurfürst

A few more questions :

g, Will it be possible to fly night-time bomber missions with Luftwaffe bombers, using historical radio-navigational guidance systems (Knickebein, the most commonly used one; and perhaps even X and Y Systems)

h, What version of propeller system we will get in 109E, the Automatic prop pitch system (mentioned in 1939 manuals) or the fully manual one (which was still in use on some planes during Battle).

i, To what depth engine management will be modelled complex, and improvement over Il-2`s? Meaning here _not_ detailed startup procedure etc, but for example use of optimal combination of RPM, Mixture, boost to maximize endurance or range (as instructed by real life manuals). Like realistic characteristics of how engines work, a bit more complicated consumption than power x specific consumption gram/liter/hour/horsepower.

j, Will photo-reconnaissance missions implemented (recon bombers, later perhaps recon fighters) on a meaningful level - ie. good shots need to be taken of target actually ?

k, Will there be a good and and more realistic, and especially IMMERSIVE pre-flight briefing.. ie. briefing room, or briefing on the grass airfield, 3D models of the players aircraft warming up, being serviced by mechanics, shots of the target (taken from 3D engine) shown to player about target, with priority targets marked on them. etc.

+1

Good points here.

[K_Freddie]

Not sure whether this has been mentioned before.

Cancelling a 'Bale Out'
---------------------
It would be nice to be able to cancel baling out, as recorded in some RL stories.
Also it's such a pity to see your plane fly away from you as you recover from a stall at the last moment

[Ironman69]

Hey Oleg, are you still alive?? Hello ? *sound of silence ensues*

[Biggs]

yeah, a response every 3 weeks seemed too good to be true. ah well, like anyone here ISNT used to waiting?

all in good time I guess.

[Bobb4]

Ubisoft and IGN are still punting April 2008, boy what a laugh.
Assuming we have not even entered Beta stage, one has to guess SOW BOB will only see the light of day in 2009.
My guess is directx 10 and opengl 3 have pushed Oelg's baby back abit.
Of major concern to me however is will SOW support xp at all.
Lets look at Microsoft's desired or proclaimed intention of produce a new operating system every two to three years.
A projected and updated timeline would be highly appreciated.

[Zorin]

One month since last update, maybe we'll get some news in ... oh, you know what I mean

[Bobb4]

Okay what gives with SOW BoB?

Simple questions:

Has the SOW engine been finished yet, and I am just talking about the basic game engine here?

Has any of the flight modeling of any of the planes been completed?

Will it support core 2 and quad core cpu’s?

Does it support directx 10 and opengl3?

[Xiola]

Geez, hes answered most of the improtant questions, give the guy a break and let him get on with the sim.

The posts which whine and moan about the sim not being finished make the authors look like little kids.

[Zorin]

Originally Posted by Xiola

Geez, hes answered most of the improtant questions, give the guy a break and let him get on with the sim.

The posts which whine and moan about the sim not being finished make the authors look like little kids.

In university I'm supposed to report back every week about the status of my work otherwise I get in trouble, so are my professors childish? Don't think so.

Btw. it would be soo easy to fool the community, just feeding them year old screens. That way Oleg wouldn't risk any of his new features and yet would stop the cries for "updates".

...and as noone here knows where the development stands at the moment so he couldn't be disproved anyway.

[The Legacy]

Not really a question, but more wanting some feedback on something that has hit the community as of not long ago.

Oleg, as I bet you are more than aware, someone cracked the format which has now created things such as the sound mod, bomber mod, and various other mods that have opened up AI aircraft, among other things, to the public.

I understand your reasoning to completely locking up IL-2 from the majority of modding. It's mainly because you likely don't want this game to turn into games like CFS2 where people can mod the game to make planes shoot straighter than a pin, and be able to climb into the stratosphere in an ultralight, and no way to prevent multiplayer games from becoming hackfests.

That's where I think you're right, and from my being in a game development college, I can see where you're coming from. However, at the same time, I believe that this game has tremendous potential for expandability, and the speed of the number of 'mods' that came out shows how enthusiastic the community is to have it (the sounds themselves are perhaps the most popular), and now that the cat's out of the bag, so to speak, it's going to be hard to prevent the format from being hacked again and again. Now, the thing is, is that instead of blocking all attempts at modding to try to protect the game from cheating, what about embracing the community?

Since I also play other games, like first person shooters and real time strategy games, I've seen modding a fair bit. Now, how those developers dealt with it, is that in order to make a mod, you had to create a seperate mod file, which an ingame mod manager enabled in order to play it. Turn it off, and the game becomes stock. And, if you modified the existing game files, then the multiplayer game server would ban you. It's a way that has been done many times in many games, and it's a tried and tested method. And, they also use cheat blocking software, which in the end makes it mostly foolproof, and barely more vulnerable than even closed-source software.

I know of a lot of people who would love to finish the aircraft, ship, vehicle, and tank catalogs in this game, and do other adjustments. Although it would take some effort to develop and install a mod manager for a future patch, it would be worth it, because it would extend the longetivity of the game, even after BoB is released. Modded games have near-infinite shelf lives, and I know this because even today I play games like Total Annihilation (a game released almost ten years ago!), just for the mods.

How I think it could be done, is this: make two sets of files, one which are compressed, compiled, and very hard to reverse engineer for the core game (the SFS file format for example), and a modable version of an SFS file. Then, using the mod manager, you can load the mod SFS file(s) in order to load extra aircraft, sounds, etc. That way, when you join a game server, and you have mods running (or the lack of certain ones), it can prevent you from joining, citing the reasons.

This way, everyone wins, because that way people get their mods, and the illegal hack mods would be pointless to exploit (except for cheaters, and we know that your current system covers that already). It would make your life easier as you wouldn't need to make a new SFS format every time a new patch comes out, and it would make the game self-sustaining, which can put your entire team's focus onto BoB. And heck, if some mods are good enough, you could even impliment them officially into a later patch!

Anyway, that's my two cents on the whole matter. Now I'd like to hear your thoughts, Oleg.

(I don't want people outside of 1C staff from replying, as this is strictly for Oleg's Q&A)