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IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover Latest instalment in the acclaimed IL-2 Sturmovik series from award-winning developer Maddox Games.

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  #71  
Old 03-28-2011, 10:41 PM
Vevster Vevster is offline
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Originally Posted by 150GCT_Veltro View Post
Still waiting for an Ubi confirmation of my cancelled order.

Meanwhile some nice shoots from Jurassic.
You could give your source for these shots...
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  #72  
Old 03-28-2011, 10:45 PM
Kikuchiyo Kikuchiyo is offline
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Originally Posted by luthier View Post
I don't think the channel map is playable as a dogfight map. There's still at least a 10 to 12-minute flight from base to mid-channel where the battle is likely to take place, and with the airfields rather spread out along the coast, and the improved i.e. reduced plane visibility it's quite possible for two groups on full real to fly past each other while a few miles away and not spot the enemy.

I.e. there's no reason to split it off at all. You can fly over the large map just as well. The server can create a mission where only Calais and Dover bases are available, and that pretty much does the same as splitting it off.

Once again - small maps are for mindless FFA. Large map is for meaningful coop. It makes absolutely no sense to split it up into parts since the parts would be completely useless for FFA and still mostly useless for historical wars because they would only limit your possibilities without offering significant performance improvement.

The maps are split into regular "blocks" and you only keep a few blocks in the memory around your current position. The difference memory- or performance-wise when flying over online or offline map is insignificant.

The large map only becomes an issue if you have 128 planes starting at 128 airfields all over the map and you begin to Ctrl-F2 through all of them. Then you'd constantly be loading and unloading blocks into memory.
I see. Perhaps some would be happy with a smaller version...say a quarter the distance with a stretch of land at opposing sides. I think what some of the history guys want is something that "feels" more real in regards to the BoB. So say a 5 minute jaunt over water tops, to reach the opposite land, with land only at either end so they can feel anticipation if their engine goes out and they have to glide back to land while hoping they don't get spotted and burned down. Would something like that work as a FFA?

I am just trying to throw reasonable ideas out. When I do FFAs I really don't care too much about it feeling historically accurate.

Thank you for your time Luthier. I am sure you are all busy enough without having to come in and babysit the forums. I look forward to 4/19 here in the US.

Last edited by Kikuchiyo; 03-28-2011 at 10:47 PM.
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  #73  
Old 03-28-2011, 10:50 PM
Dano Dano is offline
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Originally Posted by Kikuchiyo View Post
I see. Perhaps some would be happy with a smaller version...say a quarter the distance with a stretch of land at opposing sides. I think what some of the history guys want is something that "feels" more real in regards to the BoB. So say a 5 minute jaunt over water tops, to reach the opposite land, with land only at either end so they can feel anticipation if their engine goes out and they have to glide back to land while hoping they don't get spotted and burned down. Would something like that work as a FFA?

I am just trying to throw reasonable ideas out. When I do FFAs I really don't care too much about it feeling historically accurate.

Thank you for your time Luthier. I am sure you are all busy enough without having to come in and babysit the forums. I look forward to 4/19 here in the US.
He just stated why there is no point in making a smaller map in the post you quoted.
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  #74  
Old 03-28-2011, 10:54 PM
luthier luthier is offline
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Originally Posted by Vevster View Post
Thanks for the explanation Luthier.

Must add that the manual, at least the english one, hints something different.
when you read it, it sure translates as "don't try to fly online on the main channel map, it's too heavy, performance-wise"

What you are saying is quite different.
That's not what it says.

The quote is "If you are creating an online mission, we highly recommend using an online map. Trying to fly an online mission on a large offline map such as English Channel - 1940 will take up a lot of resources and may lead to sluggish performance on slower machines."

The manual is geared towards newer players.

I still remember the days of the original IL-2, and I guess all the way to Pacific Fighters, when we'd get frantic reports from players who created single- or multiplayer missions that ran at 0 FPS, and upon review they were found to have thousands of tanks and trucks and generally an insane number of objects.

We are trying to prevent that from happening here.

I know that player-run online wars were one of the main reason Il-2 stayed popular over the years, so we'd be insane not to want that to continue with Cliffs of Dover.

We simply had no resources to create additional larger-sized maps by ourselves, and it's not like we have a lot of historical options anyway. It'd be great to have a larger land-based map where you could have a moving front line, but we cannot think of a region to base it on considering our existing plane set.
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  #75  
Old 03-28-2011, 10:59 PM
Shrike_UK Shrike_UK is offline
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out of interest, is Liverpool on the large map? Only Liverpool was the second most heavily bombed city. Cant really see from the picture how much of Britain is on the map.

reference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_Blitz
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  #76  
Old 03-28-2011, 11:02 PM
Les Les is offline
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Okay fellow forum-posters, the developer has elaborated on and clarified what was written in the manual, and it now should be clear -

a) The manual doesn't and can't possibly go into the kind of detailed explanations you might be looking for.

b) Why there can potentially be performance problems when using the main map for multi-player sessions (too many spawn points or planes spread over the map can require re-loading large amounts of data when switching between them.)

c) Why cutting up the main map into smaller chunks isn't suitable for using as online free-for-all furball maps (the distances would still be too large for that kind of action.)

d) If you have requests for some particular kinds of smaller online maps, they are willing to at least consider making them.

So now what are you/we going to do with this information?

It's up to you.

Last edited by Les; 03-28-2011 at 11:42 PM.
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  #77  
Old 03-28-2011, 11:09 PM
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JG52Krupi JG52Krupi is offline
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Originally Posted by luthier View Post
That's not what it says.

The quote is "If you are creating an online mission, we highly recommend using an online map. Trying to fly an online mission on a large offline map such as English Channel - 1940 will take up a lot of resources and may lead to sluggish performance on slower machines."

The manual is geared towards newer players.

I still remember the days of the original IL-2, and I guess all the way to Pacific Fighters, when we'd get frantic reports from players who created single- or multiplayer missions that ran at 0 FPS, and upon review they were found to have thousands of tanks and trucks and generally an insane number of objects.

We are trying to prevent that from happening here.

I know that player-run online wars were one of the main reason Il-2 stayed popular over the years, so we'd be insane not to want that to continue with Cliffs of Dover.

We simply had no resources to create additional larger-sized maps by ourselves, and it's not like we have a lot of historical options anyway. It'd be great to have a larger land-based map where you could have a moving front line, but we cannot think of a region to base it on considering our existing plane set.
Thanks for clearing that up Luthier, hopefully it will go some way to dispel the wrong interpretations that some members have jumped to.

Most of us do realize that your team is quite small and you have spent a lot of time and resources creating a replica of the 1940 map, thank you for you and your teams hard work.

How goes the optimization of the Russian version, will they be receiving a patch soon?

Regardless of when the patch will arrive most members here know that you will be slaving away trying to sort the problems out.

Thanks again for your hard work, I know it must be dispiriting to have people complaining about a game using facts with no base and jumping to conclusions but, remember that there is a silent majority on this board which have huge faith in this project and know everything will be smoothed out eventually.

I can't wait to open my CE this Thursdays, thanks again for your posts.
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  #78  
Old 03-28-2011, 11:09 PM
luthier luthier is offline
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A bit more details.

Cliffs of Dover does not physically have offline and online modes. Everything is online. When playing single-player, you are a server with a lone client.

The only difference with the actual multiplayer mode is that some of the planes aren't controlled by AI but by human players, so their control input flows over the network.

So:

1. You keep roughly the same amount of data in memory when flying over any size map. Larger maps do dynamically load and unload terrain data as needed as you move around but this process is smooth, especially on multi-core machines. (edit: it's smooth when you're flying your own plane; when you switch views from a plane over London to a plane over Le Havre, obviously the dynamic load process is more significant)

2. Planes do not care who they are controlled by, and the amount of resources taken up by human-controlled planes does not significantly differ from those taken up by AI-controlled planes. This is of course assuming good ping. Map size has no effect whatsoever on plane performance.

Last edited by luthier; 03-28-2011 at 11:11 PM.
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  #79  
Old 03-28-2011, 11:10 PM
Kikuchiyo Kikuchiyo is offline
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Originally Posted by Dano View Post
He just stated why there is no point in making a smaller map in the post you quoted.
He said there was no point in cutting the main map into smaller chunks as they are still to big for FFA.

What I was suggesting was making something 1/4 the size of the shortest jump across the channel, and putting a small amount of land at either end specifically for FFA. It should (imo) both feel realistic enough for the history crowd, but be small enough to be suitable for FFA.

If I am way off base here (community or Luthier) just say so and I'll cut the jabber as I have no real stake in FFA type gameplay with Cliffs of Dover. I really only do online Co-op with my squadmates.

Edit: A very crude example of what I meant. I figure scale would be about the same as roundels vs cross
Attached Images
File Type: jpg crude map.jpg (31.6 KB, 25 views)

Last edited by Kikuchiyo; 03-28-2011 at 11:20 PM.
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  #80  
Old 03-28-2011, 11:21 PM
luthier luthier is offline
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I do like the idea of a mini-channel map that's some fraction of the real map.

We can make smaller or less historically-accurate maps very quickly, so we'll try to give you guys something more rather quickly.

Really do want to hear everyone's input on this, so don't hold back!
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