Quote:
Originally Posted by csThor
zapatista
Unfortunately one reason why campaign engines as Falcon4 and MiGAlley/BoB are still considered state of the art is that they broke their creators's backs. Falcon4 bancrupted Microprose (and didn't work properly for a long time) and the same can be said about Rowan. Such engines - done correctly, which is the key phrase here - cost a lot of time and manpower to develop. And these "commodities" are the rarest in nowadays game development industry. Unfortunately ...
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not quite true,
falcon-4 was very much aimed at a niche market that was already small to start out with, and they had significant competition at the time. falcon4 was the most hard core of the group, and was a niche within a niche, and that is mainly why microprose didnt recover its money. it was also released in an extremely buggy state.
- many flightsim enthusiasts who bought it when originally released because they like aircrafts and flightsims, tried it a few times but soon it was gathering dust on their shelves, being to complex and the learning curve being to steep for many. the f-16 it used, an advanced modern plane, also interested only a smaller part of the flightsim community.
- the campaign engine was but one of several factors that made that it an expensive game to design and create. the complex real time avionics, advanced radar guided weapon systems, etc.. took a lot of resources. it was also one of the first mainstream flightsims that tried to provide good online multiplayer functions. the campaign engine they implemented was also very complex, involving the whole korean peninsula over a long time period, and most resources went to modeling ground troops action.
simply put, "the dynamic campaign engine" is definitely not what killed off falcon-4, but i would like to point out to you that it is the main factor that has ensured its longevity and kept it going until today !
il2/BoB is in quite a different situation, it is THE flightsim of the day with a large customer base (yes flightsims are still a small part of the gaming market we all know that). but we need a major step up from what we have now in il2 to keep the current customer base interested for the next 8 years (which is how long oleg expects his current BoB game engine will last).
in BoB the dynamic campaign engine can also be implemented in a more simple way compared to other sims/games, because:
- it only involves aircraft, there is no ground troops involvement in that historical period
- there is also extremely detailed day-by-day information on exactly what happened during the june to september period, only being 4 months.
- online BoB dynamic campaign servers dont need to run for years at a time, they can cycle and repeat the same 4 month period, but because human actions will varry, it will never be exactly the same
- game design and game engine physics have evolved a great deal in the last 10 years, making it easier, better and quicker to design. pc's technology has also evolved a great deal, and computing power being available has significantly increased.
Oleg doesnt need to allocate large resources to implement it initially, it can at first be done in a simple way as long as he provides the basic structure of it from the start, but that still adds a huge immersion factor for the longer term player and il2 enthusiasts.
- the dynamic campaign can have a pre programmed main skeleton to it, where it follows some of the main events of the BoB period, not every single action needs to be modeled, but it needs to be a dynamic server that can progress 24/7 through the 4 month BoB period when left unattended, where people can join at any time and have a choice of a number of flights to be tasked (either flying in supplies to various bases, bomber missions, escort missions, etc...). it basically needs to cater for 30 to 50 people being on a server at any given time, combining AI with humans (as is done in a coop server).
- historically only on some specific days might you have had about 200 aircraft of either side in the air in the same sector and engaging in large numbers, most of the time it was significantly smaller groups, and on many days no large engagements at all. what modern cpu couldnt keep up with limited variables and small computations like that in a pre-scripted fashion? (err we are not talking about having to model each bullet from every aircraft, it is a matter of keeping track of the general numbers for ex 34 hurricanes and 12 spitfires engage 60 german bombers with 40 escorts in sector XYZ, resulting in 8 British lost and 12 germans lost).
- whatever number of aircraft lost from a particular airfield, then less aircraft become available there, until new replacements are flown in at roughly the correct historical times it took. if no humans interfere significantly with historical losses, the server arrives at its logical conclusion 4 months later.
if oleg adds the skeleton of a 24/7 dynamic server in BoB, and structures it in such a way that it can be expanded on later, there will be many dedicated il2 fans who can then progressively add flesh to the bones, and increase the detail. just have a look at the number of people involved at AAA, all working on different parts that interest them, many hands making light work ! but if the skeleton of the dynamic campaign is not added in the creation phase with BoB, then it will NEVER be possible to have it later, and it wont be a feature for the next 10 years either (expansions of BoB will involve new planes and new theaters, but the game engine itself will stay exactly the same)