Pacific Fighters Bombed - inadequate maps

[Former_Older]

yeah, tater, I agree....Burma in particular is curious. I talked to somebody who made some of the default PF skins. He told me that there were some planes- like the H81A-2- that were used last minute because the dev team was completely unaware that they were used! So he got the call to make default skins last minute, too

It was an interesting conversation, and explained a lot of little things to me, like why some skins were the way they were, and why some things were missing, or represented strangely- there were simply errors made in lots of things

[Theshark888]

Well put. What kinda makes me laugh is all the negative vibes about how Americans don't know enough/anything about the Soviet Union's sacrifices in WW2 and here is a good example of the reverse!
I really hope that Oleg gets some gamer/outside help in the "play" of the game. These Russian developers can get the nuts and bolts beautifully but their games tend to be "dry!"

[Former_Older]

Originally Posted by Theshark888

Well put. What kinda makes me laugh is all the negative vibes about how Americans don't know enough/anything about the Soviet Union's sacrifices in WW2 and here is a good example of the reverse!

Possibly all too true! I guess everyone is jingoistic to some extent but ZI hadn't thought of it the way you put it. I think you may be right

Originally Posted by Theshark888

I really hope that Oleg gets some gamer/outside help in the "play" of the game. These Russian developers can get the nuts and bolts beautifully but their games tend to be "dry!"

I feel this is more than a little true too. It can be hard to get to help a developer though...last year I was in contact with a developer for Shockwave's upcoming AVG simulation. I was arguing hard for individual skins since there is so much individualism present on the AVG aircraft. Anyway, I posted some screenshots of my AVG skins to illustrate my points, and suddenly I was PMing with the guy running the effort

I called him on his cel, he called me back but he lives in a different time zone and we never connected...I wish Scott and his team the best, but I really wish I could have talked to him on the phone rather than just online. Just didn't work out. But deep down, when that sim comes out, I know I'll spot something I will feel I could have helped make a little better, and mentally kick myself for not trying to talk to Scott harder. But try as we might, it never panned out. It can be hard, even if the dev wants help or is willing to at least listen

[tater]

Maps (hopefully objects, too), and skins are a prime example where they should really have things open (as they plan to with SoW).

I understand keeping the big maps for their own releases, but only to a point. Face it, if there were no arbitrary limits for map size for player built maps, and players made a kick-ass med map, why would 1C care? Would it stop players from buying a Med add-on? I think not, since the med add-on would have new planes, possibly new technologies (better AI, improved X, Y, and Z), etc.

Face it, unless they are having 3d parties build the maps anyway, they probably won't be all that great. They have not really shown the ability to make good maps themselves. The only good il-2 maps came from Ian, yogi, jurinko, et al, the rest are cut and paste jobs.

BTW, the lack of "lateral thinking," in terms of campaign/immersion stuff is one reason why I lobby so hard for open-ended systems for things. Features that are optional in campaigns. I'd love to see the AI opened up a bit, too. Each plane must either be assigned a generic "type" of AI to use (fighter, fighter bomber, level bomber, dive bomber, etc), or there are some variables in the code. They don't have to let is see the code to have access to the variables. Have a text file for each plane such that the AI parameters used are moddable by mission/campaign builders. Odd things can come of this, unpredicted things. A campaign builder might decide to do something crazy and assign the wrong "type" of AI to a plane and get a useful result for gameplay.

People like Chris are FORCED to be very creative in il-2 campaigns to get things even a little the way they want them. The devs are not forced, and they tend to think "inside the box," IMO.


tater

[Theshark888]

Any game about the AVG would definately need the individual pilots, Smith, Hill, Boyington etc. Glad to hear about your advice

I have been a plastic modeler for many years and doing them you get an attitude of "imagineering." I never had full blueprints of an aircraft but I would use the best resources available and make my models.
IL-2 went through many modelers who started aircraft only to say, "I don't have any resources on the port side cockpit so we cannot finish the plane!!" It seems this kind of attitude was pushed by 1C.
Hopefully a more imaginative approach, along with historical insight will be used in SOW to make it appealing to the "masses" who will really make or break our sim-pasttime. Supposed correct ammo loads are great (if there is such a thing) but the amount of work hours spent on that instead of gameplay will really be wasted in the end.

[tater]

Luckily for us, while the right side of a cockpit may have prevented useful planes from being flyable, there were apparently tons of images of cockpits for the lerche, etc. Gotta keep up standards!

Related to SoW, I personally always wondered why not have some planes simply have "player as PILOT" as the paradigm. Meaning that the other positions simply do not matter. Better to have a % of the planes with only cockpits (and bombadiers for level bombers) done at the high level required, and have the gunners, etc be AI.

More flyable planes with less work.

[csThor]

Sorry tater for not getting back earlier, but I was on vacation at "Hotel Mama"

Anyway to have "user-made maps" for Il-2 (in the sense you mean) it would have had to have been a design decision well before the project "Il-2 Sturmovik 1.0" was ever made public. Oleg said that they never planned to have more than "Il-2 Sturmovik 1.0" (plus bugfixing patches) and were simply surprised by their own success. It's not really fair to blame them for "bad planning" when their own plans were thrown out of the window after the initial release. What could have been done was to structure the 3rd Party process a lot better (both plane and map wise) but I'm not sure if I'm reading too many of my own wishes into that. I still don't know how several people actually got the tool so it might have been a case of "I know someone who knows the designer's favorite hairdresser's second-grade cousin"

EDIT: Since you posted while I was typing. Don't blame Oleg for the content choices of RRG. The late addons were drawn up by Saqson and luthier.

[tater]

Weren't the same people responsible for PF?

The Kate was axed (flyable) for lack of a couple pictures, right?

Regarding maps... I don't think a folder with a 9 TGAs, a plain text file, and a file type created by the FMB (that we all have) really requires all that much in the way of special coding.

Just like all the years we begged for cut and paste and grouping in the FMB, and it is, um, not hard to do. Guys really busted their chops to make great missions and campaigns when this already existed but simply needed to be turned on... sigh.

Make the archetypical german AAA battery. Select. Paste, drag, rotate. Paste.

Or Palm grove on guadalcanal (the Cactus Diary" Campaign). PLace 2000 individual palms by hand, OR, place a short row, copy. Paste. Select the 2 rows, copy. Paste, select the 4 rows, copy, paste, etc.

All for lack of a couple lines set from =0 to =1

tater

[Theshark888]

Originally Posted by csThor

EDIT: Since you posted while I was typing. Don't blame Oleg for the content choices of RRG. The late addons were drawn up by Saqson and luthier.

This is the SCARY part. Now he is looking for info on the Do-215, which maybe 100 were made!? And RRG is making a Korean war game-Oh brother I can't wait to see how that turns out!

I still put all of these bad decisions squarely into Oleg's lap. Sorry but I still have a bad attitude since the Pacific Theater is my favorite-maybe after The Med.