Friday 2010-10-08 Dev. update and Discussion

[philip.ed]

Originally Posted by kendo65

MD_Titus
+1

Fortunately the developers of this game are eminently more sensible than some of the people who post here. There is no way that they will risk alienating so many potential customers and damaging their chances of commercial success just because some people seem to have a hard time admitting the fact that they are sitting in front of a computer and not actually flying a plane.

And I use the word game very deliberately. It is a computer game - of the subgenre 'flight simulator'.

I should add that I have no problem whatsoever with those who choose to play on full real settings (or as near as they can get). I intend to do it myself (eventually), but what is it with this fundamentalist mindset that demands that EVERYONE else MUST do it their way???!!!

I agree. Perhaps this discussion should be continued in a separate topic though ?

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by jameson

Sow's box should have a label stating that the recommended age is "Over 25". What teenager could resist? It would be an instant 'must have'. Lol!

Lol, that might actually be a sound marketing strategy.
"For full difficulty settings: Recommended age 20 years or more.
Recommended experience with other flight simulator products of at least 3 years".

The little kids would not only want to pick it up, they'd also want to boast that they are uber and play in the "grown-up's" division, resulting in a drive for them to try and learn the higher realism settings.

Originally Posted by Splitter

To Blackdog and others who have posted similar: Yep.

I want to get my son (17) into SoW as one of those things we can do together. No way is he going to be able to know what I know (since I have been flying flight sims for almost 25 years off and on) or compete with me on settings that are more ""realistic".

But we could "dumb it down" and have some fun together right from the start. More realistic settings could be introduced to him as we go along. Eventually, we may go from playing "his" game to playing "mine"....and he'll probably kick my backside by that time lol.

Other people have friends and family they would like to get into "flight simming". 16 year olds are going to see the product on the shelves and pick it up. The wider the audience, the more copies that will sell. That helps all of us. Why limit the audience?

Just understand that people will be playing different games. Having the option to make it more "arcadish" would not take away from the "simulation" crowd at all.

Look at the Total War series. There are a dozen different way to play that game. Some people automatically resolve all battles. Some people control every little aspect of each battle. Some use diplomacy, others ignore diplomacy. The list and combinations go on. If the developers of those games said "Everyone will use diplomacy and fight all their battles" the over all market (and popularity) of the games would be severely limited.

As long as the "realistic" options are there, I am happy. If people can turn them off, how does that effect me?

Splitter

Very good analogy with the Total War series. I'm trying to get a few of my friends into flight sims and i would really love to be able to take them out for training flights and such, upping the scales as time went by. I'm talking about guys who will play anything from call of duty and company of heroes to theater of war, hearts of iron and silent hunter. They have a solid WWII background but no flight simming background at all, because "i don't mind it being difficult, good games usually are, but man it does take ages to learn" as they tell me

Xilon: Little kids don't have a lot of patience, but they have free time to learn and evolve.

My friends are all people in their late 20s/early 30s with jobs, enough money to get good PCs, HOTAS sets, TrackIR sets and enough patience to sit down and learn a complex game. You know why they don't use flight sims? Because they don't have the free time required to learn it.

I fly full switch or almost full switch (externals on when playing offline for screenshots). I campaigned hard and annoyed people in this forum to have more in-depth systems modelling in SoW, something that will be for me like a fusion of FSX and IL2 and when SoW arrives, i'll fly full switch again and i do want navigation tools and protractors to use in flight and draw up flight plans on the go as i'm skimming the waves on a cross channel raid to France in a Blenheim. But do you know how i started?

I was a 12 year old kid flying secret weapons of the luftwaffe, which by today's standards is even less realistic than IL2 with all the helper options turned on.
Also, RoF, DCS and all the other sims you mentioned have difficulty options. They are not "100% default difficulty" affairs.

It's just like school. If you teach simple arithmetics to small children, some will show enough interest and talent to become mathematicians when they grow up. If you try to teach advanced calculus to them, then none of them will ever touch a mathematics book again in their lives.

[BadAim]

Why am I surprised that this is still a topic? This is simple bloody math, us "full real" (whatever the hell that means anyway) fanbois are not numerous enough to pay for the development of a flight sim of sufficient complexity to have any settings that even approximate "full real".

In order to sell enough copies, Maddox games has to make this thing appeal to the widest possible audience, or SOW will end with BOB. Period.

As I've said before, I want the most realistic possible flight sim, but I also realize that I also need throngs of people that just want to play a bloody video game to subsidize the flight sim I want.

How does having scalable difficulty settings "hurt the community" again? Or does everyone have several thousand dollars to chip in for development? I'm sure that will work.

[Splitter]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

I was a 12 year old kid flying secret weapons of the luftwaffe, which by today's standards is even less realistic than IL2 with all the helper options turned on.
Also, RoF, DCS and all the other sims you mentioned have difficulty options. They are not "100% default difficulty" affairs.

NOOB! I go back to F-15 Strike Eagle. The ground had actual GRID LINES lol. Man, I just went back and looked at some of the footage of the flight sim games I have played. I look at what I used to think of as the sh!t and wonder what I was thinking (Aces over Europe, Aces of the Pacific). We have come a long way.

Let's be honest, Oleg is thinking bigger than SoW. We are already talking about how great the land warfare could be (totally unconfirmed future development). The game is going to be "scalable". Newbs are going to be able to jump in and fly. Old vets are going to have cool switches to click. They are designing a game that has "legs" and will go further than SoW.

Smart!

Splitter

[swiss]

Originally Posted by Splitter

NOOB! I go back to F-15 Strike Eagle.

Noob too, you!

I go back to F-16 Fighting Falcon(Amiga 500, that game was sooo cool!), actually even FS2(on Atari, but FS2 sucked).

Just to remember:



Can't believe I played that, lol.

[WTE_Galway]

Originally Posted by swiss

Noob too, you!

I go back to F-16 Fighting Falcon(Amiga 500, that game was sooo cool!), actually even FS2(on Atari, but FS2 sucked).

Just to remember:



Can't believe I played that, lol.

The 1980's PC version of F-16 Fighting Falcon had a good campaign mode whereby you flew one mission yourself and set targets for other flights under your control. Its something that would be nice to have in SOW.

[airmalik]

Originally Posted by swiss

If I remember this map correctly, there's a runway on this pilot's 8 o'clock.

[pupaxx]

the coolest game I played in nineties was 'Tornado'..do you remember?
1139242145-00.png
..times where the graphics did not reach, hard manuals contributed to the game immersion!!!
..nineties...I still had my hair

Ciao

[swiss]

Originally Posted by pupaxx

the coolest game I played in nineties was 'Tornado'..do you remember?
Attachment 3628
..times where the graphics did not reach, hard manuals contributed to the game immersion!!!
..nineties...I still had my hair

Ciao

The coolest(arcade) Sim of the 90's was Strike Commander.

I last played in '95 on friend's computer.
Never finished the campaign.
Last year I remembered and had this strange urge to finish it.
Bought a copy of SC on ebay for £1, installed dosbox and did it. lol


http://youtu.be/JATVNhteDPA

I still digg the sound from 2:00.

[Xilon_x]

i remwmber all this game in i play to Fa/18 intercepctor amiga.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb_YOvmINHQ

thei finest hour

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhO94...x=0&playnext=1