Oleg and Team.

[Urufu_Shinjiro]

Originally Posted by Feuerfalke

2. We're not talking about new sounds being added to the game. The so-called soundmod includes modifications to the FM, cockpits, effects, physics, view-system, etc.

I'm going to have to correct you on this. Your research is not very thorough. The sound mod changes only sounds, adds cockpits to a few AI planes to make them flyable, and that is ALL. No FM's are touched in sound mod, no physics, no effects, no view system, just what I listed. There are many mods, most are confused and think the sound mod does all but it doesn't. There are mods for visual effects, some for maps, some cockpit retexturing (these are amazing), some view mods (6dof), but there are NO FM MODS and no physics mods. There are some new AC with new FM but these are tottally new aircraft that have thier own slot therefore cannot be used online unless the host specifically add them to the missions so in this case new FM is not cheating. Those in charge at AAA have been very careful to avoid afecting online play and have walked a very fine and difficult line to do so. This is why it is upsetting when folks get thier facts wrong because all the effort to do this right goes down the drain when people who don't look for themselves hear these things and assume we are cheating by default of using the soundmod.

[Feuerfalke]

Originally Posted by Urufu_Shinjiro

I'm going to have to correct you on this. Your research is not very thorough. The sound mod changes only sounds, adds cockpits to a few AI planes to make them flyable, and that is ALL. No FM's are touched in sound mod, no physics, no effects, no view system, just what I listed. There are many mods, most are confused and think the sound mod does all but it doesn't. There are mods for visual effects, some for maps, some cockpit retexturing (these are amazing), some view mods (6dof), but there are NO FM MODS and no physics mods. There are some new AC with new FM but these are tottally new aircraft that have thier own slot therefore cannot be used online unless the host specifically add them to the missions so in this case new FM is not cheating. Those in charge at AAA have been very careful to avoid afecting online play and have walked a very fine and difficult line to do so. This is why it is upsetting when folks get thier facts wrong because all the effort to do this right goes down the drain when people who don't look for themselves hear these things and assume we are cheating by default of using the soundmod.

The crack was made public as "soundmod" and it replaced the original sound mostly by sounds taken from CFS (and EAW IIRC). Considering the latest Engl. Soundmod (v.093) includes 14 flyable AI-planes with modified FMs (copied from the flyable counterparts), I just wanted to point out, that it is no longer just a replacement of ingame-soundfiles, but a key to the programming-structure itself. I didn't mean to advertise all components you can install additionally.
It's true, that over at AAA people are VERY carefully what mods they support and which they ban or delete. However, in the beta-section are a couple of new posts now and then, that have a direct effect on FM, munitions-loadout, etc. Increasing dot-range and Icon-Range is also freely available.

What the modders don't want so see or simply ignore is the fact, though, that there are other websites, squadrons and groups offering a whole lot of very much different modifications, that go far beyond that.

As I posted before: I don't think the modders at AAA are cheating or intending to lead other to that aspect of online-gaming, but they opened the Pandorras Box and the more popular the modifications on AAA get, the more people get attention to the ability to change the code and will use that for their own purpose.

[tater]

The FMs are copied from the NON-flyable planes that had the cockpits added. The FMs are not changed at all. Ie, add a flyable B-17 by sticking a cockpit in it. FM remains the same as AI B-17.

[tater]

To me, and I'm strictly talking online for the moment, it requires a cost/benefit analysis. What is the actual incidence of cheating compared to the benefits?

Try as they might, DF maps (even on good servers) are simply not terribly historical. The spawn at will paradigm is inconsistent with realistic play, as is the lack of many types of planes required for context that we can only see in coops.

tater

[csThor]

My opposition is not about the cheat-discussion but because of personal experiences and a somewhat "sarcastic" outlook on people in general. Meaning I do not trust "the people" not to mess up everything in the worst possible way. I like centralization and combined efforts under a sensible and responsible management and do not like the "watering can" of "everything goes". Having said that I think the cheater issue is less about cheating itself but about the impression of someone cheating, the suspicions and the resulting bad blood. That could (and will) crack "the community".

Since Lexx posted while I was typing:

Actually I have some serious issues with the way DCG portrays a "dynamic campaign". Namely the influence players have on the frontline. I find that part way overdone, a simplification of factors which are outside the scope of a simple flight simulation. Most of these have to do with strategical decisions of a high command, of wartime economics and supply on a much broader scale.

[tater]

True, csThor, but then again, the people willing to RTFM and actually try to play in a historical way (waiting to fly in a group, etc) are also unlikely to cheat. It's not about the winning, it's about the simulation/immersion.

My very favorite missions (online or off) are those where I have to nurse my plane back with some damage. I'd rather be killed in a realistic mission than live with a bunch of pelts in an unrealistic one.

tater

[tater]

I actually partially agree on the dynamic campaign stuff overly influenced by players. The real key to a realistic online experience is context.

DF maps try (and largely fail due to no fault on their part) to provide context. Real battles were mission based, and the pilots were not cats to be herded. they did what they were told.

Flying as a group is pretty much required.

Even coops will become boring as you play the same one over and over, though. That's really the point of a dynamic campaign. To try and provide a realistic context for missions that vary over time. You need to see the forest, and not the trees, though. Yes, the front may move too much, but what matters is not winning the war, but the answers to specific querstions:

"Are the missions so generated plausible?"

"Do the players have to chose a realisitc plane set to achieve their mission goals?"

That sort of thing.

Regarding the tactical nature of the sim (vs heavies), I'd argue that il-2 is really ONLY a fighter sim. The DMs for ground targets are poor. The AI for ground units (ships in particular) is nonexistent. CAS aircraft, IMO, are window dressing in il-2. When seen from the perspective of a fighter pilot, they provide targets, and a context for the air to air battles. Once inside a ground attack plane, you are in an "arcade game" IMO.

The usual response is that "it's a flight sim, not a tank/ship/infantry/etc sim!" That is true up until the point you attack a target on the ground.

Certainly, the DMs for ground targets can be simplified in many cases. Ships, OTOH, no. If a ship is any less complicated than the most complicated plane in terms of AI/DM, it's a cartoon IMO. Two flights of player B-25s can do to a convoy like the one in the Battle of the Bismark Sea what took hundreds of RL sorties to do. One sunk ship for every push of the pickle.

Or there is the massive damage done by bombs to the cities, a couple bombs will flatten many blocks. All and all, the ground battles are an abstration that is only good to provide context for dogfights, IMO. CAS is 2d rate (odd given the title of the game).

tater

[LEXX]

CsThor::

My opposition is not about the cheat-discussion but because of personal experiences and a somewhat "sarcastic" outlook on people in general. Meaning I do not trust "the people" not to mess up everything in the worst possible way.

Okay, now that is new. What are these personal experiences that went sour? I have great optimism and positive outlook on people in general when it comes to modding in the flight sim world, probably because if I don't like something, I don't have to use it, and I won't, and so any such "bad mods" are of no concern whatsoever -- they don't exist for me, although others may enjoy them for whatever reason. There is more than enough good stuff being made by modders in the open sims so we don't have to worry about any bad modding.

The problem I have is...an example...how in the world did Oleg totally mess up the Volga River on the Stalingrad map? Maybe its because of developer time constraints, which I fully understand, and is why the developers should focus on game engine development and advancement while the customers focus on gaming content through modding. That slip-up is something a modder with tater's or ianboy's fanatical fundamentalist attention to detail would never allow happen to their creations (tater radical fundamentalist about the Pacific, ianboys militant fundamentalist about the Norway).

[csThor]

Experience 1: European Air War

When I gave up in frustration was when there were 3 different FMs along with a devout group of worshippers who fought each other in page-long flamewars in various boards. Not to mention that "the modders" went down the same road as it currently goes at AAA - no coordination, no simplification of the installation process and certainly attempt at creating "packages". It all got sacrificed for the false god of diversity. I even remember a "campaign mod" which required you to download some 20 "mod planes" separately from separate websites. That was the point when I was fed up to the back teeth and uninstalled EAW.

Experience 2: Panzer Elite

Essentially the same as EAW (minus the FM, of course). Even though there were attempts at combining efforts into packs the coordination stopped at the borders of the tight-knit groups. Essentially Mod A (i.e. Britpack) could not be used when you wanted to play Mod B (i.e. Ostpack). Of course it didn't help that the developer (who was willing to cooperate with the various groups) went bancrupt at a critical time.

Plus of course the chore of CFS2. Never regretted spending money on software more than for this POS.

These experiences taught me that "free modding" is essentially an exercise in frustration and often more about "the fiddlers" than about "the players".

[LEXX]

Thor, that sounds believable. I always figured Oleg should open the sim except for aircraft modding, since if there is one thing Oleg does do fairly well, its aircraft modding, and he makes enough to make most everybody happy. Other things, not so well...

As far as the AAA site goes, they seem to have a policy of no modding existing FM/DM/WM. Now there are plans to add new aircraft, but leave Oleg's stuff untouched.

DCG is Lowengrin's campaings right? I never played either them or ...who...StarShoy campaigns (is that DGEN)? What does DCG do, if anything, to slant a campaign towards player centric? StrikeFighter campaigns are extremely player centric, which is why I never bothered to play one of their campaigns either. Shucks, its even worse, since the StrikeFighters sim offers no map-wide combat event recording such as Oleg's eventlog text file, so an independent dynamic campaign engine can't be created. Since I consider campaigns as important as aircraft, ...

FB/PF --- closed aircraft, open campaigns.
StrikeFighers -- open aircraft, closed campaigns.

Neither are open sims, and neither are fully closed sims, just partially open in different ways.

---------

Bearcat::

The online world has not collapsed upon itself into a frenzy of UFOs and the online community has not abandoned the sim due to it's "ruin" by being hacked.

But that claim or prediction was made in this thread, which is what set me off I guess.

btw, you had made those same two predictions for years at the ubi.com.