Suggestion: Semi-Official custom plane packs by TK

[Grille Chompa 0]

I would like to see TK releasing semi-official plane packs with fan-made planes. I know that we hardcore simmers wouldn't need them as we just test everything we can lay our hands on :) , but for the people just passing by the official site it would be great to see all those brilliant plane additions already made and be given a possibility to easily download them in a convenient form.

TK should ask the modders for permission and then release the communities final versions. Also you wouldn't have any more difficulties with "different versions" of the same plane.

What do you think?

[Echo333 0]

I think that would be a good idea.

 

Furthermore I hate the fact that everytime I install a new plane, the weapendat.ini in the objects folder is amended. How can I fix that. I do not want to compare by hand everytime any changes have been made.

 

Cheers,

Echo

[BERNARD1943 0]

this seems to be an interesting idea. Maybe TW could also polish and finish when necessary these great addons made by the community??

But there are copyright implications here.

[+Armourdave 0]

TW dont have the manpower that Maddox have. They have enough on their plate without taking on the communities problems and mistakes.

 

A nice idea, yes..Workable, I highly doubt it.

[Dagger 21]

so why can't we put this together..?The only problem as I see it would be that planes are constantly being added. But basically it'd just be a installer witht eh places..skins you'd have to add later..

[Grille Chompa 0]

Very good point Armourdave. I didn't consider that.

Then why dont we create our "official" plane releases ourselves? I'm relatively new to the SFP1 scene, mainly because of the late european release. I don't know which is the biggest and most frequented SFP1 fansite out there, but we could establish a central assembling point here.

First we should think about a way for creating installers which take away all these INI- and DAT-file-messing for us. Any coders here? I'm studying C and C++ at the moment and am willing to help where i can :P

[Guest Sony Tuckson]

Most interresting forums/sites I know are

 

-Biohazard (better not forget this one )

-www.simhq.com

-www.checksix-fr.com(french speaking , but many speak English, so no worry..)

-Skunkworks http://skunkworks.free.fr

 

ohters are of course interresting, but most donloads are present on those

 

feel free to expand this list...

 

But I wonder how all addons could be "centralized", as many devellopers work all over the world....

 

I think those sites just do this, all 3rd party developpers join one or several of those toshare their work..

[+Armourdave 0]

But I wonder how all addons could be "centralized", as many devellopers work all over the world....

 

Well this was our reason for creating the skunkworks nearly a year ago. Unfortuneatly due to a lack of a real webmaster and a general lack of leadership/direction it's just become a meeting point for people who want to work on completely different aircraft.

 

Grille Chompa,

 

The idea of an installer is great. Not so much use for aircraft as yuo just need to unzip the folder from the zip into the aircraft directory. It could however be very useful for things like daggers clouds, or hawkers canopy mod.

 

Maybe you could write a piece of software that would read a .txt file that contained the name of the file(s) and the directory that the file(s) should be put it. The contents of the txt file could be written to the programs database so that it could easily uninstall the addon/mod. Just an idea ;)

 

The whole idea of a united plane pack is not a great one IMO. The download size would be out of 56k users reach, and hosts wouldn't want to touch it. It would be a complete nightmare to update. Duplication could be an issue. Extra confussion for the end user.

 

A pack of small mods/tweaks would be much more reasonable IMO.

[savagkc 1]

A plane collection can be on one site and combined into a large download (i'm 56k). They could also be available as stand-alone planes but with the weapondat.ini, etc, as a single file that would cover all planes.

The weapondat files are not large and could contain info for all planes in the pack (or standalone). They would need to track for all planes and only need to be D/l'ed again when a update was applied (via site notification).

 

I dont think the problem is with the planes but with the "other" files that need updating.

 

I'm no programmer and know nothing about coding (quit at cobol), was a Systems Analyst upon retirement.

 

 

 

 

savagkc

[JW_darkpresence 0]

as far as a central downloading point, i think biohaz is one to be considered though im sure other are as good a potential candidate. but considering my experience so far with biohaz and its efficiency and constant focus on SFP1 as well as other sims I wouldnt be surprised that biohaz should be the one picked as a central "official download" for official plane packs. just think of biohazcentral has offered and consider the advantaged.

:) its just i like what biohaz has offered lately since i been here and I have nothing but good things to say about it.

 

"that's just my opinion, I could be wrong "

-Dennis Miller

[Beer 0]

One thing we did with the Janes USAF crowd was distrubute CD's, those that could burned the Mods (this was my niche since I could not 3d or could hardly skin aircraft), and sent them out. I distrubuted 35 or so CD's at my expense (total cost was about $1.50 each in the US) slightly more to go overseas. I did this at no expense to those that requested them, and frequently the recieving party would send me a check for $5, I more or less broke even.

 

With Burners as common as they are now it can be done again.

First say Skunkworks or Biohaz, creates a "Expansion Pak SW2003",

it is downloaded (ICQ file transfer for lack of server space) by primary distrubuters whose email is posted on a distrubuters page.

 

Those interested in getting the new release email one of the distrubuters on the Sw or BioHaz distributers page.

 

A group of about ten distrubuters sends out 10 disks a piece (count me in as one), now potentially you got a 100 distrubuters, but lets say of the 100 disk sent out, 20 will start distrubuting, now you got 30 distrubuters on the list of emails, the first ten get tired of doing it so they take there names off the list, still twenty distrubuters, and the cycle continues.

 

The trick is not to create a new pack every three months, a patch to the "mod" would have to be downloadable, and the sending of 300-700 megs of mods would more or less have to be annual, to keep the distrubuters expenses/time down.

 

It worked for the Janes USAF crowd and their SP releases.

 

As for TK handling player mods? I believe all he needs to do is distrubute the tools and impart some knowledge of what we can do (which he has done :D ), and from time to time, point the community in the right direction when they are stumped.

 

Its up to the community to handle the rest IMHO.

 

Cheers

Beer