Patch December 2010-C is out!

[Murphy'S 15]

I think he did

 

He stated That the "new" terrain Will be modeled under 3ds format, the current terrain editor Will not be compatible with current terrain format.

Edited December 30, 2010 by Murphy'S

[Gr.Viper 131]

If it's 3ds, will there be tunnels?

[Phillip58 1]

My advice is don't touch this, and I thought I would never use this term with TK's game....POS!! I own all the Strike Fighters 1 and 2 PLUS both Exp's. But this is unbelievable. It says I can either install it over Merged or Stand Alone SF2:Europe. Bull.... standalone and I get nothing...zero, zip, just a black screen.

 

I have SF2 and SF2:Israel together (plus Exp 1), I like the desert theme together. SF2:Vietnam alone (just my own preferance). And SF2:Europe as stand alone. If I install the Exp2, angain Nix, Nada, Nein. I am at my wits end with this.

 

Sorry, I am going back to IL-2 untill this gets sorted out.

 

Peace.

 

Phillip

[+Old Diego 66]

Remember folks that anything TK does is calculated to have a positive cost to benefit ratio.

 

In other words, the potential profit made from it will meet or exceed the cost of doing it. There may be a bunch of folks who run modded installs, but there may also be bunches of folks who run plain old stock installs...it's an unknown factor that TK can't even tell us because he doesn't even know.

 

Anyway, if he does a totally new terrain engine, how many old terrains will be 'broken' by it...just imagine the howls then (note what happened on the prop 'shadow' issue). Or if you want to keep the old terrains available, now you have to have 2 render subsets. Just how much time and money will that cost...and will it be made up in new sales?

 

This is why multiplayer is such a low priority I think. TW games are meant for those to be able to jump in and spend just a few minutes to learn to play, and a few minutes to get to play. To get full enjoyment out of a multiplayer flight sim, you have to have time to play, longer stretches to plan and prep for something other than 'airquake' and usually a dedicated team you fly for. How many folks have that kind of time in the TW world? Is it enough to invest in a robust MP setup? Will you make enough money to pay for it?

 

Again, I don't know the answer to these questions...I'm not the one paying the bills.

 

FC

 

All interesting points, FC. From a business standpoint, TK is a genius - Keep putting out small incremental changes and sell at a small profit/break even. That business plan worked up until the point that the customer saw no cost benefit for HIS dollar spent. The changes we have seen lately, were in my opinion, random and not really addressing the major things that were broken since day one. I can't keep supporting a developer who ignores the majority of his customers. If he doesn't know how much of the community is plain vanilla, then put up a poll. He seems to post them whenever he needs to know if people want a new plane - hey look, something shiny! I'm pretty sure that there is a minuscule amount of people who enjoy the clean lines of the plain vanilla stock game but that ultra minority is not representative of the loyal paying customers who get all warm and fuzzy supporting the developer. Its been a while since I've seen a Thirdwire game box but I do recall the community mods as being a selling point on the back of the packaging. I've never seen anything on the box saying that you can play this game bone stock and be satisfied with the developers vision. The series was made for modding since it was released and during the long dry spell of "when will the patch come out" days, the community built on what was available and kept this series alive. By all rights, this game should have been dead once it made it out of Walmart so long ago. Its odd how I see a few of very same names here as I did back then and I think some of those old heads are ready for some of their own vision to see the light. We're tired of hacking the game to do simple s**t because there is no other way and we're tired of asking.

 

A new terrain engine? Really? At this point why bother if it will include the same bugs and textures. The community has shown that it can re-texture anything but if the trees still look like alpha release candidate crap, why should we spend our time and energy behind it? WOI was a major step towards better textures but then again, that example doesn't translate too well when there are a handful of trees on the entire map. No, I am NOT looking for a "new to us" terrain engine. I will only pay for a modern terrain engine.

 

Thirdwire multiplayer was always TK's vision of fun - not the community's. It came in two flavors - airquake and crippled co-op. It was no wonder the MP crowd regarded it as a diversion and moved on. Oh, there were some die hard players that tried to get something going but they quickly saw that the developer was not interested in expanding it. As I see it, the community was not interested in TK's vision of MP and he blamed the community for not playing it and didn't see the benefit of expanding it because we didn't play it and couldn't make money off of expanding it - viscous circle.

 

As you, FC, I don't know the answers but I do have an opinion.

[+Spectre_USA 7]

The man in San Antone makes some excellent points, at least from my perspective.

 

Were it not for the modding community, this series would not have gotten this far, which really hasn't gone too far from a

technology stand-point.

 

I've purchased SF2:E and the Exp2, but that is all the investing I plan on doing in version 2, as I have always felt it was

more like version 1.2, the terrain and overall sparseness has not kept pace with the increased systems capabilities out there.

 

If the Tomcat sim is not a real step forward, I don't reckon I'll invest in that series either.

 

Being close to the only show in town has its advantages, but they can't last forever...

[+Dave 2,319]

Diego is right. TK made the series moddable so I would think his thinking is that modding will also keep the sim alive, thus giving him business. So to a point he needs to think about the modders as well. The issues since day one that people have brought up could of been addressed sometime over the last 8 years! I mean look at CA, we are 90% a Thirdwire fan site who in turns generates part of his business! With free advertising too boot. People get interested in our mods, they ask what game do I need to use these? We say Thirdwire ones and here is where you get them.

 

 

Looks at these stats. They prove my above point.

 

We arent asking for a whole new game, we would like to get some bugs fixed. Not a new plane or feature, have a sit down and get some of these old bugs killed.

[FalconC45 157]

I know I'll get flak with this post but I'm losing faith on TK. I know he has a skeleton crew but com'on, he's falling into the new features then patch, ignore few bugs mentality that killed the flight sim business in the late 80's and 90's. To do something right in any software business majority you need $$$$ and real support and BETA TESTING to really succeed. Granted at first TK succeed what big companies didn't by listening to the customers but nowadays he really isn't and using the excuse of "lack of budget" and blah blah blah. I WILL NOT buy the new F-14 sim if it still has the DAMN tree texture problem. TK needs to help the modders of fixing bugs first THEN add new features and not ignoring mod related bugs. That's my 2 cents on this.

 

Falcon

[macelena 1,070]

I don´t have it clear, i got SF2E,SF2V and SF2I, all merged, does this mean that i can finally patch it up altogether?

[FastCargo 412]

Not sure.

 

I will tell you Exp 2 works just fine on a standalone install of SF2E...even on a netbook...doing my testing of the F-103 on it...

 

FC

[Gr.Viper 131]

TK's getting confusing

 

From ye olde posts at TW forum

New terrain engine has no TOD, everything is placed in max.

http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=48333#p48333

 

Then we get

New terrain engine do have slightly improved rendering of trees, but it still wont' render them correctly if you have the clouds sitting on the ground.

http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=50466#p50466

 

Does he mean rendering of old format trees in the new engine or his new trees? I mean, if the sodding tree is something added via max, then how come it can't have the same visibility calculation as the terrain it's sitting on?

[+Stary 2,426]

because terrain doesn't rely on alpha channel to render transparency, but trees and the like do

[eraser_tr 29]

Well for starters we've been able to do multiple UV sets since Quake 1, where you can tile textures on one set and bake ambient occlusion to the other. Also proper world reflections are missing. Those have been around since DX8 - I remember Comanche 4 and NOLF 2 were two of the first games to do that really well.

 

And his cost estimates for implementing those features seem grabbed from thin air. We could implement diffuse/normal/specular/gloss/reflective/glow/ambient in our engine in about 6 weeks with another 6 weeks for optimizing it. And that's on a school project with inexperienced coders coding a 3d engine from scratch with no middleware. And it doesn't take ages to create the necessary texture maps either.

 

 

I'm getting the impression that TK is doing things in an unnecessarily hard way. Probably doing everything completely from scratch with thinking from when he originally started programming and working in the game world.

 

As a bit of a reference point, my father and I are working on making an educational "game" and he was an IT manager and knew plenty of programming. He's a gamer as well, but never modded anything so he never understood how modern games worked and was thinking of how mid-late 90's games did things. It took me months of arguing and infinite explaining to drag him into the present and he's still not entirely there. He's also taking a very stingy "we can't afford to use that" attitude with alot of tools and middleware. Until he got around to using them, he didn't understand the difference in speed things were made.

 

BTW what engine are you using julhelm?

[+Julhelm 266]

BTW what engine are you using julhelm?

We used a scratch-built DX10 engine that our tech coder built pretty much by himself in about 6 weeks. The only middleware used was Havok for the physics.

 

Here it is in action:

 

 

There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Pretty much all the big developers publish papers on the various techniques they use like SSAO, deferred rendering, volumetric lighting et al. Hence why I do not buy into TK's claims about it costing millions. It doesn't.

[JediMaster 451]

I'm wondering if the issue is that since TK is a one-man show, he can't stop to learn or read up on too much of anything...he has to spend all his time actually coding in order to get the releases out that fund him. He does what he knows works and just avoids what doesn't (like the trees vs low clouds thing) in the game he makes and if modders go "outside the envelope" that's not his problem.

[eraser_tr 29]

Damn for six weeks that looks phenomenal...all the more proof Duke Nukem Forever has been 100% vaporware since 1997.

 

Yeah, it costing so much is not true. Just quick research found us tons of utilities, code and features that we can buy and plug in to the game engine (Unity) that we want to do and use all of them for less than $500 if we went hog wild. And we're even getting our voice acting and music pro bono. I ought to point TK in the right direction if what we can get is up to par, SF needs new radio comms as much as it needs terrain.

 

It's true packages like the Unreal 3 engine with full source code goes for like $500k, many fix their price to a percentage of project budget as well. The really high end tools can be expensive, but they are also usually one time costs, and there are usually cheaper versions as well.

[+Julhelm 266]

Of course, asset creation is what usually makes up most of the project budget, but again that stuff can be outsourced to freelancers or to studios in SEA.

 

Granted, the Iphone game we are making atm is projected at about €300k but that figure includes salaries for 12 people, marketing contracts with PR firms, and lots of things like that, none of which appear to make up any sizeable chunk of TK's budget. I do believe he's found a comfortable place where he can turn out new games without really having to evolve techwise, but that strategy doesn't work forever.

[eraser_tr 29]

Yeah, salaries are the expensive part. But we're dead set against any outsourcing. We've been on the short end of the stick when it comes to the outsourcing craze and there's no way in hell we're going to become what we've bitched about in IT for the past ten years.

 

Flight sims are a much smaller market, but he doesn't appear to spend anything on promotion, its essentially word of mouth with us doing the promotion with our mod work, videos etc. He's also painted himself into a corner as far as customers go.

[+Julhelm 266]

Yeah, salaries are the expensive part. But we're dead set against any outsourcing. We've been on the short end of the stick when it comes to the outsourcing craze and there's no way in hell we're going to become what we've bitched about in IT for the past ten years.

Well I can certainly share that sentiment.

 

Flight sims are a much smaller market, but he doesn't appear to spend anything on promotion, its essentially word of mouth with us doing the promotion with our mod work, videos etc. He's also painted himself into a corner as far as customers go.

If the F-14 game doesn't bring anything substantially new, I do not believe his core audience will stick around. Not with the other games slated to come out in 2011 that all offer modability with contemporary visuals.

[+Zurawski 33]

I donno... I'm kind'a ambivalent both ways.

 

Having worked on a small dev team for a health-care management software team, I appreciate the sentiment that it's hard to let go of an ageing code-base because, quite frankly much of it is proven and by-in-large is clean code. As we experienced, like I believe TK is, when you try to grow beyond the original design of the code, the "enhancements" begin to break things that previously were bullet-proof... Feature-creep ultimately was the death of the project as it quickly became a three-headed monster and we spent more time fixing our enhancements instead of supporting the product. RIP...

 

That said, clearly the Strike-fighter code beginning to show it's age spots... and limitations.

 

Granted Julhelm's example shows how much can be done graphically on a small budget, one needs to remember a flight simulation is probably 70% physics, AI and only like 30% graphic code... (I wish in no way to downplay the dev costs of a FPS and a flight simulation but I think it's agreeable that they are different)

 

The Strike-Fighter code is TKs baby... he nurtured it and watched it grow. Letting go of that to become more current is both costly as well as a step into the unknown...

 

Face it he has a proven business model that he has made no qualms about admitting it's target audience is the very-casual sim enthusiast. The problem really lies in we the core group of supports are not casual gamers... We are present and ex-military, coders, graphic artists, 3D artists. Our expectations far out stripe the cost and expectations of this game-code and honestly have done so from day one.

 

I've been playing and modding various FPS and sims for over 30 years... much of the vitriolic commentary and idle threats are lost on me as I've seen it all. I don't always agree with TKs thoughts and direction, but I admire his dedication to the genre and support of his products. I've bought them all... I play only a few. For me my enjoyment comes from the occasional hop to shoot something down and or blow something up and the fundamentally free canvas available to me to create 3D models of my choosing.

 

I guess the saying "mileage may vary" holds true for this particular product...

Edited December 31, 2010 by Zurawski

[DWCAce 19]

Back to the serious issue...

You all are missing the point!!!!

 

When do I get a damn pony?

 

 

 

Dave, due to budget cuts, it's an ass, and you're it! j/k

 

 

 

[DWCAce 19]

Anyways, to set myself straight, the Exp 2 works OK, but once we put the C patch on it it f's up?

[eraser_tr 29]

No, Exp2 is screwed up no matter what version.

 

IMHO, it is least screwed up with version C, if you can tolerate starting in the air above your airfield.

[DWCAce 19]

Ok, just checking. Thanks!

[+daddyairplanes 9,250]

You all are missing the point!!!!

 

When do I get a damn pony?

 

 

 

 

you didn't see? the was a pony included in Exp2. but like all else there were some bugs.......

[

[+Julhelm 266]

Granted Julhelm's example shows how much can be done graphically on a small budget, one needs to remember a flight simulation is probably 70% physics, AI and only like 30% graphic code... (I wish in no way to downplay the dev costs of a FPS and a flight simulation but I think it's agreeable that they are different)

The physics are generally separate from the renderer, though. And the point is that making a terrain engine that is up to date does not need cost millions. It can be done on a shoestring budget and the asset creation itself need not be too time consuming. After all, we're talking very simple building objects and vegetation. If one looks at what Stary and Jan Tuma, to name a few, have been able to do in their spare time with the current, admittedly obsolete, terrain engine, the whole "we don't have the budget for that, it'll cost millions" argument comes crashing down.

 

The thing is, if TK had made the effort to have those kinds of contemporary environment visuals, he would've run into the same bugs and fixed them. But he doesn't care about that. It's his vision of fun or bust. Unfortunately he isn't his consumer base.