Patch December 2010-C is out!

[+EricJ 3,970]

The thing is that TW is three guys... not like when I was working with Ubisoft, which had mainly the Eagle Dynamics team and conversely MORE people (I think they had like twenty people on the payroll if I remember the photo right) so its to be expected as three guys are handling all the coding and texturing, and oh by the way we want to release a new game. Besides the more complex stuff you put in, the smallest change somewhere affects something somewhere else, so its only natural. But I do agree that we're doing the betatesting after release than prior. It's not good business where the buyer has to get to the point that the benefits aren't worth it. I still stick with it because really other than the spawning over the airfield, it's not bad. Besides the benefit to this game is that it doesnt't take long to exit, edit, and restart the game and get flying again. And to echo what JM said, it's this backlash that TK is aware of that they did a poll to see if it was better to take some time and work out what the problems are than trying to rush another patch out, because in the rush we have what we have. So unlike Ubisoft, which didn't give two sh!ts about public opinion on the matter, TK does care and unfortunately its this one bad WHOOPS that seems to have really gotten everybody.

[+Stary 2,426]

I wonder how similar indie project soon to be released (JT) will compare with series2, I think Dante and his team are also just few people finally putting that title together.

 

What I can't understand about TK is few "jet era planes simulation" things that are missing or done wrong since day one, those ejecting pilots being the first thing missing that comes to mind. Surely I'd love to have the options menu to constrain the gunsight to the HUD display, this one could be very easy for TK to add in a day as every aircraft has planar hud x,y dimensions in it's avionics file specified. And I don't beg for true to life projected to infinity HUD displays. Just as an option for those willing to use it. Or belly landings, those shoot out wheels magically droping from behind closed gear doors ask for gear up ditching game of nerves.

A lot of things can be modded, I have in my install trucks that require more than single 20mm bullet to become destroyed, or tanks that you simply can't destroy using Mustang's .50s in few passes. But the core rules are closed for modding.

[+EricJ 3,970]

I would say game focus as the famous quote was "to be able to fly a few nifty planes" (I know I butchered the quote) but I think it wasn't designed to be so complex like other games (LOMAC, DCS series, JT) so he didn't focus on stuff like aerial refuelling, ejection sequence (which is at the bottom of things I'd like to see) properly modeled, etc. So when it first came out it was cool but now the more experienced simmers (and new ones) want to see the "cool" features because we've invested a lot of time and effort and would like to see some more progress with the game than what has been currently seen. And we've also played simulations where the cool features were modeled but prefer it in this environment due to the ease of modding (at least in my world view).

Edited January 7, 2011 by EricJ

[+Sundowner 4,548]

Reading TK's latest response I get the impression that we're pushing TK into a corner, trying to make the game do things that he never actually intended, all that will do is force him to hard code more and more things. I know this will ultimately result in less folks using his work for "hard core" modding but it may just increase the intrest of people who are put off by trying to keep up with all the mods...no matter how good they are. I have a gut feeling that we may become a victim of our own success, if you know what I mean.

[+Stary 2,426]

right Eric, but as the series progressed, these "nifty planes" became a bit more seriously modelled than "lite sim" standards, I mean, all the sub variants of A-4, or the modelling of Red Top acquisition in Lightning, jammer frequencies etc. In some areas this series getting quite serious IMO, but that isn't followed by any progress in many other areas

[FastCargo 412]

Reading TK's latest response I get the impression that we're pushing TK into a corner, trying to make the game do things that he never actually intended, all that will do is force him to hard code more and more things. I know this will ultimately result in less folks using his work for "hard core" modding but it may just increase the intrest of people who are put off by trying to keep up with all the mods...no matter how good they are. I have a gut feeling that we may become a victim of our own success, if you know what I mean.

 

Yea, I just read that myself Ant, and it concerns me. But now I can see the logic...if tons of people come on the TW forums and bitch about this mod or that mod screwing up their game, other folks not familiar with the series may think the game is unstable and not buy it. It's a Catch-22...market the game as mod-friendly, but you can't make it too moddable or folks will fill the boards with their complaining about their mods.

 

FC

[+Sundowner 4,548]

Yea, I just read that myself Ant, and it concerns me. But now I can see the logic...if tons of people come on the TW forums and bitch about this mod or that mod screwing up their game, other folks not familiar with the series may think the game is unstable and not buy it. It's a Catch-22...market the game as mod-friendly, but you can't make it too moddable or folks will fill the boards with their complaining about their mods.

 

FC

 

Exactly m8, today I've come across this personally, we had a truck drive come into my works, he had all sorts of avation related stickers adorning his cab so we naturally got talking about all things "planes". When I mentioned simming the SF series came up as being "buggy and needing constant patches" his words not mine.

I tried to put him straight but he gave me the impression that no matter how good SF is [or could be] it's not worth the effort. Very sad.

 

That is exactly the reputation TK does not need & no matter how, we the modders try to make our stuff simple to install etc, if it spoils the game for the non PC savvy public

it can only eventually have a negative effect.

Maybe it's time for us to back off on some issues & treat this for what it is & not what we want it to be.......work with TK & not against him.

[JediMaster 451]

I think a lot of the mods problems have to do with obsolescence. There are a lot of modders who've left, for various reasons, and their mods they made for SFP1 are now very buggy when using the latest SF2. The answer should be "don't use them", but people want to use plane X or terrain Y or effects Z and won't accept that. Instead, they blame TK for "screwing up SF2" so we have lots of people who either won't buy SF2 or bought one or 2 but now have reverted to SFP1 "where stuff works".

 

I still have old SFP1-based installs for things like ODS and OTC and a FE-pre Exp 1/Gold install for those early war WWI-planes. Sure, some of these will "just work" with SF2, but many require changes. Some are minor changes but some require a lot of work and if you're not a modder at heart but rather just want to fly but want to fly THAT plane you're going to be disappointed.

 

I knew a guy who owned all the 1st-gen titles but SFP1 and we played them MP from time to time, but he was a non-modder. He refused to read a readme, he refused to even literally spend 10 minutes thinking about how to mod. He wanted one-click installers for everything, and preferred the big ones like NF1-4 because that was a simple sequence of "double-click, point to install directory, click done, fly". I would tell him or even show him a screenshot for some new plane and he would be all interested...until he found the mod was in a zip file that had to be drag-n-dropped into multiple folders and heaven forbid weapons/decals/effects/etc had to go to! Dropping a plane into the aircraft directory was as far as he'd go, and if it was one of those instances where someone nested a folder in the zip (ie it had "plane/plane-A/cockpit" instead of "plane-A/cockpit" in the zip) so that it wouldn't work if dropped as-is into the aircraft directory, he was turned off. As a result, he mostly only played the stock games, and when SF2 came out without MP he just passed.

 

TK has to compete not with any particular game or sim, just with people's expectations. Even at $20, if he fails to deliver on that, he won't sell.

 

The problem is what people were fine with 5 yrs ago is now seen as insufficient by many, and let's face it but simmers are a stingy bunch. While they'll spend a lot for hardware like sticks or TrackIR, they HATE to spend on any sim but MSFS addons it seems. I mean, sims at $50 are seen as too expensive, when they cost $50 15 yrs ago?!??

DCS:A-10C going for $60 is an interesting experiment...how many will buy regardless of price vs those that only buy things $40 or less? At $60 they'll make the same amount for selling 100k copies as they would selling 150k at $40...but will the numbers break that way? Will they lose fewer customers at $60 than the amount they'll gain per copy? Only they will know.

[+Dave 2,318]

I still have old SFP1-based installs for things like ODS and OTC and a FE-pre Exp 1/Gold install for those early war WWI-planes.

 

That i will be cured soon too....

 

 

I knew a guy who owned all the 1st-gen titles but SFP1 and we played them MP from time to time, but he was a non-modder. He refused to read a readme, he refused to even literally spend 10 minutes thinking about how to mod. He wanted one-click installers for everything, and preferred the big ones like NF1-4 because that was a simple sequence of "double-click, point to install directory, click done, fly". I would tell him or even show him a screenshot for some new plane and he would be all interested...until he found the mod was in a zip file that had to be drag-n-dropped into multiple folders and heaven forbid weapons/decals/effects/etc had to go to! Dropping a plane into the aircraft directory was as far as he'd go, and if it was one of those instances where someone nested a folder in the zip (ie it had "plane/plane-A/cockpit" instead of "plane-A/cockpit" in the zip) so that it wouldn't work if dropped as-is into the aircraft directory, he was turned off. As a result, he mostly only played the stock games, and when SF2 came out without MP he just passed.

 

Would that be Panzermeyer? If he spent half his energy in installing a mod instead of whining about how to install it, he would of gotten to play some good stuff. That guy has ADHD bad and whined about that installing s**t too much. Or just plain lazy. He still owes me a bottle of scotch....

[FalconC45 157]

Well I just saw TK's post about hardcoding. That's sad really. No more hi res skins or environmental mods if he goes on that route. I dunno about you guys but I'm having flashbacks of various companies vs fans brawls from the golden age of sims here. We need to STOP the bickering and whining to TK. Otherwise he'll stop making the sim series a open structured sim.

 

Falcon

[FastCargo 412]

Well, to be fair, I don't think he was saying anything about hi res skins. However, the enviromental mods are what have me concerned if he decides to hard code certain things.

 

I also don't think you will see TK make the series completely mod unfriendly, but there may be limits imposed on certain aspects of modding.

 

FC

[+Old Diego 66]

Some people are getting tired of the ongoing trend toward Thirdwire not communicating or documenting about upcoming changes in how his releases will affect mods or not just beta testing their product properly. I don't think it has much to do with the community or customers expecting too much from him or his product. We each have our own wish list but that doesn't equate to us being the cause for his problems. Lets see a show of hands - who asked for the canopy/prop casting shadow effect? That's right, nobody did. Who asked for air starts only? Again, not one person did.

 

I can see cutting TK a break, I do when it comes to things that require manpower - making assets, programming etc but taking the blame as a community for something like beta testing or asking for features is laughable. Remember, TK took that responsibility from the community when he disbanded the beta testers and took on the testing himself. Nobody to blame but him. So go and feel sorry for him but you really should feel sorry for those who paid for the honor to beta test. As far as asking for things, come on, TK does what he wants when it comes to his vision of fun and anything else just falls into the "too" category - too much money, too much time required to...., too much fill in the blank______________.

 

If his only recourse is to hard code certain aspects of the game then what does that do to the customer base? I can see lots of modders taking their money, time and skills elsewhere. With nothing left to mod, many won't be satisfied with plain vanilla. Up until lately, if you wanted to fire a gun at some jets and mod, Thirdwire was the only game in town. That monopoly has not been overlooked by other developers with eager/available community talent and an open architecture in mind.

[+PureBlue 71]

Modders don't deserve more hardcoded stuff, i say they deserve even more freedom. Look at all the enhancements made to his games, they're cool in stock installs but just put one of the big mods and SF2E stock side by side..

 

btw, environment mods? I mean those fix stuff not break it That's been my experience with them.

[+ST0RM 145]

JM,

 

Your 3rd paragraph described many of the newer people to this sim. They've seen pics of all the new toys that have been added, but when confronted with a large or multi-place install, they come running here for help. Oh yea, and without reading the README or KB.

 

It's the "I want this now" mentality.

 

Getting back to the SF series though, there are still many things since Day 1 that have been broken or never implemented. People expect 100% for any amount of money paid. Be it $50 or in this case $15-20. Releasing a beta level product as a final was bad and it opened a floodgate of complaints. Some of which have been stifled for a long time. However, it's all about the way people compain that will either make or break us. Like that line in Saving Private Ryan. "This is the way to gripe..."

 

If TK decides to lock everything, then I'd predict it would be the end of his sims. Mods have kept air in the TW lungs. They've bridged the gap between new products, keeping some freshness to an old sim. Without them, it's game over and people will move on.

 

Jeff

[+Dave 2,318]

It would be really nice if he could just share with us a little more of his overall vision. So we know what to expect, can we mod the new sim? What will be its limits? Where is the current series going? Things like that. He has a account here. He is always welcome here. Just something to help us quit speculating and maybe think about where we are all going to go from here.

[+Stary 2,426]

We need to STOP the bickering and whining to TK.

 

Why? WHY? I bought inbox or by digital every single title from TK, some more than once. I deserve some response from The Guy! Even if this is "so unimportant" as trees vs clouds childlish sorting bug! This is going down, down, down. I'm soo tired of making mod A because of 8 years old obvious bug B renders it useless. TK must evolve, as we, and OUR MODS people buy these titles for did. Or he will be left alone with those "nifty planes"

 

TK shoot himself in the foot with the "airstart bug" to me.

[FastCargo 412]

Folks, does everyone understand that TK is NOT talking about completely (or even mostly) hardcoding the sim? He knows that mods are what help keep the sim alive. But he has to walk a line between testing for everything mod related with each new change and not testing at all. If you read the information on Dec2010B, you realize that the prop/shadow issue was unanticipated because the 'flags' in the previous versions of the exporter were not used. His mistake was rushing out the C patch. I think once he had figured out what was happening with the props, a simple message stating what the issue was and that it will be fixed after some more testing would have helped. People would have been a lot more tolerant of some props acting weird vs not being able to takeoff from airfields.

 

Also, reading what he has posted, the idea is by hardcoding constraints, mods won't break the sim to the point everyone complains about it. The trick is to allow enough freedom to mod without feeling overtly constrained. Most sandboxes do have walls.

 

And I'd agree with Dave that I would love some detailed information about how the sim works and the direction he is going with it. I think that information on it's own would be worth it's weight in gold to modders, so we could capitalize on the sims strengths and avoid or at least mitigate the weaknesses.

 

FC

[+DanW 32]

Nothing is being hard coded and you will still be able to mod the game.

F-14 is going to be cool.

[+Old Diego 66]

According to TK, he doesn't test his releases on mods. So what line are you talking about? He has said, just recently, that he tests on plain vanilla - which is 100% correct. So testing on mods never enters the question for him. That was always left to the modders - unofficially of course and always in between testing versions.

The whole flags/prop issue was made to sound like it was our fault for setting flags incorrectly. Who knew about the flags? As far as I know, nothing was ever mentioned about them in his forums and definitely nothing was written in the exporter documentation. Now he is falling back to that same attitude that we are to blame for his problems -

 

"Well, you may be okay with mods crashing the game for going past the limits, but most people wounldn't be... and if modders keep releasing mods that crash the game, and many people have problems with them and complain about them here, it just make us look bad (other people thinking our game constantly crash)... thats when I have to step in and make these limits hard-coded so you won't exceed them. And we already have many such limits, anytime we know certain mods cause issues, we try to put limits in the code so they can no longer cuase problems. We try to make our game as error-tolerant as we can so modders can try anything without worrying too much about CTDs.

 

Sorting issue isn't as critical as CTD, so we've kinda let this go for a while, but same thing here, I've been saying from day 1 that large alphas do not sort well, but still too many mods have way too large alpha and have all sort of sorting problems, at some point, I do need to step in and limit that so this doesn't happen." TK from his forum My bold text to high light the attitude

 

Old incompatible mods crash the game. People not reading the READ ME file crash the game. Missing objects crash the game. As far as I know, nobody is talking about game crashes. We have been talking about bad quality control and lack of communication. I wish he would focus some of that vision inward and see why he truly looks bad.

[FalconC45 157]

Well, to be fair, I don't think he was saying anything about hi res skins. However, the enviromental mods are what have me concerned if he decides to hard code certain things.

 

I also don't think you will see TK make the series completely mod unfriendly, but there may be limits imposed on certain aspects of modding.

 

FC

 

I thought the flightengine.ini needed to be tweaked so the graphic engine can handle higher res skins? Or am I misunderstanding something? Anyway that's what I was trying to say. I apologize if it wasn't clear :).

[FalconC45 157]

Why? WHY? I bought inbox or by digital every single title from TK, some more than once. I deserve some response from The Guy! Even if this is "so unimportant" as trees vs clouds childlish sorting bug! This is going down, down, down. I'm soo tired of making mod A because of 8 years old obvious bug B renders it useless. TK must evolve, as we, and OUR MODS people buy these titles for did. Or he will be left alone with those "nifty planes"

 

TK shoot himself in the foot with the "airstart bug" to me.

 

I share your frustration dude. Really. It just that I'm seeing flashbacks of forum brawls of the late 80's and 90's. We need to back off a little, give TK breathing room. Right now, I bet he's feeling that he's in a corner.

 

Falcon

[FalconC45 157]

According to TK, he doesn't test his releases on mods. So what line are you talking about? He has said, just recently, that he tests on plain vanilla - which is 100% correct. So testing on mods never enters the question for him. That was always left to the modders - unofficially of course and always in between testing versions.

The whole flags/prop issue was made to sound like it was our fault for setting flags incorrectly. Who knew about the flags? As far as I know, nothing was ever mentioned about them in his forums and definitely nothing was written in the exporter documentation. Now he is falling back to that same attitude that we are to blame for his problems -

 

"Well, you may be okay with mods crashing the game for going past the limits, but most people wounldn't be... and if modders keep releasing mods that crash the game, and many people have problems with them and complain about them here, it just make us look bad (other people thinking our game constantly crash)... thats when I have to step in and make these limits hard-coded so you won't exceed them. And we already have many such limits, anytime we know certain mods cause issues, we try to put limits in the code so they can no longer cuase problems. We try to make our game as error-tolerant as we can so modders can try anything without worrying too much about CTDs.

 

Sorting issue isn't as critical as CTD, so we've kinda let this go for a while, but same thing here, I've been saying from day 1 that large alphas do not sort well, but still too many mods have way too large alpha and have all sort of sorting problems, at some point, I do need to step in and limit that so this doesn't happen." TK from his forum My bold text to high light the attitude

 

Old incompatible mods crash the game. People not reading the READ ME file crash the game. Missing objects crash the game. As far as I know, nobody is talking about game crashes. We have been talking about bad quality control and lack of communication. I wish he would focus some of that vision inward and see why he truly looks bad.

 

Bingo. You hit a homerun with that. I don't believe he understands that we need some info on features and etc so the modders can get ready to tweak their mods correctly to make them work right.

 

Falcon

[JediMaster 451]

Yeah, that's who I was referring to. It's not that he has ADHD so much as he wants to spend every possible second playing his games and not mucking around with them.

However, he does like some others have a bit of that "lead me by the hand" attitude insomuch as he doesn't want to learn how to do it, he wants it done for him so he can just play it or he passes.

 

I'm really hoping Tomcat is a step forward for TK's series because as mentioned I think his preoccupation with getting everything ported to the SF2 engine took him too long to finish and set his vision back.

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Jedi::

I think his preoccupation with getting everything ported to the SF2 engine took him too long to finish and set his vision back.

mmm, I've kinda wondered if Vista threw TK a bad curve ball, like I think it did to other software developers. That's a wild guess however.

[JediMaster 451]

I think MS decision to enforce their structure in Vista after a lax implementation for years before threw a LOT of people for a loop. TK just had fewer resources to deal with it than most.

 

While DX10 has been a positive, it's interesting to speculate where the series might be now if Vista/7 had kept the XP-style structure in place allowing the old way to continue to work without issues. Instead of just slipping in minor improvements here and there as he switched to SF2, he might have had things like the mission builder implemented far sooner.