SF 4.33 idea for the Admins...

[Spudknocker]

Hey CA and Wrench and all the other lovely admins!  haha I may just be thinking out loud here but after looking at the other 4.33 thread I had a light bulb go off... What if one of the owners/admins (I was thinking like Wrench) went to TK and said we will buy the rights to SF series from you and charged all CA subscribers say like 20 bucks (as a random figure) to build the necessary funds for the purchase and then have the rights basically collectively owned by the subscribers/modders here at CA (with the awesome admin's taking priority of course) Heck you could even rename the site "Combat Ace: Home of the Strike Fighters Series" 

 

Just a crazy idea I thought up but I thought i should mention it cause it seemed like a viable idea to raise the funds needed and Im sure the follks here would be fine for paying 20 bucks or something to have access to all parts of the game!  

[+Stratos]

TK will tell you that all that money does not reach the 10% of the engine price.

[Trotski]

Oh if only it were possible !! but I fear, 'tis naught but a pipe dream.......oh well.

[+Soulfreak]

Dreams...

[Spudknocker]

ya but he just cant be making any money off of it anymore everyone that would buy the games already has ya know?

[Trotski]

But it would entail selling his intellectual property, and the price of that must be extortionate, so he will end up with his intellect, and no spondoolies !! now if it were me, I would sell it for the best possible offer, and add it to the profit I already had from it.....but that's me.

[Spinners]

I reckon it's still a useful little income stream for him so it's very unlikely he'd want to sell.

[Nicholas Bell]

Every one has a price.  The question is, what is TK's?  If he said $100,000 - are there enough of us to come up with funds?  Until "someone" can approach him with a reasonable fee (whatever that is) all we are is guessing and wishing.  Has anyone approached him with a kickstarter campaign?   If there was a way which required the purchase of his product he might be somewhat more receptive. 

 

OTOH, I've worked with 2 other wargame designers/programmers and they are pretty much like TK.  To put it nicely, they're difficult to influence once their mind is made up.

[Trotski]

like I say, these guys seem to get precious about their babies, which I sort of understand, however, if you are not going to further develop something, and it isn't raking in the lolly anymore, then, if a community wish to take it over , then sell for a fair price, however as my mate Nick said, the asking price may be a little rich for our ( as a community) blood.

[Spudknocker]

Its really too bad hes just abandoned everything did he ever give a reason?

[+JonathanRL]

I have also thought about this idea, mainly because TSF have a fanbase outside the forums who I feel bad have to pay 25$ for a clearly outdated game
If I was TK, i would have put the games up on Steam long time ago with a price of 10 or 15$ with links to the best mods at CA. I think that would make it compete better.

Right now, its either SF2 or a DCS Module and many will choose a DCS module if that is the choice.

[Dunois]

This is now a real old game carrying a poor basic campaign/mission editor (and I don't speak about graphics) which is his principal default.

In front of the amount of work to reach the same level as IL2 (all work done by modders community!), which has almost (if I'm not wrong) the same age, what is the real value of this sim?

IL2, and SF2 survives, because there is no real alternative if you're interested in historical sims.

IL2 is perfect for 1914-1951 period, and SF2 for 1951-until now. For WWII for the time beiing there is no alternative appart beta Sims still Under devellopement.

And for modern history DCS could be the alternative, if they offered historical maps and campaigns. Unless you always could fly with P51, FW190, and Huey over Caucasus.....

[Do335]

Slightly OT and more about general modding, I've been keeping an eye on Il2. Looks like stability is still the biggest problem. That game was not made to be modded...

[+russouk2004]

All we need is a solid yes from TK allowing us to mod what we want   as he suggested....he doesnt care if we opn the locked cats....as long as we dont make money from it....thats all we need...his definitive ok...

[Spudknocker]

I guess someone needs to figure out how to get in those... Ive tried opening up a few of those locked cats but they are all incomprehensible without a key  

[+Wrench]

they're openable, and extracable.

The programer just won't release that tool until a uncontrivertible (irrevocable?) "YES" is received.

 

Even then, there's still the piracy issue, of LODs (and other internal components) being shared without the purchase of the game (or DLC) modules required for their use

[Spudknocker]

Thats a good point.... hmmmmm seems like some rule breaking is in order 

[mue]

I asked TK/Thirdwire on two occasions per email. But never got an answer. Maybe I used the wrong email addresses?

 

My first email was to get the permission to publish a cat extractor that can extract locked content. But no answer. Not even a "No". So I decided that my extractor keeps the lod files locked but allows the extraction of the shader files.

 

In my second email I asked about information about the lod format, so that I can write an exporter. I also mentioned that I already can "read" lod files to signal him that I'm not interested in stealing his 3D work, because I'm able to do it already if I wanted that. But again, no answer.

[+76.IAP-Blackbird]

How difficult is it to open the game files to get access to maybe new avionics .. for ground radar, laserdesignator .. or even set the game to read more than 10 animation slots .. something like gameupdates in the style of Team Didalos for the old il2 .. they have full access to the game and are producing "official" updates for the game. That would begreat for SF2

[+Stratos]

I asked TK/Thirdwire on two occasions per email. But never got an answer. Maybe I used the wrong email addresses?

 

My first email was to get the permission to publish a cat extractor that can extract locked content. But no answer. Not even a "No". So I decided that my extractor keeps the lod files locked but allows the extraction of the shader files.

 

In my second email I asked about information about the lod format, so that I can write an exporter. I also mentioned that I already can "read" lod files to signal him that I'm not interested in stealing his 3D work, because I'm able to do it already if I wanted that. But again, no answer.

 

This is my last mail exchanged with TK in early 2014.

 

 

As you can see he doesn't care what we do, BUT we CANNOT redistribute his files, how we can mod the sim and comply with his desires, not sure, cause I don't know what we can do with those files, Mue maybe can enlight us, but I tought a lot about it without luck, until recently when Benchmarksims the BMS makers just passed by something similar in the last weeks, and they finally created a patch that asks for a original Falcon 4 installation before installing anything. Can we make something similar? We mod the avionics (If that is possible) and when the patch is released before installs it asks for a original SF2 installation.

 

What do you guys think? And what Mure think?

[Spudknocker]

Sounds like a good idea!

[+Viper63a]

That would be cool...even for just updated - fully fleshed out avionics and cockpits...or Battlestar Galactica mods or Star Wars mods...or...I am going to pass out thinking about the possibilities. I think there is ALOT of talent here in CA and it would be awesome if TK unleash the talented monsters here. Hell, like I said before, we (me to small degree compared to other chit kicking kung fu masters who have been doing this for years!) could become his development team! He can even incorporate community mods and/or legitimize CA by linking us to get other mods to pump up interest on his SF2 products on his site. I mean, isn't the modding community whats really keeping SF2 alive now? He should take advantage of this free labor of love and turn it into buck for himself and satisfaction for us. 

 

:)

Edited March 27, 2016 by viper63a

[+KnightWolf45]

from watt i understand his that messed whit all things just to the originals files but...if ones tweaks a DLL file and uploads it it ok it want be compatible whit a possible(and very unlikely)future update from TK so this brings to mind all the unofficial patchs for Skyrim and Obilivion etc i believe that the way to go update watt needs to be updated to today's standards  just not hack LODs and if the game gets updated some day we would just have to update our patch like have done whit our mods for years now!

 

the tecnical part about this idea well i dont know a thing about programing so........i just leave this idea here to see if it grows 

 

Cocas

[+Stratos]

We need Mue to get things working here, If he wants to unlock those files. What make me curious is, what we will be able to do with those files? Avionics update?

[+Stary]

they're openable, and extracable.

The programer just won't release that tool until a uncontrivertible (irrevocable?) "YES" is received.

 

Even then, there's still the piracy issue, of LODs (and other internal components) being shared without the purchase of the game (or DLC) modules required for their use

 

Kevin that piracy issue is pointless when you can spend 10 seconds on search engine to dig up ALL DCS modules models ripped to common 3D formats, no strange 90% of the content is on russian sites...

 

ok back on topic,

 

say the engine would be 100.000 dollars -I am pretty sure we could find 200 folks paying 500 bucks each for the effort (that excluding those strange delusional folks like me who would pay all their monies to get it)

 

let's face it dear afficionados -SF2 is more dead than Nefertiti as far as development goes and TK clearly has no intentions to change that. He doesn't even release more AI packs even having alot of great unique assets for the mobiles built