Hellshade

Afraid not Olham. Word is that in order to make room for the new, hi-res textures on all of the other planes, the Devs had to make some sacrifices and cut all of the textures for the Albs down to 320 x 200, 16 colors. It's a shame, but it had to be done. Just kidding, of course. Hellshade

Who was on your tail? Spider-man? Hellshade

HPW is a liar...and thank God for it. He told us that his latest version of the FM was his last, however he decided to take a look into the problem some of the AI planes have (Camels, Pfalz DIIIas, Alb DIIIs, etc) where they pull up and climb for so long that they just stall out at the top of the climb and hang there like a big "T" for a moment before falling backwards down towards the ground. The entire time they are doing this they make very easy pickings if you have any kind of gunnery skills at all. Most of us have seen it. You put a few rounds into the plane and it pulls up into a climb and stalls out. The whole time it is climbing and stalled out you pump rounds like mad into it and the enemy plane is destroyed without putting up much of a fight. Well HPW sent me a test copy for Quick Combat only of mods for the Pfalz DIIIa and Sopwith Camel to try and address this problem. I tested out the Pfalz DIIIa first and got good results but to be fair, the problem still persists though to a lesser degree than before. He then sent me a test QC version for the Sopwith Camel and I just love it! Suddenly the Camel has become a very dangerous opponent because (in the 10 QC fights I tried against it) not a single Camel stalled out at the top of a climb, instead choosing to either level out it's flight or roll over while still maintaining good airspeed and continuing on it's flight path arcing gracefully towards the ground to pick up more energy again. Usually I can best a flight of 6 Camels, even on Ace mode, in a Fokker DVIIF without too difficult of a time. No more! With HPWs test mod installed I only won 2 out the 10 fights I had against both full Ace and Random AI skill level Camels. With no easy targets to pick off it becomes much harder to keep track of all of them for longer and longer fights. The odds of getting in one of their crosshairs goes up and once you take enough damage, agility drops and more often than not it's only a matter of time before one of them finished me off. If you want to see them in action here is a preview movie of what I call HPWs Sopwith Camel Anti-Stall "T" mod. The Camels are set to random AI during this particular QC and I get lucky on a few of them up front but keep watching and see the difference in their attack patterns. Video Preview of HPWs Anti-Stall "T" mod Examples of Stalled "T" AI Camel Behavior without HPWs updated FM. Hellshade

That's true. Conversely, the problem with other human pilots is it's sometimes tough to get hundreds of them in the air at once spread across a huge war front where ...no matter where you go in this huge open area...a flight of players is patrolling or on a bomb run. Other players can certainly be more challenging to shoot down (if they are good) but depending on them to be there when you want / need them can sometimes be a bit of a letdown. The solution has been for Devs to make a small area to fly in, resulting in a sort of frantic fight in a fishbowl. I found after awhile in another sim of doing that that it often felt like the same fights over and over again. No surprises. You knew who would be where, in what planes and generally what tactics they would use. Certainly they both have their advantages and disadvantages. Now if you could get a balanced sized area populated with both players and AI planes...THAT would be something exciting. Let the computer figure out where the skies are empty and start putting a few random flights in here and there to mess things up for everyone. Hellshade

I try not to shoot with panic fire. That is the big key. Panic fire is all bad: 1. It gives away your position if the enemy does not know you are above or behind them. 2. It rarely hits anything. Even more rarely does it hit anything vital. 3. As such it is a terrible waste of limited and precious ammo. 4. Once you use up all of your ammo with panic fire you stop being a fighter pilot and immediately become target practice! 5. If you shoot often and miss your enemy knows either you are panicked, a novice pilot, a bad shot or possibly all three. Either way, he is emboldened against you now and you have given him a reason to be confident. That's always bad. I am not such a great shot. You don't see me doing too much hard deflection shooting or long range shooting. I know mostly I will miss so I try to save my bullets for when I can get in close and they will do much damage right away. Besides, I like the idea that every time I pull the trigger my opponent sees, hears and feels the rounds of my gun shredding through his machine - it makes him schit himself with fear every time he hears the crack of my guns! I'm sure the Devs programmed that into OFF:BH&H. They are really good like that. Hellshade

Olham, First I would hate to meet you in the skies because I must say that I don't think I could ever bring myself to put holes in such beautifully painted planes! You always have the finest painted craft in the skies sir. Your screen shots are always the most enjoyable because of your artwork. Also I must congratulate you on putting down so many Nieuports. They are very agile in the skies and it is hard to bring ones own guns to bear on them for any length of time. Good job shooting them so full of holes with just fleeting moments in front of your guns. You are an excellent marksman sir. Great video too. I especially enjoyed the ending. You are a multi-talented artist. Thank you for sharing that. I was very good to watch the Great Olham in action! Hellshade

OFF has the best forum community of any sim. I swear it. I can't wait to fly against the other modded planes. The war is about to get a whole lot harder! Thanks HPW! Hellshade

I object! I have to agree that making the planes more nose heavy might turn off some of the players from flying them. I would heartily recommend that you release them as an AI FM patch where players install them simply to make the AI use those planes better, but if they didn't like what it did to the players experience of flying the plane they could always un-install it and fly with whatever FM they prefer. Plus, I think you should add a little more weight to the Pfalz and see if you can kill the problem altogether like you did with the Sopwith Camel. While you are at it, if you have the time I think that the Albatros DIIIs are nearly as bad as Pfalz DIIIas at the Stall T behavior. Put a few rounds in them and up they go. Easy pickins, which they should not be. Hellshade

I certainly couldn't say what he did, but at least with the Sopwith Camel it doesn't do it at all anymore. Too many of the planes, the moment they suffer some damage they start to pull up right away and they keep pulling up while you pump them full of easy to hit rounds. By the time they stall out, they are already dead or near enough so. Not anymore with the Sopwith Camels using HPWs mod. You would have to ask him what he changed, but I tell you that between your V2.0 DM and the anti-stall T mod, people would be getting a lot fewer kills per mission. I tell you my hands are full when I fly against a flight of Camels now. I literally am on the edge of my seat the entire fight because they are so much more difficult to kill than any other plane. I feel the fear and the respect for them and I love it! I hope he is able to make a separate mod for each of the planes that does this behavior. It eliminated it with the Camel and reduced it with the Pfalz DIIIas, though it can still happen with them. I don't know what the difference between the two would be. Wiser minds than mine will have to figure out those numbers. Perhaps you could work with him on this too? Everyone may think I am over-playing the difference that it makes during the air to air combat but you will just have to try it out for yourself to see how much more challenging it truly makes the dogfighting. Hellshade

Outstanding. Somehow I missed the 2.0 version of Buddy's DM so I'm giving that a whirl now. Great job bundling them together this way for ease of use. Thank you. Hellshade

When it's good and damn well ready. And not a moment before! Hellshade

Forget global warming for a moment and lets say that nobody on earth even says that it exists. It's a non-issue. Thorium reactors are a great idea strictly from a conservative point of view if you think about it. If thorium reactors have all of the benefits listed in the story, then lets forget about global warming entirely for just a moment and focus on something pretty straight forward. National defense and economics. If I was going to try and take out a nuclear powered nation, current nuclear reactors make for extremely inviting targets. If I can blow up just one, I've killed potentially hundreds of thousands of people. Yes, the reactors are incredibly safe - because the builders know that if anything should ever go wrong with them, an awful lot of people are totally screwed. That makes them very inviting targets for people who hate us. Now imagine a nation that only uses thorium reactors. Nothing you do to them will cause a melt down so they aren't a prime target. Furthermore, since there is so much of the raw material around, we would go a long way towards energy independence from the middle east. Energy independence from foreign oil is a national security benefit too. It insulates us from dramatic price shifts in oil if we aren't consuming nearly as much of it. If you've ever said "drill baby drill" then why be opposed to any other resource that we can get right here that helps fuel our economy? It makes no sense to oppose it. The problem is that the moment anyone hears the term "global warming", knee jerk reactions kick in for a lot of people that say "It's all a hoax and so anything to do with it is completely worthless and not worth the money or effort to develop." Forget about global warming and look at the nation security benefits of thorium. If we didn't have to depend on nearly as much foreign oil, that would be a very good thing. If they weren't a high value target to terrorists or enemy nations, that would be a benefit. If they were completely safe, we could probably build a lot more of them than we do our current generation of reactors because you won't have the "green crowd" screaming that they kill the environment. With less opposition we could easily build a lot more of them for even greater energy independence. Not to mention if we build a bunch of thorium reactors, we're going to need people to run and maintain them once they are built. last time I checked, those are permanent jobs to help boost the economy. In short the conservative benefits are: 1. Produce energy from plants that are NOT a prime target for terrorist / enemy nations 2. Build more of them since the green crowd has no reason to oppose them on environmentalist grounds 3. That results in more domestic production of energy for us - reducing our dependency on middle east oil. 4. Create permanent jobs right here in our own country that helps grow the economy 5. and we can even use them to clean up the toxic waste that is left over from the older style nuclear plants. The downside is that it makes the environmentalists happy? If both sides can see a benefit to doing something, maybe we should stop opposing things on principal just because "the other side" says they like the idea. Just a thought. Hellshade

Downloaded it a few hours ago. Tested out several planes. It's the best FM yet in my personal opinion. Honestly, I don't think I would fly without it at this point. Nothing is perfect, but think it's a clear improvement over the stock OFF:BH&H FM. Of course HPW has been working on this and improving it for years while they Devs have been hammering away behind the scenes to give us a whole new level of immersion in WOFF. We are very fortunate to have such dedicated and talented modders. to HPW. Well done sir. Well done indeed. Hellshade

Here's a strange one for you. Call of Cthulhu : Wasteland is a phone / PC game set in the trenches of WWI. Read all about this turn based strategy game http://redwaspdesign...all-of-cthulhu/ Launch Trailer including gameplay http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KDMwDHQY4ps Lots of good reviews but I haven't bought it myself yet so I couldn't give a personal opinion. Only $4.99 though. Hellshade

Thank you very much Andy. Your work is greatly appreciated sir. Hellshade

This is fantastic work Olpaint01! Thank you so much for compiling and organizing all of these great mods into an easy to manage system. What a wonderful gift to the community. And of course many thanks to Creaghorn, HPW, Buddy1998 and Bletchley for creating the mods to begin with! What an awesome community we have here. Seriously. Hellshade

Albatros DIIIs vs a flight of DH2s (6:21) 720HD - Live Commentary Hellshade

Fantastic shooting Shiloh. I heard the first two pilots scream when they got hit and clearly you got the fuel tanks! Excellent use of ammo conservation to maximize your kills up there sir. Bravo! Beautiful pic Olham. Yes it feels bad to shoot down helpless men, but they were likely directing artillery fire onto your countrymen below. The P.B.I. depend on your skill to protect them. Hellshade

http://news.yahoo.com/video/science-15749654/make-the-everyday-easier-with-these-apps-29189631.html Hellshade

I'm not sure how they are going to turn a primarily 1st person solo RPG into a 3rd person MMO, but Zenimax On-line Studios (parent company of Bethesda, I believe) has officially announced the Elder Scrolls MMO set 1000 years before the events of Skyrim. Official Teaser video here http://www.ign.com/videos/2012/05/04/the-elder-scrolls-online-teaser-trailer?objectid=14216012 6 Screen shots (which I have to say do look really good for an MMO) and some concept art http://www.gamebansh...html?tab=images and a link to all known tidbits http://www.neogaf.co...ad.php?t=472749 In a nutshell. 3 factions - pvp emphasized with up to 100 v 100. Keep Sieges including using catapults, etc. Also balanced e-sport pvp (Battleground type stuff) No aggro control on mobs. Seems to use some kind of stamina mechanic. Public and private dungeons. Can select pull single mobs in a room usually. The whole room will turn and respond, apparently, as one would expect. etc etc. Been in development since 2007 with a team of 250 on it. Hellshade

I installed it yesterday and personally I think it's great. I linked a short QC video in the screen shots and video section if you want to hear the guns and engine sounds. Thanks a ton to all of the modders who did their various parts and thanks to OlPaint01 for wrapping it all up into one easy bundle for us. Hellshade

OlPaint01 sent me a copy of his Grand Bundle. I must say I enjoy it very much. What a wonderfully simply way to get all your favorite mods installed with just a few clicks. Here is a quick combat with it installed. - Raw footage - Hellshade

Billy Barnstormer Harry Tate Attila Hun Johnny Poopnloop

Good video Shiloh. I see that you are working on leading your target better and also doing a great job at checking your 6 when you are engaging an enemy aircraft. Definitely a crucial skill to have if you want to live longer in the campaigns. Gratz on your kills sir! You'll do Jasta 13 proud. Hellshade

I haven't had the chance to play it yet but I downloaded it from steam last night too. For $7.49, it's impossible to pass up. As a port, I hope it still supports the Xbox 360 controller. Ports usually play better with their native controlled, I find. Thanks for the heads up Zoomzoom! Hellshade