Do335

LOL

SKYNET Aerial Node Prototype

"Mandumi is under attack!"

Heh yes Beach we're all human with emotions. It's been mentioned that commercial ware devs are "paid to shut up" on the forums. That and, of course, how they're supposed to manage their time, forum blathering or coding? As a loyal reader of your AARs since like '05, I think they are certainly very spot on to represent the thoughts of mainstream players. And I think (it's just me here, but I sure reckon others'll agree) that SF is good to still have ya around despite TK's departure from PC.

OK sniped by Mina. I still think it's the Optional files that confused things... oughtta update the install instructions. Sorry gents.

minaunicorn, did you use any files from the "Optional" folder from the download?

Stary those seemed to be what TK said altho in not that many words... I totally agree about the internet being available thus resulting in skyrocketing dev cost in, say, making a 3D pit. In the process you're essentially sacrificing gameplay, since everything is a tradeoff of dev resources. Here it is literally a question of.. knowledge is power, or ignorance is bliss.

hmm space commerce. catching up the sci-fi stories here.

I've said enough but regarding forum noise... We and likely TK read too much about it. Ones that show up on the forums are a tiny fraction of the paying customers. Many game devs don't generally care too much about what's said, unless say a bug gets reported multiple times which needs public addressing or roadmap for next year etc. Last thing they wanna do is take game change suggestion from the forums and go ahead to implement it IMHO, because 90% of those are either from other games or just end up satisfying a few individuals. The forums most likely isn't feedback from the market although it can appear to be.

Heck about the sim vs game sayings I don't even buy it. Sim just equals more switchology at the sacrifice of gameplay features. Done enough button pushing and no matter how hardcore you go you can never do the things the real guys do, because excluding the danger of facing death, real guys fight on the battlefield, which the so-called sims like DCS sacrificed so they can add the button pushings in! TK hits the right balance there and with a budget none less... Likewise I hope there's a slim chance that this series can go forward. If not well... hopefully CA stays alive here and the mods will make it better. So many mods that can be improved quality wise with Mue's new tools... ---- TK's thoughts on Russian cost, just quoting here for ref. (Maybe there's a saying for it's TK so take it with a grain of salt, not sure if it's come to that heh)

Yeah, after all DCS is not that transparent to us. Maybe someone more in the know like Beach or the DCS guys can shed some light. But when referring to DCS I was actually thinking more about some non-flightsim titles that share common traits, it's just DCS are familiar with ppl here. Anyway...

Well.. over here it's not last time I asked around. Only companies that offer global pay (read 1st world pay) are in the finance sector. Things could be different in Russia or changed ofc. Then there're the helper hands which surely are below min wage in western standards:p

FastCargo.... I can only speculate with TK's views that DCS is based in Russia, hence significantly lower cost is one factor. (As in "Made in China" which sounds familiar)

Wrench that post is very old SFP1, if TK didn't use it for later titles I reckon it'd be best to comply with his later format as it's possible he dropped it like you said. Unless one's willing to do rigorous testing to verify ofc..

Excuses excuses... But jokes aside flying the red side is always hard from own experience as well.. The blue side always has way more planes in the air and that alone can cause a big problem to begin with.. Best I managed was 3-4 hops in a Mig19 Farmer before a tailgunner ruined the day.

http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6238&hilit=firesuppression

I'm vividly searching these topics at the TW foras. TK's post are spread all over the place, along with some CA in house modders'. There could be more. http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6276&p=38684&hilit=hitpoints#p38684 Well, I think you're making it more complicated than it is... The logic is pretty simple, the game first checks for collision box for the whole plane - if it hits, then it checks to see which components are hit - if any is hit, then it check the systems within that component to see which one is hit. All these are done to prevents having to do time-consuming collision checks on every single bullet against evey single systems in evey single airplane. Multiple systems and components can be hit if there are enough damage to carry over. To answer the list of questions... 1. No. 2. No. 3. It finds the min/max points in that model nodes and use that as hit box. 4. Yes, if there are enough damage to carry over. 5. System listed in 4 components will be created as 4 separate systems. 6. CollisionPoint are already used in case of belly landing. 7. Maybe, sooner I can stop answering q's here and go back to coding, better the chance :) 8. Armor absorb energy from every damage, So you can think of it as "means of increasing hitpoints of a system" that never depletes, or as "threshold ... energy that must be exceeded to damage the system". However, there is always a chance for critical hit that bypass the armor with every shot, so even with 8 x .303’s, you can still get that lucky shot. http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6206&p=38198&hilit=hitpoints#p38198 http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=27300#p27300 http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=249#p249 http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=36212#p36212 (from Stary) http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=41552#p41552 http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6238&hilit=firesuppression

Agreed Beach, seems that TK played pretty close to heart like it's his baby. One can say he never wanted to be big. Or can say he didn't because he didn't want to. But I'm thinking coming from his early Jane's days when big budgets plummeted all for nothing, his experience was the former. And having spent thousands and thousands of hours on Falcon4 I tend to agree with him. Those devs rocked hard, made an awesome and extremely in-depth sim that dwarfed everything else even to date, but rocked themselves out in the process. To think selling that to average gamers who mostly just want to play point and shoot games with 40 bucks a pop... nan. I think my second/third college year was spent like a ghost coz was reading Falcon manuals all night, testing, flying and modding it and still having information overload learning it 6 years later, they surely are dreaming to ask a middle-class career/family man for that who make up the bulk of gamers revenue wise.(?) At the end of day we are armchair pilots and not real fighter jocks, otherwise we'd joined the air force!... So I reckon maybe TK thought he figured it out and decided to do his own thing by setting up TW and keeping it small and low budget. With benefit of hindsight with DCS being successful and all, as said there could be something he miscalculated. He supported campaign engine, mission generator, AI and modding. These things don't sell. But they cost big time development resources wise. Perhaps it's still his old Jane's self playing a part, or the business model evolutions hadn't come to that point yet as SF1 was 2003 after all, or geniuses like Wags just invented them along the way, or just like Beach said it's TK's personal goal.... Anyway what if he dropped those and kept pumping out DLC addon planes, plane pack bundles, SF3.0/4/5 graphics engine updates with a few other changes mixed in? Most ppl mainly loves shiny new planes and nice gfx. And for missions god knows there're them and campaigns being uploaded to CombatAce all the time, like DCS and other games are leveraging nowadays: community or "volunteer based content contributors", which, doesn't incur dev cost at all. And heck aren't the fans all too enthusiastic and willing to contribute. Ironic that when asked to do some DLC planes TK mentioned along the lines that "There's no campaign for them." Or put it another way, at 2012 he was still doing the same thing he did 10 years ago based on basically the same engine. Some changes had to happen for business to continue and thrive. (Maybe mobile is the answer there?...) If one's read Kodak and related stories recently that could be the same principle. But... heck if TK had went just for the money grabbing route myself wouldn't be flying it though. My thought at this point. Sorry for another wall of text as ya old timers probably have more to say and it probably doesn't comfort the disgruntled PC fans any but it's my honest thought atm and writing it out is for myself as well.

Yah Beach ask them to make out of fuel AI not crash and/or give them a speed bonus to stay in formation easier like TK did, so your wingman won't crash in the next AAR:p If they're willing to take time off making switchology so it sells better to the "realism" stereotypes that is!

http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5752&p=35278#p35278

Mark pg 530

^Yeah that's a (internal?) question only TK can answer I suppose. If ventured a guess he wasn't hiring. http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7664&p=48249&hilit=coder#p48249 http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7303&p=45532&hilit=months+artwork+behind#p45532 ... He is the only coder and apparently the only tech support. But there could be merit in his thinking. Flight simming, wargaming etc, like many other hobbies actually, are niche of niche. A company can throw $$$ outta for ads and get minimal returns. I've seen other game buiz owners with same line of thinking. I think Tk's focus market is even smaller due to nature of his game. And heck Stary, TW is around for more than a decade. And it's still around for mobile. TK hasn't had a bad run at all I reckon.

Same here about 4 years... Perhaps twas indeed a bit long now.. Never knew what happened, one day stopped and just never went back. Maybe finally got everything outta her. Anyway..

lol...2 weeks eh. Anyway Im sorry mate. Take care Stary. As for TK well, perhaps he's tired of the old big budget days and just wanna do his own thing. Open modding support are something that games that wanna profit rarely do now. Neither is a robust AI and mission/campaign system. TK did them all and very well and devoutly supported modding. Perhaps he didn't wanna go big at all but just something he liked. ...Then perhaps along the way he got tired of doing his own thing, as if the lack of funds and workload placed on him finally got too much. Anyway that's the impression I got reading his posts thus far.

eh hey Eole2 what was your username at BMS/FF? I flew Falcon a lot and coulda probably saw you on the forums:) As for FF yeah iirc they disbanded shortly after BMS got released and the github project apparently hasn't been updated for half a year.. Not a coder here ofc but did get into the BMS dev forums eventually and realised it was indeed very very slow (to begin with...)