Stary

BOB2 has I think the best WW2 AI I experienced so far edit: Yeah I was soo hyped the BDG would take on Mig Alley later after polishing BOB2 but that felt into oblivion. I know they were planning Flying Tigers but that too somewhat went under radar few years ago. Also based on BOB2 was an odd more arcadey (or lite in SF series sense) flight sim rerelease, have disc somewhere, Sky Defenders or something to taht effect was the name RE: VSF -the Canvas Knights WW1 sim is developed in it with the cooperation of the VSF programmer to an extend. That is for me quinte an interesting platform for numerous reasons but the 3-years keys you loose after you (apprantly) install it on another system pissed be big time when I bought it in late 2010. There's freeware edition available that has time limit too of course plus it's again, quite interesting to look into for any flight simulation fans. Together with sea/underwater simulations etc, impressive for a one-man show.

there is also BOB code and Mig Alley code I think still available if you'd like to take a look ohh and VSF framework

Gerwin funny as I was thinking from time to time about the 1) porting of selected top quality mods into other sim engine, my thinking being mostly CFS3 for Korea (I love that engine!) or DCS keeping the "lite" nature of the SF2 way things work 2) having a paid programmer willing to rewrite engine of SF2 3) rebuilding the SF2 as a whole in otehr engine suitable for the task be it freeware or not these are more or less afficionado's lunacy and wishful thinking of course but hey, it's the way my mind talks with me sometimes

ummm... wait, isn't the whole thing behind advertising a hope to gather more funds from increased exposure sales? As for workload I wonder what would happen back in say SF2 development phases if someone with good knowledge of either programming and say modelling or say texture artists approached him with offer to work for him on SF series? You know things that happen when the titles series you work on get more net exposure via advertising. Cause and effect etc

Ok, this will be longer than usual and a bit of a rant. But I'll try to make this funny for you. Maybe SF series are underexposed beyond sane reasons because, get this, TK doesn't want them to be more exposed? What if he never wanted? Allow this thought to sink in in you head for a while... done? Good See, I have never ever seen a single SF or SF2 series ad on the net on various flight simulatinons portals -while I am flooded with ads for, excuse moi, "who-gives-a-s**t Gold Dx10 Most Realistic Edition, We assure you Tom's drunken uncle's second wive's cousin flew it back in '64 so we know it's as good as it gets" plane for FSX/P3D/P3D2 or XP9/10 by ArmchairExpertsStudioNumberSeventeen* In fact I was quite suprised when Series2 sort of quietly rolled through late 2008 till 2010 and I have not been exposed to numerous ads and banners encouraging me to try "fun survey simulatiors series covering classic jets era from 1950s to 1970" or something akin to that. Then I did what we SF afficionados are soo used to doing -that is, waiting. Waiting so maybe after he gets the base code for Series2 polished maybe around SF2:Israel he'll start flooding the sites with ads and links to his store. No? Ummm ok, let's wait a lil' more then! maybe he's keeping it low to shock the sims world with the bang of North Atl... ohh wait, nevermind. For me it is and has (allways?) been waiting for the guy to step in and deliver. Then, let me expose you to the familiar main menu screen of North Atlantic: Yup that. Need more cowbells. I mean JJ's lens flares. Or Christophers Walkens at this point. Walken and Abrams walks into a bar. Nevermind But you know what that screen says? That person that made it doesn't give a s**t about the main menu screen in the title they were working on for past months. It isn't the obscure credits screen, it isn't the campaign loss screen either. It's the screen every. single. customer will be exposed to first and 300th time they launch Strike Fighters 2 North Atlantic executable. See, my point is -it's a very lazy screen. 10-15 minutes of PS screen. The stick randomly first font we can pick from the fonts pool screen. Kind of "I no longer give a single afterthought what you will think of this main menu layout and graphics" screen. The "I am bored with this" screen. The "I don't care at this point what the one who might review this title on SimHQ will get as first impression" screen. Back on track but that was relevant: Maybe TK got just tired with running the forums, having to answer the newcomers this or that or dealing with community in general? Maybe TK got, who I am kidding at this point, he seemed fed up with modders and their silly questions and proposals and God forbit requests long time ago? The odd disappearance of forums on Thirdwire site was an indicator for me. Funny as in the first place as oldtimers know it was the dedicated modders who made the series bloom with all them mods. Sorry for not much of a productive post but I just realised early April of 2005 was the first time I ran Wings Over Vietnam. And the sucker stayed with me through all the firther incarnations till this point. 10 fucking years. So I think I have right to rant from time to time. And I still can't see my sorry ass after ejecting *forgive me small pun aimed towards certain XP10 sites that constantly flood me with ads like that. Ohh well might be I aim it as the "hardcore" crowd in general too

WBS you rock! and nice you fix things I wanted to point out, namely the too good (pristine?) conditions of them hulls, a bit of decaling of rust and water environment in general on them looks better IMO

Brain32 I have those periods when I try again to make something in Max usable by new terrain engine and it ends three days later with realization I could spend that time making nice TODs for some tiles or so

Hypothetically I think GOG is a much better platform by it's very nature aims towards more mature customers base. I have no problems imagining Steam re-release of SF2 bundle with dozens of prerelease reviews like "tiz game iz brokah!!! fix it!!!1111", you know how, let's say it politely, younger players react Do335 with all respect CFS3 is superior than SF2 in many areas not only graphics wise (especially when you put WOFF libraries and shaders into bare/modded CFS3!!!). As you tend to point towards WW2 SF2 title -how about -zero- options for switching pilot's station or manning defense turrets? Also no way to have bailout animation is immediate immersion killer for me in such case. More than in jet era. In my book SF2 is like Streak says it is -from post war around '48 (Israel's first war) through Korea to late 60s, ok make it end of Nam so mid 70s. I have hard time recollecting other flight simulator that rivals SF2 in the avionics and missiles fidelity in this timeframe. Post 90s it's not that great I think, that's why I stay from this timeframe -lack of even simple EO sensors slewing, ground locks etc you know. I think 99.5% post 90s aerial warfare was "accurately dropping this into that window from here" kind of engagements, maaaybe with 2008 Russia-Georgia and ongoing green men-Ukraine just bit less sophisticated As for DCS playability, well I still am battling with myself regarding buying the Sabre and 109K as I see that after the first 30 minutes to hour of uberhype after buying MiG-15 or 21Bis (about 100 bucks for two planes...) I can't say I was flying them later on past the 2 hours flytime mark. And that is my BIG issue with anything DCS -right now I treat is as a pricey way to have handy zoomable reference data for cockpits modelling

sure, having backups of the TW forums is more important now I think so thaks for the efforts

the infantry sure would have use of reduced movement speeds and turn speeds, not to mention separate ground object class so we wouldn't have cases where there are like 5 infantry "units" vs say 16 tanks as I recently experienced

<S> Rest in peace Jug

some fail shots from my another look into the so-called "new" NA terrain enigne... given the 60x60 kilometers test mesh was like 150 kilo polys total (composed of 36 10x10 km chunks) I wonder from where those polycounts are that you can see on info screen there. Also given the existing exporters crah Max when exporting mesh with over around 5000 vertices I wonder if there was other one TK keeps for himself used to export the chunks making Iceland

seems we have good times ahead thanks to work of good folks like Mue or Gerwin so go back to work, I will

funny as for many times I wished to win lottery to be able to hire TK to do this or that...

take a rest Kevin, watch for your eyes. Really

it works just fine -one has to set the ROOT SF2 installtion directory and open the terrain in question master ini file, like Korea3.ini AND it reads TFD tiles map and even the corresponding TODs and high resolution tiles. Wonders!

Mue! man you are already rocketing into Modder of the Year, you know that?! so it reads all the tiles and TODs too? That's beyond awesomeness already! I hope at one time it will be able to do editing in real time

Apart from SF2? The Hunter: Primal, first time I play multiplayer in years!!!!!!1111 bit of FSX Steam (go fffffu u Microsoft for you know what you did thieves!) started Ori and The Blind Forest which is beautiful visually off to start Dead Island Riptide and some classics recently: Blood One Unit Whole Blood, can someone do OpenGL port of it please? Akin to EDuke32 etc? Shadow Warrior Classic (the freeware Steam version) "Veteran Edition" of Strife which I missed in the 90s despite my friend was talking about it nonstop DooM (various WADs, but mostly now "Knee Deep in Z-Doom" with Brutal DooM v1.90, impatient for 1.20 to come out) Panzer Elite with PP2X maybe hour of Ship Simular Extreme lol and you don't want the list of games I started but stopped playing due to whatever but lack time and/or will to go back into (Xenonauts, Stalker series, Skyrim looking at you!)

but we love to beat that dead rotten horse carcass, don't we?

so let's do public CombatAce funds collections and handle the monies to say hmmm, Stary maybe? and then he'll approach TK with the cash to do the talking. I think about 1-1.5 million dollars would do just fine. Yeah. on a serious note, WTR team and I think Swambast in particular did indeed got into some deal with TK so why not try as a SF2 community? Also like PauloPanz brought up examples of efforts like those of Cliffs of Despair Dover TF mod team and Team Daidalos, I have hard time figuring out what would prevent few skilled individuals from working on the code say hacks or some runtime manipulations, from legal point of view. COD is still valid product available via multiple online stores so doesn't fall into the (let's be honest here very) blurry "abandonware" category, neither do SF2 as Harold pointed out, right? But nothing prevents 3rd parties from working on patches to owned software as far as software laws go last time I checked, right Julhelm? Plus we have mail from TK to Stratos stating he doesn't care what we do with the exes as long as it isn't sold (?) or some kind of reverse-engineering used? ZoltanTheHun, welcome aboard. +1 for good first post, keep it up just some random thinking after a hard work day

of which as far as I know only Gerwin has programming skills. Ohh rule that Stary guy out, he can't do say 17x21 without using windows calculator

I know Streak I just had to

I asked Thiedwire on the Facebook page few thigs, nothig so far -and I think it will stay unanswered like that: as you can see apart from the not-that important new terrain format I raised the issue of newer Max versions importers but I have little faith this post will get answer

"they were happy not to be working on PC these days" is a very interesting choice of words indeed FC