AndyHill

I know of a couple of people with similiar problems. Some kind of a solution would be great. Your solution sounds very odd and I suspect it might be simply a lucky random event. Have you been able to play online since? My buddies can sometimes connect properly and your eleventh attempt may smiply have been a lucky one. I'd really like to find out what's actually causing this problem. ______________________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have a dynamic campaign engine with multiplayer capability!

Personally I think the issue of simulator visibility can be summarized with an equation that contains framerate, resolution and viewing angle. Of these only framerate and resolution are even in the ballpark when comparing computer simulation and reality. (Disclaimer: From now on I'll be quoting numbers from memory and they might be wrong. I'd like to see more research on the subjects if anyone can provide them) It would only take a constant 80-100 fps to get close to the human limits and although that's possible in some games it's not very likely in Lock on. I think I remember reading somewhere that the human eye's resolution is in the region of about 10000 x 10000, but a lot of it is concentrated in a very narrow region (of about 2 degrees?) giving the human eye a distinct edge over any computer screen. The last, but definitely not the least advantage is viewing area. Humans usually see about 180 x 120 degrees, which is a LOT more than most screens can offer. Depending on your screen and the distance you sit from it your mileage may vary, but chances are you won't get close. Because of these differences we're flying virtually blind. If noticing camouflaged aircraft against the ground and keeping track of bandits and maintaining SA is an uphill struggle for a real pilot it's the Himalayas for us. Of course there are no labes in real life, but if you want to simulate the reality of air combat they may well be necessary. A neat little experiment to try is to look out of the window at an object about 100 feet away. That's your wingleader. Now move your head around and note how much "sky" you can scan while still keeping the wingleader in the corner of your eye. Now fire up Lock on and do the same. Note that to keep resolution and object size comparable you'll have to zoom close or really close depending on your monitor. _____________________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have a dynamic campaign engine with multiplayer support!

Ok so we got screenshots, how about some really interesting stuff? What kind of neat features are you working on right now? Any useful or fun features that are already functional? ______________________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have a dynamic campaign engine with multiplayer capability!

Which version are we talking about? I have 1.12a and it doesn't seem to have LoGetWorldObjectById. It does have LoGetWorldObjects and LoGetObjectById and I did get LoGetWorldObjects to work. _______________________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have a dynamic campaign engine with multiplayer capability!

I like to know about even experimental features that never make it into the final release. Even if something like dual core support fails it's good to know that you actually tried. The reason why I'd like to see developement journals or something like that is because valuable information can be difficult to find and gets lost in threads such as this one. A proper developer's journal might be a bit troublesome, but I'd settle for a couple of sentences on the forum once per week. I think you're sitting on a lot of information people would like to know and you wouldn't actually mind releasing.Like I've said before the few bits and pieces of information I've read about the progress and new features are more important to me than any screenshots. I might not be the only one. ________________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have a dynamic campaign with multplayer capability!

Well, Olgerd seems to be doing just fine with his English and I don't know how long it took him to post that info, but that one sentecnce alone has more value to me than all the screenshots combined. Even if the features won't actually work it's great to know that they're being worked on and that ED consider them worth the effort. ________________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have a dynamic campaign with multiplayer capability!

That's what developer journals are for. Instead of screenshots and videos I'd much rather read stuff like "Right now we're working on dual CPU support, flyable Hornet, a new map for Northern Europe, lots of new lua export features, AFM for all flyables and a bit less ear-shattering interface music." Note that this kind of updates and screenshots aren't mutually exclusive and we could have them both. ________________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have a dynamic campaign with multiplayer capability!

YAY! Why do we have to dig the forums for this kind of valuable info when trivial things such as screenshots parade the front pages of lockon.ru much of the time? ______________________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have a dynamic campaign engine with multiplayer capability!

Unfortunately "low expectations" probably means "realism" in this issue. Major AI overhaul would be great, but I somehow doubt ED would do it. SwingKid's campaign would be far beyond "better than nothing", as with the campaign engine fully operational Lock on would be second only to F4. Far above Strike Fighters, better than Il-2, perhaps on par with EECH. AI will do stupid things under difficult conditions and unfortunately that's not a Lock on -specific problem. Modern battlefield tends to be more problematic than simpler WW2 era environment. There are some relatively simple things that would help SK's campaign engine a LOT, but having the result exports would be a big step in the right direction. _____________________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have a dynamic campaign system with multiplayer support!

It depends. Since SwingKid would take care of the campaign engine all ED really need to do is to provide the mission result files for multiplayer. Other improvements are welcome, of course, but that's pretty much all that is required at this point. _______________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have a dynamic campaign with multiplayer support!

Because you can fly dynamic campaigns with online squads. If ED decide to spend a tiny bit of time implementing a tiny little feature. _______________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have a dynamic campaign with multiplayer support!

Ok so what's going on behind the scenes? What kind of features are being worked on at the moment? Any really interesting stuff? _____________________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have a dynamic campaign system with multiplayer support!

Once again, this was already better than a bunch of images or video. If you have anything alse to share please let us know. _______________________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have a dynamic campaign system with multiplayer capability!

Actually you CAN start on the runway in multiplayer if there's only one client flight per airfield. Probably extremely useful. _______________________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have a dynamic campaign system with multiplayer capability!

Well the best thing is that ED really wouldn't need to do that much. They already have all sorts of mission debrief systems and event logs, chances are it would be very simple to implement all the necessary features. _____________________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have a dynamic campaign system with multiplayer support!

I think it should be possible to simulate client flights by creating several one-ship flights with the exact same waypoints. That should work pretty well since following the flight lead is the players' choice anyway. ________________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have a dynamic campaign with multiplayer capability!

Like I wrote at the moment SW2 is pretty much a technology demonstrator and the missions it generates at the moment aren't that special. Every version has been more advanced and things keep progressing all the time, though. Maybe you can pressure SwingKid to work harder (I suspect he still gets some sleep at least a couple of nights every week) and you'll get the campaign faster. You could also tell him that the quality of a dynamic campaign correlates with the density of the node grid. Tracking pilot stats would be a great feature, it hasn't been discussed much yet, since the campaign engine it at such an early stage. Personally I'd like to see every pilot in the campaign tracked so that every plane and perhaps even the ground units have a specific pilot, whose successes and failures are recorded and they would have an effect on his skill level, maybe also fatique. Global pilot stats would be nice, but having campaign or server specific stats will go a long way and be far easier to implement. Note that a functional multiplayer mission event log would allow for more detailed statistics on online servers running furballs and co-ops, not just dynamic campaigns. ________________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have a dynamic campaign with multiplayer capability!

If you test the latest version you'll notice that there's already an option for creating multiplayer missions (there's a template for 8 players). The only difference with multiplayer is the flyable plane assignment so it shouldn't be too far behind. _______________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have a dynamic campaign with multiplayer support!

I don't think it would take more than a couple of days, since ED only have to do a tiny bit and SwingKid will do the rest. Personally I think even a couple of weeks spent on this would be very cost-effective, but the important part is what ED want to do. Maybe if people on this board show support they'll reconsider. After the BSO fiasco I kind of thought keeping a relatively low profile would be preferrable until the release of the campaign generator, but this would be a very good time to get a tiny little bit of support from ED. It would be a great shame if the campaign generator would be limited to single player just because such a simple little feature was missing. _______________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have a dynamic campaign with multiplayer support!

So, would you? I know I would. The best thing is that it can be done and there's even a good chance that it will be done. SwingKid has been working on one for quite some time already and although it's still at the "technical demonstrator" phase there's been steady progress and I believe the campaign engine will one day be finished and able to create dynamic Lock on -campaigns. Single player campaigns should be possible with the present mission result file system (you get all the necessary data from campaign files already so there's no problem), but if you want to fly dynamic campaigns with your buddies ED need to implement something similiar for multiplayer as well. It should be dead simple, since it has already been done for single player and if for some reason the same system can't be used in multiplayer environment there should be relatively easy workarounds such as the lua exports or multiplayer logs for example. What is required is a complete list of all the events that occur in the missions and all the associated details (such as the exatc object that is destroyed and so on) saved in a file so that the external campaign engine (SkyWars 2) can read the events and manage the campaign status accordingly. But like I said, a perfectly working system is already in place, it just needs to be enabled in multiplayer games as well. I think that at worst implementing something like this would delay the Black Shark release a couple of days at most. If ED went through a little trouble they could get a dynamic (single AND multiplayer) campaign engine for free. It would keep players interested in Lock on until the release of the sequel (and might save them a lot of developement effort if they could use the third party campaign as a prototype for their own campaigns later on) by improving replayability immensely. I couldn't think of a feature with nearly as good a cost-effect ratio as this one. This would also be the perfect time to implement the new feature, since ED are working hard on the Black Shark. The campaign engine won't be finished in time for Black Shark release, but sometime in the future ED could use the availability of a dynamic campaign to boost the sales of their products (for example a Lock on Platinum release) even if the campaign wasn't of their own making. I think this would be pretty much a win-win situation for everyone. ED would have a huge improvement for their sim at almost no cost to themselves, we would get to play dynamic campaigns in multiplayer also and SwingKid would get to do a lot of hard work for little reward. So how about it? Would you care about a multiplayer dynamic campaign? If you like dynamic campaigns in general it wouldn't hurt to show support for SwingKid, who's working on one at the moment. I say go for it all the way, what says the Lockon.ru forum? _______________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have a dynamic campaign with multiplayer support!

A couple of words is worth a thousand images. I'd much rather see this kind of weekly reports than pretty pictures. I wouldn't mind having both, though. _______________________________________________ Lock on MUST have toe-brakes with differential braking!

How difficult would it be to crack a dongle system? How difficult would it be to code a USB driver thingy that emulates a dongle when the game checks for it? If many games rely on a similiar dongle system there will be lots of demand for a crack and certain people are going to try real hard to do it. Games like Lock on and Steel Beasts are relatively safe, since they're not that popular and crackers won't bother. I don't know if there's a crack for Lock on, but for some StarForce games you can already get no-CD cracks. A no-CD patch can be made individual if it uses hardware data gathered during the registration and refuses to function on another setup. ________________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have toe-brake functionality with differential braking!

I've never played Ace Combat, but here's a guess: There's lots of radio chatter and situational feedback in Ace Combat, which makes the player feel like a part of a team? It's probably also easier to know what you need to do and when. Just my guess. ________________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have toe-brake functionality with differential braking!

You can freely use my sig. ________________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have toe-brake functionality with differential braking!

You can do pretty much anything from the Lua script, just add your stuff to the function that runs at the end of the mission. Lua may not be the greatest language in the world, but I think it should be able to do what you're trying to achieve. _________________________________________________________ Lock on MUST have toe-brake functionality with differential braking!