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luthier1

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Everything posted by luthier1

  1. luthier1

    DCS: WWII

    Да. Если соберем базовую сумму, получите все базове. Соберем максимум - получите всю линейку по максимуму. Естественно, это только на релиз. Все будущие релизы - отдельная история. Да. Аххх да. Делаем ТОЛЬКО К-4. Сейчас попытаюсь отредактировать. :thumbup:
  2. luthier1

    DCS: WWII

    В зависимости от внесенных денег, получаете конкретные вещи. Если внесли 20+ долларов, получаете один платный самолет. Внесли 40+, получаете все платные в изначальном релизе. Если внесли меньше 20 долларов, то да, потом сможете купить самолеты отдельно. Сетка дорог будет достаточно точной. Движение наземки, вообще интеграция движка, пока в работе. Конечно, мы понимаем, что в 40е надо лучше, видно больше. С А-10 долбанул издалека, квадратный километр в огне, рассеялось, лежат груды. А тут на П-47, стреляешь с сотни метров, видно каждое попадание. Наземка должна и ездить хорошо, и убиваться зрешищно разнообразно. См выше. Пока рановато конкретно что-то обещать Не знаю, и сейчас не у кого спросить. Самолеты, которых не летает, конечно делать сложнее. Со звуками конкретно про Ю-88 пока не решали. Конечно, будем стараться все с жизни брать, что возможно. Особенно если самолеты есть в Fighter Collection или у их друзей. Перекрасить Б-17 конечно проблем нет! Будет. Можно. Будет длинное видео только про него. Битые сжатые скрины - у кикстартера такой формат. Выложу скрины покрупнее, когда будет видео про ландшафт, но еще раз заранее предупреждаю - Нормандию совсем недавно начали делать. Обычно с такой стадии не показывают. У нас макет, текстуры набросали побыстрому, и т д. Тоже очень надеюсь. П-38 мой один из любимых. Эх надо перевести. Простите. Следаю как можно скорее.
  3. We're not planning to touch the FM and the systems. I really think this is more of a discussion for Yo-Yo, not for myself, as the Mustang and the Dora are his babies. We are thinking of lots and lots of stuff for multiplayer. It's a huge part of a project's success. However we are so early in our planning that we're keeping it out of our Kickstarter completely. We're still at the point where we might end up being unable to keep any promise we make in this respect. However we are well aware that dedicated servers are very important! That's what we'll have in the final stretch goal. Yes. Need to start it ASAP. The kickstarter is now live, sorry if the description is not perfect. Normandy is about 100x160km. The updated engine is for landscape. Multiplayer numbers have to do with something else entirely. To have 100+ aircraft you need to have very smart net code, where you manage to send it all the pertinent information to all participants about all the relevant FM data. We definitely want this! However please read above for more details on our approach to multiplayer improvements. Theoretically, yes. Practically, we're in very complex time-consuming territory. Even a Normandy-sized map is almost a year of work. An entire Europe - theoretically possible to make, but how many Normandies fit into a Europe? That's how many man-years it would take to make to the same quality standard. See above :) Well, when we're a week away from the end and we're coming up short of the needed funds, then we'll mount a last-resort final push. And if that fails, then we'll talk about what happens to the project if we can't get Kickstarter funding. Basically, the project will still happen, but we'll have a less detailed less historical landscape, and, frankly, more bugs due to less money for a testing budget. HUGE priority for us. Like i said earlier, we're very early in the project, so we only have plans at this point. We know that for this to truly succeed on release, we need to have giant waves. We'll see what needs to be done. Obviously, the current limitation is fidelity. Running 100 high-fidelity flight models and 400 engine models kills the PC. We need to have different LODs for aircraft models, so you don't really need to honestly calculate every aspect of an airframe or en engine when a perfectly intact B-17 just cruises in formation.
  4. luthier1

    DCS: WWII

    Ну что ребята, запустили Видео проекта есть и тут. В аннотациях - русские субтитры
  5. Hello everyone, We’ll be launching our kickstarter in about 24 hours, or, in the worst case, about 30 hours. If you’re not sure about what DCS WWII: Europe 1944 is, please read the official announcement or join the discussion here. There are a few very important points we’d like to make: 1. The project is at a very early stage. Normally, video game development goes something like this. You go through some initial planning and discussion. You agree on budget and schedule, then begin the development. After some months, or maybe even years, you arrive at a playable mock-up or maybe a pre-alpha version. You announce the project, show what you have to the fans, and move forward. With DCS WWII, we’re doing something different. We are in the very early initial design stage. If things were done the normal way, we’d be about six months away from an official announcement. Why then are we doing this? Because we are not working with a publisher. When we looked at our budget and our schedule, we realized we’d be cutting it very close and we’d really need a bit more money and a bit more time to really do things comfortably. So we decided to go the kickstarter route. It should give us the freedom to really perfect our game; and perhaps even allow us to make a larger product if we manage to hit our stretch goals. And so, we’re back to the main point. The project is very, very early. Normally we would not show it to the public at this stage. We could wait six months and go kickstarter then – but then we’d lose the stretch goal option. If we don’t start on, say, a flyable B-17 today, if we wait six months to begin, then we delay its release by six months as well. So, we know how the community lives to scrutinize every pixel and every word. So please keep in mind that things are not just WIP. They’re so far away from final, they’re all the way back at the other end. They’re “initial”. Kickstarter changes a lot of things on our end, so please accept it as a change on yours. We’re showing you the project six months before we normally would. Please keep that in mind in all future discussion. 2. Kickstarter can fail. Here’s how it works. We are asking for a relatively minor initial sum on kickstarter which is needed to put in a few extra features and really polish and perfect the product. We obviously need a large number of people to back the project to even hit the initial sum. If you back the project, but over the course of the kickstarter campaign we fail to reach the initial goal, then the campaign fails and all the money is returned to backers. We the developers receive nothing. However if we do manage to excite enough fans to back the project in the next 30 days, and we hit our initial goal, then this opens the road to the real meat of the campaign: stretch goals. All money raised will go towards development. If we manage to hit additional stretch goals, we will add a lot more exciting stuff to the project, most importantly new aircraft and new gameplay maps. However that will require a significant community effort. Larger stretch goals will require thousands and thousands of backers; it’d require the equivalent of everyone who ever bought DCS: P-51 to come in with the purchase price they paid in the next 30 days and back our kickstarter to hit some of the larger stretch goals. Possible? We hope so. But we’ll need help. 3. We need your help! What we really need for our project to succeed is exposure. If you back our project, please tell your friends about it. Even if you cannot back our project, but are excited about it, tell your friends. DCS WWII: Europe 1944 requires a large concentrated community effort to become successful. If you are a journalist, please get in touch. If you are a member of a flight sim community, please mention our kickstarter on your forums. If your friends have questions, send them here, or send us to them. We only speak English and Russian. If you are a member of an international flight sim community, help us spread the word in your language! Please help us get there. We cannot do it on our own! Thank you very much. We, everyone, myself personally, are unbelievably excited about tomorrow. See you then!
  6. luthier1

    DCS: WWII

    Это все не часть Эджа. Эдж - ландшафт. Земля, дома, деревья, море. Остальное - наверное останется как в DCS.
  7. We really haven't gotten into this very deeply at this stage. We're only going there if we hit kickstarter strech goals. If we do, we'll get to work on it, and then a few months later we'll have a much better idea of the limitations. Oh, we have tons of the Gs, we just have a lot more on the K. Or rather, we have better stuff that's more applicable to our needs for the K-4. Not much of a difference between tracking a gazillion boxes, or a single gazillion-polygon object.
  8. luthier1

    DCS: WWII

    Бизнес-политика "меньше реализма" в данном случае = бизнесс-суицид. DCS - мега реализм. Тем заработал себе имя и фанатов. Именно для них строим игры. Бросать существующую, лояльную базу клиетов и пытаться привлечь новую - зачем нам такая ерунда?
  9. luthier1

    DCS: WWII

    Все по желанию запустившего кикстартер. Каждый разработчик определяет, что давать за какую сумму. Все это детально прописано в сайд-баре. Мы, как разработчик, клятвенно обязаны сделать обещанное в обещанные сроки. Доступ к бете в нашем проекте начинается с 10 долларов. То есть, практически все поддержавшие полетают в бету. Оплата кикстартера идет через амазон. Это посредник. Туда, вроде, можно засунуть любую кредитную - дебитную карточку. Система немного громоздкая на первый взгляд, но так надо. Амазон фактически является финансовым посредником, или эскроу, не знаю, как точнее описать. Вы "обещаете" амазону 10 долларов, или 20, или тысячу. Амазон все это у себя держит до окончания кикстартера. Если кикстартер успешен, набрали базовую сумму, эти деньги передаются разработчику. Не успешен - деньги возвращаются вам. Было бы удобней сразу вбить карточку в киктстартер, но тогда были бы проблемы и головная боль в случае провала кикстартера и т д. Делает уже кое-кто отечественный авиапром. Зачем нам так напрямую соперничать? У нас Яки, у них Яки. У нас Штука, у них Штука. У нас снега, у них снега. Не скучновато ли будет? К отечественному успеем прийти. EDGE сделан с нуля. Старый ландшафт вообще по боку. Машинки еще не до конца сделаны. Как будут ездить в финале, рано говорить. Дорог на карте много. Все прокладывается ручками, так что зависит только от затраченного времени. Конечно, бессмысленно тратить человеко-месяцы, чтобы проложить все проселочные по всей карте. Поэтому точная сетка дорог будет в важных местах. Дело тут не в возможностях движка, а в бюджетах и сроках. Чем тратить 2 месяца картодела на проселочные на старой карте, лучше за это время сделать еще одну новую. Так считаю И то, и другое? Планы были очень давно, еще в старых проектах. Это супер мега сложная штука, денег и времени нужно оччччень много. Пока не потянем. Но очень сильно хочется, и очень давно. Хейнкеля пока нет. В 1944 году он как-то совсем слабоват. Чего на нем делать? Глазеть на Мустангов, и направлять горящую машину на одинокий Шерман в кустах?
  10. Also, sorry if I missed anyone's questions. Please quote yourself and ask again, I'll try to answer. And most importantly THANK YOU everyone for your kind words and wishes. I just really, really, really love aviation and it's a huge honor for me to be doing this. I feel like one of the luckiest people in the world to have my main passion as my job. I am unbelievably excited about this project, about working with my old colleagues, interacting with many old friends, and making new ones. Can't wait to fly my own game!
  11. Whew. Let's get on with it. My move and internet situation are really inconvenient. I apologize for being unavailable so much. The P-51 and the Dora will be exact copies of the aircraft from DCS World. They are perfect. We are not touching them. I have to say that I did not expect such a strong response to the separate install for DCS WWII. We are at this time just basically making DCS World modules, and we're months away from having our own executable or install. Theoretically we could go back and discuss this internally, but we're unfortunately almost out of time. Launching a Kickstarter carries with it certain obligations; since we're describing our product as I explained it, we can't eventually change our minds and release it as a generic DCS World module. Please rest assured that this decision was made for one reason and one reason only: ease of access in the long run. There are a lot of variables here that have to be considered. We thought we made the best decision possible, but since so many people are unhappy, we are unhappy. We will keep a separate install for DCS WWII due to our Kickstarter obligations, but we'll go back and think this over and try to make sure we also provide for an easy seamless option for DCS World users. We are definitely considering night operations, but not initially. There's too much that needs to be done, and we're trying to go lean initially. You need to have historical radar, searchlights, airborne radar and night interceptors with their own AI etc. It's a huge project. I don't think we could pull this at the moment, and if we add it as a kickstarter stretch goal, I am really not sure we'd be able to get the hundreds of thousands of dollars something like this would cost. We're going a bit higher. Here's a much better thing for everyone to bicker about. We decided on the K-4 because it's the best documented 109. If we were to go with a G-something, margin of error would be a lot higher because source data has so many holes in it. See above about the night module. I really don't see how it's my business as a developer to compare and contrast products. On one hand, I am probably biased towards my own work; on the other, I'm perhaps a bit too honest from a marketing standpoint. In any case, neither their product nor mine are publicly available yet. There's no business more futile than arguing about developer promises. And once the community gets their hands on all the upcoming WWII sims, developer opinions won't matter much either, right? This is the awkward name I was talking about. I'm more of a fan of more poetic names like Skies of Blood or Iron Rain (joke names I just came up with), but I guess we decided on this one out of all the options. Need the money by October so we can knock together a proper team for what we're trying to build. Actually, moved out of a large three-bedroom mansion into a tiny one-bedroom. Developing flight sims is a lot of fun, but it's not very profitable. The problem with tree collisions, at least in my past experience, is just in the sheer number of collision objects. There is probably a hundred million trees and bushes across a large gameplay map. That's potentially up to a hundred million collision objects for the engine to track. You obviously need to track the trees any place there are planes at lower altitude. In a multiplayer match, for example, where you can have dozens of people flying all over the map, you may potentially need to track every single tree across the map. An extreme case, but you know what I mean. All these trees also need to be tracked constantly, every tick, multiple times a second. You can't check for collisions between millions of 3D objects 20 times a second. This kills the PC. All right, I'll be here another 10-15 minutes. Ask away!
  12. Folks, and it's time for me to scram again. I'll be back later today, hopefully in about 4 hours.
  13. luthier1

    DCS: WWII

    Кикстартер работает так. Если мы соберем 100 долларов, мы вам дадим вот то-то и то-то. Если соберем 200, то мы вам еще дадим Москито. Соберем 300 - тогда еще и Юшку сможем вытянуть. Я это имел в виду. PS И опять я убегаю, вернусь часа через 4. Надеюсь.
  14. luthier1

    DCS: WWII

    Альфа никуда не выходит, это внутренняя межа. Доступ поддержавшим кикстартер начинается с беты. И конечно зависит. Если достигнем более высоких уровней финансирования, значит больше работы, значит все сроки отодвигаются.
  15. That's exactly what I said above :) What happens if we release, say, a G4M Betty for DCS WWII. You already bought the F6F but you have no interest in the Betty so you don't buy it. What happens when you go online with someone who owns the Betty? You gotta be able to do it, right? So you've gotta see that Betty, right, just not fly it? And the Betty owner, if he never bought that F6F, has to be able to see you dive on him out of the sun for just a split second before he explodes, right? Now extrapolate that to modern jets. See where I'm going with this? Of course! How can we possibly have 1944 Europe without a P-51!
  16. luthier1

    DCS: WWII

    Думали, решили не показывать. Не доделано еще. Народ будет тыкать пальцем, нам это не нужно. После предыдущих проектов лучше весь WIP держать при себе. Кабину Доры делали мы, кстати. Ребята в общем знают, что делают. Только анонс проекта в общем произошел на гораздо более ранней стадии разработки, чем обычно. Есть куча начатого, но совсем мало законченного. Так обычно с кикстартерами. Если бы не кикстартер, то анонс и скрины и видео были бы не раньше начала 2014.
  17. Game engine includes a lot more than landscape. It consists of multiple modules. GUI, vehicles, aircraft, weather, etc. We're just taking the old landscape module and swapping it out for EDGE, but the rest is all the same. Not at this time. There is an unpleasant issue that has to do with using the name of the old game series I've worked on. Can't really have a site that says "well we worked on something, but we can't tell you the name of the project or show any screenshots." We'll have something once kickstarter hits. It'll only be about DCS WWII and the future. Anything that's compatible with DCS is compatible with DCS WWII by definition. There are a lot of people already making WWII stuff in addition to ourselves. We'll need some sort of a plan for sharing things with 4th parties to make sure there are no parallel developments on one hand, and things are getting done on the other. Guys, can you please stop fighting about the separate installs? It's one thing to discuss it with me. I'll be glad to answer questions or entertain ideas. But it's absolutely pointless to get riled up and argue with each other. Think about this not from the point of you of today, but five years from now. DCS WWII has grown to include Pacific, Mediterranean, Korea, I don't know. DCS World has Nevada, a whole bunch of other maps, and a huge line-up of new aircraft. The number of fans that own the entire product line will number in the single digits. But if we were to keep everything as a single install, then the number of people that have to download and keep content they never use would be huge!
  18. luthier1

    DCS: WWII

    Простите ребята, я переезжаю - развод, грузовики, дележ имущества. На новом месте интернет пока не подключен, так что со связью сложности. Буду на все отвечать, но с задержками. Шербур - Фалез - Руан примерно. Детализация высокая. Некоторые места воспроизводятся 1-в-1. Например Pointe du Hoc уже сделан со всем бункерами, траншеями, обрывами, кратерами от бомб. Соответсвие ошеломляет. Другие важные места, города, поля боев, тоже будут копийные. Остальная карта - схожесть на средней удаленности. Деревни-дороги в правильных местах, но дома-улицы усредненные. Слишком много :) Создание 3Д моделей в общем на мази, наловчились делать очень быстро. А вот программирование и тестирование очень долго, особенно по меркам моих старых проектов. Пытаемся понять, можно ли ускорить без потери качества, как удалось с 3Д. Так примерно человеко-годик + пара месяцев, в зависимости от сложности систем. Как в Мусе. Пока 9. После кикстартера вырастет, по результатам оного. Муа. Наверное будут, но пайплайн очень долгий. Будут долгие периоды, когда по честному будет нечего показывать. "Вася всю неделю мучился с шасси Мессера и ничего не вышло, а Петя затекстурил бронеспинку на Спите" - апдейт не особо. Программисты все в Москве, ядро команды там же. Также разбросанные 3Д моделеры - аутсорсеры по всей планете. Нелетаб Б-17 в ступени 0. А-26, Москито, и Ю-88 в более дорогих ступенях. Летаб Б-17 в самой последней. В смысле, с коллизиями? Тестим прямо сейчас. Движок полностью рабочий :) Будут скрины 5го с Нормандией, домиками, траншеями, бункерами, статуями, обрывами, морем, деревьями, и ты ды.
  19. Holy moly you guys. Sorry, I'm still in the middle of a move. There's no internet hooked up at the new place yet, so this makes communication difficult. Taking these a few pages at a time. Got a couple more hours, so hopefully I'll get through everything. Multiplayer is definitely included in the project! We have a lot of ideas, and we even have some old colleagues that have lots of experience making multiplayer great, but this is one area where we're not making any concrete promises. After we did all the thinking and planned things out on paper, we realized we were looking at a huge project of its own. We can't afford to plug it into the core Kickstarter tier because it more than doubles the money we'll need. We don't want to risk not reaching even the initial goal because of this. The basic tier is supposed to be basic, after all. We can only start rehiring old friends and programming and designing away once we hit larger stretch goals, but there's another problem there. This is an entirely new codebase for our old programmers, and multiplayer is extremely hard to program and test and perfect. This is the riskiest component of the entire project with both time and budget. If we make hard kickstarter promises about multiplayer, we run the risk of sinking the entire project by not meeting them on time. So we're not going to promise anything now, or list any multiplayer features in kickstarter. If we hit larger stretch goals, we will work away on expanding and improving multiplayer, but there is a chance that a large comprehensive multiplayer update won't be ready in time for the initial DCS WWII release. We're trying not to go feature creep on this project. This is definitely something we've thought about, but at this time we're trying to go lean. Yup. Making terrain in EDGE is kind of an interesting process. It takes almost no time to define things like shorelines and elevation. But then making that terrain look good takes a tremendous effort. There are areas with coarse detail and areas with very fine detail. For example, our Pointe du Hoc is virtually one-for-one with all the bunkers, trenches, cliffs, bomb craters, etc. Just that one little triangle took several weeks to make. Conversely, some random piece of coastline or an out of the way village are done in a few minutes. They look generic and if you were to compare them to the real thing, you'd see lots of differences. Then there are areas that aren't hand-built at all. They are intended as a background, something you see far off on the horizon while you fly over a more important area. If you were to take the time to fly over there, you'd see a barren landscape that isn't intended to be seen up close. In other sims this would be the area beyond the map edge that was not done at all; in EDGE we just define it so looking towards the map edge looks good. So, what I'm saying is, at this time we've only defined Normandy as hand-built. I'm not sure if this can be done manually. We only discussed module compatibility, i.e. cross-plugging things we ourselves make to be compatible. We don't have a budget for a mission builder programmer or artist. If any changes are made to the editors, they'd have to be done by ED. Lots of experienced people from another sim coming together to work in parallel. It's also somewhat easier to make things now with the P-51 and Dora already done. When P-51 was being done, most of the systems had to be written from scratch. With something like a Bf.109 now, we can use a lot of P-51 code which speeds things up by a huge factor. Nope. Not only do we not have permission, we are absolutely not going to reuse a single asset from any old project. We know that we will be challenged on every single thing that looks remotely similar and have to prove to the current copyright owner that we made everything from scratch.
  20. luthier1

    DCS: WWII

    Не, видео кикстартеровское. Говорящие головы, ну и какие-то в промежутках кадры из игры. Видео будет много, выпускать будем каждые пару дней. Интервью с разработчиками, описание фич, и т д. У нас разработка еще далеко не в той стадии, где можно сделать прямо видео геймплея. Альфа - к зиме. И кикстартер такая штука, там нельзя туманно. Надо все описать вообще в малейших деталях. Все состовляющие, что кому когда, и т д. Я просто не хочу вываливать всю кикстартеровскую простыню заранее. Пусть 5го тоже будет что-то интересное!
  21. We're not planning any changes to the mission editor for DCS WWII specifically. The free base for DCS WWII will contain several flyable aircraft. The exact set depends on whether we hit Kickstarter stretch goals. We can probably finish the basic game without the kickstarter, but it'll be a little less of everything, especially on the ground. Basic kickstarter funding we're looking for will allow us to comfortably do everything we wish to do and have all the time that we need, which is the luxury I personally have never had in my entire career. Depends on stretch goals. We'll have the complete list published on the 5th. There is no emphasis on online play! I myself am actually a primarily offline player. We are definitely planning extensive single-player with comprehensive, historical campaigns. There will be at least one campaign for each flyable aircraft in all stretch goals. The B-17 and Me.262 are not flyable in the basic version. Yup. Flyable bombers only show up in stretch goals. We are planning everything you're asking for. Less than a year for the core game; a little more if we hit stretch goals. Yes, yes, and yes. Depending on your contribution level you may even directly contribute to in-game content, such as paintschemes, pilot appearance, etc. There will be several flyable aircraft in the free version. The reason we are doing a kickstarter is precisely this. I have never once in my career had enough time and money to develop the project as I wanted it. It was always a - "I need X dollars and Y months to build this." "OK, we'll give you 0.7X and Y-6 months, and if you don't do everything plus a few extra features, we're shutting you down." I did not enjoy that, the team did not enjoy that, and the fans did not enjoy that. I have absolutely no desire to go down that road again. I swore off flight sims altogether after the last fiasco. The fact that I am back means that I am hoping to turn a new page. If you are asking for assurances though, of course I can't offer anything but words at this point. The initial release will be available free of charge though, so I really do not see what you have to lose when you try it out. Conversely, I see absolutely no reason to release a broken game for free, thus making no money initially and losing any chance of making any in the future. We have a symbiotic relationship with ED. In any case, final quality check is on them, not us. You should know them well enough to rest assured that they won't allow anyone to besmirch the DCS name with an inferior product.
  22. Oh, and since I already left, one more point. Separate installs also allow us to create a separate WWII-themed GUI. It's more important than it seems!
  23. That's the idea. There is however a problem with source data for some of the planes. A P-51 is almost unique in how well it is documented. With many other WWII planes there are grey areas. If there are no authentic flyable ones today, and source data from 1940s is lacking - then by definition we cannot be as true-to-life as the Mustang, because we have nothing to compare things to. But the general approach is the same.
  24. Hey folks, Today wasn't the best day for the announcement for me personally because I'm in the middle of some personal stuff. Everything is in boxes, waiting for a moving truck, and all that sorts of stuff that has nothing to do with DCS WWII. I just figured if I don't do it now, I'll never do it because once Kickstarter hits, whew. So I'll be answering sporadically throughout the day, but there will be periods of a few hours when I'm away - like for example right now.
  25. luthier1

    DCS: WWII

    И еще, Сегодня лично для меня совсем неудобный день. Я переезжаю, все в коробках, вот грузовик подъехал. Было или сейчас, или никогда. Во время кикстартера это делать - самоубийство. Так что, буду отвечать, но будут и периоды в несколько часов, когда я буду не у компа. Например, один из них начнется прямо сейчас. :) Вернусь, все прочитаю и отвечу.
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