Caretaker

The "state" of objects so far is however limited to things like position and heading, right? I would love to see the LUA exports extended to events of all kinds, like weapon launches and hits... I understand similar things are already possible with the multiplayer log, will have to take a look at that one day - however having the same kind of event information through LUA for any kind of mission would make things more interesting, for ACMI-like or other forms of result evaluations, and possibly even more... ;)

Wow this is nice. Ok I was already working on something very similar (AWACS & ACMI functionality), but have only done basic tests so far to get the data out of Lock On (which works fine though!). LOS calculations are a no-go so far (except if someone would extract the elevation data of Lock On's terrain more or less manually), but I think a somewhat realistic AWACS function for multiplayer would still be very much possible.

I'm afraid you're pretty much alone with the assessment that this could be considered "broken" in 1.02. I also don't think it's sensible for ED to produce patches for individual users, with exactly those single improvements that they'd like to have without paying for the work involved. It is still quite possible that a free patch will be provided, after all ED has a good record with supporting their products so far. But I don't think the free inclusion of new features in the past should be used to demand more free features now.

As always, a matter of priorities and personal preferences.

Alfa was commenting on 1.1, which indeed does not have the Python missile available. I doubt that he really questions the existence of this missile in real life ;)

It's great indeed, and I feel (without having ditched a fighter plane onto a field in real life so far) that it also has the right amount of realism, i.e. you can do it, but you better be careful and look out for the right spot to land. It is however limited to the physics model of the Su-25 and Su-25T indeed. The other planes can now be taxied over grass fields as well without instantly sinking in, but still not land on fields.

I can - it is. With the Su-25 and Su-25T you can try to land anywhere in Lock On, including fields. You will notice the different surface characteristics between some crops and a nice concrete runway however ;)

I agree that giving release dates only makes sense when they are certain. We've already had too many such discussions with previous Lock On releases (and also with other sims). Development updates would also be somewhat underwhelming currently, as the current focus is to finish the addon, not to introduce and test new exciting features.

It is indeed extremely difficult to calculate this correctly; however some "fake" effect that does not really take into account the precise angles between reflective surfaces and the sun might be possible. MiG Alley already had such an effect some years back, although I personally didn't like it (it looked too faked).

Count me in ;) Your skins are usually great, and a lot of the AI planes could use some polishing. That Su-24 already looks great so far! Cheers,

The best part about "KnellKnell" is that not only does he seem to be an expert modeller, but also a real life Jaguar and Mirage F1 pilot... this could really get valuable for future modelling of French weapons or even flyables.

...Sharks? :P

At least with 1.1, planes can blow up completely, and the issue of planes still firing all their missiles while going down in flames should be reduced significantly because of this.

Would be nice of course, but probably better placed in some future development that has more detail in the naval aspect overall.

Was one of my biggest gripes with Lock On, and I came up with similar suggestions ;) In fact I very much like the idea to only have on attack pass per waypoint, didn't think of that myself, and it could be extremely useful for better control. Now the way Lock On's AI behaviour is programmed doesn't allow certain changes without major restructuring of the code, that's what I had to realize. This includes target selection aspects as well unfortunately. Still there has been quite some progress in this area with 1.1, especially when it comes to planes ignoring their primary targets to go after air defenses instead (they love to attack some sites some 30km away in 1.02 ;)). This is much improved now, and the whole ground attack aspect is more controllable in 1.1. Planes also no longer jettison their AG ordnance immediately when under fire from SAMs or enemy fighters. With proper mission planning, which includes setting wapoints, ordnance, target selection and timing, I can now get my flights on AG missions to do what I want them to do most of the time. Still needs a bit more tweaking at times than I like, but no question, it's much better. I'm also confident to see more improvements in this area in the future. Cheers

I'm not saying these issues aren't there, I'm only saying they are just as common in many other sims, and Lock On is certainly not the worst in this regard - that's what I was calling "exaggerated" ;) Yes Falcon4's AI currently is better than in Lock On, but it took quite some years to get there (was just as problematic back when it was released), and it's still far from perfect. There are still various issues, not too critical overall but they do exist. Just scanning the respective forums reveals this. Congratulations! Then you certainly know that it's not a trivial area, especially in a 6DOF environment with real-life capabilities to consider ;) That was always my position on flight sims in general and Lock On in particular. Il2/Forgotten Battles for example I stopped playing simply because I could not cope with the AI behaviour anymore, no matter how excellent the sim was otherwise. Single player needs good AI to be a challenge and for immersion, and it wasn't Lock On's strongest point so far - but as I said, it's unfortunately a common problem with sims, and the online crowd which doesn't care much for AI seems to be a bit more vocal overall. You have to keep in mind though that new AI alone doesn't sell a product. Rather it is often expected as a free "fix" even though it may just be as hard to develop as a new flyable with all its avionics. Just the way it is ;) As I said, there is progress in the AI area with 1.1, but also various things to work out still. In my view, ED is aware of those issues and the impact they have, and I'm looking forward to further progress in the future.

You are exaggerating. AI problems, unfortunately, are very common with flight sims. Always have been. Lock On is by no means special in that regard - even games which seem more popular than Lock On and have had more development still have problems with crashes of taxiing aircraft or non-existant tactics (look at Il2/FB/PF, or Falcon4) or of couse planes flying into the ground for no good reason. AI programming simply is a complex area that is sometimes subject to chaotic, unpredictable results. AI units have to be handled with care when designing a mission, that way a lot of those problems can already be worked around. I do agree that some of Lock On's AI flaws have quite an impact on the overall gameplay experience, and I was lobbying heavily for that area to be considered for further development. And guess what, it is. Whether it will be enough for your standard I don't know. I cannot comment much on stability or performance as I did not really have problems with these in any Lock On versions I played. Otherwise, sure it would be great to have more detailed carrier operations, AI behaviour tailored to each plane's specific capabilities, a dynamic campaign and whatever. No question here. But without a bigger development budget this simply will not happen anytime soon.

LUA exporting has been expanded quite a bit with 1.1, but it's not detailed enough yet for a dynamic campaign system. It's also impossible to influence objects through LUA (like dynamically setting new targets or spawning new objects). I certainly hope there will be more LUA expoting/importing hooks in the future as it seems like a good and flexible way to do things like that. On a sidenote, what I am currently experimenting with for 1.1 is a simple AWACS overview based on the LUA functions that could be displayed on a seperate computer. I've always said that the biggest obstacle for a dynamic campaign is the AI, and with 1.1 it has improved to a point where I no longer consider it a critical issue :) That leaves us with the following problems: 1) Auto-generation and evaluation of missions and their results I can do that in theory, but be sure it's a lot of work and will require quite some tweaking. It is limited to single player campaigns as so far, that is the only way to save and extract mission events like who killed what target etc. 2) Amount of objects Lock On does not have a "bubble" system for simplified AI calculations of objects that are further away. This will limit the amount of objects that any mission should have. Any dynamic campaign system should be scalable enough to work with both a few or more objects (for the future). 3) A believable theatre It is hard, but not impossible to come up with a somewhat believable background for a conflict in the Lock On map region. However such a conflict would by all means not involve ground combat on Russian territory - which is a pity because I think the most interesting terrain area is just right there... I understand this is not equally important to everyone (some people would just want a dynamic war no matter how realistic), but I think it's a point to consider. 4) Integration with Lock On Quite frankly a dynamic campaign system would have to run in a seperate environment if it provided more than just dynamically created missions. I'm talking about things like statistics, strategic overviews, squadron and resource management etc. Switching back and forth between Lock On and such a system would be necessary, no way around that. So this is my view on it. With the AI improvements, 1.1 has now reached a level where I consider a dynamic campaign possible. All hooks are finally in place :) But it is clear that the game was not designed that way, so various compromises will be necessary. For those who remember Longbow II, this is maybe a good example on how a Lock On dynamic campaign system could work. It also lacked the real-time factor of Falcon4, did not include too many AI objects at once, but still provided a great experience.

I can assure you that the AI in Lock On has been fixed in various areas, although it still has some issues remaining. But it's certainly more effective, especially for ground attacks (no more suicide attacks on SAM sites for example ;)). I'm also confident that this area will be worked on further for future releases. Randomization options haven't been included in the mission editor; what is present is that the AI now has some basic randomizations in its behaviour (which target to attack at which range, how to react to threats etc.), where it always reacted exactly the same in previous versions. Implementing this wasn't trivial as it had to be included in the track system for example, but now that it's in we might get more randomization options in the future, this isn't clear yet. But things like probability of appearance of units are not featured yet in 1.1. The claim that water rendering is unoptimized is indeed a myth and I'm wondering why it's still repeated frequently. Overall I find 1.1 quite an improvement. Just don't expect it to now fix every issue you have with Lock On. But it's clearly moving in the right direction, which is more than what could be said for many sims.

As I said, for some people the 1.02 patch brought lots of improvements, for some not, and some didn't even need them regarding performance. Can't actually hurt checking it out personally before drawing conclusions about it. Otherwise if you don't like Lock On anyway, then indeed 1.1 will probably not change this, and there's not much reason to buy it in that case. It's a great addition, but not a totally new game.

For a beta test it's always advisable to test without any mods, which is what I did ;) In general it's also advisable to install addons over a clean installation. I assume that an 1.1 addon will update various files that may have been changed by 3rd party mods; in the end it's impossible for both developers and testers to check for compatibility with all of those. I can't say if an 1.1 addon will require 1.02 or be installed over 1.00, although I would guess it's the latter and contains all previous updates.

The current version is 1.02. You should try the direct 1.00 -> 1.02 patch route (not the 1.00 -> 1.01 -> 1.02). I think it improved performance for some people, but not across the whole range of systems. Personally I never had serious performance problems with Lock On with either version, so I can't comment on that too well ;) 1.1 will be an addon that contains various new features along with a new flyable plane (the Su-25T), so no it won't be for free. From what I understand there is no decision yet whether any fixes from the 1.1 version will also be made available for free download.

Not really - basically a track only contains the starting conditions (which is actually the mission file itself) and the player's input during a mission. The rest is calculated on the fly, and each time again when a track is played. This greatly reduces the amount of data that needs to be stored and thus the file size.

I'm afraid you won't find that information in the track files, simply because they don't store them :) The track files only make sense in the context of Lock On's whole game engine which computes all movements and events based on what's stored in them. That's also why the tracks play differently on different Lock On versions. 1.1 has some extended LUA exporting functions that may be closer to what you're looking for, although events are not exported yet to my understanding. Caretaker _________________ Eagle Dynamics Beta Team