Caretaker

For a start, you can load smoke generators with different colours ;) And then there should be a LUA file which determines the exact colour of each smoke generator. Name escapes me though, would have to look when I'm back from work...

Same for the US truck... while the Russian vehicles' windows are still opaque... So I'm wondering, is Windex overmodelled? :rolleyes:

Keep in mind that old missions is potentially "dangerous"... weird things can happen! ;)

Now that was hilarious! :)

I very much doubt changing the monitor will trigger the re-activation. At any rate, "don't reinstall until you really have to" seems to be a good guideline for now, until the various issues and questions about the activation keys are sorted out.

I doubt Lock On will support "neutral" coalitions anytime soon, but a Tu-154 could still be a nice addition. And if you're bored you might also consider an An-124 or C-5 afterwards... size has a beauty of its own ;) Would love to have those two behemoths available. The An-225/Buran combination, well... not sure what to do with those in-game :)

Silent Hunter 3 is a great sim, but I don't see it in a different league graphics-wise compared to Lock On. Some things are better, some worse. Love the way ships sink though, so glad they paid attention to that and don't have the usual 2 minute sinking animations. As I said, great game despite some minor glitches or omissions.

That's quite a bold statement given the sorry state that software quality is in throughout the industry. I'd love to see a software project that qualifies as well designed and managed then according to you... ;)

Hmm "snake oil" is a standard test for certificate creation - "snakeoil.dom" is obviously not a valid address ...seems like someone was confused a bit and installed a test certificate? ;)

I think this cannot be said often enough: None of these plane projects will lead to new flyable planes. Either they will replace a current, lower quality model in the current Lock On version, or they may lead to a new AI plane. Including those is much, much easier (once the 3D model is ready) and less time-consuming than producing a flyable plane. And it doesn't matter how many virtual AI pilots sit in AI planes :) The Strike Eagle is the premier strike aircraft of the US Air Force since many years, and its absence is probably the biggest gap in Lock On's planeset. So I would also like to see it modelled at some point. But it definitely won't appear as a flyable anytime soon.

Interesting choice :) I still remember the German Starfighters, not sure when we finally got rid of them... late 80s, early 90s? Anyway, it's not totally misplaced in Lock On's "flexible" timeframe, and it's a classic plane for sure. So good luck with it!

That effect would be nice at night, but in daylight I find it misplaced. But hey there are thousands of effects I'd like to see some day... lighting and more :p

No, this was never mentioned. Even if some kind of 1.03 patch had been provided, I very much doubt that online compatibility with 1.1 would have been a possibility. You just cannot take out all enhancements of 1.1 compared to 1.02 and still be compatible online - and I certainly wouldn't have wanted to test for that... ;)

Who said you have to? ;) who said we didn´t??? that´s why ED needs to CLARIFY this once and for all. nobody said we had to pay again, but again nobody said we didn´t. how hard is it to make things clear? why sarcastic comments like "who said you have to?" when there is NOTHING official stating the contrary... I'm not being sarcastic. I agree that these things need to be defined clearly, and I'm confident they will before release. P3T3R however sounded like he was sure already that a new key would require paying again. I commented because I don't see any indication of that.We've already had a lot of panic with the first Starforce discussion after all. Personally I'm all for people making conscient decisions about buying or not buying stuff, but those decisions should be based on facts. And yes, I'm aware that not all facts are known yet.

Who said you have to? ;)

Ugh... that is cool, but now I'm feeling sick... ;)

I'd enjoy a Strike Eagle as well, but to be honest, "yet another desert theatre" would not really get me excited. Now as for Trident's proposal, I have to say it sounds and looks excellent. Some good points regarding population density and the units used!

Missile physics are at least twice as important as the chute behaviour, so the double post is fine ;)

How about distribution and copy protection issues...? (Just a guess, not an answer! :))

My various tests also did not indicate anything suspicious going on. There seem to be some valid points with StarForce and its inclusion with the demo that need investigation, but a lot of statements or fears seem pretty overblown to me.

In Oxking's defense, there's a language barrier present ;) He didn't want to say that he doesn't care, but that there are too many people who don't anyway. And it's a fact that pretty much all games are available within hours after release in the warez scene, and many even earlier, without any sort of copy protection. So unfortunately issues with copy protection will even make it less attractive to get legal copies when the illegal ones come without those... not a new fact but still very much the case, which I think was his point with that remark. Not that I consider printed manuals an alternative for a version that is only distibuted by download for other reasons. And multiplayer-keys have hardly stopped pirating much with other games either - even for multiplayer-only games.

Wow. Don't you just hate it to be absent from the computer for half a day, only to return and find something like this :? So where to begin... A lot of hysteria here. I'm part of internet communities long enough so it doesn't really surprise me, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. Please people, read! How we can go from "after the third major hardware change a new key is needed" to "you need to buy it again after installing it three times" is still funny in a way... if you're in the mood for this at least. The same goes for reports about system intrusions that are caused by this "backdoor", the exact degree of which is still not clear at all (my somewhat short research indicated it is not related to internet connections anyway?). Nope, some cookies reported by Ad-Aware are no proof of a security leak (not directed at anyone specific here mind you, I give everyone the benefit of the doubt that he knows what he's talking about, but at the same time I know from personal experience how much these topics about security/spyware/trojans/viruses etc. usually get confused). Now the issue with Starforce being installed with the demo. That is indeed a bad thing, I doubt anyone wants to argue about that. Now, crap happens every day that shouldn't. This isn't as unusual with game demos either unfortunately, or other software (still remembering how CFS3 screwed up my system with the included DirectX9 beta version that also installed without asking me). Of course that doesn't make it any better. And the fact that SF apparently leaves a driver in the system instead of the normal registry or .dll garbage (which is already bad enough) makes me wonder about the overall setup of that system. So let's get to the real point now, the copy protection for Lock On: Flaming Cliffs download version for the international market. Before Half-Life 2, my take on copy protection was pretty simple: not worth a penny, those systems never had any real impact on piracy protection, and often a very big impact on honest customers. Apparently, Steam was different here because it did at least prevent piracy long enough to increase sales. However this was somewhat special because more or less everyone wanted Half Life 2 as soon as possible. I have my doubts the same would have worked for a less hyped product. Will something similar work for FC? I have my doubts. If only by looking here. Let's face it, people who are still with Lock On are what I'd consider loyal fans, even more so those who plan to buy FC. Reasonable or not, but I see a lot of those fans being p'ed off at the moment, and I do not like that. Even if most the fears about what Starforce will require you to do or what problems it will cause are certainly overblown in my view, the result is still very real. Now I could be very wrong about the loyalty part... we all like to believe our sim communities are better and more loyal than the usual shooter of RTS people, and less prone to piracy. Perhaps that's just make-believe, and the Flanker2 sales vs. Flanker2.5 downloads could be quite revealing. Perhaps some of the people who claim to have bought Lock On two times are in fact only waiting for FC to be available on some server that doesn't belong to ED... I still don't think so, but let's be honest, we all don't really know. Still, I am convinced that we here are the people that the download addon is primarily targeted at. Even if many fears about Starforce may be overblown, even if some people that claim to not buy the addon have posted in anger and will reconsider in the end, apparently a lot of even the most loyal people are not happy at the moment. Which is especially sad because the demo was so well received by the very same people during the last week and has caused a lot of good spirit - most of that is currently washed away I'm afraid :cry: As I said, I have no clue how reasonable the inclusion of this copy protection is for FC, and how much it will increase sales by preventing piracy... but quite obviously it is not very good for this community at the moment. I hope this is taken into account when the respective decisions are made. That's all I'll say at the moment, along with the hope that some people will calm down their rhetorics a bit.

Sorry guys, I have to retract everything :) With the latest 1.1 everything is updated to English for the German version as well. The mix up only happened with an earlier version. I can also confirm that the Russian and English speech files are now present.

Not necessarily a new engine, but it would be quite an update. As a true multirole fighter, the Hornet has AG avionics like ground radar or the capability to drop LGBs. In addition the MFDs in the cockpit would require a new controller approach - it's not really practical to map each MFD button to individual keys. And as the naval aspect of Lock On is not too detailed yet, a Hornet addon should also feature an upgrade to that area, including new US ships. None of that would be impossible to do, but combined those issues would make the Hornet one of the most complex plane addons that could be chosen.

I'd love to fly that plane, and I understand it's quite similar to the Su-25/Su-25T in many ways... but definitely not mainstream enough I'm afraid. Imagine the outcry of the "western" community when yet another Russian plane would be added! ;)