GGTharos Posted January 30, 2005 Posted January 30, 2005 What you're missing is the security scheme. Right now Lockon doesn't have a particularely good one, nor is it even possible to add stuff to lOMAC as is (withness the skins as evidence) ... so any 'sdk's' will have to wait at the very LEAST until the class ID's are decoupled sufficiently to allow addition of new object types, and you'll need to have a good security scheme in place to ensure that someone doesn't jsut jump on with an F-15C modified to fly like an F-22. There do exist some solutions which are simple, some which are more complex, but the main point is - a lot of thought needs to go into it (ED has already laid out most of the ground work for security, IMHO) and the engine has to be capable of allowing it. As I already mentioned, judging from things said on this forum and th ebehavior of the game itself as well as various say 'country' mods, the LOMAC engine will curently not allow you to add squad and, no, I don't think they're een going to -think- about changing this in 1.2. Why does there have to be a huge securty scheme in the game.I have played SF online quite a bit, never run into a problem. The solution is simplier than you think. ONLY play with people you trust. No security scheme required. I have seen your suggestion so many times in the OFP community and the problems that were predicted never came true, except perhaps for there being TOO MANY ADDONS, because sometimes you would join a server and you had to download addon that they had installed on their server. I too am not sure if the engine allows, perhaps YES, perhaps NO, but security is a perceived problem, PLUS, the problem would only exist in online play. The problem is solved by only playing with buds you know. The 44th runs a public server. We're interested in keeping those who play on our server safe from cheating. There will always be cheaters, but i'just play with your buds' is one of the poorest aproaches you can take in that it implies no security at all. JF-18 was destroyed with the - what was it - ASRAAM? Addon. And it was by someone who -meant- well. You need to look a little farhter than OFP, and even in OFP cheating is fairly easy to accomplish with the most basic of knowledge, and I don't think wether the server had the addon you wish to use matters or not. Either way, my point IS valid, and you're ovesimplifying things. This game right now is out there becauseof the online play - IMHO anyway. It is VERY IMPORTANT to secure it as much as possible, and 'playing with yoru buds' doesn't cut it when there are people who are willing and bale to run public servers - in fact, you should WANT to support those peopel as this is where new guys to the game will likely cut their teeth. It isn't as simple as /you/ think, either ;) And it is quite important. [sIGPIC][/sIGPIC] Reminder: SAM = Speed Bump :D I used to play flight sims like you, but then I took a slammer to the knee - Yoda
Guest Dlink Posted January 30, 2005 Posted January 30, 2005 What you're missing is the security scheme. Right now Lockon doesn't have a particularely good one, nor is it even possible to add stuff to lOMAC as is (withness the skins as evidence) ... so any 'sdk's' will have to wait at the very LEAST until the class ID's are decoupled sufficiently to allow addition of new object types, and you'll need to have a good security scheme in place to ensure that someone doesn't jsut jump on with an F-15C modified to fly like an F-22. There do exist some solutions which are simple, some which are more complex, but the main point is - a lot of thought needs to go into it (ED has already laid out most of the ground work for security, IMHO) and the engine has to be capable of allowing it. As I already mentioned, judging from things said on this forum and th ebehavior of the game itself as well as various say 'country' mods, the LOMAC engine will curently not allow you to add squad and, no, I don't think they're een going to -think- about changing this in 1.2. Why does there have to be a huge securty scheme in the game.I have played SF online quite a bit, never run into a problem. The solution is simplier than you think. ONLY play with people you trust. No security scheme required. I have seen your suggestion so many times in the OFP community and the problems that were predicted never came true, except perhaps for there being TOO MANY ADDONS, because sometimes you would join a server and you had to download addon that they had installed on their server. I too am not sure if the engine allows, perhaps YES, perhaps NO, but security is a perceived problem, PLUS, the problem would only exist in online play. The problem is solved by only playing with buds you know. The 44th runs a public server. We're interested in keeping those who play on our server safe from cheating. There will always be cheaters, but i'just play with your buds' is one of the poorest aproaches you can take in that it implies no security at all. JF-18 was destroyed with the - what was it - ASRAAM? Addon. And it was by someone who -meant- well. You need to look a little farhter than OFP, and even in OFP cheating is fairly easy to accomplish with the most basic of knowledge, and I don't think wether the server had the addon you wish to use matters or not. Either way, my point IS valid, and you're ovesimplifying things. This game right now is out there becauseof the online play - IMHO anyway. It is VERY IMPORTANT to secure it as much as possible, and 'playing with yoru buds' doesn't cut it when there are people who are willing and bale to run public servers - in fact, you should WANT to support those peopel as this is where new guys to the game will likely cut their teeth. It isn't as simple as /you/ think, either ;) And it is quite important. There are many more times people playing LOMAC who don't play online. Online is only a small percentage of those that purchased Lomac, if not, then UBI/ED didn't sell very many copies
britgliderpilot Posted January 30, 2005 Posted January 30, 2005 In any case, look Falcon 4 with the latest official patch (1.08 of 1998). and then take a look at Freefalcon 3 or at Falcon 4 Sp 4.2. The community made it at least 50% better. (but I could have said even 100% better) Given that dev community, even if it produced some X-Wing mods, I would still love it! They did so much for that game... I wish LockOn could be enhanced as much as Falcon 4. Even with the current LockOn version, soon after having it installed and patched to 1.02, today I would feel it a bit less involving without the mods that I usually fly with. I'm not sure how many people here fly with a 100% standard (not tweaked) Lockon version... The community did good things with Falcon 4, sure. The problem is that nobody can tell just what the devs could have done with it had they not gone belly up. Who knows, we might even have been seeing a Falcon 5 with graphics rivalling Lomac and a fully simulated Hornet . . . . . In the long run, a dead developer is a Bad Thing - just thought I'd restate that :wink: Look, mods are good - no argument with that. But mods that have an effect on gameplay (invisible F15's with Phoenixes, X-Wing's with laser cannons, etc) are a bad thing - and I'd really rather ED did all the final quality control for the mods, and release them centrally . . . . . rather like was done with the Il2 series. Again, any mod that changes gameplay is going to create some odd effects online for people that don't have the mod. We're going to see this badly enough with v1.1 and v1.02, and I really don't want to see the already small community split into ever-smaller chunks, each of which can only play MP within the chunk. See GGTharos' posts for more information on the technical side of it. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v121/britgliderpilot/BS2Britgliderpilot-1.jpg
Guest Dlink Posted January 30, 2005 Posted January 30, 2005 In any case, look Falcon 4 with the latest official patch (1.08 of 1998). and then take a look at Freefalcon 3 or at Falcon 4 Sp 4.2. The community made it at least 50% better. (but I could have said even 100% better) Given that dev community, even if it produced some X-Wing mods, I would still love it! They did so much for that game... I wish LockOn could be enhanced as much as Falcon 4. Even with the current LockOn version, soon after having it installed and patched to 1.02, today I would feel it a bit less involving without the mods that I usually fly with. I'm not sure how many people here fly with a 100% standard (not tweaked) Lockon version... The community did good things with Falcon 4, sure. The problem is that nobody can tell just what the devs could have done with it had they not gone belly up. Who knows, we might even have been seeing a Falcon 5 with graphics rivalling Lomac and a fully simulated Hornet . . . . . In the long run, a dead developer is a Bad Thing - just thought I'd restate that :wink: Look, mods are good - no argument with that. But mods that have an effect on gameplay (invisible F15's with Phoenixes, X-Wing's with laser cannons, etc) are a bad thing - and I'd really rather ED did all the final quality control for the mods, and release them centrally . . . . . rather like was done with the Il2 series. Again, any mod that changes gameplay is going to create some odd effects online for people that don't have the mod. We're going to see this badly enough with v1.1 and v1.02, and I really don't want to see the already small community split into ever-smaller chunks, each of which can only play MP within the chunk. See GGTharos' posts for more information on the technical side of it. Mods won't split the community further. WHY, because by implementing a system where you can only play multiplayer with official aircraft you maintain the status quo. The solution is actually alot simpler than you think , CRC for dev created aircraft (mods). Just like I asssume they do now. BTW, is there a check in LOMAC right now, if for example I decide to 'hack' the aircraft to create that invisible F-15, are there checks in LOMAC right now. I highly doubt it, if there are then great, simple update the checks for official aircraft. If you try and join an online server with an unofficial aircraft , boom, you are booted. The security won't change from what is used now, this is assuming that any is used right now. This will still allow people to create their own aircraft for offline play , the online crowd is happy because they maintain a level playing field. ALL is well. Having the devs as the final say on quality control overly resists the game and makes it unattractive for a large group of people. GUESS what that means, lost customers.
britgliderpilot Posted January 30, 2005 Posted January 30, 2005 Mods won't split the community further. WHY, because by implementing a system where you can only play multiplayer with official aircraft you maintain the status quo. The solution is actually alot simpler than you think , CRC for dev created aircraft (mods). Just like I asssume they do now. BTW, is there a check in LOMAC right now, if for example I decide to 'hack' the aircraft to create that invisible F-15, are there checks in LOMAC right now. I highly doubt it, if there are then great, simple update the checks for official aircraft. If you try and join an online server with an unofficial aircraft , boom, you are booted. The security won't change from what is used now, this is assuming that any is used right now. This will still allow people to create their own aircraft for offline play , the online crowd is happy because they maintain a level playing field. ALL is well. Having the devs as the final say on quality control overly resists the game and makes it unattractive for a large group of people. GUESS what that means, lost customers. There is not currently a checking system in place, no. Assuming that such a thing could be implemented, you are still left with the problem of actually adding another aircraft to the code . . . . go investigate the history of the MiG29K mod and so forth for more details on that. Lomac's code is just NOT moddable right now. If they work some moddability into their "Next Project" (i.e. the one after v1.2), then things might change on that front, but for now I'd just let them get on with adding their own stuff. Too much hard work right now. So that's two "what if?"'s, and still no mention of how hard it is to actually create a cockpit, 3d model, FM, and avionics. Mmmn. F4 never actually had specific FM or avionics - it all belonged to the F16. Strike Fighters I don't know much on the FM side, but the avionics are a tad simpler than Lomac's. And while we're discussing FM's, remember that we're clamouring for the AFM on all aircraft as well . . . . . anyone got any opinions on trying to add the new AFM to a user-created aircraft? http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v121/britgliderpilot/BS2Britgliderpilot-1.jpg
Caretaker Posted January 30, 2005 Posted January 30, 2005 Well we've had such discussions before, and to be honest I have no clue why this is such a confrontational topic. For sure there is no easy way for ED to change Lock On's code so fundamentally that the inclusion of new objects would be possible without the source code. Just the way it is. And when talking about flyable planes, things get even more complicated. I haven't seen a sim with similar avionics complexity that allows this. Strike Fighters may be slowly getting there, at least people can configure HUD displays now. But I haven't seen IR displays, LGB functionality or radar guided AG missiles in Strike Fighters yet. And the flight models, well - again this is compiled code, no bunch of coefficients that just need to be changed for each flyable to produce a new flight model. Online compatibility, well certainly a touchy subject too. Again there are no simple ways or easy CRC checks to prevent cheats. Otherwise it wouldn't be such a big issue with many games. Now I personally don't care much about online anyway, and I see the point that the offline players maybe shouldn't be limited in what they can do by online issues. Just saying that, once things are opened up, there will be exploits, and trying to prevent those is complicated. "Stock planes only" for online is also no realistic option in my view. People will demand to use the nice mods online too, and rightfully so. See CFS3 as an example: nearly nobody flies online there because it's either "free for all mods" without limits to what people use, or you're limited to the stock planes which are highly inferior to some 3rd party work and have questionable flight models. Il2 in turn seems to fair pretty well with their closed architecture. I don't think there are many flight sims right now which are more popular. Not that I understand the sometimes religious discussions over there when people ask if it wouldn't be possible to allow some more user-made changes than only skins... ;) I think there's an incredible potential "out there" for flight sim developers to use, and especially now that it's more and more work to produce high-quality models, developers should think how to use this potential. Apparently ED does, and I hope for more options in that area in the future. Areas like static and AI objects, textures or the map are ideal for 3rd party developers. For the flyable planes however, I don't see this happening. Never really happened with Falcon4 either, and people did have full source code access there. Caretaker ED Beta Test Team
Guest Dlink Posted January 30, 2005 Posted January 30, 2005 Mods won't split the community further. WHY, because by implementing a system where you can only play multiplayer with official aircraft you maintain the status quo. The solution is actually alot simpler than you think , CRC for dev created aircraft (mods). Just like I asssume they do now. BTW, is there a check in LOMAC right now, if for example I decide to 'hack' the aircraft to create that invisible F-15, are there checks in LOMAC right now. I highly doubt it, if there are then great, simple update the checks for official aircraft. If you try and join an online server with an unofficial aircraft , boom, you are booted. The security won't change from what is used now, this is assuming that any is used right now. This will still allow people to create their own aircraft for offline play , the online crowd is happy because they maintain a level playing field. ALL is well. Having the devs as the final say on quality control overly resists the game and makes it unattractive for a large group of people. GUESS what that means, lost customers. There is not currently a checking system in place, no. Assuming that such a thing could be implemented, you are still left with the problem of actually adding another aircraft to the code . . . . go investigate the history of the MiG29K mod and so forth for more details on that. Lomac's code is just NOT moddable right now. If they work some moddability into their "Next Project" (i.e. the one after v1.2), then things might change on that front, but for now I'd just let them get on with adding their own stuff. Too much hard work right now. So that's two "what if?"'s, and still no mention of how hard it is to actually create a cockpit, 3d model, FM, and avionics. Mmmn. F4 never actually had specific FM or avionics - it all belonged to the F16. Strike Fighters I don't know much on the FM side, but the avionics are a tad simpler than Lomac's. And while we're discussing FM's, remember that we're clamouring for the AFM on all aircraft as well . . . . . anyone got any opinions on trying to add the new AFM to a user-created aircraft? I realize that system to mod isn't there. That wasn't my point. My point was that they SHOULD (I know, coulda, woulda, shoulda) have added it in. Alas they didn't BTW, if there is no system in place to check aircraft now, how come there isn't a ton of people cheating..OR IS THERE.
britgliderpilot Posted January 30, 2005 Posted January 30, 2005 I realize that system to mod isn't there. That wasn't my point. My point was that they SHOULD (I know, coulda, woulda, shoulda) have added it in. Alas they didn't BTW, if there is no system in place to check aircraft now, how come there isn't a ton of people cheating..OR IS THERE. Heh, ED should have included moddability . . . . . Ubi should have only released Lomac when it was done, it should have cost £5, I should have won the lottery, and Keira Knightley should have appeared on my doorstep by now . . . . . :wink: On a serious note, I think you underestimate quite how much time it would take to refiddle the code to allow modding. Go investigate the details about the CLSID system in Lomac at some point. There aren't many people cheating because there's no way to modify the aircraft. Shrug. People do cheat, though - mostly by adding loadouts to aircraft that can't carry them. A MiG29 with Phoenix missiles seems to spring to mind . . . . Of course, it's easy to see that - and the people that get seen doing are usually kicked in very short order. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v121/britgliderpilot/BS2Britgliderpilot-1.jpg
AnzacPT Posted January 30, 2005 Posted January 30, 2005 i´ve had problems playing online SF:P1, due to mods... there wasn´t even a chance to start the game... just wanted to say that... @BGP: sorry, she had to stop by here first, old chap... ;)
Guest Dlink Posted January 31, 2005 Posted January 31, 2005 i´ve had problems playing online SF:P1, due to mods... there wasn´t even a chance to start the game... just wanted to say that... @BGP: sorry, she had to stop by here first, old chap... ;) What do you mean, 'because of mods'. AND what do mean 'there wasn't even a chance to start the game'. Are you saying the game crashed because of a mod. If so, that is hardly the same thing because you couldn't play offline either.
AnzacPT Posted January 31, 2005 Posted January 31, 2005 i´ve had problems playing online SF:P1, due to mods... there wasn´t even a chance to start the game... just wanted to say that... @BGP: sorry, she had to stop by here first, old chap... ;) What do you mean, 'because of mods'. AND what do mean 'there wasn't even a chance to start the game'. Are you saying the game crashed because of a mod. If so, that is hardly the same thing because you couldn't play offline either. i had problems online, yes... me and other 2 guys were using HL, and we were setting up servers... of the 3 of us, only 2 could play... because the third one had a highly modded SFighters package... he had hundreds of mods... for what he said his installation of SF:P1 had some GB´s... we told him to make a clean install in another directory and we had no problems after that... that way i conclude that the problems were his mods... might be one in particular or not... but...
Mizzy Posted January 31, 2005 Author Posted January 31, 2005 Well, I think IL2 has taught the Sim Developers/ community a great deal. Now remember what Oleg Maddox had in mind when he was going to release IL2 through Bluebyte!!!??? Yes indeed, JUST the IL2 was to be flyable, yet the anticipation was really quite impressive for the title and if memory serves, the title was going to be distributed via the Internet. Then he anounced 109s and other aircraft flyable and BANG, the forums errupted.... but hold on.. wait a minute, what was the proposed theatre of war!! what.... The Eastern Front :eek: What was that all about... yes we remember so.......... It appears that its nothing to do with what theatre one chooses for the flight simulator but more to do with how you depict it, model it and so forth. Mr Maddox got away with making a very obscure (to the west) game theatre and highly obscure aircraft and made it a hit!!!! How did e do that ;) Oh hold on, err its CLOSED architecture for modding as well.. emmm, me thinks something is going on here ;) Could it be that IL2 had a sound business model and business philosophy or was it just blind luck, or was it that the sim community niche is all for flying prop planes I wonder. Mizzy.
AnzacPT Posted January 31, 2005 Posted January 31, 2005 Well, I think IL2 has taught the Sim Developers/ community a great deal. Now remember what Oleg Maddox had in mind when he was going to release IL2 through Bluebyte!!!??? Yes indeed, JUST the IL2 was to be flyable, yet the anticipation was really quite impressive for the title and if memory serves, the title was going to be distributed via the Internet. Then he anounced 109s and other aircraft flyable and BANG, the forums errupted.... but hold on.. wait a minute, what was the proposed theatre of war!! what.... The Eastern Front :eek: What was that all about... yes we remember so.......... It appears that its nothing to do with what theatre one chooses for the flight simulator but more to do with how you depict it, model it and so forth. Mr Maddox got away with making a very obscure (to the west) game theatre and highly obscure aircraft and made it a hit!!!! How did e do that ;) Oh hold on, err its CLOSED architecture for modding as well.. emmm, me thinks something is going on here ;) Could it be that IL2 had a sound business model and business philosophy or was it just blind luck, or was it that the sim community niche is all for flying prop planes I wonder. Mizzy. the fact that it was a very good game with nothing comparing to it at the time had nothing to do with it? :shock:
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