Shooting fish in a barrel

[Feuerfalke]

I honestly got to agree with 2 points:

 

1. AI needs improvement.

That is not new, though, and do we need yet another thread to discuss that? IMHO: Nope.

 

2. Multiplayer should get more attention.

Agreed 100%. A dedicated server, admintools and protection against teamkillers (autokick/autoban) are needed, a built in VOIP would help, too.

 

But I doubt either will come with a patch, so lets have fun with what we have and hope for the A10C and future modules. DCS is on a most promising way - lets give them our support and some time.

[uhoh7]

 

im sorry to say BLACK SHARK was getting boring... its like you fly...approach some area with targets, someone points out the targets, and then everyone puts the shkval where the fish shooting begins on the Ai....

 

It all comes down to the content. The sim will live or die on the missions that we make for it and share. One good mission...you will play it 5 or six times, then you will need something new.

 

For all the imperfections the ingredients are already in place for fantastic missions. Once you get familiar with the ME it takes about 5 or six hours to get one working well, but it's worth it.

 

All I can say is if you are bored, make something interesting.

[ARM505]

DCS:BS's technical excellence in the modelling of the simulated platform only highlights the shortcomings in two 'worlds':

 

1) The online 'world': with no dedicated server software, it becomes tougher to set up persistant, controllable online battlegrounds. Witness the TK'ing etc that goes on, and the powerlessness (well, almost. Servman etc are helping, but it's not enough IMHO) that players and server managers have against offenders.

 

2) The virtual 'world': Simply put, not much happens when flying missions. I KNOW, the scripting of DCS:BS has greatly improved this over LO:FC, but you as the player still know that nothing happens that the mission designer didn't deliberately put there. Again, I KNOW Falcon 4's dynamic battlefield has plenty of limitations, but nonetheless, it still managed to make the player feel like just a small element of something larger. For me at least, F4's campaign worked well. I could pick and choose my flights and types of mission, knowing that I would face the chaos of a battlefield that had evolved on it's own. AI plays an enormous role in this 'suspension of disbelief' thing, and DCS's AI is a little lacking at the moment. This persistent battlefield present in F4 also helped the player to get to know the terrain he was fighting over, and built SA over time - you got to know where the frontlines were etc, and mission briefings somehow seemed more complete and 'alive' as you saw AI flights going about their business. With BS, I feel like I've been led to the heli with a black bag over my head, and am now told 'The bad guys are over there, go find them!'. I have no idea whats going on other than that.

 

Just my thoughts.

Edited March 24, 2009 by ARM505

[HansRoaming]

2. Multiplayer should get more attention.

Agreed 100%. A dedicated server, admintools and protection against teamkillers (autokick/autoban) are needed, a built in VOIP would help, too.

 

But I doubt either will come with a patch, so lets have fun with what we have and hope for the A10C and future modules. DCS is on a most promising way - lets give them our support and some time.

 

THIS

 

Generally in this modern world single player trains you up, multi player keeps you in the game. A remotely controllable dedicated server with admin and auto tk features would be a boon as well as a great way to find them. DCS is looking to have a long lifeline ahead of it so keeping people which are after all social animals interested is a good thing.

 

Also the easier it is to have a hosted server the more there will be. built in VOIP I feel is a must in this day and age and adds to the immersion immensly. Possibly this could translate over to the military contracts as they could then offer group tactics with voice training.

 

Not everyone likes fast jets, that is fine but as pointed out above fast movers will bring new blood into the game. Personally I like close air support so will be trying out anything that can move mud.

 

Lastly I wonder if BS being available via Steam would help as well, there is a large base there and the policy of guest passes and weekend sales would possibly bring more people and cash into the game. With voice comms in the game and guest passes you could invite your friend to try out BS and then talk them through what to do and how to fly. The latter would be especially good if you could sit over the shoulder in the same cockpit or something or have duel control.

[uhoh7]

Uhoh7,

 

you are right that a good mission design is vital for a dynamic and challenging missions. If enough rules and actions would be available in the mission editor the AI of computer controlled vehicles could actually be very weak.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but none of the reactions I described above, except the "calling air support", can be realised at the moment with the mission editor. Although you could also activate an artillery group, you would not know where the attacker is located and you could only allocate artillery fire to likely attack positions. Can hovering helis actually be hit by artillery? ... havent tried that yet.

 

You can do so much with the ME right now, it's incredible. In the one I'm working on now, one perimeter is attacked by some very strong T80 platoons. As they get closer they hit trigger zones which spawn MRLS to fire on their positions---spectacular, and you get a message "This is wolfpack, we need a fire mission..etc." Once they overrun the perimeter the reserves are spawned to try and stop them again, another message.

 

A single AI unit is dumb, but you get groups going and it's pretty impressive. I thought this mission was unwinable---there's a bunch of stuff to deal with, but after my last test, I finnaly figured out how to stop the bastards.

 

It's my six or seventh test flight and it's never gone the same way twice.

 

There are many things the ME won't do---those are not important (though some of the patch features will be great) What's important is figuring out how to use the tools we DO have to get a battlefield atmosphere going.

 

In a good mission you never feel like you are shooting fish in a barrel, unless you are mopping up, hehe.

 

The comms are crucial for immersion, I should use voice but i just do a short static and the message cause it's alot faster. When the Hinds are inbound I push them thorugh a trigger and the spotter calls to you.

 

And the Hind AI is not that dumb, and many tweaks yo can do. IF they are getting killed to soon I add more, if they are too bad ass I drop some manpads.

 

It's 6 hours at least to make a good one.

 

But it is pretty fun, and I hope more guys will get into making them, cause thats the key.

[Feuerfalke]

Lastly I wonder if BS being available via Steam would help as well, there is a large base there and the policy of guest passes and weekend sales would possibly bring more people and cash into the game. With voice comms in the game and guest passes you could invite your friend to try out BS and then talk them through what to do and how to fly. The latter would be especially good if you could sit over the shoulder in the same cockpit or something or have duel control.

 

+1

 

The problem is, that STEAM is plain evil for a large crowd. Especially older people or people playing offline don't like STEAM, because they do not know that you can play STEAM-games offline and about the other positives sides of STEAM (games linked to your account, not to your hardware or numbers of activations, play for free weekends, autoupdate, auto-loading of free content, etc.)

You can see the effect of that in the "Rise of Flight"-Blog btw. They plan a similar concept as DCS, releasing planes and addons via STEAM, so you can choose to buy planes you want to fly, while the versions stay compatible. They planned to make it primarily an online-game, though, and posted some pretty uncertain clues about their plans.

[MBot]

Uhoh7,

Can hovering helis actually be hit by artillery? ... havent tried that yet.

 

I have never had a direct hit by a artillery shell, though I really tried hard to achieve it. If you are close to the ground you can be hit by the detonating shell. The game logs it as a hit, but I never had any noticable damage. So artillery currently doesn't have any effect against helicopters (or the chances are astronomical small), but at least it is a hell of a show :)

 

In my mission Ambush I have set up artillery strikes if the player hovers too long at certain spots. Like I said it is mostly show, but it is cool non the less :) You might also want to check out my other missions here which feature some more AI workarounds.

[Acedy]

Two things:

 

1) Keep in mind that the retail version of Black Shark has "only" been released in Russia and Germany so far, and afaik online sales are only a small fraction of total sales. So I expect to see more servers once BS has been released world wide.

 

2) Regarding the dedi: the tools are there to implement a lot of the options you would expect from a dedicated server, like automatic kicking, banning, mission rotation etc. Eagle provided a quite powerful API which you can build on to write your own server management tool. See here:

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=32063

 

"All" you need are basic programming skills and the Lua reference/programming manuals. Sure it would have been more convenient if Eagle implemented all those features themselves (and I don't know why they didn't), but at least they gave us the possibility to do it ourselves. As some of you know I have started to write a small tool that allows you to run BS as what I call a "pseudo-dedicated" server. It is currently in testing phase, but things are looking good. More info here:

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=39236

[Feuerfalke]

Sure thing, Acedy.

 

But the point was not, if it was possible with a diploma in computer science, but that a dedicated server package and an admin GUI would make it much easier to host and as such increase the number of (unlocked) servers.

 

 

On the other hand, if DCS can do it, why don't they? ;)

 

 

Well, it's in the wishlist already, so let's get back on topic, shall we?

[Acedy]

But the point was not, if it was possible with a diploma in computer science, but that a dedicated server package and an admin GUI would make it much easier to host and as such increase the number of (unlocked) servers.

 

Well you don't need a diploma, if you have learned Basic or Pascal or something similar at school you should have no problem to understand how the scripts operate (or read an introductory book about procedural programming, no OOP required), given that you inform yourself a bit about how Lua data structures work. And I hope indeed that the mod will encourage more people to leave their servers open to the public. We will see...

 

On the other hand, if DCS can do it, why don't they? ;)

 

Sure, it would be desirable, and I don't have an answer to that question. But at least they gave us the tools, and that is in line with Eagles policy to open DCS for 3rd party development/additions. :)

Edited March 24, 2009 by Acedy

[nemises]

Gotta say Acedy, that so far, my experience with Servman is that it is excellent , and really does significantly improve the dedicated BS multiplayer server experience....I can't think of much more that could be done to improve further without the addition of a non gui dedicated server.exe...full props man!

 

What is missing in MP BS, at this stage, is content!...BUT, I have a feeling that the coming improvements to the ME and multiplayer triggers could very rapidly change that.

 

What the "community" needs (now that we "have" servman) is good missions for 2 - 8 players , that can account for the differnt numbers of people , and also provide for the fact that people are going to be spawning in and out over the course of the mission.

A VERY tough job , when you only have a 1 page Briefing to go off!..but, I'm very optimistic about this going forward.

Now that missions can be restarted, or changed .. or dare I say even triggred to change! (Acadey?) by game events, then small containable missions can be built, rather than trying to make a behemouth that will stand up to 10+ hours of 8 players stomping all over it.

 

..to get back on topic, improving AI will certainly add to the immersion of the game, but I think a good set of multiplayer missions that can be strung together with some random elements , and honest goals will take MP BS much further forward...

..bring on the new triggers!

[Acedy]

Gotta say Acedy, that so far, my experience with Servman is that it is excellent , and really does significantly improve the dedicated BS multiplayer server experience....I can't think of much more that could be done to improve further without the addition of a non gui dedicated server.exe...full props man!

 

Glad you like it, although there is still room for lots of improvements. ServMan is a start, and one of its purposes is actually to show people what is possible, and to encourage them to implement new features themselves. It seems that c0ff's announcement of Black Shark's server scripts hasn't been noticed by many people, although these scripts and the functions they provide are actually very powerful.

 

What is missing in MP BS, at this stage, is content!...BUT, I have a feeling that the coming improvements to the ME and multiplayer triggers could very rapidly change that.

 

Yes I feel the same, but as you said, making interesting MP missions with good replayability isn't easy.

 

Now that missions can be restarted, or changed .. or dare I say even triggred to change! (Acadey?) by game events, then small containable missions can be built, rather than trying to make a behemouth that will stand up to 10+ hours of 8 players stomping all over it.

 

At the moment the mod provides automatic restarting/rotating of missions after a given time period, that the server host can set (but there is only one time value that is used for all missions), and players can start votes to load a mission. Unfortunately there is no way to get the overall mission score of a side (like in the single player score window), it is something I have asked Eagle to implement. This would open lots of possibilities, up to a multiplayer campaign where missions progress forward or backward or even branch, depending on the score that a side has gained after a given amount of time.

 

What might also be possible (not sure though, would have to test) is to specify certain units as mission goals, and once they have been destroyed a new mission will be loaded. What would be easier to implement is the possibility to set different mission times for each mission.

Edited March 24, 2009 by Acedy
corrected information

[MBot]

One problem with lacking content is that there are basically 3 different types of missions that require specific design. You have single player, coop and "open server" type of missions that are not easily convertable, because each requires a different design approach and balancing. I stopped converting my SP mission to coop after I saw how 4 guys blasted away every target in my Flexible Defense mission in about 2 minutes. Each mission type really need purpose build missions, which of course further reduces the amount of available content for each game type.

[uhoh7]

What might also be possible (not sure though, would have to test) is to specify certain units as mission goals, and once they have been destroyed a new mission will be loaded.

 

This would be a great feature and I think would really set the stage for greater growth online and in the marketplace.

 

Thanks so much for your participation in the discussion.

[AggiAggi]

Uhoh7, MBot,

 

thanks for your explanations. I think I'll have a look at your missions.

 

Cheers