Confused.

[sbk93036]

Why is it that there are mods like DCSMax and the terrain mod that make the game better...shouldn't the game have been tweaked by ED? I bought it online for $49 and am curious why I am downloading upgrades to performance and visuals that are made by 3rd parties. ???

[159th_Viper]

Further enhancements require further time, a rare commodity in the business. I dare say that even if the product released was pristine, there will always be Mods/Tweaks to improve/supplement it - 'tis Human Nature :)

[slug88]

Why is it that there are mods like DCSMax and the terrain mod that make the game better...shouldn't the game have been tweaked by ED? I bought it online for $49 and am curious why I am downloading upgrades to performance and visuals that are made by 3rd parties. ???

 

If it makes you feel better, feel free not to download the mods :).

[Weta43]

I find your question odd - Do you complain because there are mods for ArmA or Unreal Tournament?

 

It's the nature of all games/sims that some people in the community will come up with mods that enhance some part of the game in the creators eyes...

 

Terrain mods - My understanding is (simmodders correct me if I'm wrong) that there was an attempt to co-ordinate some 3rd party mods with BS development in the hope of including them in the release (which is why some 3'd party mods are in the simHQ videos) however, a lot of work was done by ED to optimise framerates in BS (& things are much better here than in LO/FC) but the terrain mods weren't subject to the same degree of optimisation (or maybe just weren't completely finished) - weren't all that FPS friendly on weaker machines, and so the decision was made not to include them in the release, in the knowledge that they would be readily available through the forum when complete to those that want them, along with all the other mods that are bound to keep appearing over the years :-)

 

DCSMax - someone external to ED clever came up with a good app. Good on him...

During the development of BS there were some issues with Vista that meant a warning was included in the game regarding the larger campaigns and Vista. Towards the end of development Microsoft rectified those issues. My understanding is that DCSMax (again - correct me if I'm wrong) was originally to manage affinity in Vista (this trick doesn't work in XP) & throught this gain FPS. Something only worth doing after BS development was frozen for release.

Since it's release the developer has added some nice features - but again - it's a mod. That's the nature of computer gaming....

Edited April 17, 2009 by Weta43

[sbk93036]

!

 

If it makes you feel better, feel free not to download the mods :).

That's a goofy reply.:megalol:

[sbk93036]

I find your question odd - Do you complain because there are mods for ArmA or Unreal Tournament?

 

It's the nature of all games/sims that some people in the community will come up with mods that enhance some part of the game in the creators eyes...

 

Terrain mods - My understanding is (simmodders correct me if I'm wrong) that there was an attempt to co-ordinate the 3rd part mods with BS development in the hope of including them in the release (which is why some 3'd party mods are in the simHQ videos) however, a lot of work was done by ED to optimise framerates in BS (& things are much better here than in LO/FC) but the terrain mods weren't subject to the same degree of optimisation (or maybe just weren't completely finished) - weren't all that FPS friendly on weaker machines, and so the decision was made not to include them in the release, in the knowledge that they would be readily available through the forum to those that want them.

 

DCSMax - someone external to ED clever came up with a good app. Good on him...

During the development of BS there were some issues with Vista that meant a warning was included in the game regarding the larger campaigns and Vista. Towards the end of development Microsoft rectified those issues. My understanding is that DCSMax (again - correct me if I'm wrong) was originally to manage affinity in Vista (this trick doesn't work in XP) & throught this gain FPS. Something only worth doing after BS development was frozen for release.

Since it's release the developer has added some nice features - but again - it's a mod. That's the nature of computer gaming....

I don't find it odd. It just seems that Black Shark should have been much more polished prior to release, or offered at a lower price. I love the game A LOT!

[sbk93036]

Ok. Not dissing the developers, just curious. Thx. Hey, I added an avatar recently and it's not showing up yet. Does it take awhile to show up or do I have to activate something? Thx!!!

[MBot]

I don't find it odd. It just seems that Black Shark should have been much more polished prior to release, or offered at a lower price. I love the game A LOT!

 

Of course you are free to have your own oppinion, but in my eyes Black Shark was one of the most polished releases for quite some time. Free of major bugs, very stable and running quite smooth.

[sbk93036]

Ok. Not dissing the developers, just curious. Thx. Hey, I added an avatar recently and it's not showing up yet. Does it take awhile to show up or do I have to activate something? Thx!!!

Never mind. Figured it out. :doh:

[psycho]

or offered at a lower price.

 

In my country, BS is much less expensive than others PC games (40€ BS for 60 to 70€ others)

[nemises]

It was very polished at release, however, as they say a project is never finished, it is only released.

ED could have (and lets face it, nearly did ;) ) hold onto this thing for YEARS to polish it ... they finally let it out the door, but I bet there is a list of 1000 things they want to tweak a bit further / improve / change ... but you haveto reach a point where you say its ready to go out. Other wise it would never be released....we'd all loose patience, and they'd never make any money at all.

 

The fact that people outside of ED's change control and time restraints are making these mods FOR LOVE of the sim, and are not constrained by publishers and deadlines is a huge positive in this community, and it is to ED's credit that they are given the leeway they are for our benefit.

 

/rant :P

[EtherealN]

I don't find it odd. It just seems that Black Shark should have been much more polished prior to release, or offered at a lower price. I love the game A LOT!

 

Not to beat a dead horse, but I thought I'd help your understanding of this oddity through adding my own perspective with some examples from a game I recently purchased:

 

Empire: Total War. Price: 50 euro.

Failed to even install for a lot of people, required a very specific routine to install from the discs (there were people who bought it on discs, the installer installed Steam, which then proceeded to download the 15.5GB game even though all the files were on the discs...). Bugs include the AI being unable to perform amphibious operations, so players with island territories do not have to defend those territories against the AI. Many upgrades, especially naval ones, can make units unselectable (spawns CTDs). Bugs will easily destroy your savegames. Etcetera. A lot of those bugs are still there.

 

Now, DCS:BS. Price ~40 euro.

Some issues with ATI cards on release that we who frequent the Problems forum seem to be centered on drivers. Unknown to me if it's a problem that can be solved in DCS programming. Some efficiency issues from the game not being multithreaded (which is understandable considering the massiveness of the job of rewriting an entire engine for multithreading). There's been a few very minor hickups, with some issues on some peripherals (though we simmers have stupid amounts of peripherals...).

 

---

 

So, first of all, there being mods isn't really meaning that the game isn't polished. In part, there being mods is a sign of a good design and good designs in themselves takes some time. It would have been easier to make a design that was unmoddable. :P

 

Secondly - the game is already pretty cheap.

 

Thirdly - it's impossible for them to anticipate every customers every preference. A lot of people run this game on stock, a lot of us use one or a few mods to help customize things a little bit. (I myself use TangoRomeo's cockpit textures and a little now and then I toss on the LoRELOAD terrain textures.)

 

So in my opinion this is a product that definitely is a lot more "finished" and "polished" than most releases out there, and it does have a moddable structure that allows us users the freedom to perform those customizations that work to our own tastes.

[SSneg]

In my country DCS:BS costs 11 (eleven) EUR, roughly twice as cheap as blockbusters like Assassin's Creed or GTAIV.

 

I think ED never really focused on such things as marketing&advertising or optimised performance. Their primary focus is on flight model and avionics simulation as well as building a semi-open architecture, and they did an excellent job here. I guess it's not that easy to build a game that sustains 25 different 3d-party amateur addons and actually works better with them, is it?. And simulation stuff is superb.

 

So I guess in the end things work out the way ED wants them: they devote maximum available time to simulation and open-platform stuff, the rest is done by community: optimised textures, skins, varied campaigns and scenarios, performance enhancement utilities, addon developer tools as well as numerous tutorials and trainings, even tech support. This is a truly 21st century and Web 2.0 (Gamedev 2.0?) approach. And taking into account the nature of simmer community, it should be this way.

[Feuerfalke]

Not to beat a dead horse, but I thought I'd help your understanding of this oddity through adding my own perspective with some examples from a game I recently purchased:

 

Empire: Total War. Price: 50 euro.

Failed to even install for a lot of people, required a very specific routine to install from the discs (there were people who bought it on discs, the installer installed Steam, which then proceeded to download the 15.5GB game even though all the files were on the discs...). Bugs include the AI being unable to perform amphibious operations, so players with island territories do not have to defend those territories against the AI. Many upgrades, especially naval ones, can make units unselectable (spawns CTDs). Bugs will easily destroy your savegames. Etcetera. A lot of those bugs are still there.

 

Now, DCS:BS. Price ~40 euro.

Some issues with ATI cards on release that we who frequent the Problems forum seem to be centered on drivers. Unknown to me if it's a problem that can be solved in DCS programming. Some efficiency issues from the game not being multithreaded (which is understandable considering the massiveness of the job of rewriting an entire engine for multithreading). There's been a few very minor hickups, with some issues on some peripherals (though we simmers have stupid amounts of peripherals...).

 

---

 

So, first of all, there being mods isn't really meaning that the game isn't polished. In part, there being mods is a sign of a good design and good designs in themselves takes some time. It would have been easier to make a design that was unmoddable. :P

 

Secondly - the game is already pretty cheap.

 

Thirdly - it's impossible for them to anticipate every customers every preference. A lot of people run this game on stock, a lot of us use one or a few mods to help customize things a little bit. (I myself use TangoRomeo's cockpit textures and a little now and then I toss on the LoRELOAD terrain textures.)

 

So in my opinion this is a product that definitely is a lot more "finished" and "polished" than most releases out there, and it does have a moddable structure that allows us users the freedom to perform those customizations that work to our own tastes.

 

 

A bit of comparing apples and oranges IMHO.

 

Just imagine playing Empires against the BlackShark AI - that would be a pretty static game-experience.

 

Or the limited installations from BS against the STEAM-ability to install the game on any PC you want. And you can't state some persons experiences as general flaw either. The installation routine works nice, if you let the game install and don't force it active with STEAM before it was installed. The 15GB download is a user-bug, not a program-bug.

 

I agree that BlackShark has relatively few bugs to other games, but this example is a poor one. It's not about pure number of bugs, when you want to advertise a game against another.

[EtherealN]

To be honest man, the Empire AI is a static experience. But the AI there is also much more critical to game experience than in DCS - without the AI the majority of Empire is completely unplayable.

 

But anyway, what I wanted to highlight with the example was that DCS:BS isn't in any way unfinished due to there being mods. Empire on the other hand was unfinished, and still is unfinished, AND is more expensive. On the installation disc issues, I bought it off of Steam directly but judged the nature of the install bug on the "fix" proposed on release day (to start Steam with a console command) as explained by BurtonJ over there.

 

The activations vs Steam doesn't really enter into that discussion since it's a whole different thing. (Though I guess I should have used STALKER: Clear Sky instead as an example - that was a Steam game with activations and no deactivations, which those of us who had pre-ordered got real pissed off about since it had not been advertised.)

 

And no, it isn't about pure number of bugs, it's the overall picture. And DCS was very playable right off the bat with only a few kinks. Empire on the other hand was not. (Though I personally had a better experience than many - my problems only came up further in when the memory leaks and endgame tech bugs made the game unplayable long enough into the campaign that no reviewer could hope to get there before deadline.)

 

Anyways, I accept your criticism of the game used as a comparative example, but there's so few sims getting released that it's difficult to find one to use. I would have used Falcon 4 but I didn't get that on release so wouldn't have the experience of it to compare with. But we probably shouldn't derail into a long discussion of the faults of completely other games. I just wished to highlight that the OP seems to have a slightly skewed picture of what constitutes an unfinished or "unpolisched" product.

[McVittees]

I don't find it odd. It just seems that Black Shark should have been much more polished prior to release, or offered at a lower price. I love the game A LOT!

 

Bizare (in so many ways)! :noexpression:

[PoleCat]

Worth every penny and plenty polished for my tastes. The MODS just add some butter to the bread.

 

Out

[GGTharos]

So you're complaining that ED let 3rd parties do the mods while they polished up the game and made certain it worked as well it possibly could given the time they had, rather than focus on eye-candy?

 

It seems to me like your thinking is a little upside-down :huh:

 

 

I don't find it odd. It just seems that Black Shark should have been much more polished prior to release, or offered at a lower price. \

[Guest]

It just seems that Black Shark should have been much more polished prior to release, or offered at a lower price.

 

I can say without a doubt that Black Shark is one of the most polished games I have bought for many years. I have been playing for MONTHS without a patch of any kind and have had not one CTD or any other "major" bug (just very minor niggles). So, I could not disagree more with your statement.

[nemises]

I guess the assumption he's using is that you "have" to download the mods.

 

well...I have not downloaded or installed a single mod to black shark yet... haven't neeted to, nor felt the urge. It looks and plays awesome..I get great framerates...I dont get wet over different skins etc (apols to any skinners), nor alternative sounds. I dont need DCSMax as im running XP.

 

So simple answer is, dont download them ... the Sim stands up as a great one with or without them IMHO.

[hassata]

What's this terrain mod and is it worth downloading?

[EtherealN]

From my understanding it's a conversion of a terrain pack for Lock On called LockOn RELOAD or LoRELOAD. I think it's some fairly pretty textures but don't use it all that much. I liked the cockpit texture mod better - that one looks just awesome. But the terrain pack (it should be available on lockonfiles.com) is definitely worth checking out.

 

Definitely use the ModMan compatible pack though - that way you can apply and remove it as you like.

[hassata]

Thanks!

[Cap_Z]

BS is definitly the best Ver. 1.0 game I have purchased in a very long time. I am confused by the OP's remark.

[LastRifleRound]

Black Shark is one of the most refreshing, stable releases I've purchased for the PC since Company of Heroes. If you go the sim route, since Falcon 4.0 Allied Force. I have a computer that barely meets minimum req, has an ATI card of all things, and BS worked right out of the box, with no tweaking whatsoever.

 

And about that box, the DVD version of the game is 10$ cheaper at 39.99$. Think about that, $40 USD. $60 USD gets you a new Xbox360 game of virtually any type. Compare what you're getting one of those to what you're getting in Black Shark. Black Shark is a steal if you ask me....

 

EDIT: Black Shark is based on the LOMAC engine, and LOMAC has been around for a while, so the fact that there are mods right out of the gate isn't all that surprising.