Let's salute the Viper

[MadDogMcQ]

I remember seeing this intro for the very first time and being soooooo excited about what was to follow when I got into that cockpit. Revolutionary!!!

 

 

(Note the lone Hawg under attack)

[MTFDarkEagle]

:pilotfly:

[Arkham]

Ahhh yes, I rememebr getting falcon 4.0 when it first released. I remember the fantastic hard bound, flippable manual.

 

I remember the anticipation of loading it for the first time.....

....and having my dreams shatters when I took off for the first time. :P I swear the ATC was drunk.

[MadDogMcQ]

I think you'll find it was you who was drunk, lol. I remember walking home from town with that "heavy" box - something which we sadly no longer experience.

[bumfire]

Huge game manuals FTW, i remember it started with the Amiga, for me it started there, where you got a manual with Falcon, then other games started to copy it.

 

Then all of a sudden they changed over to gay PDF files, like wtf.

 

PDF files are only good if you fancy a read of the manual whilst you are at your pc doing nothing, they aint good for playing a game and needing to look up the manual for something.

 

ALL, and I mean ALL sims should come with a decent sized paper manual, the manufacturers of whatever sim cant complain and say it costs too much to include a manual, because if there software was good, it would sell regardless of an extra couple of quid or bux added on due to the manual.

[kylania]

PDF files are only good if you fancy a read of the manual whilst you are at your pc doing nothing, they aint good for playing a game and needing to look up the manual for something.

 

PDFs are great for companies to spend less on printing a quality manual, and eventually less on even creating a quality manual (or in some cases actually creating one at all!), which they can spend on marketing you a more costly game with less quality and content all around!

[MadDogMcQ]

Boy, the good old Amiga! I adored my Amiga years! A500 and A2000.

Edited November 9, 2010 by MadDogMcQ

[GGTharos]

... what?

 

PDFs are great for companies to spend less on printing a quality manual, and eventually less on even creating a quality manual (or in some cases actually creating one at all!), which they can spend on marketing you a more costly game with less quality and content all around!

[EtherealN]

Kylania, I think you completely misunderstand what a PDF is. As someone who has worked for print magazines (specifically in the PC gaming industry), guess what file format we sent the completed issue in to the printer? PDF. It's an actual professional-grade print format.

 

Distributing PDF's decrease printing costs, which is disgustingly expensive, and also help offset publisher and distributor warehousing costs (a lot more money than you think), which allows said money to be spent on weird stuff like developing the actual product instead. The actual software product is a much higher portion of the consumer price now than it was 10 years ago.

 

Less baseless assumptions and more fact in the future, please?

 

Besides, with digital distribution fast becoming the principal means of distribution, how do you expect to distribute a printed manual over the wire? A printed manual would completely defeat the whole point of the distribution method that is gaining popularity in the pace of an avalanche, but using PDF means that your printer could theoretically print a manual that is identical in print quality as what the professional printing houses could do (sans the binding).

Edited November 9, 2010 by EtherealN

[kylania]

Touchy much? Lets not assume I was talking about ED, which I wasn't. :joystick:

 

I'm talking about companies like UbiSoft which did away with printed manuals in order to "make them more robust" since they could now spend more money on making them better instead of printing them. Also the general lack of quality of manuals in most games over the last decade or so.

 

However, when you look at the mess of a manual for Silent Hunter 5 (essentially a "simulator") you can see that not all companies put as much effort into their digital distribution manuals as they did their printed manuals, nor as much as ED does theirs.

 

I'm also pretty sure that ED could sell a color print manual for a lot less than $300 per, which is what it costs to print out the current beta manual at a local print shop. :)

[Boberro]

More and more often you can get lower prices of color print. I was offered to print color BS manual + another my own color docs for about 30 Euro. About 550 pages all.

[Scarface]

I prefer the LP intro.

[MadDogMcQ]

I prefer the LP intro.

 

Good vid ScarFace, but it doesn't have the same "magic" that the original did (IMHO). Sad b'stard that I am, Falcon4 was like my first kiss - I'll never forget it :)

 

And lets not forget....

Edited November 10, 2010 by MadDogMcQ

[EtherealN]

Touchy much? Lets not assume I was talking about ED, which I wasn't. :joystick:

 

Well, just to be clear: I am not employed by ED, my only affiliation with ED is that I spend some of my time (when Real Life so allows, I've sadly been running into a few obstacles there lately) helping them out to the best of my ability since I happen to like their products (and this community). I don't speak for ED and I don't speak in the capacity of someone directly or even indirectly involved in the work of manuals for ED products. (Though I have some insight and I can tell you that a LOT of work goes into those.)

 

However, when you look at the mess of a manual for Silent Hunter 5 (essentially a "simulator") you can see that not all companies put as much effort into their digital distribution manuals as they did their printed manuals, nor as much as ED does theirs.

 

Well, Silent Hunter 5 is a very bad example here since the manual isn't the only thing they botched. The entire game was.

 

I'm also pretty sure that ED could sell a color print manual for a lot less than $300 per, which is what it costs to print out the current beta manual at a local print shop. :)

 

As you may have noticed, ED and TFC have a tradition of making printed manuals available for purchase - you can purchase both LOFC and DCS:BS manuals through TFC/ED as well as major outlets like Amazon.

 

Also, if it would cost 300 dollars to print that manual at your local print shop, they are overpriced. Besides, a visit at your local office supplier would get you the things you need to print it yourself with a ring binder - all the software needed for double-side printing is included in the PDF viewer software suite as long as you have a somewhere near modern printer. ;)

[Pilotasso]

For the time it was launched I like Falcon 3 best. falcon 4 kinda disapointed me after creating so much expectation.

[EtherealN]

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Pilotasso again." :P

 

Totally agreed.

[Callsign.Vega]

Thats nothing. ;)

[Geskes]

Thanks for this. Watching the falcon intro again made me feel good :)

[ZQuickSilverZ]

MadDogMcQ that dog in your avatar is just awsome. Is that your dog? Is it male or female? Whats its name? I have always wanted a bulldog but they are so expensive. Not so much the purchase price but thier medical needs. If I ever do get one it will be a grey and white female. Sorry to break topic.

Anyway I don't see any need for the manual to be printed really. A map would be nice though.

[Kuky]

I don't mind the PDF files. Think about the benefit to the environemt with saving all the trees and cost of buying the game is less for all. You need the manuals only in the begining anyway... once you know your stuff they are just wasting space or collecting dust :)

[Succellus]

You want to safe money for game coding and design, cut the millionaire freaking unusefull MKT in "specialized" magazines TV shows and whatnot. Will safe much more than a poor manual.

But i agree to the decision of not bringing the manual printed anyway, a lot of them where paper waste.

My A10 manual printing costed me almost the 100 USD. And i still find it weak in some area, thank god they made video tutorials, not always usefulls especially when it come to joystick commands to button relation, but at least we have them.

And i m thankfull ED doesn t waste hundred of thousands in MKT.

[Shez]

Wait? Are you telling me that Black Shark and A10C came with a manual? :o

[Impact]

Wait? Are you telling me that Black Shark and A10C came with a manual? :o

 

No, but you can order a paper manual with extra money.

[Revvin]

I remember trudging home in the snow from the Virgin Megastore in Cardiff with my copy of Falcon 4.0. I finished work early that day just to make sure I got to the shop before they closed due to the worsening weather. I also agree with Pilotasso that I was a little underwhelmed by Falcon 4.0 having been a huge fan of Falcon 3.0. I remember the big boxed sims and glossy manuals of the Microprose games I played on my ZX Spectrum before seeing Falcon run on a friends Atari ST. I bought an Amiga 500 to play Falcon and then a PC to play Falcon 3.0, the manuals and assorted documentation was amazing. Falcon was also the reason for me buying my first modem, a 9600 baud external modem to play online having read about competitions in Enemy Lock On magazine - a subscription only mail order magazine dedicated to flight simulators. I used to read endless AAR's from dogfights completed in competition ladders on the Head2Head BBS based in Bristol in the UK. What still amazes me is looking back then at the intro's to those older sims and the CGI scenes and being impressed by them back then and then comparing those to what we actually have now in our sims like the DCS series and IL-2, we've come a long way.