DCS-series, modules or individual products?

[fragged]

Hi,

 

Before the launch of Black Shark, I remember talk about DCS being a sort of modular deal with new airplane modules coming on regular intervals.

 

Now after the launch of DCS: A-10C we have two independent products and are waiting for a compatibility update for Black Shark to make it work online with A-10C.

 

Sssoo. What after the release of 10th DCS "module"? Will we have 100 GB's of game installations, all containing 90% the same files (textures, sounds, etc the stuff that takes up the disk space) or will we at some point get real modularity and new aircraft sold like DLC's for current mainstream games?

 

Not only would this save up disk space, it would make maintaining and developing the game much easier for ED, it would make modding easier (SDK's are coming for maps etc, right?) and editing any non-aircraft-specific settings would be a lot easier as instead of having to modify the same setting for 3 different games (KA-50, FC2, A-10C), there would only be one.

 

I think I have a valid argument here. I do understand that making changes like this take time and effort, but I think it's worth it in the end. It's important to plan ahead into the future.

 

I've noticed CCP (maker of EVE-Online) starting to pick up on this with their Corification efforts of various game components, like graphics, inventory system, ui, etc. This allows them to use the same bits of code in other projects with ease.

 

/rant off

 

-fragged

 

disclaimer: I did not use search to look for possible previous discussions about this topic.

Edited March 29, 2011 by fragged

[andysim]

i think they will cross that bridge when they get to it hehe. At the rate they make aircraft (about every 2 to 3 years?) alot can happen in that time. :pilotfly::joystick:

 

Edit. I am looking forward to seeing what will happen with EVE hehe, i have a old character with 35m SP but hes inactive cause i dont really like PVP and running missions gets old. Hopefully someday they will make new stuff to do and I will reactivate

[636_Castle]

That'd be kinda cool, to have a single DCS launcher. But I imagine that might be inconvenient for devs and testers when trying to narrow down a bug. Especially when you've got different theaters/maps and additions like HDR and mods to the graphics engine with each release. Sounds like one big mess when something needs a patch. Solid point though, DCS isn't plural. ;) I just it'll be rather impossible until the entire simulator/map becomes set in stone - which might get boring after a while.

Edited March 29, 2011 by 636_Castle

[glycerinum]

beware! moderators are everywhere!

[Kenan]

It's not so much of a big deal to me. It's not like I have a 20 gig hard disk and have to worry about space. I don't think it would be easy to do as it would require rebuilding the whole code and since we all know BS and A10C are already a standalone products with their own folders, I doubt it will happen anytime soon.

[636_Castle]

Indeed. Plus who really has the mental capacity to be an ace in all of these aircraft? I prefer to stick to one jet and go from there until something better is released ( *cough* Hornet! *cough* ). I've already forgotten how to use the shvkal after having to learn the Warthog. :joystick:

 

As long as they're multiplayer compatible, it's still the best air combat sim on the market for me.

Edited March 29, 2011 by 636_Castle

[fragged]

It's not so much of a big deal to me. It's not like I have a 20 gig hard disk and have to worry about space. I don't think it would be easy to do as it would require rebuilding the whole code and since we all know BS and A10C are already a standalone products with their own folders, I doubt it will happen anytime soon.

 

SSD space still costs a lot and probably will for quite some time. Menu and flyable aircraft should be the only differences between the A-10C and KA-50 modules after they have both been patched to the same level. I don't see why they couldn't exist within the same installation. It's just a matter of coding it. Also it would make the game more future proof.

 

I see building multiple patches etc as the bigger evil of going through the effort to unify the whole series.

 

Only time will tell us how ED moves forward with the series and how they handle the new modules etc. I'm just hoping they do the right thing here. Saves us both time and effort in the future with easier patching and installation process and changing settings.

 

Couple of things that hit my eye:

Especially when you've got different theaters/maps and additions like HDR and mods to the graphics engine with each release.

Having a single package for the whole deal would make all that easier. And..

 

Sounds like one big mess when something needs a patch.

 

...one patch instead of many is a big mess? How? :doh:

[Haukka81]

Hi,

 

Before the launch of Black Shark, I remember talk about DCS being a sort of modular deal with new airplane modules coming on regular intervals.

 

Now after the launch of DCS: A-10C we have two independent products and are waiting for a compatibility update for Black Shark to make it work online with A-10C.

 

Sssoo. What after the release of 10th DCS "module"? Will we have 100 GB's of game installations, all containing 90% the same files (textures, sounds, etc the stuff that takes up the disk space) or will we at some point get real modularity and new aircraft sold like DLC's for current mainstream games?

 

Not only would this save up disk space, it would make maintaining and developing the game much easier for ED, it would make modding easier (SDK's are coming for maps etc, right?) and editing any non-aircraft-specific settings would be a lot easier as instead of having to modify the same setting for 3 different games (KA-50, FC2, A-10C), there would only be one.

 

I think I have a valid argument here. I do understand that making changes like this take time and effort, but I think it's worth it in the end. It's important to plan ahead into the future.

 

I've noticed CCP (maker of EVE-Online) starting to pick up on this with their Corification efforts of various game components, like graphics, inventory system, ui, etc. This allows them to use the same bits of code in other projects with ease.

 

/rant off

 

-fragged

 

disclaimer: I did not use search to look for possible previous discussions about this topic.

 

+1

[mig29]

Hi,

 

Before the launch of Black Shark, I remember talk about DCS being a sort of modular deal with new airplane modules coming on regular intervals.

 

Now after the launch of DCS: A-10C we have two independent products and are waiting for a compatibility update for Black Shark to make it work online with A-10C.

 

Sssoo. What after the release of 10th DCS "module"? Will we have 100 GB's of game installations, all containing 90% the same files (textures, sounds, etc the stuff that takes up the disk space) or will we at some point get real modularity and new aircraft sold like DLC's for current mainstream games?

 

Not only would this save up disk space, it would make maintaining and developing the game much easier for ED, it would make modding easier (SDK's are coming for maps etc, right?) and editing any non-aircraft-specific settings would be a lot easier as instead of having to modify the same setting for 3 different games (KA-50, FC2, A-10C), there would only be one.

 

I think I have a valid argument here. I do understand that making changes like this take time and effort, but I think it's worth it in the end. It's important to plan ahead into the future.

 

I've noticed CCP (maker of EVE-Online) starting to pick up on this with their Corification efforts of various game components, like graphics, inventory system, ui, etc. This allows them to use the same bits of code in other projects with ease.

 

/rant off

 

-fragged

 

disclaimer: I did not use search to look for possible previous discussions about this topic.

 

 

I had the same understanding. The DCS environment/system would be common and the "plug-able" aircrafts would be plugged-in every 9 months making all the DCS modules inherently multi-player compatible. But now I realize the picture is very different.

[connos]

Lets hope that they will do this. It will be good to release Black Shark like a patch to enable it in A10C without having to install BS.

[nomdeplume]

"modules or individual products"? Both, I'd say. The proportion of 'consumers' who'd want to have multiple aircraft installed simultaneously is probably pretty small. Yes, having 'the same game' installed 10 times so you can fly ten different aircraft would be silly, but then again how many people will really want/need to do this? Only the really hardcore will want to do that, so spending a lot of dev time to make it easier for them probably doesn't make sense. Having to quit one game and launch another isn't that big an inconvenience, really. We're talking 'cherry on top' stuff.

 

I think that eventually the cost of having to 'backport' engine improvements etc. into X separate products will outweigh the benefits of reduced time-to-market for new modules, though with only 2 modules available and a third still a long way off, I don't think we're there yet. Maybe they'll adopt a hybrid approach, where the new module is developed/released as a single standalone product, and the older modules are updated to the new engine as a group post-process? That might retain most of the benefits of independent development of the new module, while still making cross-module compatibility feasible to maintain.

 

Anyway, short version is I agree with andysim - they'll cross that bridge when they get to it. It's still a long way off, IMO.

[fragged]

"modules or individual products"? Both, I'd say. The proportion of 'consumers' who'd want to have multiple aircraft installed simultaneously is probably pretty small. Yes, having 'the same game' installed 10 times so you can fly ten different aircraft would be silly, but then again how many people will really want/need to do this?

 

If you own all the modules, why wouldn't you have them all installed? I mean, why would you uninstall them when you can just leave them be on your HDD.

[EtherealN]

If you own all the modules, why wouldn't you have them all installed? I mean, why would you uninstall them when you can just leave them be on your HDD.

 

Speed concerns, mainly. I frequently rearrange my HDD to ensure that the products I use frequently are on the outside of the platters. With most mechanical drives the physical location of a piece of data will greatly influence loading speeds.

 

This is pretty much a non-issue for those with SSD's, but they will instead be contending with a much higher price per gigabyte.

[nomdeplume]

If you own all the modules, why wouldn't you have them all installed? I mean, why would you uninstall them when you can just leave them be on your HDD.

 

As well as speed concerns, some of us don't have massive drives. Further, some of us occassionally get new PCs with new hard drives - I don't have Black Shark installed because I haven't played it since the last time I rebuilt my PC.

[jiblet]

I frequently rearrange my HDD to ensure that the products I use frequently are on the outside of the platters.

 

You actually manually arrange files based on angular velocity of a HDD platter? That may be the nerdiest thing I've ever read!

How do you even go about doing that?! Both finding which sectors are where on the disc and enforcing that certain files are places on those chosen sectors.

[fragged]

Speed concerns, mainly. I frequently rearrange my HDD to ensure that the products I use frequently are on the outside of the platters. With most mechanical drives the physical location of a piece of data will greatly influence loading speeds.

 

Okay.. I know about the speed difference between the outer and inner ends of the disk, but to actually care enough to move your data around.. whoa. For me it's enough to know that my hard drives are not fragmented to hell and back.

 

This is pretty much a non-issue for those with SSD's, but they will instead be contending with a much higher price per gigabyte.

 

As well as speed concerns, some of us don't have massive drives. Further, some of us occassionally get new PCs with new hard drives - I don't have Black Shark installed because I haven't played it since the last time I rebuilt my PC.

 

Which would be solved by having the modules merged together. You'd get all the flyable aircraft in one package that you own the license for.

[EtherealN]

You actually manually arrange files based on angular velocity of a HDD platter? That may be the nerdiest thing I've ever read!

How do you even go about doing that?! Both finding which sectors are where on the disc and enforcing that certain files are places on those chosen sectors.

 

I don't have an application that can do it with full control (if someone knows of such a program, let me know!), so I do it in a sort of haphazard way with Defraggler: I find some really big stuff sitting in the general area where I want my stuff to be, and delete it/move it temporarily to a second drive, and then selectively defrag the files and folders I want to move there. It's a bit of a hack but most of the time it works.

 

Another thing I do is I tell Defraggler to move large files (300MB+) to the end of the drive, and then selectively re-defrag the other things. With a 1TB drive that only has about 30% usage, this causes pretty much everything else to actually be at the outside. Again, a bit of a hack and not the fine control I would like to have, but it does the job. (And relies on having a lot of free space on the drive.) If you combine this with a blank-space defragmentation you can get your applications clustered very nicely at the outside of the platters. :)

Edited March 30, 2011 by EtherealN

[EtherealN]

Which would be solved by having the modules merged together. You'd get all the flyable aircraft in one package that you own the license for.

 

Well, merging things together has both advantages and disadvantages. For some things you get an easier job if you merge things (like adding post-processing effects to the graphics and ensuring MP compatibility), but other things will potentially get a lot harder; for example you might run into a lot more issues in bug handling and you are a lot more restricted in the optimizations you can do since what might optimize something while flying the A-10C might break something else in the KA-50. If the programs are separate, this is not an issue - you'll just include that optimization in the A-10C distribution and leave it out in the Ka-50 distribution.

 

You'll also have a lot easier time handling the Q/A for separate distribution model, since each change that the programmers make will be easier to check for the testers: it sort of helps to divide the workload for both designers, developers and testers into more manageable chunks. (Remember, ED is independent and cannot benefit from centralized Q/A laboratories like EA and Ubi-linked development teams can.)

[fragged]

I don't have an application that can do it with full control (if someone knows of such a program, let me know!), so I do it in a sort of haphazard way with Defraggler: I find some really big stuff sitting in the general area where I want my stuff to be, and delete it/move it temporarily to a second drive, and then selectively defrag the files and folders I want to move there. It's a bit of a hack but most of the time it works.

 

I haven't used it for a while, but http://www.mydefrag.com/ should have options/scripts available enabling you to organize the disk the way you want it.