Is a Dynamic Campaign really needed?

[Revvin]

The problem I have with people holding the Falcon 4 DC as some kind of benchmark (not talking about this thread, just some over at other flight sim forums) is that it's still buggy and took years to even make it anywhere near stable.

 

I'd like to see more time spent on AI and flight modelling, whats the point of having the best DC around if the AI around you behave's like artificial stupidity?

[suntrace1]

Because a human need for the random events and surprises is the driving force of his nature.

 

LOMAC needs it badly, i don't have time to create new missions after i get home from work, played old one's bzillion times and am not interested in on-line playing for various reasons. I belive there are many more outthere that have the same point of view. If nothing else, i bet it would boost the sales. I sincerely hope that LOMAC 2 will have some randomness or maybe even a DC.

[S77th-GOYA]

As far as a2a goes, there's nothing that compares to the randomness of flying against other humans.

[suntrace1]

To me the air-quake that's going on on-line has absolutely no appeal since it resembles more to CS then actual air-warfare. Besides there are few servers, i usually get lousy ping and again it's absolutly pointless except for getting ''frags''.

 

But I am very happy that you are satisfied with on-line play.

[Starlight]

The problem I have with people holding the Falcon 4 DC as some kind of benchmark (not talking about this thread, just some over at other flight sim forums) is that it's still buggy and took years to even make it anywhere near stable.

 

Uh? I played F4's DC since it came out and it was definitely playable already with patch 1.08. It had no more bugs than any other game/flight sim. At least there were no HUGE bugs like aircraft crashing into each other while landing or taking off (like lomac 1.02 does). There were more CTD, but it was also playing over a worse overall system (windows 95/98 and DirectX 5/6 if I remember correctly)

 

I'd like to see more time spent on AI and flight modelling, whats the point of having the best DC around if the AI around you behave's like artificial stupidity?

Good DC means also that there is a good AI making decisions... what lacks Lomac, is not the AI in close combat, but the AI to make decisions at strategic/tactical level. And a dynamic campaing is basically an AI engine which decides what to do at strategic level.

[Guest ruggbutt]

If they'd program the features of LMR (LOMAC Mission Randomizer) into the mission editor it would make the majority of us happy. With LMR you can set objects to spawn or not, and you can also set them to spawn w/a certainty sometime w/in the mission. I've made a ton of online missions w/LMR and only the designated targets are the same. I made one ship strike mission that when randomized ended up in a furious furball just to get to the target. Another time we got to the target w/out being spotted on radar, no A/A contact whatsoever. And there were plenty of units looking for us. There were 7 of us on that mission, a couple of '15's, some 27's and 2 '33's w/locked loadouts. It was a blast to fly. I still remember some of those sorties and that was 6 months ago.

[SUBS17]

F4AFs DC is now much more interesting as other countries such as China can now enter the conflict which makes things much more difficult. For lockon a DC might not be a good idea as the aircraft involved would kill your fps. It would require the bubble method to succeed as the engine can't handle the scale a DC would require. However for "Tank Killers" a DC would be ideal and it would work. "Black Shark" could also have a DC similar to LB2 which would rock. Its not the same as F4s DC but works in much a similar way where ground units from both sides are placed on the ground. Units advance one unit or two units at a time(company or Battalion sized). This is done by shuffling the units advancing on each other. At the collision point they engage, lost or damaged units are automatically reinforced while Air units from both sides follow their own patterns. The gunship world is much smaller so as long as the player succeeds, the lines continue forward. Trouble spots or enemy assets should be selectable targets by the player(so long as its in range). Of course a campaign clock is required and likewise enhanced communications put in.

[Floyd]

If they'd program the features of LMR (LOMAC Mission Randomizer) into the mission editor it would make the majority of us happy.

 

 

How do you know what makes the majority of Lomac players - most of them flying

offline if you believe Stormin - happy? Click a few buttons, let the computer generate

a campaign and start flying, that would be great. Not everybody loves to spend hours

in mission building.

[Guest ruggbutt]

How do you know what makes the majority of Lomac players - most of them flying

offline if you believe Stormin - happy? Click a few buttons, let the computer generate

a campaign and start flying, that would be great. Not everybody loves to spend hours

in mission building.

 

Have you used LMR? Since it's obvious were aren't getting a DC even w/1.2 what would you propose? Last time I checked there were tons of missions you could download if you didn't feel like making your own. I was attempting to submit to ED an alternative to what we have now. Let's say you had 20 missions; 5 each of SEAD, Precision Strike, CAP and Fighter Sweep. If the units on the ground and in there were different every time you flew the mission would that be acceptable considering the fact that we aren't getting a DC?

 

That is unless you intend to create a DC yourself. :D Instead of criticizing howbout offering up a solution?

[suntrace1]

Instead of criticizing howbout offering up a solution?

 

 

I had the same thoughts about what Asterix28573 on the first page said - why not make LOMAC capable of handling outsource DC engine?

[Asterix28573]

I had the same thoughts about what Asterix28573 on the first page said - why not make LOMAC capable of handling outsource DC engine?

 

Hey, something has read my idea :D!

 

Cheers,

Asterix

[Floyd]

Have you used LMR? Since it's obvious were aren't getting a DC even w/1.2 what would you propose? Last time I checked there were tons of missions you could download if you didn't feel like making your own. I was attempting to submit to ED an alternative to what we have now. Let's say you had 20 missions; 5 each of SEAD, Precision Strike, CAP and Fighter Sweep. If the units on the ground and in there were different every time you flew the mission would that be acceptable considering the fact that we aren't getting a DC?

 

That is unless you intend to create a DC yourself. :D Instead of criticizing howbout offering up a solution?

 

Yes, i've used it. But you didn't answered my question. I'm not "criticizing"

and asking me to create a DC is a cheap sleight of hand. I do play sims for what

they have to offer and I definitely do not want to spend my free time building missions.

I wanna play/fly!

 

A solution depends on one's preferences. If you can't live w/o DC then play F4 or IL-2,

if you need the triggers in the editor play F/A-18 and for all other bright

features play Lomac. But who am i to tell others what to do with their free time?

[Starlight]

I had the same thoughts about what Asterix28573 on the first page said - why not make LOMAC capable of handling outsource DC engine?

 

A DC need HUGE CPU efforts. Today Lomac simply can't handle this (see one of my previous posts which shows that adding some dozen units kills framerate down to 1-2 FPS in the Theater Map View http://forum.lockon.ru/showthread.php?t=6595 ), so its engine should be totally rewritten to manage a wartime scenario.

 

A DC to work must be integrated in the sim engine. outsource DC will make the same effect as programs which run in virtual machines, such as Java programs, which are far slower than usual programs.

What could be outsourced is more something like today's LMR, which is NOT a dynamic campaign, a DC is a whole another thing. That is a cheaper shortcut.

[GGTharos]

I don't think you understand the basics behind a DC ... It isn't -quite- this bad.

[Asterix28573]

A DC need HUGE CPU efforts. Today Lomac simply can't handle this (see one of my previous posts which shows that adding some dozen units kills framerate down to 1-2 FPS in the Theater Map View http://forum.lockon.ru/showthread.php?t=6595 ), so its engine should be totally rewritten to manage a wartime scenario.

 

A DC to work must be integrated in the sim engine. outsource DC will make the same effect as programs which run in virtual machines, such as Java programs, which are far slower than usual programs.

What could be outsourced is more something like today's LMR, which is NOT a dynamic campaign, a DC is a whole another thing. That is a cheaper shortcut.

 

Hi,

Just to clarify: what I was suggesting is precisely a way to avoid putting LOTS of units inside the game, so converting LockON in a sort of 'bubble' in which units (friendly / enemy / ...) are DYNAMICALLY entered / retired as long as the player moves arounds the theater and, most important, in real time as the player flyes.

 

This is process could be done if LOMAC provided some sort of mechanism to do it, like a hook DLL, an OLE interface, whatever. This interface should provide the "client" program (the campaign generator) a constant flow of information about what's happening inside the game, and according to the events this client software will feed / remove new data inside the simulation world.

 

This indeed could offload the LockOn simulation, as "action" occurring out of the player scope could be removed from it and managed by the "client" AI, which could simulate the results à la Falcon (statistical computing based on player's rating, i.e.). This is exactly what the Falcon "player bubble" does.

 

However, instead of reimplementing such a complex mechanism ¿why don't convert the whole LOMAC game in THE bubble? I think it would be fairly easier (note that I say EASIER, not EASY) than reimplementing Falcon engine again (after all, Falcon engine is just what I say packed inside one executable file).

 

This "client" could be a completely automatic campaign generator, or else another one that allows for some kind of external user interaction during playing, thus allowing for something similar to the "Force on Force" concept implemented in F4-AF (it was included in initial Falcon versions, but it was too buggy to work, IIRC). This can open a whole new world for online gaming, with both a Red and a Blue human "generals" adding / removing flights (both human and AI) from the whole game in real time according to what happens in theater).

 

As I said in my previous post, there's a number of 3rd party Campaign Generators out there that could benefit a lot from such an interface, for the reasons yet posted, and this could open LOMAC to a new whole modding world, while the developers keep focused in "simulation" part of the game.

 

Just an idea. Maybe you can think I'm a dreamer (John Lennon said... ;)), but I'm a profesional C++ developer with a lot of experience, and I know that such a system would not be THAT hard to implement ;).

 

Just my 0.02€

Asterix

[pappavis]

Hi,

 

Just an idea. Maybe you can think I'm a dreamer (John Lennon said... ;)), but I'm a profesional C++ developer with a lot of experience, and I know that such a system would not be THAT hard to implement ;).

Asterix

 

You are correct. It should not be that hard to implement. In theory. Since you mention C++ i would like to add my €0,01 of comment.

I know little about the tech behind lo-mac. One do not know what the code looks like. I am doing coding myself -- one gets really weird code from people at different technical skills, who codes great apps, but those apps are a real pain to expand, bugfix, extend or to maintain. Especially if many people has worked on that code, added their own little quirks. In the end one have one big spagetthi bowl. The app probably works. Management is happy. Client is happy. BUT...

Lo-mac probably has a legacy of code which came all along from the first version Su-27, that code of Su-27 --> Flanker --> Lo-mac was probably constantly being expanded to add new features to things which were already exist(ed).

The fact that its could be hard to add a DC could be just that -- the code base of lomac could possibly not be compatible for such a plugin DLL.

Correct me if i am wrong but someone at ED said that they will rewrite lo-mac from scratch for the Next Product. Probably the techies at ED has realised that lomac 1.xx is the end-of-the-line for the current lo-mac code base.

 

Whatever ED does, i do congratulate them on the great work they are doing, what they will do and let us hope that the Next Product does have a DC.

 

Now that was my €0,01 of comment.

[Weta43]

I guess this thread's about run it's course eh?

E.D.'s won't let people mod the planes - they're not very likely to open up the code to s/one to let them create a 3rd party DC generator..

The point of this thread was that if we aren't getting a DC in the short to medium term (which we aren't - maybe in the long term), what are the smaller changes that would improve play & longevity.

The concensus from this & other threads seems to be:

 

- Event triggers

- The randomiser mentioned above

- Better AI

- Better comms

 

& I personaly think that being able to assign more than one sortie to a flight would make sense too.

[Asterix28573]

I guess this thread's about run it's course eh?

E.D.'s won't let people mod the planes - they're not very likely to open up the code to s/one to let them create a 3rd party DC generator..

The point of this thread was that if we aren't getting a DC in the short to medium term (which we aren't - maybe in the long term), what are the smaller changes that would improve play & longevity.

The concensus from this & other threads seems to be:

 

- Event triggers

- The randomiser mentioned above

- Better AI

- Better comms

 

& I personaly think that being able to assign more than one sortie to a flight would make sense too.

 

Hi,

I know there won't be a DC inside the game at short - medium term, and probably neither at long term. Developers seem focused exclusively in the simulation part of the game, adding new flyables, optimizing graphics, etc... They can't - or don't want to - develop a full DC engine because this will take up too much resources on dev's hours and money, and probably the result will not be worth the effort.

 

What I was proposing was simply a sort of 3rd way between the duality of "DC Yes - DC No" paradigm. DC Yes, but external. I don't think it's something so strange, it's just a step forward the current missions editor, but in runtime.

 

However, I can't understand that modding planes is out of the agenda for now, as this would require a lot more of interaction between the game and the modder, so the later could add specific code to deal with specific radar modes, weapons, etc... As Pappavis pointed, it's impossible to know how difficult would this be without knowing how's the code organized internally.

 

Best regards,

Asterix