paint

[Bad Omen]

Great point about the neon skins HT. There is always somebody 'gaming' it.
After that comment, I would vote for no ability to do your own skins. The only choice might be Eagle's idea about the squad markings/invasion stripes.

[indian]

HiTech How about the option to show squad names in the neon sign over the aircraft that show the type of plane and squad name of nme. This might be easier to do and give us the option to turn  it off on our side for those not in a squad. Squads could come up with a three to five letter id for them to show th nme. But personally why would anybody want to identify theirself to the nme this only helps those who have a grudge against a player find them. The paint sceme would be way to big for everyone to download to many differnt scemes to have. Most dont see the problem with this request. Which is we would have to all the plane skins that everybody wants to make on every harddrive the game is loaded on to show up in the game any other way would slow the game down to unplayable screen rates.

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Tommy (INDIAN) Toon

http://www.geocities.com/~tltoon

[Dune]

I put in my vote for Jedi's suggestion.  Let's have 2 or 3 "skins" for every plane that it's applicable to.  While I would LOVE to jump in a P-51D with a Blue nose and rudder, Juve and his pals might not be so excited about the idea  

Plus, think of the good it would do for Scenarios and HA-type arenas (I am assuming these will be a part of AH).  Grey 109F's in France and tan ones in Africa, US P-39's in the PTO and VVS one's for the Russian front, etc, etc.

I think that we could increase the historical "feel" of the game substantially without increasing the number of planes.  Also, this would make more squads happy because it's more likely that a plane like the one their namesakes flew would be availible at some point during the RPS.

My $.02.  

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487th F.S. "Lil' Bastards"
Flying Tigers

[Westy]

Absolutely Dune.  

--Westy

[Downtown]

Hitech,

PLease on the Front End thing.

And I think the 32X32 Stamp for squadrons is a good idea.

And perhaps one stripe, rudder, or nose cone color for a squad.

Limit the strip colors. Still gives

128 Possible Squadrons with an individual color nose cones, waist or wing stripes, or Rudders.

Then thrown in the Postage Stamp Icon, and Whooo Hooo, loss of individuality.

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"I could feel the 20MM Cannon impacting behind me so I made myself small behind the pilot armor" Charlie Bond AVG

[Laika]

I'm not fussed about squad art,Pilot markings etc...

What I would like to see is a set of suitable skins for each theater that plane was used in.

I'd hate seeing a "Med" brown 109 over snow, P39 in Russia with US markings     etc.. etc

For a main type arena I dont care, but for events & HA it should be a must.  

laika-
8./JG5

[kkoori]

Laika, Dune etc,

My sentiments exactly - 3 paint HISTORICAL scheme options for each aircraft would be excellent.  

Helps tremendously towards "player immersion".

As noted before it gets annoying sometimes when your supposedly over the Russian Steppes in 1943 and a P39 zooms by with US markings, followed by a P40 with similiar markings.  All while flying my DESERT camouflaged Bf109F!!!    


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P/O kkoori
75 Squadron RAAF Australia
Australian Aboriginal Soldiers Homepage:
http://www.geocities.com/pentagon/bunker/6545

[Cuff]

How about interior color schemes?  I would really love a paisley print motif on my F6F dashboard.  It would really add to my AH experience and be a real design statement.  Then we could have parade of cockpits and cockpit fashion shows.

This IMHO would be SUPER DUPER...

(I don't think I need one of these but I'll add it just to be sure...      )

Not to be a butthead (I know, too late) but although I'm sure to a lot of people this is a great idea, I hope that HT and the gang put their energies to things that would much more significantly affect the way AH plays.  This is really just eye-candy.  Give me the guts, please.  Leave the eye candy for the kids.

[This message has been edited by Cuff (edited 08-12-1999).]

[Windle]

I'll take the eye candy along with the guts, thanks.  

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Windle
*Future* Aces High VF-17 'Jolly Rogers' 8X

[Belgar]

does anyone belong in a Squadron in Janes WW2 fighters?
i use to, was the 365th Hellhawks flying P47Ds

using a paint shop pro utility and making several types ie like 4 copies inculding reversal image etc you were able to have on RAF and USAAF planes a squadron marking on the tail and on LWs a squad marking under the cockpit like the JG26 squad.....because this game is full of "eye candy" so to speak you can make out the markings at a good decent range and identify what that marking is....also which is a good example on Janes which AH could adopt is the number of kills you can tally up...on Janes each and everytime you kill someone you get a kill marking painted on your plane RAF was on the engine cowl the USAAF was under the cockpit and the LWs had bullet like shapes painted on the tail ( i suspect a few people know what im talking about if they play this sim) would be nice to see these ideas implemented into this new game

Belgar

Member of 617 RAF [TANGMERE WING]

[Sascha JG 77]

Kill markers on the planes? Great idea!!
Put the current (or longest) kill streak on the player's plane in the appropriate spot.
Hmm I did it again...
**waiting for HT to show up, slap the back of my head and say : "Tsk, tsk..it can t be done, silly!"***  

Sascha

[Flathat]

Subject to feasibility, I'll add my vote for jedi's suggestion. There should be a default choice, though, for them as don't wanna or can't download everything. Remember, a "p51d3.vew" file averages 1MB or more. Three schemes triples the requirement, doesn't it? I'm not a programmer either (though I have tried, alas), but I'd bet that whatever other differences AH has from WB, art file size won't be appreciably different.

Flathat

[Cuff]

Kill markers?  Bomber logos?!  Who's going to see these things?!!  Just IMAGINE they're on there and be happy.  When I engage a guy I note his type and I could give a flying rip what number is painted on his side or whether he has a logo on the side or even what color he is!

I don't care what you guys say - I'm still trying to figure out when you would actually get a chance to see this stuff you want slapped on your airframes.  Your enemy ain't gonna see it unless he's sightseeing and you ain't gonna see it so that leaves your squad/wingmates.  They already have an idea of how many kills and what squad you're in and unless they're sightseeing they're not going to see it either.  Personally I want my wingie scanning the skies and clearing me, not gawking at my logo/colorscheme...  

As for the technical issues, people need to realize that changing the graphics in a single person game is completely different from a multi-person online setup.  In a multi-user game somewhere along the line all the individual users' data needs to be sent to all the other users.  This not only adds to server loads but burns up game time transferring the data for the users.  

The kill markers would be relatively easy to add to the FE, using your score.  The artwork is do-able if you would be happy with preset art loaded into the FE.  So they could add 40 different logos into the FE you could select.  As for the custom airframe paint - that wouldn't be that big a deal either although the option to change colors dynamically would add to the server data load being sent.

However, the custom logos would be a download/upload issue.  Users would probably have to upload their logos to a server and in order to see them everyone would have to download them at regular intervals.  The airframe color data should probably be included in this to avoid having to send extra data realtime to the game server.

I suggest to HT that he just TELL you the logos and kill markers are in the game and leave it at that.  No programming would be necessary.  No one is going to see them anyway.  

Now before you flame me, I'm NOT saying these are bad ideas.  It's just at this point it's unreasonable to expect and/or request this sort of thing.  Dreaming is fine too of course, as long as that's all it is...  

[Bad Omen]

Cuff:
I think, other than some of the stripe and 36x36 stamp ideas, people are talking about things they would see on their FE only. Mainly for screen shot/gun camera stuff.
I agree, I don't want bandwidth saturated with diff art stuff, I want it saturated with strategic stuff....

[jedi]

Well, I was hopin for player-designed artwork, and it wouldn't bother me a bit if some clown decided to make all Corsairs appear neon pink on HIS FE, but I admit I never considered that you could make your plane invisible.  THAT would obviously be intolerable  

But I reckon the "plane-slot" idea is still viable.  If the game supports, say, 200 different airplane types, then there should be no problem if 6 of em ar FW-190s that differ only in paint scheme, and 3 of em are F4U-1D in Brit, VMF-214, and of course VF-17 livery    The problem then becomes WHO does all this artwork?

That's where I hoped the players could come in.  I was kinda thinkin, OK, the designers release the artwork utility to the rabble, -dwebo- paints a plane, sends the file to HTC, who give it thumbs-up or thumbs-down, and then "tag" it so the game will accept it as a legitimate paint job.  Then it goes on a website where anyone who WANTS it can get it, and -dwebo- THEN can put it in one of his 3 F4U-1D slots (as could his squaddies).

As miko said, you rarely get close enough to someone to care about what YOU look like, but the one time you do is flying around with your squaddies.  Adds a bit to the immersion IMHO.

Not high-priority, but certainly worth considering I reckon.
 

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