Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: AAIK on February 11, 2018, 12:34:43 PM
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The game needs more content. I know its dangerous but why cant you hire some cheap programmers/artists/asset creators? You cant rely on bustr, greebo or any of the other guys to magically make the game better: You need full time workers. Relying on the very few community donators won't bring back the days of full arenas.
This game is a masterpeice if you look at it objectively and conceive that it was mostly one persons vision that made it what it was. I understand that hiring some cheap workers might put the game at risk of being pirated or illigally copied to some darknet system, but the pace at which novelties, planes, maps and new additions to the game is not fast enough to compete with the competition. Competition who have dozens upon dozens of people working on them!
I am writing this because personally I can't suggest this game to anyone. The critical mass of players attracting more players is in a state of red alert and slow stagnation is at risk of reaching new levels. It is the bond between players and squads which is keeping the game mostly together at this point. They will always be hardcore players and support the game mostly to the very end, so they wont just simply up and go without a moments notice, but that support cant be relied on forever.
Assuming that the game wants to exist *forever*, that is a point in itself, but I am sure you don't want the game to fall into the frozen abyss of staleness. I am not saying I know when this game will finally go *poof*, that might take 5, 10 or 15 more years but I would rather play with overfull arenas then otherwise.
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Your game name is?
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The game needs more content. I know its dangerous but why cant you hire some cheap programmers/artists/asset creators? You cant rely on bustr, greebo or any of the other guys to magically make the game better: You need full time workers. Relying on the very few community donators won't bring back the days of full arenas.
This game is a masterpeice if you look at it objectively and conceive that it was mostly one persons vision that made it what it was. I understand that hiring some cheap workers might put the game at risk of being pirated or illigally copied to some darknet system, but the pace at which novelties, planes, maps and new additions to the game is not fast enough to compete with the competition. Competition who have dozens upon dozens of people working on them!
I am writing this because personally I can't suggest this game to anyone. The critical mass of players attracting more players is in a state of red alert and slow stagnation is at risk of reaching new levels. It is the bond between players and squads which is keeping the game mostly together at this point. They will always be hardcore players and support the game mostly to the very end, so they wont just simply up and go without a moments notice, but that support cant be relied on forever.
Assuming that the game wants to exist *forever*, that is a point in itself, but I am sure you don't want the game to fall into the frozen abyss of staleness. I am not saying I know when this game will finally go *poof*, that might take 5, 10 or 15 more years but I would rather play with overfull arenas then otherwise.
What kind of content do you think is needed?
All the content in the world isn't going to help anything if the players dont use it. That is the problem we have now. Todays players have taken the game to the least common denominator and only use the quickest and easiest ways to win the war. The content is there and has ALWAYS been there, just not many use it.
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I think a basic First person shooter element. Like joining a jeep/m3/251/c47/motorbike then hopping out near enemy vehicles/bases or towns would add another level of game play that could get people hooked on the other areas of the game like flying or tanking.
all we need is an Allied soldier and an Axis one and go from there. Panzerfausts or bazookas. Blow up a bridge, engineer can fix it. Broken tank engineer can act like vehicle supplies. A few grenades to disable ack guns. Put charges on the map room to blow it up and capture the town. Snipers covering map rooms from enemy infantry. Bases would be much harder to take just look at what chaos a guy from the storch hangar can create. :devil
Maybe the quickest way to get at a tank in your town would be to get some guys in a C47 and drop them nearby. Rather than upping an M3 with resupply.
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Hitech could speed up terrain production for players who want to try it with an additional tool in the terrain editor if this even really has anything to do with terrains.
Over the last 15 months and now into my third terrain, even with L3DT if I wanted to put as much detail into my production as I do, it would take the same amount of time for my custom designs. Trial and testing of ideas for micro terrain features will still take the same amount of time unless I build one, then bore the wonkies out of the GV community by repicating at every single spawn like I did with my first terrain. Oceania was also an experiment is changing that up. New things take time to test.
The terrain editor needs a clone tool or suite of tools.
1. - For gross cloning of mountains or similar geo features, a highlight of the rectangular area it sits on, pull into a sub editing space. Then the ability to reorient for the new location in x,y,z and paste in. Then you clean up and do the inbetweens by hand. A sub tool of that, build a one of feature to save as reusable feature that can be cloned onto your terrains from a library.
2. - Cloning of surface textures that can be cloned like painting with the terrain tiles. Even the ability to save in a library for future use.
3. - The ability to run Artik's tool, import into the terrain editor, then capture and clone parts into another project(1. is probably that tool). The Melee arena is a three country fantasy arena where you are trying to provide features to inspire players to generate activity. It is not the SEA or FSO where WW2 is reproduced down to the historic geo locations using Artik's application.
Creating Melee arena terrains is a painfully slow process due to a lack of copy and paste style cloning of 3D structures. I have an idea that many players over the years have burnt out and given up on MA terrains during their very first attempt. Directly becasue of how long it takes to create features all over that work space. Aside from the ongoing 15 month acrimony towards myself by some in this community over terrains, you can look in the documentation posts I've run while building my terrains to see just how long and grinding the process is. The only reason I've gotten faster is because I've been creating terrains with the terrain editor nonstop for the last 15 months. I'm starting to run up against the limits of that now.
Is there a program out there that the average casual AH player can afford that clones large scale 3D terrain structures like I'm describing? Or am I missing knowing about a tool that will allow me to look at RAW grayscale heigthmaps in such a way that I can pick and choose specific features to copy and paste into another project space? I could have been cloning heightmap features from Artiks programs heightmaps then, and really speeding up my production. Or just features of my own. 4096x4096 grayscale heightmap geo feature gradient shapes just don't jump out at you unless you zoom down to almost the pixel level to catch the shades of gray demarcation lines. There is no contrast to differentiate anything zoomed out that you can outline and copy to another project space.
The upshot is we all could build faster with the ability to clone 3D features or grayscale gradient features between RAW files. 8thJinx should hop in here and talk about the objects he is creating to see if Hitech has looked at any towards inclusion in the object menu. So that just leaves novelties, new rides, and new functions which when Hitech or Waffle has finished creating, they show up magically.
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I hope something happens, it’s been months and I. Just. Have. No. Interest
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See Rule #4
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He is kind of using scatter shot becasue he seems to be a tad desperate with his attempt to move Hitech the mountain.
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We could always crowdfund..... :bolt:
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There nothing up with the game :old:
We had a blast yesterday :old:
The bloke who owns the game knows best and if you don’t like it grow a pair.
This is the state of the people nowadays, thinking because they have 300 friends on Facecuck that there whining needs to heard by everyone, it’s getting boring.
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Played yesterday too....Can't tell you how much fun the game is if you are forced to miss FSO and have been too busy to play....I think all this whining is because people are playing way too much...Told my guys that too....And they still rage quit on me :bolt:
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I heard that was due to your total refusal to put something on under your chaps..
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Your game name is?
My name......... Maxwell Smart. :rofl
(https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/teamjustice/images/a/ab/Maxwell_Smart_aka_Agent_86.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20141102210554)
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Don't lament. There is no need to be a sad sack. Instead, come see how Scenarios are your salvation. :aok
It's as Churchill famously said in his "This was their finest three hours" speech -- "If everyone played in Scenarios, all may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands."
Saturday at 3 pm Eastern in Special Events 2 arena.
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Hitech could speed up terrain production for players who want to try it with an additional tool in the terrain editor if this even really has anything to do with terrains.
Over the last 15 months and now into my third terrain, even with L3DT if I wanted to put as much detail into my production as I do, it would take the same amount of time for my custom designs. Trial and testing of ideas for micro terrain features will still take the same amount of time unless I build one, then bore the wonkies out of the GV community by repicating at every single spawn like I did with my first terrain. Oceania was also an experiment is changing that up. New things take time to test.
The terrain editor needs a clone tool or suite of tools.
1. - For gross cloning of mountains or similar geo features, a highlight of the rectangular area it sits on, pull into a sub editing space. Then the ability to reorient for the new location in x,y,z and paste in. Then you clean up and do the inbetweens by hand. A sub tool of that, build a one of feature to save as reusable feature that can be cloned onto your terrains from a library.
2. - Cloning of surface textures that can be cloned like painting with the terrain tiles. Even the ability to save in a library for future use.
3. - The ability to run Artik's tool, import into the terrain editor, then capture and clone parts into another project(1. is probably that tool). The Melee arena is a three country fantasy arena where you are trying to provide features to inspire players to generate activity. It is not the SEA or FSO where WW2 is reproduced down to the historic geo locations using Artik's application.
Creating Melee arena terrains is a painfully slow process due to a lack of copy and paste style cloning of 3D structures. I have an idea that many players over the years have burnt out and given up on MA terrains during their very first attempt. Directly becasue of how long it takes to create features all over that work space. Aside from the ongoing 15 month acrimony towards myself by some in this community over terrains, you can look in the documentation posts I've run while building my terrains to see just how long and grinding the process is. The only reason I've gotten faster is because I've been creating terrains with the terrain editor nonstop for the last 15 months. I'm starting to run up against the limits of that now.
Is there a program out there that the average casual AH player can afford that clones large scale 3D terrain structures like I'm describing? Or am I missing knowing about a tool that will allow me to look at RAW grayscale heigthmaps in such a way that I can pick and choose specific features to copy and paste into another project space? I could have been cloning heightmap features from Artiks programs heightmaps then, and really speeding up my production. Or just features of my own. 4096x4096 grayscale heightmap geo feature gradient shapes just don't jump out at you unless you zoom down to almost the pixel level to catch the shades of gray demarcation lines. There is no contrast to differentiate anything zoomed out that you can outline and copy to another project space.
The upshot is we all could build faster with the ability to clone 3D features or grayscale gradient features between RAW files. 8thJinx should hop in here and talk about the objects he is creating to see if Hitech has looked at any towards inclusion in the object menu. So that just leaves novelties, new rides, and new functions which when Hitech or Waffle has finished creating, they show up magically.
Nice detailed writeup.
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I find it funny that back during the AH2 era the big complaint was" we need better graphics". Every day it was the same whine. Now we have great graphics,and yet people still whine because the game isnt laid out to fit their particular fighting style. Dont like the maps? Design a terrain of you own and submit it,as Buster has stated many,many times. Its just a game folks! If you dislike it that much,just go somewhere else.
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There nothing up with the game :old:
We had a blast yesterday :old:
The bloke who owns the game knows best and if you don’t like it grow a pair.
This is the state of the people nowadays, thinking because they have 300 friends on Facecuck that there whining needs to heard by everyone, it’s getting boring.
Agreed.
But, to the point of the OP, new aircraft are always welcome. Some early war French, Italian, Japanese, British aka hangar queens. So many planes such as Me 323, Beaufighter, De 520. :aok
In terms of eye candy, an assortment of ship models. Japanese, British, German ships.
Game ideas are more complex. Spawn-able ships? Variable or move-able gv spawns? :headscratch:
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Yea lets make the game more exciting idea......Have "real" Victoria secret stores in the towns so we could on-line buy sexy stuff........for Bustr?
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Don't know about you but I'm busy trying to build in the raft trip gorges so Hitech can charge people to shoot the rapids or something like that or another DuH....lost my thought. This crap takes time and I wear a loin cloth made from the finest synthetic hamster fur lined with Corinthian manogahide..Huh leather hehehehe.... :lol Sorry Ricardo Mantalbon.....the island de plane de running of the vinyl manoga's. 999 you bring out the worst in me..... :rolleyes:
Oh for the love of canyons........anyone remember around 8th grade science class some teacher taught topography and you made elevation cutouts with cardboard then stacked them to make a mountain? That is the secret to using the AH terrain editor. Just create a 3D topo map. There is a neat smoothing tool called a Smooth Catmul that will weather blend the elevation steps as slow or fast as you want. All those canyons are just stacking coins starting with quarters on the bottom and working up to dimes on the top. Some places 50cent pieces. It's amazing how simple this is once you realize you build everything in topo layers then go back and blend the steps together. You free hand some things along the way, but that's just artistic license to make two features transition together stylishly. If you can sit down and draw a topo map of your idea, you can transfer it into the terrain editor by drawing the same elevations one coin at a time...... :O
(https://s20.postimg.org/l0g45sd71/medtst473.jpg)
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Yea lets make the game more exciting idea......Have "real" Victoria secret stores in the towns so we could on-line buy sexy stuff........for Bustr?
Let us just drop this idea right now. Bustr is much too busy making maps to make use of the Victoria's Secret store in town and I have an ugly thought that the only one buying ladies undergarments there and modeling them all over the place will be Cybro. I am sure the ones he brought with him are soiled by now.
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:banana:
(https://s20.postimg.org/erhgqid0t/medtst476.jpg)
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wow,, idk even know how many years i've been away,,, but sounds exactly like when i was hear last......
WHATS UP GUYS!!!!!!
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wow,, idk even know how many years i've been away,,, but sounds exactly like when i was hear last......
WHATS UP GUYS!!!!!!
Nothing new under the sun....
Good to see you back yanksfan
~S~
TC
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I recall... In years gone by the predecessor to aces high... Warbirds. Which was a great game too... I loved the .Commandos command where you could drop commandos near a base and leave them to start taking it down. You could stop em too.... By shooting them.
I'd live to see that again.
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I find it funny that back during the AH2 era the big complaint was" we need better graphics". Every day it was the same whine. Now we have great graphics,and yet people still whine because the game isnt laid out to fit their particular fighting style. Dont like the maps? Design a terrain of you own and submit it,as Buster has stated many,many times. Its just a game folks! If you dislike it that much,just go somewhere else.
Many already have Mike