General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: CptTrips on April 26, 2019, 07:37:33 PM
Title: WWI: Western Front
Post by: CptTrips on April 26, 2019, 07:37:33 PM
I thought there might be some WWI fans here that might be interesting in what I’ve been working on. It is a bit of a Frankenstein project.
It started as a personal offline project last Oct I was building so I would have something cool to fly in with my VR, and I wanted it to be WWI and populated with AI targets using the Offline Staged Mission technology.
After working with Hitech to troubleshoot various AI/mission issues (and some silly screw ups on my part ;)) and explaining what I was trying to do, he suggested it might be something I could host in the Mission Arena so other people could enjoy it too. After thinking it though, I realized that what would be REALLY fun it to set something up a little different than the traditional Mission Arena format.
What I wanted to try is an AI populated arena you could spawn in, pick a country, pick a field and just take-off and head to the front and look for trouble. I wanted the player to be able to interact with the arena just like the MA; without having to wait around for a scheduled mission to start.
The missions are actually being run by the AI. Constant, overlapping, repeating patterns. Players don’t join in these AI only missions. These missions are hidden from players. They exist to provide the arena background activity, but not just flying in circles. Aerodrome activity, patrols of the front, balloon defense, recon patrols behind the lines fighter sweeps, dogfights over the front. There will be an entire war going on 24/7 that a player can jump into any time they want and find constant action. US time, EU time, Asia time. It’s always there and the war is always going on full throttle.
This isn’t intended to be a full arena. There is no functioning strat. Bases are not capturable. Think of it as a WWI themed, AI-populated, Shooting gallery/playground.
The AI missions operate between pairs of bases. A1-A2, A3-A4, A5-A6, etc. The AI difficulty is designed to increase for each pair of bases as you move South along the front. For instance, A1-A2 would be the easy-mode AI. A13-A14 is where the Terminators fly.
A15-A18 are separated away from AI activity and are reserved for Humans only furball area. A19-A22 are separated further and are reserved for eventually adding player joinable scheduled Staged Missions.
This isn’t a scenario. The aerodrome placements are not necessarily actual historical locations. The front line is roughly based on the 1918 British sector. The aerodrome placements are purely for gameplay purposes. The aerodrome are closer to the front than historical for minimal time-to-action flight. The AI missions are operating at altitudes lower than what would be historical. However the AI dives to the deck the second the fight starts anyway and the lower altitudes means less time spent climbing. Balloons are a just hacks to provide targets. I am currently planning on configuring with 2x ammo and 0.5 fuel burn. Once you are over the front, I want you to have plenty of fun. ;)
Anyway, that is what I have been working on. That is my goal. It is a bit different approach than what the Mission Arena was originally designed for. Hitech had to make a few tweaks to allow for this (some of which was already planned for WO:P), but it is an experiment worth trying. It’s still a work in progress and it is something new so there are some teething pains. I hope to get something usable by end of May. Even if not all the content is finished I think there would be value in getting it opened for people to have fun with while I continue adding missions.
But, like I said, there are still some glitches we are working through right now. Probably my fault some how. ;)
Hitech has been awesomely flexible on what he would allow me to try, and has provided critical assistance and even provided me some feature tweaks to make this even possible. However, I suspect he thinks I’m a little bit crazy. ;) And frankly, I have been wondering what I got myself into. :rofl
Here is a little vid I put together from some of my test films.
I'll be finished someday, CptTrips
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: Spikes on April 26, 2019, 07:48:22 PM
This is the most incredible thing I've ever seen.
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: Devil 505 on April 26, 2019, 07:50:49 PM
Holy crap, this looks amazing!
Great work. :salute
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: Arlo on April 26, 2019, 08:11:25 PM
Next time I'm in the DFW area I need to buy you some beers. Great job on the vid. Inappropriate era music in the other vids is a pet peeve of mine.
:salute :cheers: :aok
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: Shuffler on April 26, 2019, 08:30:32 PM
I am impressed. The video was great too. I think you are on to something here. This could fill a huge void.
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: CptTrips on April 26, 2019, 08:53:56 PM
Just a clarification...
I didn't make the custom objects you see from scratch. They are either pieces of other HTC objects I sliced and diced and modified for my needs, or they were based on commercial royalty-free meshes I purchased and then heavily modified. All objects I purchased, I am assigning the license to HTC, and they own them along with my modifications.
One thing this projects has taught me is that I am a much better coader than a 3-D artist. I've learned just enough to be dangerous. :rofl
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: Oldman731 on April 26, 2019, 09:06:38 PM
We decided that we would have a soda My favorite flavor, cherry red
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: Cjpedrido on May 11, 2019, 12:28:35 AM
Incredible work Sir ! :aok
vSKYDIVE Devils=v=Brigade
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: TwinBoom on May 11, 2019, 04:40:59 PM
great idea
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: CptTrips on May 21, 2019, 05:24:32 PM
Well, it's not perfect, and not even finished, but it is open.
Let's call it an Open Beta. ;)
The main thing we have been trying to fix is some fps chop. I'm pretty convinced it is just a matter of number and density of the AI. If so, my options are spread things out and make you fly further or reduce the AI count and have less targets. We did reduce the net traffic max range and that seemed to help. It's playable on my system, so I want to hold off on the other two less desirable choices unless it proves absolutely necessary. So sorry if people with marginal system have too much chop. It works decently on my machine (famous coader excuse :D).
Once in, go to the O'Club and change either Bish (Brit) or Knight (German). Then spawn at any airfield A1-A14 and head to the front. A1-A2 are easy mode AI and it gets harder going South. Unless we have to take it down to tweak something, it is available 24/7 so test any time you want. IF there is a lull at the front, just start heading to the nearest enemy base. You'll run in to a patrol.
Oh, and since field icons are baked into the CBM, I recommend right-clicking on your CBM and turning off icons but leaving field names on.
Also, I just made pure guesses on the AI difficulty. I think A1-A2 are easy enough, and I think A13-A14 are hard enough, but I am open to input on how well I have the in between fields balanced. My goal was that A7-A8 would be the challenging, but doable range where experience AH pilots should sweat a little but still prevail.
Have fun. PM me if you have any major problems.
:salute, CptTrips
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: Shuffler on May 21, 2019, 06:49:31 PM
I will be in the trying it out.....
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: Meatwad on May 21, 2019, 08:16:09 PM
Missing hot air balloon duels :)
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: CptTrips on May 21, 2019, 08:21:02 PM
BTW, forgot to mention. AI doesn't go into attack mode until you get within 1500yd.
Good hunting!
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: DubiousKB on May 22, 2019, 04:55:56 PM
Popped in last night just to see what it was... Loved it.
Great work on the map AND the AI portion... The arena felt "lived in", even though I was alone.
Saved a few green AI's because i'm a hero like that, and then had to log. :airplane:
<S> for the hard work that went into this!
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: Shuffler on May 22, 2019, 09:48:13 PM
I flew tonight with server. Two others showed up roo. Was pretty fun. I shot a barrage balloon. We were flying out of A7. Thos Triplanes turn on a dime.
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: CptTrips on May 22, 2019, 10:48:38 PM
Thanks Dubious. Glad you had fun!
That’s what I was going for. People may not go in there at first when they see 0 players in there, but hopefully they will eventually realize this arena doesn’t require other players to have fun. That is the point. One player is as much fun as 10. With 450 AI aircraft up at any time, you might not even run into the other players. ;)
You can go in there any time just by yourself and I wanted to feel like you had logged into a fully populated on-going WWI arena. I wanted it to feel organic. I wanted all the AI busily going about their business. Planes taking off. Planes landing. Planes on the way to and from the front lines. Planes on patrol. Planes dogfighting over the front. It doesn’t matter if it’s 9am, 3pm, 11pm or 4am. It doesn’t matter if it’s Saturday, Sunday, or Wed. The war is grinding away, just waiting for someone to jump in.
Of course it would be better to have a 450 human player arena filled 24/7, but not all genre can generate that kind of activity especially at certain time zones. So this experiment was an attempt to try and provide access to those genre players might not otherwise get to enjoy.
Like WWI. Maybe Early War? Mid-War? The Mighty Eighth over Germany? Eastern Front? A lot of possibilities.
:salute, CptTrips
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: Arlo on May 22, 2019, 11:11:37 PM
Time to buy a new monitor (past time but I really wanna experience this). :)
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: DubiousKB on May 23, 2019, 09:57:09 AM
Thanks Dubious. Glad you had fun! ... Like WWI. Maybe Early War? Mid-War? The Mighty Eighth over Germany? Eastern Front? A lot of possibilities.
:salute, CptTrips
If you could achieve the mighty 8th bomber formations without having their gunners be lead-calculating monsters, it would be another "oh wow" experience.
Don't worry about it until you're happy with the bugs you've exterminated in the WWI arena. Keep up the hard work sir!
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: CptTrips on May 23, 2019, 10:05:32 AM
If you could achieve the mighty 8th bomber formations without having their gunners be lead-calculating monsters, it would be another "oh wow" experience.
Don't worry about it until you're happy with the bugs you've exterminated in the WWI arena. Keep up the hard work sir!
Well, part of the tweaks Hitech made to help support this project was exposing AI ability variables in the Mission Editor. There are some variables for controlling gunnery ability. I haven't tested yet, but I assume those would control gunners as well as fighters. I might set up a quicky test mission you can run in a custom arena.
Of course, also, in a mission, you'd be attacking with other AI fighters so the gunner load would be spread.
I suspect the harder problem would be fps preservation if you truly tried to reproduce the accurate number of bombers and fighters. Worth some quick prototype experiments.
:salute, CptTrips
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: Bushmills on May 23, 2019, 11:48:41 AM
I flew tonight with server. Two others showed up roo. Was pretty fun. I shot a barrage balloon. We were flying out of A7. Thos Triplanes turn on a dime.
Shuffler stealing all the glory as usual! :banana: That balloon was a team effort, I demand 1/8 th of that kill! :rofl :airplane:
CptTrips :salute a fantastic idea I had good fun, and I'll be back, naturally the hun was no match for the mighty camel :D
Have you ever played Red Baron 2 CptTrips?
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: CptTrips on May 23, 2019, 12:10:30 PM
Shuffler stealing all the glory as usual! :banana: That balloon was a team effort, I demand 1/8 th of that kill! :rofl :airplane:
CptTrips :salute a fantastic idea I had good fun, and I'll be back, naturally the hun was no match for the mighty camel :D
Have you ever played Red Baron 2 CptTrips?
Damn that Shuffler! Just explain to the Reporting Officer. He'll get your credit marked. HQ might be confused with a total of 10/8th credit on a single balloon. That's RAF math for ya. It got worse in BoB. ;)
It really feels good to know you had fun. After 8 months of grinding, at least I can feel I wasn't totally wasting my time. It was by no means a guarantee anyone would even like it. I was just burning a lot of man-hour on a roll of the dice.
Oh yeah. I played the heck out of RBII. Even more the original RB. That was the game that got me hooked on the idea of flightsims. I've developed an love of WWII as well over the years, but WWI will always be like that first girlfriend in my memory!
:salute
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: Shuffler on May 23, 2019, 12:20:31 PM
Damn that Shuffler! Just explain to the Reporting Officer. He'll get your credit marked. HQ might be confused with a total of 10/8th credit on a single balloon. That's RAF math for ya. It got worse in BoB. ;)
It really feels good to know you had fun. After 8 months of grinding, at least I can feel I wasn't totally wasting my time. It was by no means a guarantee anyone would even like it. I was just burning a lot of man-hour on a roll of the dice.
Oh yeah. I played the heck out of RBII. Even more the original RB. That was the game that got me hooked on the idea of flightsims. I've developed an love of WWII as well over the years, but WWI will always be like that first girlfriend in my memory!
:salute
OH Lord... when I went back on later and saw my post. I posted quickly and did not proof read. LOL
I flew with dervert. We had a great time.
In any case I will be back in there more. I can see that building in popularity in the coming months. I am not even a really big fan of WWI but that does peak my interest.
I do commend you on your hard work. Thank you for your time in working on this project. I think this will pay off in spades.
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: CptTrips on May 23, 2019, 12:39:21 PM
I do commend you on your hard work. Thank you for your time in working on this project. I think this will pay off in spades.
Thanks Shuffler. Some of the future projects might be even more to your liking.
The next ones will still be a lot of work, but not a complete shot in the dark. We've worked through all the mission server kinks, we have new server and mission capabilities, and I've gone from zero knowledge, and making dumb mistakes ;), to at least having a clear idea on how to do what I want to do.
Hitech deserves as much credit as me. I didn't think I'd be able to talk him into this sillyness. It took a little to explain to him why I wanted scheduled Stages Missions that no player sees or joins. :D But once he got what I was trying to do, he was 100% supportive. It would simply not have been possible without the ability variables and changes to the mission system to run multiple, concurrent, overlapping scheduled missions. Even adding the whole concept of missions that are AI only and not listed to the player. This was a pretty big deviation from the original Staged Mission design intent. This would not have been possible last year, before he added the tweaks. I was originally designing this as a series of personal offline Staged Missions.
:salute, CptTrips
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: Wiley on May 23, 2019, 12:48:34 PM
Even adding the whole concept of missions that are AI only and not listed to the player. This was a pretty big deviation from the original Staged Mission design intent. This would not have been possible last year, before he added the tweaks. I was originally designing this as a series of personal offline Staged Missions.
Oh yeah. I played the heck out of RBII. Even more the original RB. That was the game that got me hooked on the idea of flightsims. I've developed an love of WWII as well over the years, but WWI will always be like that first girlfriend in my memory!
I would pinch as much as possible from RB2 in terms of gameplay, it was an oddly engrossing game for what it was and had a strong following. Its a pity we didn't have someone as talented as you when the original WW1 arena was on the wane, a lot of what you implemented people were wishing for at the time, appreciate the time you put in :salute
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: CptTrips on May 23, 2019, 01:01:10 PM
Even in the old Mission Arena, missions will start with AI if no one has joined. But that is different thanif they aren't even listed for the user to join. Missions that are hidden from the user and can't be joined. AI only missions that don't pop up a dialog in the arena informing players that the mission is about to start. That would be annoying in WW1WF with an AI mission starting every 2 min. That was a new scheduled mission capability to make those scheduled AI missions behave differently than normal player-joinable Staged Missions.
Also, the Mission Arena didn't have the concept of multiple missions running on the same map concurrently and overlapping. Hitech had to add that to make this possible.
And missions run directly ad-hoc are different than scheduled missions.
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: Overlag on May 24, 2019, 09:57:37 AM
had some fun with it last night. Might be too much AI flying around though? Difficult balance to strike.
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: CptTrips on May 24, 2019, 10:53:02 AM
had some fun with it last night. Might be too much AI flying around though? Difficult balance to strike.
Awesome. Glad you had some fun!
How do you define too much AI? Was it hurting your frame rate too much?
Even in a big furball, only two AI at a time will target you so you won't get totally ganged. They won't engage until they are within 1500yd.
It's weird, but you get a lot of unexpected, emergent behavior from those AI missions. Sometime they'll get all clumped up in a way I never expected or designed. I guess it's a snowball effect. A fight starts and drifts position and then pulls in a passing patrols and it gets bigger, etc.
I guess I erred more on the "too much" side rather than "not enough". I sure didn't want people to waste time flying around trying to find something to fight. I wanted you to be able to move from one turn fight to another quickly.
But, that is adjustable. If it turns out we need to, I can trim some of that down.
I have gotten some good feedback on the AI skill from guys like Dervert. That may need to be adjusted at some point. Seems the current AI at A9-A10 are probably the best upper bounds. A5-A6 seems like the best mid-point. At some point I'll redistribute the AI capability so that A9-A10 level becomes A13-A14 and interpolate the others.
It's a work in progress. :D
:salute
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: bustr on May 24, 2019, 02:17:21 PM
It was fun and the Dr1 out fly's the Camel unless you can fly the Camel on the uber edge. The D7 is faster and has a better climb but, you can out turn it. Watch killing the AI such that you have any part of it drop into your plane. Kept killing AI just to have their dead carcass take me with them. Didn't try the Bristol fighter yet. Nice terrain and effects especially the balloons. Can we shoot them down? With only two rides per side and this being a two side conflict, it's very obvious the stable is quite thin. A few more rides would alleviate that. Oh, did you intend for the walls of the tower to constantly fluctuate?
During the alpha for AH3 Hitech had us test a massive BoB mission where we intercepted 60 He111 with 109 escorts. I had to turn off post lighting or my FPS turned into a slideshow. May be related to your FPS problems in Western Front.
When you work out your AI issues, is that BoB massive mission a possible next arena format? He also had a gigantic bomber stream mission over the continent for 1944, that used the late war German stable to intercept the stream. The ongoing carnage was impressive especially with the continent wide cloud layer.
You have found your content creation niche. Guess I've got to finish the rest of my mountain ranges now...... :salute
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: CptTrips on May 24, 2019, 03:11:51 PM
It was fun and the Dr1 out fly's the Camel unless you can fly the Camel on the uber edge.
Thanks for giving it a try Bustr. I'm such a bad pilot, I used to only have a chance if I used the DrI. However, for 8 months working on the WW1WF, I always flew the Camel when testing. I think I can at least do ok with it now. But yeah, against a good pilot in a DrI, it's pretty scary.
Nice terrain and effects especially the balloons. Can we shoot them down?
Thanks, but most of the work was taken care of by Artik's awesome tool. A button button click and boom, Northern France. I just needed to paint in the front and tweak the coast sand, and tweak a few textures here and there.
You can destroy the enemy balloons. They don't fall to the ground unfortunately. The blow up and hang there and burn. :O THey are just a hack set as fact fuel objects.
With only two rides per side and this being a two side conflict, it's very obvious the stable is quite thin. A few more rides would alleviate that.
Hard to do much with only two planes. More WWI planes would be nice. I put the odds right up there with "Peace on Earth" and "Goodwill Towards Men". ;)
If I had my 'druthers...even getting a two 20lbs cooper bomb load-out for the planes would open up a huge number of possible fun activities.
During the alpha for AH3 Hitech had us test a massive BoB mission where we intercepted 60 He111 with 109 escorts. I had to turn off post lighting or my FPS turned into a slideshow. May be related to your FPS problems in Western Front.
Maybe. We're packing 450 AI aircraft into about 3 standard sectors. And even then, densely concentrated along a single front line. So I guess that is a pretty perverse test case.
When you work out your AI issues, is that BoB massive mission a possible next arena format?
Well, Hitech may be sick of me pestering him all the time about stuff and may not want me to do another. :D If he does, then I'd love to do a BoB project to be complete by next summer for the 80th anniversary of BoB. For that, I suspect would be a regular Mission Arena approach as the discrete, wave-like nature of the attacks are a perfect fit to break up into a series of set-piece, scheduled staged missions.
I have an Imperial War Museum article that lays out what they consider the nine decisive days of the Battle of Britain. Some of those days would in turn need to be broken up into multiple missions as there were several waves throughout the day. That would probably constitute the initial release.
After that, I would periodically add missions to fill out the remainder of days of significant air combat. I'd be willing to spend a couple of years doing that. It would really be something to have the entire scope of the Battle of Britain captured and simulated and organized day by day. That would be a unique historical resource IMHO.
However, I probably wouldn’t start that until Fall.
In the mean time, I really need a break from WW1WF. I have a couple of little projects I could possibly do first. Then do an update for WW1WF, then start BoB.
You have found your content creation niche. Guess I've got to finish the rest of my mountain ranges now...... :salute
Thanks. I look forward to flying in your new terrain when you get it finished. And I found it interesting to watch the way you flesh it out step by step. You got that Melee thing down. Rock on!
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: Overlag on May 25, 2019, 04:32:05 PM
How do you define too much AI? Was it hurting your frame rate too much?
Even in a big furball, only two AI at a time will target you so you won't get totally ganged. They won't engage until they are within 1500yd.
It's weird, but you get a lot of unexpected, emergent behavior from those AI missions. Sometime they'll get all clumped up in a way I never expected or designed. I guess it's a snowball effect. A fight starts and drifts position and then pulls in a passing patrols and it gets bigger, etc.
I guess I erred more on the "too much" side rather than "not enough". I sure didn't want people to waste time flying around trying to find something to fight. I wanted you to be able to move from one turn fight to another quickly.
But, that is adjustable. If it turns out we need to, I can trim some of that down.
I have gotten some good feedback on the AI skill from guys like Dervert. That may need to be adjusted at some point. Seems the current AI at A9-A10 are probably the best upper bounds. A5-A6 seems like the best mid-point. At some point I'll redistribute the AI capability so that A9-A10 level becomes A13-A14 and interpolate the others.
It's a work in progress. :D
:salute
It was hurting my FPS a little. The battles were good though, Devert was in there with me. I wasnt too great with these planes 10 years ago, nothing changed. Still fun though! Something needs to be done to get people into this game and this is a step in the right direction. Thank you :)
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: CptTrips on May 25, 2019, 04:42:21 PM
It was hurting my FPS a little. The battles were good though, Devert was in there with me. I wasnt too great with these planes 10 years ago, nothing changed. Still fun though! Something needs to be done to get people into this game and this is a step in the right direction. Thank you :)
Thanks for the feedback. When I do the update to re-distribute the AI levels, I think I can trim a little excess fat off the plane count. That might help a little.
I think it came out reasonable well even with a paltry two plane type per country. No bombs. No bombers.
So imagine what can be done with a full, complete WWII armament and plane set. More to come. Stay tuned. :cool:
:salute
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: morfiend on May 25, 2019, 05:20:51 PM
This sounds interesting! Now I cant wait until I can come back and give this a try.
Lucky for me it will be a while so I hope most of the bugs are worked out and I can just play....ya I'm selfish like that... :rofl :rofl :rofl
Hope to see you all soon in the unfriendly skies!
:salute
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: CptTrips on May 25, 2019, 05:23:38 PM
Love WW1 glad to see someone is doing something with it.
If you haven't had a chance, give it a try and let me know how I can improve it. :salute
People are funny. Had a well known, high ranked player pop in Fri night. Within 15 sec announced on cross-country channel that he was very, very disappointed, and expected better out of a WWI arena. If he wanted to waste time flying against AI, he would buy Rise of Flight with better graphics. He stomped off, slamming the door behind him. :rofl
I doubt he could have actually had time to roll a plane and try it. And he didn't stay long enough for me to explain there are 4 closely spaced fields, separated from AI and AAA activity for Player v. Player furballs. I've never seen more that 4 fields used in the existing WWI arena, but if more were needed, I'll add them. He gave no suggestions, just gave us all the finger and left.
:O OK. Thanks for stopping by. :rolleyes:
I wasn't pissed. Me and some other guys were having too much fun winging and coop'ing against the higher level AI. Men vs. Machines: Judgement Day! :D
I was confused. I'm not sure what he would like me to do for him. I can't wave a magic wand and populate the arena with 200 humans. If I could, I would. I don't see the current WWI arena populated with 200 players, but he always still has that one he can go fly in. I'm about adding options; I'm not trying to take any away. :confused:
Oh well. We went back to having fun. :aok
:salute
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: Shuffler on May 26, 2019, 11:21:47 PM
Rank means nothing at all.
WWI arena is fun. I have been in there several times. Once I was the only one and enjoyed that too. I find the setup very interesting.
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: Oldman731 on May 26, 2019, 11:38:07 PM
There are many people in the world who just enjoy being miserable. No way to explain it, but it's unquestionably true. This may have been one of them.
Don't worry about it. You've done a remarkable thing here. Keep it going.
And thanks.
- oldman
This! :aok
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: Bushmills on May 27, 2019, 01:00:25 PM
There seems to be a survival of the fittest going on with the AI, you can find the odd foo fighter level AI near A1, guessing they fought their way up lol
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: CptTrips on May 28, 2019, 10:12:29 AM
There seems to be a survival of the fittest going on with the AI, you can find the odd foo fighter level AI near A1, guessing they fought their way up lol
That's weird. I assume you just didn't run in to a Human? They can be kinda slippery sometimes. ;)
I supposed it's technically possible. The zones do overlap. A high level AI could chase something North, kill it, then chase something else North, etc.
It's like Velociraptors escaping their paddock. I hope they don't become SkyNet. :noid
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: rtdash on May 28, 2019, 11:47:29 AM
I have visited this arena twice and it is awesome. Keep up the excellent work Cpt Trips.
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: CptTrips on May 28, 2019, 12:07:54 PM
That's weird. I assume you just didn't run in to a Human? They can be kinda slippery sometimes. ;)
I supposed it's technically possible. The zones do overlap. A high level AI could chase something North, kill it, then chase something else North, etc.
It's like Velociraptors escaping their paddock. I hope they don't become SkyNet. :noid
Nah a brace of AI D7s, I managed a lucky shot on one who seemed slightly slower and the other one rammed me while i stalled out :banana:
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: CptTrips on May 28, 2019, 04:53:49 PM
Yup. There are interesting things to do in this arena. Especially in VR...
...which makes me wonder why external views are not enabled.
I have a difficult time imagining how external views might allow for unfair advantage or some other problem...
Done. Unless Hitech overrides me. :D
I don't think he will mind. If he had concerns I would push back with the following arguments:
1. There are only 3 or 4 of us who fly in there regularly. Who cares?
2. It's not really a competitive arena. There are no field captures, scores are not being kept.
3. I think the whole corn-cob up the wazoo hang up about external views were questionable even in 1988. Now days with TrackIR and VR in combination with hat-switches, I think it is downright delusional. I put it up there with icons. No, planes didn't have icons in real life but it is a compensation for the lack of real-life "pixel" resolution at distance. It would ironically be less realistic to not have icons. In real life pilots don't have to contort the fingers and thumbs to look up and to the rear. They just turn around and look instinctively. F3 view isn't realistic, but it's over-all SA may be more representative of real life that then looking a paper tube view of the world non-VR players have.
Realism? If in VR I can hit my rear view hat-switch and then lean a bit side to side to look around my head rest without twisting around in my chair? That is realism? If I can lean forward an look over the nose to see how my rounds are arcing when shooting in a 5g turn, is that realism? A pilot supposedly strapped into a seat? Leaning forward under 5g with no head-shake?
Don't get me wrong, I love my VR. I don't think I'd be willing to ever fly without it now. I still suck, but I suck about 1/2 less with VR. I'd say VR + hat-switch is twice the advantage that F3 view is, and no one in the MA is complaining about it. LOL.
In my view, if non-VR players really realized the advantage, they'd demand F3 mode for themselves to compensate or demand hat-switch is removed from VR/Track-IR and G-load movement limits enforced. But since they don't have VR, they are blissfully ignorant. :t
So, yeah. I don't have a problem with F3 mode. I don't remember turning it off, but I don't mind turning it on.
I've never tried it with VR though. Seems like a recipe for vertigo. Keep a bucket handy. :D
:salute, CptTrips
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: Wiley on June 14, 2019, 06:55:16 PM
The only thing that makes an iota of sense to me about f3 mode whining is you could line up shots with the guy coming up from below your nose that you can't otherwise. The importance of this capability is massively overblown IMO but it is there.
Wiley.
Title: Re: WWI: Western Front
Post by: CptTrips on June 14, 2019, 07:49:14 PM
The only thing that makes an iota of sense to me about f3 mode whining is you could line up shots with the guy coming up from below your nose that you can't otherwise. The importance of this capability is massively overblown IMO but it is there.
Wiley.
Yeah, but compared to the advantages vs VR+Hat it's really not worth worrying about. Just the whole 3d aspect makes gunnery so much easier for me. It wouldn't concern me a bit for non-VR guys to have F3. I've tried it a bit, it isn't even in the ball park.
I'd take VR+hat 7 days a week and twice on Sunday!