My 'rant' on game cost.

[Wardog]

Fallen..

The point here is not someone taking the code and selling it. But someone taking the code and using it to create another rip off like Free Host.

Free Host and programs like it defeat the purpose of what AH is all about not to mention the fact that the monthly charges must also cover the costs of putting this all together.

This is a small market and selling AH as a boxed game would not pull in the Capitol thats needed to keep HTC in buissness.

Nothing good is free.

[Kats]

This is a bloody joke, I want to come in and ruin this thread. Responding and trying to reason with something so far out there is also a joke.

Personally, I can't stand salamanders that want something for nothing. It shows a complete lack of respect. That's why I show none here.

Anyhow, I think a new topic should be created to keep this area clean - UNEMPLOYEDand for good reason

[bod]

 

Take a rock that weighs X. Drop it. It drops at excatly Y speed, and impacts with Z pounds of force.

Well, it drops at exactly Y acceleration (good old Newton) - and impacts with Z force. But you are right, the basics are very easy.

The problem is that due to the air we breath and due to the density and shape of the stone (could be very random), it does NOT drop at exactly Y acceleration, but slightly or severly off and changing all the time. Therefore it does NOT impact at Z force, but way off and at randomly places. Add an angle to this and shape the stone as a bullet (with rotation, lift and drag) and you are into the science of ballistics. I bet 95% of the people reading this BBS could tell you that ballistics is very easy - very easy to get very wrong (WB 2.6)  

It looks like Flight Gear is what you are looking for, and you can take a trip to www.pctestpilot.com  for some dry basic engineering stuff about FM. Also take a look at x-plane (www.x-plane.com) it cost a lot, but is rather fancy and very educational with regard to FM.

Bod

[Thorns]

That was some great speaking HiTech.  I would have to say Quake does not equal this flightsim.  Two different people(s).........
Fightsim people don't fly Quake.......and Quake people will never understand a flightsim......esp a WWII flightsim.

Thorns_Musketeer
CO Musketeer Escadrille

[Dan Pittman]

Fallen, let me understand this, you draw and play musical instruments for a living?  If you do I find it amazing that you would do it for free..  Walter Williams, Head of the economics dept.George Mason University, once said all the do gooders in the world do not help me as much as the grocer who is working entirely for profit.  Or the man that I buy gas from for my car who's motive is entirely
monetary. HT is working on the american dream
but I doubt his creditors get all warm and fuzzy loaning money to people who don't pay it back?   BTW all that talk of the looks of the sim try Jane's WW2 Fighters I hear the FM was weak but it looked really good. The flt. model is the sim. everything else is gravy IMHO... handy

[Fallen]

I tried a demo of janes. Didnt like it, no idea why, was just 'missing' something...i think it was the options...didnt seem very indepth...like..it had rudder and flaps and thats about all...and the damage wasnt very accurate..and honestly the terrian was ugly as hell. As for music, i dont play it for a living, i play it becuase i enjoy it and want others to enjoy it. I work 9 to 5 at a record store for a living, and will continue to do so until i win the lottery or something . and ill probally still work there even if i do win, and end up giving the money away to people. What do i need with all that cash? Though...id probally complain less about AH price, just get a life time subscrition and shut my mouth lol.  

--Fallen

[1776]

Fallen,

    You seem to be a wonderful person.  Below is my e-mail address.  Just  e-mail me and I will give you my name and address.  By the way, what bank will the checks be drawn.
Do I endorse them in blue or black ink?

Also, I can get you a good deal on a bridge, you interested?

[Fallen]

Sod off.

[Lance]

:::Shovels some more dirt on the thread:::

Gordo

[TT]

 I dont under stand the problem here. You dont want the money, 1776 does. Send it to him. Share the wealth. Power to the people Maaaan.

[Sorrow[S=A]]

A few things that need to be mentioned.

1st Quake quakeII or quakeIII is NOT playable at 15 fps. c'mon get real. As a matter of fact there is an almost 75% correlation between FPS games and 3d hardware. Since these games are almost unplayable at less than 20 fps-40 fps as a new one gets more popular it drives the market to create more powerfull 3d cards. And most competition players of FPS games wouldn't play with a setup of less than 60 FPS.

Tribes 2 is not the game to mention here Fallen. It's not released yet. It's also based on OpenGL which is a totally different ball of tea than D3D that AH is using. However you can come close by using Tribes I. Tribes currently has a 700 meter visibility limit and uses DX to scale polygonal levels down for items further away. However Tribes does not track anything vertically more than 300 meters over it's head. But on the other hand, once again, Tribes is using Glide with an OpenGL support add on.

Something that I find interesting is that HTC is using D3D only to make this 3d Engine. I think that is a good hint that this is probably their first large scale experience with 3D engines. Most larger companies gravitate towards the feature set available in OpenGL instead.
   I myself am astounded at the complexity and stability of what they have done here. I have N E V E R seen a D3D game reach the level this beta is allready at. However there is always room for improvement. For example Allegiance is using D3D and they have several effects and visual goodies HTC does not. But the big difference will always be that HTC is doing it with a VERY small personnel base.         I myself am less concerned with goodies and visual candy than I am with them creating a stable program. If I surmised correctly then as HTC gets more experienced with using the API we will see many more visual effects in the future and I am happy with that. The only thing I wish to see continued is their evolvement of the game and commitment to making it better. And that folks, is something they have allready set out to prove to us.

------------------
If your in range, so is the enemy.

[Nash]

Yegads... This thread is a complete joke. No way to reason with the lad.

This sim, this board, and this damn topic wouldn't exist if there wasn't a market (read - prospective paying customers) for it.

The computer Fallen loves so much wouldn't exist, the Bic pen he draws on napkins with, the Fender guitar he plays music on (played any Russian guitars lately Fallen?)... all.. gone.

Heh... quit yer ("real"?) job and see how long yer girl sticks around.

Just... stupid.

And sprinkling yer comments with this faux wisdom ("the way it used to be") etc. is also silly as I have you pegged at about 25-27 years old. Which makes your reply to HT (17 years of programming experience) laughable.. Exactly what were ya programming at 10 years old? Theres fellas around here been simmin' online since before you had a liscense to drive a car (assuming of course that a vehicle is worth paying for).

What world are you living in? And (please don't hunt me down Fats <g> ) the Quake connection here is rather apropos. This thread needs to die.

[fats]

--- Thorns: ---
I would have to say Quake does not equal this flightsim. Two different people(s).........
Fightsim people don't fly Quake.......and Quake people will never understand a flightsim......esp a WWII flightsim.
--- end ---

Now how's that for a psycho analyzis done on-line gone wrong! I for one play Quake, and there are whole lotta people who do too and fly AW/WB/AH. Some of those are the folks who ran SLs and such for you in WB. But like you said they never would understand a flightsim, they simply never could be as good as you are at flitesims?


--- Sorrow: ---
have N E V E R seen a D3D game reach the level this beta is allready at
--- end ---

Graphically?


//fats

[hitech]

Btw I also played Half life and quake team fortress for quite a while. There was about a 3 month stretch where natedog,superfly,pyro and myslef were at it every evening after work.

Sorrows you actualy have it backwards. I was doing glide, and opengl , pryor to trying d3d. In the end the desicion on which api came down to which is the best supported by the hardware guys, thats what drove the desicion to use d3d. But the code is structured in sutch a way do be able to rapidly adapt changes in 3d api's. Iv'e been burnt in the past in changes of api suport, and the way I do things now is to only touch the api at the lowest level I can to make switch easyer. I do all my own.transformation, lighting,foggin,cliping, and basicly just feed 2d prelit triangles to the api. Only real goodies I still wish to add to the core eng. is bump mapping to the terrian and zbuffering to remove some of the few sorting artifacts. I have the core code partialy written but it's just not a priority at this time. Ive also have done test ports to glide just to see what the fps impact would be, suprising thing was there was no differenct.

Just to be able to support changes we even rolled our own windows gui. All the buttons, text editing list boxes, and list views are not using any window api items, this was done to get away from as much system depent code as posible. Btw ever notice how that clip board actulay maps 2d api's to a 3d object? Iv'e never seen any other game do anything similar. And how many other games are completly configureurable when you are playing? Normaly they put you into a 2d api to do any gui stuff.

To sum it all up,what we have done is to build the core foundation for a long time to come. Adding the glitzy touches will come, but their primary purpose is wow factor on the initial viewing of new people, and realy only add small amouts to the game play factor. We just choose to work on the game play and stablity side first. Strong foundations make for a long lasting house.


HiTech

[Sorrow[S=A]]

*fats:
Complexity pure and simple. Graphically it's on par with most games released last year and a little behind the level of games released this christmas. but other pure D3D games have never been this complex as far as I know with their graphics capabilities. Closest I have seen was Falcon 4.0 and it ran like a dog in comparison and had an awkward interface (ie. running everything to do with the 3d graphics through a seperate program than the gui and frequently flipping. Allegiance is almost as complex but more along the lines of lighting effects and modelling features.

Hitech:
Wow, you started in Glide and OpenGL and moved to D3D? that is a big change from other people making 3d Engines. But I suppose if you are planning on using only the lowest level it makes perfect sense. D3D IS the obvious choice for hardware support. But I have to ask here, have you seen all of the fantastic things being done with OpenGL by people at Valve and ID software? Not to mention the level Halo is planning to take it to. I understand about avoiding anything that you don't make yourself but some of these effects and options would make an incredible gameplay addition for users in the near future while probably not affecting those not using them.
Oh and YES I noticed the GUI being inside the game itself! I never commented because I actually never thought about the fact I had not seen it before. But I really really like it! And not relying on windows api is a "good thing"tm. It improves our stability probably hehe.

One thing however that IS missing still and I desperatly hope you will make a priority is support for AMD 3DNOW. A little support for this in your code will go long ways to making the game greatly improved for K6 II & III owners. And I know from experience AMD is usually very happy to give any help they can to getting it into more programs  

And as a final note from me on this thread, I fully understand and agree with the direction you are taking. A firm base does indeed make a solid house and I think you are very much accomplishing that.

------------------
If your in range, so is the enemy.