The conf.ini is not a protected file, so you cannot hack it or crack it. You can modifiy it at best. Same is for missions. As those are created with the mission editor with locked objects and maps, it is not needed to remove file-encryption or protection-measures to create new missions or change them. For protected missions, that is something different again, but you cannot do that with unmodified editors.

BTW, I think that the guys who are primarily interested in the PTO or Med, are probably somewhat "evangelical" regarding new maps for the simple reason that very few existed (Med), or very few were good/useful (PTO). As a result, they are excited, and want to share.

I don't think it's out of any sense of superiority, or that "only real simmers play with X, Y, and Z." It's wanting to share something they think is a good thing with others that might enjoy it.

Don't assume malice where it's likely exactly the opposite.

<S>

tater

PS, Feuerfalke, csThor suggested that there was some special map tool that was hacked from someone else to make maps. I was merely pointing out that this is not true, and the FMB is in fact the primary map tool. Not just for placing buildings, for placing terrains, making hills, and so forth. I know the conf.ini is not protected, I was making a joke since all that is required to enable map-building is a few changes to that file. (USING the changes is another matter entirely, but I was only discussing the tool to do so).

csThor:: Perhaps I did, and if so I was sloppy as usual.

For the record, a true Online play community, whether they use mods or not, is a group of people that does not fall apart in anger over something as inanimate and non-living as little mods in a little computer game. This is what a social community is all about.

Ideally there would be a solution that would allow both worlds to (happily) coexist (like the ability to fully "lock" a version).

Locking a certain version is fine up to a point, but I have to say that having to fly stock Pacific maps to be online would be a major downgrade. I'd rather pick people more carefully to fly with, and have the best of both worlds.


tater

Yeah, but the bad thing is, we don't have that choice. ;)

Feuerfalke:: Hi Falke. I'll take the two items in turn.

I know these details from (1) hearing about snotty gamer behavior in anonymous public servers and (2) having myself seen for years many of the "leading" anonymous public server computer gamers attack and insult Oleg's paying customers who only asked for either some additional modding abilities or for Oleg not to cripple his sim to prevent "cheating" -- an example is crippling the flight models for non-slider users by slowing elevator trim. This snotty anti-social computer gamer behavior seen among even "old timer" anonymous public server gamers is one reason so many Online players either go back to Offline play, retreat to private servers, or leave the sim entirely.

Social street-life may or may not transfer to computer business, but it translates directly to social interaction among Online players. Online players have always advertised that human vs human gameplay is superior to Offline play against the AI. Why? Because when played Online, the sim becomes real life social interaction, and not just a simulation anymore. Online play can add the only true hint of reality to a sim -- social interaction.

The flip side is that many anonymous public server players, after advertising that social interaction is the prime mover of Online play, refuse to admit that Online cheating is a social behavior that can only be consistently avoided through social awareness. When you play with society, you take risks, risks that some here don't want to talk about, so they blame the mods, or the modders and happy mod users, but never blame the cheaters since they can't find them. Somebody has to take the blame.

While community is one (important) aspect of online play, it is far more than that, lexx.

The AI is pretty crappy, frankly. The reason it's better to play vs people is that people are both better AND worse than AI in important ways. They have real LOS issues, so you can actually surprise them (well, if the idiotic ability to hear anything but your own motor was removed). When you get in a real fight, they are not predictable (except maybe their target-fixation).

Even a few human players mixed among the AI (coop) makes a huge difference because the automatic tendency to fly vs AI in a way you know will win becomes ineffective... we all do it offline, it becomes habit. You KNOW a shallow turn will throw off the AI, they'll waste all their ammo astern of you. Try that vs a person, lol. If you know that even ONE of the AI is not AI, but real, you cannot do that behavior.

Well yes, those are more technical aspects of social interaction I had in mind. Thanks for brining them up though tater, especially the mixing of multiple humans and AI together. One good one that I think I maybe might have possibly heard about being used Online is pretending to fly like AI, sucking in any opposing humoid player to a nice surprise.

Lexx - *holds out hand to shake* Your post cleared it up. The matter is settled from my side.

tater - The problem with humans is simply that they're (we're!) playing this game for enjoyment. And this means noone likes to be on the receiving end of a fighter's weapons and/or flying an aircraft that cannot defend itself or is an easy picking, which does stuff that's boring or unpopular. This results in a flurry of "adjustments":

- servers go for pure fighter vs fighter engagements
- planesets are being doctored to keep certain "groups" happy
- historical facts are being thrown out of the window for "player's convenience"

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The result of all of this is the extreme number of fighters and fighter-bombers compared to other aircraft classes as the Stukas, the bombers or dedicated ground-pounders (such as the namesake of the series). You don't see swarms of gunner-less Il-2s trying to destroy all artillery pieces in the target area on a 1942 map nor will you see a large formation of Stukas hunting tanks. These jobs are being done by fighter-bombers or destroyers because they can deal with the load of fighters and do not take that long to reach the target zone. The issue here is that people are unwilling to venture off the beaten tracks, even on so-called "historical servers". This is the primary reason why SoW will need to combine the strengths of the dedicated dogfight server with the ability of the COOPs to have moving AI units (aircraft and ground/sea objects) - to overcome the insane fighter and dogfight fixation. Otherwise it's always going to remain "Quake in the air" as opposed to a simulation of aerial warfare in WW2. You can't change the people - you have to change the rules and the environment.

And I think that is the problem here. Nobody blames the modders of anything except their behavior towards Oleg and his team, which has become very obvious several times in this thread and for cracking a protected game and making this crack officially available. That is against the law, that is unfair and it is wrong.

But you have to admit (and already did) that cheating is a problem and that we wouldn't have that problem, if this whole thing hadn't become much larger than most expected.
And when I speak of online-cheating, I do not talking about the "3 or 4" bohoo-hidden top secret servers for pay-for-play registered members only. We're talking about these "100" baddy worn-out-ugly-dirty servers on Hyperlobby, ASE and UBI. You cannot control who's joining and you cannot know everybody online, as well as you cannot really ban them effectively. So, this whole social control thing simply doesn't apply. The same way you cannot check everybodies pockets going down your street.
And the problem is not, that I'm feeling cheated everyday, but because it's in the minds of people you play with.

I'm going to have to correct you on this. Your research is not very thorough. The sound mod changes only sounds, adds cockpits to a few AI planes to make them flyable, and that is ALL. No FM's are touched in sound mod, no physics, no effects, no view system, just what I listed. There are many mods, most are confused and think the sound mod does all but it doesn't. There are mods for visual effects, some for maps, some cockpit retexturing (these are amazing), some view mods (6dof), but there are NO FM MODS and no physics mods. There are some new AC with new FM but these are tottally new aircraft that have thier own slot therefore cannot be used online unless the host specifically add them to the missions so in this case new FM is not cheating. Those in charge at AAA have been very careful to avoid afecting online play and have walked a very fine and difficult line to do so. This is why it is upsetting when folks get thier facts wrong because all the effort to do this right goes down the drain when people who don't look for themselves hear these things and assume we are cheating by default of using the soundmod.

One, I think that the notion that cheating is new is... naive.

Two, as to csThor's post (no mention of my reply before regarding maps? ;) ), there is a place for mods in the online world in the aspect of reality that you allude to.

One problem we see is that planes have a wide array of loads available, and the servers really don;t have a good way of controlling player load CHOICE.

So we have Zeros with 250kg bombs, even though that load was simply not used except for suicide planes. As a result, online (DF) you see bombed up Zeros all the time at the expense of Vals. The US planes are worse since they all had HUGE (by japanese standards) bomb loads. Why take a bomber when you can take more bombs (and rockets) in a fighter bomber?

Heavies? Not even possible without having cockpits off, which is far worse "cheating" than the theoretical plane with the HP increased a few % for an "edge" that is talked about (but unavailable as a mod).

Mods could add variant planes that are unchanged except deleted loads. Pure fighter US planes, for example, naught but their guns and drop tanks. Ditto japanese planes (or whatever side). Sticking a b-25 cockpit in a B-17 allows cockpits-on servers to have heavies. Given good mission design, targets can be set up for a sort of area bombing that requires loads of bombers (ZvW has messed with this, and you see bettys used).

There is certainly room for online improvement with careful additions, IMO.

The trust factor is still there, use honorable squads as a baseline, and play with them.

<EDIT> well said (and entirely true), Urufu!

The crack was made public as "soundmod" and it replaced the original sound mostly by sounds taken from CFS (and EAW IIRC). Considering the latest Engl. Soundmod (v.093) includes 14 flyable AI-planes with modified FMs (copied from the flyable counterparts), I just wanted to point out, that it is no longer just a replacement of ingame-soundfiles, but a key to the programming-structure itself. I didn't mean to advertise all components you can install additionally.
It's true, that over at AAA people are VERY carefully what mods they support and which they ban or delete. However, in the beta-section are a couple of new posts now and then, that have a direct effect on FM, munitions-loadout, etc. Increasing dot-range and Icon-Range is also freely available.

What the modders don't want so see or simply ignore is the fact, though, that there are other websites, squadrons and groups offering a whole lot of very much different modifications, that go far beyond that.

As I posted before: I don't think the modders at AAA are cheating or intending to lead other to that aspect of online-gaming, but they opened the Pandorras Box and the more popular the modifications on AAA get, the more people get attention to the ability to change the code and will use that for their own purpose.

The FMs are copied from the NON-flyable planes that had the cockpits added. The FMs are not changed at all. Ie, add a flyable B-17 by sticking a cockpit in it. FM remains the same as AI B-17.

tater - I did not respond to it as I am not "in the know" about the mapping tool (= I never saw it) nor do I know (and care) about the way "your" maps are being made. I know part of the legit process and so I said how things look from my perspective.

Regarding the rest of your post: I do not care for the operations of the "heavies" as my prime area of interest is the eastern front (so I see no need for additional planes). Basically what the Il-2 engine does best (tactical operations in a limited area). It's certainly true that there are no elegant ways of limiting user loadouts - the way SC and FBD do it is rather clumsy IMO but at least they offer the chance. IMO a player has to update himself/herself on the latest "rules and regulations" regarding the maps played on the server. Those who ignore the briefing and complain about kicks because of wrong loadouts or planes do not deserve any sympathy. I'm certainly not in favor of catering to the "most brain-dead users". You want to play? Then RTFM! :twisted:

To me, and I'm strictly talking online for the moment, it requires a cost/benefit analysis. What is the actual incidence of cheating compared to the benefits?

Try as they might, DF maps (even on good servers) are simply not terribly historical. The spawn at will paradigm is inconsistent with realistic play, as is the lack of many types of planes required for context that we can only see in coops.

tater

Falke, perhaps tater says it better than I...

tater:: Granted, there is something to be said for wide open anonymous Online gaming without a fear of cheating; for one thing that's where I'd guess Newbies would go first before they find friends in the private squads. One of the problems with private servers with trusted people using mods nor not is schedule timing among the people -- but that leads us back to the best things in life take time and effort. However, so far Oleg has not been able to allow, as tater says, the best of both worlds.

Thanks Thor. The whole kill score system seems to encourage fighter vs fighter Dogfight. Oleg has always favoured Online Dogfight, at least until recently as far as I know. I think a good Online War, or Lowengrin's Offline dynamic campaigns, give primary importance to destroying opposing forces or supplies on the ground, of which fighters are useful in either enabling or preventing these ground attacks. The whole issue is confused in the community by Oleg's personal favoritism toward simple Online Dogfight shooter gaming. About 2 years ago, Oleg poasted at ubi that "dynamic campaigns are arcade" but I hope he is learning new things for his new sim. Simulating air warfare through a dynamic campaign depends on success or failure of ground attack or heavy strategic strike aircraft. It seems to me that a static campaign, either Online or Offline, does not require bombers to succeed or fail in their missions.

Oleg or 1C could pay me a Monthly Fee and I still would not join a static Online War with a fixed outcome.

My opposition is not about the cheat-discussion but because of personal experiences and a somewhat "sarcastic" outlook on people in general. Meaning I do not trust "the people" not to mess up everything in the worst possible way. I like centralization and combined efforts under a sensible and responsible management and do not like the "watering can" of "everything goes". Having said that I think the cheater issue is less about cheating itself but about the impression of someone cheating, the suspicions and the resulting bad blood. That could (and will) crack "the community".

Since Lexx posted while I was typing:

Actually I have some serious issues with the way DCG portrays a "dynamic campaign". Namely the influence players have on the frontline. I find that part way overdone, a simplification of factors which are outside the scope of a simple flight simulation. Most of these have to do with strategical decisions of a high command, of wartime economics and supply on a much broader scale.

Thanks for the 411 Tater.. I did not know that. That sounds interesting and IMO opens up even more reasons for some kind of resolution oriented discussion.

As for the whole offline v s online , cheating or not BS.. well I think we all have heard enough of that cr@p over the past few months to last me a while and frankly I don't think that nonsense even belongs in any discussion of the subject, particularly with the hindsight of the past few months. The online world has not collapsed upon itself into a frenzy of UFOs and the online community has not abandoned the sim due to it's "ruin" by being hacked.

True, csThor, but then again, the people willing to RTFM and actually try to play in a historical way (waiting to fly in a group, etc) are also unlikely to cheat. It's not about the winning, it's about the simulation/immersion.

My very favorite missions (online or off) are those where I have to nurse my plane back with some damage. I'd rather be killed in a realistic mission than live with a bunch of pelts in an unrealistic one.

tater

This is correct, FM's are not touched in sound mod or any other AI-made-flyable planes. They use the same FM that the AI use that was already in place. Even when this is not preferable as in the case of the avenger, it's a pain to fly and is not how it should be but since this is the FM the avenger has that is what we are stuck with as no one at AAA wants FM's touched for obvious and good reasons. The only things done to these planes is the addition of the cockpit.

I actually partially agree on the dynamic campaign stuff overly influenced by players. The real key to a realistic online experience is context.

DF maps try (and largely fail due to no fault on their part) to provide context. Real battles were mission based, and the pilots were not cats to be herded. they did what they were told.

Flying as a group is pretty much required.

Even coops will become boring as you play the same one over and over, though. That's really the point of a dynamic campaign. To try and provide a realistic context for missions that vary over time. You need to see the forest, and not the trees, though. Yes, the front may move too much, but what matters is not winning the war, but the answers to specific querstions:

"Are the missions so generated plausible?"

"Do the players have to chose a realisitc plane set to achieve their mission goals?"

That sort of thing.

Regarding the tactical nature of the sim (vs heavies), I'd argue that il-2 is really ONLY a fighter sim. The DMs for ground targets are poor. The AI for ground units (ships in particular) is nonexistent. CAS aircraft, IMO, are window dressing in il-2. When seen from the perspective of a fighter pilot, they provide targets, and a context for the air to air battles. Once inside a ground attack plane, you are in an "arcade game" IMO.

The usual response is that "it's a flight sim, not a tank/ship/infantry/etc sim!" That is true up until the point you attack a target on the ground.

Certainly, the DMs for ground targets can be simplified in many cases. Ships, OTOH, no. If a ship is any less complicated than the most complicated plane in terms of AI/DM, it's a cartoon IMO. Two flights of player B-25s can do to a convoy like the one in the Battle of the Bismark Sea what took hundreds of RL sorties to do. One sunk ship for every push of the pickle.

Or there is the massive damage done by bombs to the cities, a couple bombs will flatten many blocks. All and all, the ground battles are an abstration that is only good to provide context for dogfights, IMO. CAS is 2d rate (odd given the title of the game).

tater

CsThor:: Okay, now that is new. What are these personal experiences that went sour? I have great optimism and positive outlook on people in general when it comes to modding in the flight sim world, probably because if I don't like something, I don't have to use it, and I won't, and so any such "bad mods" are of no concern whatsoever -- they don't exist for me, although others may enjoy them for whatever reason. There is more than enough good stuff being made by modders in the open sims so we don't have to worry about any bad modding.

The problem I have is...an example...how in the world did Oleg totally mess up the Volga River on the Stalingrad map? Maybe its because of developer time constraints, which I fully understand, and is why the developers should focus on game engine development and advancement while the customers focus on gaming content through modding. That slip-up is something a modder with tater's or ianboy's fanatical fundamentalist attention to detail would never allow happen to their creations (tater radical fundamentalist about the Pacific, ianboys militant fundamentalist about the Norway).

Experience 1: European Air War

When I gave up in frustration was when there were 3 different FMs along with a devout group of worshippers who fought each other in page-long flamewars in various boards. Not to mention that "the modders" went down the same road as it currently goes at AAA - no coordination, no simplification of the installation process and certainly attempt at creating "packages". It all got sacrificed for the false god of diversity. I even remember a "campaign mod" which required you to download some 20 "mod planes" separately from separate websites. That was the point when I was fed up to the back teeth and uninstalled EAW.

Experience 2: Panzer Elite

Essentially the same as EAW (minus the FM, of course). Even though there were attempts at combining efforts into packs the coordination stopped at the borders of the tight-knit groups. Essentially Mod A (i.e. Britpack) could not be used when you wanted to play Mod B (i.e. Ostpack). Of course it didn't help that the developer (who was willing to cooperate with the various groups) went bancrupt at a critical time.

Plus of course the chore of CFS2. Never regretted spending money on software more than for this POS.

These experiences taught me that "free modding" is essentially an exercise in frustration and often more about "the fiddlers" than about "the players".

Thor, that sounds believable. I always figured Oleg should open the sim except for aircraft modding, since if there is one thing Oleg does do fairly well, its aircraft modding, and he makes enough to make most everybody happy. Other things, not so well...

As far as the AAA site goes, they seem to have a policy of no modding existing FM/DM/WM. Now there are plans to add new aircraft, but leave Oleg's stuff untouched.

DCG is Lowengrin's campaings right? I never played either them or ...who...StarShoy campaigns (is that DGEN)? What does DCG do, if anything, to slant a campaign towards player centric? StrikeFighter campaigns are extremely player centric, which is why I never bothered to play one of their campaigns either. Shucks, its even worse, since the StrikeFighters sim offers no map-wide combat event recording such as Oleg's eventlog text file, so an independent dynamic campaign engine can't be created. Since I consider campaigns as important as aircraft, ...

FB/PF --- closed aircraft, open campaigns.
StrikeFighers -- open aircraft, closed campaigns.

Neither are open sims, and neither are fully closed sims, just partially open in different ways.

---------

Bearcat:: But that claim or prediction was made in this thread, which is what set me off I guess.

btw, you had made those same two predictions for years at the ubi.com. http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d1...ileys/Wink.gif

Ask yourself: How long will this remain policy? How many websites do allow fiddling with FM/DM issues (e.g. in eastern europe or asia)? How many players "feel" there's smething off with Plane ABC or Weapon XYZ and change values 'cause this or that book said so?
The admin's intentions may be laudable but it's rather naive to expect all people interested to abide these rules. The internet is about the lack of borders, about being partially uncontrollable. And this is exactly what is happening right at this moment. Or have you seen any input from russian players apart from cryptic comments that "these things have already been corrected"?

I've never even seen a "this things have been corrected" thread. The closest thing to alterations that there are semi-common threads on are things like rebelting ammo (with types already made and in game). So far none has happened on AAA. The threads also get locked/deleted.

Hodge podge mods are temporary. Once things mature, I think you will see "supermods" that are one stop shopping (like GWX for SH3, or TM/RFB for SH4)

tater

Well Thor, for those who would like to stay with Oleg's FM, they can do that. Its so easy, even a flight simmer can do it.

For those who wish to experiment with FM, apparently they now can. Assume a little better than what I think is your worst case of 100% of aircraft modders are "bad" -- lets assume 90% of aircraft modders are "bad" and would place XLR-99 rocket engine and Phoenix missiles on the P-51 Dora, but 10% of modders are interested in adding a decent Hs-123 for Eastern Front ground attack. I would use the products of the 10%, and if I flew Online, I would fly with or against them.

More important to me would be the AAA advances in grafix, sim functionality, and most important of all -- new maps, especially for Pacific and Eastern Front. New 3rd Party aircraft are not as important to me (in this sim). Now, in the StrikeFighters I totally depend on 3rd Party aircraft modders to make 1940s to 1960s SAC and PVO aircraft that have always been ignored by all combat sim developers everywhere. For strategic size maps and grafix effects matching early jet age strategic air warfare, I have to depend on myself.

BTW, I am the least involved of the pacific mapping team. If the machine I can post with during the day ran il-2, that might be a different story :)

I'm no more fanatical, either :)

Thx guys good to see the discussion going somewhere..

Ya, and modding offers the possibility of Spanish Civil War. Oleg once poasted that he would personally love to make a SCW sim, but, I think, he doesn't have the time. Maybe the new modding could bring JG_52 Tuckie's Spanish Civil War project back home to FB, and away from DukeNuke...er...TargetWare Forever.

Below is the TargetWare thread on Tuckie's SCW work, but the last poast dates from early 2007, so it may be dead.

~> http://www.targetware.net/modules.ph...=196&start=100

Interestingly, modder interest in simulating the Spanish Civil War offers yet another contradiction to the (again) false claims made by hostile behaving anti-social FB/PF computer gamers that aircraft modders (1) only can make UFO's and (2) are not interested in researching military aviation history.

Indeed, by definition, a good modder must deeply research his or her subject of modelling.

Thats it morons, just keep pushing Oleg towards the money from shallow Console games.

Rip his game apart so that he doesnt care anymore and we lose him to the big bucks of arcade games on the Playstation 29.

If these modders are so 'great' then why dont they make their own game? Oh I know, they cant because they CANT.

Between critics and this, in my language i would say that.. this "IS" an insult..
Like we use to say.. C'est celui qui le dit qui l'est"

It remind me of a old engine bought years ago..