Oleg Maddox's Room #1

[Avimimus]

Hello Oleg,

If you have a moment, there are two ideas that I thought I would pass on:

1.
Is there any thought about being able to get (or to turn on automatic) verbal instructions from other crew members?

For example:
- The navigator could estimate TAS from IAS for the bombardier
- The rear gunner could yell out the approach of an enemy fighter to the bomber pilot (or complain about being to closs to flak).
- A radar operator could give instructions to the pilot (most aircraft had separate radar operators)

This could all be done with a few pre-recorded audio samples from the AI or simply through text on the screen.

In real life very few aircraft prior to the late 1950s had the pilot operate the radar. For some of the aircraft in Galba and all of the aircraft in BoB the radar operator could be modeled simply as a set of verbal commands. I remember accounts of interactions between luftwaffe radar operators and pilots when chaff was first being deployed and it should be possible to even model weaknesses and countermeasures verbally.

Such as system could, at least in the text overlay, be extended to visual observation (with descriptions of the rough number of enemies or ground targets and their types) with varying degrees of vagueness depending on range/conditions.

2.
As for stories, I am sure that you already see the benefit of having a well written briefing and an atmospheric plot given the Il-2 expansion packs you developed. The briefing may only be text but they add a lot.

I agree with your statements that adding a cut-scene capability to the game is largely a waste of time but for static campaigns why not expand the text based system? My suggestion would be to add the ability to choose between different text options during the briefing. These options would add additional briefing text or activate scripts to make small changes in the upcoming mission.

This would allow campaign builders to give the player the ability to do things like:
- choose between questions to ask during a briefing
- suggest a wingmen needs to be grounded for some rest (effecting their AI level or number of aircraft in upcoming missions)

S!

P.S. Could the HUD log (text overlay) be made editable for the 3rd party (so that we can make it use less jarring text and a smaller font for instance)?