Oleg and Team.

[LEXX]

CsThor::

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.

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).

[csThor]

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".

[LEXX]

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::

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.

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.

[csThor]

Originally Posted by LEXX

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.

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"?

[tater]

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

[LEXX]

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.

[tater]

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

[GOZR]

Thx guys good to see the discussion going somewhere..

[LEXX]

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.