Multiplayer Mode and Server Persistant Campaigns.

[TexMurphy]

Hia all.

Let me introduce my self before I get down to my question. I like Im guessing 99.999% of the people here have been a flight sim fan since I started playing games on the PC. My desire for flight time in good games hasnt really been satisfied lately due to the pittyfull number of good flight sims as of late. My other big problem in gaming satisfaction is that once I tasted the combo of persistant game worlds and simluator gameplay (while Jumpgate is a space sim its still a sim game and persistant) I cant live without one or the other. Things wherent made easier by Aces High comming so close to beeing persistant but combining their excelent flight engine with to much rush and spawn feel to fighting.

So my question are now about Fighter Ops and persistancy to the campaigns.

Will the multiplayer mode be played on a set of persistant servers or will they be played on your regular online game servers without any persistancy?

If there will be persistant servers.

Will my success ratio as a pilot give me more ingame responsibilites such as wing leader assignment, abilites to assign pilots to missions, ability to assign number of wings to missions, ability to assign missions to the persistant campaign?

Will resources be limmited to inorder to prevent rush and spawn tactics when shot down?

Will pilots have to be rescued by S&R missions before beeing able to fly again after beeing shot down?

Will there be a voice com server/client integrated in the game.

Well I could go on with hundreds of questions but I will limmit it to this since till I get the answer wether the game will have persistant state multiplayer mode or not.

Hoping for answers.

Tex Murphy

[Charlie_VFP]

Tex,

I will bring up some points to the topics in your post but remember that I am not a G2I employee and have no direct say over anything regarding FO at this time. These are strictly my opinions based on my knowledge and what I have seen on the forums in the past.

Setting up a persistant server or servers would be quite costly for the developer themself to do. I would imagine that you will see a little of this done by each individual squadron for both private and public use.

As for the next few topics you bring up, I think I am mis-understanding you. When dealing with the multiplayer environment, I do not think there will be 'trackable' results as there will be in a single player mode. Mainly because it would serve no purpose UNLESS you are in a squad. But then the squad has their own ranks and command structure and these tasks will be carried out in their own fashion, not by preset game instruction.

More of your topics bridge on a "dynamic campaign" generator; where each mission you fly impacts all future missions as well. I beleive they have one planned but not sure how indpeth it will be.

As for voice server/client being built into the game, I truely hope not. The reason is because of the saying, 'why re-invent the wheel?'. There are already great programs, for free, that run voice better than any in game comm system would work. It would be very hard for them to create the same fidelity as Teamspeak inside of FO. TS is just way to great and configurable to do such a thing. So are many of the other chat clients out there. Then there is the issue of resources. TS requires very little memory and CPU power. Start building things into the game and the resources needed by it will continue to grow unbound.

With that being said.... a built in chat client would be good for the fact of bringing better communication between complete strangers when they randomly log on to servers. But I personally, these are my opinions remember, do not think that is worth the problems it will cause and the resources it will take to do it.

Hope this helps.

[Buckshot]

Hi Tex, Most of your questions can't be answered in any detail at this early stage, but as Terry said you are basically talking about a dynamic campaign engine. If you have seen falcon, which does pretty much everything you are asking, our aim is to have the campaign engine better than that.

As Terry also pointed out the tracking issues are best handled by online squads.

One thing I will disagree with Terry about is ingame voice comms. This is something we are looking at, the issues I have is that although teamspeak works well, it's not realistic in that you can't go to (for example) the DED in the F-16 and change channels as you would in the real jet, etc, the other issue is that with an integrated voice comms system you can have a bit of flexibility, eg with Falcon the IVC will limit it's bandwidth if the bandwidth starts getting tight, ensuring that the actual game messages take priority. With an external program like Teamspeak you have both it and the flight sim trying to take the bandwidth at the same priority.

One other solution is to look at an API with teamspeak or a similar program allowing you to have full channel control etc from the cockpit. The difficulty/cost of doing something like this will have to be weighed up with the difficulty of creating our own voice comms system in the game. In theory a custom built ingame voice comms should also take less resources than an external comms program complete with it's own GUI etc etc.

[jhook]

I agree with Buckshot here, incorporating a "speakable" comm system in a multiplayer/TE has bandwidth issues. Onse possible suggestion I have would be to use a digital voice compression utility as that would problebly take up the least amount of bandwidth, but you would have a slight delay with the comm's as it would have to compress/uncompress as it goes. :?

[Charlie_VFP]

I'm still leary on the issue, though Buckshot did bring up some very valid point.

My opinion is also coming from having 1GB of DDR2700 and a very fast cable internet connection.

Even Lock On, a hog of memory, doesnt come close to filling the 1GB. TeamSpeak only takes up 11,064K ish memory. That is not very much, even if your only running a 512Mb system.

If the in-game comms work out as an 'ideal' system then that would be good. Like I said, that would put non-squadron mates in touch during open server missions. Of course, this could be a bad thing as well....

Buchshot: There is a program that does exactly what your saying for FS2004 that the 'VATSIM' users use. I just found it a week ago when downloading all the software for VATSIM. When you adjust your in-game radio stack, it watches to see is a controller or unicom channel is available where your position is. If so, it automatically switches AVC (VATSIMS voice program) to that freq. I think this would be awesome.

You just cannot beat teamspeak. With all the whisper channels and features..... I think I will stick with it unless the in game voice does amazing things. :)

[Charlie_VFP]

QOUTE FROM OTHER THREAD:
I think it would be great to have a feature wherein you could speak with others verbally while on a server. For instance, in LOMAC you have to use a separate program and it would be very nice if you could have this built into the game. It would make communication easier in servers where people just join, as of now they don't usually have a way to communicate beyond typing. It would also be cool to have separate channels per each side, so you couldn't listen to what was going on in the other side.
END QOUTE

You know, I do not want to seem like a 'bad guy' here, but do you really want just any ol body to be able to jump onto comms with you on an open server?

We have seen some of the 'children' that roam around the forum. Look at the Lock On forum.... my god.

I am sure many people will use it correctly and wisely. But I am also sure that there will be those who get on comms and ruin the experiance as well.

If this happens, make sure there is an ignore feature so each user can 'ignore' the trolls that show up. :)

[Buckshot]

Oh no not at all, I wouldn't advocate having an "open" server.

I would envision it to work the same as the game server does, ie only those who connect to the game server could communicate. A lobby function would be good too where people could listen in to flights in progress, we'll have to see how it all pans out.

[Charlie_VFP]

Right. I meant open server meaning anyone could join the game and fly.

There is a large group of 'children' who like to hop on Lomac and disregard any mission parameters. They just go around doing their best to create havok and piss off the players who are trying to work together.

With integrated voice, we would be forced to listen to them too.....

Unless there is an 'ignore' feature... :)

[TexMurphy]

Thanks for the answers so far.

On the Voice coms.

Part of the reason behind me wanting ingame voice support is realism. Having a realistic flight sim with out radio channels beeing realistic? Its like... well you dont want my analogies just yet.. ;)

Second reason is not having to go through the pain of telling everyone where to DL TS2, hosting it if their DL is broken (which it often is), ect, ect.

As a example of a game where it works really well with built in voice coms we have Aces High. Aces High is really low on lag even though there are up to 400 players per server who all can use voice coms in game.

On the topic of persistant campaign servers.

Let me explain more what I mean.

I do not mean a server when me and my friends fly coop missions vs AI pilots. I mean coop missions are nice and all but fighting AI just plain out sucks. I dont want to dispute anyones ablity to code good AI pilots BUT AU will always be AI. AI will always no matter how well coded be predictable. This is why I plain out refuse to fight AIs anymore online when I can fight other pilots.

What Im lookin for is a game where that is a extreamly realistic sim, its online (sure there can be offline campaigns as well) and I dont only fight with but also against human pilots.

I love the concept of dynamic campaigns with changing objectivs based on progress and sucess of the players. But if the game is played by players on all sides of the guns then there has to be a more organized command.

What I envision (maybe not for this game but in my dreams of a for me perfect sim) is what Aces High is but with mission based sorties and realistic missions, time age doesnt really matter. I dont know if you have played AH but I asume you have.

The problem with AH is the rush and spawn feel of the campaigns which gives it more of a FPS meets Sim feel then true hardcore sim. But the concept of 400 real pilots fighting it out is something I really love.

To remove the rush and spawn feel of AH one has to build on missions, just like you are doing.

Mission assignment should imho be based off pilots rank and base of operation. Its up to the pilot who gets the mission assigned to him to use the resources assigned to him with it to the highest efficiency. The pilot who has the rank to be assigned missions should select his wingmen for the mission, the load outs and do the planing. As pilots get promoted they get more responsiblity. Eventually Id like to see entire high commands be fully player based, much like in WW2 Online.

Next thing that I really dont like about AH is that all sides have all planes. There ofcourse have to be correct nations and planes in the conflict. But I take that for granted.

So what Im lookin for is Falcon 4.0 meets Aces High and WW2 Online. Meaning persistancy and player only dynamic multiplayer campaigns.

Hope that explains what Im askin/lookin for.

Sorry for the bad swenglish.

Tex

[Buckshot]

Hi again Tex, I think you will be very happy with Fighterops :wink:

All of what you describe is in our planning. Too early to say in any detail how it all will be implemented and/or to guarantee that there isn't a chance that some of it may not make it to the final product, but all of those things are fairly high on our priority list.

[TexMurphy]

Awsome Buckshot.. ;)

Any chance that you guys would in the future be posting dev logs. Flying Lab Software are awsome at doing that and I really enjoy reading them, they could be more technical but still very good read. ;)

http://www.flyinglab.com/pirates/logs.php

Btw you dont happen to need a additional programer for database work? ;)

Tex

[Charlie_VFP]

Gee Buckshot, and some people claim you dont give updates... :roll: I guess if they read enough threads, they would get their updates. :)

Sounds awesome by the way.

[Buckshot]

Yeah, makes you wonder if they actually read at all.

Tex check your PM

[FlyBoy01]

Buckshot,

The sad truth is that many who complain loudest are often the least informed and least well read.

Thanks for the info and please continue to keep us posted. :)

[LunaNera]

Oh my am I happy to find this thread! :bounce:

Yesterday night I was thinking about what would raise the immersion level of the sim and Radio Ops struck me. How amazing would it be to operate the radio panel of your AC and have it actually switch voice comm channels!!! Rather than switch Teamspeak channel with your keyboard shortcut you'd be switching frequency on your AC's radio panel. AMAZING :thumb:

I was hoping in a more active discussion though; any news on your decisions regarding this aspect of THE SIM?

[Funky]

Today, BF2's integrated VOIP is a perfect example to refer to, for this thread.

I'm personally for it, especially since we will have different freq.s to choose. Also, I think a universal ranking system would be grate. You don't necessarily have to know what's the rank of the guy you're against, but its good to know where you stand. Just like the ranking in BF2. That way you can also compare stats with other players. Now that was just my 2 cents.

Funky

PS. Dont make us unlock missles though, like in BF2 !!! :bigeyes:

[Pacman]

PS. Dont make us unlock missles though, like in BF2 !!!

UhOh :tongue: ROFL

Dirk

[LunaNera]

Still concerning built-in voice communications;

I'm sure we've all heard that in situations where stealth is paramount, radio communications between aircraft is kept to a minimum if not abandoned at all. 1. How does talking on the radio with your wingman give away your presence/position?
2. Will the enemy's combined air defence system (awacs, fighters, sams) somehow be able to establish your position from your emitted radio energy?

Now depending on the answers to the above 2 question which are open to anyone who may have any insights, the 3rd question goes to the devs:

3. Would it be possible to simulate such effects therefore requiring actual radio silence between players so as to not give away their position too easily?

Hope this makes sense...

[Buckshot]

Yes, this is something that is in our design documents already, having comms traffic give away position etc, also the ability to communicate via hand signals as it is done in real life is being looked at.

[GI Jew]

also the ability to communicate via hand signals as it is done in real life is being looked at.

http://www.geocities.com/mellott124/powerglove.htm

Perhaps something like this needs to be reinvented?

I live for the day when i can give someone the virtual finger :tongue:

[Afterburner]

I live for the day when i can give someone the virtual finger :tongue: HaHa...... :tongue:

[SUBS17]

http://www.geocities.com/mellott124/powerglove.htm

Perhaps something like this needs to be reinvented?

I live for the day when i can give someone the virtual finger :tongue:

Quake 2