If it feels dynamic great I play it, if not, Ill play online, posibly with a squadron. Thats just my thought about it.

It happened with Lock On, I just hope it doesn't happen with DCS. Stating something on a web page isn't the same as shipping it on the CD, as we've all seen before.

No one can claim that ED have shipped nice missions and campaigns in the past, Its always been a weak point with the Flanker line of products. Hopefully this will change with the DCS line, I just want the best for this product.

I wouldn't be so concerned with that. Even if the map encompasses the entire black sea region, heli-ops. ensures that you'll be confined to only a small portion of it. It would be quite easy to close the "backdoor" to a target area using a few well placed AA objects for anyone who thinks he can outsmart the mission designer.

Why does every active unit in a dynamic campaign have to be placed on the map in 3D? Surely there's a better way.

Couldn't there be a ring around the player aircraft where 3D objects get drawn on the map? That way the objects would only be taking up the resources required to run the background campaign stats, rather than having hundreds of 3D objects outside the players view distance bogging your PC to a halt.

I think Starshoy used an approach like this with his IL2 DGEN campaigns. The problem with DGEN is that the invisible units never become visible to the player, so the world outside the mission corridor appears empty.

All I want to know at this point is: WHAT's THE CAMPAIGN LIKE???

This will be the deciding factor for me.

It sounds like a simple solution, doesn't it?
But then, what about units outside the player's ring that encounter each other?
What about 'special' units with long reach?
What about weapons that reach beyond the ring?

There are a lot of issues to take care of.

Surely the computer can work out the result of non player vehicles interacting without drawing them, the same goes for BVR weapons.

The computer can't do magic. You have to tell it what to do and how to do it, and it's not necessarily simple in any way, shape or form. It's never as simple as it sounds, and it's rare for one solution to 'fit all'.

Even falcon doesn't really have it done terribly well. It works, but it barely works.

What Mogster is talking about reminds me of how the developers of the Combat Mission described what was happening with their game. Basically, the actual simulation was running "under the hood" and was invisible to the player. It was handling all the ballistics, unit positions, probability, etc. What the player saw was an approximation of all this. In game, your tank looked like it was sitting on a hill. Under the hood, it actually occupied a very exact point in space. In the end, what you saw in the 3D engine was never exact, so to you that tank might be clipping a tree or building but it really wasn't in the simulation.

So, would it be possible to have something like this for certain units and only draw the 3D stuff within the ring Mogster referred to? I realize that what works for a wargame (abstraction) doesn't always work for a Sim, but some abstraction for "outside the ring" might let ED expand the size and scope of their campaigns in the future. Once those units get inside the ring, the abstraction becomes concrete.

A little OT to the current "player bubble" discussion, but DC's are on my mind lately...

How do you describe a DC to someone who's never played with one? I have a simple answer which is maybe TOO simple or wrong, but this is how I describe it...

In a typical shooter the AI can seem "dynamic" in that they may react differently depending on what you do. You run past a room full of baddies and they might chase you. You run into the room and they may stand there and fight you or take cover. But the same baddies are going to be in the same location every time you play the game, thus you learn how to beat the game (i.e. where to run and hide, which weapon to have ready, etc).

I'm sure a game developer can better place the bad guys rather than having them randomly placed by code, but they'll always be in the same place every time. And maybe sometimes they're not (I believe I've played shooters with some randomization [i.e. sometimes the bad guy is there and sometimes he's not)], but overall it's the same game each time, you began to master it because you know in advance what or who to expect.

In a DC you can't predict this.

A "Truly Dynamic Campaign" is IMO one like F4 and TAW which runs in real time, that is the war continues even when you're not flying. In both sims, multiple missions are generated and you choose one or fast forward time until one comes up that you're interested in. Also in both sims you can watch the war unfold outside of the a/c.

To some, playing Coop MP in a DC is the ultimate flight sim experience (I don't know, I don't play MP) but only F4 and EF2000 have ever included this feature, yes?
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Mark

I remember how much I loved TAW - many times I just sat and watched the intro , Digital Image Design did an amazing job, TAW was as near to perfection as it could be.

I can't imagine how a dynamic enviroment would work, but the workload would be huge.

Depends on your definition. EECH/AH had this, as did LB2 (although it had scripted missions sprinkled in there--and I never played it MP so I'm not 100% it had the campaign there). They were both helo sims, of course, but then so is BS.


The Jedi Master

Wow, SimHQ search actually worked for me! You're correct on both sims JM, thanks for sharing that.
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Mark

I have been member of onlines squadrans for years. As well as lone wolfing it in single player campaigns and online. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that...... Online flight in a squad with a dynamic campaign *IS* the best flying i have ever had.


Non dynamic campaign missions is like a gourmet dish that is missing a vital ingrediatn. I will give you the reasons why.

Non dynamic campaign missions in a squad have two fatal flaws.

1. The mission builder from extensive testing has the problem of knowing what is going to happen and when. They know where they are going, when we are going to get bounced, know where the targets are placed and in what directions they are facing, know what ground to air threats there are and where.

Despite what the mission builder says and no matter how hard they try. Their actions will always be compromised in game as they KNOW what will happen and when. And as a player who does not know, i can tell that a certain action performed by the misison builder is out of character becuause they know what is what. That is for me a very very huge immersion killer.

2. Head to head online play missions do not tie into each other and there is no tracking of asset loss, logistics and no movement of front lines. Its just go up for dogfight city, see if you can bomb your targets, rinse wash repeat. No alternatvies, no changes, no massive plan changes. Sure its fun, but again unrealistic and static.




But what i want in the next mission is to know that....
That bridge i took out is still out. Those planes i took out affected that airfields ability. That airfiled we took out can now be catpured or remains out of action. That convoy we destroyed remains destroyed. That intel we saw on route to our objective can be used as a base for our next missions objective. That error i did will affect us all in the future !

And above all, no one in our squad will know what is going to happen and when apart from what we know from intel and mission brief. THE WAY A MISSION SHOULD BE ! That can only be attained by one thing only. That is a dynamic campaign.

For IL2 playing on scorched earth (dynamic campaign generator) took everything to a new level. It really showed the importance of good decisions and getting your assets home safely !

I know dynamic campaigns are hard work to do. But to not have one is missing the boat in todays realms. If you are offering what you call the most indepth flight sim. Then why downgrade that effort without a real dynamic war scenario in order to keep the feeling of real life.

Heck if Scorched earth can be developed and supported for IL2 by a community member and distributed as FREEWARE. Then i am at a loss as to why anyone making what is supposed to be the "Sim of Sims" can't implement one that they will get paid for.

bogusheadbox,

You do not need a dynamic campaign to accomplish the points above. Obviously a dynamic campaign offers a gameplay element that you cannot achieve any other way - a living, breathing battlefield that exists whether or not you enter it.

But the elements you talk about - knowing what is going to happen in a mission, damage persisting throughout a campaign - can all happen with a good "semi-dynamic" campaign system. Jane's F-18 has exactly this system, where damage is tracked through the course of missions, the campaign progression can branch to multiple paths based on the outcomes of previous missions and random chance, and the mission creator can build missions where the same thing certainly doesn't happen every time, through the use of functionality in the mission builder.

Random events possible in a mission is what I consider "sufficient" for a scripted mission/campaign.

As long as I don't see a SAM behind that mountain EVERY time I fly it, or run into the flight of 4 Flankers over the bay EVERY time I fly it, then I'm ok to an extent.




The Jedi Master

I agree with Jedi master on this one, as long as its not the same exact mission everytime it works.

The other important thing is begin made to believe that you are part of a living breathing world with a war going around you. JF-15 and JF-18 nailed this almost perfectly. A big part of this was the sound: radio comms and explosion, gun sounds (hearing external sounds far away is not exactly accurate, but still was worth it for me). And it's not just about hearing random radio comms, but you knew that the radio messages being transmitted were "real" for the AI aircraft and their missions.

My need for a dynamic campaign has changed over the years. What I loved about the dynamic campaign was the idea that a live world, independent of me or my actions, was out there, going on living no matter what I did. I would launch F4 before going to bed, and set to "action camera" and it was like watching a movie. (usually a miracle if it was still running 8 hours later when I woke up).

The key to my experience though, was excitement. I was excited to sit down and fly, to be part of that world--but later, my excitement started to shift to understanding the complex avionics suite. I was in it for the "realism", or the endeavor of the developers/modders to simulate more and more systems that their real life counterparts had. Jane's F/A 18 quenched some of my thirst for this realism--as I found myself becoming more interested in properly approaching the carrier and landing, than I was in completing the mission objectives.

Finally, my excitement moved entirely into this realm with Flaming Cliffs and the Su-25 and it's advanced flight model. Combined with TrackIR, and my Cougar, for the first time, I actually felt like I was flying--something fundamental had changed, and I vowed not to fly any other sim unless it had at least the same level of fidelity. The idea of a dymanic campaign was somewhere far in the back of my mind, and I was just excited to simply takeoff and fly through the waypoints successfully.

And so today, I'm super psyched up about the impending release of Blackshark. But I'm not imagining blowing up sam sites with my Vickhers (sp), I'm imagining cross checking the navigation systems, flying heads down through a flight plan, and being able to someday, smoothly control the helicopter when flying manually! Then, and only then, will I start worrying about sam sites. Perhaps by that time, the dynamic campaign will be in place, and again, my excitement will focus on that front.

I would prefer a dynamic environment over a dynamic campaign, something that feels 'alive'
whenever you fly. Starting with Flanker, followed by Lomac, the system was not really good.
I mean, creating a mission that plays different on- and offline because one has to create
an own flight for each human separately and one can't hop in an AI pilot's seat? That's
what i call a design flaw. And it felt boring, the missions played more or less the same
(even with LMR, the Lockon Mission Randomizer).

Reading Wags' posting from the beginning where he said "user created missions"
already took the fun out of BS for me. Looking back to F/A-18 which had a similar
system and it ended with a handful of campaigns.