Why are there no similar campaigns for RoF?

Icefire I am not completely sure that I saw on these boards, but Flatspinman has definitely registered his appreciation of RoF here.

(For the unaware, Flatspinman, and Icefire were two of the finest fun campaign makers for IL2. Campaigns like Afrika! and Storm Clouds, where objectives were 10 minutes away, atmosphere could be cut a knife, tasks were varied, each mission felt fresh and different - all of this was for IL2:1946 of course, and could still be found on Mission4today site).

But this isn't a specific question to the two maestros, but a more general area for discussion: why do THEY choose not to make campaigns for RoF? Is it the difficult to understand editor? RoF engin limitations? Something else? Why did we have HUNDREDS if not thousands of home made campaigns and missions- quite a few were brilliantly written and designed, faaar better than the stock IL2 offerings, already have dozens of campaigns and missions for Il2:Clod, but none, NONE(!!!) made for the brilliant Rise of Flight?!

I remember another great IL2 campaign maker - Zeuscat, who had a very peculiar style- his missions often involved not shooting down numerous planes, but locating spy ships, locating and destroying supply cargo planes, following generals' cars, searching for submarines etc. With RoF's fantastic draw distance these would be incredibly fun. (Doesn't matter that RoF doesnt have submarines- trains, cars and aeroplanes with "escaping generals" would be just as fun to look for). But why there is COMPLETE lack of "Hollywood fun" stuff in RoF?

And this is a note to Jason as well: fun campaigns for serious simulators are certainly in demand - just Afrika! and Storm Clouds alone were downloaded about 30000 times). In fact the "fun champaigns for serious simulator" feature VERY heavily in Mission4today Top50. RoF - for one reason or another is missing a trick here! RoF has 200000 users, so the old excuse that IL2 was simply much more popular cannot explain this away any more.

Why is this so?

The mission builder software for both sims are worlds apart. Building a mission in RoF takes a lot more effort. I think that is a very big reason why we see so few missions and campaigns for RoF.

Yes, you can learn to build missions in Il-2 just by messing around and trying stuff out. With the RoF mission builder you have to approach it systematically and with the seriousness of your job.

Exactly right.

One of the very first things I do when I get a new combat flight sim is dive into the mission editor. I've been building coop missions for our small online squad for about 13 years or so???

ROF's editor is the first mission editor that really "knocked me on my butt" when I began trying to use it. It is vastly different (and more complex) than IL2's mission editor. It takes a different approach, and a large time investment to use it.

I'm still at the very early learning stages... I'm a complete "noob" when it comes to the ROF mission editor. I can create a decent IL2 coop mission, including testing it, in under an hour. A decent RoF coop mission would take me MUCH longer than that.

Currently, I've found it easier to "grab" and convert beta Career missions into coop missions. This approach is still somewhat time consuming, but does allow you to "grab" a single player Career mission you thought was fun, edit it so it can be flown as a coop mission, and fly it with your buddies online.

Best wishes.

Looking at these lessons it doesnt appear to be some MS-DOS cryptic monster, but has graphical interface similar to IL2...

http://riseofflight.com/en/community/usefulmaterials/lessons

Correct. But the similarites end there.

I didn't mean to be all "gloom and doom".

I DO think the guys who have some experience with RoF's editor can produce good missions in a reasonable amount of time....

I'm quite experienced with the IL2 editor, but have just barely scratched the surface with RoF's editor. As I learn more "stuff" with the RoF editor, I'm sure I'll get much faster. I'm terribly "slow" right now (if building a mission from "scratch").

Here is a quick example:

Choose a map. Create a new mission (from scratch). Place two opposing aircraft on the map. Have them takeoff, "meet" somewhere, then return to their respective bases and land.

This can be accomplished in about, oh, 30 seconds (less?) in IL2 even as a relative newcomer to the editor (once you've learned to navigate through the mission editor).

Now, with the same level of experience, try to do this in RoF's editor. More complex, more time consuming to acheive the same simple mission.

IL2 "automates" many of the editor funtions that RoF requires individual steps to accomplish.... there ARE advantages to RoF's approach, one being a huge level of "control" over a variety of things in the mission... but this level of control comes at the price of complexity, a steeper learning curve, and TIME (to create a mission).

Best wishes.

Hello there Borsch
Thanks a lot for the compliments and remembering my campaigns!

As you noted, I do think RoF is great and I had definitely planned to make campaigns before it was released but there's been a few things holding me back. 1 and are just factors stopping ME from doing it, but I suspect points 3 and 4 may be more widespread.

1. My PC could sort of kind of run it before but then I got a widescreen monitor and to run it on 1920xwhatever res it is just makes the poor old girl wheeze. So it's back to Il2 for me till I can get a new PC.

2. I was really, really busy the last few years(work, two little little kids, a master's degree part-time, some family problems), but that's all receding into the distance now (and with it my hairline).

3. As mentioned above, the FMB is haaaard! When I tried it a while ago I couldn't even find any towns on the map, let alone place a flight. I was probably looking at the wrong menu or something, still don't know what it was about. It looks incredibly capable but between its complexity and my lack of time and PC power it has been a non-starter for me. I'd like to though. I must say though that the Career mode I find highly enjoyable, though some of the types of mission you mentioned above would be a laugh, wouldn't they? I can practically hear the scarred-mustachioed villain I'd use in briefings!

4. With IL2 there were a couple of user made guides to FMB use and campaign making that were really accessible. Perhaps there is for RoF, too, just I haven't had the chance to find them.


If it's any consolation, I started a stalled IL2 campaign again! http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3485968/Some_desert_map_pics.html#Post3485968

It is nothing like IL2. Take a look for yourself.

Two years ago I yelled from the highest virtual mountain tops about the genius of the RoF Editor. But after much use I think the approach is flawed. Compared to IL2 and DCS (the only other Editors I am proficient with) the mission building and testing process takes an eternity in RoF. The RoF Editor seems to have been made with future capabilities built in (maybe MMO or DC). If those capabilities are ever utilized then perhaps it's strengths will show. But right now it is simply time consuming...although fun.

RoF's mission builder is needlessly complex unfortunately, and this hurts us as far as having quality user
made campaigns.
As an experienced campaign builder in IL2, I don't have time to even begin to learn RoF's mission builder.

What also hurts is the complete lack of variety possible. However creative the mission or dedicated it's creator, it's still just planes sneaking over the front and other planes sneaking up on the sneakers. Without ground forces (and the game's very strict object limitations) most of the creativity is lost to the player, much to the sadness of the mission creator. This means that there is little motivation to spend dozens of hours creating and testing only to get the reaction, "meh". (I'm talking strictly multiplayer here. Vander's "St. Mihiel" shows that in the right hands, RoF mission creation can yield amazing results.)

Maybe FlyingNutcase could come to our rescue! I don't know if he plays RoF, but his Il-2 instructional videos are great.

His site has been down since October.
The last I heard he intended to get the site running again but that was in Novemeber.

The videos can still be seen on YouTube though.
http://www.youtube.com/user/FlyingNutcase


Wheels

Unfortunately, as indicated above, proficiency in the IL2 FMB is neither here nor there when it comes to RoF.

With Il-2 users were encouraged to develop and distribute freeware campaigns, the commercial campaigns were made available somewhat later and many weren't making much of a contribution to the future of the game, though the better of them added a few maps that wouldn't otherwise exist.

Rise of Flight is different in that the developers seem to want to retain control of the release of campaigns, the sale of which make a direct contribution to future expansion of the range of aircraft available.

The Rise of Flight editor is considerably more complex than the Il-2 editor, this is possibly because the Il-2 editor isn't very good. It wasn't very good even by the standards of 1998, it is perhaps the one aspect of the game where CFS2 was the better product. However, Il-2 was basically a ground-attack game when it was being made, and this led to there being a lot more scope for missions. Rise of Flight could be considered to have been very dogfight oriented, until quite recently. It has no AI-only planes.

I wouldn't say that the editor is a problem so much as the limited variation in the existing range of planes, and more importantly the current condition of the game, with development and sales very much still ongoing.

I could accomplish anything I needed to with the IL2 FMB, the only thing I felt I was lacking was random triggers and the ability
to cut and paste things. Air combat missions are not THAT complicated as mentioned above. You need to tell the planes where to go and when, and who is going to show up and when. Objects should be easily accessed through a menu. Same with ground units. All this can be accomplished within a fairly simple and intuitive user interface.

I disagree that the IL2 mission builder "wasn't that good" on the contrary, it was easy to use and powerful enough in most aspects.
I think it was quite excellent, though lacking in some areas compared to Falcon 4.0's mission builder.
The original Falcon 4.0 mission builder is another example of a powerful, easy to use and intuitive piece of software.

It's fine if a piece of software is powerful, but nobody cares if the time needed to learn it makes utilizing it prohibitive.
IL2's mission builder allowed me to concentrate on staging, timing, atmosphere, effect, immersion. There's a lot to be said
for that. The result of IL2's mission builder is that we had a TON of great user made content available. I created a load of
online CoOp missions that I hosted myself quite often. The ease of use that the IL2 FMB offered allowed great, mission oriented CoOp play, and we were able to create at least a few new, high quality, highly detailed missions weekly.

Aside from CoOp missions, I myself created the "Liberation Skies" offline campaign which became quite well known during it's heyday.

I peeked RoF's mission builder, and the word "bloat" doesn't even begin to cover it.
It needs a rewrite if we're ever going to see the kind of user created content that we did with IL2.
In any case, I'm glad at least a few people have time in their lives to crack it. I wish I did.



Cheers
Gambit