This is exactly how I feel. Any progress is good progress. Keeping the sim vibrant and alive is key, whatever steps Neoqb takes in that direction will be welcome.

As a devoted single player ... do MP first. Adding a dogfight style server is not a big leap over existing capabilities. Get it done and show progress.

A single player campaign? In another thread I said six months to a year. One month on I have seen nothing to make me change my opinion. If anything, the interviews are depressing ... "use the mission editor". Not only do we not have a proper SP campaign, it doesn't look like Neoqb even thinks that this is a problem. I suspect that this is not really the case and that the reaction is more defensiveness than anything else ... at least I hope so. They can't possibly be that thick.

Anyway, show some progress, and IMHO MP is the easier of the two paths.

Yes...but isn't the issue that SP'ers make the majority of purchases..therefor the majority of development resouces should be directed towards completion of the SP aspect of the game...
Plus...as most peoples likey path into the game will start with SP (rather than MP) surely the best way to encourage sales will be to complete and perfect the SP aspects of the game?

This is abit off topic but SimonC if I understand your point I should be quiet because my point of view conflicts with yours??

You go on to couch your statement in some ubsurd way about fragmenting the community, the facts are that the SP folks want all the attention and any time spent on the sim in the "other" group is offensive. I see that as fragmenting the community so please do think before you post.

Your explanation of "unexpected results" vs human competition goes to the heart of the matter, in your scripted off line world you can come to know what will happen because it is "set" to happen in a certain way, I am sure the real WWI pilots would have loved that option also but thats NOT how it went.

The best depiction of any combat sim is to provide the physical world as was at the time to the best of your ability and allow the players to experience what the real pilots would have experience as close as you can (that discribes MP type of play no time wasted by the programmers trying to perfect an AI).

The problem is as always no AI can ever match (at least in this point in time) the human mind, and of course developing an offline campaigne will require alot of AI work, in addition because the AI cannot out think the human the programmer is forced to let the AI to "cheat" to be competitive, meaning he programs the AI to be deadly accurate, not subject to the same FM's as the player etc etc.

This leads to the FM complaints we see on the boards today to some degree.

Well said. My experience exactly.

Even being the infamous onliner that I am, I find the rancor in this thread to be quite amazing. In the game's current state it is not good for any of us. Online or Offline.
Bickering amongst ourselves serves no purpose. All of us want RoF to succeed and meet it's potential. We should direct our concerns/angst/righteous indignation at the developers, not at each other.

We are not the reason that RoF is, sadly, not going to make it.

The developers are the sinners here, not the faithful ones like us that voted with our wallets.

Where'd that recent open letter from Neoqb's CEO go ? Very nice it was. Lovely stuff about the future of a dynamic campaign ... empty words disguised as an olive branch ? I'm embarrassed to admit I was seduced by the hype and eye candy that promised so much ....

All the ROF concerns could be easily put aside if ROF would communicate a committed plan with a schedule for us players.

Even if their plans are modest and the dates long, at least we would all know what ROF plans and the dates and then what they do not plan.

I don't understand this post. The letter was posted several weeks ago, are you saying that between then and now you expected a dynamic compaign? The devs go out of their way to explain their current status with RoF and their plans they have for the future and you see this as empty words? Some kind of seduction?

No of course I didn't expect a working dynamic campaign in a few weeks. The CEO "plans for the future" indicated strong support for a dynamic campaign. Now it seems it's off the agenda. Not interested. Neither am I.

Are you talking about the Vision Statement by the GM and Producer?

http://riseofflight.com/Blogs/post/2009/07/10/Rise-of-Flight-Vision-Statement.aspx#continue

If this is what you are refering to, where in there did it promise a Dynamic Campaign?

Jason

Jeepers creepers it doesn't does it Jase ! I think that's the statement I was referring to ... although I read it here at SimHQ not the rof site. Have you still got that thread ?

Or perhaps I've confused it with the thread where SP interest polled slightly higher than MP and the devs indicated pursuing a dynamic campaign, a statement embraced joyously by the SP folks.

Now it seems the direction is modders will make scripted missions. That's how I read it anyway. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

BigJim

"This is abit off topic but SimonC if I understand your point I should be quiet because my point of view conflicts with yours??"

No, you're entirely at liberty to state your POV, as are all other people; I'm simply asking that you consider the wider circumstances concerning sales, players, their personal arrangements - which will inevitably impact on how they play the game and being cognisant of where we as WWI simmers currently are.

"You go on to couch your statement in some ubsurd way about fragmenting the community, the facts are that the SP folks want all the attention and any time spent on the sim in the "other" group is offensive. I see that as fragmenting the community so please do think before you post."

Actually, if you read carefully many of the posts made above, you'll note two things: the first is that SP players aren't demanding exclusive attention - most are simply pointing out that ROF is not particuarly well developed in terms of SP, yet it is the MP ROF community that appears to be making a disproportionate amount of noise. The second is that many SP afficionados are actually saying that, since MP will be easier to sort out, NeoQB should put their immediate efforts into that direction. That strikes me as an emollient gesture indeed.

Thus, I was wondering on what basis you claim that SP people want all the time and attention? Certainly, the impression I've gained is that those preferring SP are quite clear that SP will be difficult and lenghty to fix, and far from demanding NewQB's wholehearted seem to be more concerned with the overall fate of the game. Hardly divisive behaviour.

Catch, you remember right, though not from Jason's link. I too have been following KOTS and ROF from the beginning and I distinctly remember several conversations about the possibility of a dynamic campaign, but it was never brought up by the devs as a goal, only as answers of the possibility being there.

They may still have plans down the road, but I don't think it's really a high priority or an objective and I wonder if it's even possible when all the computing power is going into flight model nuances and elaborate damage models, etc. I'm guessing that their plan was that players would create enough scripted missions to keep others happy and it probably will for many who are drawn more to the limited experience of just flying and dog fights with out the whole other side of the historical involvement with a participating time line.

I would expect a well designed dynamic campaign to require hardly any processing power during a mission; it's WWI, once you've established the conditions at the start of the mission and some triggers that will prompt events during it, you don't need to be running the dynamic campaign in the background whilst the player is flying like they had to with F4. I would expect the vast majority of the processing to occur prior to hitting the flight simulation bit, leaving the computer free to manage the flight and damage models whilst the player is flying.

Even then I wouldn't expect it to be a particularly processor intensive process; the complicated bit is working out workably realistic rules for dynamism, and a database & engine format that allows the player to start in a historically accurate setting for an arbitrarily chosen date but then have a persistent history diverge with them from then on. Which is a very interesting programming problem; I had a brief crack at a prototype about 7 years ago, but never really solved it.

Well SimonC here is one example in this thread I am sure there are others,

BigJim,

I'm sure you're right, but you don't have to look very far in this thread - at either end, or inbetween - to find SP players who've said, in effect, fix MP first.

I'm pretty sure that there are many ROF players out there who don't give a #%&*$# which gets fixed first, so long as one of them gets fixed and el pronto!

You're right Rob. It'll probably never happen. No point wasting any more time on this discussion. I'll just enjoy RoF as a quality flight simulator with cool planes.

I thought that the number of events happening around one as they fly, as well as the animated objects involved in them is pretty draining on the computer resources. They would all be tied into an historical data base, and I can see how that in itself wouldn't be restrictive, just the events around one that are triggered?

The subject of the dynamic campaign is a whole other, very interesting subject in itself. Would like to hear more about your experience and opinions on it, maybe a new thread on it?
I tend to not like the idea of a player influencing the history around one. In OFF they decided to not even allow important, historical aces to die till their actual date of death, but you can fight them and possibly kill them in an encounter. I agree, it's extremely complex, but it sure adds a lot to a sim, however it's done and I hope it will be possible for ROF to develop a dynamic campaign, but I really have doubts about it.