If anyone hasn't seen it there's a link on the front page to an interview with Kevin Klemmick the programmer responsible for F4s dynamic campaign.

Its interesting stuff, especially the part about him being interested in working on another sim project......

http://www.cleared-to-engage.com/2011/03...for-falcon-4-0/

If ED developed a campaign engine then it could work for all their upcoming modules as well as Blackshark, Warthog, Lock On. Oh well I can always dream...

That's a cool interview. Unfortunately, reading the text against that background made me slightly nauseous. Something weird with those colors or that texture behind the text makes it very hard for me to track my eyes across the page (anyone else??)..

Nice link..

I didn't get that effect. My colour vision is appalling though, maybe it helped me out on this occasion.

Yeah, its a good read. With his experience it'd be great to see him work on another sim project. I don't particularly want a strategy game in my flight sims but I would like to see another real time campaign, Enemy Engaged or F4 style.

I totally agree. I thought color schemes like that went out in the 90s.

Hey guys could I ask you send me a screenshot of this graphic issue? I also don't get the effect so I guess it depends on different configurations. Here's my email: mail@giorgiobertolone.com

When loaded properly it should appear as white text over black backround, something like THIS . I've been working on an upcoming new layout so your feedback could help me to debug all the issues.

Thank you for the help!

Your link shows the same view I get..white text over a black background. I think what throws my eyes off is the subtle slanting lines/texture behind the text - for some reason it just makes it hard to read continuously. It looks great..and maybe I'm just weird, but it is just hard for me to read due to some kind of interaction. Great site and article though!

I'll chime in for sample size, I don't have any issues reading the text.

Ok, now I see what you guys mean, I was thinking to disco colors from the 90' and I was puzzled!

I will study some changes to the visual layout to avoid the problem in the future. By the way, thanks for your comments on the interview and for reporting it here!

Sorry - I meant that it was just hard to read like a lot of other sites back in the early days of the web. The article itself was great, but I had to take a couple breaks when I war reading it.

No problem Killjoy and thanks for the feedback. I will make sure that next version of the blog will have these issues fixed!

From the ultimate sim of the time to The Sims. What a shame. I'm not so sure it wouldn't be that hard to create a dynamic campaign again with the right approach. A simple RTS type engine running the the background shouldn't be that hard. It doesn't have to be so complex, just give the illusion of an active war going on around you. With todays CPU power, its crazy to think a good dynamic campaign that rivals F4 isn't possible. But, I'm sure people would pick it to death no matter how good it was.

I don't think the question is if it's "possible". I think the issues these days are is it financially feasible, will it be worth the effort and does it make sense at the time.

Even if you do like they did and have the ability to run the campaign engine without needing the sim, which I think is wise, until you actually playing the game from a first person perspective you won't have any idea if it will be any fun. And at what point can you really start doing this? Not until most of the game is already in place. OK, this would also be true for human created missions but there are a few differences which I'll get back to. Now the campaign engine could be a great RTS but not so much fun when you're just one piece in puzzle. For human created missions if it's not fun then it's easy to go in and tweak things. For a generated mission if it's not fun what do you change to improve things? You might even have a really great mission one time and then three boring ones. It's going to take a lot more testing to know if you're heading down the right path. Then if you're not careful you could have it generate a really fun mission but then every time it does it will be just about the same fun mission which defeats the purpose of being dynamic. With a simple RTS engine not only the missions but potentially the entire campaign could be repetitive. You could let the Player(s) help with planning, which would make things more variable, but then you're adding a lot more work on the development/UI side raising the costs. There's also the problem that if you do it as a real RTS then the AI is trying to come up with taskings which will minimize damage on his side and maximize it on the others so depending on the role of the Player I could see that if the AI commander is doing its job correctly the Player could be flying along and find no resistance along his way since it has either been taken care of or the AI has found a weak link in the enemy's defense. For example, let's have the Player flying CAP in one area. Now during his time doing this the enemy sends a strike to another area hundreds of miles away covered by other CAPs. There's a chance that to have fun missions some level of the AI will need to have some idea of what the commanders are doing so that things can be planned such that the Player should be part of the action. You also have to be careful of the flip side where the Player suddenly finds themselves completely outnumbered. Frustration is something you really want to avoid.

If you're hand creating missions then you're also going to need an editor. This tool can also be used to test things as you're developing the core parts of the engine. If you're testing some dogfighting logic,weapons, landings or whatever, then you just set up what you need and there you go. If you're doing a dynamic campaign then do you need an editor like this? Actually you probably do but that's going to be a lot of work that you're only going to be using for a limited amount.

I think Mr. Klemmick's comment about being able to do a combination of scripted and dynamic is the right way to go. It's the direction I had eventually been aiming at and I believe ED definitely could adapt. By starting off with scripted you make it easier to set up and test things at the beginning. You can craft fun missions that really engage the Player. You can add stuff for variability and even keep track of persistent damage. Or course both of these will make it harder to test things and you need some extra error checking so you don't have missions to destroy something that's already out of the picture but it's not too bad. If you release the editor (which will require some extra effort and polishing to make it ready for general consumption) then the community can hopefully help maintain interest in the product. Now that you're established and getting some money coming in then you might be able to consider adding a dynamic campaign. Still, there might be reasons why this needs to be put off. First is that you might need to spend effort updating your technology which could use the resource that could have been doing the DC instead. There also might be outside factors. ED's A-10 was actually done with the military in mind. They may have had to add various thing or had certain requirements, potentially that we don't even know about, which could make doing a DC at the time unwise. I know I worked on a project which was going to be used for training and I had to make sure the AI wasn't too smart since the customer needed to know that every time they were training a new person that things would behave in a predictable way. If the AI could do radically different things each time it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to determine the effectiveness of the training and to ensure the trainee is learning the proper lesson.

I wouldn't be surprised if ED did one someday and when they do I'm sure they'll do it right.

Elf

Thanks for that very informative post!

As the number of DCS modules increases couldn't the campaign be developed and sold as a seperate product that works with the DCS aircraft? Then ED could continue to update the campaign engine alongside the new releases. I just imagine this as something that could grow along with the DCS series as an additional product, I wouldn't expect to not pay extra for it.

As Scott Says maybe there's too mmuch of a conflict with ED's other contracts.