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#4028668 - 10/29/14 03:06 AM Dynamic campaign thoughts/rants/wishes/etc...  
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BeachAV8R Offline
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Just a suggestion to put it here since most discussions of other modules eventually morph into this very much wanted feature.

My thoughts in a bit.. smile

BeachAV8R



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#4028681 - 10/29/14 03:46 AM Re: Dynamic campaign thoughts/rants/wishes/etc... [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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At the risk of being labeled a heretic - I'm not convinced the Falcon campaign is the end-all-be-all of campaigns. While I had fun in the past with it, I still think EECH gave a better mix of big fish in a small pond feel that I think gaming lends itself to. I mean, let's face it, none of us want to play a *realistic* campaign where we go out, drill circles and never fire a shot. Nor do we want our one plane to be inconsequential to the direction of the campaign flow (I don't). I never really got the sense that I was doing much to push the campaign along in Falcon..but definitely felt the progress in EECH. Both suffered from somewhat repetitive mission generation though. True, you never really knew what *might* happen during a mission or campaign, but rarely could the campaign generated missions generate the very precise and dramatic details that a good custom scripted campaign mission could. (For instance - the Vergeev Group missions). The obvious problem with the later - lack of replayability.

Whatever the case - I wouldn't want ED to do a bad dynamic campaign just for the sake of doing one. And even if they made a better one that Falcon, I think there is a sense of nostalgia-disease that would prevent people from acknowledging it was better when compared to older titles..it's an odd but predictable side effect of aging in the digital world. smile

I have a lot more thoughts..but time limited this evening..

BeachAV8R



#4028684 - 10/29/14 03:55 AM Re: Dynamic campaign thoughts/rants/wishes/etc... [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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Any DC needs a really cool feature found only with TAW, AFAIK...

The ability to select any plane/ship/static or mobile ground target on a full-size map, then watching that area of the map play out in real-time 3D. That is, the ability to make any point on the map the "player bubble" for viewing in a 3D viewport, or what DID referred to as turning "inactive logic" to "active logic".

Falcon cannot do this, not sure about EECH.

I'll never forget playing AWACS Commander in TAW, clicking on a 2D symbol of an A-10 to see what it was up to and watching it strafe a train. Hoooly Moly! That's one hell of a cool feature if you're going to have a DC!



The rusty wire that holds the cork that keeps the anger in
Gives way and suddenly it’s day again
The sun is in the east
Even though the day is done
Two suns in the sunset, hmph
Could be the human race is run
#4028691 - 10/29/14 04:14 AM Re: Dynamic campaign thoughts/rants/wishes/etc... [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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Beach, I read your second post and I have a response, something I posted last year about TAW (I hope that's ok) regarding gameplay that cannot be scripted...

==========
"I'm planning a strike mission (flying escort over Strike Eagles, IIRC) while plotting waypoints slightly over the airspace of a neutral nation to avoid enemy EWR. I figure we won't be around long enough to be noticed. Wrong. As soon as we reach the border I start hearing "You are entering restricted airspace, leave immediately or be shot down!" Then a pair of scrambled Rafales come at us full speed to intercept and they take up position right behind my strike flight. Another warning! Holy crap! I have them in my shoot cue but I don't want to risk antagonizing them with a hard lock.

Now I knew a little about the game engine from digging through the extracted files. Fly over a neutral nation too many times and they can become your enemy. Fly over specified sensitive areas and you may not get a warning at all! How many warnings would we get this time? I was already losing the war badly, I didn't need another enemy!

Hand on trigger ready to take out the Rafales if they shoot (I was already expecting to lose at least one Mud Hen). And then suddenly they peel off and head for home. I look down at my moving map and as far as I can tell we had just left their border.

Freggin' incredible! You can't script this stuff!

Real-time dynamic campaign, flying emergency scrambles as your base is attacked!

Oh, and the sweet revenge! Had a pair of MiGs chase me down and kill me right before I made it home in my crippled jet (I should have ejected). A real-time campaign doesn't stop just because you're dead, I was then reincarnated to the War Room as I watch these MiGs turning for home. I grabbed an AWACS mission, vectored a pair of F-22s to intercept, then jumped in one of them when they got close. Turned both MiGs into flaming debris. Take THAT for killing me, you bastards! smile "
==========



The rusty wire that holds the cork that keeps the anger in
Gives way and suddenly it’s day again
The sun is in the east
Even though the day is done
Two suns in the sunset, hmph
Could be the human race is run
#4028698 - 10/29/14 04:40 AM Re: Dynamic campaign thoughts/rants/wishes/etc... [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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To be honest, though a fully dynamic campaign would be great right now I'd be thrilled with just persistent damage. Take out a bridge last mission, flying by the thing the next mission it shouldn't be there. Wingman goes down in flames, there should be a crater there the next few missions. I don't think that's asking too much.

#4028714 - 10/29/14 05:51 AM Re: Dynamic campaign thoughts/rants/wishes/etc... [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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I could write pages on this, but ultimately what I want is for the computer to do the grunt work of creating meaningful missions for me.

Falcon 4 is surely a benchmark, but there are many degrees of dynamic campaigns.

Anything from EF-2000 to Strike Fighters to IL-2 to EECH to Falcon to WoFF to Battle of Britain 2 would be acceptable. Heck, even the RoF Beta Campaign would be acceptable.

I understand a DC is "hard" to create, but c'mon.

#4028716 - 10/29/14 05:58 AM Re: Dynamic campaign thoughts/rants/wishes/etc... [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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Falcon is absolutely not the end-all be-all of campaigns... but it was a very good try.

I don't know about EECH but I don't think "feeling" is not a good judge of how good a campaign architecture is in concept. A perfect architecture can have its feeling ruined because someone put an extra 0 in a database and now MiG goes 5000 knots speed.

Take IL-2 Cliffs of Dover. You can fly up on a mission and inside 20 minutes there is a bomber to shoot down. The problem is if you circle around for 2 hours no other planes are scheduled to takeoff. Did WWII stop? No, it's just too scripted and it's assumed after you have your bomber kill in 30 min you will turn around and land. In Falcon you can literally have a mission that lasts 10 days and stuff will keep happening for those 10 days.

Too many flight sims are "beads tied on a string." You fly a mission. World is created. You quit. World is destroyed. You fly a second mission. Another world is created that maybe looks like the first one when you left. If your architecture is independent worlds placed side by side like this then it takes lots and lots of work to connect them. That is not how real life works.

In real life a "sortie" is just a human-defined start and end time within an unbroken time in the universe. The world isn't destroyed when the guy climbs down the ladder from the airplane and a new one is not created when he gets back in the seat. The world continued to exist in his absence.

This is the crux of it. Don't split up the game universe into multiple independent sessions. If the campaign lasts 30 days then have the mission last 30 days. This is possible now of course with a stable computer, a good mission, and lots of patience. You can fly around, land, wait, and then fly again. This is not acceptable to most people. We need to be able to stop and resume later (so good save and loading abilities). We need some direction for evolving the sortie tasking for AIs and humans. We need some simplifications to handle bookkeeping of many units and resources so our computers don't explode with 50 jets on the ramp at once.

But ultimately this should all be possible. CA allows us to jump into and out of vehicles from AI control. The mid-mission save and load feature is missing still. Optionally an abstraction system is needed to make our computers be able to handle the load. Everything else is just good AI programming to be able to auto generate flights and react strategically over longer time scales.

Last edited by Frederf; 10/29/14 05:59 AM.
#4028777 - 10/29/14 11:17 AM Re: Dynamic campaign thoughts/rants/wishes/etc... [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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Originally Posted By: BeachAV8R
I think there is a sense of nostalgia-disease that would prevent people from acknowledging it was better when compared to older titles..it's an odd but predictable side effect of aging in the digital world. smile


Can't say I agree here. I don't think that Falcon campaign is the best and can't be improved, of course it can, but the nostalgia doesn't apply here. Simply because the Falcon community still plays this campaign in BMS. It's still very much alive.

#4028784 - 10/29/14 12:02 PM Re: Dynamic campaign thoughts/rants/wishes/etc... [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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Another possible DC feature, if time period is late enough.

Again I use TAW as an example, which uses one of only three real-time campaigns ever developed (F4/EECH/TAW). Horribly flawed and unfinished, but the positives (selectable player bubble, changing alliances, optional player AWACS/JSTARS patrol) are goods examples of real-time DC game-play possibilities, IMO.

And here's another (although I've never been able to verify this)...

In TAW you should take out enemy drones whenever possible because supposedly they fly around the map looking for targets to add to the enemy's strike mission queue. How cool is that?

++++++++++

EF2000 is my favorite DC (turn-based and on an 8-hour cycle, which is more realistic to me that you can skip (or fast-forward) 8-hour periods for pilot rest).

A low-res video of the EF2K's campaign in action...
http://198.65.10.229/DID/TEMP/EF2K_DCA.wmv

More enjoyable and less flawed than TAW's DC (also includes MP Co-op), but it too didn't live up to its' potential and falls way short of the description of "WARGEN" in the EF2000 Manual.

#4028829 - 10/29/14 01:20 PM Re: Dynamic campaign thoughts/rants/wishes/etc... [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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I really liked LB2's style--dynamic missions and scripted missions woven together. Best of both worlds.

I also liked the novel (if ahistorical) concept of the campaign in SWOTL. You got to control the factories that were making your war materiel, and plan the missions to attack the other side's. So hit those ball bearing factories hard and the number of fighters you faced would drop. Let a raid do too much damage to yours and you had fewer wingmen.

Campaigns like EECH and Falcon 4 were all basically about attrition. Both sides start with X planes, and Y SAM units, and if you blow them away fast enough you get to venture unopposed to take out the enemy targets at leisure. I don't recall any resupply there, but I grant its been a long time since I played either of them.



The Jedi Master


The anteater is wearing the bagel because he's a reindeer princess. -- my 4 yr old daughter
#4028841 - 10/29/14 01:42 PM Re: Dynamic campaign thoughts/rants/wishes/etc... [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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The one thing I loved about the Falcon campaign was when I was diverted from my mission by the AWACS. It floored me that I could be on a strike mission and part way to target get retasked to air defense.

That was a looong time ago and I am not even certain that functionality is in Falcon any more but I remember it happening.

Other than that, the major features that the dynamic campaign provided where:

1) Small fish in a big fight and having to take into account what was happening in my tidal pool while on my mission;
2) Watching the ATO being developed and being able to pick the mission I wanted to be a part of while the rest of it happened around me - strike packages associated with my own taking off from my air base (or other air bases), meeting up at the assigned time and heading in;
3) Supply was an issue at the air base and if we lost to many aircraft or were cut off, we were in trouble (or pulled back to a rear airfield) until resupply arrived;
4) Having to deal with the emergent behaviour of the battlefield - how far down into my strike area would the enemy CAP get pulled making the risk I was taking wile executing the mission variable but not random;
5) As mentioned earlier ... if you sat there (anywhere) things kept going, the 'world' kept living;

I think that is the biggest plus for the dynamic campaign in Falcon 4 - emergent behaviour when the complex components that were the campaign interacted with each other.

As a coder - that kind of complexity is _difficult_ to get right and very, very difficult to debug. I don't think a lot of people really understand and underestimate how hard that is to code. You are talking about replacing the decision process of thousands of people, each doing their own part, each with an adaptable human brain. Don't get me wrong. I would _love_ to see something like this in DCS and I would literally pay thousands of dollars to see it (admittedly, low thousands) in DCS as an add on product.

The Falcon 4 dynamic campaign was magic: Clark's third law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Last edited by Fridge; 10/29/14 01:45 PM.

Fridge
----------
Things which do you no good in aviation:
1) Altitude above you;
2) Runway behind you;
3) Fuel in the truck;
4) The airspeed you don't have.
#4028852 - 10/29/14 02:05 PM Re: Dynamic campaign thoughts/rants/wishes/etc... [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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Originally Posted By: BeachAV8R
And even if they made a better one that Falcon, I think there is a sense of nostalgia-disease that would prevent people from acknowledging it was better when compared to older titles..it's an odd but predictable side effect of aging in the digital world. smile




Well, I have to disagree with you on this one BeachAV8R. The reason for this "nostalgia-disease" is basically only one:
- Many of the old combat flight simulations of the 90's are much better GAMES than current combat flight simulations such as DCS! Yes, modern sims such as DCS have better graphics, better avionics, better flight models and better damage models, or resuming better player/flyable aircraft but for the rest, the surrounding 3D world, objects and object interaction (which IMO matters more than the player/flyable aircraft itself) is better in many of those 90's sims and that's a fact.
I'm leaved to believe that many developers today trend to think of their combat flight simulations as some sort of scaled-down military simulators instead of being games on the first place as they IMO should. Even because what PC gamers want is, like the name says GAMES.
So I do believe that the reason for this "nostalgia-disease" is that current PC combat flight simulations are generally not good games and also today when there's a developer that wants to combine the game factor with a combat flight simulation, instead of looking at the great examples of the 90's, what happens? We either end up with arcadish games and/or pseudo-campaigns/careers where the player must gain XP to unlock stuff such as weapons, aircraft and missions!

I do believe that the entertainment sector is being "hit hard" by what I call a complete "lack of imagination". This not only hits the gaming sector/industry but it also hits (and very hard) the film industry. This lack of imagination prevents IMO from picking up the great ideas such as the ones developed in many campaigns of the 90's sims and developing even further (with new twists and great ideas). Unfortunately the "lack of imagination" not only prevents us from having immersive games but IMO it also limits the ability for developers to overcome complex problems that often happens when developing games. I believe that a good imagination allows developers to come up with creative solutions for those complex problems and solve them faster which in the end means, less development time for (any) game development which is good for everyone from the player to developers and publishers.
And the opposite of this was what IMO happened in the 90's. There were a bunch of developers with great deals of imagination which came up with some very good and inventive solutions which turned up in products such as combat flight simulations with great and immersive dynamic campaigns (some of them already referred here!).

So, and again I do believe that people want dynamic campaigns not only because of a "nostalgia" sake but again because those campaigns where MUCH BETTER than the ones we have today and at the same time being replayable.
This goes to the point where we are seeing many simmers installing programs such as DOSBox in order to play many of those old sims from the DOS era.
Also we see many players installing and playing older (Windows era) sims from the later 90's era (such as EAW, Hind, Janes Longbow 2, TAW, Janes F-15, Janes F/A-18 and even Falcon4 and EECH, etc, etc...) but rarely we see players installing and playing older early 90's (or even late 80's) sims as much. IMO this is because those later 90's sims were BETTER in every regard compared to early 90's (or late 80's) sims BUT current sims are NOT BETTER than their predecessors (late 90's sims) at least in every regard (like happened in the previous generation).

Regarding the EECH, what makes it "limited" it isn't the limited "mission pool" but IMO it's the simplistic way that ground forces are modeled in EECH, such as:
- Ground unit formations (Companies if I'm not mistaken) just keep advancing to no place in special until eventually they "die" (or the campaign ends). For example, those Ground units don't take objectives, don't receive reinforcements and rarely engage opposing enemy ground formations.
- There are no infantry soldiers present on the map or it's very rare to see them. You won't see infantry soldiers embedded with the Ground unit formations.
- Weird air defence system behaviour. For example, you rarely see AD systems such as the Avenger or the SA-13 firing at enemy aircraft! (Tunguskas are better thou)
Since the EECH campaign is a living world, the issues that I mentioned above are definitely and IMO game breaking issues.

Finally, what's IMO the best dynamic campaign system? And/or what's IMO the best dynamic campaign system for DCS?
Well, IMO the best campaign but not necessarily the "end-all-be-all of campaigns" is hands down Falcon4. I have absolutely no doubts about that!
However this doesn't mean that Falcon4 campaign is the only good dynamic campaign out there. There were many other very immersive campaign systems, specially in some of those 90's era sims that were just as immersive and/or good. So I would like the to mentioned what IMO is the second best campaign (after Falcon4 campaign) and what would also IMO be a good campaign system to implement in DCS, is the Janes Longbow 2 campaign!
IMO, a dynamic campaign system such as the one seen in Janes Longbow 2 would be the best choice for DCS since:
1- You don't have to model a complex real time living dynamic world such as the one we see in Falcon4, EECH or TAW, which means that ED would need less resources or take less time to develop a dynamic campaign.
2- The Janes Longbow 2 campaign generates a mission, then takes the results of that mission and generates the next one, which is quite feasible and well within the "technical scope" of a company such as ED. Similar solutions were actually successfully developed in more recent combat flight simulations such as Over Flanders Fields / Wings Over Flanders Fields and IL2 (up to version 1946).
3- Janes Longbow 2 campaign is IMO just as immersive as a real time dynamic world campaign (such as Falcon4, EECH or TAW) since it also tracks damage that units suffer, supplies of weaponry and equipment (including the playable units units and any other AI ground and air units as well) and units will acts according to their damage and supplies levels (for example a ground unit what is fully supplied will usually launch a ground offensive).


Well, sorry for the long post but these are my 2 cents about the subject.

#4028853 - 10/29/14 02:05 PM Re: Dynamic campaign thoughts/rants/wishes/etc... [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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Another DC feature that you just can't script...

In EF2000, longer missions require you to include a refueling waypoint. While your tankers racetrack within a reasonable area of safety, once you get pushed too far south your options start becoming limited (besides the possibility of losing AWACS support). The map is so big that you may not have long enough legs to reach important far-northern targets, even with refueling.

Refueling in EF2000 isn't that difficult (and without using the by-pass cheat), but sometimes you find yourself in traffic...



Although usually the tanker will free up a basket for you. smile

But in a DC there's just so many variables, and all the other activity you interact with (I don't recall if the above pic was a planned refueling or emergency). And EF2000 is a DOS game, I can't imagine what could be done today if that's where priorities were.

#4028874 - 10/29/14 02:42 PM Re: Dynamic campaign thoughts/rants/wishes/etc... [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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I believe that Falcon 4.0 is still the benchmark of dynamic campaigns. It's all about the little things, such as other flights in the air making radio calls, and you being able to build a picture in your head based on their bullseye, or seeing that strike package that was just on the radio fly by you as it RTBs. The other thing that is awesome is flying over an area where there is a ground war going and seeing the exchange of fire. Granted, you get the last one in DCS if the ground war is properly initiated in the mission.

That said, ED has most of the pieces in play for at the very least a dynamic campaign in the form of a mission generator (similar to SF2 or IL-2). They already have a mission generator and resources/warehousing built into the mission editor, so it really isn't too much to build missions based on input criteria generated form the debrief of a previous mission compared to a database of assets; this could be done with a 3rd party EXE. The real trick would be allowing for objects to be persistently destroyed between missions, and that might require some tweaks to ED's export (though I'm not sure so don't take that as gospel).

Right now, it is also possible to do a full-blown force on force campaign with generals on either side moving troops, and there is a HTML based mission editor that allows for in-mission saves for a pause in the action. Think of it as the DCS version of Scorched Earth.

What ED really needs for a persistent campaign is an adaptable AI, and AI is kind of the weak link where DCS is concerned. My pie-in-the-sky solution would be pluggable, scriptable (programmable, not deterministic) AI that could be added to missions the same way that LUA scripts are insertable now. Imagine being able to write a LUA script or datafile for different types of AI, e.g. Aggressive MiG-21 Intercept (average) vs. Balanced F-15C escort (excellent) and assign them to individual aircraft as an option in lieu of the standard skill level. Also have the ability to script at the operational level, i.e. create an OPPLAN with objectives, priorities, and as much of an asset allocation that can be modified by the AI as scripted. This is much easier said than done, but with the LUA scripters in the DCS community, adding the feature would only open the proverbial floodgates.


-Home Fries

"Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay - and claims a halo for his dishonesty."
- Robert A. Heinlein

The average naval aviator, despite the sometimes swaggering exterior, is very much capable of such feelings as love, affection, intimacy, and caring. These feelings just don't involve anyone else.

#4028893 - 10/29/14 03:32 PM Re: Dynamic campaign thoughts/rants/wishes/etc... [Re: Jedi Master]  
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Originally Posted By: Jedi Master
Campaigns like EECH and Falcon 4 were all basically about attrition. Both sides start with X planes, and Y SAM units, and if you blow them away fast enough you get to venture unopposed to take out the enemy targets at leisure. I don't recall any resupply there, but I grant its been a long time since I played either of them.

EECH does have a resupply component in that cargo aircraft can air drop supplies into a FARP or airbase to replenish it. Also, there are the vehicle generator buildings on the airbases that churn out additional armor, helo, and aircraft units at a measured pace. Thus developed the strategy of gaming the game and specifically targeting those buildings when attacking air bases. Which, while gaming the game, is just an oversimplified version of bombing factories in WW2 I suppose if you wanted to stretch your imagination. The other somewhat similar "resupply" feature of EECH was the taking of enemy bases and FARPS (and factories?) with insertion teams..which was always fun to watch happen. Again, we are talking about a sim that is going on what..15 years old at this point..so what we would expect now (some sort of dynamic battle to rage upon landing troops at a base) were sort of filled in by the users mind. I don't know that we can get away with that now with the expectations of the community.

I really enjoyed those thoughts Mark, and a great example of EF2K having all that tankering traffic in the vicinity. Those little things can definitely create an immersive atmosphere.

My dream has always been to have a set-piece dynamic campaign that has all of the assets physically on the map with the exception of any off map resupply efforts. If I visit an enemy or friendly airbase in DCS, I want all of the blue and red and in-between aircraft to be there, be in hangars, or be flying. If I visit a FARP and blow up all the fuel trucks there, I want the helos there to not be able to refuel. If I hit a radar station in mission #1, I want that radar station to be rubble and inoperative in mission #2. If I start with 18 airplanes in my squadron, and foolishly lose four on a foolhardy mission, I want there to be a couple days of gap before I'm replenished (if at all). If I go rogue and fly all over the map somehow and destroy all the refueling tankers..I want those to be gone (same with AWACS - and no, it shouldn't be easy to do that..lol..)

Falcon 4 did not have object permanence in a lot of situations and I think the campaign did a lot of interpolating for attrition. (It wasn't a destroy 1 unit remove 1 unit from the enemy inventory). I flew a LOT of Falcon 4 missions..heck, I wrote 80 AARs at one point during a campaign, and each had unique moments, but really not unique situations given the limitations of the scope of the missions. There isn't a lot of "outside of the box" moments in Falcon (ie - very specifically written rules of engagement, or the type of complex triggered scenarios you can build with a DCS editor). In the absence of a campaign with the ability to be extremely diverse, at this point in my simming career I prefer a well written and designed series of missions that tell a story - an interactive movie. Take On Helicopters, some DCS campaigns, and ARMA campaigns. They chew up a good bit of my time, but no, are not replayable unless I forget about them in X years and then can go back and revisit them. Would I prefer to have those levels of immersion in a dynamic campaign generator - absolutely! Heck, I'd love to see ED drop all their projects except the F/A-18, and just do maps, missions, and campaigns. I have plenty to focus on with the Ka-50, Mi-8, UH-1H, A-10C, MiG-21, Hawk, and the FC3 planes at this point. I can't barely remember how to start the Ka-50 and A-10C after a few weeks away. And I've mastered NONE of them.

I might be one of the few that actually enjoy the game part of entertainment sims. I don't mind going Rambo or having an inordinate number of air or ground kills. Nor do I mind never shooting a missile and doing a complex navigation exercise, or a stealth mission, or an odd combo of a bunch of roles all in one mission. The game aspect is why I always enjoyed the EECH campaigns more than the Falcon 4 ones because I felt like I was the one winning or losing the game, while still part of something larger. I understand there is some math and logic in the Falcon campaign that definitely makes your efforts count, but I just thought it was magnified in EECH.

Another sim with somewhat simple campaign structure, but is a lot of fun to play is, of course Strike Fighters 2. Granted, there is a lot buried in the binary files that we don't know about, but TK has alluded to, but as far as a sense of a lot going on in the "game", SF2 is pretty cool. I can spend hours in the F12 "action cam" view similar to the one in EECH that shows all the nifty stuff going on. Again though, it lacks a lot of what you'd expect to see in a war (more concentrated land battles and a lot of the ancillary stuff..trucks delivering supplies, planes delivering stuff, helos delivering stuff..troops on patrols..etc..)

I often hear people refer to MiG Alley's campaign as a pretty good one..but I don't know anything about it..I never played it so perhaps someone can enlighten me on things like object permanence and supply and the ground war - I'd be interested to know how that sim was.

TL;DR - DCS - make me a dynamic campaign with all the assets on the map and a believable war going on. <g>

BeachAV8R



#4028967 - 10/29/14 06:26 PM Re: Dynamic campaign thoughts/rants/wishes/etc... [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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MarkG Offline
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Beach, I'm glad you started this thread, the title caught my eye even before I realized what sim it belonged to.

It's nice to reminisce about the old days/ways but I don't think they're coming back. DC's are so...'90s, along with heavy boxes, thick printed manuals, single-player main focus and without online activation/membership.

The Flanker series has been around for two decades now, if ED was interested in campaign-style play, wouldn't they would have done it by now? Founded in 1991. Yeah, I really don't think it's their thing. smile



The rusty wire that holds the cork that keeps the anger in
Gives way and suddenly it’s day again
The sun is in the east
Even though the day is done
Two suns in the sunset, hmph
Could be the human race is run
#4028977 - 10/29/14 08:03 PM Re: Dynamic campaign thoughts/rants/wishes/etc... [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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BeachAV8R Offline
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KCLT
Maybe. But everyone has their "thing" - and if ED decides not to do a DC, perhaps some third party would be able to develop one as a third party developer. I'm still hopeful that DCS World will find people interested in making payware missions, weather generators, campaigns, terrains, and utilities that expand or enhance DCS World. How much ED is willing to allow will certainly be interesting to see. I would think that things that enhance their product and widen the appeal are all good things (think FC3 level aircraft all the way through to high technical platforms like the A-10C that could practically be used for training pilots).

I'm not technically knowledgeable enough to know much about how DCS reads and writes campaign files and references things like databases to comment much beyond my wish list. I don't know how easy or hard it would be to create. Like I said, it would just be really cool to visit other areas of the campaign map while the campaign is running and see a living and breathing world happening.

BeachAV8R



#4029004 - 10/29/14 08:59 PM Re: Dynamic campaign thoughts/rants/wishes/etc... [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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To add to ricnunes's ideas:

Imagine if airplane cockpits and dynamic weather and terrain was already done and it was your job to turn all of these tools into an experience. What would be the design process and gameplay experience outline to ensure an enjoyable experience? The costumes and stage are provided; all that's needed now is the stageplay.

So all the most talked about features: airplanes, flight models, graphics, terrain, lighting engine, etc. suddenly become a given. What is needed beyond that list is rarely talked about. What information is the user provided? What are the other actors programmed to do? How exactly does the user experience unfold? What role does the user take in the larger picture?

The simplest example is the single scenario. The initial conditions are fixed and outcome is only slightly variable over a short term. This is just an artisted mission with a low repeatability to creation effort ratio. It's good but very limited.

The next step up is a fixed campaign scenario. The initial conditions are always the same but it evolves over significant time differently each time. It's fun for a while but the programming is extremely specific to that set of initial conditions and completely breaks if given different starting conditions.

The level that starts to get challenging for programmers is to have a campaign engine which is able to take any set of initial conditions with minimal human-input context and direction (A is enemy with B, capture city C) and devise activity which is believable for that situation. For example if you give one side an aircraft carrier and carrier aircraft it may or may not station the planes on the boat depending on where the water is in relation to the objectives. How about an engine that is able to decide to put bombers on the rear airfields because bombers have longer range without having to be told by a person?

Then you invoke concepts such as learning behavior for the shaping algorithms. You ambush a supply convoy in the same spot 3 times in 3 days. How quickly does the scenario learn to avoid or escort that convoy route? How do you design around the particular traits of multiplayer users? How do you avoid griefing and encourage life-like behavior?

#4029024 - 10/29/14 09:30 PM Re: Dynamic campaign thoughts/rants/wishes/etc... [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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MarkG Offline
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The Bayou
Originally Posted By: BeachAV8R
How much ED is willing to allow will certainly be interesting to see. I would think that things that enhance their product and widen the appeal are all good things (think FC3 level aircraft all the way through to high technical platforms like the A-10C that could practically be used for training pilots).


You would think so, but not all devs see it that way. DID was known for NOT cooperating with 3rd-party developers.

With EF2000, the four campaign generated/managed files are text-based...

http://198.65.10.229/DID/TEMP/campaign.cg.txt
http://198.65.10.229/DID/TEMP/mission.cfg.txt
http://198.65.10.229/DID/TEMP/sum0.txt
http://198.65.10.229/DID/TEMP/campbrf.brf.txt

That's a good start, it allowed for one resourceful programmer to develop this add-on...











...which made it to Beta, but was never officially released because of at least one major bug that he couldn't fix (per the readme). Why did DID not help him solve it?

Maybe they thought of his program as competition for future plans? On p.309 of the EF2000 Manual...

==========
"If the demand is there, we may soon decide to give the player the power to manipulate the AI that drives the WARGEN, enabling you to set-up and play-out scenarios in a way that will astonish military strategists. Let us know what you think."
==========

Then the threats to "MadCow" over his F-22 ADF campaign generator.

At least one major TAW campaign file went binary, so that was that.

++++++++++

If the EF2000 DC had all the features and worked like the Manual describes, and if graphics were updated to a full 640x400 (MFDs are still 320x200) with 32-bit color and 3D acceleration (like the lovely 640x480 updated TIE Fighter/X-Wing I'm playing), I think EF2000 would still be a hot item 20 years later!



The rusty wire that holds the cork that keeps the anger in
Gives way and suddenly it’s day again
The sun is in the east
Even though the day is done
Two suns in the sunset, hmph
Could be the human race is run
#4029030 - 10/29/14 09:49 PM Re: Dynamic campaign thoughts/rants/wishes/etc... [Re: ricnunes]  
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Charlie_SB Offline
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Ricnunes, well spoken! That was the best post I've read in months and I agree with you 100%. Thank you for taking time to write it. thumbsup

-C-

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