Are we EVER going to get this information?

[ACG_KaiLae]

Hello all, merry Christmas. This will be probably a long post, but I hope a constructive one. First off, some caveats. I apologize for the clickbaity title. Second, I’d like to make clear that BoX is the best WW2 simulator on the market and excellent overall. I have great respect for the developers and what they do. Now having said that, there’s some things I’ve been thinking out lately (and not so lately) that I’d like to find out. Some things would be best covered by dev blogs, other by just some communication from 1C/777. With that in mind, here’s a list of things that I’d (and probably most other people) would like to know. I’m aware that some of these things are probably not feasible for various reasons – technical, scope, budgetary etc – but what isn’t doable today frequently can be doable tomorrow so I’ve included them anyway.

 

TL/DR for the lazy: Could we get some details please?

1.    How does the damage model work? While 1C/777 recently improved it, to my knowledge, no one ever from the devs has stated how or what kind of damage model that BoX uses. This is why some people will say that it uses HP boxes while others will say it has complex system modeling better than anything else. The truth is that while I suspect the latter is much more truer than the former, no one has ever actually said how it functions. Why not? How does it actually work? Related, how does the game display graphically damage? Could 1C/777 tell us?

2.    Engine modeling – same thing. Here I think the community has done a decent amount of work to reverse engineer the engine model that is used, but why should we have to? Is it possible for them to simply say how the design functions? This seems basic.

3.    Could we get a BoBp roadmap? During the development of Kuban, fairly early we got a roadmap of their planned releases. Since game development is a very much in flux type of thing, it didn’t work out exactly that way, but it was appreciated that we had an idea what they were thinking. Why can’t we get one of these for Bodenplatte?

4.    Could we get a roadmap for tank crew and flying circus? Since these are much less further along, it is of course understood that these are much more in flux, but I’d like to know what is planned beyond next release (tank crew) or any release, for FC. 

5.    3rd party development. What is the status of this? Obviously we have the Po-2 which is just released. This in my opinion is very important because there are a lot of planes that are missing which would round out the sim. As it stands I openly question how we’re ever going to get them without other developers selling them to us (in other words, the DCS type model). I’m quite concerned that the first 3rd party plane is a night bombing biplane in a sim where there is no night combat dominated by high performance fighters, with no apparent purpose. I wonder how well it will sell, and if it doesn’t will this discourage further development/developers. Especially in the early war period, BoX is missing a lot of planes that would really round out the sim. There are well enough aircraft that a 3rd party developer could create a “forgotten planes” pack and I’d buy it, for sure. For example, this is just what I’d say is missing/would be valuable to add:

 

I-15 Bis, I-153, I-16 series 20 and 29, Lagg-3 series 4/8 and 66, early series Yak-1, early series Yak-7 (BoS timeframe), Ju-87B/R, Do-17Z, MC200, IAR-80/81, Yak-9 (early for BoK), He-177, Me-110F, Late series SB bomber (series 18?), IL-4, FW-190A6, LA-5F late series (in other words, with the FN style cockpit), SU-2 attack aircraft, Hs-123, Me-410. 

 

Probably have missed some here, but there’s enough for several plane packs. The only way I can see us ever getting all of this is if outside developers take this on, so this is actually very important.

 

6.    Graphics technology. 1C/777 upgraded from DX9 to DX11, and there was a big increase in performance when they did that. Are there any plans for DX12, or better yet, vulkan? I’m aware that they probably don’t know much about this (matter of fact the only game I know that supports vulkan is X4 foundations), but I suspect that would be another performance boost. Also, as far as I know, BoX doesn’t use physically based rendering (PBR), is this something that they may take on?

7.    Contact spotting/visual bubble. You can’t spot anything in the air beyond 10km, which should depend on atmospheric conditions. I know they’d like to improve this but beyond that, is there any ideas on what would be needed to make this a reality?

8.    Multiplayer/netcode. As anyone knows who plays, while it’s functional, that’s a long way from saying that it’s where we as players want it to be. I’ll just go and state that what I’d consider – and probably most would consider – the ideal state would be an online war that could be played out in real time built into the game. Meaning, support in game for something similar to the campaign that you see in Falcon BMS (which, 20 years later, is still a masterpiece). Funny thing is that with the single player campaign that already exists, there’s a lot of the functionality built into the game. If that could be made available to a multiplayer environment – co-op against the AI and players on both sides – that would be incredible, especially if it allowed tank crew at the same time. Server admins that have done realistic expert and TAW have done amazing things by using script language, but it would be ideal if they didn’t have to. On the netcode side, it needs work to support more. More players, more AI, and more objects. Currently most servers make use of only static targets because moving, live tanks etc use up so much resources that it takes away from what actual players can do. There are also the occasional desynch issues which must be killed, where one person sees something different than another. It’s not common but occasional isn’t never, which is what’s needed. 

9.    Lobby system. For disclosure, I’m a member of Air Combat Group (www.aircombatgroup.co.uk) which is a 150-170 man combat flight sim organization. We run a weekly campaign that re-enacts historical battles; each player is assigned to a squadron and missions are run in full squadrons. Currently, in BoX, the joining the server portion of the campaign is a dumpster fire (I wish I could say otherwise but I just can’t). Since full squadrons are joining at about the same time to ensure that they make their assigned mission times, getting in correctly is extremely difficult. It can take over 30 minutes for a squadron to join, simply because of the apparent 5 man limit of simultaneous connections that the dserver will accept. We even have designated people that order who is joining when – even a custom bit of software that a member wrote to regulate the joining process – and it’s still a root canal, every week. BoX desperately needs some kind of system that regulates the joining process and queues up people joining – preferably with a notation of where they are in the queue – instead of rejecting them and throwing them out in the lobby with no explanation of what is wrong. In short, the lobby system needs a total rework. It is known that devs plan on redoing it, but what form will it take? We would very much like to know if the new system will address our issues or if it’ll just look nicer and address nothing.

10.    Air marshal. Other than what it is in extremely general terms, I can’t tell you what it is. Could 1C/777 at least provide what they are planning with regards to this? It’s ok if plans change – and we are informed – but right now I couldn’t tell you much more than “air marshal”. 

11.    API support. In CLoD, because of the data that we could access, we were able to write a full ground control radar interface in unity. You can see that here -

12.    Missing mods/mod labels. With few exceptions, modifications don’t have the right labels. For example, blister turret on a Pe-2 s87 option when installed makes the aircraft a series 110, not an  87. German modifications are not listed by R number (R2, etc). It would be nice if this was changed. Other mods not in game currently, say like La-5F with the newer canopy, would be appreciated. 

13.    Future of product. Is the idea to do BoBp and then the pacific still? Do they still plan on doing midway, or another area first? Myself and more than a few people think that New Guinea would be better for starting the pacific out in, but what are their plans? How is the work on that coming? If we could get a update on the intent, that would also be appreciated. 
I’m sure there are more things than this that others would like to know. If you can think of any please add them below. My point is that as customers of the product – I’ve been supporting them since beta, mostly gladly – I’d like to just know what’s in mind about the above. I’d like to know what you all are thinking below, thanks for reading if you went through it all. 
 

 

 

[Heckpupper]

Yes, those are all important ones. Especially those regarding MP performance and dServer. Thanks for bringing that up KaiLae.

[Cybermat47]

42 minutes ago, ACG_Kai_Lae said:

13.    Future of product. Is the idea to do BoBp and then the pacific still? Do they still plan on doing midway, or another area first? Myself and more than a few people think that New Guinea would be better for starting the pacific out in, but what are their plans? How is the work on that coming? If we could get a update on the intent, that would also be appreciated. 

 

I doubt that the devs know what the future of GBS is, because of two simple facts: it’s a niche product, and they’re a (I assume) is relatively small team.

[Rjel]

I'd have to guess most of what the OP is asking for information wise would be considered confidential and not something any company would release to the public. There was however, a road map given a while back and if I remember correctly, a good share of that has been implemented into the series already. I'd be interested, even surprised if you get much of a response from the development team.

[Garven]

3 hours ago, ACG_Kai_Lae said:

3rd party development. What is the status of this?

They are doing the 3D models and cockpits of the Flying Circus aircraft and some of the Tank Crew modeling if I recall correctly from past developer diarys.

Edited December 25, 2018 by =AVG77=Garven

[unreasonable]

This is a very good wish-list of everything I would like to know when I am being curious, missing only the question of whether customer mods could be allowed more broadly, but TBH not knowing any of it has no material effect on my enjoyment of the game. 

 

I would not be surprised if Jason took the opportunity at the start of the New Year to refresh the road-map forwards to some extent to set and moderate expectations for 2019, but I doubt that the detail the OP wants will be forthcoming.

[Jason_Williams]

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Hello all, merry Christmas. This will be probably a long post, but I hope a constructive one. First off, some caveats. I apologize for the clickbaity title. Second, I’d like to make clear that BoX is the best WW2 simulator on the market and excellent overall. I have great respect for the developers and what they do. Now having said that, there’s some things I’ve been thinking out lately (and not so lately) that I’d like to find out. Some things would be best covered by dev blogs, other by just some communication from 1C/777. With that in mind, here’s a list of things that I’d (and probably most other people) would like to know. I’m aware that some of these things are probably not feasible for various reasons – technical, scope, budgetary etc – but what isn’t doable today frequently can be doable tomorrow so I’ve included them anyway.

 

TL/DR for the lazy: Could we get some details please?

 

What a nice Christmas Eve post. But because it’s Christmas Eve and I’m in a good mood I’ll play along tonight. We communicate what we are doing more often and with more openness and with more detail than any other sim developer or game developer in general than I know of. We have 212 Developer Diaries and we OFTEN take time away from development tasks or stay late just to keep you informed on what we are doing. The team is literally working almost 24 hours a day. I can reach someone via Skype literally any time of my day because someone on our team is up working late almost every day and on the weekends. Posts like this, I feel, are disrespectful to their commitment to you. And I will defend their work always.

 
And I am not obligated to answer any of your particular questions, but we inform our customers of our plans when it makes sense to do so. As we have done here coupled with our Dev. Diaries and numerous posts within the community.

 

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1.    How does the damage model work? While 1C/777 recently improved it, to my knowledge, no one ever from the devs has stated how or what kind of damage model that BoX uses. This is why some people will say that it uses HP boxes while others will say it has complex system modeling better than anything else. The truth is that while I suspect the latter is much more truer than the former, no one has ever actually said how it functions. Why not? How does it actually work? Related, how does the game display graphically damage? Could 1C/777 tell us?

 

No, we will not explain in detail exactly how our damage model works, nor are you entitled to this information. It is one of our trade secrets. And it’s not important for you to know how it works, what’s important is the result you see and whether it seems believable or not. Why? Because this is not real life and we are forced to merge real-world data and experiences with technological tricks, shortcuts, compromises, magic and informed guesswork to arrive at what appears to be a realistic result. There are always technological limitations and giving the public proprietary information is not good for this community or our business. We already have endless arguments on the forum about such topics and revealing how exactly we do anything just leads to more arguing, backbiting and negativity because most here do not understand or have experience developing such a complex piece of software such as Sturmovik. And many folks fail to fully grasp the difficult choices that have to be made just to get the sim to work and run well on a wide range of systems. Oh, and there is also that little problem of ballooning budgets and deadlines we are always operating under. We ask that you Just fly the sim and have fun and know that we are doing all we can with the resources and personnel available to make as plausible an outcome as possible with our damage model.

 

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2.    Engine modeling – same thing. Here I think the community has done a decent amount of work to reverse engineer the engine model that is used, but why should we have to? Is it possible for them to simply say how the design functions? This seems basic.

 

Basically, the same answer as #1 above albeit we have a bit more control over known outcomes with systems modeling than damage. We have a very serious engineer who has designed and built our system and we continue to improve the systems we model. It’s his life’s work as he tells me. We all take it very seriously. Most things we really like what we have and, in some areas, we need to do more. We’ve made no secret about that.

 

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3.    Could we get a BoBp roadmap? During the development of Kuban, fairly early we got a roadmap of their planned releases. Since game development is a very much in flux type of thing, it didn’t work out exactly that way, but it was appreciated that we had an idea what they were thinking. Why can’t we get one of these for Bodenplatte?

 

Nothing has changed so no need to say anything further regarding a roadmap. What in the announcement post for BOBP, FC1 and TC and Po-2 seems in flux to you? What do you see in the Dev. Diaries that deviates greatly from this original announcement?

 

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4.    Could we get a roadmap for tank crew and flying circus? Since these are much less further along, it is of course understood that these are much more in flux, but I’d like to know what is planned beyond next release (tank crew) or any release, for FC. 

 

We don’t know what comes after this exactly because we’re in the middle of doing this. When we know what we are doing beyond this we will let you know.

 

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5.    3rd party development. What is the status of this? Obviously we have the Po-2 which is just released. This in my opinion is very important because there are a lot of planes that are missing which would round out the sim. As it stands I openly question how we’re ever going to get them without other developers selling them to us (in other words, the DCS type model). I’m quite concerned that the first 3rd party plane is a night bombing biplane in a sim where there is no night combat dominated by high performance fighters, with no apparent purpose. I wonder how well it will sell, and if it doesn’t will this discourage further development/developers. Especially in the early war period, BoX is missing a lot of planes that would really round out the sim. There are well enough aircraft that a 3rd party developer could create a “forgotten planes” pack and I’d buy it, for sure. For example, this is just what I’d say is missing/would be valuable to add:

 

I-15 Bis, I-153, I-16 series 20 and 29, Lagg-3 series 4/8 and 66, early series Yak-1, early series Yak-7 (BoS timeframe), Ju-87B/R, Do-17Z, MC200, IAR-80/81, Yak-9 (early for BoK), He-177, Me-110F, Late series SB bomber (series 18?), IL-4, FW-190A6, LA-5F late series (in other words, with the FN style cockpit), SU-2 attack aircraft, Hs-123, Me-410. 

 

Probably have missed some here, but there’s enough for several plane packs. The only way I can see us ever getting all of this is if outside developers take this on, so this is actually very important.

 

We are never going to have the development model of DCS nor is this desired by us. First, you don’t realize the complexity and skill it takes to make a 3D model and flight-model for our IL-2 and there are a lot of planes we’d like to make, but it’s impossible. When BOBP is finished we will have 45 or so. Not to mention the FC planes and the Tanks. Your list is also very Eastern Front oriented. If we only focused on the Eastern Front we’d be in trouble. Actually, working with 3rd Parties has slowed down our development internally in some ways. Lots and lots of training and checking to be done and our FMs need a real engineer to build them. What good is having 50 planes built if the wait time is 5 years to make an FM for them? Engineers do not grow on trees. We will continue to work with TALENTED 3rd Parties who show proper aptitude and have the necessary experience so they don’t waste our time and your money.

 

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Probably have missed some here, but there’s enough for several plane packs. The only way I can see us ever getting all of this is if outside developers take this on, so this is actually very important.

 

You’re never going to get every single plane on your list and certainly not every single plane in WWII. Impossible with a modern sim like ours to maintain the level of quality needed to satisfy customers or turn a profit to stay in business.

 

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6.    Graphics technology. 1C/777 upgraded from DX9 to DX11, and there was a big increase in performance when they did that. Are there any plans for DX12, or better yet, vulkan? I’m aware that they probably don’t know much about this (matter of fact the only game I know that supports vulkan is X4 foundations), but I suspect that would be another performance boost. Also, as far as I know, BoX doesn’t use physically based rendering (PBR), is this something that they may take on?

 

We will continue to adapt graphics technology that makes sense for us to use and keep moving the needle forward over time. Some technology you read about either doesn’t have an appreciable visual effect on a sim like ours or because it’s designed for more close quarters types of games like a shooter it may actually harm performance. We pick and choose what we use carefully. Our graphics work is the work of ONE MAN. Other sim teams have 7-10x as many graphics programmers we have. I have to have a much bigger team to experiment with more radical graphics technology just because it sounds good. I don’t have that luxury at the moment.

DX12 and Vulkan has already shown us to be much more labor intensive in adopting than DX11 was with currently negligible improvements.  

 

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7.    Contact spotting/visual bubble. You can’t spot anything in the air beyond 10km, which should depend on atmospheric conditions. I know they’d like to improve this but beyond that, is there any ideas on what would be needed to make this a reality?

 

We have ideas, but no available resources to experiment at the moment. Maybe in the future we can make some changes. We have to also balance performance with visuals. I don’t like the current limit myself, but I hope to make changes here. Although this is an annoying limitation to some, it’s not a showstopper situation. My one graphics programmer also works on other areas. He’s quite busy always.

 

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8.    Multiplayer/netcode. As anyone knows who plays, while it’s functional, that’s a long way from saying that it’s where we as players want it to be. I’ll just go and state that what I’d consider – and probably most would consider – the ideal state would be an online war that could be played out in real time built into the game. Meaning, support in game for something similar to the campaign that you see in Falcon BMS (which, 20 years later, is still a masterpiece). Funny thing is that with the single player campaign that already exists, there’s a lot of the functionality built into the game. If that could be made available to a multiplayer environment – co-op against the AI and players on both sides – that would be incredible, especially if it allowed tank crew at the same time. Server admins that have done realistic expert and TAW have done amazing things by using script language, but it would be ideal if they didn’t have to. On the netcode side, it needs work to support more. More players, more AI, and more objects. Currently most servers make use of only static targets because moving, live tanks etc use up so much resources that it takes away from what actual players can do. There are also the occasional desynch issues which must be killed, where one person sees something different than another. It’s not common but occasional isn’t never, which is what’s needed. 

 

We never said our Netcode was perfect and we have obviously been trying to improve it. Some limitations are not our fault and some are. Time and resources are what we need to improve the quality of the MP experience. We are looking for an additional qualified programmer now, but have had mixed results finding someone talented enough. Some other sim products have more players in MP because they are simpler simulations.

 

As far as an online Campaign, you already have some amazing servers doing this. And I have partnered with Pat Wilson to make an Online COOP feature for his PWCG. We don’t have time to make this ourselves at the moment so Pat is going to make his with our blessing. I would say that’s pretty pro-active of us. It will be a separate app like his current PWCG. We will see how his works and maybe in the future we will make our own.

 

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9.    Lobby system. For disclosure, I’m a member of Air Combat Group (www.aircombatgroup.co.uk) which is a 150-170 man combat flight sim organization. We run a weekly campaign that re-enacts historical battles; each player is assigned to a squadron and missions are run in full squadrons. Currently, in BoX, the joining the server portion of the campaign is a dumpster fire (I wish I could say otherwise but I just can’t). Since full squadrons are joining at about the same time to ensure that they make their assigned mission times, getting in correctly is extremely difficult. It can take over 30 minutes for a squadron to join, simply because of the apparent 5 man limit of simultaneous connections that the dserver will accept. We even have designated people that order who is joining when – even a custom bit of software that a member wrote to regulate the joining process – and it’s still a root canal, every week. BoX desperately needs some kind of system that regulates the joining process and queues up people joining – preferably with a notation of where they are in the queue – instead of rejecting them and throwing them out in the lobby with no explanation of what is wrong. In short, the lobby system needs a total rework. It is known that devs plan on redoing it, but what form will it take? We would very much like to know if the new system will address our issues or if it’ll just look nicer and address nothing.

 

As stated here again We have plans to make a better MP lobby. Whether or not that will make you happy, I have no idea because it’s not built or fully designed yet. Hopefully by the end of 2019 it will be up and running which has been out plan.

 

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10.    Air marshal. Other than what it is in extremely general terms, I can’t tell you what it is. Could 1C/777 at least provide what they are planning with regards to this? It’s ok if plans change – and we are informed – but right now I couldn’t tell you much more than “air marshal”. 

 

Its not your job to tell anyone what it is. It’s ours and we will when we’re ready to let you know. It’s currently going into production and in the final design stages.

 

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11.    API support. In CLoD, because of the data that we could access, we were able to write a full ground control radar interface in unity. You can see that here -

 

Cool. Good for CLOD. We will have our Air Marshall system that will do more and be fully integrated into our MP gameplay. Assuming all goes to plan.

 

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12.    Missing mods/mod labels. With few exceptions, modifications don’t have the right labels. For example, blister turret on a Pe-2 s87 option when installed makes the aircraft a series 110, not an  87. German modifications are not listed by R number (R2, etc). It would be nice if this was changed. Other mods not in game currently, say like La-5F with the newer canopy, would be appreciated. 

 

No plans to change this at the moment. If you want to make some suggestions go ahead in the suggestions area of the forum. If we like we may use them. 

 

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13.    Future of product. Is the idea to do BoBp and then the pacific still? Do they still plan on doing midway, or another area first? Myself and more than a few people think that New Guinea would be better for starting the pacific out in, but what are their plans? How is the work on that coming? If we could get a update on the intent, that would also be appreciated. 

 

I've already addressed the difficulty in doing any Pacific themed product elsewhere on the forum and see my answer to #4 above.

 

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I’m sure there are more things than this that others would like to know. If you can think of any please add them below. My point is that as customers of the product – I’ve been supporting them since beta, mostly gladly – I’d like to just know what’s in mind about the above. I’d like to know what you all are thinking below, thanks for reading if you went through it all. 

 

Actually, no. I'm not going to be answering any more questions like these for a bit now that I've answered these. I already closed the previous thread Loft started long ago. Such threads just devolve into arguments an bitch sessions. I've also done I think 2 or 3 audio question and answer sessions on Teamspeak which lasted several hours a piece. I suggest you listen to them. You can talk about items you want all over the forum, but official persistent threads like this one won't be kept open. 

 

A lot of this is “Daddy are we there yet” and all I can say is our team works extremely hard to improve our products on all fronts all the time. Everyone has niggles and complaints. We will continue to work hard, but don’t act like we don’t keep you informed of what we are up to.

 

Now I’m going to go to bed and wait for Santa.

 

Jason