Skin posts are painful

[HagarTheHorrible]

Would it be possible to just have thumbnails of skins and source pictures with the option to open up fully ( reveal hidden contents) ?

 

My internet isn't super fast and loading up pages with the pictures of dozens of newly created skins is painful. I'd love to spend more time looking at all the wonderful work done by the creators and then download the ones that appeal but I usually give up in frustration as the page constantly jumps about as images load in.

[PatCartier]

http://www.axis-and-allies-paintworks.com/download.php?list.135

[HagarTheHorrible]

Thanks for that, hopefully more skins of different types will soon be added.  It would have been nice to have had a small thumbnail next to each one in the list, but that said the full pictures load up quick enough when the link is clicked.

[No.23_Triggers]

I try to manage my own thread with 'Packs' - E.G, several skins at once with a cover image, and individual images in a spoiler. But, yes, the best place to browse is GCF's bundle - more likely that other pilots will have the skins in there, too! 

[Trooper117]

The trouble is though, with skins and skin packs, unless you use PWCG, you can never have your whole squadron in individual skinned aircraft.

The way the stock game is currently, you can only equip your own aircraft with it's own skin.

[No.23_Triggers]

1 minute ago, Trooper117 said:

The trouble is though, with skins and skin packs, unless you use PWCG, you can never have your whole squadron in individual skinned aircraft.

The way the stock game is currently, you can only equip your own aircraft with it's own skin.

 

Do you mean for quick missions? Or a possible FC career mode? 

[Trooper117]

I'm assuming that FC will be in the same format as BoS, so for a SP chap in career currently, you can only choose an individual aircraft skin.

When FC is released, the only career will be a third party one (PWCG)... good news as Pat allows for all aircraft to have an individual skin... 

In the future, it's assumed that there will be a career mode for FC, but same as the above, you will only be able to use the skins for your squadron chums that they give you.

 

For me, it's no problem as I will continue to use Pat's creation, (for FC once the map is released) but there are people out there that won't use third party or mods and just fly a stock game but would like all their aircraft as individual skins.

[No.23_Triggers]

Yeah, shame that you can't kit out the squadron in the vanilla career mode. But, I do love PWCG for the skin assignments. Whenever I'd get made a C.O I used to design my own Sqn markings and kit the whole sqn out in them! Good fun.

 

Another reason I do squadron skin-packs is for Multiplayer. JG1, US103 and J5 are certain to be using their historical mounts, and I like to think it may encourage more squadrons to form in the long run! 

Edited July 11, 2019 by US103_Larner

[SharpeXB]

Sorry to say custom skins are a waste of effort in this sim. RoF had an actual system of official skin packs but without that sort of organization it’s all a big mess. Downloading skins individually from forum threads is too time consuming and the bottom line is that you are the only person who will see them. They can’t be used in the career or don’t appear on the squadrons like in RoF

Really the whole skin thing is a big fail in IL-2. Could be better if it was like RoF.  

[No.23_Triggers]

That's why GCF is making the effort to create his skin bundles...I see plenty of custom skins online...

 

I agree that the old system was more helpful, but it requires the devs to be involved, which I assume they don't have the time for anymore

Edited July 21, 2019 by US103_Larner

[SeaW0lf]

6 minutes ago, US103_Larner said:

That's why GCF is making the effort to create his skin bundles...I see plenty of custom skins online...

 

Me too. 

[SharpeXB]

2 hours ago, US103_Larner said:

That's why GCF is making the effort to create his skin bundles

It’s a nice effort. But it doesn’t nearly replace an official developer created system. 

Unofficial skins can’t be used in the career mode unless on you own plane or squadron. The only regularly populated server, Wings of Liberty, bans unofficial skins due to the potential for cheats.

 

Without official skin packs like RoF had, the effort of users to create skins is unfortunately a waste of effort. Which is a great tragedy because such nice work is lost. 

2 hours ago, US103_Larner said:

I see plenty of custom skins online...

But you will never see them in the game. It’s way too much work for players to download skins individually, they’re banned online and unincorporated into any SP game mode. So you’ll only see them on your own screen.  

Edited July 21, 2019 by SharpeXB

[No.23_Triggers]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

But you will never see them in the game. It’s way too much work for players to download skins individually, they’re banned online and unincorporated into any SP game mode. So you’ll only see them on your own screen.  

 

Apologies - I''ll rephrase. I see plenty of custom skins being flown by other pilots in multiplayer. 

 

Besides, my Sqn flies our custom skins and it's great fun! Doesn't bother me if nobody else can see them besides us...

[SharpeXB]

5 minutes ago, US103_Larner said:

 

Apologies - I''ll rephrase. I see plenty of custom skins being flown by other pilots in multiplayer. 

 

Besides, my Sqn flies our custom skins and it's great fun! Doesn't bother me if nobody else can see them besides us...

IL-GB is a disastrous mess compared to RoF though. Very few people will spend the countless hours needed to get all these. RoF had about 4,000 skins available as a simple install. And they were all official so they were cheat free and appeared in all the campaigns and career etc. 

for all the things that this sim does really well the skins are a black eye IMO

[BMA_Hellbender]

I will say one thing about skins, as a skinner of humble talent myself: whether historical or not, they are works of art. I fully understand why people spend so much time on them and are so proud to share their creations with the world.

 

That said, they are resource intensive and besides flair and identification have very little place in a multiplayer game. I’m glad that 1C/777 ended the arms race of having to download and collect entire hard disks worth before it even started.

 

What I absolutely expect, however, is for them to implement a basic decal system, as it existed in IL-2 1946. This would allow everyone to add some customisation to his machine, visible to everyone on the server regardless of creative ability or willingness to smash through download caps (yes they still exist in large parts of the world). I suppose that the coloured streamers and scarfs already provide this to some degree.

Edited July 23, 2019 by J5_Hellbender

[SharpeXB]

53 minutes ago, J5_Hellbender said:

 I’m glad that 1C/777 ended the arms race of having to download and collect entire hard disks worth before it even started.

Seriously?!

The official skin packs in RoF were the best and only way to easily provide these to players. RoF has something like 4,000 skins for the aircraft which are easily installed with the packs. It’s impossible to download these individually. 

The current non-system in IL-2 is really infuriating and about the greatest deficiency in what is otherwise a fantastic sim. 

 

The lack of an official pack or even any organized system at all like a dedicated download section or even pinned forum pages makes the whole skinning effort in this sim a big waste of time.  

58 minutes ago, J5_Hellbender said:

That said, they are resource intensive and besides flair and identification have very little place in a multiplayer game.

Well flair and identification are not small things. The skins are the chief artwork in the game right after the aircraft themselves?

resource intensive? How? Disc space is super cheap these days and the game runs just fine with or without custom skins. What sort of resources are you referring to?

Every aircraft looking the same smacks of an arcade game. It’s even worse to see in the SP career. Not just for flair but to literally identify who your squadron members are. Again this was perfectly handled in RoF. 

[BMA_Hellbender]

5 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Seriously?!

The official skin packs in RoF were the best and only way to easily provide these to players. RoF has something like 4,000 skins for the aircraft which are easily installed with the packs. It’s impossible to download these individually. 

The current non-system in IL-2 is really infuriating and about the greatest deficiency in what is otherwise a fantastic sim. 

 

The official skinpack in RoF (latest version 1.033) provided a handful of historical skins for every plane, which is what we're currently getting in IL-2/FC without any additional downloads. That alone is already an improvement.

 

https://riseofflight.com/forum/topic/45373-new-useful-materials-page-official-links/

 

As for the community skinpacks — both the fictional and the historical — and having provided skins for both, I must say that my opinion has changed quite a bit over the years.

 

The historical skinpacks were most certainly a great benefit to the game, even if the quality of certain skins may have not been top notch (including the ones I made), and some of them were downright confusing, such as captured aircraft painted with enemy markings. Yes, you could individually curate those by deleting them after the install, in much the same way that the community had to curate them with polls before @TG-55Panthercules would submit them for inclusion by the devs. Still, I'd much rather see a number of community historical skins be made truly official and included with the actual game — which is already happening if I'm not mistaken.

 

That is not to say that the official skins are always flawless.

 

 

The fictional skinpacks were a whole other can of worms. Here I'm not so much talking about quality (which was truly all over the place — again, art is in the eye of the beholder), but rather about bloat. There are dozens if not hundreds of skins belonging to people who flew during the early years of RoF who will never see any more use. I alone have like three Camel skins which I no longer use, whereas newcomers in the last 5 years have had absolutely no chance to submit their own. In other words: personal skins may have been a good stopgap system to provide player customisation back in 2011, but it is in no way futureproof, nor user-friendly.

 

Decals would accomplish exactly that.

 

Quote

resource intensive? How? Disc space is super cheap these days and the game runs just fine with or without custom skins. What sort of resources are you referring to?

 

Hard disk space is indeed dirt cheap, but who still uses rotating platters for playing games in 2019? SSDs are getting there too, though for now I still assume that people have something better to do with 40GB worth of SSD space rather than to store the three iterations J69's all-pink Fokker Dr.Is for their 16 members, 3 of which actually have the game installed. And sure, you can work with storing skins on an HD and symbolic links, but it's once again not an elegant solution.

 

As for in-game resources, it already manages to chug along for some people if too many planetypes and separate officially included skins are together within WWI dogfighting distance. I don't think that adding more skins would make the problem much worse, but it certainly wouldn't help. When it comes to smashing Vickers and Spandaus together on Friday night (aka Arcade), I'd rather see less skins, but more customisation in the form of decals. Decals would also greatly benefit the WWII portion of the game.

 

Can I say decals one more time? Decals.

Edited July 23, 2019 by J5_Hellbender

[szelljr]

The devs. why not take 10 skins for every plane types from skiners. With default skins that 20-25 skin for all aircrafts. That more than enough . End the community vote for the skins .The skiner is happy " my skin is in the game!!!!waoooo" ,the player is  happy ,have more skin...

Edited July 23, 2019 by szelljr

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, J5_Hellbender said:

Still, I'd much rather see a number of community historical skins be made truly official and included with the actual game — which is already happening if I'm not mistaken

This is really the only way that a multitude of skins can be in the game. Get 1CGS to accept a variety of good user made skins and incorporate them into the official ones. Maybe that is happening but not enough. 

It’s a pity to say but all the custom user made skins, unless they could be adopted officially, are rather a waste. They can’t appear in SP. They’re banned online (on the only server that gets attended) due to cheating potential. So there’s nowhere you can really use them and the labor of getting them is too great. 

[JG1_Vonrd]

It would help if people would post their skins in only the dedicated threads for a particular aircraft (and yes, there are some aircraft missing a dedicated thread as yet) in stead of posting in the general area. Maybe a moderator could move them as needed.

 

Personally, I only have the skins installed for my squad and other squads (and a few individuals) that I frequently fly with.  

[SharpeXB]

The very least which could be done and was done earlier in BoS, is to create pinned threads for each aircraft. But that fell apart after a while and wasn’t maintained. 

Also it should be stated for those threads. No discussions. I know people want to comment and discuss but those clog up the thread and makes searching even more difficult. 

[PatCartier]

I'm not agree with you guys ! Doing skin is a waste of time ? So don't make skins. I've got a lot of pleasure to do some.

It's uneasy to download, there are too much comments ....

C'mon, it's not so hard...for sure it should be better but it's ok.

And we can use them in sp missions, no problémo.

Online it's the hoster choice, cheater could be easily banned.

[SeaW0lf]

1 hour ago, PatCartier said:

Online it's the hoster choice, cheater could be easily banned.

 

Can the server operator see and prove who is using transparent skins?

[PatCartier]

He's powerfull.

[SharpeXB]

2 hours ago, PatCartier said:

I'm not agree with you guys ! Doing skin is a waste of time ? So don't make skins. I've got a lot of pleasure to do some.

It's uneasy to download, there are too much comments ....

C'mon, it's not so hard...for sure it should be better but it's ok.

And we can use them in sp missions, no problémo.

Online it's the hoster choice, cheater could be easily banned.

Maybe you have tons and tons of time to spend on stuff like this. But you have to fully grasp what an ordeal it would be for a new player to even attempt to go through all those random posts and download skins one at a time. Again RoF has something like 4,000 of these. I’m sure I have several hundred for IL-2. I think the 109F4 has about 250 alone. The only reason I might have any is I’ve been collecting them for 5 years or so. Now it’s impossible to know where I left off or what I might have already etc etc. Wasting time downloading skins I already had. Searching the forum so the effort is a bust, I give up. “C’mon, It’s not so hard” is a vast vast understatement. Some people are gluttons for punishment I guess. 

 

And given the the magnitude of effort, it’s not worthwhile in the end. The only place you can use them SP would be; Quick Missions and on your own plane in Career or on your squadrons planes if you’re the Commander, which is a pain because you have to set them one at a time every mission. 

 

In Multiplayer. They’re banned on the only server that really is ever populated, Wings of Liberty. That right there kills any MP use at all because it’s the only server that ever has players on it. 

Even when servers allow them, both players need to have them installed for them to be seen which given the ordeal of installing them the likelihood of that is about zero. 

 

If if you enjoy making them that’s great. I personally think the skins are the best artwork in the game. But since 1CGS won’t step in and provide some organization or incorporate them into the game, the effort is basically a waste. The enjoyment of making them will have to be an end in itself because that’s all it will be. 

Edited July 24, 2019 by SharpeXB

[PatCartier]

Subforums for skins and missions will come soon ?

[No.23_Triggers]

45 minutes ago, PatCartier said:

Subforums for skins and missions will come soon ?

 

Can't wait! 

[SharpeXB]

3 hours ago, PatCartier said:

Subforums for skins and missions will come soon ?

When they do that for FC

1CGS Please bring some organization to it! Words cannot describe the unrecoverable gigantic mess that exists in GB

At the minimum:

- Pinned threads dedicated for each aircraft.

- No discussions in those threads, only skins. Eventually those threads will have hundreds of skins to scroll through and the discussions only make it worse to go through. Please discuss elsewhere or use PM. Keep the dedicated thread clear. 

- Only post skins in the dedicated threads, no private skin museum posts or whatever. We need a single location to download from and track. 

- Minimize the size of pictures and screenshots like originally mentioned in the OP. 

 

Just imagine having hundreds of these skins on your hard drive. How would you know when downloading whether or not you have any of these already? How do you keep track of what you have and don’t have? It must be possible for people to keep track of what they’ve downloaded already. 

 

If the insane mess continues I honestly don’t know why anyone would bother making or downloading these. 

Maybe some of you actually enjoy spending hundreds of hours on this stuff but please be conscious of other people’s time. Most of us I’m sure would rather spend time with this sim actually gaming rather than sorting files into folders and surfing through threads. 

Edited July 26, 2019 by SharpeXB