Any side effects of missions results in career mode?

[atcarter714]

The war already happened, its outcome already set in stone. Not even with Hartmann's over 300 aerial victories was Germany able to win that monstrous war of evil empires on multiple battle fronts. The purpose of Career Mode is to drop you in a squad to experience some quasi-historical battle action and let you see if you can survive the war and progress as a pilot by earning some recognition for your skills (and, well, for the very act of survival). No one pilot was going to change the course of the war, unless we're talking about particular B-29 pilots who are credited with effectively ending the War in the Pacific.

 

However, I do remember there was a 3rd party application for IL-2: 1946 called "Dynamic Campaign Generator" (DCG) that essentially did what you're proposing. It generated some semi-historical campaign missions for a particular squad in a particular map, and it had internal counters to count numbers of planes and war materials and such. So in larger scale operations a major success might move the front lines, change what planes and equipment are available or perhaps even modify the outcome of the campaign (which was focused on a particular region and time period rather than the entire war). Something like this could be created for IL-2: GB, but I don't think it's very high on the list on player demands at this time. Most people want to see more new planes and new battles and content from 1C and the modding communities instead of this. It would essentially be much the same as the Career Mode we already have but would take a LOT of time and work just to try to make it feel a bit more "dynamic". I honestly enjoy the built-in Career Mode already and would prefer to see 1C focus on bringing us as wide a variety of planes and theatre maps as IL-2 1946 had.

And the fact that you had to ask if your Career Mode exploits had a "real" effect on the campaign outcome shows that you really couldn't distinguish between the missions it creates and the ones an outside app generates "dynamically". From a gameplay perspective it was all exactly the same, and the only time you noticed a slight difference was on the briefing screens.

Edited April 25, 2021 by atcarter714

[Eisenfaustus]

BoB2WoV had the best dynamic campaign I ever played (haven’t played Falcon 4.0) - there you had a separate wargame running in the background keeping track of events and letting you plan missions ect. 
 

There what you did mattered - you just knew every plane you shoot down today won’t fight tomorrow. And if a particular unit suffered to severe a beating they were out for several days licking their wounds. Furthermore destroyed airfields radar sights or factories all mattered in a realistic way. All this gave much more meaning to combat. 
 

So yes dynamic campaigns can greatly improve immersion despite the aerial combat being the same as in a quick mission. 
 

But this system is inherently unsuited for GB for mainly two reasons 

 

Firstly GB lacks the static channel front so a dynamic ground wargame would have to be created (with infantry division’s all over the place) to have realistic dynamic frontlines. Even if we imagine this wouldn’t slaughter performance - I don’t see a benefit worth the tremendous costs. 
 

Secondly such a system would actually create realistic missions. And we don’t want that! Air combat only every 10th to 20th mission depending on the theatre? Sounds really boring to me. 
 

But maybe there are ways to make the results of a mission matter more without having to rewrite the whole game?

 

Permadeath of squadron mates is already a great factor. 

[Mandoble]

2 hours ago, atcarter714 said:

And the fact that you had to ask if your Career Mode exploits had a "real" effect on the campaign outcome 

Of at least that what I do in a mission has an effect in the mission itself until I land or get shot down. At least to feel that the mission reacts to my actions. For example, I can pursue a damaged enemy plane until its base, straffe it when it lands, destroy as many parked planes as I want and return uncontested. I would expect many more details, as having some patrols always covering key assets like airfields or friendy/foe interceptors loitering and vectoring to hunt you if you approach some key areas, etc.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

2 hours ago, Eisenfaustus said:

Firstly GB lacks the static channel front so a dynamic ground wargame would have to be created (with infantry division’s all over the place) to have realistic dynamic frontlines. Even if we imagine this wouldn’t slaughter performance - I don’t see a benefit worth the tremendous costs. 

 

Secondly such a system would actually create realistic missions. And we don’t want that! Air combat only every 10th to 20th mission depending on the theatre? Sounds really boring to me.

Well, those points are not necessarily true (which is a polite way of saying they're completely false). The fact that you need to have some kind of a wargame doesn't mean that it has to be a *dynamic* wargame. You can simply do all the calculations between two missions. Count destroyed objects on either side, weaken the frontline on that location, send in reinforcements from Berlin or Moscow (which may be impeded by any destroyed bridges), simulate other flights and battles on other locations of the map... Then generate a new frontline to use for your next mission, which uses the same mission generation algorithm as we do now so with lots of aerial combat.

 

The fact remains that a single flight from a single squadron will have very minor effects among the totality of all simulated flights and ground battles.

 

And the fact that you'd basically need to create a whole additional game. If anyone's interested in altering the course of history, I can recommend Hearts of Iron, which does just that. But to let many developers spend many months to create such a wargame feature (which IMO is a rather optimistic estimation)... well, let's just say that I think there are more pressing issues the Devs can spend their time on.

 

2 hours ago, Mandoble said:

Of at least that what I do in a mission has an effect in the mission itself until I land or get shot down. At least to feel that the mission reacts to my actions. For example, I can pursue a damaged enemy plane until its base, straffe it when it lands, destroy as many parked planes as I want and return uncontested. I would expect many more details, as having some patrols always covering key assets like airfields or friendy/foe interceptors loitering and vectoring to hunt you if you approach some key areas, etc.

The IL2 mission generation system already generates other flights, many of which you will never encounter, if you set your career density settings to high. Of course, that eats CPU for breakfast so I have it on low. But if your PC can handle it, please go ahead and set all your career settings to high. That should create more flights, flak etc. that may make the missions more like what you expect them to be.

 

It is my understanding that PWCG (I don't use it myself) does an even better job of creating other flights, that you may or may not encounter. So I can also recommend you to check that out.

Edited April 25, 2021 by AEthelraedUnraed

[Eisenfaustus]

20 minutes ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

The fact that you need to have some kind of a wargame doesn't mean that it has to be a *dynamic* wargame. You can simply do all the calculations between two missions.

To achieve the same level of realism as BoB2 yes you would need offensive actions during missions. And most offensive actions were performed by infantry - so my point stands. I see no infantry assaults happen in GB ever. Although exactly these were the kind of actions attacker aircraft would often be far more decisive than during armoured assaults. 
 

You‘re right that you could settle for a less realistic approximation - but I‘d also still call your version dynamic - just not real time but turn based.

 

27 minutes ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

 

And the fact that you'd basically need to create a whole additional game.

So you agree to my core argument of cost and benefit ^^

 

28 minutes ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

If anyone's interested in altering the course of history, I can recommend Hearts of Iron, which does just that. But

Great game indeed - I would have loved to see many of my battles to from an action/simulation game perspective

 

Maybe when I find the spare time to learn mission editing (so propably never ^^)

[Mandoble]

1 hour ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

The IL2 mission generation system already generates other flights, many of which you will never encounter.

 

Does it generate flights based on my actions, being spotted, position, etc? I don't think so. I've never seen any reaction of the game to what I do or where I am aside of the basic engagements.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

6 hours ago, Eisenfaustus said:

To achieve the same level of realism as BoB2 yes you would need offensive actions during missions. And most offensive actions were performed by infantry - so my point stands. I see no infantry assaults happen in GB ever. Although exactly these were the kind of actions attacker aircraft would often be far more decisive than during armoured assaults.

I guess the only things we disagree on then are the definition of "dynamic," and what level of detail/realism would be needed.

 

4 hours ago, Mandoble said:

Does it generate flights based on my actions, being spotted, position, etc? I don't think so. I've never seen any reaction of the game to what I do or where I am aside of the basic engagements.

It does create flights with a certain objective (e.g. intercepting you) at certain points in your flight (e.g. when crossing the front line). It doesn't create anything directly involved with you outside of your mission plan, such as spawning an interception flight when you follow an enemy to its base. Doing so is hard enough to do in a hand-made mission, let alone upgrading the mission creation code so that it creates the necessary game logic automatically, and all of that in a way that's both realistic and fun and doesn't clog up your CPU. This is something that would take a *lot* of effort from the developers, for something that too few people find important.

 

From what I hear you may enjoy the scripted campaigns more than the career. Some scripted missions do have some of the things you describe. For instance in the Hell Hawks over the Bulge campaign by Gambit21 it really feels like you respond to changing circumstances, while the circumstances change according to your actions. If you like missions with heavy scripting, I recommend you take a look at it and the other scripted campaigns.

[Mandoble]

1 hour ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Doing so is hard enough to do in a hand-made mission, let alone upgrading the mission creation code so that it creates the necessary game logic automatically, and all of that in a way that's both realistic and fun and doesn't clog up your CPU. This is something that would take a *lot* of effort from the developers, for something that too few people find important.

Based on what do you think that is not important for people? And based on what do you think it implies even a minimum level of complexity for developpers? Having a pair of flighters loitering the bases that the enemies/friendlies will use in that mission is something you consider complex ?

[PatrickAWlson]

1 hour ago, Mandoble said:

Based on what do you think that is not important for people? And based on what do you think it implies even a minimum level of complexity for developpers? Having a pair of flighters loitering the bases that the enemies/friendlies will use in that mission is something you consider complex ?

 

Mission makers are constrained by the games resource limitations.  Improve performance across the board and you open up whole new worlds as to what is possible.  In PWCG there is a a significant amount of code around throttling activity to prevent overload.  

 

Even so, I can put up more than enough air activity to guarantee action.  Air to air contact happens on the vast majority of missions.  Nonplayer activity runs the gamut of level bombing, ground attack, fighter activity, and transport activity.  I can put enough on the ground to almost always have a battle happening, transports and trains going, etc.  I can design missions such that enemy flights come to you as well as vice versa.  I just put out a release that emulates amphibious assaults and increases over water activity on the Kuban map.   I put spotters on the map for intercepts to aid in contact.  

 

The 1C career mode and PWCG are both tactical air combat careers that do not change history.  They are what they are.  They are not BoB campaigns where the Germans can win.

 

I like reading through these discussions for new ideas.  I am honestly having a tough time finding much here.  The complaints seem to be all over the place.  From simple things like fighters covering bases or some small impact to the missions actions (the latter already exists) to full blown history changing dynamic campaigns.  Lots of snarky commentary but not much in the way of rational or focused discussion.

[Mandoble]

20 minutes ago, PatrickAWlson said:

 

Mission makers are constrained by the games resource limitations.  Improve performance across the board and you open up whole new worlds as to what is possible.  In PWCG there is a a significant amount of code around throttling activity to prevent overload.  

 

Even so, I can put up more than enough air activity to guarantee action.  Air to air contact happens on the vast majority of missions.  Nonplayer activity runs the gamut of level bombing, ground attack, fighter activity, and transport activity.  I can put enough on the ground to almost always have a battle happening, transports and trains going, etc.  I can design missions such that enemy flights come to you as well as vice versa.  I just put out a release that emulates amphibious assaults and increases over water activity on the Kuban map.   I put spotters on the map for intercepts to aid in contact.  

 

The 1C career mode and PWCG are both tactical air combat careers that do not change history.  They are what they are.  They are not BoB campaigns where the Germans can win.

 

I like reading through these discussions for new ideas.  I am honestly having a tough time finding much here.  The complaints seem to be all over the place.  From simple things like fighters covering bases or some small impact to the missions actions (the latter already exists) to full blown history changing dynamic campaigns.  Lots of snarky commentary but not much in the way of rational or focused discussion.

I don't know which freedom do you have, actually my only experience with mission making is with ArmA, nothing here. As long as there is an smart logic driving the mission, the immersion could be guaranteed and the boredom avoided. But to be honest, what I would expect is to have everything IN the game and not depending on external tools.

[Rokychuchi]

I've been playing Lowengren's DCS since it's creation for the Forgotten Battles. It was a masterpiece, a jewel that gave Oleg's Il-2 much better single-player campaign than it's own Dgen. I even wrote a DCG review for Netwings, in ancient pleistocene times when Hyper Lobby was the place to go, meet and fly (then I had kids and it was a long farewell to simming).

 

The only thing that I was able to fly since, from time to time, as a dedicated single player, was Patrick's PWCG for Rise of Flight. As he says, it was a thing even before the official Career campaign. I tried both and liked much more PWCG.

 

So, nowadays that I'm slowly getting back to Il-2 I'm spending limited time i've got for our hobby exclusively in PWCG for GB. And it has come a long way from first ROF versions. It fulfils all my single player's needs. For me, and I know it's subjective, it's dynamic enough.

 

What I'm trying to say is that PWCG is a worthy heir for DCG. 15 years ago I was very grateful for Lowengren's work (that, btw, seems to be still going strong with the BAT), and now I'm grateful for Patrick's work. Imo both software creators has created the best possible (given the base sims) dynamic campaign environment for single player (within the ww2 battlefield with the well known winner of each battle).

 

Maybe there's no need to contemplate why in the first place in-house career system isn't as good as PCWG. Try both and decide which you prefer. It's a great thing we have both so we can chose.

 

Take care all!

[PatrickAWlson]

2 hours ago, Mandoble said:

I don't know which freedom do you have, actually my only experience with mission making is with ArmA, nothing here. As long as there is an smart logic driving the mission, the immersion could be guaranteed and the boredom avoided. But to be honest, what I would expect is to have everything IN the game and not depending on external tools.

 

The mission editor is very powerful but also quite complex.  It was meant as a developer tool and released with the product.  I am guessing that is the reason for the tool as it is.  I feel that I can do quite a lot with the tool.  What tends to confound me is how the commands issued through the tool combine with the AI.  In those scenarios I think the issue is more the AI and less the tool.

 

I think that your expectations would result in a much more expensive product than what we have today.   If you want everything in the game, what product has actually met those expectations?  Understanding your gold standard would help put things into context.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

7 hours ago, Mandoble said:

Based on what do you think that is not important for people?

Well, so far it has been mainly you arguing for such a system. A few people agree with some of the aspects of what you argue for, but most posts don't strike me as if they consider it to be extremely important ("important" is something else than "nice to have").

 

Anyway, you're the one arguing for a major change in how the career works that would take ages to program, so the burden of proof is on you to show that people do find it important, if your point of this discussion is to get this feature into the game. If it isn't, then what's the point of this discussion at all?

 

7 hours ago, Mandoble said:

And based on what do you think it implies even a minimum level of complexity for developpers? Having a pair of flighters loitering the bases that the enemies/friendlies will use in that mission is something you consider complex ?

Based on lots of experience with the Mission Editor, hours of looking at the campaign files to understand how the dynamically generated missions work, and years of programming experience across multiple fields.

 

With that experience, I can tell you that yes, even a very simple thing such as a loitering pair of fighters is harder than it looks. Even if you have just two bases (one Allied, one Axis), this would imply 4 fighters that constantly eat CPU, in addition to the other aircraft/ground units that are already there. Great for you if your hardware can handle that, but not everyone's can. And what if the AI decides to land at a different base because it's damaged or has too little fuel left? Then you're left with your CPU-munching fighters at an airbase no-one uses. So spawn them on the ground then when the player approaches? Alright, but at what distance? Too close and the fighters have a huge altitude disadvantage, too far and you risk constantly spawning fighters everywhere as the player gets close to one of the many airfields on each map. Spawn them in the air? Nope, with the latest updates this would be visible from lightyears away. Besides, at what altitude? You don't know at what altitude the player will approach. Sure, with a bit of balancing and testing, the Devs might come up with a solution that works reasonably well, but it's gonna take time. Lots of it. And a few patrolling fighters is far from the dynamic war simulation you argue for.

So therefore, let me reverse the question: based on what do you think it is a piece of cake?

Edited April 26, 2021 by AEthelraedUnraed

[Mandoble]

4 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

So therefore, let me reverse the question: based on what do you think it is a piece of cake?

I'll give you an example, many years ago I created many missions and complex scripts for ArmA (not a flight sim, mostly an infantry sim but including also air units). With that, it was as elementary as having a trigger detecting and enumerating units within a circle around a base or several bases, if any of the enumerated units was enemy and the trigger was not yet activated, a pair of friendly attack helicopters were spawn on air aiming in the direction of the intruders. And yes, this code could be killing if you had a Z80 CPU.

 

6 hours ago, PatrickAWlson said:

I think that your expectations would result in a much more expensive product than what we have today.   If you want everything in the game, what product has actually met those expectations?  Understanding your gold standard would help put things into context.

Operation Flash Point and any Arma mission editors allow all of that an much much more, and they are neither expensive games nor Bohemia Interactive has any huge dev department. You can actually implement a dynamic campaign in a single mission. Note that I'm not implying that you can do much more with the tools the game itself already provides, the issue is that what the game itself provides is too weak and raw.

[SYN_Vander]

25 minutes ago, Mandoble said:

I'll give you an example, many years ago I created many missions and complex scripts for ArmA (not a flight sim, mostly an infantry sim but including also air units). With that, it was as elementary as having a trigger detecting and enumerating units within a circle around a base or several bases, if any of the enumerated units was enemy and the trigger was not yet activated, a pair of friendly attack helicopters were spawn on air aiming in the direction of the intruders. And yes, this code could be killing if you had a Z80 CPU.

 

Operation Flash Point and any Arma mission editors allow all of that an much much more, and they are neither expensive games nor Bohemia Interactive has any huge dev department. You can actually implement a dynamic campaign in a single mission. Note that I'm not implying that you can do much more with the tools the game itself already provides, the issue is that what the game itself provides is too weak and raw.

Mandoble,

 

I have created a lot of missions in both IL2 and ArmaA. IL2 mission editor can actually do a lot of the same stuff that ArmA can do (not the scripts unfortunately). Having a couple of AI fighters above your airfield is indeed a piece of cake. However, we are very much limited by the number of AI objects, specifically planes since they actually ‘steer’ the aircraft as a human would. ArmA does some smart things like switching off/limiting AI calculations when player is far away. In IL2 you have to do all that yourselves. This makes it hard to have ‘live’ battlefield over a very large area.

Edited April 26, 2021 by SYN_Vander

[Mandoble]

42 minutes ago, SYN_Vander said:

Mandoble,

 

I have created a lot of missions in both IL2 and ArmaA. IL2 mission editor can actually do a lot of the same stuff that ArmA can do (not the scripts unfortunately). Having a couple of AI fighters above your airfield is indeed a piece of cake. However, we are very much limited by the number of AI objects, specifically planes since they actually ‘steer’ the aircraft as a human would. ArmA does some smart things like switching off/limiting AI calculations when player is far away. In IL2 you have to do all that yourselves. This makes it hard to have ‘live’ battlefield over a very large area.

I understand that the problem is in the extremely limited tools provided by the game itself, not in what the community can do with them. Obviously missing a flexible scripting language is by itself almost a show stopper to create a credible, immersive and dynamic battlefied. Normally, a way to spawn and despawn units based on complex conditions is the minimum needed to achieve something like that.

[SYN_Vander]

31 minutes ago, Mandoble said:

I understand that the problem is in the extremely limited tools provided by the game itself, not in what the community can do with them. Obviously missing a flexible scripting language is by itself almost a show stopper to create a credible, immersive and dynamic battlefied. Normally, a way to spawn and despawn units based on complex conditions is the minimum needed to achieve something like that.

Again, triggers, spawning/de-spawning is all possible. It’s the performance limitations that make the difference.

[Mandoble]

7 minutes ago, SYN_Vander said:

Again, triggers, spawning/de-spawning is all possible. It’s the performance limitations that make the difference.

I don't get it. If you can use complex conditions to trigger spawns and despawns, where is the performance limitation? The triggers and conditions by themselves will have (or should have if correctly implemented) no impact at all on the CPU, and of course the idea is not to trigger the spawn of full formations. But without scripting, no idea how can you manage the array of planes/vehicles that actually are within an area to trigger a particular condition (more than two planes closer to point A than n Km triggers the next verification 10 seconds later with the current minimum range, 10 seconds later, same verification is done, if minimum range is smaller now, launch interceptors, for example, etc).

[AEthelraedUnraed]

If you read my previous post well, it says that indeed it isn't hard to create a single trigger in a mission, and in fact the game does lots of those things (interceptors spawn when you're "spotted" crossing the front line, vehicle columns take cover among the trees when you approach, ground troops fire flares to let you know they're friendly...). The problem is that 1) it's hard to do so in an *efficient* manner, especially for situations outside of the mission plan (such as following an aircraft back to base), 2) a single trigger is a very long way from the wargame you demand, 3) you're not creating a single mission here. You're writing code for writing code, and you cannot compare that with creating a single mission, and 4) doing the above takes lots of time, and so far the reactions in this thread are neither numerous nor overwhelmingly enthusiastic enough that I think it warrants moving a programmer from e.g. AI to mission generation.

 

If you cannot see how all this makes it much more difficult than creating a mission for Arma, then that's your problem but the Devs will not just magically turn the game into what you want it to be. 

 

Again, what do you plan to gain from this discussion? If you want to find out how to get a better playing experience, I have already given you two options (PWCG and scripted missions). If you hope to eventually see the Devs improve this aspect of the game, I'd start with getting more popular support and reading into how the mission generation system works. If you just want to complain how awful the game is and how even you could do better in Arma, be my guest but I won't join your party.

[atcarter714]

I was gonna mention Hearts of Iron 4 and someone beat me to it! I love HoI4! ?

 

About the dynamic campaign thing, tho ... like I said, the only time I really noticed much of a difference with the 3rd party IL-2 DCG app was on the briefing screens and reading some of the battle statistics. It was kind of cool, but wasn't as great as I'd initially hoped it would be. It was definitely a resource hog when you upped the level of combat and aircraft density. And sometimes campaigns would get into some really funky states where it wasn't very fun or realistic anymore (like there'd be a huge number one plane that actually wasn't very common but almost none of everything else, and other weird things like that).

 

As far as implementing things like the "dynamic patrols and interceptors", I could see something like that being scripted for the game. But I wouldn't call it "a piece of cake" or write it off as being simple. With performance on PC (which is a very fragmented ecosystem with almost limitless combinations of hardware and specs) being such a huge concern, I don't think 1C could really afford to spend time on very specialized and narrow things like this which would only make a positive game-play impact on a small number of players under fairly unique circumstances. However, the modding community can incorporate things like this into missions and campaigns we create. It's not a bad idea. It just comes down to the question of time, resources and performance and how big of an impact it's going to make on enjoyment of the game.

 

IL-2's performance is critical. I honestly think the code relies too much on CPU usage and calculation. If I were writing a game like this, I wouldn't even have my code spawning and real-time tracking all these distant squadrons and flights that are nowhere near the player. I'd only do that with objects inside of a radius that would be like 2x or 3x (at least) larger than the camera's max view distance. Basically, other flights would be generated all over the map but not "fully spawned" ... they would only exist programmatically until they were needed for an encounter with the player. For example, a simple data structure or class would be storing some basic information about these planes or squads, keeping tabs on their location, alt, waypoints and other critical data. "Invisible" battles could even take place when they crossed paths with an enemy squadron while in this "background" state ... going off some statistics and a bit of randomness the engine would determine who won, who got wounded, who got shot down and died and modify the tracking data for the squads. Now, when the player wanders near enough that he might encounter these other flights, only then would they be fully loaded and spawn into the world (and they'd have to preload in advance to give it time to load without any stuttering or slow-downs). So say you wandered across a flight of 109s that just had a scrap with some P-51s ... there were 3x Bf-109s and 6x P-51s, so the P-51s won the scrap, shooting down a 109, damaging another and forcing them to run. Only one P-51 got damaged and has an oil leak. So as the player wanders into the area and encounters these aircraft, he first comes across the (friendly) P-51s ... they loaded ahead of time, outside of his view, so to him it's like they've actually been there all along. They're at 1.5K altitude, heading home, one is smoking and in bad shape. Player passes them by and ends up catching the 109s. They, too, loaded before he was in visual range ... and he spots them on the deck, running away. One is billowing black smoke and the other is trying to escort him home. Even though these planes didn't really exist in the 3D game world 10 minutes ago, here they are now like they've really been there the whole time and actually had a fight, the results of which the player sees ... and he's none the wiser that it wasn't a "real" battle calculated bullet by bullet.

 

? A system like this would really be the only way to vastly and drastically expand the amount of action and activity in the IL-2 world without utterly destroying performance on all but the best of the best gaming PCs. And I honestly think the developers should look into doing things this way in the future so as to add some more density and depth to the world. What's taking place off-screen and way out of the player's view and outside his awareness really doesn't need to consume the same CPU and memory resources as action taking place right in front of a player. If you're familiar with the concept of LOD (level of detail) in game programming, this should make perfect sense. It doesn't only apply to 3D models and polygon count, but it can also apply to in-game action taking place when not in the presence of the player. Very high levels of realism and immersion can be accomplished by background threads keeping track of "living" but "unspawned" game entities the player has not become aware of yet which are loaded and spawned when they're needed and it's time to render and present them in full detail ...

[Mandoble]

47 minutes ago, atcarter714 said:

 

? A system like this would really be the only way to vastly and drastically expand the amount of action and activity in the IL-2 world without utterly destroying performance on all but the best of the best gaming PCs.

What you are describing is standard in game development since 20 years ago or more. And it is also the only logical aproach to the problem.

[PatrickAWlson]

6 hours ago, Mandoble said:

I'll give you an example, many years ago I created many missions and complex scripts for ArmA (not a flight sim, mostly an infantry sim but including also air units). With that, it was as elementary as having a trigger detecting and enumerating units within a circle around a base or several bases, if any of the enumerated units was enemy and the trigger was not yet activated, a pair of friendly attack helicopters were spawn on air aiming in the direction of the intruders. And yes, this code could be killing if you had a Z80 CPU.

 

Operation Flash Point and any Arma mission editors allow all of that an much much more, and they are neither expensive games nor Bohemia Interactive has any huge dev department. You can actually implement a dynamic campaign in a single mission. Note that I'm not implying that you can do much more with the tools the game itself already provides, the issue is that what the game itself provides is too weak and raw.

 

That is exactly how the ME works.  Same thing.  For PWCG I created "virtual waypoints" that allow the flight to move without spawning it.  That is why, in PWCG missions, enemies come to you and do not wait at a location for you to set off a trigger.

 

So why not more such triggers in the mission?  Resources.  Back to what I said earlier about performance.  The performance of the software currently forces mission makers to be very cognizant of resource usage.  

 

Then there is the distinction between mission making and career making.  The latter requires a lot of code not in any way associated with a mission.  It is driven to a greater or lesser extent by what happens in a mission, but it is not the same thing.  In PWCG the answer is actually "lesser extent".  PWCG simulates air events for all pilots in its world who are not involved in a mission.  

 

This is a lot of work.  I have been doing PWCG for 12 years and 1C has had a career mode for nearly 10.  The code is algorithmically more complex than the stuff that I did professionally to control  a power grid in real time.  It may only be a game, but to get it right takes a lot of care.

4 hours ago, Mandoble said:

I don't get it. If you can use complex conditions to trigger spawns and despawns, where is the performance limitation? 

 

The performance hit happens in a big way when something spawns.  Then the AI starts consuming a huge number of cycles.  Therefore mission designers MUST take care not to spawn too much.  This is made even more difficult because the definition of "too much" varies from one person to the next and from SP to MP.  

 

The actual control logic (timers, triggers, etc.) do not consume many resources.

[Mandoble]

18 minutes ago, PatrickAWlson said:

The performance hit happens in a big way when something spawns.  Then the AI starts consuming a huge number of cycles.  Therefore mission designers MUST take care not to spawn too much.  This is made even more difficult because the definition of "too much" varies from one person to the next and from SP to MP.  

Again, you are fighting against the limitations of the game, and this topic is not related to the outstanding work you can do with the limited tools you have to both, create tools and create content. I'm aiming to the game itself. It looks some people here are simply content with what they have, I think much more effort should be put in the game itself than in modeling new planes or tanks. There is a big difference between saying "this is an outstanding model of a particular Spitfire version" and "I had an absolute blast flying a single mission in this sim like I've never had before". If the second happens, it doesn't matter if you have just a single map to play with and few planes, if the second doesn't happen, it will still not happen no matter how many maps and planes you add.

[PatrickAWlson]

Just now, Mandoble said:

Again, you are fighting against the limitations of the game, and this topic is not related to the outstanding work you can do with the limited tools you have to both, create tools and create content. I'm aiming to the game itself. It looks some people here are simply content with what they have, I think much more effort should be put in the game itself than in modeling new planes or tanks. There is a big difference between saying "this is an outstanding model of a particular Spitfire version" and "I had an absolute blast flying a single mission in this sim like I've never had before". If the second happens, it doesn't matter if you have just a single map to play with and few planes, if the second doesn't happen, it will still not happen no matter how many maps and planes you add.

 

 

I asked you what your gold standard was.  You went on about Arma triggers.  Yes, we have those here too.  Now you are making a statement about fun.  So I ask again, what is missing from the game that would make it more fun?  From your past posts I can gather more activity (that falls under performance) and a fully dynamic campaign (this product has never set out to do that).

 

I have my own list:

Keep improving the AI.  Improving does not mean make it fly and shoot better but make it more like a person.  Nice improvements so far but keep it going.

Improve performance.  That will open up a lot of options.

 

A year ago I would have said AI was the biggest issue.  Credit to the 1C team for significant improvements.  Now I would say the area most in need of improvement is performance.

 

 

[Mandoble]

28 minutes ago, PatrickAWlson said:

 

 

I asked you what your gold standard was.  You went on about Arma triggers. 

 

I said Arma, mission editing and scripting, not triggers alone. But the gold standard are not the tools, but the results, ideally achieved by in-game mechanics. To start with, as said before, to have the mission reacting to my actions in many ways, logical, but as unpreditable by the player as much as possible. Not sure if you already played ArmA, but Adandoned Armies mission was a pretty good example of something that you can play 1000 times, and it will be different every time.

 

Anyway I do agree with you, performance is currently a big issue. Eventually the simulator is running everything in full accuracy even if not even close, seen, detected by the player, no idea. But I guess these at 1C working on missions, editor and career are not these working on code optimization/simulation. They could focus on more than one target at a time.

Edited April 26, 2021 by Mandoble

[AEthelraedUnraed]

2 minutes ago, PatrickAWlson said:

I asked you what your gold standard was.  You went on about Arma triggers.  Yes, we have those here too.  Now you are making a statement about fun.  So I ask again, what is missing from the game that would make it more fun?  From your past posts I can gather more activity (that falls under performance) and a fully dynamic campaign (this product has never set out to do that).

 

I have my own list:

Keep improving the AI.  Improving does not mean make it fly and shoot better but make it more like a person.  Nice improvements so far but keep it going.

Improve performance.  That will open up a lot of options.

 

A year ago I would have said AI was the biggest issue.  Credit to the 1C team for significant improvements.  Now I would say the area most in need of improvement is performance.

Agree 100%, but I would add a cost-benefit equation into the picture.

 

Would I like to see better triggers in career missions, that really respond to what the player does? Absolutely. Do I think that it's more important than either AI or performance in general (which, as you say, allows more aircraft and ground units)? Absolutely not. Do I think IL2 sells enough copies to be able to hire another programmer to do all these changes to the mission generation code, while at the same time improving the AI, performance, fuel system, damage model and all other issues that I find more pressing? Most definitely not.

[Mandoble]

47 minutes ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Do I think IL2 sells enough copies to be able to hire another programmer to do all these changes to the mission generation code, while at the same time improving the AI, performance, fuel system, damage model and all other issues that I find more pressing? Most definitely not.

If this were the case, that would mean they simply need to sell way more. It seems the current strategy is to keep selling individual planes/secenaries to existing customer base instead of multiplying the numer of people interested, if this strategy doesn't give the expected results as to hire more people to keep growing, might be they should change it.

Edited April 26, 2021 by Mandoble

[PatrickAWlson]

21 minutes ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Agree 100%, but I would add a cost-benefit equation into the picture.

 

Would I like to see better triggers in career missions, that really respond to what the player does? Absolutely. Do I think that it's more important than either AI or performance in general (which, as you say, allows more aircraft and ground units)? Absolutely not. Do I think IL2 sells enough copies to be able to hire another programmer to do all these changes to the mission generation code, while at the same time improving the AI, performance, fuel system, damage model and all other issues that I find more pressing? Most definitely not.

 

In my real life role as principal software engineer that is what I preach.  Focus and completion.  Worst thing is to have too much work in progress all at the same time.  That results in nothing getting done.  

 

I acknowledge that there are many different talents, so I am limiting this to coders only.  I would put a major focus on performance at this point.  The AI has been improved.  Like flight and systems modeling, the AI will never be completely done, but right now it is in a good enough state that it can be put in maintenance mode for awhile.  I would honestly not focus coding efforts on decals and fuel systems and the like.  While Normandy model building and map building is in full swing I would focus hard on performance.   But hey, that's just my opinion and my own personal #1 want.

 

I like thinking through code designs.  Below is something that I would look into if this was my full time job.  Take with a very large grain of salt.

A possibly more realistic and less computationally expensive algorithm would be a micro OODA loop wrapped in a macro OODA loop.  The macro loop would be a larger decision.  The micro loop would be used to fly the plane per that decision and, possibly, rethink the decision.  The micro loop for an AI pilot might be one cycle every quarter second with the macro loop only engaged when the previous loop finished or was interrupted.  Gunner AI might be reduced to every half second or second to reduce strain and give more time to piloting.  Similarly, ground AI would also be done on a reduced cycle.  

 

What my threading model would look like is multiple thread pools of different sizes.  Some threads for macro processing, quite a few threads for pilot micro processing, and some threads for air gunnery and ground.   Do some testing and tweak the thread pool sizes.  The thread pool sizes are more about latency than overall through put.  Ideally I starve nothing, but if there is too much going on the thread pool configuration could ensure that pilot AI gets preference over ground AI.

 

How easy is this?  It's not.  At all.  it would probably require a rewrite of the core processing loop with all of the consequences that entails.  In fact, since I do not know the code, any actual 1c developer would probably dismiss this as "you know nothing"  .  Still, it's an enjoyable exercise in mental mast...

 

 

[AEthelraedUnraed]

14 minutes ago, Mandoble said:

If this were the case, that would mean they simply need to sell way more. It seems the current strategy is to keep selling individual planes/secenaries to existing customer base instead of multiplying the numer of people interested, if this strategy doesn't give the expected results as to hire more people to keep growing, might be they should change it.

If you have any particular advice on how to run a medium-size gaming company with a niche market, please tell Jason and the other Devs. I'm sure they'd be interested in hearing it.

 

I'm serious. There's nothing I'd like more than IL2 selling millions of copies so that they can hire all the people they want, and more. If you have any experience in the marketing industry and have any great ideas their own marketing specialists haven't come up with yet, please tell us.

[atcarter714]

3 hours ago, Mandoble said:

What you are describing is standard in game development since 20 years ago or more. And it is also the only logical aproach to the problem.

 

Sort of. It's a common practice. A large open-world game like Skyrim or Grand Theft Auto makes use of this principle. If you're in an IL-2 mission though you can jump to view enemy air and ground units and see that they are actively spawned and operating in full 3D form the whole time, though, and heavily taxing your CPU usage. In a career mission with "Dense" frontline activity my system can be moving like a snail even if I'm many kilometers away from any other aircraft or activity.

[Mandoble]

37 minutes ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

If you have any particular advice on how to run a medium-size gaming company with a niche market, please tell Jason and the other Devs.

It looks you already know or suspect where the problem is. But in no way it is a niche because Flight Sims are not popular.