[stansdds]

There were plenty of people who did know the Pacific theater who were more than willing to help them, but the offers of help were often refused. Ignorance of a subject is one thing, but being ignorant and refusing the offer of knowledge is something else. Regardless, we are getting a fantastic Solomon Islands map, with far more detail and accuracy than would have been provided by 1C or RRG.

[spud]

I cut Oleg some slack, RRG, OTOH, should have borrowed a clue from any of the many people who would have helped. From lurking on the 3d boards before PF the guys making the models wouldn't even get their email answered by them.

Take the parafrags. When PF first came out, they had delay fuses. I sent Oleg a ton of info demonstrating that they didn't have delays, that was the point of retarding them. Got changed.

I lobbied hard for delay fuses to work vs ships because skip-bombing was not impossible, but considerably harder than it should have been. That got changed, too.

The problem with the PTO was not understanding the theater well enough to make good decisions. In trying to encompass the entire thing, they ended up doing everything poorly instead of one area well.

PF needed focus. One small area (and time, perhaps) of the war, done well. The SWPA (including the Slot) is one obvious choice. Not late war, either, August '42 through mid '44 at most. Some of the atoll maps like Midway can be thrown in because they are so easy to do.

Doesn't matter, now

[FA_Cheech]

The problem with the PTO was not understanding the theater well enough to make good decisions. In trying to encompass the entire thing, they ended up doing everything poorly instead of one area well.

PF needed focus. One small area (and time, perhaps) of the war, done well. The SWPA (including the Slot) is one obvious choice. Not late war, either, August '42 through mid '44 at most. Some of the atoll maps like Midway can be thrown in because they are so easy to do.

Doesn't matter, now

Buddy, I agree with you 100 percent. I am a big proponent of doing one thing well, vice many things poorly. If the creators of PF had provided two quality maps, The Slot and New Guinea, it would have given the combat flight sim community a masterpiece and been a whopping success. This map of The Slot is a great example.

The Slot was the scene of intense combat action from August of 1942 to the end of the war, if you include the ANZAC campaign on Bougainville. As you can see from my previous post, a single map can be adapted to provide a large number of maps that are well suited to mission builder requirements.

We could have also parsed The Slot into a myriad of Dogfight maps, with even more detail, and excellent potential for on-line playability, but decided to leave that to the community. That is something that could also have been done with PF, if the developers had seen fit to trust the community with the map making tools.

I guess my final verdict is...coulda, woulda, shoulda can be discussed ad-nauseum, but Oleg gave us a wondeful tool, that I personally have enjoyed tremendously over the last five years. In the big scheme of things, I figure that is great value for the money I spent on all of his products, and testament to his perserverence and creative genius. Without him and his development team, we would never have been able to create the things we have in The Slot.

So, IMHO, Oleg Maddox is pretty high on my list of stars in the flight sim community.

[Former_Older]

Regardless, we are getting a fantastic Solomon Islands map, with far more detail and accuracy than would have been provided by 1C or RRG.

I think maybe that this is all that matters on the subject now; what's done is done but we are not going to have to settle for approximations and general locales anymore

[VFS-214_Hawk]

AMEN!

[spud]

One thing that the mission/campaign builders and modders have in common: a [requirement to use "lateral thinking" to get things done. The devs, pretty much by definition, don't have to think this way to a great extent. They design something based around their initial assumptions, and like any similar work, they tend to get a sort of "in the box" tunnel vision. To be fair to them, at some level they have no choice. If they allow themselves to go sideways too often, the project gets sidetracked and instead of "better" they get nothing done at all.

So I'm not too quick on the draw to attack their efforts, I understand the way such a project can snowball. Still, something like PF should have been more focused. PF in particular since to a great extent it was derivative.

[FA_Cheech]

When it comes to things like barrels, crates, and the like, I decided to take Former_Older and other's advice and leave them for mission builders to add as part of the mission builder's process. This provides mission builders with maximum flexibility, and keeps locales that are viewed frequently from getting stale.

I have also been using this rule of thumb when it comes to airfields. All the runways, taxiways, hardstands and revetments will be there, for the period modelled, but the current line of thinking is to let the mission builders also handle all the Hangars, fuel tanks, tents, etc.

This also keeps the number of objects in the map to a level that helps prevent Open GL issues when using the map editor version of the FMB. As Skunk said earlier, The Slot runs just as smooth as any default map does today, so that is not really an issue. The Slot is a very "light map" compared to maps like The Crimea and Slovakia.

Would like to get your thoughts on this.

[spud]

I agree completely. Less is more in that sense.

[VT-51_Razor]

I absolutely agree with this. It does give the mission builder the maximum amount of flexibility when it comes to "fleshing out" any particular part of the map that the mission is centered around, which will never cover the whole map.

[fly_zo]

well, you can always add objects from mission template with ACT tool later on .... if someone make template that you guys like....

whatever decision Slot team make.... it's ok by me ..... :-)

~S~

Z

[Sulla]

Agree completely and was hoping that's the way it was going to be. Thank you all.

[saunders1953]

I agree, too. Bare minimum objects would be best in my book because I have alot of "groupcloner" objects built I can use and have plenty of variety over many missions.

Spud, if less is more, just think how much more more would be! :?

[VFS-214_Hawk]

What ever it takes to NOT have a bad frame rate. I already can not fly in perfect mode.

[spud]

Bigger FR limitation would likely be populating it with realistic numbers of aircraft.

Even the stock guadalcanal map gets pretty impossible with a pile of ships in the channel and 16 betty bombers, and as many escorting zeros meeting a similar number of cactus AF planes (assuming the ships are firing all their guns).

[canonuk]

That's a good plan.

With my BoB map I've going to sparsely populate the towns and cities - mission makers can flesh out areas of action.

However, I've put massive research into my airfields so not only are the taxi ways and runways in the right places, but so are the hangars/barracks etc. They're in the correct historical places, so they're coming with the map