[I/JG27_Waggel]

It will never happend, those who controls the buttons and FM's, controls the hole Modding community. Look at it this way,,,, the urge to save the modding community, is just an urge to rule it!

I always try to see what happens in the short rund AND what happens in the long run. Live teached me that an my senior. There were times when I had the feeling he whould rule me. I hated him therefore but with the years I could use his life lessons in my live and now I am thankfull for this.

Oleg never gave us any button files or FM's. He never opened IL-2 so that we can work on this game too. Was it to save us or to rule us?
What do you think?

If everybody whould know how to work on FMs, how to create button files we soon whould have a crazy mod jungle. CHAOS. And this whould kill the whole IL-2 community. Not just the modding scene. Not just the onliners. Not just the offliners hock:
Do you want to have this?

Some time ago Cirx wrote a letter to me because he has some gunsights for the Focke Wulf. Cirx works for SAS and I do my stuff for AAA. But this was no problem for us. I asked him to use the gunsights in the A-3, he said yes, so they came with the next patch and the SAS was mentioned in the Credits. This was just a small project. A small step. But if this works, we can support each other in bigger projects and bring much more joy into Il-2.

[Guest]

I don't think you understand my point here, Yes if everybody knew how to make FM's we would have a better game I am sure. Right now some self made FM and Aviation experts are telling the rest of us what to think and do.

I know how to construct a real bird, I have actually worked on several real project, the latest being the Airbus A380, but I am not interested in programming, or FM's of any kind, and most aviation engineers I know aren't either.

And the Modding community lacks professionalism, you can not make a good product without some kind of professionalism, exactly what AAA have been trying to add to the community, but with little success, in my opinion they did not understand that real professionalism also means the freedom to acces knowledge. Im my country, any person, rich and poor have access to knowledge, and we are not a society of chaos, in contrary one of the most well functioning and economical stable nations in the world.

But anyway it's just a game, and besides that, I have personally chosen to leave my Admin status at SAS, as I did not agree with the way they dealt with historical planes. I wanted some kind of rules concerning the FM's, mainly the same as when you write a book, you put in a list list of sources to each new FM concerning a historical plane, then the rest of us can vote with the mouse.

But the future looks bright, and some of us has already begun the work on making MODS for the upcoming new high poly version of the game , looking forward to that.

Oleg never gave us any button files or FM's. He never opened IL-2 so that we can work on this game too. Was it to save us or to rule us?
What do you think?

I think it's not a game makers responsibility to leave it's sources open, after all it's an commercial product, but there should have been a better way to add new planes than now. But this has nothing to do with control, it's business.

MOSCA,
Just out of curiosity, do you fly primarily ONLINE or OFFLINE? Most of the people I see that use primarily AAA Mods fly ONLINE and compatibility is critical. Without it thir ability to join servers and enjoy the game ends. Its not a minor issue..its a show stopper. A common restructured Buttons file/AC installer isn't control, its common sense. It would also not preclude SAS or anyone else from having their own version of a buttons file if they so desired. What it would do is allow for a broader audience to have a much simpler installation path and have far greater online compatibility. Setting common formats and standards allows everything to work more efficiently, with more stability, and with far greater ease of installation..

I agree, the question is just who is making the decisions, Right now a few people are deciding what to do, based forums not visible to ordinary subscribers, but who cares, Modding as we know it today will not last for long anyway.

*MODERATION: Condensed to one post. No need to triple post.*

[I/JG27_Waggel]

From engineer to engineer: Salute!

When I started the project "Fw-190A-3", I took all the knowlege of the FW-190A-3 together. Performance data, flight data, air speed data etc. I went to AAA and soon I got an FM expert on my right side who works in the avaition buisness. I gave him the sorted data and he wrote the first version of the FM. On the left side I had a 3D god and his padawan.

I still do not know the knowlege behind an FM because it is not nessesarry. But I know how to read performance data and air speed data. I have the FM in my head.

There are so many guys who think they need to know how to make an FM but they do not have the technical background. There was a guy who told me a FW-190 should out turn a Spitfire!! hock:
I always told him that agillity is not turn radius but he really believed in this fairy tail and if he whould be able to create a FM we whould have a FW-190 that flies like an I-16.

And the Modding community lacks professionalism .... there is really a way to go to reach the IL-2 standard but we do not have any tutorials by Oleg that show us how to make a new plane or map. I personally get a big head when I see the size of the new textures. They sometimes have a size of 1024 x 1024 pixel. This is too big. But the professionalism grows. We have a growing archive of turorials and there are more and more users that work with this standards.

Back to the FM. You do not have to know how to make an FM. You just have to know WHO makes FMs and you have to know how to talk with other people. The secret of many sucesses is that the persons try to find a solution instead of protecting their arguments. The same is with 3D work and other stuff. The magic word is: communication.

[Deutschmark]

Salute ALL hi ;-)


@ Mosca, let me explain something to you, do you know of the game Red Baron 3D?
I come from that game and know it very well, RB3D had thousands of players in it when
It first came out, then at some point the tools for RB3D where given to one person in the
Community that also included the FM tool, these tools where given out freely to the
Public and soon after the onliners where experiencing much cheating in the online game
Because some that got hold of the tools did not use them for the better of the game but for
The bettering of them self

[Guest]

@Deutschmark

It must be possible to install a chkr, a l'a punkbuser on the online server, so that the version of each, connecting hosts button file is checked, I think that would be a more intelligent solution to your problem, than trying to control who and how people are doing their Mods?, just a thought .

@I/JG27_Waggel

Agree, we all have different abilities, and with the right communication great mods can be made. But in practice things are not always as easy as you claim, I don't want to go into details here as it might ruin the god atmosphere.

[keinmann]

@Deutschmark

It must be possible to install a chkr, a l'a punkbuser on the online server, so that the version of each, connecting hosts button file is checked, I think that would be a more intelligent solution to your problem, than trying to control who and how people are doing their Mods?, just a thought .

@I/JG27_Waggel

Agree, we all have different abilities, and with the right communication great mods can be made. But in practice things are not always as easy as you claim, I don't want to go into details here as it might ruin the god atmosphere.

That's something we should probably do anyway. It's always good to have checks for online games to prevent little punks from cheating. But that does take some time for all servers to be rewritten/patched/fixed/etc. Once that can be 100% completed in an efficient manner, then I don't see any reason why IL-2 can't become more "open". I use the word in quotations because modding is usually delegated to the highly technical people and "digital elites". I basically learned modding myself, because I had a lot of experience with programming and the way computers/software works. Once I showed others I was pretty self-advanced and not far from soon learning everything, it was easy to find some teachers to teach me about FMs and buttons, etc. And I learned from AAA and SAS. It was though, SAS, that taught me the final thing in the arsenal of modder's knowledge; buttons and FMs. I think things have GREATLY changed from those secretive "days of old", and I don't think we're too far from a much more free and open IL-2 modding community.

!S

[Dreamk]

Sorry to say that but all this debate is based upon an illusion - the false assertion that buttons file and FM are under the control of a selected few - well, cracking the buttons file takes about 2 evenings if you seat and think and do a littlle directed search (don't be scared, I won't tell how except that mastering some foreign languages helps).
Keeping Il2 viable depends upon the goodwill of the players and the "secrecy" attitute only incites players to take an hand at hacking the buttons and FM - and the crt=2 is very but very easy to hack too as it checks a very limited number of well defined parameters that are easy to falsify - it's why I never play on "open" servers with unknown pilots but only inside a squadron on common missions or together with this squadron against another known recogniszed squadron - or offline.
Putting together all the knowledge accumulated on the FM and Il2 modelling would help making this game a better more realistic game - but freedom of knowledge is something frightening for most people who don't dare to look reality in the eyes. And reality is, among other things, that if you don't change drastically the FM of some "stock" planes (such as the P-51D) the first new sim on the market with a better FM for these planes will be the end of Il2 (the graphic will always be better and heavier as it is the general tendency due in part to a huge economic incentive: helps pushing people to drastically upgrade their computers) And I disagreee with ypou concerning Red Baron - this game sucked and kept players hungry for something better - and they left looking for someyhing better - and they are still hungry as all the WW1 flight sim since then have had huge shortcomings - do I hope that Canvas Knights, coming from inside the communauty of players will bring something really new in this field. Sharing knowledge is the only way, eevn if it means taking risks, but risks can be controlled so long they are recognized and not denied.

[Forager]

Well it seems, from the outside looking in, that all is not sweetness and light between the different modding sites and chaos is not too far off.

SAS seems willing to post almost anything someone can cobble together and AAA seems to be so focused on the online aspect that things ready for release gather dust waiting for online checks.

Who is actually in charge of the nuthouse? I think no one.

Such is the nature of modding, eh?

Oh well, the official addon cannot be too far off and it is just possible that we do not need 35 variations of the 109, Yak or Spitfire.

The great maps, effects, campaigns, etc are just way too good to pass up though, keep it up guys!

[Radoye]

It must be possible to install a chkr, a l'a punkbuser on the online server, so that the version of each, connecting hosts button file is checked, I think that would be a more intelligent solution to your problem, than trying to control who and how people are doing their Mods?, just a thought .

It would quickly become impractical, because with virtually everyone modifying the FM's according to their own preference soon there will be no two people on this earth with exactly the same mods/buttons file combo.

So again some kind of an outside authority would have to say "this and only this is the buttons you're allowed to use online and you will not be allowed on the servers if you use anything else" - and the entire debate about control, power and dictatorship ignites again, the community will again be split with "good"/"dictator" servers and websites on one side and "rogue"/"free" servers and websites on the other.

Personally, i'm an offliner so the online issues don't bother me that much and i would love to have the opportunity to play with the FM's and tweak them freely to my liking but i do understand the concerns of the online community and the need to preserve the integrity of "their" gameplay.

Once the genie is out of the bottle there's no way to put it back again.

And there's no way to make everyone happy.

[Deutschmark]

Salute ALL hi ;-)


@ Mosca, nice thought and its already been looked at from what I been told by the ones
In the know, and what I was told is that the whole server package for IL2 would need to
Be rewritten, without going into to much detail its because of the way the Oleg made the
IL2 server and the secretes on it and that part of the IL2 game is coeded in the exe of IL2
And out of our reach, so until someone comes along and is willing to take the time to
Make a new server package for IL2 then there is not much we can do except to do is what
We are doing now to keep online cheating out of the reach of the ones that wish to do so.



Deutschmark
WW1 Project Member.

[bjgregory]

Salute ALL hi ;-)
@ Mosca, nice thought and its already been looked at from what I been told by the ones
In the know, and what I was told is that the whole server package for IL2 would need to
Be rewritten, without going into to much detail its because of the way the Oleg made the
IL2 server and the secretes on it and that part of the IL2 game is coeded in the exe of IL2
And out of our reach, so until someone comes along and is willing to take the time to
Make a new server package for IL2 then there is not much we can do except to do is what
We are doing now to keep online cheating out of the reach of the ones that wish to do so.



Deutschmark
WW1 Project Member.

I'm sure it would be possible to code the check into Hyperlobby with a little help from Mr. Fojtasek, even if not into IL-2 itself. People could still join by IP and bypass this, but it'd be a decent start, if not a full solution. Is there a way to prevent people from joining by IP?

[wurzel]

@Deutschmark

It must be possible to install a chkr, a l'a punkbuser on the online server, so that the version of each, connecting hosts button file is checked, I think that would be a more intelligent solution to your problem, than trying to control who and how people are doing their Mods?, just a thought .


!S

Small inquiry

With other MP plays (e.g. SOF, RTCW) there are also many Mods. The files needed for it are placed depending upon extent by the server or one must load itself them from an Internet site.
When entering the respective server the files are examined for completeness and correctness. Doesn't the possibility, which one makes in such a way possibly not also with IL-2, exist? The server operator or the server gives his Button file (or the files those the FM model contained) during on-line playing forwards. These files are then checked into irregular times during the play (ala Punkbuter) with a check total on correctness.

Sorry for my english. :oops:

Kleine Anfrage

Bei anderen MP-Spielen (z.B. SOF, RTCW) gibt es ja auch viele Mods.
Die daf

[I/JG27_Waggel]

SAS~MOSCA:
Yeb. I personally could say: OK I want to make FMs and Buttons now. There were days were I thaught of
it. I also wanted to start with 3D max because as an engineer there is not a big step from autocad to this
3D program. The nature of programs mostly is the same. But a lot of people say that I can make very
good textures and my research for historical flight data goes very deep into "little sh..it". So I stay with
this two abilities. It is also a question of time.

We should keep an eye in searching for new techniques to make the modded IL-2 save and user friendly.
Our mod patches start to become bigger. I once installed the Ultra pack to see the differences between
this patch and the AAA patch. The biggest disadvantage of the Ultra Pack is its size of + 10GB. You have
all the mods you need but the time to start the game is too long (5 minutes +). Even with the AAA patch
I can recongnize a longer loading time. The answer for this problem are the .SFS files. We should try to
repack the mods back into .sfs format with a new .exe. So the loading time of the game is reduced again
to nearly standards.

The safety of IL-2 is a MUST. We can not just walk around it. At the moment a lot of IL-2 servers with
mod patchs do not work with crt=2 because there is no need to do it. I never recognized any cheater
on a server. There might are no ones or they have such liddle cheats that you do not recognize them.
In the beginnning CRT=2 was nessesary because a lot of user without any mods joined on the server.
Now nearly everyone has a mod patch with the main mod planes. But in the long run, if we want to go
back to historical onlinewars like Air Dominian War or Air Force War, it is very important to have CRT=2
or any other protection software. For a lot of pilots and me too, those online wars are the CROWN of Il-2.
There you can meet the professionals, the experts, the freaks. There you get so much thrill in one mission,
that you do not want to make a second run. Like Dreamk said, the actual situation might not be the
same in the futur. In the long run more and more people will be able to work on Buttons and FM.

@ Forager
SAS and AAA are not far from each other. The point of view is a little bit different but this does not mean
that we have a confrontation. If you take a look outside you will see that the nature does not only exists
in lights. There is always shadow too. If we do not start to behave like Prometeus ( an old greek loving the
light :-D), there will be much more joy for the whole community (Like I said some posts before).