17.08.2009, 09:27
Interesting thoughts, fabianfred. I've wrestled with the same constraints making historical dogfight maps for a dedicated server. In the end, faced with the compromises of online play, and the limits imposed by the sim, I've been content to make something that imparts a "flavour" of the real life event, while keeping it playable and interesting for the average "server surfer". I realise it is different for someone building a mission for offline play or campaign.
I started with a template (I can't recall now who made it) which had every ship placed in the harbour. Some players find it a bit laggy to fly over, but I've stuck with it. Placing historical numbers of static aircraft at the airfields, however, produced unplayable lag for anyone who spawned there, so compromises had to be made.
Same for flight time...if you could start BLUE 200km away, who would want to fly that far? Who would want to wait for them to arrive? So you compromise, and make a reasonable flight time, and maybe even an airspawn for the really impatient types.
You raise an interesting point about scheduling and wait time. I don't know if it has been done, but a well organized event could have one side joining a server at a certain time, then the other side a half hour, or hour later, to engage at the "correct" historical time. Seems like something worth trying.
I started with a template (I can't recall now who made it) which had every ship placed in the harbour. Some players find it a bit laggy to fly over, but I've stuck with it. Placing historical numbers of static aircraft at the airfields, however, produced unplayable lag for anyone who spawned there, so compromises had to be made.
Same for flight time...if you could start BLUE 200km away, who would want to fly that far? Who would want to wait for them to arrive? So you compromise, and make a reasonable flight time, and maybe even an airspawn for the really impatient types.
You raise an interesting point about scheduling and wait time. I don't know if it has been done, but a well organized event could have one side joining a server at a certain time, then the other side a half hour, or hour later, to engage at the "correct" historical time. Seems like something worth trying.