BoB II is not the buggy game it was - huge improvements!

[Seavee]

Th following is is a re-post from another thread but I am so excited by some of the recent and upcoming improvements for BoBII that I think this deserves its own thread.

For the record I have no affiliation whatsoever with the BoB II Dev Group (most of whom are unpaid volunteers). I just own and play the game and work for a Bank, not a software company or distributor.

I am not here to knock one sim over another. Among the flight sims I have are the entire IL2 FB/PF/Aces series, LOMAC, Falcon 4.0. MSCFS3 with the Firepower upgrade + WM's scenery and many other mods as well as Battle of Britain II Wings of Victory. All these have strengths, all have weaknesses but none are perfect.

BoB II Wings of Victory is about to have a new patch released - version 2.04. It should be out sometime NOT LATER THAN June, '06 - probably much sooner.

Several significant CTD bugs have been fixed and there will be user modifiable weather (sea, sky, clouds) eye candy parameters, SIGNIFICANTLY improved AI code, multiskin, etc. There will be new shaders and possibly per pixel lighting. The per pixel lighting is being worked on but may not make it in this next patch. Many of the bugs that were the cause of some of the negative reviews on its initial release have been fixed or substantially reduced.

There is a "test release" (Weather9) that is close to the final form of the upcoming 2.04 patch. Many testers have been using it now with excellent results.

The Weather9 release can be downloaded here: http://www.shockwaveproductions.com/bob_dev/Weather9.rar

You can read much more about the new updates here starting about page 80 of the thread: http://shockwaveproductions.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3678&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=1245

There are also a number of user mods that are already available as separate downloads that will likely be implemented in the 2.04 release as well. Excellent community user mods include improved terrain textures with satellite height-mapping of the actual terrain, sea fresnel, sound mods, bullet and tracer effects, pinups for the cockpits, radio chatter, etc. Many of the user mods can be found here: http://shockwaveproductions.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2840

The new height mapped terrain is here: http://shockwaveproductions.com/forum/v ... 32&start=0

Having played them all, I can tell you that my favorite by far is BoB II Wings of Victory. With the latest version and some of the free community mods it is extremely stable on my system. Yes, it has a limited number of different planes for you to fly (for the moment). Yes, it has no multiplayer (for now). Its existing strengths FAR outweigh these deficiencies and the future potential with this sim with its semi-open code is HUGE.

Do NOT be fooled by critics who will say the game is long in the tooth because some of its code is based on a game already a few years old (Rowan's BoB). There have already been significant updates with BoBII and it takes quite the PC to run it at the high eye candy settings. There is ALOT this game has in terms of eye candy that leaves other sims in the dust frankly. This game has very long legs as far as putting demands on your PC -even a relatively state of the art one like mine.

What this game has and is very very good because of it are:

1. Biggest sense of "immersion". It is hard to articulate what I mean here - I've heard it described as "soul" (try the game and you'll know what I mean). Some of the other flight sims out there now just feel too "sterile".

2. Extremely realistic flight models - landing and taking off in that Spit are truly difficult and seem very real.

3. The best implementation of force feedback effects for stalls, buffeting, bullet, impacts, etc.

4. A sense of "G force" that is modelled not just via FFE but visually at the same time. The game does this by implementing small changes to your POV within the cockpit in response to G effects. For example, in a negative G dive the POV will "float up" slightly - the way a pilot's body would try to float up against the straps in such a maneuver in response to the G forces. It adds greatly to the sensation of flight (as best as a PC can do it without a flight sim seat on moving hydraulic axes).

5. Excellent AI. It is very difficult to fight these AI in the higher difficulty settings. Almost as hard as some of the better human opponents I have come across in on-line play.

6. Beautiful terrain and almost photorealistic clouds, a very good sea effect. The sky hues, cloud effects and sea color will be able to be altered to a great degree by the user in the upcoming patch. See some screenshots here (scroll to the later pagees in that thread for the more recent effects): http://shockwaveproductions.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1732&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=450

NOTE: Some of the screenshots posted in the link above from Shockwave member RUMMY include the new shader and per-pixel lighting effects and are stunning (i.e, the ME109 over the water is one of his skins). The shaders WILL be in the upcoming patch, the per-pixel lighting may not quite yet be in it. If not it likely will be in the following one. The second pic below - the sideview of the spitfire is Rummy's shot with the shaders and per-pixel lighting.

7. Beautiful explosion effects - both on ground targets and watching shot down planes impact into the ground (you can see the "shockwave" effect as they impact into the ground).

8. Very good implementation of Tracker IR4 Pro with 6 DOF (this too adds greatly to the immersion).

9. Excellent campaign mode + the option for numerous "quick combat" scenarios. No frustrations due to palying against hackers who are cheating as is frequently found in on-line game play.

10. Huge formations of enemy and friendly fighter and bomber formation while still retaining good FPS.

11. Some parts of the game code are now semi-open so there is the possibility of significant community mods - similar to that available for MSCFS3 but not yet nearly as prolific (give it time).

All in all guys, if you like flight sims this game really is worth checking out. IMO it is the most underrated but truly excellent WWII flight sim out there at the moment.

A word of warning: The game right out of the retail box unpatched is very buggy. You MUST patch it and I'd strongly recommend using the "test release" already available as well as some of the excellent user mods.

[EURO_Snoopy]

Hi Seavee, we have had a section for WOV since it's announcement. It started well but as the months went by we stopped receiving anything on it.
We depend on people in the WOV community to keep us up to speed so thanks for this update.

This site may be dominated by material for the IL-2 Series but that is because we receive the most feedback from its community. If we could get a bit more input from WOV fans then we could help build support for WOV by having a bigger, better section for it. It's the same for all other sims, I would like to cover them all but IL-2 spreads me pretty thin on the ground on its own!

I would like to use your post on the main site, if you would like to build on it by including screenshots of the new developments or expand on a few things please let me know. Iwill take a long look at WOV this weekend and update the section.

Thanks for a great post!

[Seavee]

Hello EURO_Snoopy,

Thanks for the reply.

I posted here at Airwarfare because unfortunately not enough people (outside of the existing BoB II WoV community) seem to be aware of how good this game really is. The bulk of the existing community's web traffic is at the Shockwave Productions forums.

The future developments for BoBII will have an enormous involvment with the modding community (as opposed to major commercial backing/ sponsorship). Many people seem to enjoy modding and coding and tinkering with settings. The more people are aware of the great foundation this game already has, the better it can be.

I added more screenshots to the original post above.

[EURO_Snoopy]

I've posted your article complete with screenshots:
BOB: Wings Of Victory - Time for another look?

I also posted in Shockwave forums, reminding everyone we are here to help promote WOV

[Seavee]

Thanks EURO_Snoopy.

BoBII is again not a perfect game - none are. It is again, much improved from its first release.

This game does not have the financial backing of any major companies. Ongoing development is being doen by people who love it and are doing it basically as volunteers. Great work is being done by those folks.

If anyone already has the game I can't urge you enough to visit the links cited in my first post above and download for now at least:

1. Weather9 test update
2. The height mapped terrain

Instructions on installing them are at the links and/or readme files and its not at all difficult.

There are other great mods as well such as the radio chatter mods (makes the radio sounds more like 1940s era radio traffic), and the bullet and tracer mods.

For anyone that wants a change of pace (until Storm of War is released -who knows when that will be) it is well worth the relatively small investment to buy BoBII WoV today.

Flight sims generally need more publicity and competition and are the step child to big name FPS shooters. We all benefit from having several decent game titles out there.

[Luckyboy1]

To begin with, I'd like to thank Seavee for keeping us updated and Snoopy for seeing what I've so willfully ignored. I had taken a look at this game when Snoopy first brought it to our collective short attention span and I dismissed it based on the graphics alone because I felt they weren't up to par. After ignoring Snoopy's desire for us to give it another look I finally clicked the link at the top of the main page for this site and WOW!

Now, I don't know if the graphics were always this good and I just never saw a decent screen shot or if there's been major improvements, but the screen shots in the new post are much, much better and as a result, I have a few questions...

1) Are there any plans... I mean real plans to get a truly comprehensive mutliplayer capability in the game?

2) Semi-open code?... forgive my ignorance, but I hate open codes in anything that tries to be realistic in any way. My major concern is twofold. First, there is the concerns about cheats like you have in Cousin Billy's offerings and the other perceived problem is fracturing of an already small online community into parts so small and obscure as to scatter any meaningful online gaming community in this game so slim as to be irrelivent. True there is no multiplayer capability, but I won't buy it without that capability and it has to be comprehensive.

I've found AI planes no matter how expert you set them to beome predictable. They just don't make the same variable mistakes that online players make and yes, sometimes a mistake on their part online that is not anticipated puts them right on your six at 200 meters!

3) At highest eye candy settings, what kind of frame rate will you get? Please put this in context of a standard gaming computer and be specific please!


I am very, very attracted to the idea of true realism to the degree it can be reproduced on a PC. I have over 800 hours in a real P-51 and can tell you most who play IL-2 would never make it past starting the engine if it was done even close to correctly. With new players being overwelmed already by what it takes to get a grip on the learning curve, maybe a 3 step reaism setting setup would work best. Have novice, moderate and full nasty left wing dip of death at stall settings the host of the hopefully online version can choose.

Also, one last thing. It saddenned me to see that Seavee felt it was necessary to post a disclaimer about his involvement in the game. The guy so obviously has the best interests of flight simming at heart and that's where I guess the emotion of sadness comes in for me. We are so often paranoid and hard on each other for no reason whatsoever. We quite often cloak this hardening of the heart in supposed civil rules and order. Tryanny of reason continues to stunt the growth of serious flight simming. Why can't we just grow up and take posts at face value along with a little give for the fact that communicating like this is far from prefect? Why is it that the serious flight sim community likes to be so cliquish and paranoid?

Even if Seavee was trying to pull something on us here and he so obviously IS NOT trying to do so!... even if he was, can't you in that case simply blast apart his post with reason and facts rather than paranoid thoughts of motives and looking under rocks for skull duggery!?

[Seavee]

Hi Luckyboy1.

Thanks for the reply. I will try to answer your questions to the extent that I know and will ask Osram, Bader or Buddye (BoB II devs) to expand or answer those I dont know.

Before I do I'd like to expand on what you said about the seeming hostility from fans of one sim over another. I've never quite understood that. I like flying - and all things flight related - period. Some people take even constructive criticsim of "their" preferred game as some kind of personal afront - as if they were the authors of the game or something. I for one believe that ALL flight sims (and flight gamers) benefit from having alternatives. Some games do some things better than others. What’s the big deal or problem with simply recognizing that?

I have posted this because I frankly wanted others to know about it. I wanted ANOTHER decent flight game alternative to the games I already had now and found BoBII to be a good one. The things it does well it does very well. Does it still have issues - heck yes. Are they so great as to make the game unplayable or not worth trying? Heck NO.

BoBII costs about $40. I spend more than that in a week having lunch at fast food places. For me it was worth every penny given the amount of time I have enjoyed playing the sim. I have no reason to talk about this game other than to let others know of it. If some don't want to try the game fine - its no skin off my back. Shockwave does not seem to be making much off it as it is a pretty unkown title and unfortunately does not seem to have had huge commerical success.

BTW my posts are long because I type incredibly fast, almost as fast as I talk. Far faster than my secretary and she loves me for that. If anyone doubts that I am for real and have no involvement with Shockwave (other than as a game player), send me a PM and I will give you my work contact info here in Miami.

Now, on to my feeble attempt to answer your questions within my scope/ability to do so.

1. I asked about multi-player capability for this game at the Shockwave forums. In short - highly unlikely for the forseeable future unless someone with multi-player code writing ability is willing to volunteer some serious time. Basically all future development of BoBII will rely on unpaid volunteers. There are several very competent folks already doing this but they all have lives and full time jobs. The original BobI (which I never owned or played) had multiplayer but supposedly the multiplayer function was a POS. There are still so many things to fix or improve on with BoBII, with such limited resources that implementation of multiplayer is far out on the horizon.

2. "Semi-open code" - Perhaps I misstated here. What is open is the ability to try and tweak and modify terrain and many graphics options (i.e., bullet tracers, explosion effects etc), many of the sounds, and to some extent the flight model (i.e. less bounce effect on landing with the Spit). The core game code appears to be made available on a limited basis to anyone who seems willing/able to help in improvements and developments. Official updates however are coordinated and controlled by the BDG group. If anyone is a modder and wants to have a sense of involvement and accomplishment in the ongoing devlopment of a game - this is the one for you. I only wish I knew how to write or interpret C++ code...

3. AI planes. The AI behavior is much improved from original release and to me often seems as good as any sim out there. They seem to have MANY different maneuvers to either evade or attack you and these appear to be implemented randomly. Because many of the missions involve numerous planes, shooting down even one or two - without you being killed - is often difficult. There are still AI bugs being actively worked on, such as them not reacting when you sneak up and shoot down an entire flight with no attempt to evade. This seems to happen when they are RTB. It is actively being worked on by Buddye and will probably be fixed by the next patch after this one.

4. Eye candy settings and frame rate. I have a pretty powerful system but I run it at very high resolutions and Vsync enabled and 4X AA and 4X AF. Pentium 950 dual core 3.4Ghz CPU (overclocked to 3.7GHZ with a Zalman CPU cooler); 2GB Ram, twin NVIDIA 256MB 7800 GT OC cards in SLI; 37" Westinghouse LCD monitor running at 1920 X 1080 native resolution; Tracker IR4 Pro. I have most eye candy at MAX settings. With sunny skies I can average upper 30s to low 40s FPS with highs in the 60s. Clouds are the big FPS hitter with this game. At "poor" clouds I drop to low to mid 20s FPS. That would be too low in a multi-player game but in this single player game it is still quite smooth.

5. Realism and learning curve: Its actually pretty basic for anyone that already has experience with flight sims. There are the basic engine/cockpit controls clickable with a mouse or keyboard. The movies show startup and landing. While the key strokes or interactive cockpit are not so many (magnetos, fuel cocks, prop pitch, elevator trim, cockpit open, engine starter), it is still hard and realistic to land and take off. The new patch will include several items that are user adjustable for NOVICE settings. Interestingly, I read Oleg's comments about how complex Storm of War will be. Basically he said it is not practical making a game with many many things to have to switch on at takeoff for example that will only be used by 1% of the gamers and even then maybe just once and they will turn them off. Personally I don't need to adjust the fuel mixture to still feel immersed and have a great deal of fun flying.

Thanks again Luckyboy1 for your reply and comments.

[Luckyboy1]

I'd not give any of the "conspiracy fools" as I like to call them your business e-mail address. They're so paranoid they'll just say it's a CIA front company!

Now, I'm gonna add a bit of my own disclaimer here because I don't want you to feel I'm questioning your intent or your honesty or anything. In fact, you are my kind of flight simmer! Ok, with that, here comes the question.

Now, I realize that even volunteer efforts take money to run and sometimes serious money. I too want to support as many serious flight sim efforts, and while I apparently don't eat as well as you, for flight sims, I'll pay without a problem. Still, by your post you say it is completely supported by essentially volunteer labor. Are they paying still to the old developer for the rights to the game? I guess what I'm getting at is, where does the $40.00 cost come from?

I'm asking because I'm curious and feel in my gut there's a reasonable explaination on all this and I'd like to clip the paranoid types who might read this thread off at the pass, so that's why I'm asking and NHOT because I think you or anyone else is trying to pull something here!

[Seavee]

NONE of the following is official. It is gleaned from my reading of many of the Shockwave forum threads, reading various reviews at other websites as well as the game manual (starting on page 129 in particular).

BoBII was commercially released by Shockwave productions and GMX Media in the fall of 2005. Basically it was the culmination of several years of additional improvements made by fans of the original Battle of Britain game (BoB I) from Rowan Software on a "freeware basis". That group of people are known as the Battle of Britain Development Group (BDG). Here is a quote from page 129 of the game manual:

"Battle of Britain Development Group (BDG)
A talented freeware group who continued to develop Rowan's Battle of Britain for more than three years after its release. Battle of Britain II "Wings of Victory" development started with the excellent work of BDG."

Rowan software is apparently out of business. I assume Shockwave bought the old title which was pretty much dead (commercially) for a song. Based on the improvements that had already been done by the BDG it looks like Shockwave added some additional resources and then released the new game implementing all the BDG improvements plus some additional ones. The process seems similar to what was done with Falcon 4.0 - where a company eventually put all the fragmented pieces together of the original game to release Falcon 4.0 Allied Force.

Shockwave is still selling the game and appears to be providing at least forum and web resources for patches and continuing updates. I have no idea how much ADDITIONAL financial or manpower support they are putting in to this on an ongoing basis. It looks like Shockwave's "bread and butter" and by extension resource allocation is in the MSCFS and MS FS add-ons like Firepower and Wings of Power.

The only place I know BoBII is still for sale is direct from Shockwave and its $40 including shipping in North America. GMX Media seems to have fallen off the face of the earth. Perhaps BoBII can still be found on-line elsewhere or in boutique game stores.

It appears that most (perhaps all?) of the on-going and material improvement/development efforts of the game that I can see now are coming from the core members of the "BDG group" who as before are doing this because they love the game and love modding.

Part of the allure for me with this game is not just the gameplay itself but the mere fact that individual flight sim afficionados, not some big money studio/corporation are the ones behind much of the game's continuing success. I am not a modder but I would love to try to learn some terrain editing, skinning, etc. If I can contribute in some way to this game (aside from having bought it) I will because it gives me a personal connection to it - almost like a hobby. I suspect that is the motivation for many of the fans of this game and the BDG group as well.

For all its faults, MSCFS3 has an enormous fan base which has put out - free - huge improvements to the original game. Winding Man with his huge terrain changes is a good example and there are many others. In its patched and community modded form, as well as with the Firepower add-on (which does cost money), MSCFS3 is barely recognizable as the same game out of the retail box from M$. It is not as good as the iL2 series but some of the things it does are really quite good.

I see much of the same potential for community involvement and development with BoBII. I'm really getting into the sim personally and to the extent I can be part of that process I will try.

If 10, 20, 30 or even a hundred people (unlikely) buy this game as a result of my comments here it certainly is not going to make Shockwave rich. What it will do is let others know what a nice undiscovered gem this game can be and perhaps motivate them - as I was - to try and personally be a part of its on-going development.

EDIT: See my comments about this thread that I have put up at the Shockwave forums: http://shockwaveproductions.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=40496#40496

[Osram]

1) Are there any plans... I mean real plans to get a truly comprehensive mutliplayer capability in the game?

Seavee put it perfect:
"highly unlikely for the forseeable future unless someone with multi-player code writing ability is willing to volunteer some serious time."

It might change in the medium term, but right now we have no MP coder on board and the plates of the few coders we have are overflowing.

2) Semi-open code?... forgive my ignorance, but I hate open codes in anything that tries to be realistic in any way.

<rant>
Before working on BoB I worked on the fully open FlightGear. "Open source" is often seen as hobbyist, but some people that worked on it are a guy that works on sims at university as day job, a guy that does the gfx for the F18 etc sims of the American forces, a guy that had worked on a training driving sim (ma), a guy working on the Shuttle sim, and one of the main guys behind XML. Here are some "professional" things done with it:
- Research of icing of aircraft wings. IIRC, this was done by uiuc (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).
- A British university researched how to explore Mars. They suggested flying things will be better suited than a rover and used FlightGear to simulate flight on Mars.
- When the Wright flier's FM was measured in a big US wind tunnel, Aero Prof Michael Selig put it into FlightGear, thereby making it as realsitic as possible.
- I once demoed FlightGear at a fair and they were just using it for investigating the best colours to use to dis-ambiguate the taxiway from the runway at St Jose. Each day I came to the show I had to ask again which is which . In RL several airliner pilots got confused as well and landed on the taxi way. I don't think I need to say what will happen should someone land on it in less than ideal visibilty and there is another plane on the taxi way that the first guy overlooks ... FlightGear might well have saved lives by now directly or indirectly.
</rant>

The only real downside I see is indeed MultiPlayer cheats. But even there I think it would be enough to have that part of the code secret that handles the communication.
Also with some (semi) open sims, people say it is hard to find the good from the bad mods and takes time to install etc. We are putting the best user mods into our patches with permission, so the user only has to do one download / install to have "objectively" best features. Anything non realsitic - whether developed by us or outsiders - will aways be switchable in the options.

I've found AI planes no matter how expert you set them to beome predictable.

I once read about another flightsim that in order to be able to save tracks, the AI is indeed 100% deterministic. I don't know whether that is true. In BoB2, for example if an AI plane goes into a cloud it will then like a RL pilot choose a direction to fly by chance in order to shake you while you can't see it. The random number used is written out the track file.
Being an Offline Sim, Rowan and us put in a lot of effort into AI.

3) At highest eye candy settings, what kind of frame rate will you get? Please put this in context of a standard gaming computer and be specific please!

Sorry if I should seem evasive.
What you really want is on your computer to have great visual quality and a smooth gameplay.
One way we achieved this is by making frametimes be more "smooth". As a hypothetical example, if each even frame uses 10 Milliseconds and each odd one uses 30, you will see stutter although on average it is 20 Milliseconds, corresponding to 50 Hertz. The smoothening actually decreases fps, but decreases stutters / hiccups. Actually we had users that did not know about this tell us that - completely illogical to them - BoB2 seemed smoother than another sim, although it ran at a lower average fps. Obviously fps you will get depends on CPU and gfx card. I only really recommend BoB2 to people with more than 64MB video RAM.

BTW - my own newest desktop was bought for that fair I spoke about and is a GeForce 3 one :-/ and so most of the time I work on my newish laptop now. Of course it is a gaming / gfx oriented one and does not have an integarted video chip set.

I am very, very attracted to the idea of true realism to the degree it can be reproduced on a PC. I have over 800 hours in a real P-51

Wow

and can tell you most who play IL-2 would never make it past starting the engine if it was done even close to correctly.

BoB2 is harder and in some aspects more realistic. I have no warbird comparison, but I found landing the FW190 in IL2 about as hard as landing a hangglider. That's 180 km/h versus 30 km/h, restricted vision versus perfect one, way over 1000 hp versus 1 etc.

And starting the engine in BoB can teach the newbie quite a bit:
http://shockwaveproductions.com/forum/v ... php?t=2141

[Osram]

Some games do some things better than others. What’s the big deal or problem with simply recognizing that?

I have posted this because I frankly wanted others to know about it. I wanted ANOTHER decent flight game alternative to the games I already had now and found BoBII to be a good one.

Well said. There are hundreds or thousands of attributes of a flight sim and if you compare two sims, each is bound to have some advanatges versus the other. And some things (like open source ) are a matter of opinion. And with quite a few things our expectations are wrong and we see the realistic representation as unrealstic and vice versa. I have fallen for this as well and am reading about WWII aviation since my childhood now.

I will give you my work contact info here in Miami.

Purely out of interest - do you know "Wallaby Fly Ranch" near Orlando?

Basically all future development of BoBII will rely on unpaid volunteers.

Most of it, yes. There has been a poll in a German games magazine for the favorite genre and the top was FPS with 30% and flightsims got 0.3% !!:


http://www.pcaction.de/?menu=050202

(click on "Welches Spielgenre mögen Sie am liebsten? In Klammern je ein Beispiel für das Genre." - sorry, it is in German). And that includes civvie sims and modern combat sims, so the market for a hardcore WWII flgithsim is tiny. And actually from the few numbers I have, with only one or two excpetions namely MSFS and Falcon 4, that factor 100 is also not far off the factor of the sales. As games cost roughly the same, that means you get 1/100th of the money. It is clear that with that you can not make a full sim, with all planes of WWII, skins of all units, realistic landscape and buidlings everywhere, tons of historic research, each interesting mission that did happen etc etc. So IMO any flight sim (engine) to survive needs freeware people to help out. Even during the phase that we created BoB2 in a commercial environment, most active people were from the BDG or had done freeware for other sims and had givven hundreds or thousands of hours for free.

As a small look into the current flightsim industry, money ran out during development of Knights over Europe. There are a few good posts on fora (IIRC SimHQ) telling what happened. Anyway, the small core group left (IIRC only two people) then wanted to make a game in a completely different genre where making money is easier and then invest that back into KoE to finish it :-/.

It's a huge pain knowing what could be done and what noone is doing, since of course everyone has to work with very limited manpower. Game dev wages in Russia are 1/5th of Western Europe, but even that can not close the gap against other genres. It's telling that when I was at a UBI Soft booth about 8 months ago they did not mention a single flightsim and from what I gather it is now the same again at E3.

So, to a certain (IMHO big) amount, flight sim development HAS to be a hobby. But then it is a very interesting one, as you can have a look behind the scenes of game development, get to research historic stuff etc.

That would be too low in a multi-player game but in this single player game it is still quite smooth.

I doubt this is a online versus offline thing .

[Osram]

Still, by your post you say it is completely supported by essentially volunteer labor. Are they paying still to the old developer for the rights to the game? I guess what I'm getting at is, where does the $40.00 cost come from?

Of course Empire, who succeeded Rowan software would not allow for free people to sell things made from their code. I would guess BoB I contains at least 50 man years worth of work when it shipped, and it was the culmination of about 10 flight sims they did, so a lot of experience went into it. So Empire quite rightly wants their share of the cake.

Also "support" is not initial development - some on the team that created BoB2 did it for free, even paying things like maps and scanning them on large professional scanners themselves, others did not. Also Scott, the boss of Shockwave works on flightsims 100%, IOW has no other means to support him and has a family. And I can tell you Oleg's family is not the only one that have to live humbly because their husband/father makes flightsims. Also a lot of the cost of making a game arises before it ships - so you somehow have to finance it, either with money from the previous product or through a publisher that of course then wants a bigger share or through say a bank that wants their money back with interest.

BTW, speaking about the games industry as whole, 85% of games make no profit! (I hope profit is the right word - I mean whether in the end you paid more or got more). And every comapny can have bad luck and say near the end of their developmentn hear of two other companies doing the same kind of game and shipping earlier. So at least to some extend, the 15% have to pay for the rest as well. In this respect it is similar to the movie industry.

[Seavee]

Osram makes a very good point about flight sims generally.

Flight sims are competing with other game genres (I always hated that word - "genre") for corporate/studio/promotion resources - primarily Role Playing Games and First Person Shooters. Those game types have HUGE existing and potential audience bases - translation: $$$$$.

Most major companies will be loathe to allocate significant resources to development and promotion of a game type with a relatively small fan base. As much as I like flight sims, I recognize it is not a mass audience attraction.

As Osram told me in a PM, there is a reason that there are virtually no major studios (EA, etc) or game developers in the West working on new WWII flight sims.

There is a reason why there have been virtually no new decent joystick/controllers produced in a while now.

Why is it that we have no real alternative to Tracker IR4 Pro (a great product which I have and find to be an essential for flight sims)?

Rather than petty bickering about which of our preferred games is "better" or "worse", the flight sim community at large would ALL benefit by supporting - in whatever way we can - the few existing decent titles that exist.

When BoB Storm of War is eventually released - which I am REALLY REALLY looking forward to - there will no doubt be some that rip off counterfeit versions of it. Those dishonest, shortsighted fools need to look in the mirror and recognize that the ones they are really robbing is themselves - in the form of even less resources to continue to develop this great game type we all love.

[Seavee]

Luckyboy1,

I talked a little about the AI in this game.

In my first post above, I mentioned a "pre version 2.04 patch" test/beta release called WEATHER9. The latest test/beta release is now called MLABELS5. BoBII Dev BUDDYE and others have been working on major improvements to the AI behavior. Most of the improvements will be incorporated in the final 2.04 patch (due by or before June 30th '06) and most are are already available in the latest beta test release - MLABELS5.

Following is an excerpt from BADER's comments at the Shockwave forums specifically commenting about the AI behavior in the latest "test release" MLABELS5. His comments illustrate very well how good the AI in this game can be. First he ran the mission using the last official patch version 2.03 and then ran it again using the test/beta MLABELS5. Following are Bader's excerpted comments:

Stock 2.03 tests, from the perspective of the lead He111. Hit F1 immediately and then minus and watch the show.
1) All 12 Hurricanes of No242 close from head on (in line abreast), pass underneath and carry straight on ignoring the bombers. A handful of Messerschmitts follow.
2) 6 Hurricanes of 242 close from head on in line abreast (not sure where the rest got to, wasn't looking carefully enough) they carry straight on past the bombers. I imagine that the rest engaged, as they weren't in the group heading into the far distance.
3) 12 Hurricanes come through in line abreast. 9 break as they pass the Heinkels and 3 carry on.
4) same thing, though this time they seem to be at the same height as the Heinkels.
5) the 12 Hurricanes are organised as 3 and 9 this time and all break on passing the Heinkels, but the two sub-formations are behaving independently.
6) the 12 Hurricanes are organised as 2 and 10, and then six (of the 10) break as they pass the Heinkels. The remaining 2 and 4 carry straight on.
7) a pair of Hurricanes are slightly above 10 in line abreast. 2 (of the ten) carry straight on past the bombers, but all the others break as they pass them Heinkels.
8 ) a pair of Hurricanes slightly lag the others and seven carry on, but five break and attack on passing the Heinkels.


Now for MLabels5
1) All 12 Hurricanes come through as one formation in line abreast, this time at the same height as the Heinkels (much of the time they are just a fraction below the height of the lead bomber), and they break as they pass and engage. When they do catch up, they perform some excellent slashing attacks in line astern. RAF Fighting Area Attacks are used as they would have been. Very nice.
2) exactly the same, though there are two slightly staggered lines of six this time, as if they are now in Flight formation. Engage successfully. Start code is SELECT.
3) One Hurricane dives for the deck (DISENGAGED) immediately in the distance, as if in trouble. The remaining 11 come in at the same height as the Heinkels, break as they pass and attack from the rear.
4) pretty much the same as 3 except that a pair of Hurricanes break this time and seem to leg it. But once I have seen the remainder break and attack, I observe that this was a feint and that they are coming in from the other side of the formation. Clever buggers!
5) Same as 1)
6) That's enough..


Wow. What can I say? There is variation in:-
1) the attack formation
2) the attacking height
3) the number of aircraft that engage
4) the use of feints by sub-formations.

This AI is deeply impressive. The Rowan coders were mad, and brilliant.

I think we are seeing the Rowan 'proportionate response' system at work. It's utterly brilliant and very unpredictable. It's the reason that it took so long to make the new Historic Missions- the AI has a mind of its own. It's also the key to why BoB combat is so unique. As someone once said- Each mission is like a snowflake- it never repeats. And it's Rowan's AI that makes it the way it is. Warts and all...


BADER's full post within the test release thread is here: http://shockwaveproductions.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3678&start=1395

[Seavee]

Buddye, one of the BoB devs and a moderator at Shockwave posted this list of what will be in 2.04. It is not yet a complete list. A fair amount of this is in the test releases already available (I guess most of problem fixes at least and some of the new features but not the best ones):

"This list is not complete but it is all we have for now:

Problem Fixed for 2.04
1. BF110 engine performance problem.
2. After burner speed up problem for Bombers.
3. Landing gear down problem, on Low Level Attack Mission.
4. Player engine sound stopping
5. Fixed CTD on Campaign photo
6. Fighter bailout changes to increase bailouts. Note: BOB_FIGHTERFIX=ON in BDG.txt
7. AI smoothing and fixing strange/odd maneuvers. Added transition maneuver to SimpleACM and ManualACM processes.
8. BF110 engine going out of sync when going to Manual-AutoPilot-Manual.
9. Strengthened mid-air collision between player and AI A/C so it is much more difficult for the player to fly back to base.
10. Death Warp/Speed up fixed.
11. After player bail out, players A/C now heads to the ground rather that looking like it was on autopilot.
12. Prevented AI A/C from doing vertical maneuvers when energy level is low and the AI A/C cannot do the maneuver properly.
13. Add an option based on a random number for a fighter/Ju87 to blowup when it has significant engine damage (by user request to have A/C blow up sometimes). Note: BOB_FIGHTERFIX=ON in Bdg.txt.
14. The Ju87 was added to the fighters and with significant engine damage they will either blowup, crash, or bailout. The bailout will only occur if the A/C canopy has not been damaged. If the canopy is damaged the A/C will crash and you hear a Texas death yell. Note: BOB_FIGHTERFIX=ON in BDG.txt.
15. Changed the RAF player’s A/C to display MPH on the info line by user request.
16. Deleted Rolling fire ball effect from A/C explosions.
17. Fixed the Novice JU87 takeoff problem (crashed or tipped over)
18. Fixed Novice Wheel Rolling problem (except tail wheel)
19. Converted to MPH from Knots for imperial units in Spit and Hurri gauge
20. Fixed Airspeed Cal for both Spit and Hurri
21. Boost Gauge in both Hurri and Spit to work more correctly
22. Fixed a second CTD when using Photo in Campaign
23. Add RenderD3D9.cpp CTD prevention code.
24. Fixed CTD in JimCol.cpp that occurred mostly in Replay
25. Fixed the 1-on-1 “Engage” problem
26. Osram helped me fix a Fileman CTD (note may not be the last one)
27. Osram fixed the “lost device” CTD (I called the rerun CTD)
28. Fixed the jittery and un-natural movements for both the DISENGAGE and the SCREWYOUGUYSIAMGOINGHOME SimpleACM maneuvers.
29. Changes developed for the ACM file to permit easier landing for the 109 (not sure if included or used change required)


New Capabilites for 2.04. (A New feature for our Kids/Novice users is Novice AI, Novice Bullets, Novice AI Speed control, and Novice larger Targets which is used with Novice FM). These features are all individually selectable in the BDG.txt and should allow our kids/grandkids to better enjoy BobII at a Novice/Jr level.

1. New BDG.Txt Switch for Novice_Stronger_Bullits. The bullets are about 20% stronger for those who want to get on with it (like when I test) and so our Kids/Novice users can shoot down the AI easier and have more fun until seasoned.
2. New BDG.Txt for Collision_Avoidance. Added collision avoidance for player (only) to prevent most collisions with AI A/C. Very fast collisions (especially headon) may still occur as AI A/C may skid in making very quick maneuver and not get out of the way..
3. New BDG.Txt for Warp/Jump analysis/debug (Jump_Test_Tool_Percent_X)
4. New BDG.Txt for Novice_AI. This give the Kids/Novice user a less aggressive but hopefully challenging subset of the AI Maneuvres so our they can better enjoy BobII, it will be easier, and they can have more fun until seasoned.
5. New BDG.Txt for Maneuvre_Testing (Maneuvre_Testing). This will permit the coder to get data for debug analysis concerning AI and FM issues/problems..
6. New BDG.Txt for Novice_AI_Airspeed_Fraction. This will control the AI speed as a fraction of 100% (like set to .75 for a 25% speed reduction). You can then slow down the AI for our Kids/Novice users to better enjoy BOBII until seasoned.
7. New BDG.Txt for Novice_Target_Size. This increase the AI target size for the Kids/Novice users so they can get easier kills.
8. Surprise
9. Surprise
10. New Multi-Skin Capability (Osram and Bader’s words)
11. New selectable weather, water, and sky via the BDG.txt
12. Add a BDG.txt parameter (BF109_Slats_Open_Close_Sounds). It simulates the sound of the 109 slats opening and closing. Note: the default is OFF"