Hi everyone,
I have recently had a couple of requests from people to "integrate SEOW with Zuti's Moving Dogfight Server technology", and I thought that it would be good to start a discussion thread where we can throw the ideas back and forth about such an integration might potentially work, and what positives/negatives it may offer.
Let me say right now that I have not agreed to do the integration. This has nothing at all to do with whether I like/dislike Zuti's mod (I think the general idea is great and will give a lot of people huge fun) or DF servers in general. There are several reasons for my position:
1. I am unfamiliar with standard dogfight mission building, and totally unfamiliar with Zuti's mod architecture.
2. I have limited time/energy for major SEOW development.
3. I do not understand what people want/expect from such an integration.
So I will get the ball rolling by talking about some of the essential features of SEOW now that might be difficult to communicate to a DF environment.
SEOW presents a detailed environment that is very literal. For the most part, each gun or plane or vehicle is tracked individually, mission by mission. Even vehicle columns can be partially destroyed, but still persist from mission to mission in their correct partially destroyed state. Supplies are tracked to the litre for each individual unit. This makes sense, mission after mission, and allows you to monitor each unit as it progresses through the battle, and to manage your forces much as an actual WW2 commander would have done. I call this battlefield integrity. Furthermore, as in historical actions, planning was paramount and real-time communication was poor (by modern standards), so pilots generally flew to orders and had "one shot" at the mission.
Now, consider a DF world. Anyone, please correct me if I make any wrong statements. In this world, the battlefield is populated by ground/sea objects and a roster of aircraft. Once destroyed, aircraft and objects respawn as many times as allowed, possibly aggregating kill numbers far exceeding the initial numbers on the ground and in the air. This allows pilots to respawn after dying, time and time again, so they can continue in the mission. This is a very common concept for online gaming: essentially both sides throw as many reinforcements into the battle as they are allowed, until one side runs out and the other side triumphs. Everyone stays in the game as long as possible, regardless of performance, maximizing involvement.
On the face of it, these systems seem to have different concepts and architectures. Personally I'd like to see a mode of gameplay where the mission commences with a FIXED set of ground/sea/air objects and humans can join/leave at any time and occupy/release any of the FIXED slots. This means no respawns of aircraft or tanks etc, but just joining any existing planes as they fly. That preserves the strategic balance/imbalance of each individual mission, preserves the "one shot" approach, and preserves the interesting detailed unit tracking that is so important to campaign immersion (as opposed to mission immersion). Of course, I don't think our game supports this kind of "hot-spawning", unfortunately.
So, if the MDS is the next best thing on the table, how could it work with SEOW? Building a MDS-style mission from a SEOW mission should be relatively easy, but how would we update the SEOW battle map with the results of the MDS dogfight, and retain SEOW battlefield integrity? Is battlefield integrity even important in this world? What is the point of plotting missions if the human pilots get no waypoint directions? What, really, is the motive for wanting an integration of the two systems? And who is going to volunteer their time to help build it?
Over to you...
Cheers,
4Shades
A Discussion: MDS and SEOW
Moderator: SEOW Developers
-
IV/JG7_4Shades
- Posts: 2210
- Joined: Mon 08 Jan 2007 11:10 pm
- Location: Perth, Western Australia
A Discussion: MDS and SEOW
IV/JG7_4Shades
SEOW Developer
SEOW Developer
-
22GCT_Gross
- Posts: 302
- Joined: Fri 13 Apr 2007 1:13 pm
- Location: Italy
hello Shades,
the only interesting thing I found in a MDF environment is building a persistent campaign; this would allow a big number of players to join.
However, since we have 128 slots available in the co-op environment, this is no longer a must.
I played a persistent DF campaigns on ADWAR some years ago. One hour mission, one life a mission (it's a DedicatedServerController feature).
Switching such a kind of campaign on MDF environment needs of someone to plan the air and ground movements. This is the problem into a dinamic campaign. The more brilliant way to solve it ever seen is the BADC system (AW, IL2WAR etc etc.), a semi-automatic system; anyway a mission generator is always needed if you like to keep the server and the campaign up 24/7 (e.g. Lowengrin).
That's why what we could think about is only something different from Scorched Earth, simply an upgrade of ADWAR or Lowengrin, that's absolutely different from Scorched Earth.
the only interesting thing I found in a MDF environment is building a persistent campaign; this would allow a big number of players to join.
However, since we have 128 slots available in the co-op environment, this is no longer a must.
I played a persistent DF campaigns on ADWAR some years ago. One hour mission, one life a mission (it's a DedicatedServerController feature).
Switching such a kind of campaign on MDF environment needs of someone to plan the air and ground movements. This is the problem into a dinamic campaign. The more brilliant way to solve it ever seen is the BADC system (AW, IL2WAR etc etc.), a semi-automatic system; anyway a mission generator is always needed if you like to keep the server and the campaign up 24/7 (e.g. Lowengrin).
That's why what we could think about is only something different from Scorched Earth, simply an upgrade of ADWAR or Lowengrin, that's absolutely different from Scorched Earth.
22GCT_Gross
-
II/JG7_Warg
- Posts: 37
- Joined: Fri 12 Jan 2007 5:31 am
Hi 4Shades,
Years ago, I used to be fairly proficient at building dogfight templates. It was essentially the placement of static objects on a map for targets / objectives and making available aircraft types for flying in dogfight modes and adding some scripting. I'm am totally unfamiliar with the moving dogfight concept. I'm assuming that it's something akin to taking a fully plotted co-op mission and allowing players to spawn into at any particular time whilst it's running.
How would this integrate with SE? I have reservations about what is possible and concern about the work involved in programming such a thing. For instance, is it possible to:
1. Use a standard dogfight template as the basis to start things. I.e. FMB to place all the fixed / stationary objects, targets & objectives. Use some form of scripting to set or determine when the objectives are reached.
2. Set a period of time for dogfight mission to run for. I.e. The dogfight runs for the nominated time or until the objectives are reached.
3. In the building of the template / mission use the SE planning tools to plot AI air, land and sea missions that occur whilst participants are in the dogfight. Or should this be done in the FMB?
4. Possibilities of keeping a record of what has actually happened over that period of time (statistics) and tracking when dogfight objectives have been reached to ensure mission shuts down. In past used Daemon scripting for this.
5. Mission builders will basically need to plot and recreate an air, land and sea battle environment over the length of the dogfight mission. How many of you have accurately plotted a battle in details for a number of hours? This could involve a fair amount of work, upredictable in fps rates and unpredictable impact of the AI as the mission progresses in length.
6. Is it possible to link industrials to the number and type of new aircraft available for players to spawn into? I.e. Destroying a factory during the dogfight, curtails the production of aircraft that becomes available for player use during the dogfight. I.e. Penalise players for wastage, rare, costly and advanced are not readilly available.
7. Can the SE map be updated with intelligence whilst the dogfight is running?
8. Theoretically, could use historic battles as guides to set plots. For instance, using the battle of Midway as an example, is a wealth of documentation to plot AI air, land and ship movements over a set period of time. Big undertaking though and I clearly have reservations on whether most of the features we come to expect from SE would still be possible.
9. Cannot see longterm campaigns from this. Only recreation of specific battles or incidents whose conclusions are are determined by reaching a limited set of objectives.
Thats me done for now. I suspect you'll point out whats possible and what is in the realms of fantasy. I'm sure that they'll be technical aspects that I've not considered and probably not possible, given the workload involved.
Regards,
Warg
Years ago, I used to be fairly proficient at building dogfight templates. It was essentially the placement of static objects on a map for targets / objectives and making available aircraft types for flying in dogfight modes and adding some scripting. I'm am totally unfamiliar with the moving dogfight concept. I'm assuming that it's something akin to taking a fully plotted co-op mission and allowing players to spawn into at any particular time whilst it's running.
How would this integrate with SE? I have reservations about what is possible and concern about the work involved in programming such a thing. For instance, is it possible to:
1. Use a standard dogfight template as the basis to start things. I.e. FMB to place all the fixed / stationary objects, targets & objectives. Use some form of scripting to set or determine when the objectives are reached.
2. Set a period of time for dogfight mission to run for. I.e. The dogfight runs for the nominated time or until the objectives are reached.
3. In the building of the template / mission use the SE planning tools to plot AI air, land and sea missions that occur whilst participants are in the dogfight. Or should this be done in the FMB?
4. Possibilities of keeping a record of what has actually happened over that period of time (statistics) and tracking when dogfight objectives have been reached to ensure mission shuts down. In past used Daemon scripting for this.
5. Mission builders will basically need to plot and recreate an air, land and sea battle environment over the length of the dogfight mission. How many of you have accurately plotted a battle in details for a number of hours? This could involve a fair amount of work, upredictable in fps rates and unpredictable impact of the AI as the mission progresses in length.
6. Is it possible to link industrials to the number and type of new aircraft available for players to spawn into? I.e. Destroying a factory during the dogfight, curtails the production of aircraft that becomes available for player use during the dogfight. I.e. Penalise players for wastage, rare, costly and advanced are not readilly available.
7. Can the SE map be updated with intelligence whilst the dogfight is running?
8. Theoretically, could use historic battles as guides to set plots. For instance, using the battle of Midway as an example, is a wealth of documentation to plot AI air, land and ship movements over a set period of time. Big undertaking though and I clearly have reservations on whether most of the features we come to expect from SE would still be possible.
9. Cannot see longterm campaigns from this. Only recreation of specific battles or incidents whose conclusions are are determined by reaching a limited set of objectives.
Thats me done for now. I suspect you'll point out whats possible and what is in the realms of fantasy. I'm sure that they'll be technical aspects that I've not considered and probably not possible, given the workload involved.
Regards,
Warg
Our squadron is hosting and running a server with the MDF, thanks to LW/StG10_Frank and LW/KG10_Teasy who is the template builder.
The only interesting thing of running a SEOW style campaign using the MDF is that you can respawn as many times as you want and so change the pilots task in few minutes.
One feature that the MDF has is the permanent frontline update.
If you hold the knee map on, you can see how the frontline moves forward or backward as the units move or are defeated. This way, you know exactly where the next battle will happen or where the enemy ships are moving to.
If the Mission Planner can be used for this kind of dogfight rooms, maybe long lasting missions can be scheduled. If you let a server running for half a day, where pilots can join when available, they can run missions according the map status when they come in. See the Slot map: A task force can sail for hours approaching a specified area or searching for an enemy fleet. If you are lucky, maybe you can take off and find the enemy fleet and catch them surprisingly (no enemy pilots on the carrier) and attack the ships, or maybe they were returning from a patrol or whatever.
On the ground, the units can move for one hour or more making it difficult to find as they won't be in a one hour radius range from the last position known. The far they move, the difficult will be to protect and to resupply. But they will be exposed for longer time when detected.
Maybe there is a way to know what unit is under attack. As the in flight map shows you how the frontline moves as it traces the position of the advancing units (if all the enemy units are destroyed, the frontline changes completely) maybe there is a way to know periodically where the units are or at least wich has been destroyed so the commander can track them and give the proper orders to the pilots in real time.
Currently, the server runs for two or three hours the same map. Ships and ground units have long routes. I've seen up to 15 pilots flying the server without problem, and is not a powerfull one. No AI flights planned yet. Would be interesting to know the data tracking.
ABout the respawning sea/ground units, this option is not enabled in our server. There are a couple of carriers totally operative (pilots can grab one of the carreir based planes and cover the fleet). Carriers can be and already are attacked by enemy torpedo or dive bombers and can be destroyed. Once they are gone, they won't respawn and all the carrier based planes become unavailable as the "sea-base" is no more operative.
Same happens with the tanks. Last week some red tanks were approaching a blue base. Flak shooted on them but unsuccessfully. Planes took off and killed them after several attacks. Immediately the frontline moved back.
I can ask Teasy about the template building if interested.
Anyway, the SEOW style MDF would be good if the dogfight room is open just for interested pilots and squadrons, knowing whats going on. Leaving such a server open as any of the Hyperlobby ones, won't work. Every pilot must be inmersed in the SEOW playing style wich is totally different as any DF room.
Maybe we can try to create a mission using the MP and launch it via MDF and see what happens. I don't know if this is possible as I don't know how the mission is planned, but will talk to Teasy.
I believe the pilot's tracking would be comfusing as the eventlog registers every time the pilot seats in a plane, but maybe not.
Will let you know.
S!
The only interesting thing of running a SEOW style campaign using the MDF is that you can respawn as many times as you want and so change the pilots task in few minutes.
One feature that the MDF has is the permanent frontline update.
If you hold the knee map on, you can see how the frontline moves forward or backward as the units move or are defeated. This way, you know exactly where the next battle will happen or where the enemy ships are moving to.
If the Mission Planner can be used for this kind of dogfight rooms, maybe long lasting missions can be scheduled. If you let a server running for half a day, where pilots can join when available, they can run missions according the map status when they come in. See the Slot map: A task force can sail for hours approaching a specified area or searching for an enemy fleet. If you are lucky, maybe you can take off and find the enemy fleet and catch them surprisingly (no enemy pilots on the carrier) and attack the ships, or maybe they were returning from a patrol or whatever.
On the ground, the units can move for one hour or more making it difficult to find as they won't be in a one hour radius range from the last position known. The far they move, the difficult will be to protect and to resupply. But they will be exposed for longer time when detected.
Maybe there is a way to know what unit is under attack. As the in flight map shows you how the frontline moves as it traces the position of the advancing units (if all the enemy units are destroyed, the frontline changes completely) maybe there is a way to know periodically where the units are or at least wich has been destroyed so the commander can track them and give the proper orders to the pilots in real time.
Currently, the server runs for two or three hours the same map. Ships and ground units have long routes. I've seen up to 15 pilots flying the server without problem, and is not a powerfull one. No AI flights planned yet. Would be interesting to know the data tracking.
ABout the respawning sea/ground units, this option is not enabled in our server. There are a couple of carriers totally operative (pilots can grab one of the carreir based planes and cover the fleet). Carriers can be and already are attacked by enemy torpedo or dive bombers and can be destroyed. Once they are gone, they won't respawn and all the carrier based planes become unavailable as the "sea-base" is no more operative.
Same happens with the tanks. Last week some red tanks were approaching a blue base. Flak shooted on them but unsuccessfully. Planes took off and killed them after several attacks. Immediately the frontline moved back.
I can ask Teasy about the template building if interested.
Anyway, the SEOW style MDF would be good if the dogfight room is open just for interested pilots and squadrons, knowing whats going on. Leaving such a server open as any of the Hyperlobby ones, won't work. Every pilot must be inmersed in the SEOW playing style wich is totally different as any DF room.
Maybe we can try to create a mission using the MP and launch it via MDF and see what happens. I don't know if this is possible as I don't know how the mission is planned, but will talk to Teasy.
I believe the pilot's tracking would be comfusing as the eventlog registers every time the pilot seats in a plane, but maybe not.
Will let you know.
S!
When you join a DF room, you have to choose a base where to take off from, so you know where the enemy bases are and where the enemy planes are based at, because there is a number beside each field.
Same happens with the carriers, you can see where she is and how many planes are based in.
I believe this doesn't fit the SEOW gaming spirit...
Same happens with the carriers, you can see where she is and how many planes are based in.
I believe this doesn't fit the SEOW gaming spirit...
-
242Sqn_Chap
- Posts: 30
- Joined: Tue 01 Jan 2008 9:49 am
Zuti is going to release a new version of MDS very soon (within a few days). He added in ship damage logging and they already had an implimentation of radar (but I think what we did gave them some more ideas.)
I didn't ever say that SEOW would work with this or be suitable, but they seemed keen to offer support (so I thought it best to let them make it loosely parallel anyway, they regard SEOW as the ultimate in recreation.(which it of course is. Emulation is flattery !)
I have really not looked at how similar MDF and CO-OP actually is. The MDF mission file is basically a co-op mission with DF additons (so its very similar).
I love SEOW just the way it is.
An obvious sticking point would be the way that aircraft losses are tracked. (although if players had a list of planes and squadrons that they had to select..it would probably work. So you could 'experimentaly' fudge it.)
Spawning into missions at any time is of course a nice idea, but its consequence may be to 'dumb down' the way that people approach missions.
Also the way that you select bases in DF is really not very realistic. (But Zuti could alter the GUI so you pick a side before seeing bases which would solve that).
But those are all things that Zuti is capable of solving or getting around. MDF is an extremely clever bit of programming and Zuti really has taken it a long way.
There is no expectation for you to do anything Shades.
But I think if the will was there, Zuti would 'probably' be prepared to write almost anything required into MDF if SEOW so desired it !.
Thats quite an interesting position to be in I think.
I didn't ever say that SEOW would work with this or be suitable, but they seemed keen to offer support (so I thought it best to let them make it loosely parallel anyway, they regard SEOW as the ultimate in recreation.(which it of course is. Emulation is flattery !)
I have really not looked at how similar MDF and CO-OP actually is. The MDF mission file is basically a co-op mission with DF additons (so its very similar).
I love SEOW just the way it is.
An obvious sticking point would be the way that aircraft losses are tracked. (although if players had a list of planes and squadrons that they had to select..it would probably work. So you could 'experimentaly' fudge it.)
Spawning into missions at any time is of course a nice idea, but its consequence may be to 'dumb down' the way that people approach missions.
Also the way that you select bases in DF is really not very realistic. (But Zuti could alter the GUI so you pick a side before seeing bases which would solve that).
But those are all things that Zuti is capable of solving or getting around. MDF is an extremely clever bit of programming and Zuti really has taken it a long way.
There is no expectation for you to do anything Shades.
But I think if the will was there, Zuti would 'probably' be prepared to write almost anything required into MDF if SEOW so desired it !.
Thats quite an interesting position to be in I think.
Actually, I wouldn't ask him to do anything with MDF, for what it is intended, it's perfect. But maybe it's time for him to make the next step, beyond and above MDF242Sqn_Chap wrote:.
But I think if the will was there, Zuti would 'probably' be prepared to write almost anything required into MDF if SEOW so desired it !.
With his talent, he could perhaps solve the possibility to join an ongoing co-op mission. This would be great for all kind of co-op missions, not only SEOW. It would benefit SEOW by allowing more flexibiliy of taking players en-route to target, and alleviate some of the inevitable launch problems (people accidentally disconnect etc.)As we all know, a co-op misison starts with taking slots, then when all ready, we suddenly see the view from our cockpit and we immediately have view control (can look left, right, familiarizing ourselves with the situation), and when the yellow countdown is finished, it's a go, we can make control inputs and everything starts to move. This process works well for in-flight starts as well.
Now, joining a co-op mission in-between shouldn't be much different from being part in the launch for an in-flight slot. The differences are
- late-comers should be able to join a server/host with an ongoing co-op misison (no big deal, dedicated co-op servers work that way already)
- on the slot selection, it should be visible, which AI aircraft is still flyable (not crashed) and selectable by a late-comer human pilot
- if the late-comer pilot selects an aircraft, he should not be able to change anything in the a/c configuration - it should remain as it was at the start of the mission
- if the late-comer pilot presses Fly, he immediately gets into the view of the mission and a countdown of minimum 10-15 seconds. He should have view control, but no other control input, and during this time, the aircraft is already moving, controlled by AI
- after the countdown, he would be able to put in other control inputs, taking over from the AI pilot or gunner.
This would provide an interesting possibility that players could actually take part longer in SEOW missions. If you were just shot down too early, you can re-join and take part of the remaining battle as well. If the eventlog would mark the joining of the mission clearly in the same way as it does in the beginning of the mission, the SEOW engine could handle this (maybe tracking the 2 flights by the same pilot as 2 separate pilots, since there are 2 different aircrafts flown by the same callsign).
I wouldn't say this was a breakthrough for SEOW, but certainly it would be a breakthrough for ordinary co-op missions. and alleviate the launch/disconnect problems with SEOW for sure. Got disconnected during flight? Reconnect and take another slot from the AI and continue the fight. Your disconnected aircraft is a write-off due to technical malfunction, but you can continue the fun with your friends in another slot - wouldn't that be great?
Fully automatic, dedicated COOP server controller.
-
IV/JG7_4Shades
- Posts: 2210
- Joined: Mon 08 Jan 2007 11:10 pm
- Location: Perth, Western Australia
-
II/JG54_Emil
- Posts: 272
- Joined: Thu 07 May 2009 10:45 am
I guess I haven´t been here for a while to comment on this.
4 points make the MDS mod attractive for SEOW
1. latecomers can join anytime
2. one can Refuel / Ream / Repair
3. Radar
4. scout-planes
on 1. latecomers can join anytime:
So what I think is this:
It has some features that make the SEOW life a bit easier and it bears the danger of making it more arkadish.
It is possible to make the whole mission run as a dedicated server untill the time is up.
Of course the event.log looks a bit different then.
4 points make the MDS mod attractive for SEOW
1. latecomers can join anytime
2. one can Refuel / Ream / Repair
3. Radar
4. scout-planes
on 1. latecomers can join anytime:
on 2. Refuel / Ream / Repair:With MDS 1.12 you can set the number of specific planes on a specific airfield with specific loadouts. All just like in a Coop right now.
One can select destruction of static planes to be removed from the available planes at that airfiled.
A base can be captured during the mission and the opposing team can use the base to spawn and to refuel / rearm / repair
Result:
-no long waiting untill everyone is in.
-people that are one hour late can still join the mission
-one can pick a second plane untill all planes are used up
on 3. and 4 Radar and scout-planes:With MDS 1.12 you can allow Refuel / Rearm / Repair (=RRR) if you wish.
RRR can be set individually, meaning that you can set the time in seconds for rearming of 1 MG/Cannon, 1 Bombs/Torps/FT, 1 Rocket or a complete loadout change takes to be finished.
Same goes for refuel.
Same goes for repair. Here you can set the times to repair engines, Control Cable, Flaps, Cockpit, MG/Cannons, Fueltank.
Also you can lock the RRR function to the loadout that is available at the airfield.
You can make the RRR dependent on structure that are functional at the base. Meaning if someone shot up the fuel tanks and barrels at the base no Refueling is possible. If the workshop has been bombed than no repairing is possible and reaming is then onl ypossible if the are any ammoboxes around.
Result:
- if the plane is still somewhat functional it can be RRRed to go on a new run.
We are beta testing 1.13 at Ultrapack site at the moment and ZUTI is trying to make MDS Coop compatible.Radars work when placed within the Homebase Circle.
At the homebase one can set the distance of the Radar.
One can set the refresh inteval of the Radar.
Big Ships Small Ships and Scouts-Planes can function as Radars. For these here you can set the minimum and maximum scan altitude a the scan range.
Scout planes can also detect ground troops depending on the scan-angle one assigns.
Also the icons(Aicraft/Rockets/Homebase/Target/etc.) on the minimap can be set individualy(color(white/blue/red)).
You can always decide if you want this features on or off and to which degree you want it realistic
Result:
- one has Radar in the mission already
- one adjusts the realismlevel of this feature
So what I think is this:
It has some features that make the SEOW life a bit easier and it bears the danger of making it more arkadish.
It is possible to make the whole mission run as a dedicated server untill the time is up.
Of course the event.log looks a bit different then.
That's why making it pssible to join a co-op missions would be a safer bet.II/JG54_Emil wrote:
So what I think is this:
It has some features that make the SEOW life a bit easier and it bears the danger of making it more arkadish.
In the current MDS, there is a lot of freedom when to spawn, where to spawn and where to go from there. Joining a co-op in progress would only allow entering on a slot currently controlled by AI, and usually AI is quite disciplined in following waypoints or human flight leaders.
So in other words, a joinable co-op would help integrating the players, while MDS doesn't.
Fully automatic, dedicated COOP server controller.
-
II/JG54_Emil
- Posts: 272
- Joined: Thu 07 May 2009 10:45 am
-
4./JG53_Wotan
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Thu 16 Oct 2008 2:56 pm
- Location: Florida, USA
- Contact:
There is a mod that was incorporated into the newest version of Zuit's MDF that hides the number of players using each airfield. All you will see is a "1" at the airfield you are at.Loon wrote:When you join a DF room, you have to choose a base where to take off from, so you know where the enemy bases are and where the enemy planes are based at, because there is a number beside each field.
Same happens with the carriers, you can see where she is and how many planes are based in.
I believe this doesn't fit the SEOW gaming spirit...
There will be airfield icons showing each active airfield on the briefing screen but you won't know how many people, if any, are at each airfield. Even in COOPs folks know where the enemy airfields are. Knowing where the airfield is shouldn't be an issue. If the map is made correctly you could have a lot of active airfields showing on the briefing screen and this will be even more helpful keeping "fog of war".
Also, incorporated into the newest version of Zuit's MDF is a mod that hides the plane type on the roster screen. You can't just hit the "S" key (default) and see that there are 15 B-25s up.
You won't know where the enemy are taking off from or what they are flying.
You can also limit the number, and type, of aircraft at each field.
The front lines are also dynamic - they shift with advancing ground units. So if you ditch or bail out you could find yourself behind enemy lines without realizing it.
You can have the "real time capture" of airfields. While you are out flying the enemy could capture your airfield. Once an airfield is captured the enemy can start using that airfield - real time. For example, suppose an Axis airfield was just captured by the British and then the RAF are flying Hurricanes from it. The types of aircraft are set by the mission maker.
With MDF you can run a very detailed on line war. The problem is there are now mission generator / campaign system or software that can take advantage of everything MDF offers.
For more detailed info I suggest reading the readme and guide Zuti put out. Also, as I understand it Zuti is now working with the DT team and a verison of MDF should be included in the next DT stock patch.
Theoretically it would be possible to put together a persistent online war. You can even use AI aircraft.
Personally, I hate COOPs - the delay in getting the mission going and the idea that if some has an accident, or is disconnected you either have to restart the mission or they sit out is just annoying. I have been in COOPs where the start time is 20:00 and we didn't fly the mission until 3 hours later due to issues. With MDF folks can be late, they can leave and come back (provided multi-sorties are allowed) etc...
Not to mention using the dedicated server software...
SEOW is great and has many features that could be adapted to use with MDF. However, the man hours to get things functioning properly could prove to much. Especially if folks are happy with what they have.
Wotan
-
II/JG54_Emil
- Posts: 272
- Joined: Thu 07 May 2009 10:45 am
WOW
What about giving orders to the moving ground/sea units while playing?
I believe this would be difficult if not impossible. But if you can order your AI wingman to attack your target or whatever, why not giving orders to the ground platoons while sitting at the radar screen?
Would this be possible?
What about giving orders to the moving ground/sea units while playing?
I believe this would be difficult if not impossible. But if you can order your AI wingman to attack your target or whatever, why not giving orders to the ground platoons while sitting at the radar screen?
Would this be possible?