Eagle Dynamics: Digital Combat Series

[Rommel]

Me ha saltado el facebook diciendo que hoy tienen un 70% de descuento en todos sus productos. Lásrina que no creo poder entrar para comprar algo de lo último.

[Stratos]

Yo no veo oferta ninguna

[SilverDragon]

El descuento es en Steam.

Mas información sobre WW2
http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1 ... count=1113

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tvrdi View Post
Luthier, One crucial question, which will decide me backing or not. Do you plan to make a collision model for trees. If not then ppl would use trees in mp to excape level chases. To hide. Its killing fun and is highly unrealistic. And if we turn off trees terrain will look ugly.

Let me be perfectly frank here.

I just cannot promise it at this time. All I can promise is that we will try.

I may have deja vu after my old project, where we've had quite a few instances of saying "we will do this" instead of a more semantically correct "we will try to do this", and where we eventually ended up not being able to deliver what we promised.

As it is today, EDGE is still being integrated with the rest of the game. That's precisely what's being done right now, today, having various game objects interact with terrain. Vehicles need to drive, planes need to collide, etc.

We're obviously extremely interested in having tree collisions. There's no gameplay or realism reason for why it should not be that way. The only reason why trees would not have collisions is performance.

There are obvious algorithms for making this work. There are also less obvious ones. We need to finish the programming, try things out, and make sure everything works well.

Need to point out that the people working on this are ED programmers. They're outside my control, and they obviously had absolutely nothing to do with any of my old projects.

This is why I personally cannot say with 100% certainty we will have tree collisions. My certainty is, let's say, 93.6%. This may be PTSD talking, but I don't think that's good enough for a promise, especially if your pledge depends on it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ishtmail View Post
As it stands now, there is some confusion.
One part of the description states that at 100k funding goal we get 5 airplanes (P51D and FW190 included), in another part it states that we get 3 airplanes.

Five airplanes total, three of them free.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mogster View Post
I don't really understand the business model at this point.

Giving 3 free DCS level planes seems a strange choice, unless the idea is to draw punters away from other products the initial release being really a loss leader. DCS isn't known for anything other than jets, the WW2 hardcore may take some drawing away from the IL2 series. Maybe this is Tishin's play for world flight sim domination.

This decision was based on gameplay considerations, not marketing or sales.

DCS World is based on decades of content. While there's only one free plane, there's tons and tons of other content that the player encounters, and there's a lot of fun to be had.

DCS WWII starts from scratch. We can't do all that much in the next year. If we were to release a free version of the game with a single flyable plane, there'd be significantly fewer options for the player.

We want people to enjoy themselves and really have a good, all-around complete product even in the free version.

I personally would be very uncomfortable releasing a bare-bones single-flyable free game. We still have to strong paid aircraft in the basic version, and we really hope that the influx will drive enough people to purchase the P-51 and the Dora to keep the series going.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Furbs View Post
1. How will MP work? Coops/servers? how many players in a mission.

Same as DCS at least, and we're hoping to improve on it as much as we can.

Like I said in the kickstarter description, we really want to spruce up the MP, but we don't know how much we can do and how fast, so perhaps some major features will be added on later.

In other words, we have lots of strong opinions and a lot of plans, but it's way too early to talk about them. We'll only know what we can do in the process of doing it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Furbs View Post
2. How big is the map, ive heard 100/160km but is that just the detailed area with more less detailed map area around that, will there be a English coast?

100x160 for the detailed terrain, yes.

This is the current size of our WIP map.

We can extend it at any time but we have not done so yet.

I'm personally scared to include England because it really opens up a whole new set of tasks. I am very uncomfortable doing low-quality terrain, especially with all the great things EDGE can do given enough effort. I think we could be shooting ourselves in the foot by releasing low-quality poorly textured inaccurate England with a few major airbases.

In other words, I'm potentially open to the idea, but perhaps it needs a bigger discussion with the community. We might try to add on some England and show how it can be done quickly, just so it's there, and then ask and see if the majority of the players would rather have something like that, or have nothing at all.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Furbs View Post
3. Can Paypal be added to the ways to pledge?

Sorry, we can't do anything with the kickstarter system. Whatever it supports, we'll take. Whatever it does not, we can't.

Quote:
Originally Posted by xaoslaad View Post
You need to get some of that first days momentum back!
[IMG]http://forums.eagle.ru/attachment.php?

It's already looking eerily close to what happened to the F-35A, big contributions on day one and two then a trickle from there on out.
We do have a few more things up our sleeve. As a matter of fact, even with the slowed down pace the project is doing better daily than we might have hoped for. It's just that the first few hours were so unbelievably strong, that's making the current pace look bad in comparison.

We really do need to pick up the pace and really get the momentum going again if we really want to hit those stretch goals. A flyable B-17 is my personal dream. There's gotta be a way to get there somehow.

Quote:
Originally Posted by -=MadCat=- View Post
First off, I am curious if the initially provided planes will be at DCS or FC level ?
I honestly can't see three planes at DCS level given away for free, but I'm asking to make sure.
Please excuse if this has already been explained, but it is impossible to remember every information in this giant thread.

Like I said above, this isn't just a kickstarter for the project. The project itself is supposed to kick-start a new WWII flight sim series.

We want to start it with a bang. So we really are doing three free DCS-quality planes. Yes.

Quote:
Originally Posted by -=MadCat=- View Post
We get the Fw190D-9 as a full price module by ED, matter of fact.
If stretch goals are met, we then get a Fw190A-5 (I expect it to be a full price module too) by RRG.
Here, one could still argue those are fundamentally different planes (radial vs inline).

What if then, later on, it gets decided to do a Fw190A-5 1,65 Ata or any other version, whilst we already have the D-9 and A-5 ? !
Is this then expected to sell as another full price module too ?
Same with the various Bf109s and/or Spitfires ?!

I really hope that you'd trust the guys who give away three DCS-quality planes in order not to nickel and dime everyone not to nicked and dime everyone on another plane

We want to have a strong series, and we want to build a good relationship with our players. We are not against giving stuff away for free, as you see.

FW-190A and FW-190D are really very different planes. That's why we are putting them as two separate line items; please not that we have not released even a hint of the pricing structure for anything because we ourselves do not have it set at this time.

I personally only have a vague idea of some sort of a anthology pack for major aircraft that includes various important variants in a single purchase, with a heavy discount for the owners of the initial single-variant package. But like I said, we are nowhere near far enough in the kickstarter, much less the development process, to really have made any decisions about this.

Quote:
Originally Posted by klem View Post
Why do you want to model individual trees? Why not forest and hedgerow blocks, like single objects? I suppose one answer might be to allow vehicles to travel through forests but are we really interested in that? The Ardennes aside (January 1945) where you could perhaps use trees or clumps of trees, I don't see the need for them in an air combat simulator. Surely the compromise should be in ground vehicle operations rather than flight aspects.

We'd want to have individual tree collisions because in my experience with my older projects anything less is not precise enough.

When your wingtip passes through a tree with no effect, or you fly a foot away from a tree and explode, that's horrible. And that's what happens when your collision is too rough.

If we were to go with blocks of trees, that would really change the look of the terrain. We'd need to have all fields, all roads, all parks, everything, to be a multiple of the standard tree line width. You'd see that right away. The terrain would look horribly blocky, almost Minecraft-like.

So we really do need to have fine tree collisions for this to work well. They need to match the shape of the tree, otherwise the disconnect is extremely maddening. There's nothing more upsetting than flying in MP, inching closer to the kill at tree-top level, pulling a hard turn around a tree, and exploding even though the tree is over there, just because the collision is a little too coarse.

Anyway, back to video editing for tomorrow morning!

[Maulet]

perdonad por la pregunta de inculto total , pero según veo no es solo de aviones, no?

[Stratos]

No Maulet, hay una addon llamado Combined Arms que te permite hacer de comandante de todas las tropas de tierra más los aviones, y al mismo tiempo meterte en cualquier vehículo de tu bando a hacer de conductor o artillero.

Yo lo del DCS:WW2 me lo estoy pensando muy mucho. Esperaré a ver como van las cosas porque un terreno de 100*160km me parece simplemente ridículo.

[Maulet]

No Maulet, hay una addon llamado Combined Arms que te permite hacer de comandante de todas las tropas de tierra más los aviones, y al mismo tiempo meterte en cualquier vehículo de tu bando a hacer de conductor o artillero.

Yo lo del DCS:WW2 me lo estoy pensando muy mucho. Esperaré a ver como van las cosas porque un terreno de 100*160km me parece simplemente ridículo.

y que diferencia hay por ejemplo con el arma3 ?

[Stratos]

No Maulet, hay una addon llamado Combined Arms que te permite hacer de comandante de todas las tropas de tierra más los aviones, y al mismo tiempo meterte en cualquier vehículo de tu bando a hacer de conductor o artillero.

Yo lo del DCS:WW2 me lo estoy pensando muy mucho. Esperaré a ver como van las cosas porque un terreno de 100*160km me parece simplemente ridículo.

y que diferencia hay por ejemplo con el arma3 ?

Que la infantería no es controlable. Y que los vehículos del Combined Arms son más realistas, creo...

[SilverDragon]

Por ahora, podriamos decir que en ciertos aspectos son mas realistas que en Arma3 (control de vehiculos y artilleria), se plantean mejoras para las proximas versiones como una pantalla de radar en ciertas unidades SAM/AAA moviles para facilitar la detección de blancos y una especie de computadora de tiro para los tanques), aun asi hay que contar que ED todavia no ha abierto los vehiculos para la realización de modulos realistas con modelos de fisica avanzados y cabinas realistas (algo similar a Steel Beast), esta esperando a tener el multicrew online implementado para ello. Sobre la infanteria, está trabajando tambien para mejorarla y hacerla visible en vehiculos, pero por ahora es algo de baja prioridad. Mi impresión es que veremos avances en los años venideros en este aspecto (al igual que los buques, estos tambien tienen que hacerse controlables).

La idea original de DCS: World es crear aviones, helicopteros, vehiculos y buques (y puede que otras unidades, se rumorea si trenes) con el maximo realismo, por ahora solo tenemos los dos primeros.

Sobre el terreno actual de WW2 en normandia, sobre lo que habla Lutier es que es el terreno detallado se refiere a lo que tienen realizado hasta este momento. Segun sus propias palabras, el terreno puede ser ampliado según se necesite, incluso ha dejado caer que podría cubrir todo el mundo, pero esto ultimo tiene que ser detallado por Eagle Dinamics, no por un patrocinador, ya que estos no tienen ningun control sobre las potencia y capacidades del nuevo engine de DCS: World, mas bien estan haciendo de conejillos de indias a ver lo que les sale.

Mientras, WW2 ya supere el 50% (51.354$) del minimo del KickStarter, y nuevo ladrillazo de luthier, en este hay dos cosas interesantes, la primera, que esta pensando mover hacia arriba el B-17 y crear un detallado mapa de las costa sur inglesa (en plan de realizar misiones de bombarderos), y que trae los diferentes nuevos videos que se iran poniendo a lo largo del KickStarter (reconoce que el video tres devería haberlo colocado antes del segundo), aun asi los videos 3 y 4 en mi opinión serán los mas esperados por la comunidad:

http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1 ... count=1131

I'm starting to think we might need to shuffle things about a little bit.

We'll try to change the immediate next stretch goal, and make it a flyable B-17 and British airfields. Move all other stretch goal aircraft one tier up.

We'll talk this over and have a decision for you within a day or two.

Also going to work on adding some more attractive backer rewards.

Oh trust me, I'm very familiar with southern England

--------

RRG does not currently have a dedicated AI programmer.

We could theoretically look into hiring one for this project, which would probably give us tons and tons of cool stuff over the course of the project, but I really don't know how to budget for that. We're already pretty far out there for a stretch goal. I'm kind of cautious about adding too many tiers or too many options. If I add, for example, and intermediate "improved AI" stretch goal, all as a part of all additional stretch goals, that might turn off some other people, and make it seem like the aircraft they really want are too far away.

ED has programmers too, of course. We however do not have a current plan for AI improvement.

-----------------

No clue at this point. (a una pregunta si la IA podrá ver a travez de las nubes en EDGE)

---------------

This new video is basically introduction part 2. Nick Grey is a hugely important part of this project, but it felt like putting him in the initial video made everything way too long.

It's also not about passion but about our relationship with TFC. This has immediate, direct, and unique impact on the product. We have access to the actual aircraft and the actual pilot. That's not sentimentality or small talk at all. These are the precise reasons why DCS: P-51 is the best prop simulation available today.

I have another talk video all put together, which I foolishly planned to release as video 3, but I realized the error of my ways while uploading video 2 this morning. Video 3 will be a detailed look at EDGE. Video 4 will be a detailed overview of aircraft modeling in DCS. Video 5 will be a video QnA, and then video 6 will probably be the thing I planned for Video 3.

I also have to point out that it's all just me. I write the scripts, I direct, I shoot, I edit, I release, I discuss. I don't have a marketing staff, anything like that. I'm learning as I go. Hopefully I can do enough to reach at least one stretch goal in the next 30 days. Please don't let the fact that I'm not a marketing professional or a filmmaker influence your opinion of myself as a game developer!

[CM]

Planificar la misión..., despegar con un B-17 desde un aeródromo ingles..., cruzar el canal..., adentrarse en territorio enemigo..., localizar el objetivo..., soltar bombas..., volver a casa.
Etogutaamí

[SilverDragon]

Parece que hay novedades con la cabina del VEAO Eurofighter para DCS: World

http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1 ... tcount=138

I showed some people at Duxford the 3d model of the Typhoon cockpit. I'll post some pics in the next few days.

Work has started implementing the switch test code and I'll publish a video of that as I go along the process, as below.
Basically I'm currently going through the cockpit adding all the switch and dial helpers including all the animations for each switch and dial, that's pretty time consuming.
Then it's linking the sim to those helpers, again takes time.

At that point I hand it over to Tango to take over on all of the systems code; electrical, hydraulics, etc. as per schematics.
That's just to get all the basic aircraft systems coded. Then it's onto the MFCD (as you would know them as) logic.

You actually start the Typhoon Engines with 4 switches, the rest is all done by computer on the screens.

For now, all the rest of the team are working on getting the Hawk over the line.

I know you guys want Tiffy, as do I but this one's gonna be a while yet.

Cheers,
C.

[SilverDragon]

Importante update, el Bae Hawk puede pasar a Limited Beta en Septiembre por tiempo limitado y tambien un numero limitado de licencias. Ademas VEAO parece de haber solucionado los problemas con la cabina de la 1.2.5 (Se habla de un Cockpit API). Tambien hay indicios de que podamos ver algo parecido a los updates que ha hecho Beczl en su Mig-21bis en el Bae Hawk.

http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1 ... tcount=754

Dev diary update time.

We had a very successful weekend at Duxford and thanks to all of you out there that popped by to say hi. Sorry if I didn't have time to talk to you all it was rather busy.

Thanks to ED for releasing the 1.2.6 patch on Thursday. Although we did have to unpack the 3 pc's from the 2 cars to patch them it meant we had a working Hawk in 1.2.6.

We had a lot of interest in the Hawk (I think the Red Arrows being there helped that) and I gave a little sneak peak to a select few of the Typhoon 3d model re-work which went down very well.

Thanks again to The Fighter Collection for having us and to ED for flying Yo-Yo over to support us not just with him being there but to bring the banner and brochures they had printed up all the way from Moscow with him. As always a pleasure talking to him.

So, on to development....
Well we had a few months of hair pulling, late night coding, chasing bugs and generally going crazy to get the cockpit working in 1.2.5 but to no avail.
Thanks for all of the help ED gave us to get it working in 1.2.6 ready for the weekend and of course to Tango for surprising me on Saturday morning 1 hour before doors opening to say he had published a new Hawk patch before he left at 6am to drive down to Duxford for the day. Yes I was jumping about the hangar with joy like a little girl!!!

And man does she fly beautifully in 1.2.6, even with wing tip vapour and grunting noises when pulling 6g loops

Coding Update
In terms of the cockpit functions we're about 95% completed and just waiting for the API's from ED to tie some of our systems like radios and full weapons into the sim.

All of the aircraft systems logic like electrical, hydraulic, etc. are completed and currently tied into the SFM model.

Model Update
As you can see from the screenshots in the eye candy forums Crow has done a big update on the cockpit model and skins. They are still WIP but you can see a massive amount has been done and truly amazing work.
You can even see a little sneak peak through a frame cutout of the rear cockpit and switches in there.
Yes we are working on dual cockpit's and although single player seat switching will likely be in release, multiplayer dual control is down to ED to code so we'll have to wait for that. But we'll be ready when they get it implemented.

Short Term Goals
Let's talk about short term goals and the interesting bit for you.
Here is what we are aiming to release at the end of September:

Multiplayer Module Beta
This will allow you to install certain Hawk files onto your PC so that if you join a public server that has a Hawk flying in it, you will see the Hawk external model.
This will be patched as and when we carry out and test updates to our base model and add new skins, AFM, Weapons, etc.

The purpose of the module is to ensure full compatibility with DCS when flying on public servers.
At the moment if you join a server with Hawk flying you will see a default SU-25.

The module will be free of charge.
There will be no cockpit files included, it is just the external model and skin files.
Now I'm sure some clever people out there will make it flyable with another cockpit (for research purposes of course) and that's fine if you want to do that. We will obviously not support those modules if they get released publicly.

We may, in the future, include certain cockpit files so you can enter the Hawk and look at the pretty cockpit but you won't be able to fly it unless you purchase an activation code and licence key. We are still discussing this concept.

Come and fly the Hawk for free
The guys at Virtual Aerobatics will be providing a long weekend session, or maybe a week if it goes well, of Hawk being included in their server mission.
We will be giving away 30 full copies of DCS:Hawk with a time limited licence for you to try out over that weekend.
This is your chance to give us valuable feedback on what you think of our product before you buy it. Also to give the community some feedback on what you think of it rather than us telling you it's awesome.
Details on how to get an activation code will be given out soon and we'll do a little trivia competition next week for that one. Easy answers to find on Google kind of thing.

If any squads out there would like to run a sqaud hosted session trying out the Hawk, please send me a PM for details and we can discuss it further. I know some of you are very interested in it.

Now the licence keys when registered are tied to your machine, so you can't give them out to friends and they will be a limited licence key, probably to 15 or 30 days to give you enough time to play around with the Hawk in SP and MP.
Once that time period is up, you will still be able to sit in the cockpit but the jet won't function.
For the lucky 30 of you, you won't need the Multiplayer module as you will have the full product.

This is kind of an open beta so your feedback at that time will be very valuable as we move into the finishing stages of development and we will create a new forum section for the feedback.

We will probably run another event in October and December along the same lines.

DCS:Hawk Flight Manual
Obviously you will want to know how to fly the Hawk and what better way than to read the flight manual. This will be released along with the multiplayer and test modules and generally posted for all of you.
Again it's a work in progress and any suggestions are gratefully welcomed with a new feedback forum created.

Longer Term Goals
So, with obviously flying the Hawk or seeing it buzzing around the virtual sky in the coming weeks you are going to want to buy it.
We originally set the release date for before Christmas (with a few caveats) however with the few months delays we are currently evaluating when we can release the product.
Until we have the team meeting this week and then consult with TFC/ED on their side of things we can't set a date but as soon as we have it, I'll let you know.

I would love for you to be flying the Hawk ready for Christmas but I simply can't promise it.

And to recap we will be releasing the combat variant first with the aerobatic variant a few months later. They will be released as separate modules, each costed for separately but with an upgrade price if you buy one module later than the other.
We are still working on a suitable pricing structure and details will be announced when this is finalised.

I did previously state that if you bought the combat DCS:Hawk prior to the aerobatic module being released then you would get the aerobatic module free of charge up until release date. This still stands.
So that means if you buy the combat variant when we release it and before we release the aerobatic module you get both for the same total price. After releasing the aerobatic module you will need to buy both separately.

The aerobatic module has a slightly different cockpit and engine performance, smoke system and few other differences hence why the delay in releasing them together in one module.

So, I hope that has put a smile on your face and got you as excited as the team are when we fly the Hawk and I very much look forward to getting your feedback on our product.

Please feel free to ask any questions about the above.

Thanks,
Chris.

[SilverDragon]

Nuevas imagenes del RAZBAM Mirage 2000C

[SilverDragon]

Nuevas fotos WIP (Work in progress) de Nevada

[Stratos]

Tienes el link SilverDragon?

[SilverDragon]

Nuevos Tramos de la KickStarter DCS: World WW2 1944