• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

Input Wanted for New Project - put in your two cents here!

gecko

gecko

Charter Member
Hi everyone,

I am in the very early stages of a large project that will eventually replace CFS3's quick combat, mission, and campaign modes, along with almost the entire user interface. This has been a long time in coming as I have always wanted to create an entirely new campaign for CFS3 ever since I moved on from the old European Air War. The other purpose is to be able to implement some new things we discovered whilst working on the Spitfire Mk.V package that will not work in a normal CFS3 install. All of this will allow a much higher level of detail and realism than has been possible up until now.

While I have a lot of my own ideas for how quick combat, missions, and campaigns will work (if you've ever played campaigns in Red Baron 3D and European Air War, you'll have the general idea of where I'm coming from), I also want to hear your ideas for features or options you would love to see in quick combat, single missions, or campaigns. I'm sure there are some good ideas out there, and if it seems like any will work in this project, I know the end result will be better with more people's input. This is more related to options you can select or view in the menus as opposed to specific things being simulated in game. Think outside of what the CFS3 menus offer, and imagine this as a blank slate where any feature you can envision is a possibility.

Some examples to get the creative juices flowing:

-I want to be able to start a quick combat flight at any location I click on the map rather than only over an airfield.

-I want more control of an enemy flights starting position and altitude relative to the player in quick combat than what CFS3 currently allows.

-I want to be able to transfer between squadrons during a campaign.

-I want to be able to read the game manuals without exiting or minimizing the game.

ETC...

I can't make any promises to build any specific feature, and at this stage I'm just gathering ideas. But I would like to know what kinds of things you would like to see - and who knows, maybe some of those ideas will become reality. BTW, the above examples will all definitely find their way into what I'm building.

Thanks for your help guys!
 
Wow that sounds really good. One of the bugbears for me, especially in the BoB era, is that the campaign lacks a missiontype dedicated to attacking airbases. You can find it for some reason in QC mode, but there are only 12 missiontypes in campaign mode.

Another thing I would like is smarter ships. I've toyed with some complex ways to get the shippinglane to change direction regularly, so that it makes the bombing run more difficult. For example, I've toyed with the idea that the convoy could be set up in a large dummy facility where the shipping lane is defined in a squiggly route.

There is a vehicle.cfg file that seems largely inert and redundant, some stock vehicles have one but it is not widely used. I've found that I can specify a sound file within the vehicle.cfg so it may be possible to do a range of other things to make vehicles smarter/better by adding to the functions of the vehicle.cfg file.

Also, formations could be looked at. It is a bit limiting that formations are restricted to 8 or less vehicles (with some exceptions) so larger formations would be good. Also the spacing in air formations eg 0.7, 0.5, does not seem to work when it is less than 1.0. In the spawns I've written the aircraft seem reluctant to get really close in (mind you the AI would probably just crash anyway).

In terms of transferring between squadrons, there is already a transfer between HQs function but that is not what you're after.
 
Greatest news since the ETO expansion was released ! I do like the idea of larger formation,enemy position and better altitude control. All that was mentioned would make CFS3 so much more immersive ,just as your Spitfire Mk II. Thanks for taking this huge project on. Regards,Scott
 
David, it will definitely be possible to add more mission types. I will be scrapping the entire CFS3 campaign system and making an entirely new one to be run by the new interface. I haven't fully fleshed out the details yet (hence the reason for posting this topic), but it will generate its own missions based on parameters defined by the date and what unit the player is serving in. Interesting ideas about shipping. How big is a facility allowed to be? Could one be built that stretches the length of the Channel? Or possibly spawns with a specific route called out would work? I agree, ships shouldn't be sailing in straight lines! I didn't realize the vehicle.cfg could actually do anything. I wonder what possibilities are there? I do have some ideas regarding formations, but I don't know if they will work. WOTR did wonders with formations, but I think it has to do with some special DLL magic that is pretty far beyond my capabilities.

James, I don't know anything about AI. I would love to improve it, but again, I don't currently have a way of doing it.

Great thoughts guys, keep 'em coming!
 
AI Performance

One thing I've done in an attempt to improve AI performance is to increase the values in the pilotattributes.xml. However what about the pilotconstants.xml?

The Vision Ranges and stages could be increased. The G Tolerance classes could be increased.

I've already tweaked the AI Wingmen Accuracy parameter at the bottom of the file. My tweaks can be found in the Upgrade Package V 2.1 - and also in my campaign package addon for Pat's BoB.
 
Improving AI combat performance without universally resolving their weightless fuel advantage is a non-starter for me. I don't mind them aimlessly flying rings around me, but if they ever got smart about it, my flying days would quickly be over.
 
I've mentioned it before but basically having a completely random mission going on in Free Flight.

With a basic frontline, perhaps somehow related to the era if using the ETO style era selection, and the theatre having a life on its own with the possibility of encountering roaming enemy aircraft, seeing ground battles raging, friendly aircraft flying around too doing their own thing, such as supporting those ground battles or having dogfights with the aforementioned enemy aircraft.
 
MajorMagee said:
Improving AI combat performance without universally resolving their weightless fuel advantage is a non-starter for me. I don't mind them aimlessly flying rings around me, but if they ever got smart about it, my flying days would quickly be over.
Click to expand...

In my upgrade V2.1, I have AI versions of aircraft spawning, with the weight issue taken care of in the cfg file. The non-AI have spawning turned off. It's a bit of a work-around, but it really helps to stop my wingmen being slaughtered when flying for Germany. Even with extra weight, the allied AI fighters take a heavy toll.
 
I like that one Rene. So basically free flight but with the war still on with friendly and enemy air and ground traffic still being generated, rather than the danger-free empty skies of normal free flight. I'd have to think through how a flight like that could be generated, but it is worth looking into. I have a similar feature planned which is a throwback to European Air War's Instant Action mode. Basically when you click instant action, will load straight to a mission where you start a couple seconds before a major dogfight breaks out. The mission will be selected at random from a list on instant action missions so you won't know what you are getting yourself into until you're in the cockpit. But what you're suggesting is a bit of a different flavor than that, and I think it would be nice to have both if I can build it.

BTW, this is exactly the kind of suggestion I'm looking for. While I don't necessarily have much control over AI and such things (though I will make it as good as I can) Menu and flight options like what Rene just suggested - basically things related to how the interface sets CFS3 up for a mission can be completely re-imagined. Since the stock CFS3 interface won't be used, the new menu options can be almost anything I decide.
 
IL-2 '46 has that feature . Makes free flight much more interesting ! I love all the ideas ! Maybe someone in the future will tackle the AI problem so we can add any aircraft to the install and not have to mod the config's. Can't leave well enough alone in my book !
 
Hi Daniel, I remember this being discussed years ago and am so glad that it may become reality!
I echo the wishes of the area of operations being in 'real time', for want of a better phrase.
The war is going on continuously and we can chose to drop in to an area or airfield where you may or may not meet the enemy.
No such thing as free flight, you can try it but may get bounced or find flak curling up towards you.
Best of luck with it! I don't have much time to help these days but give me a shout if I can help in any way.
 
QC Mode

The thing about the current QC mode is that the frontline or the friendly/enemy boundary forms a circle around the chosen airbase. The spawns utilised are ground.spawns. I have been able to manipulate the ground spawns so that plenty of ships appear, but when I tried to sneak some air spawns into the ground.spawns set, CFS3 threw a hissy fit.

So your challenge will be to set up QC mode so that it responds to the frontline.spawns set, and the air.spawns, to get near the situation that Rene is seeking. The shape of the frontline boundary will need to change also, to a linear frontline rather than a circular one.
 
Part of that is easy. The new QC mode won't use anything from the stock QC mode anyways, so the circular frontline and spawns issues (if I end up using spawns for aircraft at all) are not an issue. The main issue (one of the biggest I haven't figured out how to tackle) is that if a frontline is defined, CFS3 always assumes you are starting in friendly territory, and will make all the ground objects on the side of the front you start on friendly, and those on the other side will be enemy. You can't start a flight in enemy territory, and I don't know how to get around it yet.
 
This is a good idea. Can you expand this into how one mission is transitioned from one to another - IE a linear style campaign where the player has to complete one mission to get to the next. We could create historical campaigns similar to CFS1 and CFS2 or Red Baron or European Air War.

I've done a bit of playing around with the AI and I can't seem to crack it - I'll let you know if I find anything.


Chris
 
Yes, you've got the idea for the campaign. I've not finalized the structure, but I'm leaning towards a mixture of RB3D and EAW features in the campaign, with a few of my own that I don't think have been done before.

If you ever figure out anything on the AI front, I'm all ears!
 
Will let you know! I did try bringing over some of WOFF's DLL's into CFS3 and see what that does. One of those .dll's controls AI, but I need to figure out which one.

I'd love it if we could make user-made historical campaigns similar to CFS2 and CFS1. That's something that CFS3 desperately needed - really adds to those who play to learn about the history.

I'll send you a PM when I get more time - just graduated from university and am working full time and preparing a PA school application.
 
I'd wouldn't recommend using other people's (OBD Software) commercial products (dll files) without their explicit permission for your project.
 
I agree Andy, though I am thoroughly impressed with OBD's advances with AI, including, or even reverse engineering dll or other files from WOTR or WOFF isn't an option for a project like this.

Even if OBD did give permission to use their files (extremely unlikely), I don't think it would help. I worked with them briefly to see if some of the things I had done could be applied in WOFF, and there were some major compatibility issues between their code and mine.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top