JediMaster

After 30 years I doubt there are any memories left...

There's a Fallout MMO and a TES MMO. If this does well, I'm sure that will happen too at some point.

I remember hearing it on the radio back then, but it pretty much disappeared for decades until Youtube made it easy to find again. I vividly remember the laughing "da-ha-haa" part from then!

Yes, when the day comes when we start saying... "Jason! Enough with the PTO maps and planes already! Are there even any left that flew for more than 12 hours on a Sunday in 1945??" ...at that time we'll be ready to leave and explore other theaters. For now, I want CP to explore the parts of WWII that have been neglected for the last 15 years. Parts that can be argued weren't done well enough by others can wait as we at least DO have them.

As with any endeavor that needs a lot of funding and a creator who is not independently wealthy, the main issue is creative control. Unlike before it seems like this time Jason has it, or is working with people who share it, at least for now. We can't know what the future will bring, but my hope is if some investor comes in with strings attached that Jason can't turn down for whatever reason, at least he will honestly inform us that it is now "collaborative" and we all (including him I'd guess!) need to make allowances for that. Transparency is key. Knowing why there must be a compromise is an important step into accepting it. While "because I said so" works great for preschoolers, the customers are adults and need to be treated as such. Compromises are necessary, however much modern discourse seems to trumpet the idea that they are evil, .

I liked S3 well enough, it was basically "Sum of All Fears" rewritten top to bottom, although I admit I think calling this series Jack Ryan is a bit of a misnomer. Greer and Ryan aren't the ones I know from the books, they're different, and this show would likely be seen better if they had different names and there was no Clancy affiliation at all. If you're expecting the books, this isn't that at all.

I have this one on my list, will get to it sometime this summer...

This will never NOT be good:

Sure, they could've waited to announce all this until they had the first DD ready to go, but I don't think that was necessary. Planning a marketing campaign before you have a finished product is no easy feat and I'm glad it's not my responsibility. It's been almost 20 years since PF, we can wait for the successor now that at least we have confirmation one is being developed. Now if this all comes to naught and nothing is ever released, then I will grant it was too soon. For now, though, they need time and luck...and of course whatever funding they can scrape up!

SWOTL with a hex editor was a modding dream. Want the Me-262 with the big cannon? No problem! Want your B-17 to have cannons instead of MGs for defense? No problem! The graphics were poor even for the standards of the day, but while CYAC was just a string of single or random missions it had that awesome campaign where you could even pick targets or allocate resources like Eisenhower. I spent even more time with EAW, though, because it did everything acceptably well beyond the annoying split S evasions EVERY SINGLE AI DID when you got on their six. 🤨

As with anything, it's how much it will cost vs how much you can charge/expect to sell in return. There's another old saying that applies to sim development: "The perfect is the enemy of the good." While everyone enjoys more detail and accuracy, at a certain point it sucks up development resources for little benefit to the final product that you can't really recoup the investment on. Also known as the 80% solution, where you can get 80% of the way there for a realistic expenditure. I want a present-day tech version of Pacific Fighters with some specific enhancements beyond graphic fidelity like carrier ops, AI, realistic fleet sizes and compositions, but I'm not expecting a competitor to DCS' WWII modules. If CP's planes are basically convincing to fly with relative performance between themselves that is accurate, I don't care if time to climb or range is 30% off...just as long as plane A, that could out climb plane B in the war by X amount, can still out climb plane B by X amount. Tweak them later after the release is in the rearview mirror. DCS and BoX are still getting FM updates after a decade, CP doesn't need to compete on day 1.

Too bad CFS4 was canceled, would've liked to have had the chance to fly that one in the CBI theater.

I had FS2 but never 1. That WWI mode with little horizontal bow ties representing biplanes was novel for the time. Before that, though, I had a B-1B sim I loaded off a tape on my Atari 400, though! Well...as much as it could be called a sim, it was more like a text adventure with rudimentary graphics...

Back 20+ years ago the games were sold in stores who took a cut of the price, plus there were the physical costs of the disks, packaging, printed manuals, etc. The very idea of getting 100% of the purchase price was left to a very few industries but gaming wasn't one of them. Many smaller developers now have what they call "supporter editions" for this very reason. It's a way to give them more money using these platforms as they need them. Maybe get free skins as a bonus, or early access to DLCs (or even include one in it), whatever. It doesn't help for those who dislike Steam but it does help for those who wish the devs got more money from it without needing to go some cumbersome donation or crowdfunding route (which often take percentages anyway).

Within reason. I don't want to preflight it. I don't want to fly 30 mins to target and then have my engine fail because the crew chief didn't quite tighten the fuel line enough and it all leaked out on the way there. I don't want my wingman to abandon me and get suicidal because he got a letter from home that his wife is leaving him. In short, I want a realistic entertaining simulation. The real thing was not entertaining. Not the Pacific theater, not WWII, not the armed forces, and not it being a real job that also happened to be dangerous. I've got a job and no desire to pretend I have a 2nd one that I actually pay to work...

Didn't Rise of Flight start out with 2 planes only? No carriers, but there was terrain.

Weren't theirs not round but square or something? Like they cut the corners off rectangles for the miniseries and then regretted it later because it was such a pain?

Lots of people thought the Beastie Boys' video for Sabotage was from a film. Sometimes they put a lot of money into them.

It seems to me the people that want to beta test the most are the ones who have the most misguided image in their head of what it entails. Be forced to play a buggy game and do things over and over again ad infinitum in order to record all the problems and then see half of what you report not get fixed anyway so that the rank and file community complains about the quality of said testers? Yeah, I think that "beta tester" is the textbook definition of "thankless job." It's necessary, and no software devs can do without them, but I would want to be paid to do it, the benefit/loss ratio is too heavily negative for me to do it for free!

So do I 😉

DCS still has trouble with it, with planes sliding around on the deck especially during turns. It's not an easy thing to do if you're not making it all automatically scripted between landings and takeoffs.

FWIW, July 20 is a Thursday in the next to last week of the month which is a traditional release time for major updates. So it may be a specific day and not just "2023."

I remember the Cylon Raider but not the drinking glass in BSG...

Used to have a red-eared slider named Gamera, because of cause I named her that, but she died many years ago. I have an Amazon, which looks to be quite different from most others' pets here, but I don't have a recent picture handy. I have these from 2005 though.