Dan Verssen

We are planning a mini expansion with a few new aircraft and campaigns. We'll be able to give a better estimate following the holidays. Thank you for your continued interest in DIF!

The game will cover from 1960s equipment to modern, if that helps.

I'm working on a game about modern land combat and I wanted to get a reality check to make sure my assumptions are correct. I'm looking at 5 types of attacks: Small Arms (rifles) Man-Portable Weapons (Rocket Launchers) Heavy Machine Guns (.50) Light Cannons (25mm on Bradley) Heavy Cannons (Main tank cannons, 100mm+) I'm thinking of 4 vehicle armor defense levels: Light Armor (Hummer) Medium Armor (most IFVs) Heavy Armor (most tank armor) Super Armor (Chobham) Would it be true to say: Small Arms can penetrate up to Light Armor Man-Portable can penetrate all, but will less chance as armor increases Heavy Machine Guns can penetrate up to Medium Armor Light Cannons can penetrate up to Heavy Armor Heavy Cannons can penetrate all, but less chance as armor increases Opinions? I realize there is always that "one in a million" shot or that "never penetrated once" situation, but what I'm looking for is the "in general" situation.

Thank you Martin for approving this announcement! I’m very pleased to announce that my company, DVG, has placed a newly designed Down In Flames tabletop card game “Aces High” up for pre-order on our web site… www.dvg.com The game features an improved action card system that greatly expands player decision making and options, additional detailing of aircraft stats, and a new campaign system that focuses on ease of play. The game has both more action cards and aircraft cards than the originally published game. Aces High includes 110 action cards and 110 aircraft cards, including 55 types of aircraft spanning both Europe and the Pacific. The new game is not compatible with the old games originally published 15 years ago. After examining the old system in detail, I found there were too many problems to fix, and too many areas to improve upon. I was able to address these issues with the computer game design, and those of you familiar with it will feel right at home with the new card game design. If you have any questions, please let me know!

Brian and I are working on a Down In Flames expansion and need some help in creating a couple campaigns. Brian has an online campaign creation utility already built, so no programming skills are required on your part. I will create the needed map graphics. To create a campaign, you need to do some historical research, detail the planes, pilots, and targets, and then test it for balance. Each campaign takes a couple hours to design. This isn't a paying job, but you will get name credit. Some work has already been done on the campaigns. Our goal is for the campaigns to be finished by the end of March. If you're interested, post a message.

Well, we almost had news. Give us a little more time. You see, I have this interesting curse, whenever a programmer agrees to work with me on a game, his life gets turned upside-down within 2 weeks.* * If you are a programmer, and you're thinking of working with me on a game, please ignore this warning of doom and gloom. I'm sure you'll be immune.

The idea has been brought up that people should have an option to play the game with more realistic death rules (ie pilots die more often and don't get 100s/1000s of kills) If there were a benefit to designating a pilot as being "realistic" during creation, would you do it?

Thank you for the ideas, Brian and I have been watching the DIF forum. In your opinion, what can we do to expand the DIF user base?

Brian and I are kicking around some ideas to give players the option of playing more deadly games.

Hello skaol, Replies below... 1. Sorry, but DIF has the Dumbest (and I have played and Beta tested alot of games) and I do mean Dumbest, Campaign UI's there is and ever was. I mean Click to close to click to close to click to close...it is beyond silly. 1 Freaking Screen Period. --The campaigns were tricky to create given the nature of the game. With all the data going back and forth, the interface needed to take a very step-by-step approach.-- 2. No Offline Campaign's...yeah ok need I say anything. --On the list of Things To Do.-- 3. Hello Mr. Vista....refer to #2 --What problems are encountered with Vista?-- 4. Pilots who have 1 Billion Kills, is Complete and Udder BS. "FEAR OF DEATH" should always be apart of any game and I do not mean the small percent of deaths we have compared to the amount of Combat Missions/ Per Death, we have now. Raise the percent and Drop the free get out of Death Card. --This is one of those realism vs. fun factors. When the game first came out, death was much more common - and people hated it. There was no end to the number of "my pilot died, I hate your game" posts.-- 5. I have no Idea why you have the ability to buy "EXPENDABLE" cards, if any player has ever been in combat (I have) or a Dogfight, they will know not 1 single skirmish or engagement is alike. Now saying that, your giving a player a chance to purchase expendable cards that simulate the battle going as planned over and over, thats dumb. The "Permanent" Cards is what a player should rely on because I see that as his traing and skill, but Expendable are a joke and thats why we see players with a 2 kills per mission status, yeah thats realistic. I never use those dumb things thats why my kills are low but way more realistic like it should be. --This is another example of realism vs. fun. I haven't been in combat, but I am deeply grateful to you, and those like you, who have put your lives at risk to defend your country.-- 6. Team Campaigns, would be a grand installment and a 2 teams vs. 2 teams would really be addicting and would make it where players would get to know other players. --Brian would need to answer this one. I'm not sure what the copding hurdles would be to make it happen.-- 7. Your Pilots in Campaigns...Nuff said --Also on the To Do List.-- 8. Add a new place by your photo, where you can add a Unit Pic, I use mine as my Main Pic now but would be nice to see a Pic and a unit symbol there. Not a major thing here. --I will ask Brian about this one also.-- 9. A link on the Main Screen UI that links to the Forum, come on most players have no idea how to get here or suggest things, you need to make it easier for new players to get involved period. --Sounds like a good idea.-- 10. Input from the game producers, in a timely matter, yeah small, yeah part time garage game, yadda yadda, but you can make it so much more with just a bit more effort. --Agreed. We should have news soon.--

The proud ship MNB is underway, late, but not sunk. Things are moving forward (honest!) We should have news soon.

"Soon" does leave one room to maneuver. But it's not quite as flexible as when one of the kids says they are "almost" done with their chores/homework/etc...

I've been in recent contact with the nice folks at BFC and hopefully we'll have some news soon.

We should have some news soon. We're all very excited about the game. I'm going through the design docs right now to get it as polished as possible.

Good News! MNB-WWII will use the engine being developed for Combat Mission - Shock Force, so it will look amazing. As soon as Shock Force is wrapped up, coding will begin on MNB-WWII.

Great to see you're back!

Things have slowed down. It might just be the holidays and people are busy. If anyone has any cool ideas for generating interest and reaching new players, we're all ears.

Right, the Turbo Charger ability has more to do with overall performance than the device. At one point there was talk of having two levels of Turbo Chargers in the game. The first would treat High as Medium, and the second would work like they do now.

True, we had to adjust the release date by a few days so as to not conflict with vacation time for one of the people on the team. Of course, we are all team players and do not point fingers if one of us causes a delay by being on vacation and cannot update the server with all the latest files. All for one and one for all, there is no 'i' in team, we're all giving 110%, etc... Hope you're taking lots of pictures Matt.

Progress! Also a chance to show the wife DIF, "Hey honey, some guy is trying to shoot me down. Do you think I should Tight Turn or Barrel Roll?..."

TimVD, No problem! Congrats on your victory! -Dan

Maybe we can help with some tips. When you play the campaign, what tends to happen that swings it in favor of the Germans? In general, I have found that placing 2 elements of defenders in high value areas works well in the early game while your pilots are still fresh. This allows you to inflict early bomber losses. Don't try to defend all the regions. As the UK, you need your pilots to get as much rest as possible, so only defend regions that have high values. Take losses if needed, but get the bombers early in the campaign. This will make him stretch his bombers thin in the later part of the campaign and make them much easier to shoot down. Lone German bombers are only useful for picking up low value targets from then on.

Brian and I have taken another look at the skill and we agree that it is overpriced. He'll be able to give an idea as to when the game data will be updated. Thank you for all the input!

We plan on continuing the plan of releasing free new aircraft and campaigns from time to time, but we're going to need to charge for the expansion. The expansion will add 29 more aircraft, including the Soviets and Polish air forces to the game, at least 12 more campaigns, the medals and pilot images for the new countries, and their voice clips. It will also add more than a dozen new skills, and several new game features. In short, it was a huge amount of work.

We need a person who is fluent in Polish to record about a dozen phrases for the Down In Flames expansion East Front. The sound clips can be saved as simple WAV or MP3 files with the normal computer microphone. If you are interested, please let us know!