bartbert
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Posts posted by bartbert
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There are 76 cards in the deck right now. If you right-click on a card during a game, it will pop up a card graphic which shows the cards rarity in terms of percent. I guess you guys can do the math.Originally posted by Liebchen:Is there any way to know the breakdown of the deck? Or is this something that will mutate over time, with the introduction of new cards?
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I did a search on that error, and one possible cause is that the shortcut to the game has somehow been set to run in Win98 compatibility mode.
Right-click on the shortcut to bring up its properties page. If there is a "Compatibility" tab, click on it and uncheck the Win98 compatibility check box. Here's a link that describes the problem:
http://www.deerbrook.com/downloads/sysreqs/Bridging/new_page_2.htm
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Do you have version 1.1 of the .NET Framework installed? There should be a link on the Start menu in the same place where you launch the game from.
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It's kind of a complicated matrix, but it basically boils down to comparing the "Starting Point" ratio to the "Victory Point" ratio to determine a level of victory.
If the two sides are roughly equal in starting point value, then in order to get a Minor victory, one side will need to score 1.3 times as many points as his opponent.
If your side starts with between 75-85% of your opponents point value, then you would receive a Minor victory even if you scored only 70% of his victory points.
Also note the way that scoring works. You get the value of the aircraft each time you damage or destroy it. So, if a 9-point pilot damages a 12-point pilot, he gets 12 points. But the stronger pilot only get 9 points if he damages the weaker pilot.
If the weaker side can just stay even in terms of the number of damaged and destroyed aircraft, they actually come out ahead in terms of points.
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The limit applies to the full game as well. Fatigue and limits on the number of pilots per nationality work together to produce a couple of positive effects from a game standpoint.
Our testing showed that without fatigue, players tended to just fly the same pilots again and again until they were maxxed out (or dead). Fatigue gave players a reason to rotate through a set of pilots and develop a team with varied abilities.
Limits on the number of pilots per nationality means that every so often, you may find that all of your pilots are fatigued to some extent, and you will be forced to fly a fatigued pilot. This is particularly true at the higher end because the hot-shot pilots gain LOTS of fatigue every time they fly.
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No problem. When you play a table top game such as the card version of Down in Flames, all the game mechanics are readily visible to all players, so it's much easier to get an intuitive feel for probabilities. Computer games tend to hide some of the details, so I understand that players are interested in gaining insights into how things work behind the scenes.
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They are marked as discarded, or unavailable, until the last card has been drawn. At that point, the deck is rebuilt.
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There is a single deck shared by all players. Cards are pulled randomly from the deck rather than shuffling and pulling from the top. When all the cards have been pulled, the deck is rebuilt and play continues.
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Is there a particular page you're trying to get to? Maybe going straight to the page would work. Like if you're trying to get to the Tournament Round #1 page, it is: http://downinflamesonline.com/DiFPortal/Default.aspx?tabid=57
Are you getting a message saying that your login failed? Or does it appear to log in successfully, but doesn't give you access to the correct menus?
Do you access the web via a proxy server? Sometimes companies use a proxy server which caches pages, and this might be causing problems.
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Are you unable to log into the web site? Or are you unable to log into the game Lobby?
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What should happen when a leader gets killed is that the wingman gets promoted to leader, and any skills that he had should get traded back in for equivalent XP value. Then you can purchase leader skills with that XP. If that didn't happen, you can send an e-mail to difadmin@battlefront.com including the player name and pilot name, and we'll take a look at it.
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Actually, when I compare the skills of the two sets of pilots, they really aren't all that far apart.
Your Leader has 3 permanent skills: Natural Pilot, Zoom Climb and Starting Energy. The enemy Leader has 4 permanent skills, but one of them is Target Pilot, which doesn't really help in combat (but does make them more deadly when they shoot you down).
Your Wingman has 2 permanent skills: Natural Pilot and Check Six. The enemy wingman has 3 permanent skills, but again, one of them is the Target Pilot skill.
So the big difference comes down to the "Draw extra card" skills that the AI pilots have, and your pilots do not. If you were playing the full version of the game, I can almost guarantee that your pilots will rarely go into battle without buying at least a couple of "Draw extra card" skills. They're relatively cheap, and they can really help out when you're in a pinch. That's where the 100 XP limit really starts to put the demo pilots at a disadvantage.
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Yeah, sounds like you've got plent of RAM. Are there any error logs showing up in the install folder (C:\Program Files\Battlefront\Down In Flames\bin)?
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Theoretically, any machine that can run the .NET framework should be capable of running the game, but I can't rule out the possibility that a Windows 98 system might have more difficulty than others. The .NET framework can be kind of greedy when it comes to RAM, and the later operating systems like Windows 2000 and XP tend to do a better job of managing RAM.
How much RAM does your system have? Do you notice a "slowing down" of the computer as the game progresses? If so, it may be an indication that there is no available RAM which is causing slower response times. Just a thought.
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I'm looking into the campaign issue. Hope to have it fixed in the next day or so. Must have broke it in the last server update.
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What kind of connection to the internet do you have? Cable, DSL, ISDN, dial up? Lost connections typically happen when the server goes through a certain number of retries, and then decides that the user must not be there anymore. Dial-ups in particular could be susceptible to noise that might result in a lot of retries.
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Have you installed the .NET framework? There is a shortcut to the install on the Start menu under Battlefront/Down in Flames.
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When you right-click a card, you get to see what it responds to, but you are correct that we don't show information the other way around, ie, we don't show what cards respond to a given card.
</font>
- Ace Pilot: Can only be responded to by another Ace Pilot</font>
- Barrel Roll: Can be responded to by Barrel Roll or Ace Pilot</font>
- Tight Turn: Can be responded to by a Tight Turn, Scissors or Ace Pilot</font>
- Scissors: Can be responded to by a Scissors or Ace Pilot</font>
- Vertical Roll: Can be responded to by a Vertical Roll or Ace Pilot</font>
- Maneuvering: Can be responded to by a Tight Turn or Ace Pilot</font>
- Half Loop: Can be responded to by an Ace Pilot</font>
- In My Sights: Can be responded to by a Barrel Roll, Tight Turn, Vertical Roll or Ace Pilot</font>
- Out of the Sun: Can be responded to by a Vertical Roll or Ace Pilot</font>
So if you respond to an In My Sights with a Barrel Roll, your opponent can only respond with another Barrel Roll or an Ace Pilot. Since an Ace Pilot is pretty rare, his most likely response is with a Barrel Roll. Therefore, when it comes back to you, your response will have to be with yet another Barrel Roll (or and Ace Pilot).
So you are in some sense committing yourself down a certain path once you choose to respond to an In My Sights with a Barrel Roll instead of a Tight Turn.
[ August 14, 2005, 12:35 PM: Message edited by: bartbert ]
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Back when we were testing the game, we had a guy who was a game reviewer that had this exact same problem. I wish I could tell you that we figured out what was causing it and how to fix it, but the fact is that we never did figure out what was going on.
I can tell you that we monitored things from the server side when he would try to connect, and as far as I could tell, the request to connect never made it to the server. Whether it was being stopped by something on his computer, or a hardware device on his network (such as a router, cable modem, or hardware firewall), I don't know, but the request just wasn't getting to the server.
I was looking at some of the e-mails he and I exchanged at the time, and one thing he had in common with you is that he was using McAfee virus/firewall protection. I know that you have said that you disabled it on your machine (as did he), but maybe there's something there. Or perhaps there is some anti-spyware software that is blocking the request
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The server is supposed to kill your session if it doesn't get a response back within a certain number of retries. Apparently something went wrong in this case. We'll be installing an update to the server software soon, so that should clear your session.
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I think one other person has reported the problem with the wingman getting cut off, but I haven't been able to duplicate the problem on my machine. Are there any unusual video display settings that you're aware of? A particular video card perhaps? Are others having this problem?
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The effects are somewhat lengthy depending on whether it is a leader, a wingman, or a bomber, but a good rule of thumb is that every 9 points of fatigue constitutes an additional fatigue level.
At each successive level, a pilot/aircraft will lose 1 point from the airframe rating. So if your pilot had 20 fatigue points, that would be Level 2. If his aircraft normally took 7 points of damage to destroy, it would now only require 5 points.
In addition, each level of fatigue beyond level 1 will also impose a penalty on Performance, Horsepower or Bursts (for leaders). For example, at level 2, there's a -1 Performance. At level 3 there is a -1 Burst (in addition to the -1 Performance), and so on. Wingmen similarly suffer degradation to their offensive and defensive ratings.
It gets fairly ugly pretty fast. The moral of the story is don't fly fatigued pilots if you can help it.
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I wasn't sure, but it sounded like part of your question was whether there was any way you could play cards to prevent your opponent from climbing up to your level, or diving down to your level. If so, the answer is No, you cannot prevent that from happening. The sequence of play is:Originally posted by securityguard:...can you not use defensive cards?
It seems like when someone dives up to me, he can use maneuver cards with impunity. Are scissor cards only used on the offensive? In other words, can I only use scissor cards when I target something, and not when I'm being targeted (unless he uses scissors first)? I haven't really noticed, but it also seems like tight turns don't work when they dive on you. Maybe it's a figment of my imagination.
1. Wingman plays cards
2. Change Altitude
3. Leader plays cards
4. Discard
5. Draw
During the Change Altitude step, you can go up or down by one level, and there's nothing that anyone can do to stop that from happening. If you are Disadvantaged or Tailed when you change altitude, your opponent can follow you, but he cannot prevent the altitude change.
Losing wingmen in game setup :(
in Down In Flames
Posted
I'm not sure what's causing your game to lock up, but I think I know why you're losing your wingman. The server doesn't know why you disconnected from the game. It could be due to a legitimate loss of connection (as in your case), but it could also be due to a player who doesn't like the way the battle is going and decides to close it down.
In order to discourage players from quitting in the middle of a game, the server will perform a normal bailout check on the pilots who lost connection, with the normal consequences for failure. If you fail the check and have an Escape Death skill available, then that will be used up. But if you don't have the Escape Death skill, then the pilot is toast.