bartbert
-
Posts
636 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by bartbert
-
-
For the demo game, there really aren't any restrictions. Since there is a 100 XP limit on pilots, and there is only one type of aircraft per nationality, we decided that it might make it too difficult to join a game if we put the normal restrictions in place.
In the full release, you will not be able to join a game unless the value of your pilots plus aircraft is greater than 75% of the game value and less than or equal to the game value.
-
It sounds like something is blocking or interrupting the connection to the game server. I suspect that it is not just campaign games, and probably any online game would have the same problem.
The fact that you can log into the lobby would indicate that DirectX is working and that you are able to establish at least one connection. Perhaps there is something that is preventing a second connection from taking place, although I don't know what that might be.
Anyone else run across this problem?
-
Hmmmm. That's the same resolution I use, so that can't be the problem. It seems like it must be some kind of configuration setting on the display properties, but I haven't been able to find any that duplicates the problem on my machine.
Anyone else have any ideas on this one?
-
Do you have DirectX 9.0 installed as well?
-
What screen resolution are you using that results in the wingman getting cut off?
-
A couple of others have asked about the same thing. We're going to add a team-chat feature that you can toggle by pressing Ctrl-T. This will switch back and forth between sending to just your team or everyone in the game.Originally posted by Kozure:I don't recall seeing it suggested elsewhere, but maybe it has been - a simple side-only text chat, next to, above or below the general chat. A few times in 2v2 it would've been great to communicate certain things (i.e. - I'm OK, climb, dive, I'll cover, etc.) to a teammate without having the other side know.
-
Every time you start up a game, whether it is against an AI or human opponent, there is a mission preview screen that opens up. This preview screen shows all the participants in the battle along with a summary of their stats and a list of their skills.Originally posted by Gunhawk:How can you tell which skills and AI pilot has?
Thanks
Gunhawk
In the online game, the preview screen opens up at the same time that the game starts, so it may be easier to miss that it is there. In the local game, the preview screen comes up first and you can look it over a bit before the game starts up.
-
Well, I can tell you that local games should work the same way as online games. So either you've just been lucky, or there's some kind of bug in the logic.
You can tell from the bailout parachute animation whether the pilot made his safe bailout percent or not. If the parachute kind of wags back and forth as it goes down, then it was not a safe bailout, and the pilot should have expended an Escape Death to survive (if he has one). If the parachute just goes straight down, then it was a safe bailout and he didn't need an Escape Death.
Do you recall whether you've seen the parachute wag back and forth on any of the bailouts?
-
Ok, I tried sending it to that address. Hopefully it arrives this time.
-
I tried sending you the verification code by e-mail but it got rejected with a message saying, "This user doesn't have a yahoo.com account"
-
Bill, if you could post the exact error message you're getting here, or send it to difadmin@battlefront.com, we'll see if we can figure out what the problem is.
-
Exactly right.
-
The answer can be somewhat complicated. If you are climbing during your own turn (during the Change Altitude phase) it only costs one card to climb.
If you are Tailing your opponent when he changes altitude, it still only costs one card to follow him when he climbs.
If you are Advantaged on your opponent when he changes altitude, it costs one additional card to follow him, so if he climbs, you must discard 2 cards to follow him.
If you are Advantaged or Tailing your opponent and he plays a Vertical Roll card that you cannot counter, it will cost you one additional card than normal to follow him. So if you are Advantaged and he plays a Vertical Roll that you cannot counter, and he climbs, you would have to discard 3 cards to follow him. Very expensive.
To make things more complicated, there are skills that can alter the cost to change altitude. The Zoom Climb skill subtracts one from the cost to climb, for example.
-
Well, everyone is going to have their own threshold for when they start getting bored with a game, of course. Keep in mind that we have intentionally limited what you can do in the demo game, though.
Flying the same aircraft every mission can get kind of dull. In the full version, your pilots start out flying the worst aircraft available for their nationality. As your pilot gains experience, he not only can purchase skills, he also unlocks better aircraft. It's always fun to get a newer, better aircraft for your pilot to try out.
When your pilot gets enough experience, he can also start flying escort missions instead of just the standard dogfight mission. Bombers can be tough, and they are worth a lot of points (undamaged bombers score points for the escort, damaged and destroyed bombers score points for the interceptors). Your tactical decisions may required a little modifications. As the interceptor, do you go after the escort first, and hope that you have enough time later to down the bomber, or do you ignore the escort and go straight for the bomber? As the escort, do you defend the bomber at all costs, or do you leave it to the wolves if things get tough? If you allow the bomber to get shot down, you may actually end up earning negative experience points!
Then there's the campaigns. The Dunkirk campaign is very small and short. Relatively speaking, there are only a few decisions to make when allocating your pilots to the map. The full version adds the Battle of Britain, Singapore, Solomons, and the massive Daylight '44 Bombing campaigns.
My personal favorite is still the Solomons campaign. Both sides have bombers, so both sides could be attacking some areas while defending other areas. There are 5 areas to cover and there are 4 turns. Neither side can cover every area on every turn, and your pilots will need rest somewhere in there, so there are some very tough decisions to make in terms of where to put your resources.
We haven't really mentioned anything about it because the plans have not been finalized, but I think there will also be some contests and tournaments sponsored by BFC to give your pilots even more reasons to jump into the cockpit.
Just food for thought.
-
There is support for voice in DirectX, so voice chat is not out of the question in a future release.
As Dan mentioned, we'll be adding a team chat mode to the in-game chat box. Basically, you'll hit Ctrl-T to toggle between sending messages to all players or just the guys on your team.
-
I looked into this pilot, and I think the Leader Board is working correctly. Four out of the five kills occurred last month. For the current month, he only has one kill, and that is where he shows up on the Leader Board.
You can always change the filters on the Leader board to look at last month, or all-time.
-
You may have some kind of spam filtering in place that is blocking the receipt of the verification code. I sent you a separate e-mail with the code. Hopefully it gets through.
-
Campaigns were a relatively late addition to the game, and we wanted to find a way of including them without introducing a lot risk and instability into the game program. Having the web as the place to setup and manage the campaign, while playing out the missions in the game allowed us to add a very nice feature at relatively low risk. Essentially, the web becomes a "mission generator" for the game.
As you have pointed out, the down-side to this decision is that the mechanics of going back and forth between the web and the game are a bit clunky. We knew this would be a problem for users, but we felt that it was just too cool of a feature to leave out, or to delay things for a more elegant solution.
However, one very nice positive of the current web system is that we have a lot of freedom to create new campaigns, and add new features to campaigns that would difficult to do if the system were more tightly integrated. We can add new target types, maps, pilots, aircraft, etc., without you having to download a new version of the game.
-
I think what probably happened here is that you allocated your pilots, hit Execute, and in this case, the AI decided to have all his pilots "Stand Down". Therefore, there were no missions to that needed to be played out, and the game moved on to the next turn. Presumably, you were awarded the points for all areas where you allocated pilots and the AI did not.Originally posted by Cull:On a related note: I played the Dunkirk campaign once and had an oddity. Maybe (likely) it was user error.
I set up my strategy for turn 1 and hit "execute", went back to the mission screen and flew the mission. So far so good. For turn 2, I went back to the campaign screen, saw the results posted, set up turn 2, and hit execute again. For some reason it appeared to actually execute the missions, as there were results posted for the turn 2 missions and the campaign screen read that I was now on turn 3. Hmm, thinks me. I then played turn 3 with the same steps and it worked fine, got the campaign results screen and all that.
-
Let me know what the pilot names are, and your player name, and I'll take a look.
-
The answer to your first question depends somewhat on who created the game, and who is joining the game.
If a super-pilots creates the game, then when you go to join the game with your lowly noob pilot, you should look carefully at point value of the game before you join it. If it's a 20-point game, you're just asking for trouble if you join it with a 5-point pilot. We will probably be adding an additional restriction that a pilot must have at least 75% of the game's value to join it.
If the lowly noob pilot creates the game, then we prevent someone from joining that game with a pilot that is more than a couple of points higher than the game value. So if you're pilot is worth 8 points, then you shouldn't be going up against anyone worth more than 9 or 10 points.
-
Depends on how much he pays me.
-
I don't know the answer to that one. I guess Martin will make that call before the full release. You guys have really helped us put this Beta Demo to the test though. We do appreciate the feedback, and hope that it has been "fun work".
-
As you suspected, there is a 100 XP limit on all Demo pilots. We allow you to continue to accumulate XP and Kills as far as the Leader stats on the web page are concerned, but I'm afraid you can't purchase anymore skills with those pilots until the full version is released.
Glad you're having fun with the game, though. The full version of the game will open up lots of new aircraft, bombers, escort missions, new campaigns, and as many skills as your pilot can earn.
restrictions for joining game?
in Down In Flames
Posted
The XP shown on the web site is kind of misleading. Essentially, it shows how much XP your pilot would have if there were no XP limit. However, if you go look at your pilot in the "Manage Pilots" screen from within the Lobby, you will see that your Cumulative XP goes no higher than 100. This means that you can never purchase more than 100 XP worth of skills.
We decided not to limit the display of XP on the web site so that players could continue to compete for the top Ace position even after they hit the 100 XP limit.