bartbert

I'll try to get to update the Leader Board this weekend to allow sorting on Polish and Soviet pilots, and see if I can update the medals as well. Polish pilots get "upgraded" to British pilots after they gain 50 XP. I don't know if there will be any additional Polish aircraft added. That would be up to Dan.

The game is not compatible with .NET 2.0 so you must install 1.1. You can play both online and offline, although campaign games are only available online right now. However, even if you play online you can play "Solo" games against the AI and you get the added benefit of having your pilot statistics tracked on the Leader Board. The only reason to play offline is if you simply don't have an internet connection available.

If you send an e-mail to difadmin@battlefront.com with as much detail as possible on what the error is, we'll try to help you out. Even better, if you have error log files in the folder "C:\Program Files\Battlefront\Down in Flames\bin" (or wherever you installed the game), send those in the e-mail.

Ok, I'll look into it. Thanks for the heads up.

Yes, custom missions allow you to specify what aircraft you want to match up. We released it at the same time as the expansion, but you don't need to have the expansion to use it.

If you purchased the bundle, you can put the same serial number in either or both text boxes. The server should recognize that it is for the bundle and register you for both products. As Ray mentioned, if you have any problems, send an e-mail to difadmin@battlefront.com and I'll help you get it working.

It looks like the server is timing out while trying to figure out how to allocate the AI pilots. I'm not sure why that is happening yet, but I'll look into it. Thanks for the heads up.

It would be part of the base game, so when it is released everyone would get it whether they had any of the expansions or not. However, it might be released in conjunction with an expansion just as the Custom Missions feature was released at the same time the Eastern Front expansion was released.

No, I'm afraid that is not in this expansion. We get frequent requests to be able to play campaign games offline. I think when we add that feature, we will also include a campaign editor so players can modify the existing campaigns or create new ones (for offline play). That would kind of address what you're looking for.

No problem. Glad it was helpful. Down in Flames is unlike most any other game, so it can take some getting used to. The mechanics are actually fairly simple once you get the hang of it, but there is still a lot of depth to explore.

I posted an update that should fix the problem for the German version not showing the new skills, and medals. However, the new skills and their descriptions show up in English right now. If someone wants to send a list of the new skills and their descriptions in German to difadmin@battlefront.com , I can update the information accordingly. Thanks.

Ok. The Shinden files are now available for download via the auto-updater. I will take a look at the problems with the German version and hopefully can get a fix out later today.

Cyrano, could you check in the folder "C:\Program Files\Battlefront\Down In Flames\images\Aircraft" (or wherever you installed the game) and see if you have a full set of files that begin with "j7w1_45"? There should be a total of 52 files. If those are missing, then that would explain why the Shinden isn't showing up and I'll put the files out for download. Otherwise, there is some other problem that I need to figure out. Thanks.

If you go to the "Help/Check for updates" menu item, it should pull down a set of images for the aircraft preview and stats pages. However, within the game you will continue to see the "generic" fighter aircraft images until the expansion game has been purchased. In other words, you can play against other players who have the expansion pack, and they can use the new aircraft, but you won't get to see the real aircraft images in action unless you purchase the expansion pack.

We should be getting pretty close to releasing the expansion pack. I've been informed that everything is in place for the game to be downloaded and the CD's/DVD's should be in house any time now. Once that is in place, we'll put a new version out for the auto-updater and everyone will get to use the new "Custom Missions" feature. [ September 20, 2006, 06:15 AM: Message edited by: bartbert ]

If you haven't done so already, I'd recommend you reboot your computer. Sometimes a game that doesn't get properly closed down is still running in the background even though you can't see it. Then when you try to start a new game it sees that a game is already running and shuts down.

I like that idea. Maybe for human vs. human missions a pilot receives 45 Fatigue Points if he is "Killed". If you're playing against the AI only, then your pilot becomes inactive and you have to reactivate him with whatever penalties we decide are appropriate.

All good input, guys. And we're not changing anything right away. This is more of a fact finding mission right now.

I can't help but be amused at the divergent opinions on this issue. It seems that no matter what we do, there will be some group of players that won't like it. Such is life. Well, the simple answer to this is that you leave your pilot inactive. Then you don't lose any of your stats. That's not meant to be a flip answer, by the way. It is actually an intentional design feature. A player who loses a pilot with low stats isn't going to care if he loses 10% of his XP, Kills, etc. However, a player who loses a pilot who has very high stats (and possibly holds the record in one or more categories) will probably opt to permamently retire his pilot rather than lose stats. But he his no worse off than he is today (i.e., his pilot is permanently dead).

Medals don't really matter from a game-play standpoint, but have "bragging rights" value to some players. You may be right about the percentage being too low.

Dan and I have been kicking around ideas on this and if we were going to make any changes, I think it should work something like this: 1. If your pilot gets "Killed" in a mission, the game works exactly the same way as it currently does. That is, you are informed that your pilot was killed and the pilot becomes inactive. 2. We change the "Manage Pilots" screen so that you can switch to viewing your pilot "graveyard" or "infirmary". In this mode you can view your inactive pilots but obviously you can't purchase skills, etc. However, there will be a new button to "Reactivate" the inactive pilot that you are currently viewing. 3. If you choose to reactive a pilot, you will be informed that the pilot will lose 10% of his Cumulative XP, 10% of his Kills and maybe 10% of his Medals (not sure about this one since we'd have to figure out which medals to remove). Fatigue points will be set to zero and of course you must have an open slot for that nationality (i.e., you must currently have less than 4 active pilots). 4. We will also keep a count of how many times a pilot has been reactivated and show that number on the Leader Board. We could also put a new filter on the Leader Board that would allow players to only show pilots who have been reactivated 0, 1, 2, 3, etc. times. The default would be to show only those pilots who have been reactivated zero times.

I'd be interested in hearing what you guys would think about changing the system so that pilots never permanently die. Perhaps instead of permanently removing a pilot, he gets gets a whole bunch of fatigue. That way, the pilot will be out of commission for awhile, but can eventually come back. I think there are a couple of arguments in favor of not permanently killing pilots besides the ones that Paul mentioned. First, I think players become a lot more attached to their pilots than Dan and I thought would be the case. We have had some pretty irate players who lost a pilot that they had spent time building up. Second, many players have found ways of keeping their pilots alive well beyond what Dan and I thought was possible. But in order to do that, players have to work the system by flying low risk missions or getting a buddy to fly a "gentlemen's match", etc. I suspect that these "games within the game" that players have to play to keep their pilots alive ultimately detract from just having fun. Finally, there is plenty of precedent for not killing off players "characters" in the fantasy role-player genre. They might lose some treasure, or weapons or experience points, but they always come back. So, what do you guys think? Should we do away with permanently killing pilots? If so, what should we replace it with? Fatigue? Loss of XP? Loss of a skill?

Which files did he e-mail to you? I ask because we used to have quite a few aircraft files that were available via the auto-updater. These were aircraft that we released as free updates after the main game was released and included aircraft such as the F4F Wildcat, Buffalo I, Ki-102 Randy, Me-410 and revised versions of the Spitfire I and Bf-109B. We removed these from the auto-updater because they were causing the initial update for some users to be quite large. Plus, the latest version of the game that is available via download already has these aircraft included (although the CD does not), and the upcoming Eastern Front expansion will also include these files. So, if Sixx sent you the aircraft files for any of those aircraft, that's probably the reason. If you want to download all the "freebie" aircraft files, send an e-mail to difadmin@battlefront.com and I'll provide you with information on how to download the files via FTP.

I always had mixed feelings about flying the Hurricane II. It does terrific damage when it can hit, but its performance sucks. It's a good plane for shooting down bombers, though.