homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation Rise of Flight - The First Great Air War ROF Campaign Released

You will be transferred. Not nice, I know, but the that was the design descision for an interesting conundrum. If I transfer the historical ace it would be ugly. RB handled it by having two commanders on staff, which I also did not like. I thought moving the player was best.

Hello Patrick,
Thank you most kindly for your continued support, I certainly voted for your mod in the 'favourites poll', it adds such a wonderful dimension to RoF.

Just noticed today that a new version was released at new years, so perhaps what I'll report is resolved.
A 'balloon protection' mission was generated, which upon loading put me and the wingies in the air above a balloon. No trouble there except I do not have 'start mission in air' active. All the generated missions thus far have started on the field except this one. I can email if desired.

Also, this is not an issue per se, but I've noticed now that there seems to be a heck of a lot of enemy activity converging along my flight path --all the time-- to the point where the last few missions have always ended up with me vs 6 or 7 hostiles. You can only do that so often before it ain't fun anymore. Maybe I've just been unlucky, time will tell.

When in similar outnumbered engagements in other sims I try to drag the battle over a friendly airfield to even things up a bit, or have a place to crash and get medical attention promptly
Anyways, how can we get AAA and AAMG at airfields???

Thank you again!

So I guess you cannot fly a campaigm mission as An American?? Not a major problem Just a question.

Thnaks

pawgy

Bandy, the readme says that escort and ballon defense missions are airstart only, that is by design.

Pawgy, after the screen where you select USA, did you set the correct date on the dropdown list to start your career? By default you are in 1916, you need to set a date late enough then the squadron box will fill up with available squadrons.

RS/. that was it. As soon as i moved the date to late in 1918 I move on to the next screen. thanks

You can experiment with the dates, to start early in a N.28, if you want that. I think one or two squadrons are there in late 1917?

Hi Bandy,

I think that I have to make the number of opposing flights (flights that are designed to cross your path) user configurable.

I can also look into putting AA on airfields. It's a good idea.

For those interested (and for those who can come up with improvements), this is how the algorithm works:
Create n number of flights.
Of those "n" there is a 30% chance that a flight will be designed to cross your path.
Other flight paths have their routes generated without regard to your flight.
Keep all opposing flights.
Toss flights that ...
- Are very far away from yur flight.
- Exceed maximum flights allowed.
- Cause too many different aircraft types to appear.

If I had my way I would just create dozens of fligths, no opposing flights at all, and let em fly. I would recreate ground positions too for every mission. it would actually make my life easier. Can't do that due to performance considerations, thus the complexity and need for configurability.

Please keep the ideas coming.

Just a humble suggestion. Is there any way not to show what opposing aircraft you're gonna face? Adds more mystery.

Also, I haven't messed with the mission builder in a long time, so I'm not sure what is possible, but can you make it so the aircraft don't show up in the mission until they are close to the player's flight? Sorta like the existing campaign engine. Would that help performance?

Actually, as I typed that out, I realized that I don't believe that's possible. You'd have to fly over a trigger, and there's no way to "randomly" set one where an enemy "might" be. If the player goes off the beaten (waypoint) path, there would be no triggers. Damn.

Anyway, great utility here, it's really the only reason I still play ROF.

Oops! Thanks, honestly I did read the ReadMe at one point in the past, but obviously that point didn't stick, and I've NEVER had a balloon protection mission till now...

THANKS Patrick for looking into the possibility of placing AAA and AAMG at airfields. They don't have to be perfectly placed at the corners, behind privies, etc., just in near proximity would be most welcome.

I agree with removing the 'airplane types appearing' in the mission briefing. While an argument can be made that squadrons/jastas/escadrilles had intelligence reports, the 100% accuracy of the briefing does detract from the element of surprise at getting the chance to hole this or that bus/crate type when they are encountered... I'm not sure how sophisticated the generator is RE: squadron placement immediately opposing you (and their A/C type), but maybe an 'Intelligence Report' can be included in the briefing that states who is opposite the lines??? This would not necessarily mean they will be in the air that day though.

Having ALL flights (hostile and friendly) with complete flight paths (rather than triggers) is the way to go for the campaign generator IMHO. It means you can wander around a bit, enjoy a sunrise/sunset reflected on a river off the flight path and generally break from the rigidity of the waypoints (HATE waypoints, navigate by the map, it is a lot more fun!). You can't miss a trigger and will never know what can happen in the mission. It is the most real.

On the other hand, it appears to result in no action for the first third to half of the mission, i.e. thus far I have not encountered hostiles during take off (scramble) or behind friendly lines till the later half of the mission. I assume this is because all flights must take off at the inception of the mission?

Suggestion:
Is it possible to start some flights at random points along their flight paths? That could be very interesting and mix things up quite a bit.

tn_prvteye:
Actually, as I typed that out, I realized that I don't believe that's possible. You'd have to fly over a trigger, and there's no way to "randomly" set one where an enemy "might" be. If the player goes off the beaten (waypoint) path, there would be no triggers. Damn.

This is what Red Baron actually did - a combination of flight path calculation and triggers. Aircraft were nothing more than a bit of math (the flight path calculation) until such time as they were within visual range of the player. Then they would materialize. If RoF ever did this their performance would improve markedly, and you could put dozens of flights and hundreds of aircraft in the air.

I can do that for the mission briefing, it makes sense. Replacing it with Bandy's suggestion, i.e., an intelligence report also makes sense.

Bandy:
I do already start some flights along their paths. The problem is that there are not a huge number of flights so the odds of encountering one are not that great. The limited number of flights is also the reason behnd the opposing flight concept. Without that you would never see anything (which is exactly what did happen in earlier versions of RoFCampaign).

You did mention more flights being a resource hog, and I could see why. I have looked around inside the Campaign generator ini file, just to see whether I could tweak this or that, and saw the various entries for number of opposing flights etc. I increased some numbers minimally, seemingly without negative performance impact, though I imagine these variables have been tweaked for performance on your system. So, if I might ask, what are your system specs and what are the perceived limits for some of the variables???

To the extent that I play I use the defaults. In fact, it is my testing experience that generates the defaults. I have a generic but decent rig so I think that I am fairly representitive of the norm. At those settings I find that things are generally smooth in normal time but time compression does not work well.

A small confession: I don't play very much. I like playing beginning to end of war and I miss the two seaters. Sounds silly but it is a big deal to me. Also, I really like developing the code. This is a once in a lifetime chance to develop the WWI air war campaign that I have always wanted. I want to make the best of it .

Hi Patrick,
You are NOT alone! There are lots of us who miss period correct two-seaters, and the chance to fly them. It looks like this will improve with some patience though. Meanwhile, I'm surprised to hear that you don't fly that much considering this campaign is your 'spawn'. Can't speak for others, but you must know that without it I wouldn't be enjoying RoF by half as much.

If you don't mind me fiddling, I'm slowly bumping up the number of flights for both sides (and decreased chance for direct opposition to 80% at lowest experiment), so far with little to no perceived impact on performance. Have had one uneventful mission though, and another long patrol where I had finally given up on making contact and so dropped down to bag a balloon and strafe some trenches, only to notice several hostile specks show up as I flamed the gas bag. Being in character and at low altitude, I got the heck out of there...

One question if I may, I see no identifiable variable in the ini file that affects the size of flights themselves. How/where is this accomplished and can it be tweaked?

many thanks

Some of the parameters are hard coded. I expose others through the GUI. It is probably worthwhile to put other parameters into the config file without exposing them through the UI. This way people who want to fiddle can do so.

Does anyone know if ROF keeps a log file to record information on events during a flight ? Similar to what IL2 does ?
When I use the generator I never know what to put in regards to what aircraft were shot down etc.
The only ones I know about are the ones I shoot down mostly.

I have not yet figured out how to do that, but I want to. That would bethe top priority of version 7. At the moment I am still doing dot releases for version 6, but that is going well,so maybe soon.

Hi Patrick,

I've a log parser which may be of use to you, though it's mainly used for MP. It's written in python at the moment, and I know you use Java - it runs nicely in Jython though I'd have to strip out the GUI front end. PM me and perhaps we can get the two to work together, or you could pick out the bits of code you need.

W.

Edit: I don't know how well it deals with AI vs AI encounters though, that may require some more work.

Absolutely. PM sent.

Winger, which logfile does your app access?

RoF does produce log files if set in the startup.cfg.

However they are very unwieldy, with a seperate txt file generated for each event.

I'm hoping for something a little more stream lined once the official campaign comes out.