homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation DCS World Campaign after Campaign - ED's new focus

And he had absolutely no help at all from ED?


Yeah, DCS more than most, so much so that it's almost guaranteed.


Point 1. Why is it not valid? Are we not allowed to ask questions anymore?
Point 2. 5% risk is different from 30% risk is different from 60% risk is different from 80% risk. How often have tutorials and campaigns been NOT BORKED after a patch vs. how often have they been BORKED after a patch? How often would you expect a developer to fix a campaign for each patch before the developer decides it's not worth it anymore? Would you write a program for an "alpha OS" which is essentially what DCS World is at the moment or would you wait for the "OS" to mature a bit more before proceeding?

Well, they should be and if they aren't that would explain why obvious things are totally broken on interim releases.

So there you go, ED are involved with all of the points in my previous list - yes, ED are developing DCS, but they're also having to put additional resources into periphery that isn't essential and shouldn't be high on their priority list. Resources that could be put into the core development work.

Now magnify this work by as many campaigns there are, now magnify it again when one of ED's builds breaks a campaign because all of this will need checking and updating.

Now magnify this again when 2.5 merges and all this additional content has to be checked and tested.

Surely you can see it's irrelevant who creates a campaign, you seem to think that just because someone else puts a campaign together then ED have no involvement. ED are using resources to pull it all together and the examples I gave in the previous post are probably the tip of the iceberg.

No, please actually read my answer.



This is something that generates revenue. Do is really require an explanation in what way something that generates revenue for very little involvement is a good thing for the areas of work that don't directly generate revenue?



You saying fixing a bug that breaks 10 campaigns is more work than fixing a bug that breaks one campaign?

As for testing, yes, fixes have to be tested. But whether you like it or not, much of that is being outsourced to the open beta program.



I would, if that would make any sense...

Doesn't say anywhere that the campaign was done by ED and Ranger79. The credits of the vid also say that Ranger79 is the creator. Why do you think he would need help from ED?



Pretty much an exaggeration, but yeah, sometimes things get borked.



Because the credits indicate that ED was not involved in the creation of the campaign.



What makes you think so?????



In my experience, pretty often. When it did indeed happen, it got hotfixed.



Now that is an interesting question. It surely depends on the business model of the respective party. We do not know at this point how ED will handle such a situation. If i bought a campaign and it is no longer maintained, i would lobby ED to make it freeware so the community can maintain it.



I find 1.5 a pretty stable platform. Is your experience different?

Since when did 'stable' indicate that software cannot be alpha and is already mature. 'ICE' didn't even mention the word stable, therefore why are you? Do they mean the same thing in your opinion as it may explain a lot of things.

I can see the mindset of ED here.....and why they don't think they have to finish anything since a stable build means the alpha/beta is finished and essentially complete. If your statements mirror ED's process then they need a massive kick up the backside. Simple as that.

Sure, it generates revenue, and nothing wrong with that.
However, is the revenue gained NOW be worth the hassle of having customers complain later on when the campaign is broken on patch release? What I'm saying is that sometimes, it's better to hold back until you have a better, polished product. That way, you (er, ED in this case) will have revenue AND satisfied customers.


Ah yes... because just anyone can make a campaign, test it, and put it up for sale by themselves. Are you serious?


"Sometimes" is different from "almost guaranteed."



Does it say that "ED and Belsimtek"?? Does it say "ED and Leatherneck"?? Does it say "ED and RAZBAM"?? So does that mean ED did not help these guys at all? Does that mean ED is not involved in these projects?

Where exactly are you looking at for "credits"?


And here I am thinking "it shouldn't have happened in the first place, it should've been caught pre-release of the patch." I guess it's just me, huh?



It is indeed an interesting question, one that I think should not be investigated. But I fear ED will test this limit in the near future.



1.5 is stable now, yes, but things will be different going forward. Would you write a program for an "OS" now knowing you'll have to do more work each time the "OS" is patched?

Actually I understand completely. Several things. About how a new build can affect old software. And how you will continue to be an apologist for ED. Even when facts and "dah troof" is right there in front of you. I've developed for FC3. Third party. But hey, thanks for the input!!!!!

Facts? What facts? I see a lot of opinions on how broken DCS is, i don't see a single fact.

And to return to the topic of the thread, i see a lot of people who don't know the business end of a console trying to tell me how much ED need to go out of their way to include a third party campaign when all they need to do is push it in their repo and create a shop entry for it.

I'm not being apologetic. There's things that bug me about ED. Still this particular criticism especially concerning the latest campaign is misguided. I'd like to be able to comment on it without being character assassinated again and again.



So have a lot of other people that don't know how to work with version control.

Anyone can make a campaign, yes. Not anyone can make a campaign that doesn't suck (i probably couldn't), but that is a different matter. I don't get what the big deal is? You think the step from making missions to making campaigns suddenly requires dark magic?



Hence why i think your statement is an exaggeration. We'll probably have to agree to disagree. I'm not inclined to spend hours to make a statistic of how often campaigns get broken and i assume you feel the same.



There's two frames at the end of the promo video, one states that the campaign was created by Ranger79, the other states who made the video.



People shouldn't have to die of starvation every day either and yet they do.

I've spent enough of my time testing software vital to the security of car passengers to know that it's not financially viable to test to the same standards in lines of business where human lives are not at stake. The amount of work necessary to ensure that software is virtually bug-free (which even the software i tested wasn't, btw., but at least we made sure that the risk of catastrophic failure was miniscule) is enormous.

Knowing the realities of software development, i don't find it hard to accept that even important aspects of the software get broken from time to time, as long as they get fixed afterwards in a timely manner.




Why not? I would very much like to know if there is some sort of contingency plan if, perish the thought, something should happen to a campaign dev and he can't maintain it shortly after release, for example.



There is always some big milestone on the horizon. When you develop for DCS, you need to accept this reality (it's not like it's all bad, i'm sure devs are quite happy that they get new features as opposed to MSFS, e.g.) and deal with it best you can. There is no 'just sit this development step out and then everything will work out itself'. The only way this can ever 'work out itself' is if there was such a steep increase in revenue that ED could increase its QA department tenfold and 3rd parties could establish their own QA departments with testers on a payroll, but i don't see that happening.

I have no confidence in the quality of campaigns for sale based on the quality of campaigns included in modules for sale. The current set I own range from completely broken at worst to underwhelming at best with most being practically unplayable. I don't blame the mission makers; the tools are anemic, platform quicksand, AI limited, demographic uneducated, and the modules themselves in various states of working. The most talented mission maker on Earth would struggle to make an enjoyable scenario given these raw ingredients.

Do any of these campaigns have a demo mission? I'm not paying for reported quality until I see it with my own eyes.

Do you have the M-2000C module?

One issue I see is the massive difference between what a campaign is in ED's eyes and what some other people think it should be. For example, the ED style of campaign, requires a linear points scoring trip where at the end of one flight you have either scored enough to proceed to "LEVEL 2", or you go back to "LEVEL 1".

Now I'm somewhat OK with the answer, "It is what it is". But let me say. It's rubbish.

A campaign should be a continuously played out scenario, where if the player wants to partake, he can and if not, he can watch the computer continue itself. A campaign will be heavily limited by logistics and it will continue beyond one sortie. As a single player it should be something you can pause and as a multiplayer it should be something that contiunues despite players joining and leaving, and support 'JIP', server restarts, perpetual world states including capturable and destructible scenery.

Having done some design of these at squadron level, including one we ran for 8 sessions and 24 hours of realtime in persistence, I can say I know about campaigns, not serialised missions. Making them, is not only hard, but stretches and meets limits that not many people see in the ED SSE. This idea has been touted on the forums by a great many people with some limited success over the years.

What hasn't happened is any result by ED since these asks were first vented all those years ago.

So it is not surprising that the post exists, that people are fed up of the limits of campaigns ED style. Despite even polls on the official forums by the producer, asking for what features should be next and resulting in clear "Dynamic campaign" victory so many months ago, we are no further forward in delivery.

Yes, I agree with the OP. Shove these linear, binary, dead carcasses full of fluff and media into touch and lets get some decent dynamic content for DCS.

PS...as for 1.5.4 being stable, which stack trace do you want me to send to your inboxes. I've got unanswered stuff from March. Not having more than 2 MP clients, no scripts and more than 4 waypoints with no complexity is NOT what DCS is about.

I think this is a great example of the disconnect on what a campaign is and what it shoudl be. Whilst an ED campaign does not require dark magic....something looking like what BMS does as a campaign would require mods like DAWS, tools like Witchcraft, scripts that are custom built and scripts that wholly change DCS content that are public.
So you might not be wrong. But I can not find you right either. I hope you understand that sentiment is not about saying you are wrong, but about why people cannot find agreement and why campaign releases seem so dull for some.

A great couple of posts there 'Pikes'.

From the minute I posted the original post in this thread through utter frustration in seeing continual campaign releases I hope the sentiment is identified....it's not in the great work and amount of time people are spending to actually create the additional content. It's the fact that the fundamental core foundation of DCS is still a work in progress, and this continual (and very slow) level of progress from ED means they are having to maneuver their resources around just to support other people's work at the detriment of what is really important and that is getting the core foundations in place to start with.

The last few posts from Ice and myself go beyond that and into the interim DCS updates and releases which are borking this additional content and making more work for the content provider and ED themselves....when the core foundations of the sim still need lots of work. The more of these additional campaigns we see, the more there is to go wrong and the more resources ED will have to put into their side of things to provide the fixes in due course.

ED need to focus on the core game as an absolute priority, I think Sobek made the claim of the additional revenue earlier and that's all well and good but not if all that additional revenue is lost when everything has to be fixed and retested on a total different magnitude further down the line.

I think we have a bit of a misunderstanding here. I wasn't commenting at all about what *should* go into a campaign to make people happy. The discussion circled around whether an individual can, right now, compose what currently makes up a typical campaign without needing support from ED, which is perfectly possible. There's freeware campaigns of varying quality on EDs file exchange that ED has had no hand in except a moderator unlocking the uploaded file.

I'm sorry, but at this point "DCS is broken" is a fact, and the evidence for it can be found easily depending on how the statement is framed. Not 100% broken, I'll give you that, but broken nonetheless.



I don't need to know how to code in order to comment whether a thing is broken or not. I don't need to know how to fix a car in order to determine that my vehicles is running funny. Your statement in bold is an assumption. It may well be true, but so is our statement/assumption about ED having to divert resources. Since you have been talking about "facts," then where is your evidence that ED did nothing to help the campaign creator?



Make a campaign, yes. Make a campaign that you could actually sell and you'd think people would buy, well, that's a bit more complicated. Doing THAT and having ED actually put in in their store....

Plus you're missing the point. It's not about "making" the campaign that's the issue, it's going from start to sales WITH or WITHOUT ED support is what we're talking about.


Exaggeration? Maybe slightly. Saying "sometimes" is skewing it the other way, but more than "slightly." I may be off a bit when I say "almost guaranteed," but you're way off if you say "sometimes."


And where are the "credits" for the modules?

Stating that the campaign was made by Ranger79 is like saying the modules were created by Belsimtek/RAZBAM/etc. Just because they've not explicityly stated ED helped out does not mean ED did or did not help out. Point is: You're putting too much faith into that one frame.


Going off tangent there now. You're really comparing software development with starvation? Ha!



Sure, getting software "virtually bug-free" is a big ask. But making sure campaigns and tutorials don't get borked each time a patch comes out? That should be basic stuff. I'll give them leeway the first few times it happens, which in my experience was the Beta phase of DCS A10C. However, when it happens and keeps on happening much later, it's a different matter altogether.

Again, I LOL at your comparison of "broken campaigns and tutorials" with "car passenger security."



Again, you're missing the point. It's not about a campaign dev stops supporting his product due to personal, RL concerns; it's about a campaign dev having so much trouble from ED and their patching process.



You must have a very broad definition of "big milestone." Also missing the point between "alpha OS" and "a more stable, mature OS in continued refinement."



Yeah, these FREE campaigns are simply uploaded to a server and done. Are you saying that this was the same for Ranger79's campaign? No testing by ED at all? No requirements or quality standards imposed and checked by ED?

Ranger79: Hey, I've made a campaign that I'd like you to put in the official store and sell for me.
ED: Sure, upload it and we'll put it in the store. We won't check it or anything. We won't see if it's even worth selling. We need the extra revenue so anything is welcome, really.

Ouch!


Thank you Pikes.

Or they get removed, like the 'Shore' campaign for A-10C.

This is the thing I'm afraid with the current way things work. DCS World is an in-development platform, it will always be. This is good on one side - i.e. you now don't have to repurchase the content, or the old content can be played with upgraded engine. But it also has downside - things breaks, especially in the hand crafted mission enviroment of DCS world. Every single, small change has the potential to break a mission. i.e. A simple change in missile performance parameter might tip the balance in the air war on the opposide team, preventing the players A-10/SU-25 to operate in theater.

Previously they were two ways how these mission could get fixed - either the mission author fixed the problem, or, when he was no longer active, someone else took the mission and fixed the issue. The problem is the latter is no longer possible, because the triggers are protected and wrapped in a .dll (and mission editor wont even let you save the mission). So now the only thing left is for the customer to hope that Ranger79, or any other, payed, campaign author will be around for the whole life of DCS World.

That said, I'm happy that DCS went with separate payed campaign. Lack of SP content was always a problem for DCS. The community campaigns, people keep mentioning, were very few and far between, and with varying quality. The good, high quality, like the Vergeev Group Campaign, were always payed. I just wish they would be some kind of publich plan, how ED plans to handle situations where the campaigns broke and the author is no longer active.

Since you seem to insinuate that 1) all of us don't know about this 2) you know everything about this I'll 'splain some things to you.

I was involved with Crytek and their Cryengine II, our mod was the first to be recognized and supported by Crytek. You might remember who they are, FarCry and it's iterations. We had full on support from the devs. So yeah, I fully understand how different versions can break existing or future bits of software. We dealt with that all the time.

But thanks for playing Sobek.

I dont go for the paid campaigns, but was kind of frustrated to see another week of little actual content to the modules being updated.

If NTTR is considered alpha, then why the delay in introducing new airfields? Adding content in phases continually provides interest in something. Instead, 9+ months later they'll dump everything at once, people will explore, but will burn out for another year waiting on other items to complete the map.

A solid plan would be like:
March 2016 release North Las Vegas airfield
May 2016 release Solar Farm
July 2016...

And so forth. This shows a solid commitment to continue supporting the released content. It gives the consumer confidence.

Oh well.