Thought on the distribution of BMS
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Shadow says, ‘Don’t drag me into this discussion.’
+1 , the thought of you in drag would be too disturbing
I don’t know, Vyper… some might say that anything would be a definite improvement…
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Waiting for the thread close, me thinks.
Independens I believe will overcome this proposal.
Steam seeing the downloads might “wake” up and maybe we all don’t want this.
Why not gog u will say. Well gog will see falcon 4.0 downloads and not BMS. -
Anyone that falls at the supposed hurdle of a torrent (even dcs updates come by torrent though of a rather automated nature) is not likely to stick with the steep learning curve that is bms. I do not see that bms stands to benefit from an avalanche of questions/complaints/demands resulting from the new points of access. Buying Falcon on steam or GOG gives no entitlement to the bms mod. Some of the threads started here lately by new arrivals clutching their 2 dollar game suggest they DO feel entitled.
Cobalt, I assume you’re responding to me , so let me first say I don’t have problems with Torrents, either. That is under the catagory of “it aint broke…”. It doesn’t answer my questions, though. However, your main point seems to be that you envision a horde of casual players cluttering up our BMS with their “compliants”. That could a valid point. I like our Community the way it is, too. There is also the very real question if the Devs would even want that, to whatever extent it would happen. However,growth isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
So, once agian it becomes a classic gain/loss question. -
Don’t worry, the steep learning curve and extensive READING usually vets out the casuals and unintelligent.
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If there is a one click solution on GoG and Steam to add bms, frankly it would add a whole lot more people to the game.
… and next will be stuck by “RTFM” and the mountain of book to “eat” … No changes anyway.
And , please, BMS head team spent a lot of time and effort to deal this legit story for community’s pleasure. So now please … please, them them breath, do not add more potential issues into that story.
BMS head team well knows what is good to do or not, so let me advice to let them sail their ship the way they think without adding more entropy. -
I think BMS and this community are fantastic.
I’m just saying it took me a lot to figure out how to get he game going, before I even started playing it. Had to figure out how to install 4.32, what folders, and all of that, download a profile for the Saitek X52, figure that out, etc. It took a bit of time, and that was not time spent learning how to play the game. Of course many people who would buy the game and then be able to upgrade to BMS in once click would still be overwhelmed and give up, but some would not. I guess I was just thinking that a bunch of my friends would try to learn this game if it was easier to get it started.
As it is, installing 4.33.1 will be easier than 4.32. And no matter what it will be a niche game. I just guess that this game and bms update are so awesome it would be nice to have even more people experience this work of art. This is just my opinion, I have great respect for BMS and for the owners of Falcon 4.0.
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+1 , the thought of you in drag would be too disturbing
The trouble is I have put on weight these last few months, I can’t find a dress that fits anymore.
On a more serious note the current installer is somewhat convoluted or tortuous.
It should be noted on the Installer/Patch Page in large Bold text.
You are not patching the Sim you are patching the installer and then reinstalling over the top of your current version.
This is where I see many relatively new and even some of the old timers get stuck.
Don’t get me wrong I like the Installer, however without the ability for it to do online checks for a new patch it losses its attractiveness.
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I can’t find a dress that fits anymore.
Who are you kidding, yes you can.
You are not patching the Sim you are patching the installer and then reinstalling over the top of your current version.
That was true of 4.32 but not 4.33, brother. Mind you, we have not had an update yet for 4.33 so hopefully patching is easier going forward.
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And even this first update will not be a patch but, a new install.
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The trouble is I have put on weight these last few months, I can’t find a dress that fits anymore.
Sure you can. It is called a tent
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The trouble is I have put on weight these last few months, I can’t find a dress that fits anymore.
A moo-moo. It’s so you, Shadow.
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Thanks for all the encouragement.
Let me look in the garage for some thing to wear.
Edit: I never wanted steam on my computer, until I could avoid it no longer.
I still think of it as an invasion of my property & privacy.
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Who are you kidding, yes you can.
That was true of 4.32 but not 4.33, brother. Mind you, we have not had an update yet for 4.33 so hopefully patching is easier going forward.
Once you get the the hang of it and understand the advantage of a “patched” installer, and there are real advantages to doing it this way, its no problem.
Many of us will remember the “falcon dance”
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Well it stayed on topic for a little while. Can I get a moderator to remove the OT posts? Cheers.
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This post is deleted! -
You seem to be actually ASKING for DRM. If it’s not broken dont mess with it.
DRM already exists in 4.33.1 as it stands. That DRM would break with this install method, because Steam would replace the Falcon install with the BMS install, which without modification, would go looking for a Falcon install as part of its DRM, fail to find it, and quit.
For this method to work, it would be broken and would need fixing.
Anyone that falls at the supposed hurdle of a torrent (even dcs updates come by torrent though of a rather automated nature) is not likely to stick with the steep learning curve that is bms. I do not see that bms stands to benefit from an avalanche of questions/complaints/demands resulting from the new points of access. Buying Falcon on steam or GOG gives no entitlement to the bms mod. Some of the threads started here lately by new arrivals clutching their 2 dollar game suggest they DO feel entitled.
Thats not true. Buying Falcon 4.0 is the only requirement you have to use BMS. Buying Falcon 4.0 on Steam or GOG is the only thing required for a sense of entitlement - to use a free mod. Unless BMS are to start charging separately for the sim, being entitled to use free software is a given.
Id agree that there have been some new arrivals with a sense of entitlement alright, but evidently we disagree over what it is they felt entitled to.
Its also worth pointing out that questions about Steam would mostly be asked on Steam. They have forums for their products, as well as their own support channels.
Independens I believe will overcome this proposal.
It does look that way, but its something that would have required a bit of time, work and research to set up anyway. Still an interesting idea - it would be nice to be able to install BMS through your Falcon 4.0 settings window in Steam.
Steam seeing the downloads might “wake” up and maybe we all don’t want this.
Why not gog u will say. Well gog will see falcon 4.0 downloads and not BMS.Er… what are you talking about?
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Rarely ever do I post in these forums, however this thread is definitely worth of discussion in my view given I’m an active steam user.
On the topic of points raised by the OP:
While steam has a go-to status as an online game store, Valve’s file usage policy for content uploaded in the workshop (and most likely to the store aswell, given that, afaik, greenlit games have even stricter requirements) has been a huge bummer to content makers before. And I don’t think that has changed at all in the recent time. This could prove to be an immense setback to the BMS developers if they’re overly protective of their work.
While Valve’s usage policy can be something to be wary of, bigger exposure of BMS would help bring in newer pilots, this can be both good and bad: Good in that newer people are much less accustomed to what BMS is, and could provide fresh input to help the team update some aspects of the game, which generally go unnoticed by people who have played it so much that it became second nature to them, which could be improved. The bad part of this is that the bigger exposure could also bring in people who don’t get what BMS is about and criticize it freely in a non-constructive manner. In my opinion, the pro heavily outweighs the con in this part.
Furthermore there’s also the part of properly integrating BMS in steam in whatever way they find it best to (providing a link for the mod in the store for those who own F4, or including it in an alt branch under F4’s update rules), however I do believe that this would be the easiest part of getting done, and would definitely bring the barrier of “getting into BMS” further down. And complementing what the OP said, no. Steam support would definitely not deal with any BMS bug reports regarding anything. The devs would have to take care of those by themselves.
In the end, I do believe that people who buy the original, online available, Falcon 4 these days do it with the intent of installing BMS, given how outdated the base game is. In which case, I’d say adding a way of acquiring it on steam would be beneficial to BMS as a whole, even if it does have a few bad aspects to it. In my opinion, what currently limits BMS’ community size is it’s exposure. Taking DCS as an example, making it available on steam not only boosted their sales (wouldn’t happen to BMS given it’s a free mod), but also boosted their userbase(in a good way).
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@Pie:
While steam has a go-to status as an online game store, Valve’s file usage policy for content uploaded in the workshop (and most likely to the store aswell, given that, afaik, greenlit games have even stricter requirements) has been a huge bummer to content makers before. And I don’t think that has changed at all in the recent time. This could prove to be an immense setback to the BMS developers if they’re overly protective of their work.
To clarify, I was suggesting the use of the beta feature instead of the Steam Workshop. What parts of the file usage policy have game developers found to be a ‘huge bummer’ before?
@Pie:
Furthermore there’s also the part of properly integrating BMS in steam in whatever way they find it best to (providing a link for the mod in the store for those who own F4, or including it in an alt branch under F4’s update rules), however I do believe that this would be the easiest part of getting done, and would definitely bring the barrier of “getting into BMS” further down. And complementing what the OP said, no. Steam support would definitely not deal with any BMS bug reports regarding anything. The devs would have to take care of those by themselves.
any BMS bugs, sure. I was pointing out that issues relating to Steam itself are dealt with by Steam support. Maintaining the distribution channel would not be an added load on the BMS team.
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To clarify, I was suggesting the use of the beta feature instead of the Steam Workshop. What parts of the file usage policy have game developers found to be a ‘huge bummer’ before?
Something regarding the authority Valve will have over the files. I don’t recall the issue precisely but I’ll be looking it up for clarification. However, by using workshop as an example, I merely wanted to extrapolate it’s terms to how the greenlight/beta branches/store terms could be like.
any BMS bugs, sure. I was pointing out that issues relating to Steam itself are dealt with by Steam support. Maintaining the distribution channel would not be an added load on the BMS team.
Yeah that’s correct, the way I understood it is that steam would be responsible for the BMS-Steam interfacing. They have proven in the past via other devs that they aren’t.
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In fairness, workshop is always third party stuff. They can get away with a lot. The stuff they can get away with for commercial products (which most of their software is) is quite a bit less.