Devs real question
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You guys are harsh on poor Randall. Money may not be the answer to BMS and this community (Although I’m pretty sure 4-5 million would be plenty for all that high level expertise for a couple years). But it doesn’t mean it couldn’t be an answer for an alternative of equal quality. Nor does it implicitly or explicitly mean anyone currently or formerly associated with the project would need to be involved. Given the source of the code they would be using as a basis for a new project from scratch, it might even be better if they weren’t. But the truth is, if you have an end goal in mind, and the money to pay experienced professional developers to get to that end goal, they don’t need any experience with Falcon, or flight sims, or any of it. Developers don’t get paid because they have a degree in physics and understand the underlying quantum mechanics of 3-body gravitational interaction, they get paid because they can implement the equation the physicist came up with and handed to them.
Money will never equal passion
Money has never driven passion
Freedom drives passion
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I am a real new guy here, so maybe someone could explain two things :
1. Why do people like to declare stuff like:
I like [some feature], [some feature] is totally awesome,
if you don’t satisfy me and make [feature feature feature], your work is dead and everyone will abandon it.
Apart from this logic being somewhat broken, it is also entirely consumerist.
I never found this demand to be ok in the actual gaming industry field,
but at least you could say this is how consumers deal with products.
This isn’t really the case with BMS - it’s not a product,
it’s a project of crazy passion and you are not buying it but
a) getting it for free and b) are absolutely welcome to contribute to.For almost 20 years a group of people is doing what they like.
Have you ever heard about people who are into reconstructing airplanes ?
Have you seen this small group in New Zealand who are making replicas of WW1 era airplanes ?
They also fly those at airshows, but mainly they build it, they stage dogfights, they are having fun - basically time travelling, finding out what that could be like.
There are also people who do this for museums and people who just have money and collect planes, restore them etc.
Have you heard about 16-60+ year old men who spend thousands on plane models ?
Have you seen that you can buy an actual jet plane, just a miniature one ?
Ever seen the dogfight events where the prop planes are supposed to cut a ribbon from each others tail ?
This is what BMS team is doing essentially - it’s just that what they work with a piece of software instead but hey first, the times are changing and second,
they are working with not just a plane but with a profession-lifestyle-experience simulator.
It’s kind of unique and well, i sincerely wish that Falcon BMS will one day end it’s life not on a retro gaming website sale but in a museum.
I think we’re pretty lucky that these enthusiasts have decided some time ago to release it to public.
Hell, they even organized a forum, a website with community with it.
They share some tools and so on.
And you’re very welcome to partake in this hobby - you’ll get advice and help.
It might be difficult and it might be you have to persist quite a lot in your efforts and redo, remake.
But just think about it - it’s the most sophisticated complex toy for adults - and some people are constantly making it even more interesting and complex.
Doesn’t it seem that the developers add things there so they could enjoy it just like the community ?
I mean i really don’t see why they would spend time implementing something
like (possibly) carrier landings on pitched deck unless someone from them thought -
man that would be so amazing to experience.
Curiously enough, Falcon has a framework of dynamic/random/unpredictable gameplay
that means you’re not just playing through your own script, you could actually experience this yourself anew.And another thing i don’t understand is this strange desire to belittle a “hobby” and demand it turns into a business.
Why would you wish such a horrible thing on a person ? “I wish you would quit everything and satisfy me, here’s 50 bucks for you.”
If the aspect of demanding that a group of people with their own lives and careers and families should abandon it all
and become a game development studio is ok with you,
then let’s do some math and talk about game development.
So crowdfunding, huh ?
The premise of this whole project is a simulation that is as close to real life experience as possible.
Systems, situation, environment etc.
This inevitably makes it complex to learn (which is part of the experience and a great one) and no amount of inbuilt tutorials will fix this.
So the interest will be limited - maybe 25-30 thousand people contribute to the campaign, 50 euro each on average.
This brings us to a rough figure of 1 and a half million euro - minus taxes and the fee of the crowdfunding platform.
We end up with something like 1200000 euro for the actual development.
We will assume that the number of developers currently would be (core and optimistically, i’m not informed about this) 10-15 people.
Let’s also be optimistic and assume that just 5 more people (non developers, support staff, financial staff) need to exist in any case in the team.
So that would be 20 people - maybe they would be ok to work for 3000 euro from which we would
need to deduct taxes and medical and social insurance (yeah, that’s a thing in europe, thank god).
You know how much time these team of 20 has ? 20 months.
I mean if they just continue working with what they have and sit at home/cabinet their own places.
In order to work effectively as a company they need to at least partly be in one-two offices.
Let’s take a wild guess that we now need two studios with equipment and electricity, internet, water, etc. Let’s continue guessing
and find out how much would it cost to have a studio in (for example, randomly) in Brussels and somewhere small, perhaps midwestern in US.
How much does this cost to rent?
I have no knowledge how to calculate the price of equipment needed for development so let’s just give the devs an average gaming pc - 1000-1500 (cheap option) per one.
We need 15 at least - that’s 22 500 euro alone (not counting software, network, it support etc).So. Let’s imagine that (somehow) some more money has been acquired and the development was able to proceed for 2,5 years.
The distribution doesn’t cost much so at least that’s free but if you want to sell this at all you need at least some money for marketing.
Maybe 300 000 more. Otherwise you sort of have to sell it to the 30 000 thousand people who already contributed and therefore paid for it.
So there’s no profit. What are the devs supposed to do next? Make a new crowdfunding campaign?
Go back to their (now broken, such is the cost of crunch laden game development) previous lives?
It’s quite clear that in 2,5 years a team of 15 people will not be able to build a Falcon BMS 4.33.5 level simulation
from the ground up because it took 20+ years and a lot more effort and people
to build what we are now lucky to have.
Perhaps now you can understand why DCS devs are locked into this terrible circle of needing to release
new aircraft modules and visual updates because they do not have the resource
to actually add gameplay to it - how could they if they need to constantly support themselves ? The cost
of development in Russia is lower, yes, although not in Moscow, but
they still have lives they need to support just like any game dev - and in this industry
you’re pardon me so [beeeeep] as the rate of people getting laid off from the studios is so insane and so normal,
that you might as well consider yourself a freelancer all the time with zero security.
Game devs are only starting to discuss unionization although it remains to be seen how is this possible to achieve
as there is a constant stream of young idiots ready to work for nothing 18 hours per day for a year
and get fired right after the release of the product.
This “turn hobby into serious business” problem isn’t unique to BMS though,
if you look at the amazing Wings: Over Flanders Fields, a project
that shares a few problems (with rights or engine performance for instance) with Falcon- they (or Mark himself) decided to (and can legally do it) sell their project.
You can (and should) go get it for 60 dollars + buy a copy of Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 3.
But first of all - the company is literally just a few people,
they have a sponsor, they’re still not making enough money to make this a large commercial project.
People have been demanding vr support and a new engine for a long time now,
but the devs chose to make a new project (ww2, central europe, dynamic campaign, destructable scenery etc)
with the same engine - partly due to financial reasons and partly because they already know this engine and they can do what they want not in 5+ years but right now.
And this leads us back to the point of BMS devs being the actual users/players - they can this right now,
they can implement new stuff in this here and now.
It took Il2 Battle of Stalingrad devs 5+ years to develop what they have today - a beautiful, realistic, approachable (with a hotas and tracker and pedals) simulation with a campaign -
and this was built on an already existing engine of Rise of Flight (also 5+ years of work).
It has VR (and a great one) and now a campaign - a career really, but not on a level of the living world of Falcon.
(not to mention the huge difference in complexity of modeled systems and incomparable attraction of obsessing over ww2 details for wargamers - i mean these forum battles about the modeling of the power of Minengeschoss, jesus christ!)With regards to the Starcitizen thing… (thank god for this forum being a closed one) well, it’s a really different story.
In short - it’s a totally different crowd. Look at the videos of the yearly meet ups - who do you see in the public ?
It’s the dude-bro guys, people who grew up on Halo and american movies. This might sound judgemental,
but it’s more of a fact. It’s their thing, up to them. But if you look at the design of the whole thing, you’ll notice pretty
quickly how much this is a blockbuster, a pompous fantasy. But ok, i would absolutely want to see it happen.
If it could work out - it could be a game changer for the interactive entertainment. But it won’t -
not because i don’t believe they can’t release it, i’m sure they will, -
it’s just that this dream of a virtual star system with a mega amount of details will flop under the weight
of what the online gamer community today is - mostly angry young white men,sometimes not so young.
Sorry if this offends anyone, but please just take a look at what happened with EVE online -
it’s a wonderfully flourishing community of snakes.
Personally i wonder why online communities go this way so often. I also wonder why the BMS community is not like this.
I wish Star citizen best of luck but please do not ever bring this up as a success story for game development -
there is a miriad of stories from the workers of the many studios on this project,
which tell a story even worse than any other triple AAA developer.Vr on other hand… is still a thing of the future. I’m glad to have bought a vr set from internet in europe - cause i returned it within a week.
It is absolutely the future of simulation and i think more importantly the sims themselves might be the future for the VR.
Without significant technological leaps in haptic controllers, affordable motion platforms etc,
vr is not really good for anything but the simulations - whether military, medical or commercial entertainment purposes.
But neither the image quality, nor the price margin today make this worth investment today unless you really can’t wait.
Give it a few years time and i’m sure you’ll see both the better and cheaper vr sets and controls and implementation of it in Falcon.
For now, it seems to be more of a wow factor shiny new toy and is good to keep in mind or on a roadmap
but doesn’t seem to be something that needs to be urgently implemented not on a level of a hack.
And well it seems like some folks disagree and are working on a hack.All of this doesn’t mean that the wishes for better and better looking and more complete Falcon are a bad thing.
Hell, i would organize a crowdfunding campaign myself if this was a realistic prospect -
for buying the license (or negotiating, it’s unclear at the moment how is this supposed to work due to TitanIM) for the Outerra engine.
But while i don’t know much about coding, i doubt that it is possible to just port/attach/connect this to Falcon.
I could imagine the reasons for this not existing but really the most appropriate crowdfunding here
should be a “thank you” donation campaign - with no objectives, no strings, no obligations and maybe no reasons -
just to thank the BMS team for the fact the they share this project with the public. It’s like a bunch of people are constantly working on restoring an airplane and allow us to take a ride on it. - they (or Mark himself) decided to (and can legally do it) sell their project.
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Sorry, toooo long to read…
I believe that in 5 years from now, VR will be a reality in BMS. But if it doesn’t … I also believe that it won’t be dead anyway. Maybe just few less users.
If I was a Wall Street investor, I would give bms less chances to fail vs dcs in 5 years from now. “Business” here are more safe.
Developers don’t get paid because they have a degree in physics and understand the underlying quantum mechanics of 3-body gravitational interaction, they get paid because they can implement the equation the physicist came up with and handed to them.
C now why they will NEVER reach bms quality in regards to an F-16??
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Second u must start something from scratch, total zero.
This has been tried already, years ago. If my memory serves me right, it was between Open Falcon leak and OF data dev and BMS coders merging together. Somewhere around BMS 4.1X. You guys have no idea what happened between OF 4.3 and BMS 4.32…
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I generally find that if you have passion, you’ll find money…but that if you have money, well…it can become a guide that can lead down many paths. Varied paths.
I’m satisfied.
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Guys when u r money depented and run a company u must have a main budget.
This budget must be the Holly Bible so that things don’t get under the red line.
Or below brake even state.
This means things must be done and get sold to preserve the existence and continuation.
If u succeed money wise than you can have the resources and luxury to have a team working free and do that “magic” work adding and developing wow factors that are not must factors to preserve and follow the strict budget.Στάλθηκε από το MI 5 μου χρησιμοποιώντας Tapatalk
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I’ll leave the passion to the team , I’ll take the money.:bolt:
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As the manager of a RL game studio that makes military simulators I can tell you that there is a lot behind running a successful studio that will have major impacts on the BMS team’s lives.
I also don’t think there is enough of a market to keep cash flows going. I doubt ED has a very large core team - there just isn’t a wide market for this sort of thing (there used to be, remember all the Janes games?). With really effective marketing you might be able to keep it going, but im sure most of the BMS folks have successful careers in STEM fields already which pay really well, and im sure most of them are older guys (like Chris Roberts). You have to give up a lot to start a studio - it’s going to impact families and a regular 40 hour a week job might turn into 60+ hours a week.
I also think one thing which inhibits community teams from becoming highly effective is a lack of a production and product management team which ensures frequent releases and reigns in scope creep respectively. CHris Roberts Industry is an extremely dysfunctional game studio as far as I can tell for this reason. They don’t actually release anything playable. And I am sure they have major integration issues. Yet they continue to add scope. Because they are intoxicated by $$$. I would be surprised if when Star Citizen finally comes out it isn’t another Daikatana. The point is: i’d be wary to say “BMS team can be like Star Citizen, woooo!”
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I’ll leave the passion to the team , I’ll take the money.:bolt:
Let’s do a kickstarter then. When we reach 20 millions we will develop the Ultimate Flight Simulator
Pledge 5$ or more: get the cockpit for free when product is released,
Pledge 50$ or more: get the cockpit, plus one wing , plus the poster “Shadow on your six”
Pledge 100$ or more: cockpit, both wings , poster and convenient coffee cup “Cocoaster”
Pledge 500$ or more: get the whole aircraft, 5 posters , 5 Cocoasters
Pledge 10000$: all of the above, plus your name tattooed on Shad’s left buttock (available while inventory lasts)PS: The Sim will feature the capability of uploading any aircraft or landscape picture with your browser and automatically generate 3D models. It will however have porn filter for obvious reasons.
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Yeap here in Greece we work 10-15 hours… U r still on 30-35?
[emoji38]
I believe those 30-35 hours if existing would be on public sector work positions in some countries.
The actual truth is way different.Στάλθηκε από το MI 5 μου χρησιμοποιώντας Tapatalk
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…I work 9 hour days and get every other Friday off - working Fridays are 8 hours. Not a bad setup.
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We don’t need a new sim. Falcon is awesome but for one final piece. VR. Make that happen then drop the mic and walk off like a mother ****ing sorcerer
Sorry for the language. I played Cards Against Humanity last night at the hunting lease lol.
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We don’t need a new sim. Falcon is awesome but for one final piece. VR. Make that happen then drop the mic and walk off like a mother ****ing sorcerer
Sorry for the language. I played Cards Against Humanity last night at the hunting lease lol.
We don’t but we do need the 20 millions
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How much did falcon 4 or DCS cost to develop?
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How much did falcon 4 or DCS cost to develop?
Not a soul here has the answer to that question!! Never been made public.
C9
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As the manager of a RL game studio that makes military simulators
And what would those titles be??
C9