Devs real question
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How much would it take for you to make the definitive DCS + actual game (persistent dynamic campaign (war)) ie “Falcon 5”.
like im asking you to start a patreon or that star citizen thing with a price, so we can raise funds to get you guys working in your own studio making a full game.
DCS is basically dead in the water, all they can produce are US planes and I have no doubts you could pull the studios making their planes away from them. they also haven’t innovated at all in the 20 years since falcon 4.
and you know moddable
and open source (only if you want).PLEASE RESPOND.
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While I am not a manager nor “the official voice” of the BMS team, but as a regular team member, I would answer the following:
BMS dev members already have a job and earn their lives. The Dev is for pleasure. No money to put in there … no studio needed. Not for BMS team at least.
There is no competition … and there are no customers to satisfy. Only a Falcon4 community and a mod to share for free.
There is no plan to make BMS like DCS’s modules and if one day we can finish the F-16, it would be a great achievement (not saying that no other a/c than the F-16 could ever have some luv).
Open source : Never. It would be the best way to sink the ship … Some people already tried (F4OSC) and seriously failed.
BMS is a Free community mod … and will remains as is.
PLEASE TAKE NOTE.
Regards.
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Glad we don’t have ppl speaking about “money” in the team and happy that it will remains our “hobby”.
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Glad we don’t have ppl speaking about “money” in the team and happy that it will remains our “hobby”.
The problem is that while BMS is an awesome mod to the original falcon 4, the game as a whole is limited by the decisions made in the original game and also by the attention that can be given to it because it is only a “hobby”. I am wondering if we raised enough money so that you could make a living, you could create a full-fledged game that could take falcon 4, or even BMS to the next level with regards to the limitations of modern day tech.
essentially i am asking to make this “hobby” your job.
DCS is an ok game, but the company that makes it is limited in what they can do, both in willingness, ability/talent, and where they are located.
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I like BMS forums, almost everyone here contributes to falcon one way or another. Because we like it. If money is thrown into the mix people may hoard ideas and projects to retain profit. IMHO this “free falcon” BMS is better for the very fact that it’s all of our favorite hobby and not our job.
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job is the worst word ever
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I think MorteSil’s right… it’s not feasible. And DJ’s right–the dev’s do this for hobby/pleasure/love of the sim. We all have full time jobs already.
“The problem is that while BMS is an awesome mod to the original falcon 4, the game as a whole is limited by the decisions made in the original game”….
Not 100% sure what you mean by that, but I’ll assume you mean by the way some of the code is written. Anything can be rewritten given enough time and effort (and many things have!)… but that’s what we’ve had to get where we are now… time and effort.
How many other games have survived for 20 years?
DJ… we will ‘never’ finish the F-16… Even if the USAF stops flying it and ceases software enhancements, I think we’d still have our work cut out for us for quite some time…
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Open source : Never. It would be the best way to sink the ship … Some people already tried (F4OSC) and seriously failed.
You guys obviously have to stay within the rules laid down from on high at Billionsoft, and I respect that. But rejecting all open source software due to the efforts of SkyKnight is a lot like rejecting DCS based on the quality of a third party module, or deciding that all versions of BMS are terrible because you didnt like the graphics in 1.08us.
Lets face it… do you think those guys would have had any different outcome by being closed source?
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The problem is that while BMS is an awesome mod to the original falcon 4, the game as a whole is limited by the decisions made in the original game and also by the attention that can be given to it because it is only a “hobby”. I am wondering if we raised enough money so that you could make a living, you could create a full-fledged game that could take falcon 4, or even BMS to the next level with regards to the limitations of modern day tech.
essentially i am asking to make this “hobby” your job.
DCS is an ok game, but the company that makes it is limited in what they can do, both in willingness, ability/talent, and where they are located.
You are totally wrong
First facts : BMS is unsurpassed in many domains , even by so called “pro companies” like DCS
Second fact: if you want BMS team to make BMS for a living , no way you would have enough money to pay the entire BMS crew . Especially considering the very high level of expertise of some of of us
In BMS :" on code pas avec le cul" and that makes a difference
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essentially i am asking to make this “hobby” your job.
We cannot afford that. Period. The BMS community as a whole is very small. Even if there were 100,000 people who would pay serious money for BMS “5.0”, that would be nothing compared to the actual development cost of a commercial “next level Falcon 4.0” simulator. Developing complex combat flight simulators is not a profitable enterprise. It ruined Spectrum Holobyte and then MicroProse. It’s not sustainable.
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You are totally wrong
BMS is unsurpassed
Especially considering the very high level of expertise of some of of us
Modesty comes with a high price too
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essentially i am asking to make this “hobby” your job.
No ****in way.
Organic growing is my hobby and job already.
The only reason I’m at BMS is because we have known each other for about 15 years and I consider my teammates to be my friends. It could be a car game or rpg it would be all the same for me.
Hell I hate wars machine with a passion, just a waste of money while children cry for food in this sick liberalist capitalist rotten world.
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only if you don’t do something you love.
I LOVE to fly. But since it is not on Sunday for flying around my house and since I have no choice, sometimes, I am bored to have to leave my wife one more time for several weeks to go to work … and even knowing that I am gonna fly over beautiful landscape, desert … etc … flying at very low level, … etc …
When it is your job … it is no more the same because with the fun, comes the constrains and obligations. Which is not the case here.
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You guys obviously have to stay within the rules laid down from on high at Billionsoft, and I respect that. But rejecting all open source software due to the efforts of SkyKnight is a lot like rejecting DCS based on the quality of a third party module, or deciding that all versions of BMS are terrible because you didnt like the graphics in 1.08us.
AFAIK, Billionsoft do not impose anything on that area (?) … and has no regard on who is accepted in the team. I mean that we could open the door to anybody anytime (and we do not hesitate to do so since frequently we have a new coming team member … I do not remember, maybe five or more ppl joined the team this last year.
Lets face it… do you think those guys would have had any different outcome by being closed source?
Not necessarily. But the fact they were open source didn’t made it either. And I can tell you for sure that if one day BMS become Open Source, in few weeks/months you will see several versions rising, incompatible among them … and completely bugged with effect to divide the community, break MP events and will quite rapidly kill Falcon4 once for all.
Cheers!
But this has already been discussed to death … so … I will better invest my time to Btest rather chitchatting for nothing prolific. -
For me payware and crowfounding never seemed a good way for Falcon. Always happened someting bad when money came into the picture. It leaded to AF… which stucked in many areas in SP4 level and is dead almost for a decade now.
To me the biggest issue how releasing the new version happens. In case you make a huge mod with year(s) of work the next big iteration of annules every effort what you put into your work. This is why I gave up modding. I made Korea '80s MOD and very quickly outdated and could not be ported easily to 4.33, only full manual redone is possible. I do not have time for this and is no tool which would help to solve this issue.
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AFAIK, Billionsoft do not impose anything on that area (?) … and has no regard on who is accepted in the team. I mean that we could open the door to anybody anytime (and we do not hesitate to do so since frequently we have a new coming team member … I do not remember, maybe five or more ppl joined the team this last year.
I was more commenting on the fact that as you are not owners of the Falcon 4 IP, you are limited to distributing your derivative work under a license from the owners (Billionsoft at present, unless I am misinformed). While any details about this license have not been forthcoming, its assumed that this license would prohibit making your source code public, as doing so could represent a risk to the income stream BMS provides to the Falcon 4 IP owners.
…if one day BMS become Open Source, in few weeks/months you will see several versions rising, incompatible among them … and completely bugged with effect to divide the community, break MP events and will quite rapidly kill Falcon4 once for all.
Well, I dont doubt that you would see offshoots develop. Much like all the offshoots of F4OSc though… not very numerous. The point of free open source software is to encourage improvement of the software itself, so improvements are targeted at being something you can include in the main project with a simple pull request. As far as things being completely bugged, its not like BMS has a bug free or 100% stable history to compare against. Broken MP can be easily resolved with client checks, similar to how the current iteration already performs anti-cheating checks.
Since 4.33 U1 though, I can no longer disagree with you about the ultimate result being the death of the Falcon community. The IP owners would only send a few C&D letters out before the development stopped being public, and you would end up with a very small underground community without much of the diversity we currently enjoy.
…rather chitchatting for nothing prolific.
Perhaps you meant productive? You are more prolific than I am, on these fora!
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To me the biggest issue how releasing the new version happens. In case you make a huge mod with year(s) of work the next big iteration of annules every effort what you put into your work.
This will always be the case and is unavoidable as long as we do move forward. Unless we accept to stop development of new features to focus on bug fix only, there is not way to do otherwise. This is also why that not having too many major frequent versions upgrade is a good thing (one every x years in average). It let the time de ppl to enjoy the sim without breaking stuff every month (This is what I had experienced with DCS … it is quite unbearable because when something is fixed, another thing is broken).
So yes … next version will invalidate existing theaters, UI, missions, campaign (but Mission Commander might help in conversion in some ways ;)), … etc … It will also definitively break TacEdit and 4FBrowse. But fortunately, for good reasons, and maybe also to make things easier for the future.
What you said Monli is universal and also true for BMS team member themselves. Theater has to be redone … Campaign also, Training missions and manuals also … Documentations to be updated … etc … so no, it is not only an endless work for 3dr party … it is the case for everyone. Even for player who will have to re-learn a lot of things that has been changed/updated and sometime will have to radically change their habits.
And with the 4.34, it wont be the last time it will happens. Which is fortunate.
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@Red:
Modesty comes with a high price too
Considering my poor skills on code I don’t consider myself as high level of expertise , but considering what are doing some of our mates there , i do mean what I wrote
And there is nothing wrong to be proud of beeing unsurpassed when this is true