The Falcon Epopee - The history of Falcon 4
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So some of us will never know the truth.
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So some of us will never know the truth.
Actually, I don’t think anyone can claim and be right about knowing the whole true story. Anyone smart enough would know better than to try to make that claim, I’d assert. Truth has a subjective quality to it to begin with and besides, I don’t think there is any one person even that can claim to have witnessed or participated in all the efforts that have gone by. This is why I think it’s ultimately like an NP complete problem - there’s no way to find and document the whole story in a reasonable amount of time or words so why even try?? How much better then to simply look back at all the turbulent water under the bridge already and marvel that Falcon4.0 is still afloat at all.
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Take you point and heartily agree with the sentiment. We need to look forward not back.
Having said that… the birth of a phenomenon and its growing pains will always be of interest to some… particularly those of us there at the beginning and who continue to devote our time to it. I don’t think it should be completely ignored just because its past is messy and possibly painful. Continued Falcon refinement (in all its variants) has hopefully still got some life in it and with a bit of luck will continue for many years. As a piece of entertainment software it is unique and it deserves more than a mere foot-note in history. Yes, history as you say is subjective as all human history tends to be. F4 is no less susceptible to opinion, hazy recollection and not a little bias, that’s just the way it is. As someone with their name in the credits at the back of the original manual you certainly have more history than most of us. I hope you will indulge the rest of us in our humble curiosity and allow us a little peek into its past now and then?I think Skyhawk’s account is fair, impartial and well written considering it’s not his native language. He even admits to it not being 100% accurate & invites others to correct it. I salute him. Personally I’m only vaguely interested in who pissed who off who or even how fragmented the teams became (but I respect that others may be). What I am interested in is the bigger picture. The one that helps explain why the hell we’re all still here executing thirteen year old code on our multi-core, GPU addled mainframes running software that’s more stable and infinitely more sophisticated than 99% of ‘triple A’ titles on the market today. Good luck to the FreeFalcon guys I say and anyone else who cares to keep the old girl alive. Falcon 4 is one of a kind (well several of a kind and I think it will be a long while yet before the competition catches up. No, I’m not dissing the competition but they’re still flat footed by the dynamic campaign (however imperfect) and without that, their cool gfx and avionics lose a little shine due to their placement in a hollow, barren and sterile world. (Don’t bitch to me about that btw checkout this epic thread here if you disagree: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=64161
Keep up the good work Skyhawk -
Very eloquently put……for a yorkshireman…;):D
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The truth? Well, I’ve probably forgotten more than I remember, but I can say in the age old battle between FF and BMS, the differences were more philosophical in nature brung about by differing management styles. Those fundamental differences ultimately brought about the creation of two different Falcon teams. Over time, the difference in versions between either Falcon flavor created a scenario where “bringing it all back together under one roof” was literally impossible. I’m not sure about FF management at this point in time, but I will say that we’ve long since stopped worrying about that issue and have just focussed on what we’re doing. I really think our success has been for 2 reasons: 1) We have a REALLY great coding team. 2) Our EULA is awesome. The whole team was involved in writing it, and if you are a modder I believe it is designed to work for you, and not against you.
One last side note: Our management style is practically non existent. For some of you bean counters (me included as one of them), this might surprise you. The only down side we’ve really experienced is relatively slow releases. We are well aware of the issue, but honestly, I don’t think many folks care. We’re happy to just do what we do, and release when it all “feels right”.
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The higher ranks a Falconeer gets are highly dependant on his patience.
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Excellent! Thank you.
Good read, very informative and puts some pieces of the puzzle together, I have wondered about quite a few times, since I’ve entered the Falcon arena. Korea, that is, I s’pose… ? !
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I really think our success has been for 2 reasons: 1) We have a REALLY great coding team. 2) Our EULA is awesome. The whole team was involved in writing it, and if you are a modder I believe it is designed to work for you, and not against you.
+1 for the EULA. For me, that’s the “feature” of BMS I like the most, because it constrains Falcon 4 to an even brighter future.
One last side note: Our management style is practically non existent. For some of you bean counters (me included as one of them), this might surprise you. The only down side we’ve really experienced is relatively slow releases. We are well aware of the issue, but honestly, I don’t think many folks care. We’re happy to just do what we do, and release when it all “feels right”.
Looks like some open source project management. And always released in 3-4 we… when it is ready.
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+1 on the BMS EULA. It encourages innovation from interested modders. Also, the EULA encourages inexperienced users to actually to mod something. Rather than have them sitting around and complaining that next release isn’t here yet. I’ll admit it, I fall into second column.
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I really think our success has been for 2 reasons: 1) We have a REALLY great coding team. 2) Our EULA is awesome.
You forgot a couple…
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We have an awesome data team
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We have many great beta testers that spent hours and hours and hours and hours doing repetitive testing that ensured both the data and code was quality stuff.
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What’s the software language used to compile the flacon 4.0 and the BMS ?
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Mostly but not entirely c++ to be strictly accurate.
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Is there a place online where Frugals got archived? Sort of an internet archive someplace?
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it’s interesting how time passes so quickly
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This document has (finally!) been updated with the last events. Enjoy
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There is a Hungarian blog about computer games, the iddqd.blog.hu. It is interested to release a post about Falcon 4.0 which I plan to write. Do you have any source and interesting story which is worth to post about history of Falcon besides the THE FALCON EPOPEE and the interview with Gilman Louie? Of course I remember many thing but more sources is simply better.
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Beside the history charts, the FalconEpopee has been slightly updated! Not much for the seasoned pilots that already know this document, but new players might enjoy it.
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What is BMS EULA?
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