Falcon 4: Allied Force

[CounterForce 0]

I'm happy with AF

There are still some bugs and issues but they are adressed and hopefully will be fixed.

The biggest improvement is that there are no mods.

Modders will never have a full overview of the game's source code and therefore will add bugs etc. to the game.

There may be some improvement by mods, but in the very long time of free mods no combination was ever as stable as AF is at the moment.

I don't need eye candy if I can play online without installing the game four times with differnent mods and setup which all will result in some CTD.

Stability is the most important thing, and AF runs better than ever before.

[Homefry 0]

Yes I played around with F4 + SP4.2 + BMS2 lately before buying AF.

F4 was of course free.

Anwyay, another big disappointment is the LAN/Internet no-mixing for the dedicated server.

So what if you have stability, if you lack some of the basic and primary requirements of a modern game/sim. I am really hoping they fix this up somewhat.

Not to sound like an idiot... but how did you get the original F4 for free?

[hardrock 1]

Not to sound like an idiot... but how did you get the original F4 for free?

It would be illegal to speak it out here, but it has something to do with dogs.

[crashdome 1]

Lol..nice..

Server is STILL running.. if anyone can just try to connect it would be nice. I just need to know it works and how difficult it was for you.

Is the VPN thing scaring ya off? Is it too slow? etc...

[bn880 5]

Me, I've been too busy trying to learn the ins and outs of this to get into MP yet.  And trying to decode the manual as well.

Personally the VPN does scare me off a bit, and it just feels wrong to have to do that these years.  I'm trying to see if these guys will fix the net stuff...  I was hoping to be able to host on my own server for private/cohesive campaigns, but at this rate, that plan is dead, and this was mainly why I bought AF.  hmm  

Edit: you can try the original F4 + BMS2 if you find it under a dog... bit of luck will do

[crashdome 1]

I've got the orig F4.

Bought the one with the nice Binder and everything when it came out.. played SP1, 2, 3, all the way up to 4.2, BMS, etc..

Tried FreeFalcon (never got Cobra1 though)

All of them destroyed MP. Completely unplayable.

MP5.1 was a wonderful fix but only worked with SP series. No BMS.

Experienced alot of CTDs with MP5.1 though. It would work but was very finicky.

In all honesty F4:AF is the only one that is solid MP. Besides the current LAN/WAN issue (which always was a problem except for a small workaround with SP4.2 + MP5.1 and didn't work 100%) I still think AF is the best option. Let's hope they acheive a fix. It's just a matter of them coding in the ability to use more than one interface at once. Something that in 1998 wasn't a high priority when they constructed the first F4.

I could attempt to host a ded server on another network. It'll be risky because if it does go down... I would need to physically bring it back up - therefore it would need to be at either my home or somewhere I would have access to.

Options:

I've only got only one dynamic Internet IP address, but if purchasing another is an option I could do it by setting up another router. It actually isn't that difficult.. just annoying.

Or.. we wait for LP to fix the problem.

OR completely reversed .. I host one on the machine I've got now and ditch the VPN and any ability for me to join the server

 

*EDIT* on other forums, people expressed using Hamachi... never tried it, but it appears to be somewhat of a more private VPN system. That is also an option, but it sucks having to require others to go the extra steps to connect to a server just so the host can play too....

[crashdome 1]

EDITED My Server requirements in above post...

I've disabled the need for VPN...

People join just using my IP address as listed in the post I made up above.

I'll just have to refrain from joining in until I can figure out a different way to get the LAN/WAN thing going.

Consider this the first OFP community Falcon4:AF server!

Enjoy!

[bn880 5]

Thanks, it just may be a bit too early to expect the MP games? I'll probably connect to verify that stuff works, but not much else from me.

Anyway, I want you to check out something very interesting at SimHQ forums. I achieved my mission, but at a cost.

Check out the SimHQ topic "Review: Falcon 4.0: Allied Force - Part 4: Multiplayer" if you wish.

Not sure if I'll be playing AF much after all, and it appears to me the people at SimHQ are very closely tied to Lead Pursuit. It would certainly explain their "extensive" reviews which fail to point out several core issues not fixed since F4. And it would explain why the reviewer pointed out that my complaint of the reviews suggests a "deal making".

I for one was cheated by the PR of AF to buy the game, thinking the bugs of the old F4 were fixed. Many are not. I don't know, I'm now going to wait on LP to deliver the 3 basic fixes, if they do not, I will probably get quite upset, and forget this cash cow in the long term.

Sadly I think LP may consider Aeyes' response to the LAN/WAN issue the way to go:

"1. As you know Falcon is a complex simulation with a realtime war going on demanding many many positional updates online, so to keep MP in its optimum state currently LAN is supported or WAN, but not combined. However I have seen reports of people using a nice proggy called 'Hamachi' making LAN/WAN possible. Have a look here http://www.hamachi.cc/download "

as their PR person noted to that "I hope Aeyes has at least helped answer the points you raise. If you have any other specific issues, please post and I'll help as much as I can."

Of coruse this makes me chukle, is there not one real programmer in the LP team?

[Supah 0]

My experiences of Allied Force :

1. Models look poor especially for AI aircraft.

2. All textures are poor, most are posterized! This might have been ok in the early 90's but its not nowadays!

3. The ground looks bland and boring, repetitive textures.

4. Cockpit doesn't look good on high resolutions, 3d pit isnt really great.

5. It sees my CH pro pedals as a joystick so they dont function as rudders, I have to use only my Saitek stick, cant use them both. Is there a way to change this?

7. Stability has improved but you can't alt + tab out of the game, it will crash. On long offline campaign missions this is important.

8. The manufactorers appear to have no forum for people to ask questions?

9. You cant use external Anisotropic Filtering or Anti Aliasing, if you do the screen just goes black.

[Fork122 0]

7. Stability has improved but you can't alt + tab out of the game, it will crash. On long offline campaign missions this is important.

That's what I dislike the most about the game. I need to alt-tab to read the PDF manual, but I can't so I'm stuck with no manual ingame

[bn880 5]

Yeah well, that's the joystick issue Supah. At least they say they will look into those two issues, CTD and Joysticks, but the LAN/WAN they are not really budging on. Me, I cartainly am done pimping this kind of product until those 3 are fixed.

[crashdome 1]

I guess I am a bit more hopeful than you others.

To me, F4:AF is similar to OFP:Res.

Although I am sure I cause quite a stir with this statement, don't nit-pick it - as a general statement they are very similar.

Same graphical engine with some 'enhancements' (considered old and outdated graphically by MANY other people)

Slight Improvements to address many issues including some new features.

Some features (considered 'standard' at the time) wanted, but not available (like how Join-in-progress was demanded but not received until ... well.. a few months from now)

Old bugs still there, and new bugs pop up (BIS certainly did come through for us, though)

I admit the only thing NOT similar is community respect by the devs to encourage modifications. However, if Codemasters had really dropped the hammer like Hasbro and Atari did... well.... I dislike thinking about that.

I feel for the issues that plague you guys. I wish even I could do something to help you all.

Fortunately for me, I've never had any CTDs with AF (and I got an Nvidia FX5700 card) and I can alt-tab just fine if I am not 'in-flight'. While I do not have any rudder peddles, the 'paddles' on my X45 work fine.

I'd only comparing graphics to the orig F4, because if I compare to community mods, that would be like comparing OFP:Res to BAS, FDF, or others.

All of those issues and others are/were due to the age of the product. They tackled some, but they are not supermen.

All that together, my F4 experience has really improved and I enjoy the missions, I enjoy the realism that surpasses modern sims much how I like OFP over other FPS games that label themselves 'sims' even though it is several years old, I enjoy lack of CTDs (sorry bn880 wish I could help you not get any ) and furthermore, I would enjoy flying with you guys in a campaign - which is possible with some effort. But I guess I am alone here  

[bn880 5]

I was on your server a minute ago, everything appears to work allright. I mean I didn't fly a sortie as I'm not going to attempt A-G yet, but things seemed to roll, I let the campaign run for 1 minute or so and stuff was going on just fine.

Well CrashDome, I just feel LP should come to the table and promise as LAN/WAN patch next to the other fixes, or a real good attempt. After all, this thing is selling in hundreds of thousands is it not...

Currently I do need to Alt-Tab from missions, to get the damned manual, and in a campaign it would be useful even of only for a few seconds to check some things when messages come in.

Edit: Remember, hosting on more than one IP is much more trivial than join in progress, I don't think BIS re-hashed most of an old product, and released anything nearly as lacking, and check the year when OFP1 came out, this is late 2005.

[crashdome 1]

Quote[/b] ]I was on your server a minute ago, everything appears to work allright.  I mean I didn't fly a sortie as I'm not going to attempt A-G yet, but things seemed to roll, I let the campaign run for 1 minute or so and stuff was going on just fine.

Yay

Quote[/b] ]Well CrashDome, I just feel LP should come to the table and promise as LAN/WAN patch next to the other fixes, or a real good attempt.  After all, this thing is selling in hundreds of thousands is it not...

I agree. It is a simple fix IMO, but since the source is unavailable to me, perhaps there is something really really preventing them from doing so. If not, well then... yes ... they've got issues with their abilities!!

Quote[/b] ]Currently I do need to Alt-Tab from missions, to get the damned manual, and in a campaign it would be useful even of only for a few seconds to check some things when messages come in.

Alt-tabing IS nice. However, even OFP gives me alt-tab trouble sometimes... in the meantime... gotta laptop?    

Another alternative is to fly with an experienced F-16 pilot at your side and hire a secretary (ok..ok.. I just couldn't resist... )

I had to learn the same way you did and I had the same alt-tab problem. My learning method of choice was trial-and-error.... hit "Freeze" mode and click buttons until the engine quit. (ok..ok..actually I had the printed binder, but was too lazy to get up and actually look at it)

*EDIT* Also, the LAN/WAN issue only comes into play if trying to set up a "psuedo" dedicated server and join in from another machine while others connect via the internet.

LAN parties = fine

Hosted campaign on reg players server = fine

Dedicated server by itself = fine

Were you planning on hosting a ded server from another machine?

[bn880 5]

Yes of course I was planning to host a dedi server on my own internet connection. I do that with just about every MP game that I play, like OFP.

My biggest peeve is not the CTD, it's the LAN/WAN problem and the controller axis. And the only unconfirmed issue for LP is the connection stuff, the rest they will try to fix.

[crashdome 1]

@bn880: Thanks for testing the server btw... I meant to say so earlier.

Join up OFP/F4:AF users! The enemy is pushing forward! We need pilots!    

Since it works, I'll leave it run. Everyone can check the link I posted a few pages back to make sure it's running before connecting.

(It's almost fun just watchng the action.. not as much as actually participating though )

[EiZei 0]

Too bad my joystick does not work.

[bn880 5]

You've gotta be patient with zee players, I know some people in the EU are waiting for the release there, though maybe they will wait for some patch before they do buy it.

The rest are probably trying to figure out this whole "flying an F-16" thing before going to MP, like myself...

[gandalf the white 0]

Too bad my joystick does not work.

too bad my joystick is screwed over .

I can fly CSLA's Mig 21 fine, it handles like every other plane I am used to, both in OFP and Lockon *ducks bricks*, wich is "very" sensitive...

[crashdome 1]

What joysticks are you using?

In relation to the LAN/WAN issue:

Quote[/b] ]Just to add to the discussion and help some (hopefully). LAN/WAN support ala MP5-1 is definitely NOT in F4:AF. The original reason for the additional code support in MP5-1 is the reason you guys have discovered. The clients (not just the server/client connection) need to connect directly to each other. With UDP networking, that is not possible with most routers/NAT setups. VPNs are a special exception which I personally have not tried yet. In the "old" days, some people claimed they got it working, and I see no technical/code reason why it wouldn't work, but I can't say for sure without having tried it myself.

Now, the main reason that MP5-1-like code for LAN/WAN support is not in AF is because that code got broken by Win XP SP2. Microsoft, for good reasons I might add, turned off the networking tools used in MP5-1 (raw sockets in case you are interested). So even now, trying MP5-1 with a server running Win XP SP2 will not work.

So, the MP5-1-type code for LAN/WAN support was not included since it would break anyway for so many people. More of my focus in MP in AF was spent on stability, smoothness, with some definite long hours pulled on the new MP UI and new connection method (the death of the "-ip" switch is complete! yippee! in order to make joining and flying easier than it has been in the past.

I'm gonna look into perhaps getting another IP address and hooking up another netcard directly to another router/switch. It seems excessive by todays standards.. but I wanna play damn it!!

*EDIT* To keep the thread to a minimum size, discussion of my campaign server can resume at the SOW forum site (see my sig) --- its at the bottom of the page. Forgive the blandness.. I just switched to SMF from phpBB forums.

[hardrock 1]

I simply guess F4 : AF is the OFP of flight simulators. Takes time to learn, medium-quality graphics but once you know it, you never get away from it.

[Supah 0]

I simply guess F4 : AF is the OFP of flight simulators. Takes time to learn, medium-quality graphics but once you know it, you never get away from it.

It has some pretty basic flaws though. Like in the models. They used the F-16C tail on the F-16A MLU while its totally different. Their using photo's as textures in the rear of the cockpit that look REALLY awfull. Their using 1980 vintage high Vis tail markings on the dutch MLU's in a conflict in the mid 90's.

[hardrock 1]

It has some pretty basic flaws though. Like in the models. They used the F-16C tail on the F-16A MLU while its totally different. Their using photo's as textures in the rear of the cockpit that look REALLY awfull. Their using 1980 vintage high Vis tail markings on the dutch MLU's in a conflict in the mid 90's.

As I understand it by now they basicly mainly revised the code and got rid of bugs to improve the stability of the game, whilst the core of the game is still the one of 1998 (?) including many of the models.

[Supah 0]

They claim it has a revamped graphics engine (I am not seeing it) and the MLU 3d model has been updated ... why not get it right the first time? Its not like the dutch airforce (who's bird their modelling in the balkans campaigns) is overly secretive. A simple phone call to the RNLAF would have gotten them a lot of help. A simple search of airliners.net would have helped them prevent the modelling mistakes.

[bn880 5]

I simply guess F4 : AF is the OFP of flight simulators. Takes time to learn, medium-quality graphics but once you know it, you never get away from it.

Well almost, they have left way too many flaws to really be in competition with OFP1.

CrashDome, I simply use another controller for rudders, which involves axis configuration. I'm not willing to run any VPN or controller wrapper software to do this, it has to be in the game, simply has to be at this day and age for a flight sim. With the wild claims of best this and that LP and SimHQ have, I'm waiting for delivery.

So by that logic, OFP and all the 1000 titles out there should not have LAN/WAN compatibility, STFU LP. They can go stuff it.