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Noob question (ACE Dossier)

M

Mk2

Guest
I have a noob question but I'm not exactly a flight sim Noob, been playing since commodore F-15 eagle and I am founder of www.combatace.com anyway, I want to thank the devs and modders and researchers for what appears to be master piece on the first world war.

On to my first Noob question, I have P3 up and running (first time playing oFF in any incarnation) and I create a 94th aero squadron pilot. Browsing the Ace dossiers I see the message "ace pilot file not found" . As an exmaple for Eddie Rickenbacker.
Is this a DB error?
If not is there a way to add the info to the :typing: sim?

thanks in advance and happy flying!
 
Hi Mk2,
Yea, there are a lot missing. So much to do, so little time. If we go forward, we will wack away at them, but it all takes time. I haven't counted, but I think we have around a thousand pilots, so that it a lot of writing to do.
Cheers,
shredward
 
As good as Between Heaven and Hell, or Phase 3 appears. It is a work in progress, there was a Phase 1 & 2. Just as I hope there will be a Phase 4, someday ( no hurry guys). Surely you realise, it would be impossible to include every ace from every country, throughout the entire war, and every skin of every squadron, all on a single DVD.

How you would go about adding it, is above my pay scale :wavey:
 
shredward said:
Hi Mk2,
Yea, there are a lot missing. So much to do, so little time. If we go forward, we will wack away at them, but it all takes time. I haven't counted, but I think we have around a thousand pilots, so that it a lot of writing to do.
Cheers,
shredward
Click to expand...

Thank you for the response.

I also was the lead mod on some cool stuff for the thirdwire series strike fighters...total conversions (real good jet age stuff Aces of North Vietnam and Iran Iraq) . It was a labor of love that took years and downloaded by thousands.

I am willing to volunteer my services (free of course LOL!)as a modder and researcher to flesh out the American pilots as well as others. Please contact me directly and put me to work, I'll knock out the missing ones with all my books and my free time.

GIMPGUY...the DB file contaning the text is a lot of work . I would glady lend my services to such a worthy project.
 
Hi Mk2,
As Shredward says and as you can appreciate with your own experience in this field, it takes very many hours to compile all data for flight sim of this depth. Shred' is our researcher and supplies everything from aircraft colour schemes, Squadron history, pilot data etc.

It was really a case of setting a cut-off point for completion in order to release OFF BHaH. The DEV team are well aware of what detail is required to fill in any gaps, most of which is in incidental data, such as ace dossiers. Trust us, these gaps will be filled in due course.

As an example, you can fly with or select and fly Rickenbacker's aircraft in the 94th Aero, even though his ace dossier is not, as yet, available.
 
sandbagger said:
Hi Mk2,
As Shredward says and as you can appreciate with your own experience in this field, it takes very many hours to compile all data for flight sim of this depth. Shred' is our researcher and supplies everything from aircraft colour schemes, Squadron history, pilot data etc.

It was really a case of setting a cut-off point for completion in order to release OFF BHaH. The DEV team are well aware of what detail is required to fill in any gaps, most of which is in incidental data, such as ace dossiers. Trust us, these gaps will be filled in due course.

As an example, you can fly with or select and fly Rickenbacker's aircraft in the 94th Aero, even though his ace dossier is not, as yet, available.
Click to expand...

I hope no one thinks I was complaining...I was asking because I never played the game before and was not sure if it was something that was not installed right.

I also was simply offering to help ...I could have helped type stuff up. Just help thats all.

thanks for the responses!
 
Didn't think you were MK2 - just trying to endorse Shred's comment. Your offer of help is appreciated and if needed, doubtless Winder or Polovski would contact you. However, at present we seem to be OK for team strength, but offers of help would always be considered.
 
sandbagger said:
Didn't think you were MK2 - just trying to endorse Shred's comment. Your offer of help is appreciated and if needed, doubtless Winder or Polovski would contact you. However, at present we seem to be OK for team strength, but offers of help would always be considered.
Click to expand...


Cool sandbagger, I already started working on my own personal copy and will have all American aces fleshed out with all kills included on the right side (it is a lot of work , typing wise but the file structure is similar to the total conversions I have worked on before). I also won't "add" any aces, just finish the ones already included.

As modders reading this know, this does not mess with game play and it is just litterally text , so its easy enough to update and install ( but just like was stated before, lots of work for the guy updating).

Here is a pic of Eddie so far:
eddie.jpg


Gimp as you can see it's right on my payscale to do this :)
 
I think that Mk2 was gently suggesting that Eddie Rickenbacker was not just "any every ace from every country". He was America's top ace, and, while America was not really a significant factor in the air war, Eddie was the best from the US. Mk2's offer was interesting. Why not let a master historian like Shredward assign pilots to volunteers and let us research them and submit a brief biography for his approval. The approval would be necessary because probably not every well meaning volunteer would be a good historian or writer. However, it we gave footnotes and resources it would help keep opinion and misinformation out of what should be objective history. In fact, these biographies could be put up in the OFF site as a wiki and later brought into the game as quality control verified.

As an example, I have a copy of rare copy of Volume 1 of James Norman Hall's history of the Lafayette Flying Corp (of which the famed Lafayette Escadrille was a part), which gives a one page biography of each of virtually every flier who enlisted in that corps (400+ pages). It would not be that hard to simply retype J.N. Hall's biographies of at least the aces into such a wiki. I'm a lousy typist but I'm retiring in less than a month and it'd make an interesting project. Plus, there a probably a lot of us that would like to give back to the OFF team.
 
duck said:
I think that Mk2 was gently suggesting that Eddie Rickenbacker was not just "any every ace from every country". He was America's top ace, and, while America was not really a significant factor in the air war, Eddie was the best from the US. Mk2's offer was interesting. Why not let a master historian like Shredward assign pilots to volunteers and let us research them and submit a brief biography for his approval. The approval would be necessary because probably not every well meaning volunteer would be a good historian or writer. However, it we gave footnotes and resources it would help keep opinion and misinformation out of what should be objective history. In fact, these biographies could be put up in the OFF site as a wiki and later brought into the game as quality control verified.

As an example, I have a copy of rare copy of Volume 1 of James Norman Hall's history of the Lafayette Flying Corp (of which the famed Lafayette Escadrille was a part), which gives a one page biography of each of virtually every flier who enlisted in that corps (400+ pages). It would not be that hard to simply retype J.N. Hall's biographies of at least the aces into such a wiki. I'm a lousy typist but I'm retiring in less than a month and it'd make an interesting project. Plus, there a probably a lot of us that would like to give back to the OFF team.
Click to expand...


Duck, I conversed with Shreward via PMs and he has invited me, based on my modding and research past, to help him with American Aces. I will get them done ASAP.
 
Well, that's nice but what I was suggesting was a little more broad than completing the American ace biographies. I would venture to guess that there were also Russian, Turkish, Australian, Canadian, Italian aces etc.. I wouldn't be surprised if there were OFF members from many countries that would volunteer their time. I learned as an engineering manager for a few decades not to turn down offers of help. Wikipedia has shown the power of many individuals and a lot of game and simulation sites already have their own wikis. I certainly don't have the ability to set one up (I'd guess the regulation of the entries is non-trivial) but there may be someone in the OFF audience who could.
 
Mk2 and Shred, thanks for getting together on this. Best wishes on this work.
 
duck said:
Well, that's nice but what I was suggesting was a little more broad than completing the American ace biographies. I would venture to guess that there were also Russian, Turkish, Australian, Canadian, Italian aces etc.. I wouldn't be surprised if there were OFF members from many countries that would volunteer their time. I learned as an engineering manager for a few decades not to turn down offers of help. Wikipedia has shown the power of many individuals and a lot of game and simulation sites already have their own wikis. I certainly don't have the ability to set one up (I'd guess the regulation of the entries is non-trivial) but there may be someone in the OFF audience who could.
Click to expand...


Thank you Rickitycrate, it's really my pleasure.

Duck, I agree that it would be great to do all countries and aces (who wouldn't agree) .

I think the problem is making sure volunteers follow the same format and can manipulate the files on their own and there is the issue , there might not be that many volunteers that can do that. It's also tedious work. I just finished Rickenbacker's bio and kill list and I missed one space in the kill file and the entire file would not load until I found the one space in the middle of the data......(ugh)

Here is a quick low res snapshot of Eddie...he's done and on a final note , I will be using (for the Americans) Norman Franks and Frank Bailey's OVER THE FRONT book as the final say in kills as I know of many discrepencies that exsist in the WW1 data and this is really a well researched study on kills.

eddie_1.jpg
 
Very nice but the lack of contrast is hard on my eyes to actually read the script. Could it be lighter? :USA-flag:
 
Rickitycrate said:
Very nice but the lack of contrast is hard on my eyes to actually read the script. Could it be lighter? :USA-flag:
Click to expand...

Thats not what it looks like in game, have to make the picture different to post. It will look the same as any other ACE
 
duck said:
Mk2 -
I understand. You don't need any help. OK.
Click to expand...

I need plenty, not sure I made it clear (I edited my post above ot make it clearer). . It's not up to me to ask anything from anyone as I was invited by Shreward and I have all of ONE day under my belt in the OFF community.

I was just attempting to explain why maybe no one has asked for volunteers before . .

As I see it, it will take a VERY long time to finish all Aces and all kills no matter who does it. It took me most of the afternoon to do 4 American Aces and there are only 36. I saw some countries have over 500 included!

Duck I'll send you a PM in a bit
 
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