For a long time my questions to Nova Logic have been ignored. Recently I have made another attempt to try to get them to respond to our questions and the following is a compiled list of answers and my replies to them concerning the issue of placing real mission builders in their games. You will notice Nova Logic's answers in red. The following is in e-mail format having the original messages toward the bottom and the last message at the top. I may change this later on but I have been very busy and it's hard to find time to do all these things. For now I just want to get these on here so the gaming public can see the mentality of the software developing companies. You can clearly see from their reply they do not hold a high regard for their customers. They indicate basically that it is very hard to convince the gaming public what they really want. Like saying the game company has the mentality to try to convince us of what we should want rather than what we do want. In other words they want to convince us that we want the junk they are trying to sell us, rather than to give us what we really want.
I am trying to be honest with them and you. But sometimes the way large companies do their very best to make us take what they want us to have, the only way we can really fight back to get what we want is if we all get involved and start sending them e-mail telling them what we want. Then don't buy what they put out until they get it right.
The vendors no longer support the software they sell. Just try to take something back after you have opened it to find out it was junk. They say "no opened software returned." Well how are you going to know it's no good if you don't open it?
The software developers don't support their software anymore (to speak of). Just try to get some help after the software vendor tells you that he isn't going to give you your money back.
I want the gaming public to know what kind of multi-headed beast they are dealing with so here are some of the messages directly from Nova Logic.
I also want the ISC group to know I am at least trying to work for them to get what they want to see in a game. I know it's hard sometimes when you have a rep trying to do a job when the people he is representing can't see how the companies respond to him. I'm trying, they just aren’t listening.
There are other messages but for now I am going to put this out here so you can read it and add to it when I get time. Please feel free to respond to me or the group about these things. Tell your friends and pass the message along. If you want the software developers to give you want you want you are going to have to make an effort to tell them. You and everyone else you know.
Sliding by under the wire, Nova Logic appears to be doing its best to keep from giving the gaming public what we really want. They are cutting their costs at every turn and in Comanche 3 they don't even intend to give us a quick mission generator. I guess perhaps they saw how badly they failed with their quick mission generator on their new F-22 Lightning II.
From: newsletter inet <newsletter@novalogic.com>
Reply to: RE>>Comanche 3 is flying!
Bryon,
I appreciate your comments. I can see we won't see eye-to-eye on some items.
Having developed computer games for 15 years, I can emphatically state that an "in-house" tool is an order of magnitude less work than a commercial product that you put on the store shelves. One of our products, Armored Fist, had a built in mission editor. So I have seen both efforts first hand. I do not know your programmer's experience, but I can assure you there is more effort in programming a commercial product than an "in-house" tool. Your question whether my statement make sense does not appreciate the difference. Coming from a computer science background I can understand the misconception. The product is the game not the code. Most of the effort is done when the game is done. The is no code maintenance cycles. It's done. As such, we always measure return vs. investment.
I hope my little expose helps clarify our position.
C3 does not have a mission editor. In fact, it does not have a quick mission mode.
That's what the Nova Logic rep said in his message to me.
Yes, their in house mission builder does not require quite as much work as one that would be designed for the public to use. In house they only need to have a mission builder made for a certain kind of computer. The one that would be required for the general public would cost a good deal more because it would be required to run on many different brands of PC's. But what do you want in a game? Do you really want that real mission builder ? Are you willing to pay for it ? If you are, you had better tell them you are, otherwise you aren’t going to get one.
My reply to them is as follows.
Thank you once again for taking the time to read and respond to my message.
This is my hobby, not my business.
Please forgive me if my message tones appear to be somewhat harsh at times. I am trying to establish a communications link between the gaming public and the large software developers who create the games we enjoy. I have personally been down a very rough road in this area and have experienced all kinds of negative responses. The worst I would guess is being ignored. The software vendors no longer support the products they sell and if it is opened it can’t be returned. How are we going to know the product is defective if we don’t open it, install it and try it out ?
The software developers no longer support their products to speak of and it is a very rare situation when a software developer actually gets behind the products they produce to say, if it doesn’t work we will fix it and if we can’t fix it we will give you your money back. Broderbund is one of the few who will do this. Their software products are top of the line and I have never had one complaint either of my own or from anyone else about the Broderbund software. What we learn from this is that if a software developer is willing to actually get behind the product with a satisfaction guarantee the product itself will be top of the line because the company will go the extra mile to make it so.
When a software company won’t stand behind their products and there is no one to make them, they can literally produce junk and with the right hype they can sell it to the public and there’s no one going to hold them responsible to correct the situation. They can hide behind deceptive language in their advertisements and hype and can still sell their product to the unsuspecting public. The computer program buying public is starting to get wise to these techniques being used by the software developers and the day is soon coming when it will take more than advertising tricks to sell the products.
In my own personal experiences there was a time when I would buy several software packages each month, test them and write reviews which I posted for the web site. It has been over 3 months now since I bought anything. I walk into the software store and look around, I see people doing the same thing. They pick up a box, read on it and put it back on the shelves and I know why. Most of them no longer trust the advertising on the box and those who wonder about it may be looking for something just like me, a real mission builder being included with the software.
The general software buying public do not like to be treated as if they are a lower life form there to supply large companies with funds to continue to produce inferior products. They want a voice in the design of these products. They want the advertisements to say exactly what is in the box and they want that software to do exactly what it says it will do. I can walk into any given software store right now and pick up a software package that will display misleading advertisements. I asked a Nova Logic rep before I bought the F-22 Lightning II if it had a real mission builder. He answered (It has a mission builder) and I bought the game only to discover it has a quick mission generator. It’s not the same thing. Had he not misled me I would not have bought the product and I would not have experienced the many other problems that followed. I literally threw about $60 away on that game and Nova Logic has not lifted a finger to correct the problems. I can’t help but tell the gaming public what is going on and to warn them what they might expect. Many of them have all ready learned the same way I have, the hard way.
Your original answer mentioning the public sounded to me and everyone else who read the message that what you were trying to imply was that Nova Logic didn’t really care what the game using public wanted, but that they wanted us to want what they were willing to supply to us. Politicians do the same thing when they tell us the people don’t know what they want or what is good for them so we will decide for them.
The truth is we do know what we want and we would like the game developers to listen to us for a change and then provide those games and features that we want to see in these products. There is not enough communications between the gaming public and the developers of these products.
I am fully aware of how advertising hype can sell products that are not worthy of our time or money. F-22 Lightning II was a huge disappointment to a great many of those who bought it, including myself. Your own vice Pres. In charge of program development told me personally he was being flooded by disappointed customers who had bought the simulation game and he was aware the game had many flaws, yet instead of fixing the real problems with the product the advertising end of Nova Logic continued to pump hype to the public instead of the truth. Certainly you can make money using this method but the product itself is nearly useless and a huge disappointment to many who bought it. I personally can’t even run F-22 Lightning II because after I installed the last update patch the game locked up and I gave up on it. The offer for the pilot’s style sun glasses was not even in the box, yet it was advertised and this is false advertisement. (Not that I need the sunglasses you understand, because I don’t. But if it says it on the box the company is responsible to back it up.)
My numerous complaints to Nova Logic only managed to get me ignored but no one lifted a finger to set the problem right. The aerodynamics are incorrect with F-22 Lightning II and I am a 45 year old pilot myself. I am also a videographer and I have worked with the military and the Thunderbirds on different occasions. Using the excuse that (someone said) a jet of this caliber should not be able to go into a loop right after take off is incorrect and has nothing to do with the flaw in the aerodynamics of this simulation game. F-15 Eagle’s and F-16’s have been able to go directly into a loop right after take off for many years. I have it on video and have the cockpit video from ThunderBird 7 going vertical before it even reached the end of the runway and going to 11,000 feet in seconds. The videographer’s name was Jerry Gordon who worked with the Thunderbirds the day this video was shot. I was shooting ground footage and still have the original ¾" video that I shot that day. Certainly if the F-22 can do all the things they say it can and using these new engine designs, it can go vertical right after take off and can do a loop. The problem with the F-22 Lightning II aerodynamics is that it doesn’t turn when you bank it. The nose is, well, it’s squishy and the simulated aircraft will not respond correctly. It doesn’t go where you point it and doesn’t bank correctly. It doesn’t take off correctly. All of this makes no difference if the program won’t even run on your 166/686 with 16 meg of RAM. I guess this was the first really bad game I have ever received from Nova Logic. I only mention these things so that you will have a better understanding of why we (I speak for a group of people) are concerned about these things and why we have developed a negative or depressed attitude about software and software developers. We are being lied to (misleading advertisements) and we are being ignored in far too many cases.
When I reported the fact that Nova Logic had not even supplied support for the CH F-16 Combat Joystick (which I use most of the time) Nova Logic ignored the fact and not until I contacted CH Products and had them contact Nova Logic was anything done to correct the problem. The button designation was literally dreadful. Far as I am concerned all this is in the past. I am concerned about the future of Nova Logic and other simulation software developers. I am concerned that the people have a voice in the products being developed and I am concerned that the software developers stand behind their products with rock solid service and support.
We have had high hopes for Comanche 3 but if it has no real mission builder in the software I would not be interested in it myself. I can only pass this information along to the group and to the web site and let others become aware of it.
Might I ask you if Armored Fist 2 will have a real mission builder with the game ?
The programmer I mentioned in my last message is my wife and she works for Data-Tronics Corp. She is schooled in several computer languages, specializes in COBOL and is one of the bosses over a group of programmers there. I have other friends who are programmers and I have personally written game programs and screen printer drivers in RAW machine language for the old Motorola CPU’s with a bare bones assembler. I have also written other games and data processing programs in Basic. I am aware of the pain-staking process and modules that must be developed in order to produce desired effects. I don’t consider myself a programmer and have not done anything of the kind in a long while. Still it helps me to understand what software developers must deal with. Like being a pilot, I have been around aircraft both civilian and military most of my life. I lived and worked at certain airports. I live right down the street from the FSM Airport and Air National Guard. I have friends who work in Avionics there for the F-16’s. I have watched them working on the radar systems and other things. I have a nephew in the Navy who worked on the tactical computers for F-14 Tom Cats. My father-in-law is a retired fighter pilot. His brother Max is a Marine helicopter pilot. My brother is a flight instructor and he has a friend who was an SR-71 pilot. This doesn’t scratch the surface of the people I have contact with who are in the know about flight and flight simulation and how it should work. Nova Logic should have even better contacts than I do and this is why we expect your products to be closer to the real thing. Not just fancy terrain viewers like the F-22 Lightning II ended up being but at least to simulate the real thing.
Another thing we the gaming public are aware of is that every single one of the major simulation game software developers claim to be the ones setting the standards. Of those I have tested Ocean/DID TFX, EF-2000, EA/Janes ATF, ATF NATO, AH-64D & Flash Point Korea, SSI’s SU-27 Flanker, IM’s Apache, MS Flight simulator 5.0 5.1 and 6.0 for Windows 95, FormGen’s Black Knight and all of them have better more realistic aerodynamics than Nova Logic’s F-22 Lightning II. So who really does set the standards for these flight simulation games ? The only thing that Nova Logic has done in the area of outstanding performance is in the area of 3-D graphics.
Nova Logic’s Comanche 1 and 2 and Werewolf are really fun games, but they are arcade. Still I keep them close to the old computer in case I have the desire to really kick up some dust. Your Armored Fist 1 was a blast and I spent far more hours creating my own missions than I did playing the ones that came with it. Though I played them all many times. I looked forward to the new Armored Fist 2 also hoping for a real mission builder, but, as you might expect, if it doesn’t have one I won’t be interested in it. I’ll just pass the information along to the ISC group and let someone else test and write the review on it.
Please keep in mind that some of us are willing to pay the extra price to have that real mission builder, even if we must buy it on a second disk. I suggest we take a survey to find out just how many computer game users would be interested in having real mission builders for their favorite games.
If you would make a note of me and my e-mail address, and inform me of any new developments or thoughts about my comments here I would appreciate it.
Thanks again.
I thank you for your time in responding to my messages.
The answer is however what I call programmed obsolescence. You fly the last mission and throw the game away. :-( Even Janes AH-64D and Flash Point add on disk, as good as it is (the best so far) was sent to us with programmed obsolescence. I flew all the missions at the hard settings about 3 times and chucked it back with all the other games that I have finished. EA/Janes ATF and ATF NATO however are still handy to me for when my son drives in from Hot Springs, AR and wants to fly a few missions together in multi-player mode.
I'm here in my office with a professional programmer of 18 years and I asked her to read your answer to my question. She said the same thing I said...
Nova Logic says >>It is very easy for us to tell our mission builders "Don't do that!". It's real hard to tell the buying public not to.<<
This statement makes absolutely no sense.
The mission builder is all ready developed, your team uses it to build the missions that come with the games. Could it take that long or cost all that much to include one ?
In business you try to give the buying public what they want. You don't tell them not to want. It's their desires that keep you in business as long as they are willing to pay the price of product development. The buying public are become more and more informed about how many software products are not what they are advertised to be. As a result they are becoming more intelligent shoppers.
What about people such as myself who would be willing to pay a little extra for a mission editor. You must understand that I'm the kind of man who likes to see my own creations. Oh, for example, ceramics - anyone can buy a mold that someone else has made but I like to make my own objects and molds from scratch. I’m not alone in this respect when it comes to simulation games. We want real mission builders included with these games.
I would even be willing to trade the quick mission generators that are so frequently included with these simulation games since I seldom ever use them. How about we trade that for a real mission builder.
You are no doubt informed as to the later inclusion of a mission add on disk for this product (Comanche 3). Are you aware of any intentions to add a mission builder for this game at that time?
Thank you once again for your time. ....Bryon Smith
---------- > From: Comments Inet <comments@novalogic.com> > To: dream-link@dream-link.org.removethis > Subject: Re: Comanche 3 > Date: Wednesday, April 09, 1997 3:47 PM > > Reply to: RE>Comanche 3 > > Yes, the F-16 is support in Comanche 3. >
Reply from Nova Logic >>No, we did not include a mission editor in the game. Since a mission editor must be consumer ready, we do not want to add the development time to a project by including it. It is very easy for us to tell our mission builders "Don't do that!". It's real hard to tell the buying public not to. > >
-------------------------------------- >
Date: 4/9/97 9:00 AM > To: Comments Inet > From: dream-link@dream-link.org.removethis >
Does it support the CH F-16 Combat Joystick? If I remember right the F-22 Lightning II did not originally and when it finally did get a patch for support the button designation was very bad.
> > We want real mission builders with our flight simulation games. What will it take to get Nova Logic to include or even make an add on disk with a mission builder ? I need this information so that I can better inform the ISC group. > >
...Bryon > > >
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