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B17 Flying Fortress: the mighty eight


Soback
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Anyone has this game. Any opinions?

I just got it and can't get enough of it. The only thing I have so far that's bad is the scripted campaign. I mean take a look at Mig Alley or Rowans Battle of Britain. Those games were made before it (at least Mig Alley was, that I know for sure) and they have dynamic campaigns, so how hard could it have been to do so in this one. But anyway, other than that I get a huge kick of all the conrol you have over your bomber.

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I have it. I haven't played it since around January. It still has a great deal of bugs and no MP component.

Just another example of Hasbro Interactive screwing the gaming public by rushing it to market. It could have been so much more, according to the developers.

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They made a 25mb patch. I don't know if it fixed all the bugs so try that. Still, my major thing is dynamic campaign. I wonder if anyone will attempt to make a bomber game like this in the future. I just love WW2 bombers. Also the flight dynamics could use a little tweaking.

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Is that the first patch, second patch, or have they come up with a third patch?

The first patch was to resolve the crash bug related to the radio operator and to remove some garbage ( old Windows IE files ) that was accidentally compiled into the code.

The second patch was supposed to activate the engine management features. Unfortunately, the engines can't be managed while flying the plane due to poor implementation of the gauge views.

Here is a list of problems still present in the game:

    1. Stuttering terrain and enemy fighter graphics.

    2. Enemy fighters constantly playing Kamikaze into your bomber formation.

    3. Stuttering graphics in the turret positions.

    4. Map bugs that make it difficult to set waypoints.

    5. The right wing echelon flys too close to the player's six bombers, causing collisions when making acute angle turns.

    6. Flight models are nowhere near accurate. ie: I can fly loops, Immelemans, etc. with a fully loaded B-17.

    7. No kneeboard map for navigation in fighters.

    8. No "stretched neck" or "line of sight" cockpit views. This makes manual control of taxi and takeoff literally impossible, as well as engine management.

    9. Cockpit controls and gauges were touted as fully functional. They are not. In fact, some are missing.

    10. Poorly implemented landing procedures. This causes runway pile-ups as well as loss of injured aircrew because severely damaged planes don't get preferred landing clearance or cleared from the active runway when they crack-up.

In a nutshell, the developers were running way past their deadline and Hasbro pulled the plug on them, dumbed it down to pre-teen level, gave it a lick and a promise beta test and shipped it.

The only positive I can come up with is the external view graphics at higher altitudes which are nothing short of stunning. Also, flying into flak gives one the feeling of almost being there. Scares the hell out of me when I'm not paying attention.

But, graphics do not a fun game make. It could have been so much more. Too bad the Hasbro bean counters didn't see it's potential.

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It's V2.0 patch. Here's the things I have run into that you have described.

1. Terrain yes, it still stuters. Enemy fighters all fly pretty good, no stuttering.

2. I was in a bomber formation and a group of enemy fighters attacked us. We shot them all down and none of them crashed into any of our planes. They were doing this pretty cool menuevers and fly bys. War pretty nice actually. Try upping the enemy fighter level in your options. See if that does anything.

3. Turrets graphics are nice. You can see the tracers and they never stutered on me. All smooth. That's how I actually helped shoot down one of the enemy fighters in the situation I described in #2.

4. Map waypoints are easy to set. Just drag, drop and set altitude. You can zoom in, out and tilt the map. Maybe you are having problems with your navigator following them. Try navigating and updating you planes position manually and by pilotage, he might not be experienced enough.

5. True. I have run into problems with sharp turns while in formation. I think they made the flight model for B17 way too manueverable and responsive. Aceleration is the only thing I like, you actually notice the gap between when you cram in the power and when the plane starts catching up with it.

6. See #5.

7. Don't know, havent tried that.

8. Yeah, that's true. I usually do that in outside view.

9. Instruments I actually liked. Try going into the pilots instruments view, and then pressing F5, F6, F7, F8, F9 for all the instruments views. They all work. The problem you might have is if you run the game in 16bbp, then they are pretty much unreadable. If you run in 32bbp then it's just amazing. I don't know what you mean by saing that some are missing. If you mean something like an ADF or radio stack or something then yes, but all the engine, and you relevant ac systems are there.

10. That's true. I usually let the autopilot land just because of that.

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Soback my friend,

Just an FYI. I am a fanatical flight sim enthusiast. I was camped out on the B-17 bulletin board from day one through release during the game's development. I listened to a boat load of what ultimately turned out to be tripe from the developers. It wasn't their fault though. As I mentioned previously it was Hasbro that put the axe into it.

I also have the PC muscle to run the game.

B-17 FF TME needs only some fine tuning to make it "THE SIM". Adding a MP component would make it the ultimate in flight sim immersion.

Have you found the Aliens yet?

I re-checked the Bombs-Away download section. The patch to version 2.0 was the second patch, which I have. It didn't impress me. At present I don't foresee any further patches coming down the pike. In other words, "They Dropped It Like A Hot Potatoe".

Oh btw, If you kick the auto-name generator for crews enough, you will find my surname popping up from time to time. The developers invited the Bombs-Away board members to add their names to the game and they did.

[ 10-17-2001: Message edited by: Wolferz ]

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Guest rtoolooze

I too am a WWII flight sim buff, my first one also being Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, that I just loved! (I wish they would remake that one!)

I picked up B17 Flying fortress when it first came out and did'nt like it, so I returned it. Just did'nt seem immersive enough for me, plus all the bugs. Too many other good flight sims out there.

I still fire up Falcon 4, as erazor and the RP group of dedicated fans continue to work on this sim. Its finaly what it was supposed to be, and its about as bug free as any sim this deep could be.

Still waiting for the ultimate WWII sim with dynamic campains where you can see army's on the ground fighting and stuff. that would be cool.

over and out.

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Wolferz I didn't disagree with you, I was just trying to help. But check this out, I found this out yesterday. Let's say you want to fine tune an engine, like increase the manifold pressure from 38" to 40" or something and from view F5 you can see the instruments and the boosters levers but instruments are kinda far so it's hard to tell if it's 40" exactly. So what you do is press the left mouse button on the lever for whichever engine you want to change setting in, hold it down and change view to F6 (the instrument panel for engies) then with the mouse button held down move it up and down like you are moving the lever and you actually are. That way you can fine tune all of them for the precise indications you want. But yeah, the sim could have been more but right now it's the best bomber sim out there, do you think anyone will attempt to make a WW2 bomber flying sim and make it a real SIM rather then some arcade or half sim game?

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