BoB II still up to fight back against BoB:SoW?

[GlobalExplorer]

Originally Posted by Dowly

Dang, have never flown when it's that dark!

One of the few things that bugs me in Bob2 - no night missions.

Screenshots galore in this thread:

http://www.shockwaveproductions.com/...732&start=1215

Graphics in Bob2 is not only beautiful, but it also feels just right. IL2 always gave me some sort of artificial feeling.

[CCIP]

Gah, reminds me that I need to get it back again!

I agree on one point without reservation: BoB 2 is by far the better single-player game. Even without strategic control it's dynamic campaign is leaps and bounds better than any comparable, reasonably-modern sim - and the fact you can control it all is icing on the cake. It's not as fully-featured otherwise and can't nearly claim to have a comprehensive plane selection or all aspects of BoB modeled, but it gets the most important stuff right! I can live without the frills, more unusual plane types and night missions as long as it gets the Spitfire and other things of that magnitude of importance right! And it sure does.

Otherwise, considering that the original BoB, the engine of which BoB 2 retains, came out in what... 2001? - well, she may have aged well, but she's sure aged by now. I'm sure SoW will be a different beast, but I don't think it's quite fair to hold up this old lady that, in all actuality, will probably be 8 years old by the time SoW hits the market with cutting edge technology. BoB 2 is an equal peer to IL-2 and CFS 3, and I think it's a shame it's the most overlooked of the three. Again, as just a single-player campaign game, it beats the latter two hands down! Overall, I think IL-2 still takes the cake as the definitive WWII sim today, but anyone who finds IL-2 dry and lacking athmosphere (I actually don't - I'm more just annoyed by its AI sometimes, which BoB also has better), well - this is your game, I think.

On my older PC, which unfortunately didn't perform well enough for me to fly fighters (FPS dropped to about 12 in the middle of action, which is not nearly enough to dogfight), I had a blast playing as a bomber gunner on all those strikes that I planned myself

[HunterICX]

Same here, I play CFS3 : OFF mod for single player as its a lot better and really gets me flying 30 minutes to a target without TC and sometimes for nothing! perhaps to get banged up by enemy aircraft.
and then you have to fly back to base too
but its worth it

and IL2 1946 just kicks all others in terms of multiplayer.
its stable as a house, and the playing a campaign with friends is a lot more fun as anything can happen.
you can even open both sides (allied & Axis) and play against eachother too on the same campaign

HunterICX

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by HunterICX

Same here, I play CFS3 : OFF mod for single player as its a lot better and really gets me flying 30 minutes to a target without TC and sometimes for nothing! perhaps to get banged up by enemy aircraft.
and then you have to fly back to base too
but its worth it

Hehe, what I started to do after my 2nd sortie was get high up, dive down to get enough speed and hit the warp button. :rotfl:

[Tchocky]

Ahh, I bought this game during the summer, played it for an hour or two, then forgot about it. I remember thinking that it looks like fun, once I get the time to play it properly.
Once I have time to game again, this will be top of the pile

[SUBMAN1]

I just found IL2, well, umm, boring? It is lacking everything that BoB2 has, and its graphics are not up to snuff either. I never could get into the single player of IL2. Not much fun. Maybe multiplayer is better but I haven't tried it.

-S

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

I just found IL2, well, umm, boring? It is lacking everything that BoB2 has, and its graphics are not up to snuff either. I never could get into the single player of IL2. Not much fun. Maybe multiplayer is better but I haven't tried it.

-S

I'm with you, the single player is rather boring because of the dumb/predictable AI and I've hated the ground textures since I bought the first IL2 game, tho I dont have to worry about that for long. :p

And now that we are on the graphics, the buildings look very bad if you ask me. And dont give that "But hey, it's X years old game" preach, the new models and coming with the 4.09m look as bad.

MP is the pearl of IL2, cant say for how long, some talk have been that the BDG team has been trying some things to get MP to BoB II. AFAIK, they succeeded in it, but it still has fatal bugs in it. MP in BoB II with 1000+ planes in the air... *drool*

[GlobalExplorer]

I don't think the lack of MP in Bob matters that much because by design it works best a single player game.

But I'm with Subman and Dowly on the IL2 experience. I got it first in 2001 and since then I could not help but feeling its a rather bland game. Sure it felt right to taxi my plane on the ground and flying the He111 for the first time was great. But the ground objects popping into place was annoying, the maps are limited and artificial (no satellite data, eh), and flying at anything above 3km looked right out terrible. I never got as far as being able to judge the AI, because I could never get deep enough into it.

Bob2 on the other hand has everything I hoped for, except for the aged ground terrain which looks dissappointing below 1km, but higher it looks almost perfect. don't forget that they are constantly updating the landscape, the summer terrain was already a huge improvement, and there is a new thread about high res terrain textures (still work in progress).

http://www.shockwaveproductions.com/...er=asc&start=0

Finally, via the BDG people you can get in direct contact with the developers. When I discovered a small bug with my improved campaign map they fixed it right away and included my work in the last patch without much ado. That is the right way to get the community involved, and I am really looking forward to what these fine people will come up with in the future.

Here is a screen of the new campaign map:



I also did some work on a GIS file that can be used for strategic overview. There is more information in this thread:

http://shockwaveproductions.com/foru...globalexplorer

[SUBMAN1]

Might as well do a couple more mood shots.

An Me109 tries to hide in whats left of the sunlight:



I got a pretty good burst into him after a short while - it is almost over for him at this point: