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SDOE Mission Making Tutorial - Part 1
by Scott VergeNumbers
You have to worry about numbers, as the more objects in the mission the harder the game will tax the CPU. Another thought about numbers would be your computer: Don’t even bother with putting in more then 8 planes or so if your running on your old Pentium 233 with a voodoo1.
Even people with Uber machines would probably be best off keeping the number of planes down to below 20 or so. If you’re not sure how many your computer can handle, slap a bunch in a mission on air start and check your frame rate. ALT-P displays your frame rate in the lower left corner; you want to avoid dipping below 20 or so as it becomes choppy for me around 16 FPS and hitting your guns always drops the FPS a bit. For online play keep the # of planes below 16 as it is the maxmimum number of players you can fit into a multiplayer mission.
Then we start worrying about details, especially historical. Try to think back to real missions during the war. Some times the bombers had escorts, sometimes they did not. Other times, escorts changed during a really long run.
Flak
This is where flak comes in. The flak in SDOE is VERY accurate. One flak gun firing at a group of three B-17's is most certainly going to take at least one out if not two and damage the third, so go light on them. Another reason to go light is the FPS: the more you put in the lower the FPS, not only because of the extra polys and AI to account for but all those great looking flak bursts are taking up precious CPU and video card resources.
Start low and run a couple test missions without opposing fighters. Not flying but just watching. Hit Shift-F6 and let the bombers carry on the missions by themselves. How many get hit is important and you may want to run it a couple times. When the amount of bombers making it through is to your liking move on with the rest of the mission making process.
Speaking of flak, remember to put in some planes to take out that flak before the bombers arrive if that’s part of your plan. The tiffie’s and P38's with their nice bomb and rocket load are perfect for this, besides the tiffie is under-used in this game. Remember to give each base that will be used in the mission, and other non-used airstrips, flak protection.
Every strip in the war had at least some flak cover and the returning planes sometimes needed it to keep the baddies off of them while they landed. Some times, when I’m out of ammo, I like to lure my opponent over a friendly airfield and hope the flak will take him out.
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