Anyone know where a good place to order the “real life” version of this? I’m not familiar with this stuff at all…
Im looking for some M:TG alternatives to try out with the gang at lunchtime!
The board version of Down in Flames is limited to the Pacific Theater, as the first game in the series, Rise of the Luftwaffe, is out of print. (Although the going rate is about $70 on eBay, so you can get it used if you want to pay that much.) You can get the Pacific game (Zero!) and the expansion (Corsairs & Hellcats) either directly from the publisher, GMT Games (www.gmtgames.com) or from one of the online retailers like Thought Hammer (www.thoughthammer.com). I see that at Thought Hammer, Zero! is only $14 plus shipping. The expansion, on the other hand, is $35.
By the way, I lost my best pilot (“Rudel”) last night to the AI, specifically some AI pilot named Tracy Baker (!) While that sucks, I like how the game tracks recently killed pilots at www.downinflamesonline.com, including separating out the “Top aces killed this month.” While Rudel was up there with 42 kills and 949 xp, some guy named Zonsa lost a pilot with 85 kills and 1,469 xp.
Is direct sales from the publichser the only way to order a full copy of this game? I couldn’t find it on gogamer.com
Yes.
Got some mixed initial impressions.
Install was wonky. Ended up having to go into the forums to find out about some .NET program that also had to be installed. Not that there was an error message to this effect or any warning to expect this error, unless I missed one in the help files. Okay, easy enough.
Here’s where it starts getting annoying. Why do I have to log onto a server to play a campaign game? First off I’m forced into registering on some site I may or may not want a long term relationship with. Secondly, all the data/AI for a campaign game isn’t on the disk I own? Is that site going to be up forever? I’d prefer my games to be complete on the disk, in the box, on my shelf and not entirely dependant on the kindness of strangers. Lastly there’s quite a little dance where you set up the -single player- campaign game on the site (which it seems requires you to log in seperately even after you’ve used the application to log in) and then, at least in my case, those newly created campaigns then fail to show up in the available list of campaign games in the game.
Now I’m certain I’m doing something wrong but I’m just a simple fellow. This is a card game. Right? Why is it that the rigamarole I’m slogging through with the interface seems more complex than the actual gameplay? And it’s alot, alot, less fun.
Now the upside. Since I seem to be limited to the “local” one-shot games I’m playing quite a few of them. The action’s fast and the feel of dogfighting seems brilliantly abstracted into an incredibly playable game. Very simple on the surface but a great deal of complexity in how the cards, abilities, pilots and aircraft can interact as you start getting a feel for things. I’m blown away - it’s a great design.
But I’m not entirely sure, yet, it makes up for the technical irritations and just amateur hour feel of the interface and forced online hassles.
I’m pretty down on this game, and not in the hip positive way that kids these days are down on (or is that “down with”?) things they like. You nailed a lot of it right there, Brian, and it just gets worse the more you play.
I reviewed the game for Yahoo a few weeks ago, but there’s been some delay getting the review live. In brief, I wouldn’t recommend Down in Flames unless the developers do a lot of tidying up with it. The original design – i.e. the card game it’s based on – is great. Everything else – i.e. the computer game it was turned into – is not so great.
-Tom
Hello All!
In reading through the previous posts I noticed some questions on some of my other games. Here’s a general rundown of what’s going on with them…
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The original 2 DIF games have been out of print for a few years. They can sometimes be found on ebay. The 2 latest card games are still available from GMT.
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The DIF series continues with the new computer game released by Battlefront, and with DIF-WWI which I have self-published as a Vassal/PDF Download game. I hope to expand the WWI edition as well as moving into the Jet Age in the near future.
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The 2 Leader games released from GMT are both out of print and can also be found on ebay from time to time. I am also expanding this series with Hornet Leader II and the soon to be released Corsair Leader.
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I have designed a couple collectible card games. 7th Sea did very well, probably one of the best selling non-licensed CCGs made. The Z-Cardz collectible game didn’t do nearly as well. :)
For future projects, I am dividing my time between the DIF computer game and the Vassal/PDF games. I think the tabletop gaming business world is going through some tough times these days and the place to be is online play and digital downloads.
Thank you,
-Dan Verssen
Dan Verssen Games (DVG)
www.dvg.com
Tom and Brian,
If you have time, I’d like to discuss the aspects of the computer DIF game that you didn’t like.
You are both obviously very experienced strategy gamers, ie you’re right in the middle of our prime target audience. If there are things that you don’t like about the game, I’d like to hear about it, so we can make changes.
Like the card game, the computer version is a new type of game of sorts. It’s a card game, but with RPG aspects. It must also meet realism and historical tests, but not get too bogged down in them. As a result of all this, we put together what we thought players would best like.
My guess is, we hit that mark in some areas, but missed it in others. Luckily for us, software code is not carved in stone, so we can make adjustments based on feedback as we go forward.
For example, during the demo stage, several good suggestions were presented by players, and Brian (the programmer) was able to get them into the full game which released only one month later.
In the future, we have major plans for expanding the game with new aircraft, new campaigns, detailing the aircraft stats a bit more beyond what the card game did, etc. If there are game play aspects that you think need fixing, the sooner we hear about it the better. :)
-Dan Verssen
www.dvg.com
Anybody who knows me knows I’m always happy to talk about my issues and since I’ve bought into Down In Flames I’d certainly like to see that investment improve in quality. But, largely, my concerns are already covered in my post.
I haven’t got enough into the actual game yet to comment in depth on that aspect but I have played enough to say, with certainty, that I love the design. As I gain more experience I’ll probably have more insightful commentary or at least more colorful crap to say.
What I don’t like is having huge chunks of the gameplay experience, namely the campaigns, lodged on someone else’s distant server rather than available as part of the package I purchased. There’s also a good deal of busywork involved in registering for the site, logging in, and then the campaigns I tried to make never showed up on my client’s campaign list. I spent far too much time hassling with this.
Essentially the beauty of a game like Down In Flames is its seeming elegance of design. That same grace should extend to the technical layers of interface - all aspects of the game’s infrastructure should be easy to navigate and demand very little thought or effort from the user. If I were, for example, buying a highly technical home-brew flight sim I’d expect to have some hassles and do-it-yourselfer moments getting things to run. But asking me to navigate various menus and websites that all are dependant on each other but that don’t appear to work altogether smoothly to play a user-friendly card game, well, that does defeat the purpose.
Also, big no-nos are demanding end users install auxilliary software, aside from DirectX, or forcing them to register on a website to play a game’s solitare elements - in this case, the campaign game for DiF. It may well be that most players will eventually want to join the site to play other players, that would seem to be a shining strength of the game, but that’s not an assumption a publisher should make for them.
Edit: And what does this mean:
“Error occured in: DiFOGameClient
Description: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Trace Info: At bartbert.games.difo.client.forms.MainForm.CommandPlayCard(StringcommandXml)”
Errors like this seem to happen with regularity during missions however they don’t seem to really effect anything. Also I’ve been unable to maintain a consistent connection to the DiF server. Every time between missions I’ve become unconnected. Hopefully this won’t effect my campaign game?
Random thought. Also, why don’t you have a solo campaign in which you can husband along and train pilots? As cool as it is training pilots in local one-shots (or in online mode I’d presume) the real fun would be building them up in an extended campaign mode. Perhaps the maps/bombing format wouldn’t work that well but a series of connected missions in a theatre with a killboard and various random elements. Hell, you’re the Hornet Leader guys right? I cite Hornet Leader constantly as a good example of how random events create dynamic variation in games. I’d put together that kind of mission construction with the combat resolution you’ve got already in DiF. One example of classic card gameplay nestled inside another one.
What a game that’d be!
Hello Brian,
I’ve looked through your posts, here seems to be a list of things you like to see addressed…
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Separation of the campaigns games on a website.
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Needing to install .NET
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Ease of setting-up a campaign game
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Having to register and login to campaigns after logging into game.
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Disconnect problems
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Desire to place pilots into a campaign setting
What I’m trying to do is get a good collection of issues together and then talk them over with the team.
-Dan Verssen
www.dvg.com
The pilot-campaign idea is something for well down the road.
I’d suspect that creating a simpler way to access the existing content would help everyone out. I’m not a coder myself but if there’s a way one could simply install the game, not have to worry about .NET or the website at all, and access all the singleplayer content, including the campaign mode, then 90% of my headaches would clear up. Folks who do want to venture online and play with others (though it’s unclear how many there really are - I’ve seen seven or eight people in the lobby at one time so far at most) might need to install .NET, depending on how your system is set up, and would certainly need to register for the website ladder. Even then, I’m wondering if there’s a way to go without the need to install .NET at all.
Keeping things simple is very important. I honestly believe Down In Flames has great crossover potential for a very broad community of gamers who might not even be interested in traditional wargames. But to get these people the ease of installation and use has to be at a premium.
Most installation packages, such as InstallShield or WISE, will do the .NET installation for you if it isn’t already installed. It’s just a simple dependency check. What installation package do you guys use?
I was on for a bit this morning. Evidently I’m not the only one who keeps losing connect to the lobby server. One fellow there suggested it was .NET that might be overloading the system but I’ve got no idea if he knows what he’s talking about.
I have no idea about this “flight simulator” contraption that you people are talking about, but I can assure you that the .NET Framework (i.e. the 20MB stuff you need to install in order to run .NET programs) is basically a big library, like the Java runtime. And “library” in programmer terms is the shared part of a program.
The .NET Framework is perfectly safe, it doesn’t do anything by itself, it doesn’t affect Internet connections or the rest of your system at all, and there’s no way to avoid installing it if you want to run a .NET program.
It’s effectively just a chunk of your application that is shared by multiple applications and must be installed separately. That’s all.
Yes indeed, there is absolutely nothing wrong with installing the .NET framework. It won’t blow up your machine or make you vote Republican.
— Alan
Yes indeed, there is absolutely nothing wrong with installing the .NET framework. It won’t blow up your machine or make you vote Republican.
It’s funny, though, to be paying B+/A quality game prices and have to download the .NET framework to get a game to run correctly.
Funny, if you think that “sloppy” and “amateurish” is funny.
WTH, Battlefront?
–scharmers
Fuck it then, I ain’t installing it.
they need to use lines of code to run their computer game?
/vader NOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooOOOOoooooOOOOOO
seriously, i know ms sucks but is .net that bad?
What does that rant have to do with anything? You also have to install DirectX to run any modern game, does that make them sloppy and amateurish, too?
It’s just like any other OS prerequisite. I don’t know how this game you’re talking about is distributed – if it’s on CD-ROM then of course .NET should come on the CD as well. But if it’s downloadable then yeah, you need to download any OS prerequisites as well. And you can simply use Windows Update to get .NET, you know.