Red Baron II FAQ last revised on August 1, 1998 7:09 PST

This FAQ is for Sierra's World War I flight sim Red Baron 3D. I do not work for or represent Sierra On-line, so please don't blame them for any information that I have put here. This FAQ is an preliminary version based on the early beta and public test versions of Red Baron 3D. Mostly it contains answers to common questions about what features to expect. Look for the icon in front of questions added since the last update. If you have additional input, see an error, or think of something you want added please email me so I can update the FAQ. Thanks, and enjoy!

Return to FAQ Page | Return to Main Page | Email

What's New

Q: What's new about Red Baron 3D? What's the difference between it and Red Baron II?

A: The 3D Upgrade "... will include stunning new terrain graphics, new plane cockpits, new explosions and special effects and something beautiful as well as practical... trees." There will also be "real" clouds that you can fly through in 3D accelerated mode.

It will include a number of improvements to the flight model, artificial intelligence, tweeks to game play, etc.

Massive multiplayer support will finally arrive. While testing is far from finished, there is some hope that up to 100 players at a time in the same game will be supported. This is a result of the addition of a client-server multiplayer model.

At this point it will NOT include any new planes or campaigns.

"There will be nothing in the RB3D software that isn't in RB2 + super patch. The only extra things you get are the physical CD, the box and whatever printed material comes along. We'll try to make at least the most important printed materials available online as well." - Tyler Hart, Dynamix Online Representative

Q: What's the release schedule for Red Baron 3D and all the new patches I hear about?

A: "The basic situation, for those of you who have been following things is: we're on track. The "3D patch" is in limited tech release ("beta"), as you know, and things are proceeding apace. It could be out at the end of July but it could just as well be a little later. I doubt I'll have more than a few days' notice before its release, so you may not hear anything more specific than this until it's nearly out. .... <snip>

The next thing will be a Massive MultiPlayer tech release.* This will be sometime in August according to the current schedule. That will be happening at WON - they are being very cooperative, and we need to test this thing on something that's familiar.

* "Tech release" means more or less what "open beta" used to mean. The term "beta release" has been co-opted for use in so many contexts that it has lost any consistent meaning whatsoever. A tech release means we open it up for testing by anyone and everyone. It's silly that we have to resort to this sort of semantic gymnastics to describe a process you're all familiar with, but we've learned to shy away from the word "beta" in any formal usage.

Anyway, at some point we'll put the wraps on the MMP, and shortly after that you'll see the famous "super patch." This will include all of the various patches including MMP in one giant chunk. The release date for this is dependent on the convergence of, essentially, two separate critical paths so I'm not even going to think about speculating.

The release of Red Baron 3D will follow in - hopefully - fairly short order after that."

- Tyler Hart Dynamix Online Representative

Q: Hey, wait a minute! Except for the support for a massively multiplayer mode this sounds like what Red Baron II should have been when it was released.

A: "The RB3D upgrade will be free for RB2 owners as a rebate. This is now confirmed. No shipping and handling or cost of materials. Free. Well, you have to pay to mail us your new RB3D receipt and your old RB2 CD. That's on you. The rest is on us. " - Tyler Hart, Dynamix Online Representative

So again, the plan at this time is that all you will need to do is to:

1. Buy Red Baron 3D.
2. Mail in your receipt and your old Red Baron II CD to Sierra.

Sierra will then mail you a rebate check for the purchase price.

You will also be able to download for free the all the new features in RB3D from Sierra, and just patch your current version of Red Baron II.

Q: Well that sound pretty decent of Sierra. Why are they doing this?

A: They felt that they owed it to their customers to make up for the problems and mistakes that were made with Red Baron II. You can read more about it here.

Q: Will there (finally) be a frame rate counter in RB3D?

A: "Yes, the 3d patch will have a framerate counter. ALT-F will toggle the counter. It will appear in the upper left corner. It wasn't released on the first shipping version." - Hugh Diedrich, Dynamix.

Q: Will there be an invisable cockpit view?

A: "We are (also) offering a transparent cockpit mode so you can make your cockpit translucent while flying. This way you can see through it to track planes." - Hugh Diedrich, Dynamix.

This view is actually translucent. You will still be able to see the outlines for the cockpit.

Q: Why was time spent on putting in the translucent cockpit view? Time could have been better spent on many other features.

A: The translucent cockpit view is actually a "free" feature of using 3D accelerated cards. It took about 10 minutes to put it in. There were also many requests for this feature. This should help make up for the limitations of the current cockpit art, which was designed for 640x480 resolution graphics, and does not give a historically realistic viewing area.

Q: Will you be able to at least toggle the translucent cockpit off for multiplayer? It still seems like a cheat to me.

A: Details about what features you will be able to enable/disable for multiplayer mode have not been released yet. Internal discussion is still continuing on this topic.

Q: What's this I hear about trees?

A: Another feature added to the 3D accelerated version of Red Baron II was the inclusion of trees. You can see them as you get close to the ground, and they also help provide an indication of your current relationship to the ground. (Hopefully before you stick the nose of your plane into terra firma).

Q: What other new effects can I expect?

A:There will be new terrain graphics, new explosion effects, and new plane cockpits. Here are some screenshots of the new 3D accelerated version. (More details and screenshots later).

• Tyler was able to answer a few more questions for me. Here's a post in it's entirety from the Delphi Flight Sim Forum.

  Tyler: "Anything answered with a "don't know" properly means "I'll find out ASAP." ASAP may be tomorrow or halfway through August.

  Cage: What kind of options will there be for realism? Will their be options for the FM type?

  Tyler: The normal controls for FM and realism will apply (i.e. set by individual player). OverG raised the question of allowing the session owner (person running the scenario) to determine what settings are allowable. We agree that this is desirable and are unsure whether it is practical. It will be determined during the tech release phase. If it's doable given the resources we have, we'll do it. Otherwise the honor system might have to apply. I'm hopeful but there is no way to tell at this point.

  Cage: Will bombs and rockets be properly modelled or eliminated in the high realism areas? How about the transparent cockpit, map pointers, and landing anywhere to repair?

  Tyler: Bombs and rockets: don't know. Other items: same answer as above. We'd like to make all that stuff controllable by the session owner, it seems like the best solution. There aren't any super obvious roadblocks...which means exactly nothing. So, I guess the answer would be "hopefully, if at all possible yes."

  Cage: Will there be an option for combat limited to certain plane types by era?

  Tyler: I don't think that would require a software option. It should be handleable (is that a word? is now) by essentially putting up a sign on the door. If some idiot comes charging into a 1916 battle in a DVII you'll have to gang up and massacre him and then ostracize the fool...I guess it's possible that an actual control option for this will be trivial to implement, in which case you might see one. If it's harder than trivial, probably not. Peer control is the way to go, I think.

  Cage: Will their be an option for cooperative multiplay?

  Tyler: Yes. "Team melee" we call it.

  Cage: Who will set the options?

  Tyler: The session owner (there might be a better word for this) will control some things. The individual might control others. The answer to this is above, really: "it depends." We'd like to give the owner a good bit of control.

  Cage: How many different games/arenas will be set up on the server? Just one?

  Tyler: Generally speaking, one. A truly burly machine under the right conditions might be able to handle two, but...remember, the arenas are actually being run on the server. It's not like the current WON system where their machine spawns off a game and can then almost forget about it. The upside will be that you'll have way more planes and it'll just work much better.

  Cage: Will their be different arenas for different options or maps?

  Tyler: Don't know. Probably...but not sure.

  Cage: Will their be computer controlled planes at all?

  Tyler: No. Too bad, too. This is another classic example of one that looked easy from the outside and turned out to be totally brutal. The basic problem was with keeping track of SA type information, who was where doing what vs. who was supposed to know that and who wasn't. The more we looked at it the worse it got, until the developer who was working on it finally realized that there was no way to even predict how long it *might* take to solve the problem. Unless we could sell management on the idea that "we'll have it done sometime between now and the year 2000" we had to drop it. It's not a problem that has ever been solved, so it would be totally breaking new ground. It'll have to be done soon, and when it's solved the solution should be widely applicable, but we need to leave that to a development team that's on a year or 18 month dev cycle rather than our 6 month one.

  Cage: Will their be support for different scenarios?

  Tyler: Well, I'm not sure what you mean. There will be a couple of basic formats of play. If the players or the session owner want to set up specific objectives within the context of, say, a team melee, there should be room for that. We won't have "squadron bomber defense" (or whatever) type scenarios built in, i.e. the program wouldn't keep track of whether the objective was met or not. Humans could do that, though. Is this the sort of thing you mean?

  Cage: How will scoring be handled? Will their be individual and team scores based on kills and completion of goals?

  Tyler: We're going to track a large number of stats. I don't know how WON will derive their scoring system from that. Rogue servers should be able to create scoring formulas of their own based on the raw data we'll give you. What stats exactly, I hear you ask? The person I need to ask that question barely has time to breathe this week. I'll find out next week and give you a detailed list.

  Cage: Will there be a high score board? If so, will it be divided up by scenario/map?

  Tyler: Up to WON. Dunno. No reason not to that I can think of.

  Cage: Will their be the same WON lobby, or something more fitting for the era?

  Tyler: No idea.

  Cage: What kind of support will there be for squadron events?

  Tyler: What do you mean? If we think there's a fair setup, there's a pretty decent chance of our providing prizes and such - in fact it's a lead pipe cinch - but I doubt that's what you mean.

  Cage: Will there be more room for descriptive information and even pilot pics in the chat room?

  Tyler: Don't know. Up to WON or the rogue server owner, I guess.

  Answer to a question from a different post: NT4. As for the machine you run it on, a P233 with 128 megs of RAM would be fine - that's not a minimum requirement, it would really work well. Faster and bigger is better, of course, but you could get away with a little less as long as your sights aren't set too high.

  Emphasis:I am not kidding about the bandwidth. If you are thinking about setting up a rogue server, you should know that bandwidth *will* be your choke point. It will be the factor that determines how many players you can have on and how good the response is, and the difference might be very large.

  If you're thinking of investing in this area, you need to really know what you are getting into. I strongly suggest that you seek expert outside advice from someone in your area that doesn't have any financial stake in the decision you make. Bandwidth is not absolute - you could have a T1 pipe to your ISP - sounds great - but their connection to the backbone might suck rocks, and you're hosed. This is a "buyer beware" market and you need to do research and educate yourselves before getting involved. We would really hate to see some of you sink money into setting up servers and end up completely frustrated and unsatisfied because your connection doesn't live up to its billing.

  This probably will need at least one if not several separate threads in RB2 Technical over the next month. Anyone out there with expertise in these issues - please speak up!

  Tyler Hart - Dynamix Online Representative

Return to FAQ Page | Return to Main Page | Email