Confirmed Kill

A lot has been written about Confirmed Kill (CK for short) but it has been
over a span of a couple months. I thought I would gather this information
into a FAQ. Where I directly quote people I give credit but be aware that
I may have made small editorial changes (like correcting spelling or
grammer). As such, all mistakes are my responsibility. Some areas are
still not nailed down (such as the pricing scheme) and are subject to
change. Nothing in this FAQ should be considered as written in stone and
this FAQ is unofficial. This is version .3 of the FAQ. Additions since
the last version include an expanded networking section,  and new
sections on recovering from spins and etiquette.

Dave Chaloux            french@cris.com

Table of Contents

1.0 What is Confirmed Kill?
2.0 What Aircraft will be Modeled?
3.0 What kind of system do I need to run it?
4.0 Where do I get the FE software?
5.0 What does it cost to play?

6.0 Its slow on my system. What can I do to help?
6.1 Why do S3 cards have special support?

7.0 Will CK have...
7.1 a 1/2 time arena?
7.2 multiple-player/crewmember planes?
7.3 Modeling of collisions?
7.4 TCP support built into the FE?
7.5 A historical arena?
7.6 H2H offline play?

8.0 How do I...
8.1 Lock the tailwheel on takeoff?
8.2 Get the easier flight model?
8.3 Check how good my internet connection is?
8.4 Recover from losing updates to all players?
8.5 Recover from being grounded?
8.6 Stop the rapid jittering in the planes position?
8.7 Recover from a Spin?
8.8 Tell what country I am from?
8.8 Talk on the radio and communicate with others?

9.0 Do ...
9.1 Bombs and other ordinance affect the flight model?
9.2 Flaps and gear down have any affect?

10. Why ...
10.1 Do the distant planes warp?
10.2 Do I need to trim my plane?

11.0 Should I use Error Correction and Data Compression?
12.0 Where is the action?
13.0 What is good etiquette?
14.0 When is the boxed version coming out?

1.0 What is Confirmed Kill?

Confirmed Kill is a World War II flightsim that can be played online
against scores of other players at the same time. "Wait a second", you
may be saying. "That sounds just like Air Warrior" (AW for short). It does
have many similarities to AW and that is no accident. The people who
wrote this game cut their teeth playing AW. Some of the features of this
game are its force based flight model, gunnery and damage model,
and full screen view. The graphics of other planes in flight are
quite detailed and are texture based.

The force based flight model means that the way aircraft behave
is based on the various forces that act on the airplane instead of
being derived from a bunch of tables. Because of this, things like
the vortices created by your prop effect the way your airplane flies. If you
suddenly change your throttle, you better be prepared to deal with the change
in torque. Flat spins, tail slides, torque and rudder induces rolls are
all part of the game. Accelerated stalls can throw you upside down or into
a spin if you are not careful. Because some people may find that the
flight model is too realistic to be fun, a somewhat less realistic
flight model is available (for a separate arena).

The gunnery and damage model are also quite realistic and detailed.
Instead of shooting at a hit bubble that surrounds a plane, you actually
have to hit a particular part of the plane and the damage you do is
based on the part you hit. Hit the fuel tank and the plane explodes.
Hit the right wing enough and it falls off. Chew up the rear end
and the horizontal stabilizer will come apart. Partial damage is
also possible. Also, each individual gun is modeled. This means
that things like convergence matter (and can be set by the user).
Machine guns can be fired independently of cannons so they can be
used to zero in on the prey and the cannons can be used to finish
them off.

The full screen view is another nice feature. 90 degrees of view is
mapped to the full screen. What this means in practice is that the
planes are large enough to show the nice, detailed, texture mapped shapes
in combat without artificially making the planes bigger than they should
be. When you take that right wing off the other guy, you can see it!

All this attention to detail on the part of the designers would be
wasted if the game was not fun. The attention to detail helps
immerse the player into the game. What really makes or breaks the game is
its players. The satisfaction that can be had when you enter a furball
out-numbered against real people and you survive is a rush that is
hard to equal. The sight of your arch-rival spinning out of control
with his left wing missing is its own reward.



2.0 What Aircraft will be Modeled?

According to GunJam, the first 15 aircraft to be modeled will be:

Zero A6m5
KI-84
VAL
P-51
P-38
P-39
F4-U
Spit
Me109
FW190
JU-87
ME-110
IL-10
B-17
A-26

He also indicates they are planning on doing a Solomon Island Scenario.
If this happens, he indicates they will be adding:

KI-61 Tony
G4M- Betty
D4Y2-Judy
B6N -Jill
______________
B25
F4Fs, and/or F6Fs
SBD-3
TBF-3

Finally, he indicates that of the first 15, all significant variants
will be modeled.



3.0 What kind of system do I need to run it?

The stated minimum requirements are:

486 Dx33
8 Meg of memory
VLB video card

You also must currently have a soundcard.

It is important to note that the system uses floating point calculations
in its flight model so a 486 Dx is required.



4.0 Where do I get the FE software?

The best place to get the software is ICI's ftp server. Its ftp address
is ici1.infohwy.com.

The software can also be gotten at cactus.org in /incoming/ConfKill



5.0 What does it cost to play?

During the current beta testing process it is free as long as you are
one of the lucky people to actually have an account.

When it actually goes commercial, it will be 2$ an hour. There will also
be a monthly fee of 10$. Killer had this to say about that fee:

Actually the $10 will get you 5 hrs of flight and unlimited access to the
BBS on our system Fletch, no mailservers, no community split between umpteen
services, you pay $2 to fly and have nice community BBS free to use for
everyone.



6.0 Its slow on my system. What can I do to help?

Actually, there are a couple of things you can do. First, if you have an
ISA motherboard instead of a VLB motherboard, you can upgrade to a
VLB for under 160$ even if you get one of the higher end replacements.

Second, you can get an S3 based video card. THIS MAKES A BIG DIFFERENCE.
I have heard complaints about how Dx66s were running so poorly under
SVGA that they had to drop back to VGA. My Dx66 with an S3 based card
could run 800x600 smoothly! The S3 cards I know work are based upon the
following chipsets:

S3 864, S3 964, or S3 Trio.

My card is a STB Powergraph 64 with 2 Meg for VLB. This was a good choice
for me because it also runs fairly well in OS/2. It is S3 Trio based.

Another card which works are the variations of the Diamond Stealth 64.

Brian Holland (Rolo) says that his #9 GXE 64 Pro with 2 Meg VRAM is
also very smooth.

Mike Stelmat (Moto) reports a S3-968 card NOT working. If anyone has
a 968 based card that does work, I would appreciate hearing about it.

My advice with any video card is buy it where you can take it back if
it doesn't work out right. You may pay more but it can save you some
heartache.

(A list of cards known to work would be helpful. If your card does
work, you might drop me mail if it is not on this list.)



6.1 Why do S3 cards have special support?

Because the newer S3 cards have built in polygon rendering.



7.0 Will CK have...



7.1 a 1/2 time arena?



Killer writes concerning the less strict arena being planned:

Less strict as in a fly by wire applied to the model to help out those that
can't or won't stay in the flight envelope.

1/2 time? nope, no, no way, no how, not ever, over my dead body...

Won't it be enough to fly in a full screen 640x480 warpless environment,
hitting planes and doing damage relative to what part you hit? blowing off
parts of planes like wings and tail structures and watching them spiral into
the dirt to explode into hundreds of pieces??(and the enemy may not be able
to  bail out ) popping chutes of bailing pilots (they can shoot back with
that .45 too) Firing rockets and dropping bombs and torpedoes?

Angling in on your target, fire off a stream of MG till the lead is close,
then open up with cannon and cut him to ribbons?



7.2 multiple-player/crewmember planes?

Yes according to GunJam.



7.3 Modeling of collisions?

Killer writes:

Nope sorry, no collisions. When everyone has fiber in the house and we can
have latency down to miniscule numbers maybe. Till then we probably wont do
it.



7.4 TCP support built into the FE?

No. However, Killer wrote:

We are seriously considering offering TCP/IP as we have recieved more
interest in it than I had expected. For at least the short term we will be
modem access only, which is to say the FE looks for a standard COM port.
There may in fact be a way to fool the FE into "thinking" its talking to a
comm port instead of TCP/IP,