Confirmed Kill FAQ v0.3 ======================= 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? 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, maybe ComT. Thats about all I can say on it for now. 7.5 A historical arena? Killer wrote: We have discussed this exact idea many times. We will build one and see how people like it, It would take maybe a whole hour to set up a axis vs allies arena with the stock terrain. Maybe a day or two for a realistic English channel terrain. 7.6 H2H offline play? Bryan Walker of Domark wrote: The online version will allow offline play, but only to the point of flying the individual planes. The boxed version will allow modem and 16-player IPX Network play, as well as some interesting tutorial features. 8.0 How do I... 8.1 Lock the tailwheel on takeoff? Killer wrote: .. Right now you can lock the tailwheel by holding the stick full back. Keep it full back till you hit 50 IAS or so then you can center the stick and avoid alot of the yaw on powerup. 8.2 Get the easier flight model? Killer wrote: There already is an easier flight mode. The host can control this or you can enable it on or off line. Try the .dweeb 1 command and try to spin one. 8.3 Check how good my connection is? You can check this by using the ping -s ici2.infohwy.com command from your shell account. Be warned that for some reason on CRIS, this continues forever instead of being killed with a [CTRL]-C. Therefore, you may want to use a different form of the command. ping -s ici2.infohwy.com 56 10 This will ping ICI's machine 10 times and then summarize the statistics. Doing this from CRIS I got: CRCINET 1> ping -s ici2.infohwy.com 56 10 PING ici2.infohwy.com: 56 data bytes 64 bytes from ici2.infohwy.com (198.65.146.10): icmp_seq=0. time=128. ms 64 bytes from ici2.infohwy.com (198.65.146.10): icmp_seq=1. time=99. ms 64 bytes from ici2.infohwy.com (198.65.146.10): icmp_seq=2. time=136. ms 64 bytes from ici2.infohwy.com (198.65.146.10): icmp_seq=3. time=97. ms 64 bytes from ici2.infohwy.com (198.65.146.10): icmp_seq=4. time=95. ms 64 bytes from ici2.infohwy.com (198.65.146.10): icmp_seq=5. time=94. ms 64 bytes from ici2.infohwy.com (198.65.146.10): icmp_seq=6. time=94. ms 64 bytes from ici2.infohwy.com (198.65.146.10): icmp_seq=7. time=94. ms 64 bytes from ici2.infohwy.com (198.65.146.10): icmp_seq=8. time=94. ms 64 bytes from ici2.infohwy.com (198.65.146.10): icmp_seq=9. time=114. ms ----ici2.infohwy.com PING Statistics---- 10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0% packet loss round-trip (ms) min/avg/max = 94/104/136 Numbers below 200 are fine and will yield a good connection. The higher the numbers, the worse the connection and if the go high enough, the game becomes unplayable and the host will ground you. You should be aware that normally low numbers can be ruined if you get occasionally very high ones. I was flying one night where I could go for minutes with a ping time of around 50. However, every once in a while the system would basically just stop and I would get numbers like 1800. When actually flying, I could fly for a couple of minutes and then I would get grounded. The next question is, "Would switching providers help?". In order to answer that question, we need to know a bit more about how your messages are getting sent to ici2.infohwy.com. We can use the traceroute command for this. traceroute ici2.infohwy.com I get the following: CRCINET 5>traceroute ici2.infohwy.com traceroute to ici2.infohwy.com (198.65.146.10), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets 1 router-sprint.cris.com (199.3.12.1) 4 ms 3 ms 3 ms 2 sl-chi-1-S17-T1.sprintlink.net (144.228.128.129) 13 ms 13 ms 16 ms 3 sl-chi-6-F0/0.sprintlink.net (144.228.50.6) 14 ms 14 ms 22 ms 4 sl-chi-nap-H1/0-T3.sprintlink.net (144.228.56.10) 23 ms 19 ms 24 ms 5 198.32.130.227 (198.32.130.227) 15 ms 16 ms 20 ms 6 border2-hssi1-0.Chicago.mci.net (204.70.25.5) 21 ms 18 ms 16 ms 7 core-fddi-1.Chicago.mci.net (204.70.3.81) 25 ms 21 ms 16 ms 8 core-hssi-2.KansasCity.mci.net (204.70.1.17) 29 ms 25 ms 25 ms 9 core-hssi-3.Houston.mci.net (204.70.1.22) 45 ms 48 ms 56 ms 10 border1-fddi0-0.Houston.mci.net (204.70.2.98) 205 ms 117 ms 195 ms 11 sesquinet.Houston.mci.net (204.70.36.6) 44 ms 40 ms 39 ms 12 HOU1-F10.SESQUI.NET (192.67.13.181) 40 ms 46 ms 40 ms 13 HOU2-F0.SESQUI.NET (128.241.200.82) 53 ms 40 ms 39 ms 14 SCCSI-S0.SESQUI.NET (128.241.5.146) 43 ms 49 ms 43 ms 15 com4.houston.sccsi.com (198.65.128.45) 41 ms 41 ms 42 ms 16 cisco1.houston.sccsi.com (198.65.128.2) 62 ms 43 ms 83 ms 17 i3t1.sccsi.com (198.65.144.214) 60 ms 48 ms 46 ms 18 ici2.infohwy.com (198.65.146.10) 53 ms * 48 ms By the way, those numbers are individual times and do not represent a minimum, average, and maximum like with ping. This gives me all the steps in the route needed to get internet traffic from my provider to ICI's machine. The times show will give you some idea about how much time it took to get to each step along the way. By the way, those numbers are individual times and do not represent a minimum, average, and maximum like with ping. However, to get a better idea, use ping again. CRCINET 8> ping -s HOU1-F10.SESQUI.NET 56 10 PING HOU1-F10.SESQUI.NET: 56 data bytes 64 bytes from HOU1-F10.SESQUI.NET (192.67.13.181): icmp_seq=0. time=359. ms 64 bytes from HOU1-F10.SESQUI.NET (192.67.13.181): icmp_seq=1. time=39. ms 64 bytes from HOU1-F10.SESQUI.NET (192.67.13.181): icmp_seq=2. time=42. ms 64 bytes from HOU1-F10.SESQUI.NET (192.67.13.181): icmp_seq=3. time=41. ms 64 bytes from HOU1-F10.SESQUI.NET (192.67.13.181): icmp_seq=4. time=40. ms 64 bytes from HOU1-F10.SESQUI.NET (192.67.13.181): icmp_seq=5. time=41. ms 64 bytes from HOU1-F10.SESQUI.NET (192.67.13.181): icmp_seq=6. time=40. ms 64 bytes from HOU1-F10.SESQUI.NET (192.67.13.181): icmp_seq=7. time=44. ms 64 bytes from HOU1-F10.SESQUI.NET (192.67.13.181): icmp_seq=8. time=41. ms 64 bytes from HOU1-F10.SESQUI.NET (192.67.13.181): icmp_seq=9. time=112. ms ----HOU1-F10.SESQUI.NET PING Statistics---- 10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0% packet loss round-trip (ms) min/avg/max = 39/79/359 You can do this every step along the way and you should be able to isolate exactly where a problem is occurring if you are having one. Remember, the problem may not be your provider (and then again it might). If it is, you now have the ammo to shoot at their tech support people. If you don't mind a somewhat messy display, you can also use the traceroute -q nqueries form of the command. However, ping is better for doing large numbers of queries (the reason will be obvious if you try with traceroute). 8.4 Recover from losing updates to all players? I have heard that this is a known bug. For now you should use enter the following command on the radio. /.e This should take you back to the selection room. Then enter: exit exit will take you back to the menu where you choose between the BBS, getting software updates, entering the arena, etc. Enter the arena again. At this point, you can select field, plane, and fly again. You can also try the .abort command. This leaves you in the arena. Follow this with the .login command. You should now be able to select your plane, etc. 8.5 Recover from being grounded? First, this happens because the host received nothing from you for 4+ seconds. This can be because of a temporary burp in the system or because the load on your internet provider is just too high at the moment. You might want to see the section of the FAQ on checking how good your connection is. You recover by doing a abort followed by a .login at which point you can select your field and plane. If this happens a lot, you are going to have to find a different provider (or learn to live with it). 8.6 Stop the rapid jittering in the planes position? The rapid jittering is caused by the fact your joystick does not usually put out one consistent value for a particular position of the stick. What you should do is adjust the deadbands for your stick and rudder pedals (if you have them). You should be aware that the oscillations back and forth that occur on a somewhat slower and smoother basis are normal and are part of the flight model. Real planes behave the same way. For some people, their are two other causes: a) For a limited # of people, using the .stick 1 command has helped. However, for most people, this makes things worse. If it isn't broke, don't fix it! b) You may be calibrating incorrectly. Some people are trying to calibrate their joystick and then calibrate their rudder. The program wants you to calibrate them at the same time. If you calibrate them seperately, you undo the first calibration. Say you did your joystick first and your rudders second. What you will have done is told the game that the center position is both the minimum and maximum position for your joystick. This is going to give you an EXTREMELY bumpy ride. 8.7 Recover from a Spin? Pyro writes: I've been playing around offline with the really nasty spins. I did a lot them in all the planes and I definately believe that there is no such thing as an unrecoverable spin provided you have enough alt and have not had flight controls shot off. At least, I recovered from all my test spins(probabably about 50 of the nasty sort). Most of those were done using the F4U. I'll try to explain the technique. It may be hard to visualize but if you watched it once, it would be very clear. First off, if you get into a flat spin at high alt that is particularly bad, recovery can be impossible until you get down around 7K. It seems that for those spins, you just can't get enough bite into the air until you get down in the denser stuff. You still have plenty of time to recover though. I've spun 15k and couldn't do a thing until I hit the lower alt where recovery was made without much problem. Throttle is very important. I found that spins can be unrecoverable if you throttle all the way back. Realistic or not, stay throttled up. The whole trick of spin recovery in CK is get your nose pointed straight down. You want to get your nose aimed at the point on the ground that everything appears to be spinning around. The first thing to do is get the nose down a little. Use opposite rudder, forward stick, and some opposite aileron. Monitor your airspeed and watch for gains in it. The object at this point is to get from a flat spin to at least a slightly nose down attitude. Hold down opposite rudder and adjust stick input to aim your nose down at the center of the spin. If you use too much stick input, your nose will shoot past that point. As your nose gets closer to center, ease up on your stick input. Sometimes ruddder input needs to be adjusted a little, but for the most part, it is held down all the way. Stick input will differ according to the attitude you are in. Just using forward stick alone will not do it in most cases. Use your stick input as if you were flying your plane towards the center of the spin. And go into the direction of the spin, not with it. Sometimes, you get in an attitude that is very flat and hard to get any input into it. If you give a quick kick of rudder going into the spin followed by max opposite again, it can sometimes put you in a more favorable spin attitude that you can get out of quicker. Use the airspeed indicator as a feedback to what you are doing also. Speed increases as long as you are doing something good. Once you do get nose down and stabilized, watch your speed and allow it to build some. If you try to pull out before doing this, it is very easy to reenter a spin. Once you do it a few times, it will click and you will be able to get out of any spin as long as you haven't lost any flight controls and have a few k of alt between you and the ground. It's pretty hard to explain in words, but it really isn't that difficult although they do take some work. It ain't textbook spin recovery but it works here. 8.8 Tell what country I am from? Your color of country depends on the country that you selected (the default is country 1). The countries are: 1 - Red 2 - Green 3 - Blue 4 - Purple Another way is to do a roster command when on the ground. This will give you a list of who is flying, their color, handle, etc. Look for the entry listing you and it will tell you your color. 9.0 Do ... 9.1 Bombs and other ordinance affect the flight model? Not yet. They will. 9.2 Flaps and gear down have any affect? Gear down seems to have no affect. Flaps down create only minor amounts of drag. This will be fixed. 10. Why ... 10.1 Do the distant planes warp? Currently no smoothing of positions is being done for distant planes and their position is being updated only once every two seconds. This is normal for now. 10.2 Do I need to trim my plane? Boomer writes: An aeronautical injuneer is probably gonna have a heart attack, but here goes ;) If you were flying a real airplane that was designed to cruise at, say, 250 mph, flying it at 150 (fuel econ, whatever..) you would quicky tire from holding the stick back to maintain the angle of attack (AOA), etc. Trim tabs allow you to 'fine tune' the Horiz Stab airfoil via little 'elevator' tabs set into rear of stab. For older planes, these tabs were mechanically set via a wheel in the cockpit (in this case WWII). Later, they became electrical with a small up/down switch. Turn the wheel one way, the tabs went down, pushing the nose down a bit, Turn it the other way raised the nose. In the example above, you could set th trim so the stick was neutral, i.e. needing no force to keep the plane in the right attitude to fly a high speed plane at low speeds. It's important to note that trimming the plane is only good for the speed it's trimmed at. If you trim your plane level at 200, it will be OUT of trim at 250. Of course the design of the plane would determine just how much. 11.0 Should I use Error Correction and Data Compression? Go ahead and set your modem for Error Correction. You should probably turn Data Compression off. 12.0 Where is the action? First, you should get and print a copy of the map for the arena you are flying in. In the current arena being used for beta testing most of the action has been between country 1 (red) and country 2 (green). Good choices for take off spots for quick action are fields F3 (red) and fields F9 and F4 (green). More logical choices for involving all four countries are Field F8 (red), F16 (green), F14 (Blue - country 3), and F22 (Purple - country 4). These are the closest fields in each country to the center of the map which is over Field 15. 13.0 What is good etiquette? I am not about to get on a podium and dictate what you can and cannot do in this game. The following are my opinions and you can do with them what you want. That said, a total disregard for etiquette is going to get you a reputation you might prefer you could lose at some later date. Dweeb hunts for bad offenders in AirWarrior have been organized in the past and this will undoubtably occur in CK as well. Still, if you disagree with some of what is below, simply ignore it! My object in writing this is to help some dweebs avoid doing things they have no clue would get people upset. o Don't shoot down your own countrymen. The anti-frag code generally prevents this but it is not always turned on. o If you have been waved off of a fight by someone in your country stay away. In my opinion (and this differs from some others, you do NOT have to ask before joining a 1 on 1). o Do not constantly wave off countrymen from a fight. Reserve this for when you are actually dueling someone. o Don't boss people around in the arena. Instead of, "All greens follow me to F3." try "I'm headed to F3. Anyone else want to come?". o Don't make excuses on the radio for everytime someone shoots you down. An occasional, "Man, you were warping" is ok but if this become a litany, people are going to notice (and the problem is probably your connection anyway). o Don't expect other people to bail you out of your dumb decisions. They are not obligated to help you out (see don't boss). o Do NOT bail on someone in a fight just to avoid giving them the kill. (Bailing after you are hit is OK). This will earn you a reputation in a hurry. o Don't take advantage of quirky bugs in the software to kill people. For example, there was a bug that allowed you to take off from another countries field. Any idiot could take advantage of that and hose people as they took off. o Don't use long Kill macros. Also, Don't monopolize the radio channels. o Don't just stay at home waiting for others to come to you. This may be good for your K/D ratio, but if you develop a reputation as a homer, people aren't going to think much of your K/D ratio anyway. o Don't play joust. Any idiot can get kills by taking up a fast airplane and extending long distances and taking headons. This is not saying you should not take headons. It is saying that making them your staple diet is a bad thing. o Don't steal someone elses handle. If they have a handle that you absolutely must have, the normal protocol is to duel for it. o Don't game the scoring system (when eventually there is one). Using two accounts so that your one account can shoot up immobile airplanes from your other account is NOT cool. This sort of thing led to a very memorable dweeb hunt in AirWarrior. Of course there is the flip side. o Do occasionally compliment your opponents for a good fight. o Do help your countrymen out when they are trying to accomplish something or are outnumbered. o Do try to help the dweebs out. o Do feel free to vulch people on the ground if you have flown to get there. o Do give ICI constructive feedback. 14.0 When is the boxed version coming out? Killer writes: Hopefully this fall or next spring.