From: french@cris.com
Subject: CK: Faq version .3
Date: 10 Jun 1995 00:21:32 GMT

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 <g>) 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. <g>



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 dicta