New Game Scenarios

[StumpyOG]

15 minutes ago, Tommikka said:

Can I be your forum  fwend?

Of course Tommikka

[shadowfacex]

I think the topic escalated quickly from “what do you guys think about this new game scenario” to a cynical demotivationfest. @Rogerborg let the guy have his dreams, you never know what could come out of it, maybe he is a brilliant geek who’s going to take airsoft industry by storm? I understand your point about shilling some off-shoot devices for no reason, however from what I gather that's not going to be the case.

 

Coming back to scenarios, I agree with @Adolf Hamster, it’s nigh impossible to cater to absolutely every type of player. However, that’s where special events come to play. I’m not talking about your run-of-the-mill mil-sim (excuse the pun) or reenactments, but rather something that is above your typical skirmish packaged in a full day campaign, yet not as hardcore to require a week of prep, BDUs, MREs, or accurate gear/RIFs to boot.

 

While reviewing and adding various sites to PlayAirsoft, I remember there was one site that attempted to do that. They had three distinctive types of events, one for all, one for proper mil-sim, and one that was a cross between the two mentioned above. They specifically state what sort of expectations players attending a given event should have. I’ll try to dig up which one it was.

 

Having clear expectations about how the games are run is half the decision points for a lot of players. That’s from the data I’ve gathered last year. However, I wonder if anyone has attempted to write their game scenarios for this weird type of airsoft-swashbuckler-not-hardcore-enough-for-milsim? I’d love to dig through that, and maybe publish some on PlayAirsoft for everyone to see.

 

I understand most games are typical run-and-gun, but maybe if we put our cynicism and jadedness aside we could let at least some folks have fun LARPing hard (or hardly LARPing).

[StumpyOG]

26 minutes ago, Rogerborg said:

 

throbbing.thirsty.delusional

I have you measured up Rogerborg. 

 

You are so insignificant in your real life, you TRY to be a dominating force online. The trouble with that is that you have an online footprint. Your online footprint belongs to a who? I actively mask my OFP, you simply don't have one. Next time you think being a "keyboard warrior" is a good idea and saying "don't PM, we're not friends" consider this. YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS. Good day, good night, good evening and fuck off.

[Rogerborg]

5 minutes ago, shadowfacex said:

@Rogerborg let the guy have his dreams

 

He can dream, and I can roll my eyes at his dreams.

 

I hope to be wrong, and to super-duper-apologise when I see a new product that can be bought from stock, from an actual retailer, with a warranty, that has a compelling feature list at an affordable price.

 

It can happen, like tracer units.

 

However, it's been my experience that ideas-guys floating vague "How do you do, fellow airsoft kids?" oblique narratives aren't on the success track.

 

That applies double if the only thing standing between assured success and flouncing is some experienced cynical grumpy old bugger on the intartwebs.

[SBoardley]

6 minutes ago, StumpyOG said:

I have you measured up Rogerborg. 

 

You are so insignificant in your real life, you TRY to be a dominating force online. The trouble with that is that you have an online footprint. Your online footprint belongs to a who? I actively mask my OFP, you simply don't have one. Next time you think being a "keyboard warrior" is a good idea and saying "don't PM, we're not friends" consider this. YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS. Good day, good night, good evening and fuck off.

Oh. Deary. Me. 

[ImTriggerHappy]

I think if marketed towards site owners it could actually have legs. Capture the VIP games do quite often work and if you had a game where each team has a few nominated players carrying trackers that is a interesting spin. I say this because one style of vip game that I have seen work very well is where each team has only certain players that can actually capture the vip and that always leads to small groups of people congregating round their teams own personalities and actually going for the objective. Add trackers being carried by those nominated players you could actually have a game mode that could be quite successful.

[Adolf Hamster]

35 minutes ago, shadowfacex said:

Coming back to scenarios, I agree with @Adolf Hamster, it’s nigh impossible to cater to absolutely every type of player. However, that’s where special events come to play. I’m not talking about your run-of-the-mill mil-sim (excuse the pun) or reenactments, but rather something that is above your typical skirmish packaged in a full day campaign, yet not as hardcore to require a week of prep, BDUs, MREs, or accurate gear/RIFs to boot.

 

i've heard folks saying good things about filmsim as something that bridges the gap between the full-on milsim style and the chaos that is a regular walk-on.

 

never been to such an event so i can't really comment one way or the other, but i'll admit it'd be nice to have a themed event where you can indulge in a little more immersion than a normal day, but maybe not to the point of needing a 20 page document published so you know the rules (although maybe a 1 page document, printed on a0 size and nailed to a board at the site entrance would be good, even for standard games)

 

41 minutes ago, shadowfacex said:

I think the topic escalated quickly from “what do you guys think about this new game scenario” to a cynical demotivationfest. @Rogerborg let the guy have his dreams, you never know what could come out of it, maybe he is a brilliant geek who’s going to take airsoft industry by storm? I understand your point about shilling some off-shoot devices for no reason, however from what I gather that's not going to be the case.

 

+1, i'm all for a bit of healthy skepticism (having joined this place being the optimist who thought he could revolutionize the sport and knowing exactly where that went.....), but this does seem to have escalated a bit beyond that.

[StumpyOG]

52 minutes ago, Rogerborg said:

 

He can dream, and I can roll my eyes at his dreams.

 

I hope to be wrong, and to super-duper-apologise when I see a new product that can be bought from stock, from an actual retailer, with a warranty, that has a compelling feature list at an affordable price.

 

It can happen, like tracer units.

 

However, it's been my experience that ideas-guys floating vague "How do you do, fellow airsoft kids?" oblique narratives aren't on the success track.

 

That applies double if the only thing standing between assured success and flouncing is some experienced cynical grumpy old bugger on the intartwebs.

I have asked if an idea has the potential to be viable on airsoft fields.

My idea is, as correctly quoted, pointed out & documented, aimed at site owners.

To throw some backing & credentials in the mix, I am the production supervisor at https://www.argonelectronics.com/

Check the link before spouting nonsense.

Don't block someone before discussing everything.

Edited January 30, 2022 by StumpyOG

[Rogerborg]

13 hours ago, Adolf Hamster said:

this does seem to have escalated a bit beyond that

 

Not that I'd noticed, I'd already blocked the bloke before he flipped the table.

 

 

OP is just flexing. He'll either deliver a product, or he won't.  Either way, he's not going to fill my face in, or see me in court.  I'll be astonished if he files so much as a design patent, let alone a functional one. We can enjoy the brief frisson of drama while it lasts though, that's what the intarwebs are for.

 

If you're going to re-invent something that's already been released and failed, something needs to be different, either with the features, the price or the market.

 

It is a fair point that airsoft has come on since 2009 - more folk running comms, tracers, even NODS, and sites prepared to invest in props and things like AttackSense. 

 

I've had a look at the spec of the MT1268 and it looks reasonable enough: GPS for position[*], LPD433 (at an unspecified power) for unit-to-unit communication.  However, that limits it to outside use, and liable to interference from (e.g.) folk flying drones. If that's 10mW LPD then a 500m range would be very optimistic, and essentially line-of-sight, thereby obviating much of the point of it as a find-the-McGuffin tracker.  Consider that PMR runs at 500mW.

 

The kicker was the price: $250 per non-water-resistant unit, i.e. $500 before you can do anything with them on a site.  It's no wonder it vanished without trace.

 

Given the tiny potential market, I'd sack off the idea of dedicated hardware and look at doing it as a phone app instead. There are already "family tracker" style apps that seem to fit the bill, and it wouldn't be super hard to roll your own.  The issue would be sharing phone locations fast enough to be useful: you'd need a location with decent mobile data coverage, and then you'd have to provide hosting and "matchmaking" services, getting updates out to connected devices quickly enough, and with enough location resolution, to be useful.  There's also the obvious risk of getting your screen shot out in-game.

 

You could give the app away and charge a subscription for hosting.  Doing it the other way around, a paid app and free service, would be a risky buy as it would likely collapse as soon as sales plateau.

 

It's not a terrible idea, it might actually work.  But anybody can have an idea.  Following through to market - and long term support, once the orders dry up - is the tricky part.

 

[*] You can forget the idea of using any sort of signal strength for estimating even distance, let alone direction. It comes up every so often, the NHS track-and-trace app tries it over bluetooth with pretty poor results. I was involved in a failed project to try and track phone locations (and thus crowd density) in stadia and concert venues using bluetooth and wifi discovery signals with multiple receivers at known locations.  We never got anything close to usable fidelity, even with a short range line-of-sight setup, let alone with walls and such in the way.

[PopRocket123]

18 hours ago, Rogerborg said:

 

Not that I'd noticed, I'd already blocked the bloke before he flipped the table.

 

 

OP is just flexing. He'll either deliver a product, or he won't.  Either way, he's not going to fill my face in, or see me in court.  I'll be astonished if he files so much as a design patent, let alone a functional one. We can enjoy the brief frisson of drama while it lasts though, that's what the intarwebs are for.

 

If you're going to re-invent something that's already been released and failed, something needs to be different, either with the features, the price or the market.

 

It is a fair point that airsoft has come on since 2009 - more folk running comms, tracers, even NODS, and sites prepared to invest in props and things like AttackSense. 

 

I've had a look at the spec of the MT1268 and it looks reasonable enough: GPS for position[*], LPD433 (at an unspecified power) for unit-to-unit communication.  However, that limits it to outside use, and liable to interference from (e.g.) folk flying drones. If that's 10mW LPD then a 500m range would be very optimistic, and essentially line-of-sight, thereby obviating much of the point of it as a find-the-McGuffin tracker.  Consider that PMR runs at 500mW.

 

The kicker was the price: $250 per non-water-resistant unit, i.e. $500 before you can do anything with them on a site.  It's no wonder it vanished without trace.

 

Given the tiny potential market, I'd sack off the idea of dedicated hardware and look at doing it as a phone app instead. There are already "family tracker" style apps that seem to fit the bill, and it wouldn't be super hard to roll your own.  The issue would be sharing phone locations fast enough to be useful: you'd need a location with decent mobile data coverage, and then you'd have to provide hosting and "matchmaking" services, getting updates out to connected devices quickly enough, and with enough location resolution, to be useful.  There's also the obvious risk of getting your screen shot out in-game.

 

You could give the app away and charge a subscription for hosting.  Doing it the other way around, a paid app and free service, would be a risky buy as it would likely collapse as soon as sales plateau.

 

It's not a terrible idea, it might actually work.  But anybody can have an idea.  Following through to market - and long term support, once the orders dry up - is the tricky part.

 

[*] You can forget the idea of using any sort of signal strength for estimating even distance, let alone direction. It comes up every so often, the NHS track-and-trace app tries it over bluetooth with pretty poor results. I was involved in a failed project to try and track phone locations (and thus crowd density) in stadia and concert venues using bluetooth and wifi discovery signals with multiple receivers at known locations.  We never got anything close to usable fidelity, even with a short range line-of-sight setup, let alone with walls and such in the way.

Didn't desert fox events already do the mobile app thing? It looked pretty cool, especially for larger events but I know they did come across issues with it. 

[Rogerborg]

18 minutes ago, PopRocket123 said:

Didn't desert fox events already do the mobile app thing? It looked pretty cool, especially for larger events but I know they did come across issues with it. 

 

Doubtless so, there are few new ideas out there, and doing it as a phone app seems pretty obvious.

 

Doing it as a site feature sounds great in principle, but in practice how many times have you seen complicated games simplified down during play when the site or marshal team haven't figured out the technology, or can't get it working, or it craps out mid game?

 

And I stick to my point that if you hand out a couple of McGuffin Trackers that they'll doubtless go to the Marshal's Mates and most of the players won't even get a sniff of them, or particularly care that they're meant to be doing much beyond slinging plastic in yonder general direction.

 

 

[Cannonfodder]

No I wouldn't be interested. It seems every couple of years someone makes a big announcement about a prop which they claim will revolutionise airsoft and fuck all happens, this sounds exactly like that. If you've you've really been involved in the game for a decade you'd know that

 

Also your attitude means I wouldn't be interested even if it was the best product ever, you've been told by several people here that it won't work, and rather than accepting it you've decided to throw your toys out of the pram like a toddler 

Edited January 31, 2022 by Cannonfodder

[Guest DrAlexanderTobacco]

21 hours ago, shadowfacex said:

I think the topic escalated quickly from “what do you guys think about this new game scenario” to a cynical demotivationfest. @Rogerborg let the guy have his dreams, you never know what could come out of it, maybe he is a brilliant geek who’s going to take airsoft industry by storm? I understand your point about shilling some off-shoot devices for no reason, however from what I gather that's not going to be the case.

 

Yeah extremely common on AFUK, I'm sure there's a kill tally for these sort of threads on some cunt's bedpost.

 

In any case, my advice for @StumpyOG

- Don't try to match other people's attitudes, I was liking your posts until you started rolling around in the same pig shit as the oinkers arguing with you

 

- "Build it, and they will come". Most products or solutions that actually have staying power, and get people interested, are ones that have a basic prototype or validation of the idea in place. I.e. OhShiBoom, or @shadowfacex's "PlayAirsoft" website.

 

Asking people if they like an idea, as if this is a focus group, is not an effective means to validate because you'll half get people who just enjoy torpedoing your hopes and dreams and the other half just murmur "hmm, yes, sounds cool".

 

True validation is to build the product, as barebones as you like, and get it in operation at a site somewhere. All you need to know is: Could people understand and use it; did they enjoy using it. After that it's a solid sign that you've struck gold and can continue to iterate on the idea.

 

The prototype doesn't even have to be the final implementation method either. That is, you could easily test the _idea_ pretty easily, here's how I'd do it:

- Give each team's 1IC / Commander / etc. an iPhone

- Put two Apple AirTags into a backpack, give that to the VIP Apple AirTag

- Tell them to crack on, have fun, and ask players after the game whether they enjoyed the change of pace.

 

That way you can actually be sure if this is an avenue worth pursuing, at the most basic level.

[Stratton Oakmont]

At the risk of being called a horrible, dream dashing, negative cynic the idea you are talking about has been part of the future soldier programs for years. It’s never come to fruition and more importantly has therefore not been repeatedly rendered obsolete by newer, better versions to allow it to eventually be released to the civilian market (see gps and night vision as examples). 
If you can genuinely make this product work then considering it as airsoft targeted (re-microscopic participant numbers) and the belief that you can protect your product in the face of Chinese clones no matter how  much better (see Odin) makes me question your sanity and probably goes a long way to you receiving the level of incredulity you have experienced on this forum. 

but then

 

“I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams”

Edited February 1, 2022 by Stratton Oakmont

[Tommikka]

19 minutes ago, Stratton Oakmont said:

At the risk of being called a horrible, dream dashing, negative cynic the idea you are talking about has been part of the future soldier programs for years. It’s never come to fruition and more importantly has therefore not been repeatedly rendered obsolete by newer, better versions to allow it to eventually be released to the civilian market (see gps and night vision as examples). 
If you can genuinely make this product work then considering it as airsoft targeted (re-microscopic participant numbers) and the belief that you can protect your product in the face of Chinese clones no matter how  much better (see Odin) makes me question your sanity and probably goes a long way to you receiving the level of incredulity you have experienced on this forum. 

but then

 

“I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams”

Don’t worry - I have been called out for breaking his dreams in our team chat

 

 

We had some discussion by PM and the questions he asked me about our devices that I had referred to earlier in the thread.

 

Without him actually telling me what his specific plans were, we discussed some types of features.  We have those in our devices, but do not have live tracking (at least not as a player feature)

On that basis, and from our conversation he isn’t pursuing his project, as it appears that his ideas have already been produced (and may also be in the public domain under open source & project demos etc)

I did add a comment that I’ve pissed on his parade, but that doesn’t mean he won’t have an outlet for his idea, nor that he won’t come up with a product that people will want to buy - just bringing down some expectations that the customer base will be small such as taking a first edition to his local site etc 

 

…………

 

On the matter of ‘future soldier’ I was in on the fringe of an boring element of that programme, important but boring.

Had a previous poster about his super new idea timed things differently then the Brigadier that he said he was speaking with would have spoken to my Brigadier and I’d have ended up in the discussions if they went anywhere.

As an aside for that, at some  Future Soldier programme happenings they would show us two displays side bush side - “Future soldier” and “eBay soldier”, not only the example of big money defence investment filtering down to the private market cheaply, but cheap and cheerful tech rushing on ahead with cheap disposable ‘good enough’ technology giving the capability to the poorest countries armed forces or terrorist/Irregulars today whilst technological nations were floating around prototypes and concepts

 

[Rogerborg]

Mmm, I may have been... slightly more than usually robust.  There's nothing wrong with having ideas, as long as you're aware of the prior art, why it failed, and the very limited size of the target market.

 

It's something that would be fun to lash up as a hobbyist project, even just for local site use.  If you want a device, then Pi / Arduino GPS modules are dirt cheap now and you could do initial prototyping using wifi between devices to share their location.  11n claims a maximum of 250m outdoors although reality may have something to say about that.

 

Once you start factoring in screen, input, sounds, battery and a case though... well, phones exist now, and you'll have to write software either way.

[Tommikka]

23 minutes ago, Rogerborg said:

 

 

It's something that would be fun to lash up as a hobbyist project, even just for local site use.  If you want a device, then Pi / Arduino GPS modules are dirt cheap now and you could do initial prototyping using wifi between devices to share their location.  11n claims a maximum of 250m outdoors although reality may have something to say about that.

 

.

…. And if I can build & programme some over lockdown, then anyone can

 

Our man behind the gadgets is a perfectionist, and builds things to survive abuse

But anyone with an idea, and the ability to think it through can knock out a gadget with ease undercutting everyone else

[MagpieTactical]

On 30/01/2022 at 20:24, PopRocket123 said:

I do want to try a casevac scenario. With dummies that are a set of stuffed overalls with a balloon head. One team needs to retrieve all the dummies, the other needs to capture or kill them. I know it's just more retrieve the thing but I think making the objective more difficult to carry solo and vulnerable to the enemy would really change it up. 

These type of games don't appeal to me at all. I am not there to carry awkward things around.  I get why some may like them, but as others have said, I am there to shoot people. 

[MAX DICKER]

26 minutes ago, MagpieTactical said:

These type of games don't appeal to me at all. I am not there to carry awkward things around.  I get why some may like them, but as others have said, I am there to shoot people. 

I like the idea of other people carrying awkward things around... makes it easier to shoot them.

[Rogerborg]

1 hour ago, MAX DICKER said:

I like the idea of other people carrying awkward things around... makes it easier to shoot them.

 

"Is the use of drones unfair?" goes the question.

 

Well, yes, but the other way around.  If Team Red has got someone doing nothing but spotting Blue Team with a drone and shouting "They're behind the tree! The big tree!  On my left. No my drone's left, it's facing towards us..." then advantage Blue.

[Tactical Pith Helmet]

It seems a lot of effort for an electronic cow bell.  

 

I expect that I misunderstand, but there we go.  

 

[Rogerborg]

On 30/01/2022 at 21:31, Tommikka said:

Theres also a recent video by another tech guy in a different industry - he demonstrates using a real time tracker, but as he goes on the reliability gets worse and worse giving false readings which he begins to resolve with error correction but they repeat inconsistently and give false positioning 

 

Hmm, thinking about it, position should be reasonable, but orientation would be the problem.  GPS sampling rate and accuracy is too slow and low to be useful for determining small motions, let alone orientation, so you'd be adding an inertial measurement unit as well, then you've got the problem of initialisation and calibration.  A simple device gets complicated pretty quickly.

[Tommikka]

13 hours ago, Rogerborg said:

 

"Is the use of drones unfair?" goes the question.

 

Well, yes, but the other way around.  If Team Red has got someone doing nothing but spotting Blue Team with a drone and shouting "They're behind the tree! The big tree!  On my left. No my drone's left, it's facing towards us..." then advantage Blue.

I really am going to need to create a thread about props, gadgets etc and the advantages & disadvantages of a using them around a game structure.

(The need of a game first, and the gadget after - not a game to use the gadget)

 

The wrong drone is in these pictures, but it was the first one we used and let a side take ‘control’ (tell our pilot where to fly it) and see what they can see

 

A later iteration that could take a payload was then mixed in with the screens in the case.

Watch what the drone or RC car can see, and do some stuff

 

But there is footage here of an early test flight among the trees … and my one handed dive and catch as it decides to drop out of control …….

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Rogerborg said:

 

Hmm, thinking about it, position should be reasonable, but orientation would be the problem.  GPS sampling rate and accuracy is too slow and low to be useful for determining small motions, let alone orientation, so you'd be adding an inertial measurement unit as well, then you've got the problem of initialisation and calibration.  A simple device gets complicated pretty quickly.

Here’s one I watched earlier …… which is nice affordable technology giving localised real time positioning 

 

All fantastic, until he tries to apply it, correct errors, and it all gets just worse and worse ….

 

 

Our man with the soldering iron just says no

He’ll drop in trackers to find something, or quietly work away until one day he’ll throw in a working product 

But currently it’s no - not reliable, not worth the effort, and for any ideas brought up there are simpler and alternative ways to do it

 

 

I gave him a laser tag ‘missile launcher’ once.  He had the idea and built a laser designation pyro control system operating across a valley.

Players had to spot and ‘tag’ a sequence of reflective sensors 

Great fun, worked perfectly

 

and then at the end of the day he told me that he just painted it, made some boxes with reflectors - and stood beside the operator with a pyro remote button in his pocket 

[Rogerborg]

That certainly looks like fun for the people involved.

 

Which gets me back to my initial point though: most gimmick game modes seem to leave most players befuddled, bemused or bored, because they won't be actively engaged with them.  Rentals and new-to-the-site player in particular are going to have a hard time making use of any information beyond "Go / shoot that way"[*].  This applies even to bog standard find the single VIP / bomb / McGuffin games where a couple of site regulars tend to charge off with spooky preternatural (or tipped-the-wink) knowledge of where to find the $SINGLE_THING, while most players wander around and just shoot whatever's nearest.  Contrast with find the drug blocks / $MANY_THINGS where everybody (who wants to) has a good chance of getting invovled.

 

That's not a reason to avoid doing gadgets and gimmicks, you're (probably) still raising the net fun quotient on the site, and we're all there to have a laugh in different ways.  It's a niche activity within a niche hobby though, for marketing, sales, and cost amortisation purposes.

 

 

[*] Rambling unrelated second-hand anecdote, the Depot 1.0 ran a chaaaridy special weekend  where they got in some, uh... celebrity airsofters, and 'Big' Phil Campion, (actual) ex-SAS to do some skills training.

 

One of the local Walts was weeing himself in excitement and giving it "Delta Charlie squad double-time to location omega, prepare to execute enfilade from ambuscade" style jibba-jabba, translated as "Please notice my skills, Campion-senpai".

 

After a bit too much of this, Phil stepped in and started organising the team along the lines of "Right, you lads stay here, you lads go over there, let's mess them up", a much more effective strategy.  

[Tommikka]

10 hours ago, Rogerborg said:

 

 

 

[*] Rambling unrelated second-hand anecdote, the Depot 1.0 ran a chaaaridy special weekend  where they got in some, uh... celebrity airsofters, and 'Big' Phil Campion, (actual) ex-SAS to do some skills training.

 

Far too much alcohol consumed currently, so forum posting is not really the best plan…..

 

But a Phil Campion mention can’t go without comment

As you know his name then for you this is probably already known…..

 

Phil Campion has been called out as

a Walt - he is not a walt

 

There are some tall stories that come from Phil Campion or are attiburted to him - those are the ones

backed up by documented fact.

The less believable the tale is, the more factual it turns out to be