Short status update
 

Hi everyone,

As I see, there are plenty of wild rumors circulating on these forums, and of course it's completely our fault. I myself simply cannot spend enough time posting on these forums, as I work 10-12 hour days 7 days a week and barely have time to sit down. I feel the weight of my failure to interact with the community daily, but all I have time for is browsing the forums, not actually posting.

We are however in the process of creating a full-time community manager position and setting up an old team member who will interact with you guys daily, answer questions, and keep you up to date on all events.

Otherwise, the work on the patch continues. The true full-screen mode has been a nightmare from hell. It still does not work properly. Every once in a while, after you hit Esc to go to the menu from inside the game, the game will go into the background and require you to alt-tab to you. And while it may seem like a pretty minor thing to most of you, after everything you've already lived through, it's still bad practice and annoying and we always feel like we're 'this' close to solving it.

The current build we have did address the multiplayer issues, thanks in no small part to the help of the dedicated server hosts. Obviously MP is a larger priority than the full-screen mode. If by the end of the day Tuesday we still haven't solved the full screen issue, we will most likely release the patch anyway just so you guys can have stable reliable MP experience, and add the full-screen fix at a later time.

We are also hard at work on some larger game components. We are also hiring, with quite a few new openings posted recently for our Moscow office. We already have a new team member, an experienced AI programmer, reworking our plane AI code and voice comms, and we are working to expand and improve our team during the coming weeks to make sure we can roll out better more well-rounded updates quicker. We are also hard at work on FM changes and improvements, redesigning GUI to make it more user-friendly, and creating new variants of existing aircraft.

Those team members not hard at work on improving CoD have also been working on new content for a new project for quite some time. We've posted a teaser in our V-E day post. Just to state again, work on that project is specifically designed not to interfere with our CoD support.

Most importantly, please don't take the frequency of my visits as an indication of anything right now. As a matter of fact, if you see me here posting a lot, that's the best clue that we are NOT working as hard as we should. All of us at 1C:Maddox Games, 1C Softclub, and Ubisoft, are fully committed to the game and to the series, and like we always said, we will continue to support it with patches, add-ons and sequels in the coming months and years.

Thank you for the update

Good to hear from you Luthier.. hopefully it'll make the naysayers stfu... bet it doesn't though :grin:

Cheers

Goanna

Hey thanks a lot for posting :)

Wish you all the best for continuing support for CoD and future projects!

Speaking for myself at least I am having fun with what I have :) Excited about the future, and thanks for prioritizing MP. There's a lot of fun to be made online :)

I like the news about a more user-friendly GUI. The layout, though dark and depressing :P, is okay, but the issues with selecting ammo loadouts, saving presets and actually getting them to load is proving a little frustrating. It's like a little tease saying "Look at all the cool ammo you can't use" :P The way you did MP home base selection in IL-2 was perfect! Simple and tidy. Perhaps combining the map with easy navigation tools to find the bases + using old IL-2 style plane selection and loadout would be a more welcome approach. That way, fans from the old day will have an easier time to pick up, and new guys will see some logic in the GUI :p I'm sure you are already thinking hard about this, but often the simplest way is the best, and make an "advanced" button for the options not necessary to "jump in and fly" (such as ammo belting, fuzes, convergence). That way the plane selection screen may look a bit tidier :) I'm at least finding the scrollbar thing to see all the options a bit confusing from a design standpoint. Also while I'm on the topic of homebase selection, have a number showing how many other players are spawning from that base, that makes finding the action so much easier. Actually for GUI all together, I'd say just draw as much as you can from the old series, and incorporate the new stuff with easy navigation in mind :)

Sorry, may sound a bit harsh, but it's just my personal experience with the product. I must say I fly the sim as often as I can and even with your great success of IL-2 FB, I simply can't say that I prefer the old game. I feel "wrong" as if there's something better to be flown, which is CoD. I'm still absolutely baffled by the damage model and effects. You have done an excellent job with all the effects this time. Big fuel leaks, small fuel leaks, oil sprays that look different from six o clock and from the side. The smoke effects also seem to vary frequently in size, like you often see from the propwash affecting the airstream the smoke is generated in. It's much better than the original "spinning texture balls" we're used to. The various fires and ability for them to spread is nice. I like the fuel tank explosion when the wings break off with a huge cloud of fuel vapor igniting into a fireball. I am grateful to review my victories, looking at the fallen enemy to see where all my bullets struck, what systems they took out and even where the bullet has exited if it just passed through the fabric. The amount of systems modeled, working together in one plane alone is like nothing I've ever seen before in a combat flight sim, and then add the rest of the planes that are in the fight. The randomness of each dogfight is infinite. It's almost like you built the sim around the damage models, because it's one of the things with the game that you have gotten very close to perfection.

Once you get this sim to a overall pretty stable version and you can start focusing on what you're already waiting for: expanding the scope of the sim, it's going to get even more interesting than it is today :)

Thank you, I'll be flying this until you build the next generation flightsim, some 10-20 years from now maybe :P

Thanks Luthier, can't wait for the 24th !

The vast majority take no notice of the 'doom and gloom' brigade and thanks for the hard work and comittment.

Thanks mate for the update. Now we can delete all the negative posts that referred to the series 'definately' crashing. Hope now we can all support you guys and look forward to the patch.
To all the doomsday people, don't you all look a bit silly now. I'm not talking about the people who complained about the state of the game on release but those who posted that CoD will crash and burn.

As angry as I am with various things not working in CoD, I deeply appreciate your attitude towards the customer. It takes a fine character to have that stressful position, take major flak from the community and still stay so cooperative. Kudos.

Thank you, make sure you insert a "stress" clause in the community manager's contract, I'll give him a fortnight before the trolls here drive him into a dribbling mess.

Luthier as always thanks for keeping us in the loop. I don't need daily updates but I love to hear how you guys are doing. It makes the whole thing that much more real to me and it gives us that inside track that we really appreciate.

I still can't even buy the game yet but it looks like Steam release to North American customers is coming up soon and I'm excited to get in on the action.

Good luck and keep things coming!

Thanks for the update.

Strike - How do you like your G940 Hotas system? I'm thinking of getting the set but would like to hear from experienced flight simers who are actually using it in COD before I do. Anu issues? How well does FF work?

Thanks

Thanks Luthier. Will you be fixing the skins too?

Luthier

Well at least you SAY something. I can give a LONG LIST of companies that don't say SQUAT!!!

Although i have shelved CoD till some useful features are active in the game, QMB or a DCG. I'll still support CoD. So thxs again for the updates and keeping the Paying customers in the loop :) Muchly Appreciated mate.

Regards

I doubt that anyone in 2011 would see this as a "minor thing": Maddox Games struggling with implementing full-screen mode. Maybe if it was 1997 or 1998, but to be still working on this on a released game in 2011, is truly unprecedented. I'm glad to hear you are hiring now. You are in desperate need of good game coders and I'm behind you now as I have been since 2001. I'm glad my $14.41 is being put to good use, and look forward to also purchasing the US release.

Thanks for the update Luthier!

All great news, the full time community role will add immensely to this community. Already we appreciate all the support you obviously give this game, and to be able to interact with your team and stay informed as to what you are working on will certainly continue to breath life into this community.

Thanks again and keep up the great work, its much appreciated.

Luthier! Thanks for the update!


Wow! Last of the big spenders! But you really need to check the licence agreement more closely. The $14.41 version of the game specifically forbids sarcastic and derogitory comments by the licence holder.

I on the other hand being the proud owner of the Special Collectors edition am licenced to make all the witty comments I like.

Cheers! ;)

Thanks Luthier!

Still waiting patiently for a North American release. It does, after all, seem as though the forced-hand alpha release to Europe and Australasia brought in the required dollars to continue development, ramp up staff, and get the title to the finishing line (eventually).

Shame about all the kerfuffle, but I guess in a tough niche industry I'm not too concerned about how we get there, as long as we get there. Bravo for hanging in there :)

Looking forward to hearing from the new community-liaison dude.

Cheers, Spinner

Thanks for saying hello.

Hello Luthier.

Don't worry too much. Most long-time gamers understand a rough launch. Sure, it would've been nice to have everything working perfectly on launch day... but the game we have now is still very good and is rapidly heading toward greatness.

We're not console FPS kiddies around here. We're simmers. We know how to wait for good things.

Thanks for info.

It takes service minded professional people. Like any other customer based company whatever the branch, who has employees with their priorities in order.

Good news Luthier and thanks for the heads up. 10-12 hour days, 7 days a week is much more than most of your customers put in at their work.

Thanks for the update, Luthier! Remember to get some sleep from time to time as well :D

As much as multiplayer is very inportant to the community, To me, So is the look of the game,
would realy like to see full screen fixed, and AA Bad jaggies
and the horible 3 blue lines, with the Ati6970 cards
and load-outs fixed
But thanks for the update

agreed:-)

Thanks for the update and the support.

Big thanks Ilya! Maybe next week I can start playing CloD again, something to look forward to.:)

Thank you very much for the update. I'm confident you'll get there. Don't forget to refresh your batteries every once in a while. Kudos to you and the team.

Cheers

Thanks for your time Luthier and MG.

I know it must be disheartening to read all the negative comments posted here, I personally have had a lot of fun playing the game its fantastic, wish I could spend more time playing.

I have no more stutters (removed a few patches ago) and the game runs okay everywhere except over large cities, but I am sure thats something to do with my 5970 and crossfire (A problem it seems most game developers have to figure out after release).

Thanks again for your dedication MG.

thanks and good luck !

Thanks for the update and for recognising the importance of good communication. Hopefully we won't see any more ridiculous chicken little posters.

Thank you for the update. Sounds like we will enjoy this fantastic game for years to come :grin:

Even with its flaws, I am enjoying the game very much!

Great to hear that. I particularly keen on what you bring up with respect to the AI routine which currently is a bit of an annoyance (no offence meant). And that the FM gets a touch up. My hopes are high that we finally get the real Vmax and the real ceiling and a Spit Ia with CSP.

I hope you can release it before 28th of May as it is obviously a major patch and likely from then on I won't have access to internet for quite a while :( And before I go offline for many weeks I would like to have a decent AI routine :) (Or could you make the patch files available with an extractor that does what Steam would do via download? That would be great for those with no internet connection).

Getting close to buy time here in the states, can't wait!:grin:

Good news , thanks Luthier

I like COD very much and i know it will be better with every update.

Thanks very much Luthier for taking time out of your allready hectic schedule to post on here,we do appreciate it.

It's very pleasing to read that the issues are being fixed and that new content is being added.

I for one have been thouroughly enjoying this sim and it's got so much potential,once the problems are dealt with we're going to rock!

Many thanks for the sit-rep

Lamb to the slaughter. Best of luck to him. ;)

Thank you for the quick update. :)

Thanks for the update, luthier. Good to hear that the sky isn't falling after all :)

Thanks for the update. Good to hear you're investigating and fixing the main issues.

By the way, as long as you're releasing weekly patches, no-one will really complain if you're not posting stuff every now and then..;-)

Ps. As long as one of your team members is looking into the AI code, is it possible to create something like different AI models? For those running with less cpu horse power normal or medium AI model could be enabled. For people with 8 cores or more, a more sophisticated and advanced AI would be very nice.

Edit:
PPs. I'm very much looking forward to the Eastern theatre. Can't wait to see how Yak's and Fw's will look using this new engine..;-)

No Fw190s in a Battle of Moskau scenario :D

Thanks for the update and really pleased to hear you're all looking to the future and dealing with the present, especially that you're hiring more talent for your team to expedite the development of the game engine. Don't burn yourself or your team members out.

not a word about AA, optimisations, external sounds......but like I said, time will tell.....few months reveals....the final truth

Thanks for the update..

Who knows? It could be Oleg?

Luthier, thanks man, that's exactly what I was hoping to hear. Remember, you lot are still the best! :)

So your saying that they will release a patch that doesn't do anything useful?

Ugly? Jaggies?

http://i55.tinypic.com/29mae6a.jpg

Seriously, give it a rest allredy.



Thx Luthier, keep up the good work and dont forget to a take a rest now and then ( u and team). Misstakes is more easily done when worn out.

My thoughts exactly.

My thoughts exactly!

Cheers!

My god the nay sayers were right.. the game's been ditched, if you read carefully between the lines Luthier is saying they can't arsed with it any more they have our money have taken up shop in South America in order to rip off unsuspecting customers again!..arrghh i can't believe it! :rolleyes:

Thanks for the update.. MP fixes = :grin:

Wow, awesome screenie that! Easily worth a 1000 words ;)

Next time try posting the full picture, and not a cut down size, which will make the screenshot look better anyway
Plus i can see jaggies on the left wing facing us

Quote
We are however in the process of creating a full-time community manager position and setting up an old team member who will interact with you guys daily,
--------------------------------------------

This poor fellow will need 50mm armour plated skin and ear plugs along with weekly visits to a shrink if he's to stay sane.


He would probably last longer at this job.


Keep the political satire out of this forum, its deeply offensive

Full pic


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3.../Shotdown4.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3.../Shotdown2.jpg

No jaggies

The Screenshot is not mine, its from the screenshot thread (cheers Buchon). You have good eyes Doc, I cant see those jaggies.

Ok fellas

Jaggies point proven ............ lets move on and not turn the thread into another pointless rambling fireball to nowhere :)



Luthier

Thanks for dropping in and giving us a few words to calm the air a little.



.

Thanks for the info Luthier http://www.norwegian-server.com/e107...ternsaludo.gif

By reading Luthier's last post, I would speculate :rolleyes:, for the fun of it,
that since many months before initial release, there were major management " issues" within 1C leading to programmers departures and Oleg disengagement from developpement. 1C fell short of finishing the game due to the lack of programmers and good leadership. They are hiring now, wich is very good news and at the same time, confirming that they needed fresh money to go on.
Since Luthier was himself working on the project, that made him very close to the programmers and the team, and it feels like the whole team is supporting Luthier now that he is in charge. And I would'nt be surprised that UBI was "waiting" to see if the team would keep on going or fall apart after Oleg's departure before injecting money to support the project till it reaches near perfection.

Oh well, that is MHO....

Salute !

Much appreciate the news and the hard work being done. Brings back personal memories.

But, I would like to see the graphic artists working on ships than on objects for some future project. The first phase of the BoB was battles over the English Channel.

I think it's a bit early to be talking about "new projects" considering the sorry state that CoD is in.

Thank you very much for the update, I think having someone offical who is in the know to answer the communities questions about CoD is a very worthwhile idea and hopefully will be a good step to reasuring the community along with the patches.

Thanks for taking the time to read peoples post, I do feel way more positive now we have offical word again.

Good to hear all is well and making progress! :-)

Working Comms a MUST! Also the ability to turn shadows on/off for different parts of the sim!

[/QUOTE][/B][QUOTE=Doc_uk;283531]Next time try posting the full picture, and not a cut down size, which will make the screenshot look better anyway
Plus i can see jaggies on the left wing facing us[/QUOTE

Over 300 post in 2 months. I thought only chicks like to communicate that much.:grin: Try keepin it to under 100 a month

Thanks for the update!

It's reassuring to know the good work is continuing; judging by the 'quality' of some of the posts, a rhino hide is required, I think!

I'm finding the game very playable in its current form, and with good, constructive input from the forum will surely become the benchmark for a long time to come - I've already shelved Il-2 1946...to arcadey, too...'early 2000s'.

Never thought I'd be saying that!

Thanks for the updates Luthier. Great to hear you are hiring more help. This is the time the game needs it.

+1

Please make the skins work.:)

One more thing. When you have time, maybe after the release of this patch, please go post a few words on the UBI forums. Nobody from 1c posted anything on the official international home of Cliffs of Dover in years!
I know is UBI's site, but is your game, and you are loosing more money than UBI if you just abandon that part of the community.
After all, for the international comunity, specially the new players, that is the official home of the game.

Thank you for the updates.

Agreed and very well stated...:cool:

Why clog this thread up with a problem related to your video card ??

I asked you all not to and you ignore this request.

There are stickies dealing with technical problems at the top of the forum I suggest you use them.

So what about UBI dropping support? (rumored here)
What about RoF taking over CoD? (simhq boards rumor)
What about the Invasion of Mars add-on? (new rumor)

Yes! The community strayed when Moses went away and worked on his patches... I mean tablets.

Actually, the community manager thing is a good idea. And we shall call him, MOSES.

Thank you for the information. Community manager is something I`d welcome, especially when we have some trolls here posting about 1C aborting the project. Posting few words from time to time will prove them wrong.

Thank you for the update Luthier, it is very much appreciated, but please please take some time off, you'll do none of us any good continuing to work so much, least of all yourself.

And this forum desperately needs a minimum of ten commandments....

The ten commandments of banana forums:

1. I am Cliffs of Dover, and I shall be the only sim of this forum.

2. Thou shall not worship the grass textures of competing sims.

3. Thou shall not flame thy sim in vain because of yee own faults

4. Thou shall never make any promises to deliver anything before at least two weeks has passed.

5. Honor thy Maddox and Luthier

6. Thou shall not flame, yee little Troll of little faith.

7. Thou shall not commit adultry with another flightsim?

8. Thou shall not steal forum space by making threads to openly accuse Maddox Games for robbing yee.

9. Thou shall not bear false witness of thy holy Maddox and Luthier abandoning the sim.

10. Thou shall not covet anything belonging in a different sim.

Amen

I'd like to know why teenagers are being allowed to moderate the forums of a professional developer. THAT indicates a woeful lack of good judgement.

Yes, and that was exactly the point.

Probably because there's 50 year olds that act like children.

I might be in trouble with #7. I have had some intimate moments with RoF.:lol:

That was a damn good line.

Funny, I figured you were younger.

Thanks for the update Luthier. I hope your new "Forum guy" has some serious "Moral Fibre", cause he's gonna get the crap kicked out of 'im otherwise. In Maddox we trust.

Thanks for the update and I have complete trust that everything will sort out in time. In the meantime I enjoy the game/sim for what it is already!

Skoshi, you gave me the first good laugh of the weekend. Thanks :grin:

thanks for the update, and good luck and good will with the fixing!
i love many stuff about the COD, and i hope there will be cool campaign in future with more exciting features and characters so we can get hook up forever :-) and enjoy it.multi need big fixing and iam sure you know about it, i just say every time i spawned my flight i crashed sitting in hangar with broken plane and the rest of my flight was scattered around so i was trying to find plane which wasnt broken and fly.Also i have no idea if my bombs exploded or not,bit confused with the fuses and timing.ok i cut it off this isnt thread for reporting anyway sorry.

Thanks for the update.

Looking forwarder to the next update and patch.

All's well on the good ship lollypop.

The best is yet to come.

Congratulations to the new hires.

I would like to note also that I asked in a thread at some point if the bullet holes in the glass only happens in MP.

I'm glad to say I got bullet holes in the glass in single play last night."S":grin:

flyer01

Thanks for the feedback.
Somehow it made me fell less bad regarding the 49.99 € I spent in this software.
Regards

I have none of these issues Luthier speaks of. Runs like a charm here. I got full screen and I can alt-tab'd out to do some editing of a video and then upload it and alt-tab back into game and carry on no problem. I see silly bugs that are not related to performance though things like track recording of cem is borked. The track playback features as well. But no crashes or anything. Just pure erotica.

To the boo brids of CLod.
 

Before you watch this video it is not in CLoD but another sim that I enjoy.

I have lots of flight sims I like to fly in and CLoD is one of them.

To the CLoD team thank you for what your doing for all the flight sim'ers around the globe.

flyer01

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsLmjGQAdDA

Not a word about Luthier's post then which refutes eveything you said in your previous post???!!!

Just another whinge.

Thank you luthier for posting this. By the time I purchase the game it will be well operational for the majority users.

Any news on the dedicated server software?

And another addition to the ignore list. :)

Thanks for that.

I'd like to think my previous post had something to do with Luthier's post, as was intended. The point had to be made, because nobody else's was working.

The obvious was clearly over some peoples' heads though, wasn't it. :rolleyes:

As for Luthier's post, it's a good one and could only have been improved by being a few days earlier. Being kept in the picture isn't much to ask, and clearly Luthier agrees. :)

Thanks a lot for the status update Luthier. With your words you just have confirmed me that buying the Collector's Edition of Cliffs of Dover on day 1 (back in March, as I'm from Europe) is the best decision I could ever do.

Amen!!!!!!!!

But these are attractive jaggies, unlike the ugly ones being mentioned by some posters.

Originally Posted by carguy_ View Post
Thank you for the information. Community manager is something I`d welcome, especially when we have some trolls here posting about 1C aborting the project. Posting few words from time to time will prove them wrong.

No your point was to stir up trouble as usual, have you apologised yet for the lie you told about the game being dumped, your always big on honesty and expecting apologies from the devs in your posts, so how about you lead the way?

Doc, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but those "jaggies" on the wing are the paint job, not the 3D model..

thank you very much for the update. i thought i would post a reply to show my support ;)

I'm with you. Things are a bit worse than I expected. Seems like 1C lost abunch of the CoD crew years ago. I appreciate the news but this is very dissappointing:(

On topic:

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated as usual.

I trust that hiring new people and setting your artists to work on future add-ons (and thus, paying them) instead of giving them a lengthy leave of absence means you are mostly out of the woods financially speaking. I've always thought "if it has problems they'll fix it, as long as there are funds available". It seems like they currently are, so no worries from me and i'm happy to see my purchase is being put to good use.

I run medium settings on a mid-range, two year old PC (i7 920, 3GB RAM, Ati 4890, win7 pro x64) with good frame rates, there's still some things to fix (both performance and gameplay issues, mostly controls) but this is not the thread to report them and i'm already having too much fun with what's included while you repair the rest of the features.


Speculation/idea:

Maybe it's the support for Steam overlay functions ("player X has joined such and such game", steam's community features) that's causing trouble with the full screen mode? I mean, even if they are disabled the support for them is probably hard-coded, it needs to somehow overlay things over the main game display and since it was announced somewhat late maybe it's not a completely seamless integration.

It could be a good idea to ask valve directly about this and demand their cooperation if such an issue exists, after all they too stand to make a profit by selling your sim.


Off-topic:

Sorry to say so, i don't have any "stakes" in whatever forum "vendetta" you guys may or may not have, but this is one of the best come back lines i've ever come across on an internet forum. I'm noting it down for future use, it's that funny :-P