A new article in SimHQ about Cod
 

It is "a little bit" critical..

http://www.simhq.com/_air13/air_499a.html

I wouldn't call it critical , just honest.

preatty much my opinion too.

they had a good chance to make a good start and they blew it.

They will fix the game eventually but they will never recover from the bad start....

i agree - honest and hopeful.... I think Ubi will be facing some very critical reviewers from hence force. Launches and pressed publishing of CoD and SHV are going to make consumers wary of their logo.

I also agree the association of COD with IL2 is a tricky one... but I do see it as a statement or promise for future quality. good luck to all - I continue to enjoy the sim.

It should be critical. It's a heaping mess as is.

not true - developers do recover.... look at WWIIOL, probably the worst launch in history and still around looking absolutely nothing like it did in 2001.
I will guarantee the WWIIOL team was smaller than the COD team on many orders.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fePh_RVfhzM[/youtube]

I'd call it highly sympathetic. Although it tells about the "buggy mess", they just scratch the "being lied on/ignored" part lightly in point no.7, along with a still-hopeful lookout. Other guys could have been way more chastising...

The strange thing is that I posted similar thoughts to Tom on the SimHQ website and got myself a life time ban!!

no surprise from them... it's do as I say, not as I do..

I do agree with the article, especially in three points.

The release date was probably pushed on 1C by Ubisoft, who I see as the main culprit here.
The market for flight simulations has shrunk as compared to when IL2 original was released, making errors and bugs even more punishing, but also pushing back release dates (you see the conflict here).
But most importantly I agree that the game is super ambitious. From the miriad of little details (pretty much everything that can move moves and works in the planes) to flight modeling, damage modeling, graphics (clouds do have a high impact on fps, but boy do they look good and have effects on the plane when you fly through them, suneffects, shadows in the cockpit, gorgeous aircraft etc.) to a fully interactive cockpit.
When you think about it you would have to say these guys are nuts wanting to incorporate all those things into the game.

But that is exactely where the potential lies, once everything is fixed, and fix the game they will (I agree as well with the believe that the guys at 1C absolutely love flight sims and are dedicated to their product), this sim will be head and shoulders over anything else out there.

The sad thing is, as the article also mentions, that companies can make much more money with a lot less investment by producing console games that cater to the instant gratification crowd.

So lets hope the money does not run out for 1C and they will make this another sim that will shine for the next decade.

Are Ubi the Europe & Russia distributor as well? Because it seemed like Ubi pushed back the US release date a few times... Presumably in the hopes of more patches and updates.

That article hits bullseye. Nothing more, nothing less!

I just can't find any "article" in the link provided... ;)

Its more honest than the September PC Pilot magazine article that says.....get ready for this......:

"..it seems that not a week goes by without the appearance of another patch making noticable improvements to Cliffs of Dover."

LOL its been nearly 9 weeks since the last patch and over 2 weeks since we have heard from the devs. This is downright misleading and dishonest.

And they say that using AA on the videoecard improves framerates over using GUI AA. D'oh, its porked. No wonder he gets better fps, zero AA on the card is better performance than 4x in the sim any day. LOL again :rolleyes:

http://www.simhq.com/_air13/air_499a.html will take you directly to it.

Really ? That is absurd...

And I will risk being banned myself, but what pisses me off the most, is the fact that Oleg is the one who wasnt honnest with us. He is the one who let us down. He was the one making the Friday's Updates. " Trust me " he said for 6 years... He was the one giving interviews and press information. And he did that long enough so he could leave and probably cut a deal with Ubisoft so the game would still go on developpement
unless he stayed till Russian's release...
So why blame only Ubisoft and 1C ? The man left thru the back door never to come back...

Lets hope Luthier is not like Oleg ...So we can trust him to complete that sim...

Salute !

That would make Tree_UK right then, because the article is bang on.:-D

I can't blame 1c for pushing Maddox Games for release. They had six years to produce a functioning core game and they failed to deliver. I'd have booted them out into the real world too.

No, its some of the reasons why it runs this way at the moment and why it shouldn't have been released that way. And how it affects the likelyhood of a good outcome. Highly relevant.

More useless blather from a self-important video game player who is deluded by his web forum admin account into believing he is qualified to judge how a company runs its business. I can't wait for "Tom Cofield" to release a flight sim so I can write my commentary about it.

Yes, but common sense and being happy about the fact that it's much improved from its initial release state doesn't give people the ability to rub it in and chant their "i told you so"s, so we end up delving in the past, day in and day out :-P
In other words:



As for the article, well, it's pretty funny considering all the soft massaging that RoF got over on SimHQ during its early days but i guess the reason is already mentioned in the article: people expect more from someone who's already released a flight sim series than they expect from an up-start company, aka double standards.

The comparison with DCS in terms of business model is only partially valid as well. Doing it like DCS:A-10 and releasing CoD as a beta for people who pre-ordered would indeed be better and deflect the negative criticism. Just make a PC gamer feel he's somehow privileged and the ego swell will take care of the rest even if you provide them with the same build of the game: "wow, i'm part of the beta and get to play before everyone else woooohooo!" as opposed to "man, this game is buggy" :-P
On the other hand, the people who work on DCS have some pretty lucrative contracts with the military in various countries and that's how they subsidize their flight-sim department: make a 100% sim for a military client to train their pilots on, get money, replace the top secret bits and military-specific interface with a gamer packaging and feel in terms of menus/mission editors/etc and sell to the wider public.

Maddox games has nothing of the sort to subsidize their efforts, unless there are air forces who still fly Spitfires and we don't know about it.

Other than that, i think the article is accurate (if a bit aggressively worded at a couple of points). It's just not relevant to the present.

Funny how people can't move on to better things while the game that gave them so much grief is doing exactly that. I mean, i knew each one of us flight sim fans is a bit of a masochist deep down inside, but some do make the extra effort in that department to keep feeling bad as long as possible :cool:

Tree, if this was really similar to what you had been posting over at SimHQ we would all be forced to read this review in every thread everyday for the next six weeks, I think they banned you to save the sanity of the rest of us ;)

You have to close your eyes AND tape them, very tightly, to not seeing how this way of running the business is blatantly wrong. Oh how I wish, as random customer #25135, to not having to write this bellshuuut all the time and instead spend my time playing a great simulation where you are NOT encountering major bugs and flaws on nearly every. single. screen...

The things that were done which are blatantly wrong are not even mentioned in the article.

Point is we have heard it all before... its all redundant bitching now... how many times do we need someone to point out what is wrong? *golf clap* for SimHQ.... they get the Captain Obvious award... maybe the need someone writing articles that actual research something new and interesting...

I am gonna write an article about how the sky is blue.... be back later.

It doesn't surprise me, to say the least, but then my once very favourable opinion about Maddox Games has taken a sharp downturn since "the crunch" (as I call it). I do not know if the new leadership is simply swamped with work so that communication with supporting external parties falls prey to time constraints or if they simply don't care. The former would be understandable - but then it would be easy to post a quick sticky on this board saying so - but the latter would be an inexcusable gesture of contempt to those who spent considerable time on making additional stuff for CloD (i.e. Foobar and his railway stuff). I've already heard rumors about a new behavior when it comes to being offered information for Clod and future titles - key phrase here would be "talking down to externals".

Since Oleg departed MG (and no "press release" can take that opinion away from me) the company's policies have taken a sharp turn to the worse simply by ignoring the potential and creativity of the community and the willingness of individuals to spent their freetime to help bolster the flight sim genre with a little research work of their own. If the CloD release has shown one thing then that MG isn't large enough and not "rich" enough to pull of so fundamentally complex projects without outsourcing some non-essential parts to externals ... Ilya, if you read this (which I doubt), start thinking about the way you and your guys are treating the community and the people who could support you.

This made me chuckle.

The article is not a critique of the game but rather of the way its release and pre-release were handled (in the writers opinion) How further forward it takes the game is easy to guess- nowhere. It does seem odd that there is a firestorm ongoing as to why SimHQ has not put out a review of the game yet at the same time this article gets front page space.

As to the content I think it is for the main part factual, the game was mis-represented as to what it actually was prior to release but then Ubi and the developers were hardly going to yell 'roll up, roll up, give us £50- The game doesn't really work that well but hand over the cash anyway !!'.

I'm not really up for running around with a pitchfork but the single most irksome thing for me is that one of the great names in flight sims (if not the greatest), IL2, has been used to generate sales for a product that didn't really deserve to carry that name. It was a cheap trick and for that Ubi should be rightly criticised.

i wondered why you hadnt posted for some time in simhq;)

-


-

I think Ilya could take a note from his friend Jason over at 777, I notice that often when new players turn up with issues on the ROF forums he will personally assist them, it's the little things that make the customers want to come back for more, leaving customers up in the air is just bad business, simple as that, not sure if Luthier is the only one at fault but this whole project has been poorly managed from start to finish, of course having a publisher like UBI doesn't help either, they are not exactly known for their customer support.

lol, yes its been a while, the mad thing is that noone even noticed the post i got banned for, even one of the mods contacted me and said he couldn't believe I had been banned for such a post. :grin:

you know, I didn't start this thread. Neither did I write that article. But I tend to participate sometimes, to help reminding those in charge that people are waiting.

And why do you even klick on this thread if it's not of interest for you? I mean, I haven't read the "whens the new patch due" thread up until now...

That Sim HQ article hits the point!!!

Here i though i was about to read a review about CoD the flight sim and instead got a short "how to/how not to" run a business from the most unlikely places of all (who knew).

Oh well, maby next time.

I´ll take a bet:

MG / Luthier will not comment this one
as they proofed to have a concerning lack of communication abilities.

But I will be very pleased if I´ll loose the bet.

Where are now "the defenders of the CLOD"? Its is an epic failure, it was clear to me after few patches. Dont get me wrong, you should see my disappointed face. I was very sad. Because I was a big fan of IL2 series. I finally accepted that I trashed 45 bucks. Now, finally the truth is said on SimHQ. TBH it was a surprise to me as I thought they are biased. Congrats to them.

Maybe one day we will have "the real CLOD". Until then see you in the skies of Rise of flight.

Yer, when i bought COD i was expecting a "Battle of Britain" sim from the most likely of people...who knew? :)

The article was mainly about the marketing of the sim. I personally didn't but COD due to marketing.

I feel I received most that was I promised (maybe not what some people thought that they were) and I'm confident that we'll get the rest sooner or later. At the moment COD is still the best WWII Combat flight sim that you can buy.

My bet is that after a few bug fixes and added content and all the doom mongers out their will become the most evangelistic fanboys! Then they'll be complaining that us ‘Gen 1’ fanboys should stop complaining!

I'll go with the conclusion of the article –

What marketing ? Some screenshots once a week ? Interviews that said nothing, except the fact that they had problems with DX11 ? So what ?

Well, like everything else in life, people have different priorities, expectations and amount of leeway given when a flight sim is concerned.

I expected somewhat improved graphics, a next generation DM, some form of aircraft systems management and the hooks in the engine to let people in the community contribute in ways that were not possible up till now.

Check the dynamic and scripted campaigns some of the forum members have been releasing to see what i mean: there's a new campaign posted that features aircraft replacement tracking on a squadron level, custom-made scoring system, awards and promotions and clearing the scoreboard if your pilot is killed to simulate flying with a new pilot without having the player choose between restarting it or hitting "refly" until they succeed.

In return for those ambitious leaps forward and considering the size of and funding available to the development team, i also expected to get release troubles, bugs, poorly documented features that are not working 100% correctly, performance, stability and optimization issues and cutting corners in terms of stuff that can be added later without a major rerwite of the entire engine, because somewhere, something's always got to give.

What i certainly didn't expect, didn't want and even opposed with a passion during the development phase was for them to keep strictly to an old formula just because it worked in the past. That would be a lack of ambition and desire to move forward.
IL2 worked, but i didn't want CoD to simply be IL2 with a facelift, like an old girlfriend with a new lipstick.

I wanted cool new stuff and features built for longevity under the hood, even at the cost of having to learn how to use them from scratch and having features that were considered standard not being up to spec for the short term, because i'm sure that if something is considered standard for them based on what they previously delivered, they can do it again at a later date.

What they wouldn't be able to do would be to plug a new CEM module and the entire coding interface that lets users create complex campaigns with their own interface and custom made conditions to an engine that wasn't built from scratch to support these things, at least not without a major recoding effort.

And i got exactly what i expected ;-)


If anything, the main thing the development team would be most guilty of would be biting off more than they could comfortably chew with their given manpower and resources. Well, i admire that because it's the people with a crazy vision that take things forward most of the time, not the armies of drones who rehash someone else's or even their own successful past recipes ad infinitum.

If people have different preferences to mine and would prefer a rehash of the old recipe that's just fine, it's a matter of opinion after all. However, if they can't even see what's good about the new recipe, it's simply because they are too bored to look under the wrapping, lack the imagination to see what the new features bring to the table in the long run or just plain being spiteful that they didn't get their way.

That is something i can't help them with and i don't care to change their minds. I just can't allow myself to be convinced that the sim is no good at all, no less by people who can only perceive a fraction of what others and myself have seen: if a colorblind person comes up to me and starts lecturing me on the colours of the rainbow i won't chase him off kicking and swearing, but i'm not going to let him harp on ad nauseum about how he's right, i'm wrong and i should start seeing things his way, something which is practically impossible after all because he's colorblind and i'm not ;-)

We have a new cadet who know nothing about the IL2 series, even if he's a former military pilot and a great WW2 warbirds fan... which game do you think he's going to buy to fly with us?

Yes... the old IL2.

I'm giving another chance to CloD until the new patch.

Anyway I agree with the article. Of course the guy is talking only about "a problem": he has not talked about the game design and the project management, that are the things that I'm frustated about.

No he wouldnt....due to the more realistic FM's DM's better Pits, massice potential of the CEM... better looking game..get used to this now as good things are sure to happen kind of mentality not a 10 year old game with a makeover, and however you look at it the orig IL2 cannot and will never be able to do what CoD can and hopefully will....FACT

so...

Yes he would def buy CoD

The article would have had relevance if it had been posted four months ago, but now? It said nothing that hasn't been said a thousand times before. It's a bit pointless really.

Il put quite alot of money on that theory

Maybe we'll get lucky and Jason Williams will buy MG too. Must be a lot cheaper than it was this time last year.

Can people stop using the word "potential" in the context of this game? Stop saying that word and plz notify me instead when the game is finished, I'll keep on playing DCS: A-10C in the meantime, taah!

Not before having to upgrade his PC to run a bad optimized application. :-D

And if he does still he would not fly with us: in these weeks we fly modded IL2, Condor and RoF.

I agree that CEM is great, DM seems a lot better (but which are the numbers inserted in the DM model? IIRC We have a PP 3x slower than the real one and "inverted" of course... are DM really "right"? I didn't trust Oleg's numbers... wonder if I trust the CloD's ones) and some detail is really welcomed in a sim... but after these aspects at the moment the modded IL2 is still superior to CloD... FACT :-P

Of course It's a 10 year old application vs an alpha one.

Ops... and 5€ against the 50€ that some of us had paid leading to some bad reactions.

I agree, it's annoying.

Well the title of the thread caught my eye, and I was interested to see what SimHQ had to say, to be honest if I didnt pop into threads that contained bitching and moaning, there wouldnt be many threads to pop into.

As for reminding the people in charge people are still waiting? They are working on a patch, I dont think anyones negative posting is inspiring them any further ;)

some time a go...
 

I liked the article, it was written in an interesting “opinion maker way” style but with what it seems to be a deep feeling for the company 1C and for the genre of simulation.
Some time ago things written in the mentioned article would have been solved with a lightning fast ban...

I guess truth or the absence of other alternative is stubborn and gets through the cracks in the walls and underneath the closed doors. Anyway, in the article is the first time, expressed in a formal way, that someone makes considerations about the possibility that “the market” is not ready to swallow this, Clod I mean…I just love how North Americans talk about “the market”, customers as a community of market makers that will define the fate of a product.
Most things are not like 10 years ago, almost none of them. The market for sure is not the same.

Salutes

You are right... but after 10 years of playing IL2 is quite boring (for me!), so the need of something new is "urgent"! Thus, like many other, I bought Clod, I'm learning the CEM and cross the fingers... but just until the next patch! ;)

We are in your same condition. Some months ago I could never think myself flying with Condor, being a MFS hater, but me and almost all the squad is playing with that great sim and we are enjoying it a lot.

Really in these months our squad is experiencing every kind of sim... and CloD is not one of these (even if we all bought it)

Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi or in english: "Gods may do what cattle may not"

you calling tree a cow? A cow lacks 999999999999999999,999% of the necessary vocabulary to say what tree says, besides the cow cannot compare software products to cars or burgers, nor communicate in an underlying tone that he is genuinely feeling sorely ripped off. :D

I agree the launch of IL-2 CloD has been nothing but FUBAR. Still, I've paid money for it, I've played it 10 times more than Crysis which I bought at a similar price some years ago. Yet crysis is gaming "perfection" in both graphics and gameplay, and IL-2 is so flawed it's bittersweet to play it. It's like "Man, I just have to play some IL-2 CloD! It's so awesome!" Then a few minutes in : "Holy Cow, this is so flawed, it's hard to keep playing" :P So I've been on and off playing it for over 100 hrs. I totally must have alzheimers.

All in all, it's fun playing it, imagining how it will be when it's fixed. Just like you imagine how it's to play, when watching trailers.

Yes it is..and from all accounts was a POS when it first arrived with us, lets not even talk about RoF..

Back on track..

These are your thoughts mate and your welcomed to them what im saying is that just because YOU wont play it, dont enjoy it or have no faith in it doesnt mean a new pilot joining us wont..

there are lots of pilots who purchase this game and love it since day one even in its current form..NO one knows and NO ONE will EVERRR know why it was released and know it to be 100% correct so thats the way it is..we have to live with it

Its really not a FACT that Il2 is better than ClOD or the other way round..WE as in Me and You can presume and have our opinions thats it..

Il2 looks and feels old..Imo hence why I cant go back and play it, blowing nearly every aircraft into tiny pieces with cannon doesnt really do it for me..if its content that rocks your boat then be my guest too

I have one map, pretty much 1 plane i fly and still would take that over an OLD feeling game like Il2 whatever its content and stabilty..

Ive been here moaning and bitching just like everyone else but you know what..?

And as youve already stated...Its Boring, will always be Boring

Its quite simple, each to their own, and that way it will stay but dont presume everyone feels and has the same opinion as you

Dude what are you on about?...you have no guns! ;-)

Now THAT def wouldnt do it for me :-D

This is how.

7.Promise that everything will be fixed and that the game will be great. I know that the team in the past has done a good job trying to update the original IL-2 game, but this game has so many things to update and without good cash flow I don’t know if it will be done.

It is very relevant. It will take much more than motivation to fix this sim. Blinders on won't make it better either.

Again...

Do you realize what state IL2 was when it was released? and other sims that we wont mention?

At what point now do YOU think that this game cannot get fixed when youve had an update from wait for it..the Dev team on what is being worked on..a complete engine overhaul, sound overhaul etc etc etc

I dont know about you, but if my intention was to chuck this game at the wall i wouldnt be winding people up more by continuing to talk trash about updates and posting here....id be long gone

Yes it will take more than motivation to fix this sim, it will take time and hard work, nothing to do with blinkers being on..

Youd have the same BS posts but about other things...porked FM's uber planes..better this and worst that even if this SIM was working 100%, been like that since the beginning of Forums and Sims and its not going to stop now..

No off course i do not!
It's the original meaning of the roman quote, nowadays maybe we would say: "It's not neccesarily the same, when to men do the same!"

That was my thought!!

But I tried it and it's really enjoyable... :-D

Maybe there is a cow out there has the appetite for a tree. ;)

~S~

What we need would be one, or maybe 20 of these:

http://www.illustrationartgallery.co...20thBronto.jpg

aaaaaaanad back on topic :


http://www.wallz.eu/photo/70889.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1269/...4b3db891_b.jpg

lol

Just look at how many IL2 players are on HL and instead how many are playing at CloD... and that's is only for the online. That's a fact :-)

And of course most of my opinions are shared by my squad mates. Damn... I know many virtual squads in Italy and our friends share this opinion too (or they think the worst)!!!

I know that CloD could became the most awesome flight sim ever: the problem is that it's not there yet, and it's far from that target. Nobody here is hoping they fail.
Some day ago I opened a thread on our board about my positive feeling flying in CloD: the DM detail, the CEM ect. ... but still nobody want to fly it, and are hoping for the next patch to change their mind.

Ah well..

Just tell em to come back once its fixed :)

First of all I'm not talking trash.

Secondly, I was just refuting the statement that the entire article was irrelevant. I want this game to get patched but I am not in denial of the facts. Your last statement about other posts is irrational.

Yes, I remember it clearly, only positive memories about that release.

Cant see anywhere I said you were speaking trash.. apologies if thats how you read it...

'Youd still be seeing........' does not refer to me saying YOUR talking trash, it refers to 'you would still be seeing'

thanks

I think you raise a very valid point there Cheese.

Im glad :) though I suspect that your not talking about Il2 when it was first released?

I chose to put up a view once that didn't follow the herd, it was implied I was somehow anti-American because of my view by a few senior members regardless of the fact I have visited the US, have several US friends and have supported a US company through a web-site I run. I decided it wasn't worth the hassle anymore so just stopped visiting.

Ok, no worries. I thought you were insinuating I was talking trash about the game.

Eehr...yes? IL-2, Pro Evolution Soccer (PS2) and GTA 3 (PS2) kept me occupied through that whole autumn/winter of 2001. Honestly, I personally don't remember IL-2 to be a mess at release and IL-2 was also a step forward in the simming community. CloD will go down as a botched release for me, IL-2 wasn't. But here's for "hoping" for the "potential" of CloD.;)

It's very common practice -unfortunately- for game publishers to send out review copies after the release of a game if they know that the game is total shite themselves. Don't be so naive.

lol, +1.

Are you serious? SimHQ has been around since dirt with a lot of credible articles and people writing them as well. They specifically work with developers and publishers and focus on Simulations. I would take a look at their staff's background then get back to me if you think they are just video game players.

What are your credentials?

Yeah thought so...

The article is spot on.

For me the golden times of SimHQ are long gone. Don't remember the last good article i read there. Nice to inform what new on the market, but nothing more.

This is the same tired old rants that are posted here in fact they read and are wrote very much a like so I would lean towards whoever wrote it writes the same opinion pieces in here.

I have looked at the background of "Tom Cofield" on SimHQ and did not see any indication that he had ever designed a computer game and brought it to market, nor any product for that matter, unlike myself.

The biggest concern I have is despite being lambasted by SimHQ Luthier remains silent. The patch to fix it all remains a vague promise. ;)

He isn't a game developer but he does work with them and reviews flight sim games and has so since the start of SIMHQ.

Again your credentials are what now? So you have developed a game and brought it to market. Which one is that? Also just because you've built a game doesn't mean someone can't critque 1Cs failed attempt with COD.

The bottom line is COD is far from complete and it lacking many of the advertised features. It doesn't take a developer to point those mistakes out does it?

Anyways moving forward the point was brought up by not only Tom from SimHQ but by others including myself about using the DCS model. DCS did a much better job.

My experience as well. I criticized RoF's DM and the fan boy herd called my knowledge of WW1 into question. As if my knowledge of the history of the Great War had anything to do with rubber airplanes bouncing off of anything they crashed into.

I stopped going to SimHQ and uninstalled RoF, and have never looked back.

Goodness me. Only the most blinkered of the blinkered could possibly suggest the SimHq article was not more than fair.

And I think the criticism about review copies is entirely well founded. Refusal to give them out does suggest you have something to hide. Accusing SimHq of petulance because they didn't get a freebie is very silly and ignores the robust history SimHq has for frank and fearless reviews.

From memory 1c also muddied the waters further with SimHq by holding off on giving a long-promised interview to coincide with the release.

When the interview did come through at the very last minute it was very basic and vague, with no screenshots included.

That said - I do hope 1c can sort out Cod. This game has so much promise, but many of us are still struggling to trust these guys thanks to the colourful stuff that went on before the release.

Thank you for confirming my observation: he is a guy who plays video games and writes about them. My point exactly. :)

Who cares? Just because he is not a programmer does not prove his article is wrong or that he does not know what he is talking about. Fallacious argument big time.

I never said it proves the "article" is wrong. All I am saying is what he wrote is blather.

It was like any other negative post on this forum, well, he used spell check, but other than that it was same crap different place...

Guys, we're going around in circles here while things are dead simple:

a) 1C had a set amount of money to spent and a finite amount of people to work on a new project.

b) They could either do the same solid stuff that they had done in the past or try and add something new in it, but there was not enough money over time and people to do both at the same time.

c) They decided to do the difficult part first and lay down the foundation for the new stuff, then add the rest they already knew how to do from their past work as time goes by, simply because it's easier to do it in that order rather than the other way around.

If you build the game engine so that it works like IL2:1946 and missions can use up to 1000 objects,it's difficult to modify the engine at a later date to include CEM and load 15000 objects in a single mission.

If you do it the other way around and build an engine that is modular and can support a lot of objects, you can release it with some placeholder modules and then start adding to it as time goes by without having to once again code the basic engine in the future.

It's exactly what's happening as we speak: new graphics and new sounds are coming, sometime later we'll get new water and dynamic weather, etc. You can't just cram a new module into a game engine if it's not built from scratch to support certain features. If it was possible they would have just modified the old IL2 engine and not spend time and money to create a new one, since they didn't i guess it's not possible.

It was a choice between "let's build something that we can add to over the years at the cost of some technical troubles early on" vs "let's build the same thing we did in the past with better graphics and have it working right out of the box".

They went with the first choice and i'm absolutely thankful for that, i can't spend another 10 years flying in a sim where people can abuse their airframes and engines as they see fit for no penalty and all aircraft perform to the top of their capabilities without any reflection as to how hard it was in reality to make them perform that way. And in return for a departure from those habits during the lifespan of the series, i'm willing to take a few months of initial teething troubles.

It's that simple, new and untested vs repeating tried and tested stuff, some people prefer one method and some prefer the other.

By the way, i'm not pulling random numbers out of my head here. The map running on the ATAG server has 15000-20000 objects and 5000 of them are flak guns (ask Bliss about it if you don't believe me).
Good luck even getting a mission to load with so many AI units in another simulator, much less play through it.

I think the main problem here is the lack of communication from devs, not only an unfinished product. If they said : "ok guys, we need your help to finish it... please be patient... we admit the product is unfinished, we will work on it and keep you informed on every progress" then probably the things were different... people would not be so aggressive and impatient.. but if you give half of what a customer paid, and then don't answer the phone and hide yourself, I think the customers have all the rights to be upset.

The publishers may also play a part in this, in a normal business the public would only here from the publisher not the Devs, so it may be that they are only allowed to say certain things, I must say it is difficult to understand why they have taken this path of silence otherwise, it sure isn't helping game sales.

probably yes you are right, we can't know all the aspects of this question, we are only speculating... who knows probably can't talk... :|

Where's the news? Three items, I guess:

- SIMHQ feedback thread on the actual Tom Cofield article is 2.5 pages long versus this one which is 11 pages. I find it funny that the senior editor at SIMHQ writes an opinion piece which actually stimulates more business on the manufacturers site than his own :)

- Tree pretty much did say the same thing as Tom (although he did say it multiple times per day). Maybe it's not "what" you say, or even "how" you say it - we've evolved (perhaps devolved) to how many times you do say it - that causes one to get banned these days.

- Luthier isn't talking to Tom. He has no inside "scoop" on the most significant WWII prop sim development since Il2. Notice I didn't say "good" or "bad" - I just said significant. If it wasn't significant, there wouldn't be so many threads about CoD being thrown about and we would not have waited for so many years for it.

Look, on a typical day - there are more SIMHQ readers in the CoD forum than there are in the RoF forum. As we've been in a dry spell lately, the numbers are very close.

Let Luthier post a one-liner over here (notice he doesn't post at SIMHQ) - and whamo - the CoD forum at SIMHQ has 2X, 3X or more readers than the ROF forum. The funniest thing I've ever seen in my time in simulations was the infamous "Banjo Video". That was awesome. The negative posts after that were priceless.

You have to ask yourself at some point "How bad do I really need Luthier to come back in here and tell me what his last post said?"

I don't think I need it, and I don't think thousands of other users do either. It does seem however, that the tiny percentage of the actual user base who can't seem to stop posting when "no new info" is available do.

With all this said (most in jest) - I am looking forward to Dart's review. Not because I don't know this product - but I'm curious to see Dart's take on it, as a fellow simmer and how he will write it up. He's more like the folks I fly online with and I like him. You actually see him online in the sims we fly.

East Coast Earthquake, record rain, Gadhafi and Condi, double dip recession, etc....

And this is what some of you insult each other over? An opinion at SIMHQ?

Next you'll be fighting about the demise of the UBI boards....

I know, I know... it's something to do while passing the time :)

S!

Gunny

As I just posted on the SimHQ forum its old news and constantly repeating it doesn't help the future of CoD or 1C. Its not that critical articles aren't welcome, its just getting a bit boring reading the same old stuff and I'm fed up with the drip drip drip moaning about the same old things. What value is there in that article? All that stuff was written by others months ago.

Hopefully the same critics will give a good and loud review if/when 1C manage to get the game fully back on track.

I think they've stated this multiple times, especially immediately after release. I distinctly remember Luthier saying "you guys have every right to be angry but we're going to be working on it and fixing things" or something similar, then we got a roadmap, a few quickfix patches, then an expanded roadmap for the more long-term patches that will remake entire modules of the sim (like the graphics and sounds patch being currently worked on) and so on.

I understand what you're saying, it just seems to me that they've already done and are still doing much of what you suggest. I'm genuinely confused :confused:

Surprised as well I must say. What's the point of having this secondary forum over there, I thought it's meant to allow more critical voices?

MAC

yes.. you are right, I forgot this, sorry my mistake.

+1 Klem

I first read the SimHQ article a few days ago. I've just went through it again sentence by sentence and I'm amazed that anyone here can be critical of what is said in it or view it as an attack piece.

First up - it's NOT a review - the title is: 'IL-2 Sturmovik: Reflections on the Past and Questions for the Future'. There is also the word 'Commentary' in nice red letters in the top left corner.

The opinions throughout seem balanced and strongly grounded in fact.

And check out this quote:

"I do believe that the team will try their best to fix this game. If IL-2 has shown me anything it has shown that the 1C team is a team of flight simulation enthusiasts that really love the genre. Knowing that; I am willing to give the team the chance to bring this title up to the standard that the first title was."

Those opposed to the opinions expressed either criticise the individual's background (not a game developer! So, none of us is allowed to have an opinion on COD unless we've taken our own flight-sim from inception through to production!? What about films or music - can we have opinions on those if we're not Hollywood producers or Grammy-winning recording artists?) or imply that no-one should be expressing a negative opinion.

I'm afraid to say that the 'D' word raise its ugly head here - Denial! Plain and simple.