Battle for Moscow
 

Has there been a formal announcement, or has it just been mentioned in passing? I'm hoping they don't make the same mistake they have with CloD - not interacting with the paying public.

Despite the annoyance factor with CloD, the vast majority want the game to succeed and a simple 5 minute post every week would work wonders eg

1. This is what we're doing.

2. Problems doing what we're doing.

3. Time scale for release/patches and reasons for slippage.

Make it a locked thread and all is good.

Hood

Moscow:confused:...I did'nt get to England yet!:-P

I just bought and installed Cliffs of Dover, is there something new out already?

We know the developer is working on the sim and when they have something worthwhile saying they'll say it. Your simply not going to have anything worth saying weekly. It was possible to drip feed us weekly before the release of the original IL-2 series as the sim was basicly done a year before it was released. The publisher wanted the developer to produce a demo before they would release it, so they new exactly what was going to make the release, and drip fed us accordingly.

Clod is in a state right now where you can go online and mix it up with the best of them, there is the CTD issue but you can get around that, just exit out after you get shot down and restart, not too hard. They are working hard, no doubt, the reason your upset is because it's so great, blows 1946 away, I find it hard to go back and rarely do, you have the right to be upset but try to see the big picture, I would like to hear from Ilya but he's very very busy trying to make us all happy~S~

A structured monthly update rather like Rise of Flight does would be nice. Weekly updates are probably a bit too much at this stage and would likely become a chore for the devs.

There was an Il-2 developers blog at one stage if I recall. I don't think it got past the first post however. You gotta laugh sometimes :)

Well, I was just curious. I've not tried multiplayer yet, but so far single player is nice. I'm still testing things out, getting to know the game...I loved the old IL-2 which is why I bought this, and, I am a fan of WWII flight sims in general.

You complain more than most.

Control issues?

OP's questions can be found by searching the few last latest update threads, the big sukhoi.ru thread going on . . . well narrowing it down to Luthier and BlackSix's posts

---

I'd agree with Feathered_IV's suggestion, a solid update once a month is reasonable.

This thread wasn't to start an argument but to suggest that a very small update weekly would go a long way to building (or re-building) trust between developer and fan base. Note I say fan base. There is always something to say, even if it is just a comment that work is ongoing and something has been done. Call the thread "5 minute update", limit the time spent on the update to 5 minutes and then the whole community knows where we stand. Hell, using smart phones the update could be done while sitting on the toilet! :grin:

My own opinion is that a need to trawl through pages of posts to find any key points is frustrating, and leads to misunderstandings. The impression given at the moment is that interaction between developers and fan base is not thought important, or it is thought to be too much hassle. It doesn't have to be.

Hood

People have been complaining about this issue for some time, every now and then the information flow improves and everyone is happy and then it just stops so the complaining starts again.

once every two weeks is enough but it needs to be regular that way people have something to look forward to instead of wasting their time spamming F5 on this forum.

Regarding the OP, Battle For Moscow is in the making, I cannot seeing it being ready this year, we are now 10 months since release of CLOd and there is still a lot of work to be done.

I think they'll be working harder on releasing BOm to keep the cash flowing and a lot of the fixes we were hoping for in CLOD will come with that release.

A community manager is what they need. Lack of info and sporadic feedback is killing them right now.

So far I am very pleased with the game. As with any game, there
certainly seem to be some issues to be worked out, but like the
last IL-2 series, I am confident they will be corrected over time.

+1, 2013 at the earliest.

I thought we had one?

And confidence is coming from.....? The game is still unplayable for most (online) when effects are near (dust, explosions) or when the dogfight is low over cities. AA still not working without "3d party fix". Game was released year ago.

No Battle for Moscow for me, until they fix the CLOD. Dont get me wrong, I would like to play this sim because thats what I like to do in my free time for last 15 yrs....and I gave them 50 bucks....which is not a small change in this part of the world...

10 years of IL2 development and a lot of "been there, done that?"

This thread isn't about any of the CloD problems - we all know what these are. It's about rebuilding the fan base/developer relationship and BoM providing a great opportunity to do so. You could even do this with CloD if the will to do so is there.

Hood

There is still a chance that a publisher forces it out in 2012 in an unfinished state because economic crises which influenced CloD release is not over yet. Is it good or bad? I think it is still better than closing MG like MS did with their MSFS studio once.

We can only hope that Euro and USD do not collapse before we have the game engine in more or less working condition. The rest can be done by modders in the long run.

2013? ....wow that actually a generous estimate from the whinge massive.

the BOM engine will be the same one that a patched COD will use......won't it? if it was a whole new engine surely it couldn't be merged (I am talking as a complete layman I know)
so really all they are working on should be the game content....3D models, maps etc.....not a whole game from scratch.....surely? and that surely 'must' happen within this year.

The same is true of North Korea.......point is many institutions go through a change of leadership but the institutions remain the same.

So you think IL2 and CLOD share the same playability, optimisation (of engine) success, sale and popularity amongs fans?.....not even close...maybe one day but we will see....we wil see...even if CLOD succeed in that, IL2 will still have better start...much better...btw, having a different man in charge could make a big difference....both in success and quality! of the product and in communication with the fans and other parties...On top of that Oleg didnt have IL2 as backgroiund for his team...it was "to be or not to be". Maybe thats the reason of their success...

if to put out early in an unfinished state mean like CoD, and again start to pray them for a patch and thanks everytime they will give a new info like now? I pass, MG can close and Ilya can find a new job in my opinion, i don't care...

You are a dreamer..... :rolleyes:

Well probably the area that will take the longest is the models specifically the cockpits I am still mesmerised by how good they are, hopefully they will one day be fully functional so we have to do realistic engine start ups.

Maybe....a positive outlook on life is never a bad thing

only speaking personally I have to say COD is already better than IL2 for me, but I am one of the lucky ones that gets good performance at max settings on modest hardware (bless my lucky stars), I am fully aware of the problems others are having and feel accordingly bad for them.
My point about different leadership was just to give the balancing view to counter the 'black and white' mentality that crashes around this place.

thats it....we agreed

Debateable......it just raises the doubt over the 'inherently broken game' theory, if it works on my machine it can be made to work on the rest.....and that is what they are trying to do.

They would have to find someone to bankroll them in the meantime. Imagine giving another 8 million to MG based on their last efforts (!)

2013 sounds like a reasonable timeframe for a reasonably polished product. Although I'm thinking circumstances will instead demand a somewhat half-arsed product for 2012, with a lolly scramble to plug the gaps in 2013.

Nope. Simmilar was with ROF. Some of us had almost the same machines but some couldnt play without serious issues; very noticable drop of performance (FPS drop, stutters etc) and some had really smooth game. Same is here but with more dramatival differencies. THAT HAPPENS usually with games which are not OPTIMISED well.....ARMA had some issues earlier too. So all the roads lead to optimisation....I dont even mind lack of content or how the landscape look..just give me the sim which I can play decently.

IMHO, this is pure economics...Even if they fix COD , they will have to give for free the patches, the hotfixes and all the new features promised in the initial release....We did buy un unfinnished product...
But by putting all their efforts on a new game rather than the planned Add-On( whatever theater) based on what was done on COD, and sell it as a new sim, they will be able to get some new fresh money. New release at Xmas 2012 makes sense then....
Then, after, maybe, they will retrofit some of the new features in COD.
Its the only sensitive way to go....

Salute !

+1

I accepted the not working comm.
I accepted the scripted Campaign.
I accepted the FPS drops.

..but I really cannot accept the CTD. I know, always the same "bla bla bla" :-).

For me CloD is a really nice sim, no question!

Is it possible that the main focus of the devs is concentrating to the sequel?

I think they're doing it in parallel. I would imagine they will try to give us the minimum fixes to get the game stable and playable but without much more content. Alongside that they'll be doing everything they can to get BOM out the door to bring in more money. The workload for BOM won't be anything like CLOD as once they've got the engine working properly it's just a matter of maps and cockpits etc.

Then they can give us things that were promised for CLOD like dynamic weather? Better AI? and other improvements.

I'm not holding out too much for the next couple if they fix the crashes and make sure the Fm is right then that's a start!

We are kind of a "captive" community...No more other real good ww2 air combat sim out there.
So , just by curiosity, lets pretend that 1C had completely abandonned CLOD,
but was able to come out with a full featured new game with Moscow theater in September of 2012 , with all the bells and whisles as promised in CLOD,
would you forgive 1C and run to buy it ? If most of us are thinking "YEAH !", then this is probably what we will get....To be honnest, those of us who are still reading and writing on 1C's forums are all craving for a top notch game....We are addicts...SO whatever the price, we will still be there to buy anything good 1C is going to put out....I think they know that...;)

Salute !

All that im waiting for is the fix for the CTD, before that I was waiting for the multi-player sound fix, the game as never been playable for me without a major problem. When the CTD is fixed maybe I cant start to sing its praises but its going to have to be amazing to justify the long wait pre-release and then the fix post release. I have never in 20 years of gaming ever purchased a product that was so bad out of the box in terms of bugs and completely unfinished features.

Can I start calling it the "Battle for Moose and Cows" now, or do I have to wait for the official announcement?:-P

That bad ? I tought the majority was able to play the game as is on good machines...
But I still think that the new game will be out before major patching is done on COD...Hope I am wrong !:rolleyes:

Salute !

One certainly expects this to be part of it( a screenshot from years ago f4rom a preview of the upcoming Sword of War ...now of course...Cliffs of Dover:)
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d1...20grab0001.jpg

I'd be cautious to be honest because I don't have a lot of time for games etc and only spent so much on my rig for CLOD really. I have always dreamed of being able to fly a BOB sim so I would want to see if the users dropped CLOD as well.

If all the good stuff was ported to CLOD as I believe it will be and there are plenty of people flying bob missions then I would buy it.

Yeh like me for example I can fly it with most settings turned up but after 55 minutes it crashes...thats fine for dogfight servers but not for CO-OPs....that is if there were CO-OPs out there to fly which there aren't because it is badly implemented.

I do think there will be a patch to address the CTD which will be part of the updated engine but there are many things missing and I think that is where you are right. We probably wont get radio commands/better ai, dynamic weather and loads of other things until BOM.

The question is can they give us enough to keep us flying until it is released?

CoD yet even in it's current state and all it's problems is miles and leages above IL2. The core is alive and kicking, just the stuff around it is rotten. But that is something I can live with. Besides, it is not as if Oleg sat down back in those days and programmed this Sim al by himself. There is a whole team behind him that is still active. If they do not know their stuff by now, then nobody does. The only point where I currently agree is the CTD issue, wished they'd release a hot fix for that, but that is not enough to break the whole sword over the guys.

You may be of different opinion, but that's it, your personal opinion. Don't make it out to be generally accepted when it is quite obviously not.

Cfs3...
 

Hey Tree,

You must not have played Microsofts Combat Flight Simulator3, the definition of unplayable at release and 1-2 years after for some. Needless to say, that was the end of big bucks MS and it's cfs series. The sim (COD) plays fine for me just needs some optimization or a next gen video card to realy get going(some planes need a fix here or there too), hey that sounds like IL2 back in 2001:-P.

+1
That and I guess he never tried SH5! ;)

SO, COD is a lesser failure by comparison, so we should be lesser whinners..:rolleyes:

you have to bear in mind that in Trees world he is the majority

Thank you Bewolf, I was hoping someone inteligent would convey what I really wanted to say

Funny thing is this 'different team' excuse that some try to applied to CoD does not even apply to IL-2.!

In that the IL-2 team even changed over 10+ years of development.

What is the same is the 1C standards and way of doing things..

Which was clear to 'most' when Luither said CoD will follow in IL-2 foot steps wrt updates and sequels.

Sadly some still choose to ignore that statement by Luither.. Because it does not fit well into their agenda.

Never said that..

The point your missing is most if not all games are released with bugs.. Such that it is un-realistic to 'expect' a game to not have any bugs at release.

The difference most miss is that 1C is still working on fixxing the bugs.. Where as other games like SH5 gave up a long Long LONG time ago.

SAVVY?

Witout doubt there is an element of the whingers that have an agenda

The evil agenda is that people want a working sim. I'm glad you think it's great.

I think it's going to be great, unlike the 'agenda' mob who just want to put as much bad oppinion on these boards as they can

While you wait Tree. I know you build and have built a top end system to fly. Could you humor me and install COD and your flight peripherals on a separate SSD with its own Windows 7 64bit OS. You might not want to spend another dollar on COD, but I never have CTD's with this setup. The only draw back is you have to reboot to that particular OS when you want to fly COD, but the reboot is very quick, and the sim load times are awesome.

This is without doubt the most ridiculous post i have seen on this forum. what a chump. :grin:

But i will play along so here goes... <cough> So whats the agenda? Is it that we have shares in another flight sim development maybe? Or do we just despise Russians? Or..... is it that we would just like the game we purchased to work??? <-------

Hi Chivas, this is something i would like to try actually and could possibly be the reason why you are not suffering the same CTD's as the majority. It would be intersting to see if it works but I wouldn't consider it to be a fix, I was rather hoping that maybe one of the Dev team might pick up on this and actually try it to see if it could lead to a fix. However, Luthier did tell us that the CTD was caused by thier graphics engine and if he is to be believed then i cannot see how a seperate SSd drive would resolve that. That said, it is very hard to pin anything on what Luthier does say these days, its normally rash statements which are followed by backtracks or silence.

The answer to that question is above my pay grade..

But this guy might be able to shed some light on it?

http://i762.photobucket.com/albums/x...yourself-1.jpg

I don't know.....you tell me, I'll let you have the chump because I have been less than flattrering to you.

Unfortunately the animosity has gone both ways, between the developer and community in the past few years. The biggest problem is some in the community not understanding the difference between what the developer is trying to achieve and a promise in past updates. Now the developers have to be very careful on how they word every statement, but that doesn't work either, when they state there is no promise with this particular features, its ALWAYS thrown back in their face as a PROMISE later.

A week goes by very slowly for the community, but its a nanosecond for the developer. A bi-weekly update might work, but I just as soon they wait until they had something worth reporting.

Hopefully in the next year the game engine will be optimized and it will be more just a matter of adding content, rather than a Keystone Cop's fire drill.

I agree its quite likely the graphic engine, and I'm not a computer tech, and don't know how much data can be loaded into the memory and how much it has to retrieve from the hard drive. If it has to retrieve data from the harddrive on the fly, then an SSD could help quite a bit.

edit... Another factor in not having CTD's could be that I have a very fast internet connection. Hopefully optimizations will make most of this unnecessary.

Hey Tree! You need to put your money where you mouth is. I actually sold my gaming rig last week because I wasn't playing CloD anymore (play all other games on my Xbox360, Wii or PSP). Figured I'd sell it while it was still worth something. I'm gonna build myself a mini-itx PC just for the heck of it and because it consumes about as much electricity as a 60 watt light bulb on full load. Back to Clod though, I'll still be around the boards and wait for Battle of Moscow to see how it will work out. To everyone else, you don't have to hear my "complaints" anymore since I don't even play the game, I guess those of you glass "half-full" people should be happy about this. :) Still be flying IL-2 though, especially now when the Pe-8 is flyable, hellz yeah!:cool:

P.S Kept the Samsung SSD for my soon to be mini PC

Chivas, unfortunately that's an awful lot of the usual ifs and buts. One thing in particular:

>>The biggest problem is some in the community not understanding the difference between what the developer is trying to achieve and a promise in past updates<<

A daft side-swipe, if the truth be told. It could be put another way - the community understands only too well, having made huge allowances both prior to release, during, and since...but grows continually tired of fudged expectations, and partial delivery of results - at best.

It's quite simple - dont promise what you can't deliver. However good your intentions may be. Equally, dont bounce it back onto the users when you fail to deliver, or only partially deliver...and certainly dont go on about better user relations if an initial link is then slowly eroded to the point of nothingness. Best of all, be succinct and truthful with the problems you are encountering, and dont patronise your user base, many of whom are equally as bright and skilled as your own developers, and sometimes developers themselves.

I would have said these points were obvious and basic.

Ben/Falstaff

Not for me it doesn`t. A week is just a week. 9 months passed by like nothing for me. Still waiting with optimism. I come here check every week, nothing. Cool. Back doing other stuff.

That said, I don`t think that if we are to get some major updates, those would be in BoM if it is ready in 2013. Either BoM comes out in a few months with all the vital updates for CloD or we get those updates earlier for CloD only. If not, well then what can I do about it.I got a job that`s made of dealines too, lots of them. And I can tell you dealines are something of the devil. You always run out of time to do it 100% right. That is how I see 1C struggling and that is why I have understanding for them. CloD shows the very same love for sims as ye olde IL2 and Luthier is one of the people that sustains this love, the attention to detail and realism. Right now I`m having some trouble understanding their priorities but I bet that is caused by not knowing what we aren`t allowed to know as customers.

You are right. Several people reported that reinstall to a separate disk helped here http://translate.google.com/translat...hp%3Ft%3D73504
OP installed system and CloD on separate HDDs though, took care of temperatures 9both CPU below 51 and GPU below 70 degrees), increased RAM to 16GB, cleans windows Temp/Tmp folder regularly, runs BoostSpeedPortable before playing. No launcher crashes since reinstall. At least 2 others replied that it helped them too.

I am not so pessimistic about those Updates. What I see coming is all the urgent Updates for CoD coming within the next months, at least everything basic required to make CoD a fun past time then it already is. BoM then will include a rework of the GUI, probably the new weather system, maybe a Dynamic Campaign, reworked Map Editor, stuff like this.

Purely speculative, but that is how I would approach the issue if I were in Maddox games situation. Get everything essential right and add the goodies later.

As a comsumer planning to get each new IL2 title that is an approach I can perfectly live with. However, I can see the dissapointment for those that only are intersted in the Battle of Britian. Then again, everybody how knows the history of IL2, and the controversy surrounding some Title upgrades, especially Pacific Fighters, knows that Maddox Fames never did a good job in the representation of a single theatre. It was the complete package that made IL2 what it eventually became, and that was far from obvious with initial the IL2 release. Il2 was also a hugely less complex sim then CoD now is.

There are ALWAYS alot of IF's and BUT's in a development this complex. We were lucky to be involved in the development at all, its just unfortunate many don't have any experience with developing anything, or the knowledge that prototypes ALWAYS evolve until you have a working product.

There's that promise word again lol " Its simple , don't promise what you can't deliver" The developer continually stated there were no promises.

Its unfortunate the development had to be released before it was finished so there are going to be many problems before its done. These points are so obvious that if you can't see them there is no point my debating it with you.

My thoughts are that no news is worse than no update even if the update doesn't contain any substantial information. That's why I say limit it to 5 minutes so it does not become a chore.

Nobody wants CloD or BoM to fail but without any rapport the goodwill just dissipates and people drift away.

Hood

Agreed. And I love the way you step around the magic "two weeks" by saying bi-weekly ;)

Be sure.



Sorry, but it had to be said.



At this point I am no longer playing CloD, but I'm not whining about it. I have faith it will be sorted out and when that happens I'll start flying again.

Life is just too short to get wound up about something as petty as a piece of entertainment software.

I agree, ( although I'm not experiencing the problems your having), the sim definitely needs optimization for the average system and even higher. The developer is well aware of this and it appears to be the main focus of the development at this time. If this can't be addressed the sim will not be financially viable.

So what is an acceptable % of bugs in a game at release ? How can you draw the line ? Many games are 99% fully functionnal at release even with few bugs.
And some are so buggy they would never pass QC but are released anyways...
In what category would you, yourself ,put COD at initial release ?
And almost a year after the first release, what is in opinion the current state of COD in terms of patches and hotfix ?
We are all in the dark now and that is why a lot of us are just speculating ...and debating ...and arguing for nothing...really...:rolleyes:

The amount of bugs in this sim are huge, and will stay considerable until the sim engine and features are near completion, as then and only then can you clear most bugs up.

This is all a function of releasing an unfinished sim which IMHO much prefered to cancelling the project altogther as the financial support was drying up without an influx of cash. This next year is critical.

The bottom line is that you're going to have to wait until they are done fixing it. No amount of complaining is going to change that.

+1

Quoted for truth.

Just curious where you get your info Chivas. Was there a post by Luthier that they released it in that state because they needed an influx of cash? I just can't imagine a company saying "We gave our customers the shaft, cause we needed the cash". Maybe a link?

Gentlemen just a reminder to keep discussion civil and on topic.
Needless trolling, dev bashing and wild unfounded speculation or accusations will get you a short holiday from the forums.

The rules are being enforced, as a couple of people unfortunately had to be reminded today... the hard way.

Please keep it civil and no, disguised swearing is not acceptable!

If this thread degrades any further it will be locked and that would be a shame.

Common sense, and eight+ years of following the development, and many rumors have strongly suggested that the sim couldn't keep going as is. A couple of times Oleg mentioned they were running out of time and money and COD had to be released soon. That time has long since come and gone. It was also rumored that the development had cost eight million dollars so far and you can't continue that with this very small genre. Its not hard to figure out what choices they had left. Luckily they chose to release what was done with the hope the influx of cash would keep the accountants at bay for the time being.

Sorry but "common sense" "rumors" and "strongly suggested" don't make it a quantified fact as you make it out to be. Unless you really know what their financials are and can back it up, your just guessing so maybe you should phrase your statement as such. We don't know what Ubi kicked in, residual sales from 1946, other endevours etc. so lets not make them out to be on the brink of disaster unless we know, could do more harm then good

What about that rumour that Ubi was gonna scrap the project all-together if it wasn't released?

Guys it's an interesting theory, but let's remember, they (1c) are still here, they havent left us, and this is still theory and speculation no matter how many times it gets uttered and bandied around as fact. The great thing is that they are still developing for the series!

I could not agree more. Plus a lack of information seems to lead to much more speculation and rumors so maybe regular forum updates (even when they are just 'still working on the patch') would be helpful.

Actually the funny.. no telling part would be for you to tell us what you think the percentage of bugs is in CoD

In that I think any attempt by you or anyone else would only highlight how absurd it is to think you could come up with a value, which in turn would highlight how meaningless your statement that many games are released 99% bug free.

But I digress..

The point you are still missing from my initial post that you commented on is that it is 'UN-REALISTIC' to expect 'ANY GAME' to be released without 'ANY' bugs! If they can come to grips with that FACT then they will be able to view the state of this game in a more realistic light..

The next step would be for them to take pause and realize that 1C is still working on the product. Which is the 'EXCEPTION' to the game making rule! That is to say one does not have to look far to see dozens upon dozens of games that were released with bugs.. Where in many cases no bug patch was ever provided, or one was that fixed a few items but not all.. Followed by all support being dropped shortly after.

Should they get that far, than and only than will they realize just how 'LUCKY' they are that 1C is the company that made CoD.

Let me get this straight, your negative speculation is OK, LMFAO.

There is plenty of material from Oleg, Luthier and even Jason Williams both here and at SimHQ to give a good understanding of development as related by Chivas.

I love the parallels between the development progress of the new IL-2 series and Hitler's invasion plans.

Let's do an invasion of Britain. . .

"Oops! That didn't work out very well, how about we move on to Moscow? That's got to be a winner!"

Its unfortunate that you can't see the honest speculation in some of my posts.

Common sense tells me the developer wouldn't risk releasing an unfinished product, unless it was absolutley necessary, knowing full well the negative publicity that would garner. Especially when they had plans to continue the series.

We know that the development has been delayed for years and that couldn't continue. Investors are simple not willing to carry a project that long.

Bugs are expected and are one thing.
missing or non working features are another.
features that still dont work after 8 months are still another thing.

Features that have to wait 2 years and to pay for a sequel is a...well make up your own mind.

That's just it Chivas. I see it as speculation, you were telling us all it was a fact with the way you stated it. I just thought maybe you had something that backed it up as fact. I thought maybe UBI was pressuring 1C to just release the darn thing after 6 years of waiting or maybe they would pull out of distribution or something. Whatever man, just think maybe you should throw in a "IMO" if you don't really know.

Ha!

Me too.


Probably get banned for replying to that lol

Ok I'll share some insider information with you. If you don't see Luthiers name as the poster its more than likely speculation.

IMHO, I dont think UBI were involved until nearer the end, I remember Oleg making a post saying that he had found a publisher and he would let them announce who they were, if UBI were always involved then the post would have been pointless unless Oleg was playing some kind of mind games.

Whoa...hold the phone. You mean that 99.99% of us in here might be full of B.S.? I think you might be on to something here...let me get a piece of paper...I gotta write this down. :grin:

Actually, much of what Luthier says is speculation. A recent example is his claim that the new engine will deliver not less than 50% performance increase, followed by, we dont know what sort of increase, and lastly - the wheel fell off and we don't know what happened. He is a lovely guy, but does tend to struggle with mission goals and project forecasts.

Probably get banned for replying to that lol
Last edited by FS~Phat; Today at 08:06 AM. Reason: Not this time but you will if you keep that attitude up!

Nor me, but my brother did, some role playing game back in the windows 98 days which was so bad he uninstalled it and it wiped out a load of critical windows files at the same time and left him with an unworkable machine :eek:

funny :D

Quite, and perhaps the responses show exactly why some form of contact is vital to the series as a whole. Without it imagination runs riot. Keep it short, brief and to the point avoiding conjecture and the job is done. Lock it then nobody has to police the update thread.

Hood

lol, now that is bad!! :grin: