[Mardescrap]

Man what a mess!

I don't know exactly what went wrong over there, it feels either like the team wanted to do BIG things they weren't able to deliver or some guy of the marketing department wanted the thing to go out at a PRECISE date even if it wasn't finished. Marketing folks are funny, they think that a trailer with flames and epic (bad orchestral) music sell better than quality.

The AI is completely off (Bf110 rolling like crazy when pursued, gunner shooting at you between regurgitations), the ground is too heavy for most systems (drawcalls or polycount, whatever), the LODs have problems, often the textures don't load properly so that the models in CoD look worst than the ones in IL2. The gunsights are a pain to use along the now bad camera controls. The sounds are good, the problem is that there seems to be lots of placeholders left in the final product.

What I fail to grasp is why the need to fix things that weren't broken at first in IL2 made this actually worst in its functionality than the original. Why is there a need for a custom window full of information that remind you constantly that you are actually in a game (not flying), and why does it overlap over the radio menu? Why is the menu such a mess? Where is the quick mission screen? Why not just reskin IL2 with a deeper AI, better damage models and a better career? I mean the only complaints I had about IL2 was the AI (which is good since one of the last patches) and the shallow careers.

From what I heard the team is 26 guys strong? Over the course of development I saw some things like an autogyro (with a model that looked fairly final), pilot animations for bailing out and VERY high resolution ground vehicles. It sounds like zigzag development and leaders not grounded wanting every idea done. 26 people can't go like that and finish everything, that's sad because making this thing with 26 guys is still a feat even if it's broken... however this should have been done with priorities at the right places... but I'm just being captain hindsight here.

On the bright side, congrats to the modeler of the airplanes and cockpit, that's really a nice job. The textures on the airplanes, when they load properly, look right on spot, the specularity and the progressive weathering are near perfect. The normal mapping adds a lot, especially to the aircrafts covered by fabric. The damage model is REALLY nice. Water is nice too, best shader in a flight sim that I saw so far. The lighting is pretty good too. Under the problems there seems to be high potential for something awesome. The progressive weathering of the airplanes holds potential, for instance a career that you wear out your airplane by flying it would be awesome.

Anyway good luck cleaning this up to the team, I'll check after some patches what if feels like. I'm sure it will be better later, but I'll keep on flying the KA50 until my WWII airplane is fixed.

PS: I pre-ordered the game and got this after a delay, I think it was worth that post.