Friday 2011-02-04 Dev. update and Discussion

[sk065]

Originally Posted by mazex

Well their marketing at least dragged you here, for what good that is?

Im afraid not. Ive been a long time fan of IL2 and knew about this release when it was annouced a few years ago.

I have been a long time lurker of this forum as you will see from my join date.

Have we actually had an OFFICIAL statement about what aircraft are flyable? Come on 1C/Ubi.....

To me, screenshots mean nothing. It doesnt tell you anything about the game other than how it looks (it does look nice!)

I think a few people are frustrated, waiting this long for a game and a few weeks before release being told features have been removed/postponed with no substance to any of the information being provided by the devs.

Maybe i am a whiner...But I also think I have a level head. As for the argument about Il2 1946 being amazing ergo this title MUST be....Total BS. Again i refer to Sileny Hunter. SH3 was amazing...SH5 was pants.

That is all.

[The Kraken]

Originally Posted by sk065

Maybe i am a whiner...But I also think I have a level head. As for the argument about Il2 1946 being amazing ergo this title MUST be....Total BS. Again i refer to Sileny Hunter. SH3 was amazing...SH5 was pants.

Silent Hunter III was far from amazing to me, it had a whole range of bugs on release and was short of important features (just remember the 1024x768 max resolution), then dropped by the developers to sell you the same game (and the same bugs) again with parts IV and V. Sorry, no comparison to Il2 for me.

I don't find it unreasonable to expect that Maddox Games can produce a great flight sim a 2nd time. How good it is in the end will be decided once we have it in our hands - no amount of videos, development notes or PR will change that anyway.

[major_setback]

I imagine they are working like crazy to iron out the bugs and fix all that needs fixing.

If they have to stop work just to make a video (as Oleg said a few weeks ago) then I won't be surprised if we have to wait a few weeks for a decent video from a present build.

Carry on the good work chaps!!

[I/ZG52_Gaga]

all very nice indeed!

however the complete absense of human representation in the game other than the aircrews is something that in my opinion, the artists of 1C should re-consider.

putting it plainly is an utter bummer ...

anyway ....

best regards

[kirq]

I think it's a good time to tell what actualy is in the game, not what didn't make it into it. And I'm not thinking about release announcement (full of errors). Some screens looks great, others look mediocre. There is no single one video up to date captured on decent rig showing something more then 1-2 min of flying over water.

I've already pre-ordered CE but right now, I have to honestly admit that I'm begining to wonder if I didn't rushed this decision. I'm not even sure if I can get my money back if I cancel this pre-order, but if I woun't see/read somthing solid about content/performance/new features within 2-3 next weeks I will check what I can do about this pre-order.

I'm sorry if that sounds like whining but I just wanted to share my (and probably some others) doubts about this long awaited title.

I'm not telling I woun't buy it eventually, I probably will, but with current PR policy I'm begining to lean toward waiting for reviews and forum opinions before I open my wallet. Please make me really want to buy it first day!

PS. I really don't understand how things showed in 2006 as a main features of the game woun't be available on the realease almost 5 years later...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9OWQ55n8ig

[Avimimus]

Originally Posted by kirq

I think it's a good time to tell what actualy is in the game, not what didn't make it into it. And I'm not thinking about release announcement (full of errors). Some screens looks great, others look mediocre. There is no single one video up to date captured on decent rig showing something more then 1-2 min of flying over water.

[...]

PS. I really don't understand how things showed in 2006 as a main features of the game woun't be available on the realease almost 5 years later...

1) Oleg tends to deliberately under-sell the product in order to avoid hype and keep expectations low (with the result that he gets more positive reviews at release)

2) The engine was rewritten in that period. The old version would have been limited to DX9 etc. The new SoW engine is designed for growth, assuming that sales are high enough (with four additional projects already planned, with work completed on some of them). Expect new features (and higher minimum system specs) in the next few years.

Generally, I'd recommend trusting Oleg. I've watched his work for ten years now and no one has a higher dedication to quality and pushing the limits of what can be done (even when it really doesn't make financial sense) than his team.

[luthier]

Originally Posted by Tree_UK

Luthier, thanks for your reply, the answer is obvious, use a PC that is good enough.

If I had a high-end PC, the recommended specs we've released a while ago would have been the minimum specs.

I'm using a mid-range PC for a very specific reason.

You have to understand that my job is to make a good game. It is NOT to market and advertise it. We're a tiny developer working on a shoestring budget. If I have to stop working for a day each week to make videos, we will end up with a kick-ass marketing campaign for a crappy game. I'd rather have it the other way around.

Originally Posted by Skinny

Luthier, am I right concluding from the above that CoD (much like IL2) is mostly CPU bound, rather than videocard bound ? At least at "normal" resolutions (HD and below) and AA settings, IL2 doesnt care too much what videocard you have, you can increase resolution and AA and it barely makes a difference, even on my old 4870, but the CPU speed makes all the difference in the world, game performance scales almost linearly with CPU clockspeed.

Do you know how well the CoD engine makes use of 4 (or more?) cores, and whether or not that shifts the bottleneck towards the GPU again, or is even a Core i7 or whatever the main bottleneck?

You need a good video card to play over populated areas. We have huge textures so lots of video memory is important too.

Originally Posted by LukeFF

What is the status on the dynamic campaign system? We know from the announcement on the Ubi forums that it won't make the original release.

There's bits and pieces. We made a decision about 18 months ago that we wouldn't be able to make it right, and we'd rather build good static campaigns instead. So it's been on a backburner for some time.

I'm the guy who wrote a bunch of giant 100-page design docs for the dynamic campaign, so it was a very hard decision for me personally.

There's probably at least a year of work left on it to make it great. We could have make something like an Il-2 level dynamic campaign in a few months, but I don't want to do that at all. I want it to be ground-breaking and worthy of the rest of the game.

Originally Posted by Meusli

Damn missed you Luthier, but maybe you see this question tomorrow. When the video was at an end you was telling them to cut recording, is this because you did not want us to see the parachute scene? Also i noticed the eject scene was missing that animation you showed us of a bailing sequence, has this also been removed for release

No, I actually thought that the video was crap and I wanted another take. And I ran out of ideas.

Originally Posted by Skoshi Tiger

In the video Luthier is using a Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog. As I've recently got one I'ld be interested to know how CoD handles the On-Off switches on the throttle.

Not good. We just got the Warthog this week, and I was very disappointed in how most of the buttons worked. I played around with the TM software and couldn't figure it out at all. The push-up-for-constant-input button that's also a push-down-for-no-input-at-all doesn't work with the game at all. We need to write a whole different chunk of code for that kind of input to be recognized properly.

Originally Posted by Tree_UK

Yes thanks for that, but can you not see where your answer is fundamentally flawed, in that we dont know how it runs on a high end system, we keep begging Luthier and Oleg to show us some video on a real high end PC, we want to wave the Cliffs Of Dover flag and say jeez look how good this game runs if you've got the the right kit, hundreds of people are waiting to buy or build new systems and spend thousands just to play this game, but for some reason the devs are holding back on showing us this game run on a top end gaming rig.

Jeez.

Originally Posted by zapatista

question: is there any hope to have the dynamic campaign element added in as a similar "as is" state, and allow the community to develop it further with some tools ?

It's nowhere near the state of the weather. There's nothing to play with. Most of the dynamic campaign exists in prototype stages split up into separate chunks.

Originally Posted by Koyan

I think the chute is still being worked on. At the end of the video when Ilya is about to open the chute, he suddenly realizes its not ready to show yet and makes this 'cut' gesture.

No, the parachute is OK. There's no collision with the plane yet which is why it's not as good as we want it to be, but otherwise the cut gesture and the bail out sequence are not connected in any way.

Originally Posted by I/ZG52_Gaga

however the complete absense of human representation in the game other than the aircrews is something that in my opinion, the artists of 1C should re-consider.

Yes, I'm of the same exact opinion. We messed this one up. It's completely my fault. Our lead ground 3D modeler hates my guts for it. We are working on it though. At the very least we'll try to dump something into all those vehicles for release.

It looks horrible and we all know it, believe me.

Originally Posted by kirq

I think it's a good time to tell what actualy is in the game, not what didn't make it into it. And I'm not thinking about release announcement (full of errors). Some screens looks great, others look mediocre. There is no single one video up to date captured on decent rig showing something more then 1-2 min of flying over water.

[...]

PS. I really don't understand how things showed in 2006 as a main features of the game woun't be available on the realease almost 5 years later...

I explained this in detail earlier in the thread. When we try to do something ground breaking, sometimes we end up failing to deliver.

I'll note again that everything we said we were going to do, we did. It's just we were not able to get it into a playable state quickly enough. It will take more time.

[Stukadriver]

I don't know how you guys balance the wishes of the players with the reality of the constraints on hardware and the time investment it takes to get such a nice game to market. I can imagine the howling and crying of some if you put this game out and it only could run on a beefy computer. My time spent checking in on the forum to see how your game is progressing has confirmed to me that you can't please everyone. I sometimes wonder why you didn't just close the effort. I admire your perseverence. Your development company has an excellent record and your products have brought me hours and hours of enjoyment. I am looking forward to COD because your past work has been outstanding and I am confident that this game will continue that tradition.

[Stukadriver]

To Kalimba -

I like your humor! Good man.

[JAMF]

Originally Posted by luthier

You need a good video card to play over populated areas. We have huge textures so lots of video memory is important too.

Good to know. With regard to memory, are you allowed to share the answer to these questions:
-Is the 32Bit exe programmed with LargeAddressAware, so even the 32Bit exe can use 3GB on the 32Bit Windows and 4GB on the 64Bit Windows7?

-Is the 64Bit exe scheduled for the release, or has it been scheduled for a patch? (I hope I didn't miss a previous answer to this question)