Where are the game elements in this sim?

[Redroach]

I mean, even Il-2 wasn't really a burner in terms of immersion between missions... no fancy rendered/acted sequences (at least SOMETHING when you were awarded medals/promotions; Battlehawks 1942 already had that with people gathering on your CV and your CO handing you the medals. The "Missing Man" formation in Falcon AT when you die is something else than just texting "Red has been shot down/killed", too.), very conservatively designed menus and simple .tga loading screens with nothing blinking, texting or anything like that. I figure that would take relatively little effort (excluding big-budget rendering/acting, of course), yet add greatly to non-flying immersion. Thus, Il-2 was very simplistic even in 2000 terms, yet CoD v.Alpha2 easily gets below that.
Meh, at least the drawn loading screens look reasonably well.

The more I think about it, the more it annoys me even with respect to Il-2 1946 >.<. Is RoF worth its money in that regard, as well as with respect to realism?

[addman]

Originally Posted by Tree_UK

I think we all understand now that what Oleg or Luthier said in the development stage held little water, thats why i take everything that is said now with more than a pinch of salt. We will see how much longevity the game as after the American release, Once that pile of cash as been counted we will then see if they are truly committed to fixing this game.

A pinch of salt? how diplomatic of you Tree. I'll put it like this, I'm not buying anything associated with 1c/Maddox Games from now on without proper reviews and user input beforehand.

[II./JG1_Wilcke]

I also purchased RoF, oh about 9 months after release and shelved it. I finally started flying it weekly at the first of the year. I do support it by purchasing their addon material ac, etc. Its a fine sim now and getting better especially after the campaign is released in the next update.

These sims are now relics and it takes about two years of ongoing support to bring them to the point where one can say wow!

[jojimbo]

Yeah, no disrespect to Luthier and the Clod team, I have no doubt that these teething troubles will pass, but I went over to RoF , luckily for me, it's had it's teething problems for the most part fixed, and already has a great career mode, which is being biult upon by the team.
RoF is always in development, and thats how I see CoD, I fully support the development of CoD and paid my 30 quid to the devs.

I would love to see a simple career mode introduced to CoD based upon the plane you fly, ie a Spit,Hurri,ju87,109 etc, and also a dynamic campaign feature (in the future of course) and i would pay extra for it.

Pity I cant enjoy CoD to its fullest, my rig is medium standard, but has no problems with RoF and i wanted a sim to PLAY, RoF provided it, and i am a ww1 convert.

Keep popping in to see the progress, good luck to Luthier and the team.

[Skiiwa]

Unfortunatly the OP has a good point. The QMB that I ALWAYS played in 1946 just isnt there, and what is here is not working to make a complete flight playable.

In a Year this game will rock! Right now, I think I will go back to 1946 for my combat flight fix. If I remember, the same thing happened with 1946.

[iceblink_luck]

Originally Posted by Skiiwa

Unfortunatly the OP has a good point. The QMB that I ALWAYS played in 1946 just isnt there, and what is here is not working to make a complete flight playable.

In a Year this game will rock! Right now, I think I will go back to 1946 for my combat flight fix. If I remember, the same thing happened with 1946.

I too have gone back to 1946, couldn't install it from original DVD, so bought it again from GOG. It doesn't look that different, graphics-wise, to CoD - in fact, the latest review from Custom PC magazine states the same (35 out of 100, BTW, final sentance saying it is borderline unplayable). I stopped playing it a week after launch, and may get back to it in a few month's time - in the meantime, there are better games for me to waste my time on....

[Blackdog_kt]

I personally can't go back to IL2:1946, it's been way too easy to operate the aircraft for a long time and after trying out the new CEM i can't go back.

Originally Posted by Feathered_IV

I must agree. Remember the "Holy Sh*t" thread that Luthier himself started asking for gameplay elements? Tons of suggestions in there and not one was acted upon. Instead they went for the Spitgirl...

The only people who seemed to benefit from that thread was the Rise of Flight team. I notice that a very great many of the features suggested in that topic are already announced for the new single player dynamic campaign announced for release this month.

In all fairness, it took RoF two long years to get there. I think the big surge in regards to CoD content will come with the release of the SDK or at the very least, some scripting documentation.

If we can customize the interface (which they said is possible) to run a campaign generator in-game and track relevant data in the form of mission event logs, parsing them to the generator (which is possible through scripting), then the campaign generator can act on that information and create the next mission in a dynamic campaign.

As for many of your suggestions in that thread (which i really liked a lot), i expect they too will be possible through scripts, after all it's a C type language they are using: it needs some coding experience but it's much more powerful.

I think that whatever the devs do, once the community come to grips with scripting they will always be one step ahead, simply because we are so numerous and ideas keep bouncing around all the time.

Off the top of my head, things i would do if i knew how to work with scripts:

1) Navigator interface: From a simple "i click on the map and you tell me how to get there" to a full fledged SH3 type of deal with markers, rulers and protractors so i can draw up my own flight plans mid-flight, the have the script play "AI navigator" for me and guide me there. It would only work in aircraft that had a navigator crewman, for single seaters it would just give you the mapping tools to work with yourself.

2) Celestial navigation with a sextant for night missions (since the nice sky has accurate positions of constellations).

3) Script calling out contacts when they are in the field of view of AI crewmen.

4) Bombadier guidance script: Jump to the bomb-aimer's station, engage the script and guide the pilot through the bomb run (like level stabilizer but so much better and more realistic).

If i can come up with 3-4 useful ideas in the time span required to post a forum message imagine what the rest of the community can come up with, especially people who can actually code it, dedicated modders, etc. There's no way a developer team of 25 people will be able to compete with a few hundred or even thousand modding community members, so they focus on getting the basics done and providing a framework to do more. Of course, the basics are not there yet and i'm not denying that. I just don't expect the dev team to be able to "race" the community in terms of new features once we are up to speed with scripting, it's not realistic to think so.

I expected CoD to be a sort of "operating system/framework for simulation gaming" type of thing and that's exactly what it is, which is a big reason i maintain mostly positive attitudes about it (that is, it turned out to be what i expected it to be).

[addman]

Well, it's playable even on my modest rig, that's not the problem. Problem is there's nothing to play, have to create everything myself and that grows boring and predictable rather fast.

[easytarget3]

Originally Posted by addman

It's so frustrating having such a high fidelity sim as CloD but having to build every single mission if you want to play. I like making my own missions but two things makes it unsustainable to create new ones all the time:

1. It's time consuming to make a good mission.
2. No surprises during mission, you know what will happen.

After finally having smooth performance in CloD, it hit me, where's the game in this sim? What exactly did luthier and Co expect people to use this game for? Playing quick mission builder skirmishes over and over again? The campaigns aren't horrible but once they are finished they don't offer much more in replay value. I don't care so much for multiplayer (broken at the moment anyway) because I'm an offliner. I've played 3 self-made missions the last two weeks in CloD, that's it. I'd never thought I'd say it but I miss Dgen LOL!

I read in luthiers latest update that they're hiring a lot of new staff, I hope they hire some kind of game producer and not just 3D modellers and programmers because this game is in desperate need of game elements. They'd better come up with some kind of campaign generator for their next game because they can't rely on the community to do everything for them.

Don't hate on me for this post because I really love IL-2, CloD and the team at MG I just want to play and enjoy this game but it's very hard when you have to spend just as long creating a good mission as it takes to fly it.

1+

[JG27_brook]

Agree u know we only get " 4 missions" for the 109 its like " GROUND HOG DAY "