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IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover Latest instalment in the acclaimed IL-2 Sturmovik series from award-winning developer Maddox Games.

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Old 03-22-2012, 02:41 PM
Strike Strike is offline
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I am imagining that it's difficult to compile a beta build if they run into some unforeseen issues. I am no developer or programmer and can't speak on behalf of them, but I assume the answer simply is that they are working on it. By that I mean that they are busy working as hard as they can on getting a stable, usable build they can release. That's why they havn't released it yet.

It's like.... oh dear, again with the imagine this stories....

Imagine construction workers are working on patching up a highway road. They have re-routed the road on a somewhat bumpy detour of a road and you are eager to have your repaired highway back. Since you are paying taxes to have the road network maintained, you think they better be done soon! The fact is that work is work. You still have to close the road, set up your site, bring in the machinery, mend everything, and hope that you don't encounter anything that may delay the work. The leader has to come up with a plan for what gets done when and that's called a plan. This kind of plan is an estimate for when the road is finished. Now imagine: They screw up the asphalt mixture. That means they have to dig up the old asphalt, and start over. Maybe the mixture was good for some stretch, but they have to investiage where they messed it up and start over from there. Meanwhile the boss of the company is on the phone with the site manager shouting at him demanding a new estimate. The site manager says 2 days, be sure. Then they strike a water pipeline. The manager calls back and the boss is infuriated, another 4 days delay and a phone to the piping department. Then the pipe is fixed a little early and they get ahead of schedule again. New time. New time. New time. That's what work is like. You can say that you can guarantee something is finished within X amount of time but you'd be a liar.

The interesting question is; what if the construction workers just re-opened the road without fixing the asphalt and thoroughly fixing the pipe? We'd be like "awww Yay!" for like 2 minutes until the asphalt sunk into a hole. And we would be furious!

It ain't done until it's done. Period.

At least we have a detour (bumpy-road) we can use, and the traffic isn't in a 100% halt. There's no urgent emergency.


Point is; the game works (just enough for my flight sim craving emergencies). But it isn't as good as it could be.

Why push it and force a release that is completely untested with all bugs waiting for us to find them and rage over it.

They probably aren't saying anything because there's nothing to say. Its better that they work on the patch imho, rather than work up an excuse and try to explain us how the graphics integrates with this, so that this feature can work like intended in harmony with unit X and still not wreck feature X.. and so on.

Just saying (guessing)
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Old 03-22-2012, 03:02 PM
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6S.Tamat 6S.Tamat is offline
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Strike i'm with you in your general assumption, but extending in my point of view your metaphore:
- the road is in a private neighborood paid by the local community
- after some months of work (insthead of some weeks said by the construction company) the community is irritated and is yelling the boss of the company
-the boss of the company needs to fix it, but explains precisely the problem to clarify more the situation.

The fact that they say: "there is nothing to tell because we are working on" is like to not say that an old pipe exploded and to say nothing to the community more than "we are working on some new problems".
If someone thinks that there is no way to talk about technical problems i would simply remember that the world is not full only of children not able to understand the language of the programmer gods. It is like to say to the community "We are sorry for the late but there are problems- What kind of? - I'm sorry you would not understand."
If someone is interested in seeing how a complex developement can be described he could go to read the Xplane 10 developer blog.
Explain the problems require time for sure, but the trust is not for free and the situation is not so calm and positive now, after an year.
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Old 03-22-2012, 03:30 PM
kendo65 kendo65 is offline
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Strike, there is slightly different issue here I think - there is always a judgement to be made about how near you are to completion of the plan and whether it is worthwhile to go to all the hassle of reconfiguring everything.

To make that call you need to have some idea (or take a guess!) of how long either option is going to take. If you're always making the judgement that you're 'nearly there' then there never seems to be a good reason to change course.

It's only with hindsight that you realise you've spent 3 months convinced you were 'nearly there' - and there is STILL no way of knowing whether NOW you are 'nearly there' or it will take another 2 months?!?

For this reason alone I don't think we'll see them issue an interim patch. I just hope that they make the progress they need on the graphics soon enough.
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Last edited by kendo65; 03-22-2012 at 03:35 PM.
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Old 03-22-2012, 04:13 PM
SEE SEE is offline
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I would prefer to wait and have a single patch that goes the distance in resolving the main areas of critiscm. I fear an improved GFX patch with better performance will not altogether satisfy a lot of peeps if the FM, DM, comms, AI are left unattended and WIP.

It will be a case of "yeah, it runs and looks better but .........".
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Old 03-22-2012, 05:10 PM
carguy_ carguy_ is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Strike View Post
I am no developer or programmer and can't speak on behalf of them, but I assume the answer simply is that they are working on it. By that I mean that they are busy working as hard as they can on getting a stable, usable build they can release. That's why they havn't released it yet.
You do not need to assume anything. They`ve been saying that probably in every single friday dev update thread to date.
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