Monday (???) April 4 Development Update

[luthier]

Hello everyone,

Thank you all for your continuing support! Thought I'd update you on our progress made after the release date patch went live early on the 31st of March. We worked through the weekend to improve the game some more. I have to note that this wasn't anything unusual, most of the team has been working on a schedule like this for months. As I think I've mentioned somewhere, I've been working 7 days a week since mid-summer.

Our main priority, as stated before, is improving performance.

Here's what we've done as of the end of the day today.

1. Buildings are as fast as we can make them. That's it. I doubt we can improve them more.

2. Trees are still much slower than they can be, but we did completely reshovel the entire code to completely remove microfreezes. They're gone. The code is currently bruteforcing a lot of the stuff so it's not nearly as fast as it can be. We'll be optimizing it some more. Should not take a long time at all.

3. Misc bug fixes, as we can get to them, are also being put in. We've fixed the extremely unfortunate FMB oversight with the labels - it was the result of an overly zealous optimization effort last week. We've also done things to our Info windows, since they gave people more problems than we could ever possibly imagine. That alt-click, we still need to figure out what to do with it. Maybe even reverse the entire thing and make the cockpit alt-clickable and chat windows normal-clickable. I don't think we've ever done anything that confused the players more than these damned windows.

4. We've also finalized updates to the multiplayer GUI - see attachment for preview.

5. Unfortunately what seemed like an easy fix to the server search issue in steam still eludes us. Since I'm only allowed to admit to our own faults but not to other peoples' I can't say anything more about this.


The plan right now is to release an open beta version of the patch tomorrow night or the next day. It'll be a small archive you manually extract on top of your game's install. This is to allow the people to test the fixes. Since we've done some radical things in #1 and #2, we don't want to make the patch live to the entire world right away. We're hoping that everything will go smoothly and nothing new is found in the update, which means we can go ahead with our plans and push the update out to steam the end of the day Friday.

Our great hope that the Friday version will allow everyone to run the game smoothly and finally begin complaining about FM and DM and AI and skins and missions and GUI and landscape and the clouds and the weather!

[Sven]

Thank you Luthier!

Your typical humour is also present I see

[HFC_Dolphin]

Originally Posted by luthier

...Our great hope that the Friday version will allow everyone to run the game smoothly and finally begin complaining about FM and DM and AI and skins and missions and GUI and landscape and the clouds and the weather!

Now we're talking

[fireship4]

Thanks.

[adonys]

First of all. THANK YOU, Luthier and MG guys!

Now, please DO NOT change the info windows focus on click, and the cockpit ones on ALT click, that would force us do in-game ALT clicks (ie with two hands instead with just one).

The people are confused about them because nowhere there's a clean and detailed explanation regarding how to use/customize them.

What we REALLY need regarding the info windows would be:
- a way to customize all text's colors (atm there are some which don't allow this (and the dark blue text is not so easily distinguished against the background)
- fix the bug forgetting the info windows' settings (I've set mine a few times, and now and then the my settings are just forgotten)
- add a digital info window for IAS/TAS, altitude, etc (as in old IL|2)

Also, please give us a BIG water only map. It should be a work of only 2 mins for your guys, but it will mean a lot to us.

Also,

[Topo]

Thanks!

[meplay]

Luthier! Much Appreciated!!!

btw does the Horizontal Stabiliser Work

only messin S!

[Conte Zero]

Originally Posted by adonys

Also, please give us a BIG water only map. It should be a work of only 2 mins for your guys, but it will mean a lot to us.

^THIS, damn how muuuch do I quote!

[mungee]

Luthier - I must add in my "bit" from down here in South Africa.

Firstly, the sim looks brilliant - the clips that have been posted show that you guys have once again produced something that has "raised the bar" by a massive amount.

I endorse what others have said on this forum - try and relax, take a breath or two and "re-charge your batteries".

You guys have shown amazing commitment and dedication to "tweaking" and fine-tuning IL-2, Forgotten Battles etc in the past - I'm sure that the community, that knows you guys, will be very patient.

Thanks (as always) for keeping us all informed and ware of developments.

[Targ]

Sweet!