CoD--Becoming a Masterpiece

[robtek]

Well Oktoberfest, thats not what he said.
So: you is wrong!

[proton45]

Originally Posted by Oktoberfest

Guys, your God Oleg is OUT OF THE HOUSE. He LEFT THE BUILDING. OLEG is no more. It has ceased to be a developper of this thing ! He's not working on this sim anymore. Can you get it ???

Your such an angry little thing...aren't you?

[PeterPanPan]

Originally Posted by nodlew

Pulling lead was next to impossible in the older games, it was a black art. You really had to learn to shoot with the enemy hidden under the nose of your plane--it was ridiculous. I knew that it wasn't right.

Actually, this is quite accurate, for a Spitfire anyway. With its long nose, pulling a lead would hide the enemy under your nose. With its shorter nose, this is one advantage the Hurri had over the Spit.

PPP

[nodlew]

Peter,

I didn't mean that there were never situations where the target would get covered by the nose of your plane--depending on the orientation of your fighter vs. the location and vector of your target. There are certainly many possible firing solutions where it might be. In the case of a slow-maneuvering, slower-flying bomber with a large surface area, perhaps some of those solutions might be the ideal shot. Given the design of the gun sight, and given its necessary position above and behind the elongated engine of the plane (more pronounced on some planes than others), this would, physically, just plain have to be the case.

However, most of the WWII era gunnery manuals I have read, including "Bag the Hun!" (British, by the way) describe employing the gunsight reticule to estimate distance and proper lead of the target, and this is not possible unless one can maneuver one's own aircraft in such a way that the target remains visible in the sight relative to the reticule. The problems doing this in the past that I referred to were the result of a number of game deficiencies--the most egregious of them being that the sights were crudely modeled (too cramped, wrong size, no way to compensate for range by lofting your shells, etc.), making their employment unrealistically difficult. Another culprit is bad flight models of AI aircraft, or the player aircraft, causing planes to maneuver and fight in unnatural ways (not being able to employ rudder effectively in a turn for example), resulting in one never seeming to have a good sight picture of the target.

As Il-2 improved over the years, this problem was mitigated, and as my own skill increased, obviously I learned to compensate, pick my shots, and hit the enemy planes.

My point is that the way the AI behaves and the way my plane responds in Cliffs of Dover along with the realistic gunsights and ballistics of the shells has finally completely resolved this issue from my perspective. I am able, from any workable angle, to point my gunsight ahead of the enemy plane, work the ailerons and rudder to achieve my desired lead, fire my shots and usually witness the effect or lack thereof on the target.

And it is my assertion that this is a giant leap forward in the simulation of aerial combat of the WWII era.

Thank you for your time.



Another that I just thought of--AI aircraft, even if the flight models of the planes are correct to the nth degree, are free from the physical and psychological limitations (habits, proclivities) of human beings. AI aircraft have always behaved as if, beyond the programmed limitations of energy maneuver for the planes and avoiding collisions with the ground, they really couldn't care less if they are oriented "properly" to the Earth or not. In a dogfight, they are always turning as tightly as the code will allow them to get on your six, which means that every dog fight is the same Luftberry circle, with your and your opponent's planes standing on their wingtips, turning at the edge of blacking out, until one can fire on the other. In this orientation, the target will ALWAYS be beneath the nose of your plane, since to keep on him you must be in the same maneuver plane as he is, and in a tight turn, the shells will drop off very dramatically, or rather, instantly. I do not detect this behavior in CoD, and I am very pleased to be able to say so.

Here, again, I have written ten pounds of verbiage and taken extreme grammatical pains to be clear in order to make myself understood, when really, anyone who was making any effort to understand me in the first place would have taken my meaning from the earlier pithy remark. It's a good thing I really like listening to myself talk...er, type.

[robtek]

Originally Posted by Opitz

Clap clap clap! What a innovative way to talk to the Maddox Games tricked customers! I just LOVE it... Just excellent... So we should just shut up or leave, right? So next time don't count with us again, all right?... I would rather play old Red Baron sim instead of buying anything from Maddox Games EVER AGAIN.

I hope your future customer base of 500 people world wide will make you happy.

Btw.. Your response is just the most arrogant post I have ever red on any game's official forum... You should be ashamed of yourself... What a sad end of the official IL2 community...

What a display of delusion! ROFL
Do you really think the few whiners make the majority??
They are loud and the same few post very often, that doesn't make them many.

[nodlew]

I hope your future customer base of 500 people world wide will make you happy.

You can't be serious? Even if Maddox games were to fold this afternoon, and all official support of Cliffs of Dover were to cease immediately, dozens, hundreds of amateur and semi-professional programmers would take up finishing this game On Their Own. There would be an instant call for the SDK, programming tools...

And whatever their success, or failure, hundreds of people, all flight-sim enthusiasts everywhere, would continue to work on and play this game for years, decades to come. You know why? Because, whatever its current bugs, there is nothing even in the same ballpark as this game. And there is no other company out there with the knowledge, the inclination, or the dedication to even attempt to produce one. Ever.

In fact, games like CoD are not made anymore. They don't exist. The profit margins are not high enough. They are too hard. The buying power of the Plane Nerd set is not potent enough to justify the effort involved. Ask the guys at TankSim.com how things are going in the Armored Warfare sim niche. And tanks are dirt simple to simulate compared to planes.

No, you are very wrong. Whether the folks at Maddox choose to kiss your ass or not, this game is by default the Name of the Game in WWII flight sims for the next decade. Anyone and everyone with a boner for WWII flight sims will be playing this game. And although a few may drop by the wayside, feel free to do so yourself, more will take up the game to compensate the grievous (snark) loss of your participation.

No, I am with those who choose to support Maddox games. I don't see anyone else producing anything comparable in the genre, and I predict that I won't see anyone else. I happen to love WWII, and I like simulations. I discovered flight simulation with Il-2 (and Jane's WWII Fighters--Jane's doesn't make flight sims anymore), I was always a tank sim guy before that (but they don't make tank sims anymore)*.

As I said at the beginning of this thread--I was angry about not being able to play the game, but I have witnessed the efforts of the Devs to fix those problems and I am mollified.

What the hell. All games these days are released with a bunch of bugs and problems. The classic games mature, and become refined. That's the way it works. What separates the companies that deserve our support from those that don't is their demonstration of their willingness to address these issues and perfect the game.

*Yeah, I know there's the new one with the T-62 and the M-60. I will definitely check it out.

[WT_Schmouddle]

I just come by.. and I am getting the drift..I guess

Mods here allow yaysayers to suggest naysayers to stick their head through their anus, no moderation there.
And as naysayers claim what they think is wrong, that is called negative attitude and their posts are deleted and their accounts profoundly banned.
I always thought mods are not here to herd the discussion the "righteous" way, they are supposed to be here to keep it civil, just like the Hyde Park soapbox keepers. You can talk whatever you can, but you shall not insult any other member, right?
Mods projecting their wishes about the product and baning others, that is A shame and a major no-no for an ordinary customer like me.

So, to the topic:
I am a sport pilot IRL, so take my commentary with grain of salt as the only warbird I ever piloted was humble 600hp Yak11 trainer (a plane similar to Texan I guess).

Regarding visibility:
Sorry, but that's how it is, quite often, IRL. Very often you cannot see white Cessna half a km away against city or cloud or haze. In the autumn, I met a group of WWI replicas inflight and as these are brown/green they were almost invisible against the terrain, only the strobe light of accompanying microlight gave their position on about 300m. So get used to it, even a collision is a possibility.

Flight models:
These are, IMHO very, very gentle. Even way too gentle. IRL I am really not sure whether I would dare to fly the Spitfire of Hurricare the way I do in COD. Heck, I was able to bring Hurricane without any problems to precise 3-spot landing on the precise spot on the airfield on my first try with 19fps and heavy stutter. I have never bent any metal in COD as a result of pilot error. That is very, very strange as IRL I sometimes have a LOT to do to keep straight and otherwise civilised aircraft attitude.
(Not adding that IRL I always got like very smooth 25fps, irrespective of scenery density)

AI: I feel the AI is taken straight from the old Sturmovik. Same, robotic controls (jerking it), same ignorance of aircraft limitations (try to fly Blenheim on the same settings as AI does, you blew engines in no time!), same inability to lead up properly on shooting, same collisions with terrain, same aerobatics with full laden Dorniers. I have seen it all, and there is a lot of things to correct.


The game is unfortunately very buggy and it more looks like a Betatest.
Talking about flying the Blenheim, I was very upset on myself I was not able to keep engines ticking, as these always lost power quite soon after takeoff.
I even dug a Blenheim POH outta internet and studied. The reason dumbfounded me. As the GAME was telling me I have 100% mixture in the digital levers on screen and also on engine monitor, the lever was set to "weak" in the cockpit. So I ruined at least ten sets of Mercury engines just to find out the GAME is wrong? (Not adding there shall be no smooth 0-100% mixture setting, just "weak" and "normal".) How on earth could anyone with more limited knowledge of how airplane engines work IRL find out what is wrong here? (And as there are no POH's released with the game, CEM is a sort of wizardry for common folk)

Someone here has mentioned the state in which ROF came out.
As I was a ROF betatester, I can openly claim that such mistakes were absent. The flying part of the ROF was top notch from day zero.
And comparing ROF and COD release - while ROF was released with more or less "Sorry guys, it is not ready yet, but we need to release and make some money, please support us, there is a list of to-do's" and in reality it was a very late beta, COD was released as next-gen ultimate WWII simulator being in very early beta.
And the support of customers reflect that. ROF found its supporters (I also own a majority of addon planes, just to keep them developing the offline campaign and keep a wish for an MMOWWICFS), while COD still struggles with 500 copies max ceiling on Steam.


There were my 2c, shall I have only one wish, I beg yaysayer mods to leave my opinion here before baning me for being negative.

[bongodriver]

But there are many naysayer postings on here that are still around and all say the same thing....

[nodlew]

Gee whiz. I'm a bad boy. A bad, bad boy.

But, you know, we were having a perfectly civil and decent discussion here until Cpt.Badger made his crude and insulting quasi-sexual suggestion about the "lube".

And then Oktoberfest's suggestion that anyone here views Oleg as a "God" was not flattering to the people concerned.

These comments rather interrupted the discussion and introduced the negativity that prompted my suggestions regarding what they should do with their lube and that they should pursue it as a team activity.

So don't put no guilt trip on me, buddy. They were asking for it. And I think the moderators could be forgiven allowing one instance in which someone responds to such Hecklers in a straightforward and no-nonsense fashion.

I bent my landing gear in a hard landing once.

And we will all anxiously await the patch that reworks the flight models so that the planes exactly reproduce your subjective experience of flight in whatever sort of plane you fly. At least then we will all rest easy in the knowledge that one person somewhere is completely satisfied with at least one particular aspect of the game. Mission accomplished.

Sheesh.

[WT_Schmouddle]

Nodlew - there is no need to excuse yourself. One could slip here and there.
My critisism went towards moderators, not towards you.

In my eyes (and I am a mod elswhere, too) if they got banned you should have been banned too. If you were not, they shoud have not been banned neither.

Simple as that.