Questions for Luthier

[bongodriver]

Originally Posted by salmo

Luthier, Is there any prospect of opening up COD for the community modders to improve content/gameplay & fix bugs? Perhaps with some sort of mechanism to allow 1C/dev's to "approve" altered content. I've always believed that there are community skills that could be utilised "for free" to improve COD which would relieve some of the load on the development team.

That would be the SDK which has already been confirmed as low priority.

[salmo]

Originally Posted by bongodriver

That would be the SDK which has already been confirmed as low priority.

No Bongo. I'm asking about access for modders to improve the gameplay, not about the SDK perse.

[Jugdriver]

Originally Posted by Tree_UK

Good post Phat, I think the word that we are looking for is 'Immersion' , Il2 fb had that and CLOD doesn't,

I don’t agree with you here, I think what is missing is Depth. IMO COD has good immersion, but it does not have the depth to make repeated play interesting over a long period.

Luthier, would a future SDK have the ability to produce human controlled planes and/or objects, or just maps?

JD
AKA_MattE

[Pudfark]

Dear fans,

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost a year. For myself and for the team the past two years are a blur. Things have been hectic long since CoD pre-release days and there’s no sign of letting down. We work in a constant state of emergency.

We know that even a year after the initial release many of you are still unhappy with many aspects of the game. We are painfully aware of your unhappiness. For me personally, it’s a constant feeling in the back of my head. It drives me and motivates me, and I in turn use it to drive and motivate the team. It is at the same time very humbling. I personally want to apologize to the community once again for the state of the game at release, and I want to thank you for sticking around this long and continuing to give us a chance to redeem ourselves.

I realize that the pace at which we release patches and updates has slowed considerably. The latest patch that has been “almost ready” for months, and it’s even more almost ready today. The graphics rework is basically done. The average framerate has shot up almost twice. Only one relatively minor issue remains that prevents the gunsight, tracers, and bullet decals from being drawn. Of course, this minor technical issue has a huge impact on gameplay, and that is why we cannot release it to the public in its current state.
Secondly, reworking and becoming confident in the graphics engine itself allowed us to spread the net and start identifying additional issues that were causing hick-ups and slowdowns in the game. That is the hardest thing to locate since they are unpredictable and very difficult to replicate. Rewriting the graphics engine fixed many of those issues, and made the others very easy to identify by narrowing down the usual suspects. We have identified some very obscure issues with visual effects, the landscape engine, the texture manager, and with the weather system that were causing the occasional stuttering that by itself arguably had a bigger impact on gameplay than low average FPS.

On our end, we are much more confident in our product today than we were a year ago, and we are also much more excited about the future. The team continues to grow. We are just now beginning to look for a huge number of new applicants that will grow the team by almost 25%. We have a lot of very exciting new things on our plate that we cannot wait to reveal. The general mood of the team is one of excitement. We cannot wait to prove our detractors wrong, crush the competition, and give our fans what they are looking for with our next major release!

Thank you again for your support!


Ilya Shevchenko
Lead Development Producer

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I realize, that was then and this is now. What happened?
Communication the last 18 months has been abysmal, will it
remain the same?

[JG52Krupi]

Originally Posted by Pudfark

I realize, that was then and this is now. What happened?
Communication the last 18 months has been abysmal, will it
remain the same?

+1, please keep us informed.

[Storm of When]

I don`t chip in on the forums very often and I do actually enjoy playing the game every now and then on the ATAG server mainly but...

When you state that no other developer would have supported this release as much as you people have really gets me annoyed, Mr Shevchenko could you tell me in what other form of business could such a complete mess have been released as a working product without a recall and demands for a refund??. I think you should be grateful that 1C are still employing you and the team given the failure in an 18 month time period to fix this product to a satisfactory level??.

On ATAG it`s very easy to lose sight of targets or chase ones that simply aren`t there,
can that be fixed please?

Any combat online involving more than about 5 aircraft turns into a slideshow any chance the community that supports the game by playing online could have that sorted please.

Any chance that the community relations chap could be a little more enlightened when answering the questions,,, I don`t know wait and see is wearing a bit thin.

[planespotter]

Originally Posted by FS~Phat

In anycase, my question is, do you think you can do better with "gameplay" in the sequel? Whether that be, "MMO" or a new "co-op" mode or team "death match", "capture the flag" these kinds of things from a flightsim perspective for the online world would bring a bit of variety. The other obvious thing missing from CLOD was a campaign...

Agree and support and would like to add to this question...will the sequel include a dynamic campaign?

The community can build missions and static campaigns and for 1946 the best campaigns were comunity made. Desastersoft does great static campaigns. Heinkill does fantastic historic and alt history missions.

But only 1C team can give the series an integrated dynamic campaign engine.

Any chance?

[JG52Krupi]

I know you have said that there will only be one more patch before the sequel but is there any possibility that features that were going to be in COD and are being made in the sequel could be tested in COD?

[Stealth_Eagle]

Is there a way that you can make the sequel(s) independent of Steam please? I'm wanting to be able to buy a CD and install it and be able to play it in the distant future (I'm saying when I'm 36 in 20 years about) without having to worry about Steam. That is just hope that I have since I hope to continue flying this for as long as I can (devolpment of the original IL-2 started before I was born and it's my favorite game that I own).

Thanks for your time and commitment,
Eagle

[BlackSix]

I stopped collecting the questions. Thanks!
Please, waiting.