Friday 2011-02-04 Dev. update and Discussion

[Bolelas]

Originally Posted by Skoshi Tiger

Hi! and thankyou very much for the update.

In the video Luthier is using a Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog. As I've recently got one I'ld be interested to know how CoD handles the On-Off switches on the throttle.

In IL2 many of the game commands are toggles, where the same key switches the system on or off (ie the engine switch where it is controlled by a single momentary switch ). Will CoD allow a latching OFF/ON switch (like many on the Warthog throttle) to be switched on and stay in that state until the switch is turned off?

I hope this makes sense.

Cheers and thanks again

Interesting question mr Tiger, i asked this one over and over(luckly i didnt get banned), and got no answers. Its so simple to solder 2 wires and put a on-off switch on your joystick! i hope they include this possibility, i mean, the game is so complex with tiny details, and why not this option to cockpit builters? i know simple rc games that have this option! Even if they dont, congratulations to all Madox team work, its awsome!

[Avimimus]

Originally Posted by kirq

I think it's a good time to tell what actualy is in the game, not what didn't make it into it. And I'm not thinking about release announcement (full of errors). Some screens looks great, others look mediocre. There is no single one video up to date captured on decent rig showing something more then 1-2 min of flying over water.

[...]

PS. I really don't understand how things showed in 2006 as a main features of the game woun't be available on the realease almost 5 years later...

1) Oleg tends to deliberately under-sell the product in order to avoid hype and keep expectations low (with the result that he gets more positive reviews at release)

2) The engine was rewritten in that period. The old version would have been limited to DX9 etc. The new SoW engine is designed for growth, assuming that sales are high enough (with four additional projects already planned, with work completed on some of them). Expect new features (and higher minimum system specs) in the next few years.

Generally, I'd recommend trusting Oleg. I've watched his work for ten years now and no one has a higher dedication to quality and pushing the limits of what can be done (even when it really doesn't make financial sense) than his team.

[Stukadriver]

This is footage I took while flying the Langhurst Stuka replica of Oberst Rudel's JU87B2 Stuka T6+AD. Kind of calm days but hot...hence open cockpit...did not bounce around in cockpit as much as usual.
"

[luthier]

Originally Posted by Tree_UK

Luthier, thanks for your reply, the answer is obvious, use a PC that is good enough.

If I had a high-end PC, the recommended specs we've released a while ago would have been the minimum specs.

I'm using a mid-range PC for a very specific reason.

You have to understand that my job is to make a good game. It is NOT to market and advertise it. We're a tiny developer working on a shoestring budget. If I have to stop working for a day each week to make videos, we will end up with a kick-ass marketing campaign for a crappy game. I'd rather have it the other way around.

Originally Posted by Skinny

Luthier, am I right concluding from the above that CoD (much like IL2) is mostly CPU bound, rather than videocard bound ? At least at "normal" resolutions (HD and below) and AA settings, IL2 doesnt care too much what videocard you have, you can increase resolution and AA and it barely makes a difference, even on my old 4870, but the CPU speed makes all the difference in the world, game performance scales almost linearly with CPU clockspeed.

Do you know how well the CoD engine makes use of 4 (or more?) cores, and whether or not that shifts the bottleneck towards the GPU again, or is even a Core i7 or whatever the main bottleneck?

You need a good video card to play over populated areas. We have huge textures so lots of video memory is important too.

Originally Posted by LukeFF

What is the status on the dynamic campaign system? We know from the announcement on the Ubi forums that it won't make the original release.

There's bits and pieces. We made a decision about 18 months ago that we wouldn't be able to make it right, and we'd rather build good static campaigns instead. So it's been on a backburner for some time.

I'm the guy who wrote a bunch of giant 100-page design docs for the dynamic campaign, so it was a very hard decision for me personally.

There's probably at least a year of work left on it to make it great. We could have make something like an Il-2 level dynamic campaign in a few months, but I don't want to do that at all. I want it to be ground-breaking and worthy of the rest of the game.

Originally Posted by Meusli

Damn missed you Luthier, but maybe you see this question tomorrow. When the video was at an end you was telling them to cut recording, is this because you did not want us to see the parachute scene? Also i noticed the eject scene was missing that animation you showed us of a bailing sequence, has this also been removed for release

No, I actually thought that the video was crap and I wanted another take. And I ran out of ideas.

Originally Posted by Skoshi Tiger

In the video Luthier is using a Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog. As I've recently got one I'ld be interested to know how CoD handles the On-Off switches on the throttle.

Not good. We just got the Warthog this week, and I was very disappointed in how most of the buttons worked. I played around with the TM software and couldn't figure it out at all. The push-up-for-constant-input button that's also a push-down-for-no-input-at-all doesn't work with the game at all. We need to write a whole different chunk of code for that kind of input to be recognized properly.

Originally Posted by Tree_UK

Yes thanks for that, but can you not see where your answer is fundamentally flawed, in that we dont know how it runs on a high end system, we keep begging Luthier and Oleg to show us some video on a real high end PC, we want to wave the Cliffs Of Dover flag and say jeez look how good this game runs if you've got the the right kit, hundreds of people are waiting to buy or build new systems and spend thousands just to play this game, but for some reason the devs are holding back on showing us this game run on a top end gaming rig.

Jeez.

Originally Posted by zapatista

question: is there any hope to have the dynamic campaign element added in as a similar "as is" state, and allow the community to develop it further with some tools ?

It's nowhere near the state of the weather. There's nothing to play with. Most of the dynamic campaign exists in prototype stages split up into separate chunks.

Originally Posted by Koyan

I think the chute is still being worked on. At the end of the video when Ilya is about to open the chute, he suddenly realizes its not ready to show yet and makes this 'cut' gesture.

No, the parachute is OK. There's no collision with the plane yet which is why it's not as good as we want it to be, but otherwise the cut gesture and the bail out sequence are not connected in any way.

Originally Posted by I/ZG52_Gaga

however the complete absense of human representation in the game other than the aircrews is something that in my opinion, the artists of 1C should re-consider.

Yes, I'm of the same exact opinion. We messed this one up. It's completely my fault. Our lead ground 3D modeler hates my guts for it. We are working on it though. At the very least we'll try to dump something into all those vehicles for release.

It looks horrible and we all know it, believe me.

Originally Posted by kirq

I think it's a good time to tell what actualy is in the game, not what didn't make it into it. And I'm not thinking about release announcement (full of errors). Some screens looks great, others look mediocre. There is no single one video up to date captured on decent rig showing something more then 1-2 min of flying over water.

[...]

PS. I really don't understand how things showed in 2006 as a main features of the game woun't be available on the realease almost 5 years later...

I explained this in detail earlier in the thread. When we try to do something ground breaking, sometimes we end up failing to deliver.

I'll note again that everything we said we were going to do, we did. It's just we were not able to get it into a playable state quickly enough. It will take more time.

Very impressive !

I would say, though, that the grass is way to "greenish" ( at 2:30 till 3:00) and the clouds are still looking 2D...The trees are nice, but would need more different types. Water is to dark. The propeller F/X certainely needs work !
And the sound ! Awfull !

But anayway, nice work !



Salute

[Trumper]

Originally Posted by luthier

We couldn't record the real Merlin or a Daimler Benz or basically any real engine from BoB era due to a limited budget. There aren't any in Russia, and we couldn't fly out our sound engineer to the UK or Germany with all his equipment.

We do have the recordings of the real engines of course made with various Russian aircraft this summer. Using advanced SFX magic we transformed our samples to sound the way we needed.

Am i to read into this then that we won't be hearing Merlins or D-Benz engines,how close is the synthetic version to the real thing?.
I wondered if the Merlin sounds could've been recorded from an external running engine on a test bed if access to the aircraft wasn't available.
Would the sounds be able to be modded/patched in the future if access and recording equipment were able to get access?
Thanks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fSEeu0hzLo

[Stukadriver]

I don't know how you guys balance the wishes of the players with the reality of the constraints on hardware and the time investment it takes to get such a nice game to market. I can imagine the howling and crying of some if you put this game out and it only could run on a beefy computer. My time spent checking in on the forum to see how your game is progressing has confirmed to me that you can't please everyone. I sometimes wonder why you didn't just close the effort. I admire your perseverence. Your development company has an excellent record and your products have brought me hours and hours of enjoyment. I am looking forward to COD because your past work has been outstanding and I am confident that this game will continue that tradition.

[Stukadriver]

To Kalimba -

I like your humor! Good man.

[JAMF]

Originally Posted by luthier

You need a good video card to play over populated areas. We have huge textures so lots of video memory is important too.

Good to know. With regard to memory, are you allowed to share the answer to these questions:
-Is the 32Bit exe programmed with LargeAddressAware, so even the 32Bit exe can use 3GB on the 32Bit Windows and 4GB on the 64Bit Windows7?

-Is the 64Bit exe scheduled for the release, or has it been scheduled for a patch? (I hope I didn't miss a previous answer to this question)

[Feathered_IV]

Thanks for the update Luthier. Nice to see the "human" element in the vid. Hopefully we'll all develop a similar cackle soon.

By the way, do you know if Oleg got the email I sent regarding this?:



Wiek Luijken is willing and able and happy to offer his services to Oleg.