Friday Update, January 27, 2012

Originally Posted by Dano

I've no problem with people airing the issues

I just wish they'd do it in a more reasonable way and not post blatant untruths because it helps nobody. I can understand the frustration but as I have said before, what is ranting and raving going to do? Nothing, it serves no purpose other than to inflame the community to arguments.

Dano , I agree with you. But recently, due to the lack of new real updates to chew on, we are all a bit on the edge I would presume...
Personnaly, I can cope with whining regarding COD's future and things to come...I find it more difficult to deal with personnal insults and intolerance...And flaming people with whom we disagree...But hey, that is me !

Salute !

[Baron]

Originally Posted by Heliocon

Modelers dont model the "engine structure" other than the polygons, all the programming for that is done by others, including internals etc. Also modeling the engine is the easiest of the bunch because its not actually visible in game so it can be low polygon count/quality.

So I believe he said there are many people involved in modeling planes, not just 1. A year is absurd.
I love that they are informing us on whats up, unfortunetly its probably bs.

I guess u missed the post by the guy who worked with MS amongst others stating that a year would not be unusual. MS spent a fair few months on one ac with no DM (huge chunk of the work), working weapons etc.

[Blackdog_kt]

Now i know i'm not around as much as i used to, what with real life commitments and all, but especially due to my busy schedule my tolerance level for forum shenanigans is running low.

We've got more moderators here running around the clock too in various timezones, so even if i don't call it, someone else is bound to.

Stern and Ace, take it up in PM and stop cluttering the thread. I'm starting from the last page and going backwards for as long as i can be bothered to, before actually doing some flying (as in "spending my free time flying the sim instead of babysitting adults").

Everything that is

a) not related to the nature of the update or
b) debating and rehashing old news for the millionth time with a bit of personal point scoring interjected

is getting deleted.

I'm not around much, but from now on whoever derails announcement posts will get an infraction if i'm around to see it.

Opinions are fine, positive and negative, as long as you can remain respectful of our fellow forum users. That means wording them in a respectable manner and taking care not to turn each and every thread into your personal boxing ring. And just to let you know we're trying to be impartial here, if you keep it up you're both just as likely to get a ban, no matter your opinion of CoD.

Stick to the bloody topic and stop wasting everyone's time.

[Sutts]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

Now i know i'm not around as much as i used to, what with real life commitments and all, but especially due to my busy schedule my tolerance level for forum shenanigans is running low.

We've got more moderators here running around the clock too in various timezones, so even if i don't call it, someone else is bound to.

Stern and Ace, take it up in PM and stop cluttering the thread. I'm starting from the last page and going backwards for as long as i can be bothered to, before actually doing some flying (as in "spending my free time flying the sim instead of babysitting adults").

Everything that is

a) not related to the nature of the update or
b) debating and rehashing old news for the millionth time with a bit of personal point scoring interjected

is getting deleted.

I'm not around much, but from now on whoever derails announcement posts will get an infraction if i'm around to see it.

Opinions are fine, positive and negative, as long as you can remain respectful of our fellow forum users. That means wording them in a respectable manner and taking care not to turn each and every thread into your personal boxing ring. And just to let you know we're trying to be impartial here, if you keep it up you're both just as likely to get a ban, no matter your opinion of CoD.

Stick to the bloody topic and stop wasting everyone's time.

Good to see you here Blackdog. I do miss your posts - they were level headed, intelligent and unbiased, a quality sadly missing these days.

Please clear your inbox if you can - I tried sending a PM but it bounced with an inbox full message.

Cheers

[Sutts]

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger II

well one year on the shelf and the game is still not working, if that's not a failure I dunno how to call it.. Once the new Battle of Moscow will be out, CoD will just be a distant fart in the past. This game is getting no more planes, zip, nada.

Sorry but I must take issue with this statement. The game hasn't failed at all....it runs very well on my fairly low spec machine - XP, 2GB, GeForce GTS 250 - on lowish settings admittedly, but I'm realistic about what old hardware can handle. I do plan to upgrade when finances allow.

The game does suffer from crashes - which should be addressed by the new graphics engine release I remember reading. In the mean time I'm getting a great deal of enjoyment out of it as are many others.

As for your statement "CoD will just be a distant fart in the past. This game is getting no more planes, zip, nada." that's wrong too. Look at the way each sequel in the IL2 series added new content and aircraft. That content can immediately be used in CoD (with new skins etc), as can all the extra features being planned for the sequel.

With the sequel CoD will be reborn - in a more stable, fully featured state. Like a new product really. That's something I look forward to very much. Then of course we'll have all the extra content added by 3rd parties once the SDK is released.

CoD is far from dead and abandoned so please don't keep promoting that myth. It really does nobody any good. The future looks very bright in my eyes. The Devs have made some mistakes and were pushed into a very difficult corner last year. However, they have proved to me that they love this product and have the dedication and hard work to make it work - if we allow them.

All will be good if we can just be patient and have a little faith.

[Sternjaeger II]

all we can do now is wait and hope..

[Blackdog_kt]

I managed to get as far back as page 19 or so, cleaning up the thread. It's 5am on a Sunday and i'll probably try to clean up the rest of the pages, instead of going on ATAG to skip bomb some ships because i'm a community-minded masochist like that. So please work with me here and keep on topic from now on

Not all people with deleted posts should be worried (the ones who should got a warning already), so don't flood my PM box please

It's just standard moderating practice that when we do a thread clean up, we prune all posts that contain links to the offending posts (such as quotes, replies, etc).

I will post this quote from page 19, because it summarizes all the "has already been argued to death" situations in an eloquent, polite and impartial manner:

Originally Posted by Strike

I dare you to disappear until 27.01.2012

Otherwise, this bashing between RoF and CloD isn't getting us anywhere. If cluttering up the internet with hate-spam is your main goal in life, the joke is on you. I play both sims, I have my own reasons for preferring bits and pieces of both of them. If I could have it my way, I would combine the best of RoF and CloD's game engines, but that would probably be a game set for release around the time where Skynet's robots are erasing humans from the planet.

If you ask me personally, my opinion is that Luthier is right about one very essential thing. When they set off with this goal "make 2nd Gen IL-2 series BETTER than first" they chewed over A LOT more than they could swallow.

What it is is really like comparing a 18th century cannon towards a M109 Howitzer. Imagine the issues you could have with a cannon= Fuse wet, wrong amount of gunpowder, wheel falls off cannon rig etc... Then imagine a M109... think of the million pieces of hardware and software tied together in a very finely tuned engineering masterpiece. What we have is CloD.. aka the M109 that - unfortunately - was not finely tuned at release. So now what? Well the gun fires, it can drive around but every now and then the turret hangs up and the thing breaks down. Annoying as "F" and you probably wished you had a damn 18th century cannon instead But the point is here, the devs have to take into account a system so vast, any small tweak may have a large impact in the end of the coding string. A simple parameter in the JU87 AI divebomb routine config, may render all other aircraft with bombs to commit CFIT suicide. And now you have to write new code, that may effect other elements of the game in a negative behaviour, so you need to open a whole set of branches in a huge coding-tree only to implement a simple alteration of an AI tactic.

Again, to step away from this wall of text, I feel that Luthier set the bar too high. Hence temporary(?) removal of advanced weather features, animations, atmosphere etc etc. As the project moved along, things must only have become more and more difficult. Making all parts of this game engine communicate and cooperate properly is a huge undertaking. It's miles ahead of anything else on the market when it comes to damage modeling. The potential that lies in the game engine to introduce player controlled ground/air/sea vehicles is also a strong competative factor one should consider. It could potentially lure tank-warfare/naval-warfare enthusiasts into the genre some day.

But what about us? All the waiting? What about our satisfaction? The bang for our bucks?

Well mate, it's all up to YOU! Nobody can tell you how you are supposed to react when playing this sim. It's all up to your expectations and needs. It's wether IL-2 CloD hits you on all the right spots, or completely strokes you against your hairs that will help you judge the game.

I can only speak for myself when I say that when I fly my trusty spit over the french coast I get excited only by the fact that some german AA gun may target me, and the damage I potentially can receive could do anything really, but based on the accurate calculations of bullet velocity, ammunition type, impact angle, shrapnel, material strength, penetration, structural consequences, component damage etc etc. It's thrilling to know all of this stuff is being calculated as the sim plays out, and no outcome is identical.

What I miss is working launcher.exe during MP, more varied and indepth sound, better AI, campaign etc.. But as long as they claim they are working on this, I can wait a few months. What I have now gives me the kicks I need - a.k.a the good outweigh/balance the bad.

As for RoF, it's the wrong forum to be discussing, but I didn't play it until a year after I bought it I was so disappointed. 5 flyables or something like that, loads of bugs and unoptimized content, menus etc.. As for now, I enjoy it, but more in the essence of how I think of BF3 and ARMAII. I play BF3 for hours and hours for a great action game, with even balancing and 15 second respawn. But I play ARMA II for the more "hardcore" game, which happens to have bogged physics etc, but gives me a LOT greater feeling of "acheiving" something. RoF is like an online deathmatch frenzy, all planes are so balanced, but you always get shot down by a turning camel or Dr.1 . 'Special damage' seems utterly random (fuel leak, oil leak, ammo explosion, fire) and wing damage is just climbing %. The higher the % damage is the easier it breaks off. For me, I feel nothing special when gunning at planes in RoF. It's like ok theres a 50% chance the wings come off, there's a 25% chance the engine catches fire and a 25% chance the pilot dies. All the trailer videos showcasing advanced engine models etc feels like a marketing stunt to me. In CloD at least my individual cylinders can misfire! But Rise of Flight has been more immersive due to some cool effects such as the dynamic wind, rain/blood spatter, sound etc. But then again it all feels so built up around core elements such as "pretty art-like graphics" and balanced flight models.

So you can basically ignore my opinion on CloD and RoF and have your own, but bashing them back and forth in a thread for discussing the upcoming expansion and promised friday updates is just rude. I totally welcome and promote constructive feedback, but this is NOT the place for waging forum warfare and CERTAINLY NOT the place for addressing problems with RoF :p It could be an own thread in the pilots lounge: "IL-2 CloD - RoF: Comparisons".

I would like it to be made common knowledge just exactly how complicated this simulator actually is, what's being taken into account, what's being rendered and then perhaps everyone would understand the amount of time and work is required to actually "fix" something. Too many people claim that "Oh well fixing this should be easy". Well there it is^^ In the update stated by the boss himself. It is almost NEVER easy - be sure.

As for the update? I base my expectations on the previous update records, and sooner or later, we're all bound to be positively surprised aren't we?

I've bought the game, there's nothing I can do about it now whether I like it or not, besides whining about it, or doing something more productive*. Do like Chuck Norris, choose the latter.


*(there's a huge list of productive stuff to do, pm me if you need advice)


Thanks for the update Luthier, I'll bee seeing your update next week Be sure

Whenever one needs to argue the same old points take a look at this quote, take a couple of deep breaths and re-read your post before hitting the submit button. If one's post has nothing new to add on top of that quote, then one should post about something else.

This is an update thread and people need to be able to be informed and exchange ideas about the update. They don't come here to be "entertained" by a minority of "forum gladiators".

I don't like heavy-handed moderation, but at some point a line is drawn and that point is when people can't use a thread for the purpose it was originally created.

Thanks for your cooperation

[Skoshi Tiger]

Originally Posted by Chivas

The only aspect of COD I don't see the developer continue to work on are the Campaigns and Missions for COD. The existing FMB and any updates to the FMB gives the community more than enough tools to make very good campaigns, and missions, just as they were done in the original series. New aircraft will be added to COD thru those developed for other theaters and from the SDK that will be provided by the developer to the community.

Also if the AI and flight models are recieving a rewrite, why would you spend large amounts of time building detailed missions and campaigns if you can't predict what the actor behaviours will be. Surely that time would be better spent after it has been updated? (This goes for community developed content as well as the Devs)

[150GCT_Veltro]

The only update we need is a working and debugged Battle of Britain, no more no less even if i doubt we'll never have it.

Stern is 100% right, like it or not.

Thank for the update, nice Rata.........

@Stern give it up with CoD and this forum, and wait for the patch. We'll see......

[Feathered_IV]

I imagine Luthier has now been fully updated as to the feelings of the community.