Was Oleg Maddox too far ahead of his time?

[secretone]

Originally Posted by MB_Avro_UK

Hi all,

Was he?

Best Regards,
MB_Avro.

Surely he was. But that is not the worst sin in the world and I admire him and the team for trying to create something beautiful and significant. What we learned along the way is not lost, it will be reused by others to reach even greater heights. I sometimes find so called failures like that to be more inspiring than most of the safe and mundane successes I see every day. What if nobody dared to write novels or symphonies or run for office because they were afraid of a flop; we would all lead poorer and less inspired lives I think.

[MB_Avro_UK]

Originally Posted by secretone

Surely he was. But that is not the worst sin in the world and I admire him and the team for trying to create something beautiful and significant. What we learned along the way is not lost, it will be reused by others to reach even greater heights. I sometimes find so called failures like that to be more inspiring than most of the safe and mundane successes I see every day. What if nobody dared to write novels or symphonies or run for office because they were afraid of a flop; we would all lead poorer and less inspired lives I think.

Well said

[Friendly_flyer]

Originally Posted by Outlaw

Without post graduate work very few engineers will truly understand the differential equations used to APPROXIMATE flight dynamics, let alone be able to actually program them. Putting together a top notch flight sim is a black art in and of itself. Merging it all into an actual game is staggering.

So, it is very difficult to find the, "right pros", when coding for a hard core PC based flight sim.

Having been sitting rather quietly on the sideline, my impression is that Oleg was too ambitious when he did the basic design for CoD. He clearly wanted it to be perfect in so many ways, and in the end he had neither the resources nor the time needed to fulfil his ambitions. One could always criticize him for not prioritizing harder and drop features to get a workable game, but he clearly stated he never wanted to make a beefed up IL2, but something new and spectacular. As one who do creative work professionally, I can certainly emphasize.

At some point 1C needed a return on their investment, apparently replaced Oleg and some other people and hoped Luthier would be able sift through Olegs work and put together something workable. As I'm sure Outlaw can confirm, switching rider mid-ride will newer be easy. Luthier probably did as well as anyone could, but in the end he too came up short on money and resources.

In the end, I don't think Oleg was too far ahead as much as too ambitious considering the amount of manpower and time he had at his disposal.

[David Hayward]

The problem isn't that he was too far ahead of his time, the problem is that they wasted a lot of time on stupid things like Spitfire Girl.

[*Buzzsaw*]

Salute

To address the question put forward by the original poster:

Oleg had a definite vision of what the STORM OF WAR was going to be. That would have put it far ahead of anything else produced in the Flight Sim genre.

However, for reasons we are not privy to, he left for an opportunity in industrial graphics, taking with him his chief code programmer.

Whether his leaving was primarily to do with an opportunity to explore a new field, or whether it was a function of issues between himself and 1C is a question which has not been answered.

Those who remained in the development team were not able to accomplish the goals which Oleg had originally set.

Luthier was an individual who had entered the Flight Sim business from a starting position as an amateur enthusiast, who started by doing volunteer graphics modelling. (remember the Bi1 in IL-2?) For whatever reason he and the team of programmers and coders were not able to implement the business plan set by 1C and the Maddox development team after Oleg left. Perhaps that plan was too ambitious? Perhaps the decisions made were not achievable with the skills remaining in the development team. I think personally quite a number of aircraft and objects included in the game were superfluous to the basic requirements of a BoB scenario. Perhaps the effort put into those objects was a factor in the lack of attention put to more basic and important concerns.

In any case we were left with a published game which was seriously lacking, full of bugs and not ready for use.

It took another year and a half to get it into reasonable shape. Now it is actually a well performing online game, more than able to accomodate 80 players, with most of the graphics bugs gone.

However, many issues remain, the primary being the failure to model altitude performance correctly.

Could these have been fixed with another 3 months of focused work? Perhaps. Perhaps the decision to focus the efforts of the development team on a BATTLE OF MOSCOW sequel should have been put aside until the basic game was performing as it should have.

1C made a financial and managerial decision, which we do not have the details of, to drop the game. How much of the decision was a function of their evaluation of the code's failings, and how much a function of their evaluation of the development team failings is unclear.

So we are left with an unfinished dream, which any detailed examination will tell has enormous potential, but which is now a seeming dead end.

A waste? Perhaps. Oleg's vision has not been fulfilled by the publishers. Maybe the goals were too lofty.

Now it is up to the community to take it further. If people believe in CoD sufficiently, they will step up and move it forward. Otherwise it will be just another dream unfulfilled.

We are where we are.

[LukeFF]

Originally Posted by *Buzzsaw*

What exactly are you doing here Luke?

I'm here because I want to be here and to add my own my opinion to the question originally asked.

You're just another ugly stray dog, p*ssing where you are not wanted.

Who died and left you in charge?

[LukeFF]

Originally Posted by Lexicon

7 years in developpement...Probably 5 to 7 million $$$... A very narrow niche type of game with so little market...At release the game doesn't even work at 100% with more than half the features removed and you dare to say that whoever was putting the money was not patient enough ?

My point exactly.

[LukeFF]

Originally Posted by SlipBall

That is interesting, I thought that they had a long history and were friends to each other.

I didn't mean that the two of them didn't get along with each other - rather that there were things going on behind the scenes that most people don't know about.

(And no, I'm not going to go into details. What was told me was told in confidence).

[ATAG_Bliss]

You don't have the 1st clue what happened. You don't even know what team members are there from the old team. You weren't here when IL2COD was active, so please don't come here now that it's closed.

A WWII sim on the ROF engine is gonna be an insult to WWII itself.

[Roblex]

Originally Posted by David Hayward

The problem isn't that he was too far ahead of his time, the problem is that they wasted a lot of time on stupid things like Spitfire Girl.

Define 'A lot of time'; it was a simple mission using a stock spitfire with a stock person jammed in the cockpit to restrict the view.

Do you realise that this happened in reality? A pilot whose name I forget actually did land at Biggin Hill, stop in front of a senior officer and let a girl out of his cockpit. They tried to court-martial him for endangering one of His Majesties aircraft to which his defence was that there was no added risk and he would be happy to demonstrate it again with a girl or a dummy One of his fellow pilots (more senior?) backed him up by saying he has also done it on several occasions and pointed out that there was nothing in the regulations to restrict carrying passengers in a spitfire. He got away with it!