Short status update

[luthier]

Hi everyone,

As I see, there are plenty of wild rumors circulating on these forums, and of course it's completely our fault. I myself simply cannot spend enough time posting on these forums, as I work 10-12 hour days 7 days a week and barely have time to sit down. I feel the weight of my failure to interact with the community daily, but all I have time for is browsing the forums, not actually posting.

We are however in the process of creating a full-time community manager position and setting up an old team member who will interact with you guys daily, answer questions, and keep you up to date on all events.

Otherwise, the work on the patch continues. The true full-screen mode has been a nightmare from hell. It still does not work properly. Every once in a while, after you hit Esc to go to the menu from inside the game, the game will go into the background and require you to alt-tab to you. And while it may seem like a pretty minor thing to most of you, after everything you've already lived through, it's still bad practice and annoying and we always feel like we're 'this' close to solving it.

The current build we have did address the multiplayer issues, thanks in no small part to the help of the dedicated server hosts. Obviously MP is a larger priority than the full-screen mode. If by the end of the day Tuesday we still haven't solved the full screen issue, we will most likely release the patch anyway just so you guys can have stable reliable MP experience, and add the full-screen fix at a later time.

We are also hard at work on some larger game components. We are also hiring, with quite a few new openings posted recently for our Moscow office. We already have a new team member, an experienced AI programmer, reworking our plane AI code and voice comms, and we are working to expand and improve our team during the coming weeks to make sure we can roll out better more well-rounded updates quicker. We are also hard at work on FM changes and improvements, redesigning GUI to make it more user-friendly, and creating new variants of existing aircraft.

Those team members not hard at work on improving CoD have also been working on new content for a new project for quite some time. We've posted a teaser in our V-E day post. Just to state again, work on that project is specifically designed not to interfere with our CoD support.

Most importantly, please don't take the frequency of my visits as an indication of anything right now. As a matter of fact, if you see me here posting a lot, that's the best clue that we are NOT working as hard as we should. All of us at 1C:Maddox Games, 1C Softclub, and Ubisoft, are fully committed to the game and to the series, and like we always said, we will continue to support it with patches, add-ons and sequels in the coming months and years.

[Hunden]

Thank you for the update

[Goanna]

Good to hear from you Luthier.. hopefully it'll make the naysayers stfu... bet it doesn't though

Cheers

Goanna

[Strike]

Hey thanks a lot for posting

Wish you all the best for continuing support for CoD and future projects!

Speaking for myself at least I am having fun with what I have Excited about the future, and thanks for prioritizing MP. There's a lot of fun to be made online

I like the news about a more user-friendly GUI. The layout, though dark and depressing , is okay, but the issues with selecting ammo loadouts, saving presets and actually getting them to load is proving a little frustrating. It's like a little tease saying "Look at all the cool ammo you can't use" The way you did MP home base selection in IL-2 was perfect! Simple and tidy. Perhaps combining the map with easy navigation tools to find the bases + using old IL-2 style plane selection and loadout would be a more welcome approach. That way, fans from the old day will have an easier time to pick up, and new guys will see some logic in the GUI :p I'm sure you are already thinking hard about this, but often the simplest way is the best, and make an "advanced" button for the options not necessary to "jump in and fly" (such as ammo belting, fuzes, convergence). That way the plane selection screen may look a bit tidier I'm at least finding the scrollbar thing to see all the options a bit confusing from a design standpoint. Also while I'm on the topic of homebase selection, have a number showing how many other players are spawning from that base, that makes finding the action so much easier. Actually for GUI all together, I'd say just draw as much as you can from the old series, and incorporate the new stuff with easy navigation in mind

Sorry, may sound a bit harsh, but it's just my personal experience with the product. I must say I fly the sim as often as I can and even with your great success of IL-2 FB, I simply can't say that I prefer the old game. I feel "wrong" as if there's something better to be flown, which is CoD. I'm still absolutely baffled by the damage model and effects. You have done an excellent job with all the effects this time. Big fuel leaks, small fuel leaks, oil sprays that look different from six o clock and from the side. The smoke effects also seem to vary frequently in size, like you often see from the propwash affecting the airstream the smoke is generated in. It's much better than the original "spinning texture balls" we're used to. The various fires and ability for them to spread is nice. I like the fuel tank explosion when the wings break off with a huge cloud of fuel vapor igniting into a fireball. I am grateful to review my victories, looking at the fallen enemy to see where all my bullets struck, what systems they took out and even where the bullet has exited if it just passed through the fabric. The amount of systems modeled, working together in one plane alone is like nothing I've ever seen before in a combat flight sim, and then add the rest of the planes that are in the fight. The randomness of each dogfight is infinite. It's almost like you built the sim around the damage models, because it's one of the things with the game that you have gotten very close to perfection.

Once you get this sim to a overall pretty stable version and you can start focusing on what you're already waiting for: expanding the scope of the sim, it's going to get even more interesting than it is today

Thank you, I'll be flying this until you build the next generation flightsim, some 10-20 years from now maybe

[louisv]

Thanks Luthier, can't wait for the 24th !

[SEE]

The vast majority take no notice of the 'doom and gloom' brigade and thanks for the hard work and comittment.

Thanks mate for the update. Now we can delete all the negative posts that referred to the series 'definately' crashing. Hope now we can all support you guys and look forward to the patch.
To all the doomsday people, don't you all look a bit silly now. I'm not talking about the people who complained about the state of the game on release but those who posted that CoD will crash and burn.

[Redroach]

Originally Posted by luthier

As I see, there are plenty of wild rumors circulating on these forums, and of course it's completely our fault.

As angry as I am with various things not working in CoD, I deeply appreciate your attitude towards the customer. It takes a fine character to have that stressful position, take major flak from the community and still stay so cooperative. Kudos.

[Sauf]

Thank you, make sure you insert a "stress" clause in the community manager's contract, I'll give him a fortnight before the trolls here drive him into a dribbling mess.

[IceFire]

Luthier as always thanks for keeping us in the loop. I don't need daily updates but I love to hear how you guys are doing. It makes the whole thing that much more real to me and it gives us that inside track that we really appreciate.

I still can't even buy the game yet but it looks like Steam release to North American customers is coming up soon and I'm excited to get in on the action.

Good luck and keep things coming!