Reviewing Luthier's roadmap

[jimbop]

Remember Luthier's roadmap? (As if you could forget with JG52Krupi's constant reminders... )

I thought it would be good to review the roadmap since the dev team has come a long way since release and I think this is quite good progress. Hopefully a new roadmap will be shared soon since I think this one is now out of date although for good reasons (i.e. a lot of stuff on it has been fixed).

1. Performance increase. Over terrain, the two things that slow things down the most are trees and buildings. We are currently in final stages of testing optimized buildings that almost double the FPS over London on a test machine.
Tree optimization is a little farther away. You will probably see changes in how trees are rendered, they’ll take longer to appear over terrain, but once again, performance increase should be significant.
If everything tests correctly over the weekend, both of these should be released by early to mid next week.

- Achieved. Always room for improvement but do you remember performance before the Kegetys mod and subsequent official patch?

2. Enhanced multicore support. The mode that we unfortunately were not able to finish in time is sending all render to a dedicated CPU core. The mode is working but somewhat buggy. It easily doubles the FPS, and the performance boost is especially noticeable in larger missions with lots of stuff going on.
This is probably at least two to three weeks away, and we will probably do a short public beta of this major change before it’s made live to everyone.

- Achieved as above, implemented in a patch (can't remember which one). Probably further room for improvement with dedicating rendering to a core if I remember correctly but still mostly achieved I think.

3. Multiplayer. There is something in steam filters that prevents game servers from being found. This is only happening with live retail versions of the game. This apparently isn’t caused by us – hopefully it’s just a simple oversight somewhere and the fix will be a simple flick of a switch.

- In progress I think. The specific problem referred to above was fixed but MP is obviously stuffed at the moment with the sound problem.

4. FM and ballistics. We have already addressed the issue where rounds appeared to leave aircraft sideways. This was caused by the difference between physical and rendered position of the aircraft, i.e. the rendered position lagged behind the actual aircraft position.
Our aircraft programmer has a huge bucket list of things to check, which he’s going over at a rather brisk pace.

- In progress but FM will always be in progress if IL2 is anything to go by. Quite right too.

5. Resurrecting SLI support. This is our next biggest priority; it’s done by the same programmer now in final stages of optimizing buildings. We are really hoping this will be a quick task, but I don’t have an ETA at this point. It’ll either be a couple of days, or a much longer undetermined amount of time if we have to submit versions to card manufacturers and ask for their input.

- Fail. This should have been fixed by now or at least a status update. I know that there are non-CoD profiles available that 'work' but I doubt these are optimal. SLI is just not optional in game development these days with many new since cards being multicore.

6. Bug fixes and support. We are reading this forum a lot and some Russian-language forums, and working very hard to address all issues as they are being reported.

- I don't know how to rate this one. Luthier, if you are reading the forum please leave a comment from time to time! Especially in the bug threads (Insuber's, beta bug threads) to encourage quality feedback otherwise these will inevitably degrade with less and less valuable input. Why bother going to the effort of accurately describing bugs if you think no-one is reading it?

7. New stuff – larger online maps, some new aircraft such as the 109E1 and E4 etc – are all in the pipeline too, but obviously we need to solve the bigger issues first and then deal with the freebies.

- Achieved with the new plane in the last patch but this will obviously be ongoing as well.

All in all I think the progress is quite good. My current major gripe is the lack of feedback from the devs rather than the rate of improvement. A formal recognised bug list would be tremendously useful for the community to build on.

If you want to post please try and keep the thread positive with comments on what you think the next roadmap should be in general terms (there are more than adequate existing threads for both bug reporting and ranting). Mine would be:

1. Online playability (sound and FMs)
2. Formal bug list for the community to build on
3. SDK and FMB documentation release
4. Offline playability (dynamic campaign or at least a decent set of static campaigns). Note that #4 would be assisted by #3 due to quality community development.

[JG52Krupi]

Nice very good post Jimbop.

Let's hope this thread can be kept civil

Xfire is certainly a fail for me using pseudo fullscreen to disable my 5970 I get around 10fps gain from turning my fantastic gpu into a 5870

[SG1_Lud]

Originally Posted by JG52Krupi

Nice very good post Jimbop.

Let's hope this thread can be kept civil

+1 but I won't bet on the second

[Bobb4]

I started posting in this thread, then I realised I have not played Clod since the last patch and to be honest I no longer care if it is fixed. The game is shelved next to my copy of Silent Hunter 5.
Team Dalious are doing wonders with Il2 and honestly outshining the crowd here.

[JG27CaptStubing]

Bob... I'm with you on this one. This game while some would argue has a long ways to go before I spend the time. I'm currently enjoying DCS A10. I'm holding off until some major portions of the game are fixed MP and some Offline stuff.

I think a fail was trying to say the FULLSCREEN is fixed when its not.
We have fullscreen (i think) when actually flying, and not proper fullscreen when in menus. The flashing desktop issue makes me feel ill it happens so often.
Why on earth has this been left this way? Its fundamentally wrong that they should be working on anything else till fullscreen is fixed, ie my game switches to full screen on start up without all the crazy desktop flashing, and doesnt change back till i exit the game.

But i think the biggest fail is that they said we would have a community spokesman to keep us fully informed LOL.

[carguy_]

All in all I think the progress is quite good. My current major gripe is the lack of feedback from the devs rather than the rate of improvement. A formal recognised bug list would be tremendously useful for the community to build on.

Just out of curiosity, where have you seen a game that has a stellar, frequent dev-community communication? What are your real life comparisons, that make you realise that there is "lack of feedback"?

1. Online playability (sound and FMs)

All for it. The multiplayer is what the dev team nedds to repair and quick. Even simple squad to squad coops will do for few months. This means sound bugs and a completely new UI which is similar to this of Hyperlobby.

2. Formal bug list for the community to build on

I`m pretty sure that`s recognized. The feeling of being ifnored by the devs may come from the fact that they have different priorities. We don`t exactly see the repairing of multiplayer interface, but then again what good is it without online sound?

3. SDK and FMB documentation release

It seems this is a question of both decision making and lots of work. The SDK has been announced unofcially, though we know nothing else as if the team decided to refrain from releasing the SDK in current situation. Documentation is lots of work and I think that the user community will sooner make it on its own.

4. Offline playability (dynamic campaign or at least a decent set of static campaigns). Note that #4 would be assisted by #3 due to quality community development.

That`s one step away. Though how do you think they can create such campaigns if they do have a whole lot of highier priority work?

Dude i hear the black beauty main theme when i read your posts listing excuses for why this game insnt right, you obviously are on a crusade to shut down any thread that you think may be negative or maybe have uniformed information contained within it. Why not just leave people to their opinion instead of pulling apart what they have said? Oh... are you our Community Guy in disguise? Incognito Car Guy shhhh

[bongodriver]

I'm confused.......all the time now I hear DCS is better, ROF is better, I have shelved COD and just don't care for it any more, I'm not playing anymore wah! wah! wah!........so why are these folks here?.......constantly, shouldn't they be filling their time playing DCS and ROF because they are just so brilliant? instead of coming to this forum and making comments about a game they just 'don't care for'.....constantly.

Because they can, "they" have always been here, and they love the game really, i feel its frustration. I agree with both sides of the fence in all honesty all joking aside, Sorry car guy just messing around.