[luthier]

Part II

First of all, I see that my brand of humor offended some people. I forget sometimes that some fans are so passionate about this game they can’t take anything but straight out plain answers, so I’ll answer some of the earlier questions again.

4. Could you tell us how you test your alpha/beta patches before release, many of them have broken has much as they have fixed and your customers are left scratching their heads wondering how you could of missed some of the most obvious bugs, such as the hurricane not starting. Also could you tell me what online servers you or your employees use to test the game.

The entire point of an alpha-beta patch is to TEST things. If an alpha-beta patch had no problems, it wouldn’t be called an alpha-beta patch, it would be called a release patch.
We release these test patches fully aware that a portion of the community will get upset over every issue and blame us for it, but we’re still doing it because it allows us to test our software on a wide range of hardware by a huge number of people, and locate and fix problems much faster than if we test in-house.
Programmers themselves usually do a limited amount of testing, and that’s precisely why it’s always a good idea to have their work tested by other people when they think they’re done. Our other employees are usually far too busy to thoroughly test patches, and external teams of professional testers we have access to are not, you know, simmers and if we test with them we’ll get nowhere near the feedback we get over here.
So, we will continue to use this approach in the future as well.
I just want to add however that if you are one of the people who gets really, really upset when alpha or beta software does not work perfectly then please, please don’t participate in beta tests. I’m not being sarcastic or snarky, I sincerely mean it. Beta tests will always be buggy by definition.

2. Have you had serious problems re-writing the various code routines?

You’ve seen how hard it was for us to redo graphics. AI and radio comms are even worse. Flight models? Nightmare.
The only time redoing a feature turned out well was when we redid the sound engine. Pleasant surprise for everyone.

Are you ever going to fix the severe particle effects fps issues without resorting to making the effect look like it was made with lego?

Yes, the current particle system still needs a lot of work.

You say you are 'not proud' of Cliffs of Dover' and fair enough you should not be.
Will you be offering a discount on the sequel, to people who bought Cliffs of Dover, as an apology?

I’m not in charge of setting prices in any way. I seriously doubt that any of the people who are responsible for setting prices and distributing the product would ever consider anything like that. If I were to suggest something like this to me they’d look at me with big crazy eyes, quietly walk away, and never speak to me again.

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1. What exactly is the awesome feature never done in a flight sim before you told us about at some point?

Previously answered – can’t reveal yet.

2. What is, or when can we expect to hear the June/July announcement?

Previously answered. Sorry, not my call.

3. Will the radio comms be fully completed and working in the CoD patch? or at the sequel's launch?

Redoing and adding a lot for the sequel.

4. Will the most urgent AI bugs:
- AI not following your radio comm commands
- AI not following you as a flight leader
- AI not considering you a part of their flight
- AI flying straight into terrain
- AI landing procedures
- AI waiting for player warm up (even if they don't have player's CEM, they can be forced to wait for a few mins before starting up)
bugs be fixed for the CoD patch or sequel (which bugs in which patch/release)?

Sorry, sequel.

5. Was sighting ghosts bug fixed and will the fix be included into the CoD patch/BoM sequel?

We hope it’s been fixed in the RC patch. I see some reports that it isn’t, so we’ll start investigating on Monday.

6. Was the netcode looked for, and bugs like flying ships or warping planes fixed for the CoD patch?

See the most recent patch notes.

7. When can we expect to receive a dedicated server?

Dedicated server shipped with the initial release?

8. Will we get own airframe hit visual and sound effects added/bug fixed for the CoD patch/BoM sequel (and in which)?

This is something that we’ll make sure is in the final release patch.

9. Will model LOD/dots transition be fixed for the CoD patch/BoM sequel (and in which)?

We are looking into this, the current situation is unintended.

10. Will model LODS range (like terrain targets not visible even if in a proper distance, and warping out from dot to a big model - ships, buildings and facilities - things which are practically destroying bombing and recon missions) be fixed for the CoD patch/BoM sequel (and in which)?

We won’t address ground object LODs in Cliffs of Dover.

11. Will the aircraft loads GUI be fixed for the CoD patch/BoM sequel (and in which)?

Completely redoing the entire GUI for the sequel.

12. Will working clouds/rain (at least a basic, static, decent weather system) be available back for the CoD patch/BoM sequel (and in which)?

It’s nowhere ready at the moment, so you won’t see it before the sequel is released.

13. Will flickering shadows be fixed for for the CoD patch/BoM sequel (and in which)?

Unfortunately, it’s working is intended at the moment. See most other current gen games.
All our shadows are saved into something called a shadow map, a single shadow texture that is then placed on top of the landscape and other objects. The shadow map is of a standard resolution. The technology often leads to a case where a shadow map pixel is not the same size as a terrain or object pixel underneath it. As the camera moves, the shadow map is redrawn and reapplied, and the mismatched shadow map pixels appear to shift or shimmer. This is especially noticeable with a large amount of small objects.
The only solution is to increase the size of the shadow map, and that leads to a huge performance hit so it's not an option at this time.

14. Why can not the trees be made darker, as they should, by a simple texture modification?

Don’t have an answer.

15. What features were removed from the current engine (due to optimization reasons)? will they be added back into it, and when, please?

Few features were outright removed. The only thing, if I remember correctly, that we had and you guys could not access was player-controllable ground vehicles. Other features may have been modified, shrunk, or not completed to desired specs, but I can’t even remember anything that was cut per se.

Will there be anymore flyable aircraft added to COD in the future?

No.
They’re too expensive to make to release for free, and we can’t possibly hope to make any money selling them as DLC for Cliffs of Dover.

Is the video recording to record the fixed and the outside view in a server with which it is deaktivatet. Because as far as I can remeber me this unfortunately did not work, and so online battles and events on Full Realitic can't be made movies or other video.

It’s working as intended. View settings cannot be changed in a track, otherwise people would just record a track online, quickly play it back on another machine, and see exactly where all the enemy planes are.

When the bug with flight of bombs underground, found at the time of a patch v1.05.15950 , and described here http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpos...&postcount=294 will be corrected? Do you know about that bug? The bug still is present аt BETA PATCH v.1.08.18956

It appears that the track did not record the bomb bouncing off the roof. If you watch bombs dropped at a shallow angle in real time (i.e. while flying) you’ll see that they’ll bounce. This is what happened, but apparently the bounce didn’t play back in the track.

Luthier, you spent considerable time making some vehicles drivable, I guess it dawned on someone at some point that due to the fact there is no collision model on the tree's any kind of ground vehichle usage is pretty much defunct, do you think you could of spent all that time better by trying to fix the flying part of the game?

I’m not the only employee here. We have different people with different skill sets. The person who worked on player-controllable vehicles has absolutely nothing to do with aircraft or any flying part of the game.

I want to ask that you don't loose sight of the fact this is a game and the importance of "Game Play" isnt lost in the effort to "fix" CLOD and release new content for the sequel. More content in a new theatre with slightly better graphics and dynamic weather and "better simulation" or what ever other features you introduce wont make up for bad game play and game dynamics... I think you know what I mean by this. The game, bottom line, also needs to be fun.
1. In anycase, my question is, do you think you can do better with "gameplay" in the sequel? Whether that be, "MMO" or a new "co-op" mode or team "death match", "capture the flag" these kinds of things from a flightsim perspective for the online world would bring a bit of variety. The other obvious thing missing from CLOD was a campaign...

Definitely very important considerations. In addition to myself, we now have several new game designers working very hard on improving gameplay elements and creating interesting, exciting, new online modes.
Now that the game engine is rather mature and we aren’t constantly distracted by FPS or crashes, we can finally take a deep breath and start, you know, making a game out of all this.

2. Will a sequel contain the ability or content for a dynamic campaign? or even better, a rolling dynamic online war, where choices your team makes determine the outcome of a battle over a number of days or weeks?

(wink)

Agree and support and would like to add to this question...will the sequel include a dynamic campaign?
The community can build missions and static campaigns and for 1946 the best campaigns were comunity made. Desastersoft does great static campaigns. Heinkill does fantastic historic and alt history missions.

(hurts his eye winking, ow)

Question, is the Dev team aware of the "new" flicker issue in the zoom mode when dogfighting? Several members, including myself, are experiencing this bug for the first time. Other than with that, happy with the progress, and hoping the final patch and sequel are a hit.

Yes, we are aware of it. Sorry, we don’t have a solution yet, looking hard into it.

Will AI get the attention it deserves? Offline players are not happy with this at the moment.

It is getting the attention it deserves. Unfortunately the code is so bloated and complex, changes to it take forever. See how long it took us to get the graphics working – the AI is even worse.

Luthier, Is there any prospect of opening up COD for the community modders to improve content/gameplay & fix bugs? Perhaps with some sort of mechanism to allow 1C/dev's to "approve" altered content. I've always believed that there are community skills that could be utilised "for free" to improve COD which would relieve some of the load on the development team.

See earlier about the mods

When you state that no other developer would have supported this release as much as you people have really gets me annoyed, Mr Shevchenko could you tell me in what other form of business could such a complete mess have been released as a working product without a recall and demands for a refund??. I think you should be grateful that 1C are still employing you and the team given the failure in an 18 month time period to fix this product to a satisfactory level??.

Well I could always run for senate.

On ATAG it`s very easy to lose sight of targets or chase ones that simply aren`t there,
can that be fixed please?

We’re hoping it’s been fixed in Friday’s RC,

I know you have said that there will only be one more patch before the sequel but is there any possibility that features that were going to be in COD and are being made in the sequel could be tested in COD?

No, I don’t believe so.

Is there a way that you can make the sequel(s) independent of Steam please? I'm wanting to be able to buy a CD and install it and be able to play it in the distant future (I'm saying when I'm 36 in 20 years about) without having to worry about Steam. That is just hope that I have since I hope to continue flying this for as long as I can (devolpment of the original IL-2 started before I was born and it's my favorite game that I own).

Thank you for your support and your kind words! I can’t make any comments on online platforms for the sequels at this time however, and I really wish I could.

Luthier, you say that many core problems will be fixed by the sequel but there will only be one more CoD patch. The fact that the sequel can be loaded over CoD means that CoD will benefit from all of those improvements. These may be net code, LODs etc which we may have to wait for.
BUT! Unique CoD issues have only one more chance. This essentially means the map and the aircraft. Everything else would seem to be 'core' although I may have missed something.

As stated previously, it’s still my hope that we’ll release a map-making SDK allowing the community to change the existing map as they see fit.
Aircraft – as I wrote previously, they won’t be abandoned with the upcoming final patch. We are carrying everything over to the sequel, and they will get the same attention as new sequel aircraft and definitely benefit from our future efforts.

The BoB was to have been the flagship of the SoW series (as it was originally called) and for a very good reason. It was the iconic air battle of the war and particularly spotlighted air combat between the fighters. CoD cannot even come close if the FMs for the aircraft are incorrect. Anything else is just noise or are core issues that will be fixed anyway.
We still want to fight the BoB on a realistic basis as far as the aircraft are concerned, particularly the fighters.
Will you please confirm that if the FMs are still not close to historical data when we beta test them in the next patch (as regards basic performance like speed, climb and turn) you will put maximum effort onto this important CoD aspect and get them right or promise a final patch that fixes this single important aspect?

Absolutely.

Originally Posted by kendo65

Can I say regarding the bolded bit from your quote above that I disagree somewhat. For sure some here will be hostile no matter what you do. Others, myself included, sometimes feel that poor communication needlessly creates antagonism - eg the delay in providing answers to these questions. A simple post on the forum saying they were delayed but upcoming would have been enough to smooth things over until they were ready.

Some of us who want to be supportive feel that the (lack of) communication here is sometimes more damaging than the issues with the game.

If that could be improved i think people would feel more involved and on your side.

I meant that it wouldn’t do anything for the bottom line, for sales. Whatever I do here today won’t sell any new copies, and it will have no effect on the sequel.
The only reason we ever did anything with the game, starting as far back as about last May, was for forum brownie points. It was clear enough even then that any additional fixes won’t pay the bills, that the only way for us to survive financially is to release a good sequel, fix any issues with Cliffs of Dover while making the sequel, and grandfather CoD content into it.
We made the decision then to try to release as many of the fixes as we can in the shape of free updates for Cliffs of Dover and hope that it restores some of the trust and placates the community. That unfortunately never materialized. The community is as hostile as ever, and for most of us the general atmosphere of “you fixed X, about time, let’s never mention it again, now why the hell aren’t you fixing Y” is extremely tiring. Again, don’t feel like being all PC today. Definitely not judging anyone for their attitude or saying they have no right to feel that way, but I personally can only take so much abuse, and that’s why I post here so rarely.
To me, the product speaks for itself, and my efforts on the forums are secondary. I feel that if the people aren’t happy with my product when they play it, I certainly can’t convince them to like it by posting about it on the forums.

Originally Posted by GF_Mastiff

yea' but now there seems to be texture lod issues again with the 109s disappearing when 300 meters away either this is modeling issue or texture

planes are causing micro stutters when they get near my plane

Spits won't start

Hurricanes won't start

throttle settings are incorrect

Boost scale is way off

Single player customization ammo load outs are not working

objects and horizon are visible through the cockpits again

objects are visible through the terrain and clouds

now if those were fixed, I think 95% of us would be happy with it.

Great list, thank you! Do everything we can for the final release.