Friday Update, April 13, 2012

[luthier]

Originally Posted by VO101_Tom

Can you give any information about the 109?

German flyables were in a much better state than the British ones, so we can't report anything dramatic. You will probably notice some changes in the 109 if you fly it a lot, but the others will be even less perseptible, just seen on the graphs that we decided not to make public.

Originally Posted by Falstaff

What are the plans for Clod, specifically, after this patch? Will it be supported as a legacy app?

Hard to say, after how long this patch took. There's still a lot of things we'd like to improve, but the general idea is like this. We keep on improving the overall engine as part of developing the sequel. The things that can be put back into CoD get packaged up and released as a patch. When we get close to the release date of the sequel, we hold the changes for the sequel. If it's a major addition, not a fix, we also keep it for later.

This is how the current patch is being released. Ostensibly, everything done for it was done for the sequel, and then patched into the "old release".

Originally Posted by csThor

I have a question with regards to the village layouts. Are they hand-placed or was a template used? I wonder because one particular feature that appears again and again in various german Eastern Front books is that russian villages often "clung" to a road and were therefor rather "long and thin". This is what we germans call Strassendorf (Street Village).

We don't place the buildings manually, but we do mark the overall areas manually. We take a historical map and trace historical roads and outline historical settlements.

Then the standard "village" or "town" or "industrial" or whatever texture with the standard pattern goes on there. However that pattern lines up with the spline historical road - we don't know. In some cases it'll line up with the texture and the buildings, in other cases it'll cross the standard village streets at a 45-degree angle.

That's just how it is. If we had to place every building on a map manually, even a small 40x40 km online map would take years to make.

[Sammi79]

Really promising update, Thanks BlackSix and Luthier and team.

Can't wait to try it out!

Happy Easter,

Regards, Sam.

[NSU]

Originally Posted by luthier

We don't place the buildings manually, but we do mark the overall areas manually. We take a historical map and trace historical roads and outline historical settlements.
.

you know, in the Clod map you get no historical map it is all like in "Google map" see Dunkirk, Boulogne sur mer and Le Havre Ports

[luthier]

Originally Posted by VO101_Tom

Is it possible, that you give us such a graph of all aircraft, when the patch comes out? Max level speed, climb rate, turning speed / time as well (like the old il-2 compre)?

We wanted to make in-game graphs for CoD, but we ran out of time to build the GUI. And because we're moving to a whole new system for our GUI, thank goodness, we won't be able to make it for CoD.

Originally Posted by bw_wolverine

I cannot believe that the RAF planes are going to be getting WORSE instead of better. I just cannot believe it. And no changes to the 109s. Reduce the IIa, sure (though 60mph seems a bit of a too big reduction), but the Ia is a joke currently.

Spit I got better. Its speeds at altitude got progressively worse than the real thing in the old build. The patch will make it better.

The Hurricane got about 20 mph slower, sorry. It's historically accurate.

The Blenheim got a major boost though, so - no reason to cry the way I see it.

Originally Posted by OutlawBlues

Has the AI been improved to a point where we can get a decent fight with them? Much need for the offline players.

We like the offline AI. It's realistically dumb on lower levels, and pretty tricky at higher levels. There won't be a huge change there.

Originally Posted by addman

Will the changes listed in the update be in one single beta patch? Also, about multi-core CPU support, in the update it says different things will be off loaded on to seperate cores, will that mean for us that have let's say just a dual core CPU worse performance than before? Stupid question but I'd like to know. Cheers!

Yes all of this goes into the one beta patch you'll be seeing in a matter of days.

If you have a dual core you will still see a tiny improvement, but it won't be as much as a quad or 8 core. Still, in the old build you still overused the first code and underused the second one, so there will be an improvement anyway.

Of course, there's a larger overall FPS improvement that's due to code optimization, not multithreading, so everyone will benefit regardless of system specs.

[bw_wolverine]

Originally Posted by luthier

Spit I got better. Its speeds at altitude got progressively worse than the real thing in the old build. The patch will make it better.

The Hurricane got about 20 mph slower, sorry. It's historically accurate.

The Blenheim got a major boost though, so - no reason to cry the way I see it.

Thanks for the response. We'll have to wait and see, I guess. Thanks for your hard work! I can't comment regarding the Blenheim stuff since I don't really fly it or know about it.

Would it be possible to post a graph like the G.50 one you put up? We'd love to see it if the speeds are more accurate. For both the Hurricane and the Spit I/II.

[Strike]

Luthier, if I may ask, are you currently saying that the sequel to Cliffs of Dover will not be backwards-compatible with cliffs of dover?

I personally think one of the great contributors to IL-2 1946's success was the expansion pack system. You could use the original planes with the newest releases, creating a huge library of combat vehicles and aircraft from many theatres.

How do you currently plan to do it? And if you cannot make it backwards compatible, will there be made work to upgrade the cliffs of dover content, and add it to the sequel in the future?

[luthier]

Originally Posted by Strike

Luthier, if I may ask, are you currently saying that the sequel to Cliffs of Dover will not be backwards-compatible with cliffs of dover?

No Il-2 product was ever backwards-compatible. You could not take a Pacific Fighters patch and apply it to an Ace Expansion Pack install. You cannot take graphic improvements in 4.12 and install them on top of the original Il-2.

The new line will work the same way. If you own the old product, you'll be able to install a new one on top of it; or you'll be able to get a compilation product like 1946 that includes old content from previous releases.

But once the sequel is released, there obviously won't be any more support for stand-alone CoD.

[Strike]

Originally Posted by luthier

No Il-2 product was ever backwards-compatible. You could not take a Pacific Fighters patch and apply it to an Ace Expansion Pack install. You cannot take graphic improvements in 4.12 and install them on top of the original Il-2.

The new line will work the same way. If you own the old product, you'll be able to install a new one on top of it; or you'll be able to get a compilation product like 1946 that includes old content from previous releases.

But once the sequel is released, there obviously won't be any more support for stand-alone CoD.

Thank you for the answer!

So basically, no more patches for those who don't own the sequel, I totally understand that, but the sequel will act as an expansion to the original (cliffs of dover) and will now be a combined product, which you will continue to support.

That is good news As long as you are doing like you did with the previous series of IL-2 sturmovik I believe you are working in the correct direction

Good luck with the closed beta, it sounds very promising

[philip.ed]

Originally Posted by luthier

No Il-2 product was ever backwards-compatible. You could not take a Pacific Fighters patch and apply it to an Ace Expansion Pack install. You cannot take graphic improvements in 4.12 and install them on top of the original Il-2.

The new line will work the same way. If you own the old product, you'll be able to install a new one on top of it; or you'll be able to get a compilation product like 1946 that includes old content from previous releases.

But once the sequel is released, there obviously won't be any more support for stand-alone CoD.

This is perfectly understandable (if somewhat sad because CloD does feel like it's being scraped under the carpet somewhat) but if the ETO is further expanded in the future, will these changes affect the core structure of the expanded CloD? So the game will be improved, but not directly...? e/g any map changes to Britain and France will transcend.
Additionally, if there is ever a larger 1:1 scale map made of Britain and France, will this be able to take the place of the older one?

So many possibilities...

[Gourmand]

Originally Posted by luthier

No Il-2 product was ever backwards-compatible. You could not take a Pacific Fighters patch and apply it to an Ace Expansion Pack install. You cannot take graphic improvements in 4.12 and install them on top of the original Il-2.

The new line will work the same way. If you own the old product, you'll be able to install a new one on top of it; or you'll be able to get a compilation product like 1946 that includes old content from previous releases.

But once the sequel is released, there obviously won't be any more support for stand-alone CoD.

seems legit.