First I'd like to thank everyone for taking the SimHQ poll and letting us know what ideas they support. I'd also like to thank all of the people who have offered to help save KOE.

Earlier this week I was on the phone with the president of Aspect and as I was telling about all the good results of the poll and how people were eager to help he stopped me in mid-sentence and said .." it's time for you to start thinking of letting go of KOE. I want you to focus all of your attention on finishing project A and not spend time on the forums trying to save KOE. It'll work against us. People will get all fired up and ready to go and we won't have anything to show for at least 6 or 9 months, if ever. Better to let it go."

Project A is a product that's much less complex than a flight sim and something that two people can make. We hope to sell it over the internet. With the money raised we hope to re-visit making a WW1 flight sim. Successful completion of Project A will help establish our credibility as developers as well. But a lot can happen between now and then and it would be unwise to ask people to patiently wait, especially after they've waited so long for KOE.

Nobody can be more disappointed than I. Well maybe FlyXwire can.

It was never my intention to let people get all fired up, only to have their hopes dashed yet again.

I do hope two things will come out of this.

1) That people will realize just how hard it is to make a flight sim.

2) If people could get organized, they could pool their resources and hire a professional team of their own to build the flight sim they want, instead of waiting for game publishers.

My thanks to the people at SimHQ for all their help and support. Hopefully I'll be able to come back in a few months with some news on how project A is doing.

While this is the end of KOE as we knew it, it's not the end of flight sims.

Keep your chin up.


John MacKay
3d/2d artist
Knights Over Europe

Well we tryed. I guess someone has to act responsible d amn it. This very very disappointing but it may be for the best. I gotta figure that the longer it takes the more advanced it will end up being. Thank you for breaking the silence of KOE and thank you for trying so hard. please keep in touch and when ever product A is ready I'm sure I'll be willing to check it out.

Best of Luck to you sir!

S!

Bummer

Thanks for letting us know whats going on

Thanks for letting us know and preventing us from wasting our time. Take care John.

Thanks John for the news, regardless of its content. We appreciate you keeping us up to date.



-FranksValli

Too bad.

Thanks for posting this.

There may be a chance in the future to possibly put some work into this, or if the source code could be sold and finished but it looks like the end of the game, at least for now.

Keep us in the loop for any changes.

What a shame. Perhaps another developer (Oleg maybe?) will see the responses here and give it a shot.

Rjel2003

Although the demise of any sim is bad news, it's one of the reasons I never look forward to the release of the next best thing. Usually if it sounds or looks like the next best thing, it'll never be released.

My suggestion for all the WWI fans is to give your money to Dawn of Aces team and ask them to make it better. Or at least turn it over to the same engine that runs Warbirds 3.

Wow, I thought we had KOE nearly ressurected here. To bad

Yes, we all do feel very said about this, but the will was there if not the immediate means.

John, you hung onto our dream as long as you could, and after all it was never Aspect's failure but that of the publisher's and their decision to abandon this project.

I think in the long run the experience has been a good one, if not a bit sobering. Still we have learned many things about the software development business, and marketing, and as you said......how hard it is to make a flight sim!

Finally, the sim community has really rallied around this effort, and this has been a very refreshing experience in fact!

Perhaps then something of real value has arisen from our experience here, and our dream of one day rising into the skies to do battle again like Knights Over Europe will always be with us, in one way or another!

Thank's to John and Aspect for giving it their best shot, and to all here, 'cause it's been grand!

As one of the former team members, I'd like to say thanks to everyone - to Gary and John at Aspect for giving me a shot at 3d modelling full time, and to the community for all the support and goodwill since we made our announcements.

Good luck to you and the other project. We appreciate the effort you've both made on behalf of Aspect.

If anything is to come from this, hopefully another developer in better financial circumstances will see the potential here...

S!

Sorry to hear, but thanks for telling us. Good luck with that two man project.

Bad news, but at least we were let down gently havng got used to the idea it might not happen anyway.

Well at least many issues were discusses, ideas raised, and there's hope yet for the WW1 sim community

Good luck in the new Project and lets hope 2005/6 we are talking about a WW1 sim from Aspect again

Yeah thanks guys - is there any chance that the source code could be released? It could be taken on by a group here or even used for something like Target for Tonight or a similar project. Would hate to see all that good work go to waste

Heartbreaking

But thanks for coming here John and explaining the situation and for discussing ideas.

Thanks also for trying your very best in attempts to resurrect KoE.

The discussions have been very very readable and it was good fun joining in.

Best of wishes to you regardig project "A", hopefully it will be a succes, so that we do not yet have to say "goodbye" to KoE, only "au revoir"

Would there be any interest in my posting stories about working on the inside of KOE before they shut down this forum, I could post a few images from the archieves. It wouldn't be technical as there are still restrictions from my NDA agreement. They'd be stories like, why were we in Denver, how I got hired, a day at the office, my first model made in gmax and when the trouble with Destineer started, what we knew about the forums, etc.

Please do - I am sure that everyone here would be interested in what it is like to work on a sim from the inside. Any pics of you and anything else of relevance I am sure would be of interest as well. Maybe you could even give us a sneak peak of what you are working on?!

John - you ought to write a book. Even with what I know of the KoE saga, it would be a NY Times Bestseller

so bad a news......it was so promising and WW1 sims are much in waiting of a new product. This one was going to be a standard one for all we knew.............
Sympathy for all the development team and my best whishes that this is going to be revived in a not so far away future.

Good luck guys and above all thanks !!!

Yeah you could call the book "On a Sim and a Prayer! lol

I am certainly interested to hear some more inside factoids. It is understanable you can not write down everything, both for NDA/confidentiality and since it probably would indeed be book-sized.

Abolutely John, if you find the time and inkling, I'd think it would be fascinating reading. Sort of an insight to just how much work is involved.

I always enjoy Osram's postings, when he talks about "behind-the-scenes" regarding BoB.

Yes I would like to hear the anecdotes. I bet some of my 17 Hours experiences can compare.

Droops

OK - I'll start a new thread later today, after I get done with my daily chores on Project A.

Very sorry to hear this... Ah well at least we tried. I posted about this on a few other forums.

Here's hoping you guys do well on this secret project you mention! Just be sure to backup your KOE work for the future!

I am very sorry to hear about KoE going down. It was my hope for a new state-of-the-art flightsim. R.I.P.

I just finished looking again at the screenshots of this game on the Aspect Simulations website. Such beautiful work. What a shame to think it will not come to fruition.

Everytime I watched the Blue Max this year; I kept thinking "Cool, soon I will be able to fly some of these planes, do a little reinactment." What a bummer.