That's what you get when the squeaky wheel... etc Anyway, they are here now and they have their place in single missions or online early war dogfights. I think it is a good decision of the devs to keep concentrating on mid and late war: better to get one period fleshed out than have a bit of everything here and there.

I hope to see the career mode lose its "Beta" status this year. There are still too many rough edges to make it truly great (some superficial, like AI pilot names, other a bit more under the hood), but I understand that they need to create payware in order to keep further development going. I don't usually buy addons for other games, so when I look at my full hangar I see that the ROF team must be doing something right

I am glad to see they are going to try to continue developing the game. But I can not afford to give them money on the hope that if they get enough pre-orders they will continue working on it. Maybe if they gave us an idea of how much is needed or how close to the financial goals they are away from getting there it would make it easier to part with my money. I have pretty much bought everything this game has offered and will continue to support them with pre-ordering content that does not have a disclaimer in the ordering section. When and if this new content is confirmed to be released for sure, I will purchase it without hesitation.

Before I actually played the game, I would have thought that the 1916 planes were more fun. Now That I've
bought into the vision of the game and flown the Brisfit and the Dolphin, I really like the strange
feeling of raw power that this game somehow makes visceral. I look forward to floatplanes and naval events
and I think this is the best simulation game I've ever played. It has completely changed my view of
the First World War.

I think you're misreading it. It's not that there's a chance they won't come out, it's more a "we won't give you a concrete release date" type of disclaimer. It could be a month, it could be 2, it could be 4. After over 2 years and expanding their user base I don't think there's a chance they'll change their minds. It's only up for preorder because it's close. Stuff that might not make it I doubt would be announced.



The Jedi Master

You are wrong, sorry.

From the RoF forums from the man himself.

der_zahn wrote:
I have a question about pre-ordering the map, in the blog you state " Obviously, if this new map project is successful it can open up possibilities for other new maps in the long term." On the pre-order page you state *No Refunds on pre-orders due to the complex nature of our development schedules. We apologize for any inconvenience" does this mean that even if the map is not made public for some unforeseen reason we will not get our money back?


Yes, that is the case. If you don't want to help us make all this a reality, then that's your choice, but if there are not enough folks who support us we run the risk of failure and you may not see all this. So far, this has never been a problem becasue the community ha supported our plans. We don't anticipate a problem, but if money dries up there could be a problem. Welcome to our little world of trying to run a business in a small niche market.

Jason

I myself thought it was kinda lame that they would not put it in there somewhere that there was chance no matter how slight it might have been that it might not happen unless they get the proper amount of funding from the pre-orders and that reason is why I did not pre-order this. I am not implying I think that it's not going to happen in any way shape or form mind you, its just how I feel about this situation. when they remove the disclaimer from the pre order page I will gladly pre-order them.

Gentlemen ( and ladies ), this subject and variant posts thereof have been all over the ROF forums of late.

This is in no way official, as I am not part of the dev team nor a beta tester, but the "sneak peek" we got of Water 2.0 from last summer appears to finally be making it's appearance http://riseofflight.com/Blogs/post/2011/06/24/Version-1020.aspx on the new Channel Map.

* WAG Mode on *

Given 777's penchant for letting it's fans speculate on things, I believe there's quite a bit to this new map that will pleasantly surprise many...that is why I have pre-ordered everything and anxiously await it.

For those of you who are convinced ROF is going the "wrong direction" by not filling in the current plane set, or focusing on fixing flight / damage models to make things more realistic, I think you are overlooking the fact that 777 needs to offer something new to keep the "ball" rolling and revenue coming in ( which includes incentive to develop more ), while at the same time committing resources to addressing those very issues...issues which ARE slowly being addressed, but there's a LOT on their "plate" that a small team like theirs has to deal with.

I feel that, barring the fact that Jason isn't telling us a whole lot ( I have a pet theory that he gets his "kicks" out of pleasantly surprising people, but that's just me ), this new map may function as a small "pond" ( pun intended...Channel, pond...nvm ) to showcase improvements to ROF's Digital Nature engine that may include reallocating resources to enable more and varied ground objects among other things ( who knows? ).

I also think that quite a lot of hard work has gone into this new map ( which would justify the "joining fee" being as high as it is ) and it will open new channels ( really, NO pun intended this time ) to further development and releases. I think if people are patient and jump on board now, later on "down the road" there will be a lot of surprises that will make ROF MUCH better than it is now.

* WAG Mode off *

Finally, I believe that eventually more of those early war planes will be modeled and included as well as quite a bit of new content, FM fixes and the like...however, it's going to take time.

Regards.

I think what we can take away from the update is that there are only THREE airplanes coming out the year (I think last year was five?). That means only three flight models to sort out (cited by Jason and others as being by far the most work on every new airplane). Just going by this update, it looks like the flight modellers have about ~60% of the work load from last year (I don't how much harder it will be for the big Felixstowe or water planes in general). Also, the DH-4 is, I believe, a left over from the development of the Knights of the Sky project (as is a DH-9 I saw pics for once upon a time). If it is indeed true that the flight modellers have a smaller work load, does it not stand to reason that they could be re-allocated to adjust existing FMs for each new patch as 777 has done recently (every new patch seems to have an FM fix or two in it)? I think the FM problems will be largely sorted by 2013.

Cheers,

Fafnir_6

Last year there were 8 aircraft, same as the year before that ( granted, two of 2011's planes were variants of the same airframe ) : http://riseofflight.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=27521

Also in 2011, the Nieuport 17 flight model was revised http://riseofflight.com/Blogs/post/2011/11/20/Version-1022.aspx as well as the SE.5a ( no link, sorry ) as was part of the AI. There were also other improvements made, all while offering 6+ aircraft.

I have a feeling there are more details NOT mentioned simply because what they have at the moment is enough to stay busy for quite some time. Keep in mind the Halberstadt CL.II is still having the finishing touches put on and should be released in the next week or two IMO.

Since our perspective is lacking in detailed information, ( left that way purposely by Jason? ) I'm of the hard opinion that his latest post regarding the 2012 roadmap is only a "primer". As summer gets closer, I think we're in for more surprises.

I think it's fair to say that not all details of what's going on this year are in that update - even as a beta tester we get roadmaps that don't line up with each release i.e. there's more stuff in the release than we ever knew about.

777--Please listen. I'd prefer more single-seat 1915/1916 planes please from both sides. This is in my eyes the weakest part of RoF. I love those old crates, please give us some more.

Thanks.