I think there is a misuse of the word "supported" going on here.

RoF is what in the old days we'd call complete. It's got every thing it's going to get. No more content, free or paid. Traditionally this is when work on a sequel would be underway.

And it is. The sequel is BoS/BoM. "But that's WWII and not WWI!" you say? Who said it had to be? Look at Battlefield or Call of Duty. Those sequels regularly jump from WWII to present day and back. So BoS/BoM is both the sequel to ROF and the sequel to Cliffs of Dover, "even though it's not another BoB sim?" you say? Yes.

Unsupported would mean the store is shut and whatever you have is what you have. If you had a problem and emailed 777, they would either ignore you or reply that the product is no longer supported, please buy the current product instead. You'd have to go scour community forums for answers or fixes. You could still buy it from them, but "as is."

Abandonware means you can't buy it anymore. It's off 777's site, there are no DVD copies available for sale, just resellers or those ebay people who always collect stuff like that. The accepted definition is you have to pirate it if you want to get it because you are unable to legitimately purchase it no matter how much you want to. Many programs that were abandonware in the past several years have recently shown up on GOG.com and Steam, sometimes with minor tweaks that allow them to run on modern systems, so they're not abandoned any more. They're still largely unsupported, though, so if you find some bug about locking missiles or whatever they're not going to fix it.





The Jedi Master

Yep, sadly, some things never change.

I'd like to be able to say (after Humpty Gokart?):

"But we'll always have Paris."

(Even if it's only half an inch high, as it were.)

It's all down to semantics.

Unsupported, abandonware, still supported...

The end result is the same.
There will be no further development of RoF, no planes, no maps, no bug fixes (if any new are found).

It's still for sale and the store is still open, all that signifies is you can buy the game and the addons.

UBI still sell IL2-1946, I hardly think we'll see much in the way of support from UBI for that title.


Don't get me wrong, I love RoF, it is my main sim. I put more hours into RoF than I do any other sim, only rivalled by my love for RB3D back in the day.

I like what we have, we are in a good place. But I am also realistic in that I realise we are at the end of the road with it and what we have is what we have and we'll probably not see anything new.

While I don't agree that RoF is dead, I don't agree that we are still supported by the Devs.

Then again, look at how long RB3D survived with just ONE patch.

And RoF is a fantastic sim - good enough that I'm going to fire it up and work through some of the issues I'm having in taking off with my 7/8ths scale Nieuport 11.

It's old hat with me - I got a handle on wheel landings in a RL Champ 7AC by doing nothing but wheel landing after wheel landing in a SPAD XIII in the sim.

Releasing more DLC is NOT any definition of supported I've ever heard. That is called active development.

As for bugs, there are things that have existed for years that some call bugs that it's clear the devs never had any intention of fixing for whatever reasons. I've not heard of any new bugs in a long time, but maybe people just aren't talking about them here, so I'll grant there may be some. Still, until a game-breaking one is reported and they decline to fix it we can't say they won't. They might. Of course, people's definitions of game-breaking also differ so that's a matter of opinion. If someone finds out that trying to fly a Camel in 1917 from a French base results in a CTD every time, that's what I call game-breaking, and if they said they're not fixing it THEN I would agree they're not supporting it any longer.

By your definition, every human over the age of 25 has every right to say "I'm dying" because they've stopped growing ie active development. While some people may think that way, the idea you can spend 25 years living and 40+ years dying is pretty hard to argue in favor of.




The Jedi Master

I want to emphasise something here ".....I don't agree that RoF is dead"
I'm not in that camp
I'm in the camp that RoF is a still alive and well and a bloody good game.

The business model was to develop and add content over time in paid for DLC, slowly filling the game out.
That has come to an end, I can't see anything more coming out.
Even getting a skinpack released is an effort for 777 now, with all the focus on BoS/BoM.

Yes. It's a good sim, a good game.

We are all talking about 777, but isn't so that 1C rules Rof and not Jasons 777, The same company that was involved in the WW2 Clod game.

AFAIK It's not going to be developed any further so no new planes, patches and no Paris I'm afraid. You can fly to where Paris should be but, well, Paris is big and the map is big. Too much big make little PC go boom-boom.

Judging by the thousands of pilots registered in the Career statistics I would hardly say it is dead. People are playing but they are mainly playing on their own. Some seem to forget that many games are just more enjoyable like that (Game developers especially forget this and jam multiplayer into everything). Online is pretty quiet, of all the thousands of people in careers there's not many online outside of a few airquake tragics and, unless you know people who create the really good events and online wars (which are inevitably hosted at 3am here in Upside Down Land and have 400ms ping.) then you're stuck with airquake.

Not that I care, I prefer my mods and hand-flying long patrols in PWCG much more than doing helpdesk sessions in the chat and facing constant Dr.1 spam.

My advice is to get PWCG, a whole bunch of mods and as many skinpacks as you can while they're still hosted. That's what I did and I'll be enjoying RoF for a loooooong time to come.

(Watch out for nested folders if you're using JSGME!!!)

This.

Never once did I play on a public server. I just don't care for the dynamic and the hassle. All of my MP time with ROF has been on private servers hosted by friends and we always flew cooperative missions against the AI.

Would you mind giving some advice on what are the must have mods (and why), so far I am using only PWCG and skinpack, nothing else.
Thank you in advance.

I use almost everything from here basically Staniol:

ROF MODS

Thank you, I give them a try!

Actually UBI quit selling 1946 some time in late 2012. Right around the same time that Steam quit selling it in their store until they brought it back for some unknown reason, to me anyway. UBI never did bring 1946 back to their store. UBI only sells Cliffs of Dover and on that I agree you won't see any support from them after you buy it. Even their Cliffs of Dover forum and in all reality their entire Maddox Games forums are a ghost town now. Some forums haven't had a post in them for over a year and even those post are spam posts that no one will take down. I've reported them more than once.


Wheels

Hello.
I am one of you, lover of WWI flight sim games.

I played, back in times, RBI, Wings of Glory, Dawn Patrol (the horror), RBII, RB3D with the huge amount of wonderful patches followed. From few months I'm into WOFF.

I always had an eye on ROF. Maybe you are interested in knowing my unbiased reasons on why I never got it.

ROF looks both scary and beautiful. I think one of the first downturn is the requirements. With that shiny beautiful graphics I am pretty sure I won't run it smooth on my 2013/14 PC. Also, when I had a look for opinions "WOFF vs ROF" I noticed more than once that many people were saying that ROF flight engine is better (apart the outstanding graphic) but WOFF is much more immersive.

This is what probably ROF had always missed, from my side: historical campaign or enthusiast people talking of that, if I missed it has one. WOFF players literally were spilling joy and satisfaction for the campaign mode. There are hundreds of report online. I'm sure most of WWI flight simulators players are not just gamers. They are somehow fascinated from the historical contingence, and they crave to live again that epic and bloody time.

I never minded much about payments, when you like a game or the world the game brings you in, you won't think too much on putting 100-150eu/year to play that. We all did something like that with one or more mmorpg. Why wouldn't you do that with ROF?

The pure "multiplayer" option, whatever good or not or balanced or not, is not enough to fill that "romantic" needs for an historical connection that many of WOFF/RBII players ask from the game.

While RoF is free to play, I never understand people that don't at least try it out.
I have WoFF, but prefer RoF.

RoF does include historical campaigning for single player and also Pat Wilson's Campaign Generator as an alternative for SP.


It is not a pure multiplayer game. I'd say the SP side is equal or better than the MP side of the game.

For SP play you must have Pat Wilson's Campaign Generator. It turns RoF campaigning into a very close facsimile of the RB3D campaign experience.

Link:

http://riseofflight.com/forum/forum/394-pat-wilsons-campaign-generator/