http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/168-developer-diary/?p=131366

Hi Everybody!

Another week of development is passing by. Some of you may even say that the game is basically complete and we only need to assemble the ready parts and release is straight away. But actually we all here in our small Moscow office (which doesn’t even have windows BTW) and we are totally engrossed with work. Tension is growing every week, but even summer time with its traditional human thurst for vacations cannot break us. I think, flight-sim developers are the toughest and some of the most driven specialists in the gaming world, because if you can’t keep your promise to deliver a new high-end flight sim - then you don’t get to work on a new IL-2 Sturmovik title.

The Project manager that some of you may know as Han on the forums is the one who, with his unfailing precision is coordinating pretty much all production segments and keeps the work going as planned and previously announced. Actually, he manages to solve so many production issues that I’d rather not bother him without a certain need - everything’s under control and the system is maintained like a perfectly serviced mechanism. He oversees all new elements and fixing newly discovered flaws - all that is in trustworthy hands.

The team of engineers is led be Andrey aka Petrovich who occupies the furthest room in our office. They run so many insanly complicated maths and physics that I’m honestly surprised their PC haven’t been caught on fire yet (three knocks on the wood). The flight model for the Fw-190 and He-111 is what we all are expecting from them these days. There’s no doubt that the result will be as impressing as always. When these two planes are complete, the engineers will run tests for all 10 aircraft that we have and make sure they are historically and technically correct. No use repeating how difficult and long that work can be, but we’re sincerely grateful to them for it.

Of course, there would have been nothing to fly in without the game engine and the program environment in general which are permanently maintained and developed by our programmers and their leader, Sergey Vorsin. Those who claim IL2:BOS to be nothing more than ROF with different planes and maps have no idea on how incredibly wrong they were. Our code guys are relentless. The constantly work on newly added graphical technologies and fresh content, and neverending game optimization - they always know what to do and how to bring the project closer to their ideals. It’s the same story with our network segment developers. BTW you help them a lot with your bug reports on issues in multiplayer; all that feedback is warmly welcomed and sincerely appreciated. It’s crucial to fix the netcode now, before the big release.

The long-awaited He-111 can easily be taken from a desktop on our modelers’ displays and made into a desktop - this much time and work it takes to make a large mighty German bomber. It’s still too early to show it on screenshots but trust me, there’s a lot in this aircraft for you to put your teeth into. The Fw-190 is much clearer - we only need to finalize the cockpit. Meanwhile, we still have to agree to some compromises, such as gauge illumination level dial is not going to be controllable in the game. Even though it’s a unique feature we still hope that you’ll be able to fly and and enjoy the game without it.

And that picture of peace and harmony that is saturated with creative energy is regularly resounded with rumble and clanking. Valery Kornilov, like a very self-critical and devoted goldsmith, is polishing the sounds that he prepares for the game. Well, we can’t shush on him: the war is a one loud thing, so our sound director is fighting for every decibel to be in its place.

The most quiet spot in our office is occupied be the customer support. If you’ve ever communicated with them them you must know how client-oriented they are. How could it be any different? Flight-sims is a unique genre and its community is definitely worth being treated correspondingly.

Unfortunately, the developer blog isn’t big enough for me to tell more about other crew members. But anyway what I was trying to share with you is the unique atmosphere here in the studio. It’s the spirit of the original, long-awaited and cherished project - a really new IL-2.



The change log (the most important bits of it):

- each fuel tank can now be set in flames individually

- stats has been fixed again, we expect some improvement

- the tail gear at Pe-2 was too weak, we fixed it

- shadows dropped by clouds are less contrast now so it's easier to see small elements of terrain and distinguish the plane shadow clearer

- La-5 will be available in multiplayer for the entire weekend