Hello everyone,

It’s been too long since I’ve posted on here. Black Six has been doing such a good job managing the forums and interacting with the community that it really allowed me to sit back and just focus on managing the product.

I apologize if my absence has upset some of you. I know the community adores wild rumors, but we’re all still here, and we’re working very hard on making the Il-2 series better.

However as you might have guessed, the brunt of the team’s efforts has gradually shifted to the sequels. I know many of you won’t be happy, and neither are we. Cliffs of Dover is still not the product we are happy with or proud of. Unfortunately, as all businesses we have goals, budgets, profits, losses, expenses, and wages. We have milestones to meet with our future products, and we just cannot miss those.

So for the past two weeks the team has been working hard on delivering a stable, working milestone for the sequel.

The general plan is, after the milestone is submitted and accepted, we return to the now almost-final patch, cram as much as we can into it, and make it our final Cliffs of Dover patch. The next time it will be updated is when you install the sequel over it.

Are we happy with that? No. But we simply cannot continue to support and grow Cliffs of Dover while also trying to ensure our sequels are released on time and are sufficiently polished. I’m sure most of you will agree that we have already supported our release more than perhaps any other developer in a similar situation. Most of you have probably guessed that Cliffs of Dover was not exactly the most profitable project in the world, and for at least the past year supporting it did nothing for the bottom line but put it deeper into the red.

Having said all that, Alexander sent me a short list of the most commonly asked questions. So here are the answers.

1) When do you expect to have full-featured anti-aliasing?
We still didn’t get to that task as our graphic programmers still have a pile of even higher priority issues to cover. So, not in the next patch.

2) Will the next patch be fully NVidia certified, and will it have Crossfire support?
NVidia – definitely. CF – still TBD.

3) Will there be a complete readme?
Yes!

4) What’s the status of the Su-26 and the SDKs?
We will most likely include the Su-26 in the final patch for free. The SDKs, we really want to release at least the map-making SDK to the public “as is”, which is why they’re not covered by the next patch v. sequels discussion. However simply packing up the source code into a package that can be released to the public is a somewhat lengthy task that can only be done by our lead programmer. Once he’s done putting out the fires, and once the patch is out the door, we’ll find a way to squeeze that into his schedule.

With that, I'm out. I'll be back at the end of the day to answer more of your questions.

I would go more with 'realistic news from Luthier'

RedToo.

That's not sad that's great news, just wish they were more up front about it, but I will wait and hope that next July will be the bomb!

"The general plan is, after the milestone is submitted and accepted, we return to the now almost-final patch, cram as much as we can into it, and make it our final Cliffs of Dover patch. The next time it will be updated is when you install the sequel over it."

In other news, water is wet.

great news. can't wait to get the sequel. this sim is awesome

Do we have to buy the sequel to get the final CLOD patch?

5) Are you really going to insert those rusty and possibly diseases-carrying foreign objects up your already disgruntled customers' backsides and make them beg for more like it's completely normal ?

Definitely


Cheers

Nico

no, the "soon to be released" final CoD patch is just a normal patch update that will become available through steam for all Cod users

additional improvements to CoD can later be obtained if you also install the later BoM sequel that is anticipated around march 2013 (my educated guesstimate, they havnt given a date, but they indicated it wont be for this year). a similar "update" method was used in the old il2 series, where several sequels were released that either could be installed as stand alone, or as an addon for an earlier version of the game

the good news about luthiers most recent post is that:
- development of sequels continues
- CoD will still get a major patch, with them indicating they want to make it a comprehensive bug fix
- the MMO project seems a way off, so wont change the initial BoM expansion project
- with the main problem of the poor gfx engine performance having been resolved, and them having plenty of time to work on BoM, that SoW release is likely to be a better functioning and more comprehensive all around working product

with nobody else in sight creating a decent ww2 flight simulator, that is good news !

+1

Glad they finally came out and said it, doesn't help the hundreds of jaded customers who are still waiting for an actual Battle of Britain game that is not just a broken tech demo...

Good luck with Battle for Moscow, because my money certainly won't be going towards it unless they turn Cliffs of Dover into the game it should've been.

It is what is. The saga continues. If the final patch is good the sequel should be a good product at release. That said, I'm not just going to buy it without first checking the reviews. If it's merely a patch with a few new goodies I'll wait untill it hit's the bargain bin. They're going to have to get me exited again to fork over the dough at release prices.

I would hope that they take some time to really polish up this last patch, if this is the last dedicated patch that it will get then it should really try to fix as much as it can, that includes major FM problems.

I don't expect anything from the final patch that wasn't already in the latest beta. They dialed back the gfx to win some fps, cut out radio commands which didn't work anyway, fixed the Lotfen bombsight, fixed some stuttering and crashes, and that is about it. And they fixed some problems which other betas had introduced, like disappearing buildings, though not completely. On the other hand, they porked the FMs and damage gfx. Fearless Frog, ATAG Snapper and I discussed doing a review of the 1.08 beta and decided there was really not much you could say about it, certainly not enough for a review. Given the tone of this news, I don't expect they will do anything beyond trying to fix what they porked with the 1.08 beta patch, and call it a day. Even that will be hard enough for this team.

The beta patch was built mainly to fix the stability/performance issues. I don't believe for a moment that it was done only by "dialing back the gfx to win some fps", but would include actual code optimizations aswell. I don't think the RC patch will be the same as the last performance/stability patch. Now that they have addresses many of the performance issues, and they are calling it a "Release Candidate" patch they must be including atleast some gameplay fixes.

I'm sorry. And you believe these guys after their recent efforts?

Luthier and 1c will never get another cent out of me. Those here who continue to make excuses for this mob need to reasses.

I'll definitely reassess the sim after "RC" patch and every other patch and Sequel after that, to see if its worth buying. The sim is quite bad off-line and less so On-line, but I won't let people get away with passing misinformation to make it seem worse than it already is without a contradictory post. People should be pissed at having to buy a beta, at the same time they seem to forget it is a beta, the finished product could be much better, and it doesn't cost us another dime to wait and see. I feel sorry for people who can't see that.

I new you'd weren't going anywhere, and be waiting patiently for bug fixes.

After the stella response Luthier got on the Yellow boards he obviously decided not to put his head over the trench top again.

I've had a good look and I can't find anything that notified me I was buying a beta either at the time I pre-ordered my copy or before it arrived. In fact everything seemed to be pretty optimistic from the sellers side until we got to the 'the computers didn't have enough memory' gag and the 'naughty Ubi made us break our own game with an epilepsy filter' scream. Old news for sure but never the less no mention of a beta.

I know its a hanging offence to even think it but I am starting to suspect that they told a few fibs, yes, I think the ocassional porky pie slipped out. In fact I think they have been running around trying to put their own arses out for over a year and economy with the truth tends to go with that territory. The latest news asks two things of any customer- 'believe what I say and keep buying my stuff'. I would like to say 'yes' to both but the track record is as poor as Bob Poor in his poor phase and therefore its a double 'no' from me.

There is one more thing Luthier asks of us- believe that I/We can put this right. That is one I would really like to say yes to for the sake of my own future personal enjoyment but there is one minor problem- In terms of software development everything I have seen since release leads me to suspect that this team couldn't fart without messing themselves. As flawed as it was there was an undeniable glimmer of genius in the game when it was first realeased that has been utterly destroyed by subsequent attempts to resolve its issues.

I would like to meet whoever is keeping the lights on for this project and shake them by the hand, because the world needs optimists like them. I also have some magic beans I would like to sell, I think they may be interested.