Dev Update 66

http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/168-developer-diary/?p=123482

66





Hi Everyone!



Today we publish answers to the most interesting and important questions of the forum community. Friday game update is still being worked at, and it will be released later today. Don't expect big content updates, it's mostly about bug fixes and improvements.



How will the single-player campaign work? Are we going to play as an abstract or real pilot, or we freely choose where to server and what plane to fly? Are separate missions in the campaign connected?

Our goal is to tell the story of Battle of Stalingrad to as many players as we can. This approach along with restricted development period surely limits us in comprehensive recreation of smaller details. Thus it will not be a single player campaign about a pilot or a squadron. It will be about aircraft and war history.

We'd be glad to avoid endless community arguments on that matter. However, there's a lot to discuss since even historians are not certain about some moments. So we just turn away a bit from these issues and create a game about planes. Let your imagination personalize your gaming experience. We're an unbiased story teller. You are pilots living virtual lives in the sim. Also, this community is quite segmented in its desires, just because you are the loudest, does not mean you are the biggest. A lot of players can't afford to spend more than 1 hour a day in the game while the other group of players is able to play the game 10 hours a day or even more. And we realized that it's not us making the game emotional, it is you. Our part is to deliver necessary conditions for your experience.

IL2:BOS campaign will tell you the story of Battle of Stalingrad from November 19th 1942 till February 2nd 1943. The whole period is split into operations (phases of the battle). Each phase has a realistic template on how ground troops and airfields were positioned. We did our best to be as precise as possible in this and all templates are based on historically correct data and real maps. We divided the battle into several key parts: Uranus, Little Saturn, Aerial Bridge, Winter Thunder and so on.

Meanwhile the player is not limited with anything and the playable character is impersonalized. Each player is going to have their own virtual life and singular, specific experience and emotions. You'll be free to pick any plane, any airfield and any mission that is available at that moment. And this unique experience of yours will build your personal campaign.

Missions are not connected with each other. There's sort of a "groundhog day" within each single phase. Time of a day, weather conditions (within a list of historically correct ones for each period) will vary every time you start the mission. And you play this or that phase as many times as you want. Several successfully completed missions open access to the next phase leaving the completed one available for reply at any time. This is akin to sand-box style gaming.

Players who are looking for precise reconstruction of particular historical events will have community created missions to satisfier their demands. Those missions can tell about specific pilots, events and real combat missions down to historically correct personal skins and battle conditions. But our studio is not able to deal with such amount of tasks right now, that's why community we'll need to provide themselves with those WWII reconstruction missions. And the main campaign will remain available for the wider audience.

Is there going to be an object viewer? The opening screen with the rotating plane is stunning. Really allows you to view the aircrafts details. It'd be great to be able to do that with aircraft and even vehicles and other objects as needed.

We have such tool, but it's been designed for development purposes and that's why its interface is too complex. I hope that we'll be able to make something like it for you. But this may happen after game release only.

What’s the final decision regarding the pilot’s exhaustion simulation? There was a users’ poll about it somewhere on the forum.

We’ll do it if we have time for it. You see, the feature is interesting, but still quite elusive. It’s already hard for players to figure out how to play such a complex game where an engine can fail about 10 different ways. So, adding such unexpected elements like pilot’s exhaustion could turn us into a developer with target audience of 20 people.

How will AI bombers behave in the campaign? A player tries to stay alive, maybe bots should do so as well? Speaking of AI pilots in general - will they try to keep their planes and their lives leaving the battlefield if fuels and ammo run out?

Bombers will not be that impressive as you described, but they do have a fear of death. They try to leave the battle and get back to the airfield by evading a threat. But nevertheless they are game objects only. They wouldn’t bring any enjoyment to players if that were not just objects. Imagine that bots would refuse to fly because they saw their battle stats and considered further attempts futile.

When will we have the full mission editor?

This will come after game release. Only those who we have worked with before will have a chance to get their hands on the editor during early access. The editor is too complex. It has reached functionality, but it’s too hard to learn to use it. Loft is sure that 95% of players don’t need it at all. The remaining 5% are actually capable of making something worthy. We’ll contact these 5% later, and I hope that some of them may offer the community their own user missions by the game release.

When will we actually see Skin templates? Can we have some sort of skin viewer to check if our work "works" properly on the model?

Yes, there’ll be templates and tools.

Will there be an option to see how many hours your buddy has flown in the game? What modes count flight time for the global stats?

Detailed stats will be done after game release. We’re currently creating basics of that stats system. One’s flight time counter can possibly be hacked as any other counter, but who plays with cheaters and liars?

How do you plan to count frags? The last one to hit gets it? Or the one who dealt most damage?

We have system of group victory. The one who deals critical damage gets the frag, other get group victory points. The algorithm is rather complex as well as the definition of critical damage. And we don’t have health bars so it’s impossible to count who dealt most damage.

Question, will we have AI that tries to belly land a damaged aircraft? Currently I see AI only bailing out also at low altitudes.

Yes, AI is currently able to bail out only after getting critically hit. Admit that most players do the same. I hope that we’ll be able to teach bots to land on belly. That would mean making AI more complicated which would scarcely be the wisest decision. Anyway we’ll get back to this discussion later.

How much of the code for BoS will be available for third party folks? Back in the day in IL2 there were several 3rd party utilities that came out from Sturmolog to the DCG and the UQMG etc... Will it be possible to do something like this in BoS?

You don’t need code for it. All the tools are in the game as well as full logs and mission editor algorithms. As of yet I’m skeptical about it because people would rather talk then do anything. But if somebody from the community actually did something worthy we’d help them personally as we have at times done with the ROF community. And please don’t compare the game to IL-2 1946. The original IL-2 game lived several years before such creativity came out to the light; we’re only 16 month old.

Will you give dedicated server to players someday this summer, before the release? Is it possible to control the server remotely?

Yes, we’d like to do so and give out the tools. But they are not yet ready and we’re still working on them. It means that you’d require our help and guidance and we’re currently unable to provide constant support to such enthusiasts. Please, stay patient for a bit more.
And yes, you can operate the server software remotely using any standard remote access software, and there’ll be no specific tools for it from us. We also use remote access to control the servers and its fine.

I find all this highly disappointing. I was waiting for a clearer picture of how the campaign would be developed before deciding to purchase or not, and it looks, for the time being, that it will be a "not" for me.

Yeah, that's rather disheartening to read. I was really hoping they'd listened to the ROF community and were going to put more emphasis on the single player experience. Buyer's remorse is slowly but surely kicking in.

I'm disappointed too and will likely wait to purchase, off-liner here...till the game becomes more finished with the FMB

To me it sounds very interesting. I like the flexibility to switch around between roles rather than being stuck in one aircraft for the whole campaign. It will be interesting to see how it is implemented but it's a little early to judge before we see how it's going to work in practice. I hope the campaign is added to the early access some time over the summer.

I'll wait and see but groundhog day does not feel too good. The movie is great but for a career .. noooo. I hope there is stuff lost in translation and that they have something great coming up.

-C-

Hmm..sounds just like a normal random battle generator where you choose your plane and airfield then click go rather than an actual Campaign system.

"Ground Hog Day" was probably the worst choice of words possible.
Makes you think 'repetitive, torturous, maddening, wanting to escape, always the same' etc.
Basically, totally negative. I'm still not sure exactly what this individual was really
trying to say. The general feeling of 'let down' is shared among many it seems.
We wanted in this day and age, at last, something more from an offline campaign.
So getting this announcement that really comes across as a preemptive white flag from the Devs
is disappointing. However, it might be just that - a poor choice of words.

I'm keeping my hopes up. There will be user made content, and maybe someone will step up
and do a "Patrick Wilson" number on the single player campaign. (still not sure why the developers can't)
In any case, I'm glad I bought in. I'm having fun just with the QMB so far.

In the RoF forum Pat Wilson said it took him about 1000 hours to create PWCG...a daunting task for a free program. But that is 1/2 of a man year, and for a professional software team of 7 (the size of 1C) that is a reasonable project task for a 2 year project (I am a retired systems integration manager) if you think the return is worth the investment. For 1C to not think the return is worth the investment in creating an IL-2 style FMB for an IL-2 branded product they may have missed the broad side of the barn in identifying their potential customer base.

If I were investing in 1C and was told they were going to offer a new IL-2 product to a market that included existing IL-2 customers I would be more comfortable than if they were going to take the IL-2 brand to the arcade market, so I'm surprised by the direction of the BoS project. The reward might be huge or it could turn out like when Coke changed their formula. 777/1C are definitely rolling the dice.

Add to that a lack of COOPs, individual markings for planes and a user friendly FMB and im not feeling very good right now in the direction were going.

Im happy i paid for early access and helped support them, its a great actual sim but long term im feeling a little disappointed.

To use the term "groundhog day" to describe the campaign in a historical combat flightsim is just... very, very strange.

Will wait for more info but as someone who greatly enjoys SP campaigns I have to say this doesn't sound too good.

Sounds worrying however I will give them the benefit of the doubt, as what they have produced so far is above and beyond my expectations.

That is the heart of the matter. I think it would behoove the team to spend some of those man hours on the single player career experience, even at the sacrifice of something else (modelling a plane, for example) that can be added later. Maybe they have research that shows differently, and if that is the case, I suppose I am doomed to disappointment. (However, given the emphasis on "career/campaign modes" in other genres, such as sports and strategy, and given the popularity of role playing games in general, I think I'm in a solid majority, or at least plurality, of customers). Either way, I know for myself, I would gladly by a flight sim that only released with a couple of flyable planes and a single theater, if the career experience was designed to capture the immersion, squadron management, and general feeling of "being there" that EAW and RB3D managed to do.

I hope someone will explain a bit more about the campaign (because I guess it's officially not a career now) during next week. I'd like a theoretical 3-mission walkthrough.

Now back to my supply flight from I Bootis.

-C-

So basically "our campaign is not really a campaign, but you can use your mind to imagine all the things that make a great campaign. Also, here are a bunch of fancy words to substitute for actually saying something: words, words, words..."

Seriously, just say you are not making a campaign and are focusing on other stuff.

This is pretty devastating news if I'm reading it right. I'd more-or-less assumed we would be getting a career mode much like that in ROF (granted, without any evidence). I don't need a fully dynamic, complex campaign like Falcon4, but I do need to feel like I am an individual pilot taking part in the war. If I'm attached to my pilot and his progress in the career, the experience is so much deeper than just generic aerial combat. Suddenly seeing a dozen yellow noses diving toward me out of the sun is terrifying because I have something real to lose, not just the time it takes to restart the mission. Barely making it home after a tough scrape is exhilarating for the same reason.

In short, I need a virtual life to care about as though it were my own. Even a patrol mission where nothing much happens can be exciting because the whole time I"m thinking something *might* happen, and if it doesn't then, well, I've survived another day.

I'll wait and see. I always have trouble understanding their vision for BOS, but I really, really hope it's not just Wings of Prey with better physics.

Sim is great so far but I was REALLY hoping for some more immersive experience in the SP portion of the game, which is the one I play. And which has been missing since the early 2000's at best.

That's more or less the way they came off, yes.
Hoping that's not the case.

Which mission does Yak Girl appear?

I'll wait until there is an FMB Not looking like much chop at the moment or for a while after release for the off liners.

Speculation: the limitations of the BoS engine (I am guessing they need to limit the game to a snowy few months to avoid the GPU load of having to draw a non snowy landscape) means they have to limit the time period of the game/campaign to just a few weeks of winter.

And this has a cost, which people are seeing, which is that there are only so many missions possible within such a short span of time (about 70 days!), if you followed a single career/pilot. How many career missions could a pilot realistically have flown, how many promotions or medals could they have won, in just 70 days? They would be very short campaigns, and people would then be complaining about the length of the careers, or the unrealistic nature of promotions.

Opening the campaign up to allow any plane/any airfield, makes the game seem bigger/longer/deeper, but at the cost of career style immersion.



Having accepted the limitations of the engine already (if I am right that it is limited to winter for now, for a technical reason), I am actually OK with this, though it doesn't seem much different to me to the already existing quick mission generator. Sort of a random quick mission generator with different levels you need to qualify for by flying a few successful missions first. A kind of 'evolved' random mission generator.



Actually, unless the FMB is dramatically reworked, the experience of RoF indicates this is not likely to happen, certainly to the extent that user content is created for earlier IL2 series games with a much more user friendly FMB. So, I'm not getting my hopes up over that. Especially because of what is said below!



OK, the community of 5% of people smart enough to use the FMB might create some historical content to be available at launch. Others will have to wait to use the 'too complex' FMB after launch. Bottom line, a lot of barriers for user created or 3rd party created content.

All that aside, I am actually feeling better than I expected about this announcement. I guess it is just a matter of low expectations!

I had already resigned myself to flying a great selection of aircraft, over a small snowy map, for a couple of short wintry months, and this actually seems like a quite logical, even creative way of dealing with those restrictions. With the number and variety of aircraft which will be available at launch, it can still be a compelling game even for offliners.

But I can understand if one had his/her heart set on long immersive careers, there would be disappointment.

H

That doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Why should a summer/autumn terrain have a significant higher workload on the GPU? It certainly doesn't seem this way in RoF. And the BoS engine seems already very well optimized, providing good performance with stunning visuals. The main reason for only one type of seasonal terrain is much more probably the limited resources of the development team.



I don't really see a big problem with the time period chosen for the campaign. It wasn't unusual for pilots on the Eastern front to fly more than one sortie a day so even with a couple of days of snowstorms that would more or less completely cancel flight operations you could easily have some 50-100 mission campaigns. Which IMO would be more than enough.

I don't see people complaining that the Battle of Britain only lastes ~ 3 months.

@PB

As I said, totally just my speculation, based on having never seen a non winter screenshot of the terrain with a lot of objects/trees/roads/traffic etc on it. And placing a lot more trees, foliage, grass and objects on a map often creates a big GPU hit. The current BoS map avoids all of that by having to model very little in the way of elevation, no moving or dynamic water, and covering all that ground detail in a thick blanket of snow. Don't get me wrong, I think it is a very nice way of prioritising, allowing the dev team to focus on the aircraft and gameplay, rather than redesigning the RoF landscape rendering routines - isn't the RoF engine known to struggle with larger numbers of aircraft/objects?

The aggressive timeline of the project implies to me they would need to prioritise, and extensive development of the existing RoF landscape engine hasn't seemed to be a priority, unless I'm wrong (often am!). And you have to admit, that flat white landscape has to be pretty easy on the GPU.

You are totally right, BoB was only a few months, and it lends itself to great campaigns. I suppose 70 days is OK for a campaign, but I would imagine most people are/were hoping for something like the RoF career mode which covered 700 days, not 70. Though, after all, the game is called Battle of Stalingrad, not Battle of the Eastern Front, so again, it seems people had higher expectations than the reality can bear!

H

Not the case at all.
Remember, BOS is based on the RoF engine.

I also would think they're planning on adding to the basic framework after release, so the campaign/career system we have at launch is not all we'll have 2 years later.

This schedule was compressed, and possible largely because of building on what ROF already had...but remember the restrictions ROF itself must deal with as a result of its initial design being for an always-online MMO-type sim.




The Jedi Master

I would like to believe this BUT this is not a strictly 777 Studio project.
We all have to remember that and 1C can be a Horrible publisher at times.
They have the license for Il2 and they will have the final say on a LOT that happens in the future of this title.

With that said we can't compare BOS to ROF in the aspect that 777 has full reign over the project and it's future.
SADLY,, they don't !

This is a huge concern of mine with BOS,, I can't go and say 777 is completely in charge like I could say with ROF.

For me personally,,777 studio's reputation speaks for itself, but that is when they have full control over their project and they don't have that this time around.

1C Only cares about Money and nothing else, that is the name of the game for them.
Beyond the original Il2, I have not seen any true care from them for a gaming community,, they are a "Publisher" who sadly owns the rights to the name Il2.

Desode

3 months??? I've been fighting that battle in various sims for 14 years...and I haven't done England proud..

Keep at 'em Piper ! They are down to the last fifty Messerschmitts

It wouldn't worry me too much if we had a good COOP system, my all time best online flying was in VEF flying medium sized COOP's.

With everyone knowing a large part of the success of IL2 was player made COOP's run through HL, i still don't know why it wasn't very high on the list of must have's for BOS.

I miss the IL2, Hyperlobby CoOp days.
I hosted a lot of missions in those days.

Yeah, I've done plenty of coop missions in the original IL2, too.

I have very little interest in "air quake" style dogfight servers.

2014 and can't even get a decent campaign.

I've heard all the excuses. They may even be valid. But it still sucks.

I hadn't bought BOS yet precisely because I expected this.

Agreed completely, the online wars were by a MILE the most enjoyable sim flying I've ever done. Hoping there's enough interest to get that kind of setup working with BoS.

Actually, I'd say the odds of getting an excellent campaign in an initial release are lower today than ever before, and will continue to get lower as time goes on.

The only hope is the product is popular enough and makes money long enough to warrant them devoting the resources to developing a bigger campaign.

To expect cutting-edge graphics (and from the comments I've seen here, people do), top-end flight and damage modeling, reliable network comms for MP, good AI for SP/MP, multiple theaters/maps (ONLY winter??!?), numerous flyable aircraft, a user-friendly mission builder, templates for skin making, AND comprehensive campaigns on release for even $100??

Would you like a copy of Windows with that?



The Jedi Master

Yeah, but honestly I've found this news disheartening too... This sort of campaign, for me, is a definitive dealbreaker.

I'm happy others find themselves fine. It shows they got at least part of the users right.
I've been happy enough with a copy-pasta (so to speak) of the RoF campaign, but like this...

Still the work they did with the rest of the sim is nothing short of breathtaking.

I think too many people are confusing "on release" with "all that will ever be."

ROF didn't have that campaign on release. It didn't have anything but the Western Front as a map on release. It had TWO flyable planes on release. Look where it is now.

I can't discount the concerns over 1C's involvement, that is valid, but I suspect 777 didn't walk into this without some contractual assurances that should mitigate some of that.



The Jedi Master

It's your decision, your money, so nobody can tell you what you should do.
However, IMO this is throwing the baby out the with bathwater. The sim is already in excellent shape,
and will only get better with time.

I want the excellent single player campaign as well.

Jedi, I have my Fingers Crossed,, and I want to and DO believe that Jason and 777 studios have their rear ends covered on this one as best they could do.

Reguardless of anything that happens, Jason and 777 have my support.
I would just HATE to see them get some sort of blame from 1C pulling some underhanded stuff with BOS.

Gaijin took a beating in their dealings with 1C and I was there from the beginning on that "Il2 " project on console.
I'll tell you this 1C hung Gaijin and the fans out to Dry ! It was Very Ugly !
A credit to Gaijin was that they actually paid for what updates they could afford out of their OWN pocket , simply out of love for the community.

FINGERS CROSSED for 777 on this one.


MOST Sincerely , Desode

Very true.

I give credit to 1C for not simply killing off the Il-2 name after what happened with CloD, something I'm sure many of us totally expected...you mess with a franchise and when it collapses you place the blame on it and wash your hands of it.

They opted to go with 777 for this retooling, though. So I tip my hat to them for that. Beyond that, I reserve judgement. I know what 777 can do without any publisher interference. Let's see what happens when they must also please 1C and that might restore my faith in 1C. If not *shrug* I wash my hands of 1C.



The Jedi Master

Clod was not that bad but certainly had some issues, and if Oleg had stayed they would have been fixed properly!!...the big problem was, it needed a much stronger rig then was the recommended advertised spec's

I stayed away from Clod when it was released due to the reports of bugs and choppy frame rate, but purchased it several months ago after reading about the Team Fusion mods to fix it. It is now exceptional and I think the best WWII flight sim for BoB scenarios. When BoS comes out I hope it will replace IL-2 1946 as the flight sim to play for eastern front action in that time period, but will have to see how realistic it's content is. I think IL-2 1946 will stand as the pinnacle of WWII flight sims for a long time to come as the graphics are still acceptable and the scope and content are the holy grail of WWII flight sims. Team Fusion is talking about a new region for Clod and most think it will be the Battle for Malta, so Clod still has a lot of life left in it also. With open code Clod could become the engine for the next great WWII flight sim if the BoS folks drop the ball and just build dogfight sims without a strong FMB.

For me the lack of an epic campaign (and the wonky UI) keeps me away from CLOD. It's such a classic piece of history and failing to tell that story is such a shame. I longed for a simulation that put you in the middle of what you read about in all those books. The sacrifices made, the struggle of Great Britain, the massive air battles and the fact that Britain took a beating but won. We have a great map, the tools, the planes but the rest is up to the community, and while some great progress has been made it's still a long way from what I hoped for. I still hope that BOS will eventually turn into something more than a bunch of historical aircraft on a historical map but also manage to tell the story of those who fought. I'd surely be willing to pay a lot extra for a single player career.

-C-

CloD was that bad on release. It had nothing to do with performance problems but with the fact it had a horrible campaign, brain-dead AI, non-working radio commands, no weather engine worth that name, the worst, convoluted GUI in the history of flightsims and enough bugs, technical problems and unfinished features for a whole series of games.

Jeeze, even the printed cloth map of my collector's edition was of horrible quality.

Glad I didn't jump in right then... my first main goal in a new flight sim would be to find back the old SP campaign flavor that is now long gone... and I just can't stand the "cold-lifeless-last-on-the-list" campaign introduced by the first IL-2 and taken as the rule of law since then... no good & lively SP campaign? no buy...

So, tell us how you REALLY feel PB and stop holding back!




The Jedi Master

If only P_B were exaggerating... all of what he wrote is factual. Frankly, I'm surprised Jason saw any value in the "Il2 Sturmovik" moniker after the CLoD debacle.

Looking forward to BoS, it looks like it's going to be THE WW2 flight sim for at least the next 5 years... and there's a lot more "room" for it to grow (theatre-wise) compared to RoF.

Glad that you gave it a chance, it really is a very powerful game engine

Yes, yes its all true lol...but the original game has many features that were lost by luthier with the re-write. He did a good job though and made it playable for many. TF also is doing a great job on improving the game. I still fly all 3 versions but my favorite is the original release. It's just some things like the game's lighting, and that I was able to changed some sound files to suite me. But the number one reason that I still fly the original release is because of the fact that the gunnery is very, very difficult to do, because of all the jumping around of my aircraft and my target's aircraft. Gauges going wild and all that, it just seems more realistic than the seemingly "airplane being on rail tracks" as I think you may have noticed...that is just to easy for my liking, so I as an off-liner really enjoy the 2011 Eu release.

Within the scope of the next 5 years, I think DCS WWII is the horse to bet on. The edge DCS is poised to bring to the table, is third party content integration. For example, VEAO just announced several WWII aircraft for DCS World, and I'm interested to see how well ED, the DCS WWII team, and third parties like VEAO get along.

777 has already confirmed that BoS is going to be more on the survey sim side of things, simply because they only have so many resources. Conversely, DCS would be less prone to resource constrictions, because you've got several independent, third party dev teams feeding content to the platform. More to the point, these dev teams are free to focus on a specific area of content, eg aircraft, scenery, campaigns, etc, so you're getting a deeper product for each category as they can focus in their attention to one discipline.

From a user standpoint, that could see the DCS platform start to eclipse BoS simply because it can become both broad and deep. BoS on the other hand, has only one pipe-line to leverage (the main dev team).

It is of course possible that 777 will open the doors to third parties, but it's already behind the ball compared to DCS.

Conversely, I think BoS will take it the next three years though, leveraging the aggressive head start they have. The key though, will be keeping it fresh with new content, as it looks like they aren't really bringing their A game with the campaign, so I think many will get board. I suspect a fix for this will be porting the dynamic campaign module from RoF over as a paid add-on.*

I would be willing to bet a cool $100 that DCS won't even come close to overtaking. Development is just so catastrophically slow and honestly, the sterile feel of the game and all the addons isn't going to win crowds.

I honestly don't think/know that opening up the door to 3rd parties is 777's call.
Like I said before people need to understand that most of the time,,, the publisher who owns the license makes the the calls.

It's not like 777 bought the rights to use the IL2 license ? Is it ?
The way I understood it 1C that is having 777 make the sim for them .

I believe it is the other way around. 777 is a marketing entity and 1C is a programming house. I believe 1C is writing the code and owns the rights to the Digital Nature flight Sim engine used in RoF. RoF was on the market before 777 bought partial/whole rights to it.

You believe it wrong. RoF and DN engine was made by neoqb (following Gennadish) before 777 took over. 1C/777 agreement came only after.

Thanks, Rama. I knew that RoF was not made by 777 but wasn't sure how it came to be.

I said within 5 years. In the near term (less than 2 years) BoS has a wide lead. Remember, yes DCS development takes a while, but you have lots of teams working otherwise independently piping in content on an alternating basis. I think it will take about 3-5 years before that state is actually realized, but we'll get there.

Both of you are wrong to some extent. Not sure why this is important to you guys, but 1CGS is 1C-777 Limited. One and the same. Not really separate. Development happens under one roof, same guys on both ROF and BOS teams.

And for the record, yes, ROF was initially owned by neoqb and initial development was done under that banner. But then they sold it to 777 and we developed it for several years more with the same guys. Most major features and content was released under the 777 banner and management. Now it is developed and sold under the 1CGS banner.

Jason

Jason,,the reason, we are talking about this is because some of us are curious/concerned as to what amount of long term control you and 777 have over BOS and who has the final say on things 1C's publishing or 777 studios ?

I had pointed out in this thread,,that since I knew that 777 had bought ROF, 777 then had complete control to make ALL final decisions concerning aspects of ROF's continued development,,, and that Il2 BOS may be a completely different beast in terms of who has the final say in BOS's development since Il2 is a 1C owned license.

I don't speak for everyone, so I will just say this for myself.
I have complete faith in you and 777 because of your Truly outstanding work on ROF.
You guys did a Amazing job on ROF and in my opinion you also did a OUTSTANDING job dealing with the ROF community.
You did everything you said you were going to do with ROF.

1C, in the past has been another story for me personally,,, Not the Dev Side of 1C, but the Publishing side of 1C.
In one situation, 1C as a publisher,, did not allow a DEV house,in a joint venture, to release a patch to fix key elements of a game because they didn't want to spend the money to do so and the DEV house had to literally take up the hat amongst it's own dev team and pay for a patch to be released out of their OWN pocket.


With that said, I see a lot of people talking about what 777 may do with the long term future of BOS,,,and I just pointed out that 777 may not have total say in the decisions concerning BOS like they did with ROF because as I understand it, Il2 is a 1C owned license ?
Grant it,,,I'm assuming that 1C still owns the Il2 license.

I'm curious/concerned with who has the final say on the development/long term decisions in BOS ?,,,especially Long term. 1C ? Or 777 studios ?

I ask this because :
1. I don't want to see the 1C publishing side of this joint venture pull a fast one and Screw over 777 Studios and in the process hurt 777's reputation.
AND
2. I would feel way better knowing that 777 has complete control of decisions about the future of Il2 BOS.

To be Blunt,, I have total Faith and Support for 777 studios but I don't have any faith at all in the part of 1C that handles publishing.
I hate seeing the ownership of a license used to control and screw over both a Dev team and a game's fan base.


If the project of Il2 BOS is different because 1C and 777 are now a newly formed joint company yet the top decision makers in that company are the same people that had the final say on the choices in ROF, then my worries would be laid to rest.

Sincerely Desode

I had complete faith in 777 Studios based on how they handled the RoF stuff and that was the ONLY reason my squad and I preordered BoS and it has turned into a complete disaster. No personal attacks please is so far out in left field and everyone involved is supporting him. If I could I would never have supported this game. If I could I and my whole squad would get refunds for our preorder. But we cant, all we can do is stop other squaddies and friends from making the same bad decision we made.

On the notions of campaigns, I think whomever came up with that idea is too much like me and not enough like everyone else.

I have always ignored what campaigns said about my avatar and my squadmates, making up my own narrative as I went along. If the mission was a repeat ("groundhog day") of the previous one like escort bombers, meeting at point A to bomb point B, and return I'd simply fill in a reason for it based on how I did the one before. "It worked so well we're doing it again, and the boys on the ground need it," or "Your disastrous failure at protecting the bombers means we're having to do it all over again as the boys on the ground need it" as required.

I usually ignore medals awarded by campaign engines unless I think they're realistic, and sometimes mentally award myself one when it doesn't. I also like to award medals to my squaddies, sometime when they don't deserve it.

On squadmates, I usually determine who will live or die as it fits my own narrative, regardless of what a campaign engine may say.

The notion of a more omnibus campaign where one steps into the eyes of a different pilot doing a different role in a different plane from mission to mission is oddly appealing to me. To do one mission escorting a Pe-2 in a Yak and the next one flying the Pe-2 being escorted by Yaks in a similar mission seems kinda neat; the narrative changes in perspective, but now both sides have a name and backstory.

Give me a realistic world with believable aircraft, missions, and plausable AI and I'll invent the rest.

Time constraints have left me behind the ball in flying the sim, but I'm planning on jumping back in over the next month or so.

I fail to see how it contradict what I said (1CGS was created after 777 took over neoqb).... but it doesn't matter...

A complete disaster? What in the world are you going on about?

I think this says it all;



Maybe a new thread is in order?

But.
I'll leave that up to you guys.
Please be civil, thanks.

Um, I'd say "complete disaster" is a bit of a stretch...

I'd say "a bit of a stretch" is a vast understatement regarding "complete disaster."

Maybe I would say "complete disaster" is "completely ridiculous."





The Jedi Master

Yeah, I had to read that twice to make sure it wasn't some kind of ironic statement.

Maybe I have completely different expectations but IL2:BoS still looks to me like an amazing flightsim. Especially considering it's not even been released yet.

Perhaps after it's been released we can talk about disappointments or flaws, but to declare anything now is putting the cart, the caboose, and the entire train before the horse.

The fact is BoS runs better NOW than CloD did on its release day, minus a couple of features not in yet like the campaign. Yet it's more stable, on and offline!

Might as well say "compared to this teenager just drafted to play in MLB, your 1 yr old baby has ZERO skills, and it will obviously never be as good!"



The Jedi Master

Well it is not just my opinion but that of my whole squad. You could count the number of hours my squad has put into BoS on one hand. We all preordered it back before it was playable. Slowly the game has moved from optimistic to wtf are they thinking. Following the Dev Diaries is like watching a train wreck.

It started with the limited beta, then graphics options and removing features already programmed because they felt there were too many button... or I think the exact quote was something like "that feature was for the AI only and players were not supposed to be allowed to use that historic feature." Now they dont plan to put in on/off toggle commands so you cant use on/off switches. There is a whole list of other things which I wont go into because this post would become too long.

They just seem to in general treat the community like crap. And it is obvious that most of this doesnt affect the people posting here and I understand and respect that but also you guys have driven off everyone who has ever had anything negative to say about the game. You are like a pack of sharks attacking at the scent of blood.

I have an entire squad of people who are upset about BoS and who would have gotten their money back if they could but none of us can. We cant even vote with our wallets anymore because we are stuck with something that was misrepresented to us for preorder. That is the last time I preorder anything from 1C or 777 which is a shame because I had the utmost respect for 777 based on RoF. I dropped over a grand into RoF buying people copies of the game and planes and etc. I didnt have a problem with that because I enjoyed the product and I wanted to help 777 and support them. Now I am utterly pissed off by a hundred dollar preorder. That doesnt even seem rational in my eyes and yet I am fuming over the way my squad and I have been treated by this preorder.

If you are happy with it then that is wonderful. I am happy for you. But there is a whole group of people who are unhappy with it and "completely ridiculous" does not represent us fairly. Just because those who uninstalled the beta stopped posting on the forums does not mean that those people dont exist.

Ok, rant over. Sorry for ruining another BoS thread. I'll try to keep clear of here for a few more weeks. Who knows maybe I will be pleasantly surprised on release but i doubt it.

It looks like your squad spends a lot of time looking for things to be miserable about. Toggle switches instead of on/off switches are really a deal breaker? Sorry, but that's just silly. BoS looks really good right now, and it's not even done yet.

How do we know how much time Master and his squad spend looking for things to be miserable about?

Toggles being a deal breaker may well be silly, if that was what Master had said. He did not

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Nothing wrong with that.

@Master: maybe you guys will find DCS:WW2 more to your liking.

I'm looking forward to playing both titles.

Perhaps expectations are too high?

Look at the recent WWII sims: DCS WWII -- who knows how long before it resembles a true WWII sim in the proper environment as opposed to the current "WWII planes fighting in a modern battlefield," reusing an existing engine

BoS -- given 18 months (stretched to 24) to make something with a modest budget by reusing an existing engine

CloD -- given the most money and TONS of time and produced a horrible broken mess that took another 18 months just to patch up to a playable state, albeit still far short of where it should be. Later modded to alter some details that were capable of being changed, taking another year plus of development but still missing features that will never show up because there's no source code, no funding, and no chance. Might become the ultimate BoB sim, but will never be a Pacific, Med, or Eastern Front sim.


So we have one major production that completely collapsed, a modest one that partly collapsed and will hopefully rise from the ashes, and another modest one that isn't pushing the boundaries enough for you as they attempt to broaden its appeal beyond the hardcore and limit the tech headaches they will have to deal with.

It's not going to happen. What you want costs too much and has too small a market to be a profitable enterprise. This isn't 1999. You will NEVER get something like the 2001 release of Il-2 again, let alone something like the 2006 Il-2: 1946 and you will be elected Emperor of the Earth before we see something like the final result after Team D patches on top of 3rd party mods.

So you have two choices: keep flying the old sims and grumbling about how great things used to be, or accept the new paradigm of having less ambitious sims in return for anything being made at all. The fact that your demands would likely cause BoS to fail just as badly as CloD did is not missed by the developers, which is why you're not getting them. The customer is NOT right when they want your entire inventory for free.

It's not personal, it's business, and what you want out of a sim is no longer practical, even for labor in Russia. Notice all the Western sim developers competing with them? Right, the last disappeared 10 years ago.

I'm not saying you're wrong to want those things. I'm saying you're wrong to blame them for not giving you what you want when it's not going to be viable ever again. Wags mentioned spending over $100k to make the AFM for one plane that already existed! That's US money for Russian labor!

Maybe if everyone who bought a copy of Call of Duty ALSO bought a WWII sim we'd have a $150m+ budget for a sim and see a sim like that again.




The Jedi Master

I'm also looking forward to both titles. @Master: You do understand BOS is still in Alpha, not even Beta yet

Well said, thank you.

They removed a feature that was already coded because "they had too many buttons." That has nothing to do with affordable coding and everything to do with a mindset shift. They could just have easily left the option in under and advanced key commands section and catered to both hardcore and casual play just like leaving the graphics options in and just adding an advanced tab for those who want to tweek.

But they dont want to give you options it is their way or the highway and sadly I cant pick the highway because I gave them too much trust too early before they did their 180 degree design decision change.

I accept that, but I am not happy about that nor am I happy about being treated as an fool or idiot because I am not happy about it.

I can understand your frustration with loosing that, hopefully they will reconsider. CLod had some cool things removed with the final/finished rewrite, but it only disappointed me, and a hand full of others...go figure

Like I said though, it is not one thing that is the problem but the whole shebang But i'll stop rehashing old arguments just for the sake of rehashing.

Your second post on this, and still haven't really said anything at all.
Disaster?

I still can't figure out what he said.

Yep
As someone who's been around this scene for a long time, like many others here, I tend to be fatalistic and more
to the point, realistic about these things while remaining supportive.
We've all been burned. CloD wouldn't even boot up for me, it simply crashed. THAT is a disaster.

I'm absolutely loving BoS so far - the feeling of flight is the
best I've experienced in any flight sim. If NOTHING was ever added or changed, I could spend many hours just messing
around with the QMB. Sure I remember EAW and the heyday of IL2, but I've moved on.
I can't whip up a mission in an afternoon and host CoOps later that night anymore, which bums me out a bit, but
I'm not spinning about it. Maybe we'll have a user friendly mission editor and CoOps later.

I certainly can't relate to the word "disaster" in relation to BoS, and to me this sounds like so much running in circles, crying that
the sky is falling. Most of us remember features that were slowly added to IL2, including FM changes. Those changes
and improvements went on for quite a long time. Crying 'disaster' at this stage and attempting to withdraw one's funds
is counterproductive to seeing the same kinds of incremental improvements happening with BoS.

From where I sit, the devs are doing an amazing job.
I'd give them another $94 (and that's no small thing for me) if they announced a pre-order for an upcoming add on.

I'm not putting any eggs in the DCS basket at this juncture - I'll wait and see how that progresses - looks pretty sterile to me.
If I see it coming together, I'll happily begin supporting it. Who knows, maybe that will be the team who gives us the immersive, EAW style experience back. For the moment, I'll be pleasantly surprised if it ever becomes a functioning, true WWII flight sim (not just an opportunity to fly WWII planes) Time will tell.
For now, BoS is the best we have.

I'm guessing the historical feature/removed command was the 109's ability to eject its canopy. Not quite the disaster most with a level head would rush to declare, but I suppose when you truly want to denigrate a product any little thing will suffice.

Exactly, and Jason even posted here to clarify that removing this feature had zip to do with "having too many buttons," as Master would have you believe.

"You could count the number of hours my squad has put into BoS on one hand"

seems like you all gave it a fair go after such a large financial investment

However you seem to have made your mind up

"all we can do is stop other squaddies and friends from making the same bad decision we made."

As has been said, perhaps you are better off waiting for DCSWWII Master, why you need a separate button to eject the canopy in a 109 when it ejects when you bailout baffles me

Cheers Dakpilot

I completely forgot about the canopy eject button being removed.

And this would be a good starting point for a mature discussion between fellow simmers as to why a toggle switch is important to another flight simmer

But we seem to prefer to make value statements about the individual, and we are incredulous

As I said, the desire to have such a feature is one thing that could be debated, but the expectation to have it is another where the debate is far easier. Whether you think it's good to have or not, whether it's necessary or not, the issue still boils down to dedication of limited resources and where they're best spent.

While the addition and later removal of a feature that seems to be working is puzzling, it's not unlikely that there are deeper ramifications we don't see.




The Jedi Master

Not really. It's so ridiculously minor that there is no possible way I'm going to understand why anyone would include it on their list of reasons they want their money back. In fact, his entire rant is absurd.

I do feel this is important, why is there a sudden need for something - lets say nav lights for example - to use two commands to turn them on and off? Why would there need to be two commands for anything that can be turned on and off? Even the lauded pinnacle of flight sims - DCS - has single commands for on/off, or landing gear up/down.

Is it because this individual has a board with an array of switches, so they want to be able to assign one key to on and one key to off so that the switch functions in an on/off scenario? Well, you can just assign the same key to both positions. Up = On/Off key and down = On/Off key. It will still function the same exact way.

It is just another nitpick to complain about this product because the true, and only, complaint Master really has and repeats ad nauseam since it occurred is the fixed graphics settings which make it easier to debug and identify actual performance issues during alpha/beta testing. Most (in the 85% range) people absolutely mess up their graphics settings gaining themselves terrible performance and then blame it on the game and not that they went in to the advanced settings totally screwing them up because they never belonged going in there in the first place. Most people have no idea what they are messing around with and that certain combinations of advanced settings will yield terrible picture and performance, but they read somewhere on the internet that this setting does this and that setting does that so obviously when they contradict each other, or override, they should both be on/set to max. So it does make sense to lock down the graphics settings to ensure that development time is not wasted on performance issues induced by the end user.

Dunno... since I started messing around with personalised controls and Voice Attack in DCS I realised how frickin'important is to have to different input for one control.

It may sound minimal... but it does make quite a difference.

Maybe is only so for a certain hardcore sub-faction of simmers.
But in that case I sadly belong there...

But then... you're using your voice to command your aircraft to do things. That certainly is the opposite of historical and realistic, which is the supposed reason for multiple inputs for on/off states. Not trying to start an argument about it, just that voice operated command systems don't even exist on modern day fighter jets so I don't think it could fall in the "realistic" argument.

Nope, you misunderstand me. Or better I explained myself really bad.
When you have voice control (I actually use it to "boss around" my crew in the Huey- do they have to have switches or I can use my voice?) you can meet two conditions.

1) The control is a single stage alternating function.
2) The control has two stage, on and off.

For example in the Huey- let's take Anti-collision Lights.
It's one of those unfortunate switches as in case 1).
That means I can't control it directly (Boss my Peter Pilot to get to a know state) but only command a state change. That's a bother. A big one.

If I want to go Shadow (all lights off) I first have to check the current state and then act accordingly.
Same thing when I'm inbound for landing and I need a specific Light condition set.

This of course doesn't REALLY relate to me... but let's just say that in an impetus of joy at seeing one of your favourite Software house, 777 (and they are to me...) getting into WWII fighters... Lo and behold they're making your favourite plane- the FW 190.

You can finally use your home-made cockpit with all the switches connected to the LEO Bodnar boards...
It becomes a drag to have to remember if your gear are up or down just because the producer can't be bothered to code in a two stage control.

Now, I have NO IDEA if the gear works like that.
Let's try to focus on the point- that being if the cockpit has a two stage control... why not code a two stage function?

PS: Anyway Eurofighter Typhoon HAS voice activated functions. And not a little number either.

Well, in the case of those things I would think the answer would be "look at your cockpit". The gear handle and lights tell you if they're up or down. Ditto flaps. External lights should also have a switch in the cabin.

Just playing devil's lawyer here, but the ability to give the command "lights off regardless of whether they're on or not" is not realistic either. You're either going to look at the switch to see if you need to flick it, or you're going to put your finger on it to feel where it is and then see if you need to flick it. The actual cockpits don't have two switches for on and off.

So now you're in the classic "ease of use" vs "more authentic" debate. There's no right or wrong answer, it's a matter of preference (I use auto engine management because I'm not interested in it--I don't mess with the engine in my car and I don't mess with the one in my plane either!) You can NOT make the "but this is more realistic!" argument stick, though, because in an actual cockpit that's not how it would work.



The Jedi Master

Yes and no.

DCS allow us to match the switches of the virtual A10 C to our physical HOTAS.

That's good.
In absence of an option alike, it's pretty bothersome to have to readjust the entire cockpit for each mission.

And don't make the mistake to strike this only as a Quest for realism. There a good chunk of us who want just immersion.

And this discussion isn't limited to BoS. I honestly couldn't care less. I don't have it.
I am neither a squadmate of Master.

Buy when there's a physical switch with two or more states... why not code it with those states?

Setting the Huey office is really tedious, sometimes, whether you use keyboard shortcuts, voice or a physical switch IRL.
But it's not even that... it's about coherency sometimes.

It's weird that belsimtek went all the way to give each CB a keystroke... every single one.
Nav lights too, Radio as well... and leave out Anti collision?
And that's just the first that springs to mind. There are more important ones. Flares Dispenser Arming. (Which is bugged too, it's a single alternative state that doesn't rotate its states.)

Whether it sounds a little whine to you it's pointless. When you have to fumble during combat, flipping a switch 3 times to get it right you know it's wrong.

But again, it's only few hardcore that suffer from this. Luckily.

Peace.

And actually I never called for realism. Not once.

I just stated that I need to be able to set all the states a switch has.

Quite simply, its redundant coding. It adds to build size too. Everyone complains about downloading x amount of data, but they want z amount to account for redundant coding. If one command does up and down or off and on, then truly - another isn't needed.

I wasn't aware the Eurofighter did voice command, but they appear to be very basic and again - not WWII. You may have not said "realism" but the other irate fella did.

But you don't have BoS, so clearly it doesn't matter to you but for some reason you are posting in this thread so it does matter to you for some reason because you are, again, posting in this thread?

Hardcore isn't voice commands in WWII aircraft, doesn't matter if you have all of the switches to flip - if you are telling the computer vocally to flip them then hardcore went out the window long ago. You are limited to a few modern day jets at best that voice commands will be "hardcore," and at that it's in the single digit.

I will repeat again, you don't have BoS but you are still concerned about this but you aren't because you don't care about BoS but you are posting about it for some reason.

Now about that voice command software, it functions just like joystick buttons. You could say "gear up" and "gear down" yes? But both of those commands could be the exact same key, yes? Yes. So your voice command software, flibbity flobbity could be R and hippity hoppty could be R - and R would be the key that toggles lights on/off. Not seeing the problem.

Switching switches does not hardcore make.

[quote=NattyIced]But you don't have BoS, so clearly it doesn't matter to you but for some reason you are posting in this thread so it does matter to you for some reason because you are, again, posting in this thread?[quote]

Are you serious? If so, this is relevant how?

I apologize and take my leave.

Fixed that for you. But, sadly, it's more than a few.

Keep in mind that we're not discussing whether it would be better if they added every little feature that we'd like to see. We're talking about people who want their money back because they're not getting every little feature done exactly how they'd like to see it done.

Bit pathetic... isn't it?

I agree. Totally disappointed