Official Fulqrum Publishing forum - Post made by Jason at Sim HQ

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- - Post made by Jason at Sim HQ (http://forum.fulqrumpublishing.com/showthread.php?t=25701)

Quote:

Originally Posted by zapatista (Post 327934)

another piece of the puzzle we are missing is what exactly happened mid development that caused the lost 2 or 3 years which became the Achilles heel in this whole CoD project ? time wise this is the period we know oleg fired some people, or some left on their own (taking part of the code ?) and the RoF project was started. are all those facts linked, its all speculation at this stage, but those missing years caused the whole delay mess that landed us where we are now.

At the beginning BoB was further developed from IL2 and new features were built on top of it. However, someone thought it would be great idea to abandon Java (in which IL2 was written) and OpenGL. It might turn out it was indeed a great idea (in the long run), but usually such changes (revolution instead of evolution) mess whole project badly in the beginning, especially if you have small team and there were/are staff changes. That probably slowed development by 1-2 years at least.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tree_UK (Post 327835)

For those that were/are still under the belief that CLOD was financed by Ubisoft then read this below, especially Chivas who as been on my case about this for a long time.

Originally Posted By: 777 Studios - Jason

I'm sorry, but I need to say something because your comments are not correct.

1.) Luthier is a long-time friend of mine and you are smearing him with no proof or knowledge of what really happened that caused the less than stellar release of CLOD. Oleg didn't hand Luthier anything. Luthier was asked by 1C to try to finish the project after Oleg was, depending who you talk to, relieved of duty by 1C or he quit 1C. You make the call. Luthier is making the best of a bad situation and he is a good guy and from what I can tell a good manager. My point is you can't blame him for the release or bad decisions that were forced upon him by others. He was given 12 months to correct 6 years of bad decisions made by others. A good analogy is blaming me for every decision made regarding ROF before my company took over. Coming from someone who had to take over a not so great situation I know what he is going through.

2.) Again, you see to blame Ubi for all this. Why don't you ask 1C if $8 million and 7 years was enough time and money for a team to eventually be held accountable for there work and produce a product? Ubi is not quite the monster they are being portrayed as. Again, see my comments about Oleg's departure. Only Duke Nukem' can have a never ending dev cycle and hell even that got released eventually. Bringing Oleg back isn't going to solve anything. 1C loves when you blame Ubi. 1C was the day to day manager and owners of IL-2 franchise, not to the mention the primary funding source so why aren't they held accountable? Some of you hold Oleg and 1C up like some sort of gods and people who can do no wrong which is foolish.

I'm not going to say anymore, but what you've said about Luthier isn't fair to him. There is no need to be an Oleg or 1C apologist.

Jason

Anyone that was surprised by the information that Jason shared really have to learn to read between the lines ;) Of course it was 1C that pushed the game on the market after getting tired of financing the project for years...

/mazex

Well maybe when 777 studio puts out their WWII fighter sim, then we will see.
I give up on 1C and getting this IL2 sturmovik Cliffs Of Dover version off the ground. Maybe if in 18 months, it might look and be as good as Rise Of Flight.

until then see y'all next year around Christmas time is what I'm going to estimate.

So I'm sticking to IL2 1946 Forgotten battles, and the new mods improvements.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZaltysZ (Post 328131)

... However, someone thought it would be great idea to abandon Java (in which IL2 was written) and OpenGL. ...

It was just the GUI/Menus etc. that were written in Java, the game engine itself was in C(++). I think they took the same approach with Clod, although they exchanged Java for C#.

You're completely right about OpenGL.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mazex (Post 328137)

+100, thats the way mosts sensible people see it, Ubi took a lot of blame but like Jason says the blame was unwarranted. 1C financed the project not UBI.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chivas (Post 328078)

Proof, there is no proof, for any of your statements. Ubisoft was in on COD from the beginning, and is still the publisher. I'm sure IC publishing didn't fund 8 million without considerable investment from UBISOFT.

Give it up now Chivas, lets move on, its not doing your reputation anygood by clinging on to this outdated opinion.

Its all good fat chewing. Conspiracy, counter conspiracy etc etc.

If, as some suggest, key people left 1C and created RoF with their knowledge and experience it would explain what many see as an inexplicable hole in CoD and its development. Inexplicable because 1C had so much experience and did such a good job on IL-2. Its as though a raft of knowledge and ability suddenly went missing or possibly actual data/coding could not be understood and is now being replaced. How could the sounds for instance be so naff after all they learned in IL-2? How could FMs and cockpits not have been tested? 1C have been so much better than that in the past. Am I the only one that thinks the pre-releases seemed better than COD itself or was it a master stroke of sleight of hand?

Why did those guys leave (if they did)? Frustration? Quick buck? Who knows?

Its all speculation.

The thing that matters is what is happening to CoD now. The next patch should tell us how they are coping.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jonk (Post 328019)

Not sure comparing the budget of blockbuster games to that of IL2 is really a fair shake..... How about we look at the budget of "Deadliest Catch: Alaskan Storm" and compare that.

Clod is regularly compared to blockbusters to make a point, mostly regarding development time and it's relative lack of polish.
But if people want to pull numbers for any other game, that's fine by me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ACE-OF-ACES (Post 328025)

Not sure what this cost comparison is suppose to prove? All I know is this data can be 'looked at' in different ways to prove different things..

As it is, this data can be very misleading..

For example, a bigger software team can do more in less amount of time. So for this data to really be useful you would have to take into account how many worked on it and how long it took to develop those 'games' you listed. Ill bet that none of them took 6 years like CoD has.

Also note that and a lot of those games are spending a lot of money 'creating' worlds that don't exist, the neat thing about WWII flight sims is they only have to worry about 'copying' a world that already exists. ;)
And as you noted marketing is included in those numbers, marketing can be a very big chunk of the pie!

With that in mind, when I look at this data, I see it as 'proof' of how small the flight sim market is in the rest of the gaming world, and not much else.

Yeah, in many ways I agree with you. As you say, bigger teams equals less develoment time. (Usually.) And yeah, those are numbers I just got from a google search. I don't know how accurate they are, but it's the best I could do.

Where I disagree is the bolded part. Developers making up their own universe have a much easier time of it than developers faithfully recreating something.
Think of all the research that goes into a simulator, not only visual, but what goes on on the inside, like CEM, bullet physics, flight models etc.

The devs for say, Halo have none of that to worry about. They can make it up as they go, and don't have to worry about it being realistic.

Quote:

Originally Posted by albx (Post 327896)

So, when Oleg was present at the lunch of CoD in Moscow, he was there but he already left 1C. I think we need to give Ilya our apologizes and give him our best support to go ahead with the project, we need just to turn the page.

I gave him my best support like others here: my money.....
And I dont apologize for nothing...

It is the turn for 1C now not for the community