The Crystal Ball

[RickRuski]

If I read this reply from Luthier correctly it sounds like the improvements to the graphics engine and any future add ons will only come with the talked about sequel. Just re-reading one of his old posts doesn't sound encouraging, and now they are saying that there won't be any patches till just prior to the sequel being released.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Luthier
We’ll work along the model similar to the old Il-2. There’s a single progression line from version to version dotted by sequels. For example, we never released a patch for Forgotten Battles that contained new code from Pacific Fighters. The way to get it was to buy PF and merge it into FB. That’s exactly how it will be with CoD.

And now this Quote: -



We are trying to pull off a very difficult balancing act with developing a new game and supporting an old one at the same time. Pretty much no one does that. Most large developers simply release games, support them for a month at the most, and then switch to new paid content regardless of the state of the game. We are however trying not only to patch up major issues, we're working on improving things that generally work - and we're doing that for free seven months after release. We are doing that by trying to parallel tasks as much as possible and improving CoD while developing a sequel.

That is however simply not possible with some features. In some cases that's a question of limited resources. We cannot make a new flyable for CoD because that means one less flyable for the sequel. With other tasks it's simply a matter of time. Some of the changes we're making are so sweeping, they're scheduled to be completed very close to the sequel's ship date. The animation for example is such a huge task with so many facets that we can't just take it, turn it into a half a gig patch, and release it for CoD a month before the release of the sequel.