Reviewing Luthier's roadmap

[JG52Krupi]

Originally Posted by furbs

3. Multiplayer. There is something in steam filters that prevents game servers from being found. This is only happening with live retail versions of the game. This apparently isn’t caused by us – hopefully it’s just a simple oversight somewhere and the fix will be a simple flick of a switch.

- In progress I think. The specific problem referred to above was fixed but MP is obviously stuffed at the moment with the sound problem.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also i would say this is still failing...servers disconnecting and also kicking players for no reason.

Plus no CO-OPs and the sound bug.

Very strange I have logged quite a few hours online now and have never being kicked or booted from a server, had the game crash once and my overclock overheated (like my 109 ) but I have never got kicked...

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by bongodriver

Phil,

I understand the concept of criticism and how fanboi'ism will not help, but the criticism is becoming a stuck record, and I don't think a constant barrage of DCS is better or ROF is better will help the sim suceed, rather it will make people go and buy DCS and ROF and forget COD......no? but how about this for a concept, every aspect of the games bugginess has now been discussed to death, and there have been sadly only a couple of threads that really go into highlighting the bugs, the rest is just mud slinging, this is why I see no logic to the current form of criticism....it just wont help the sim suceed at all.

Exactly. Sorry for the off topic tangent, but this needs to be stressed somewhat and maybe hammered into some of the thicker skulls.

The difference between a whine and a legitimate, constructive complaint is the tone the message is delivered in.

If people think there's things broken in the sim, they want to tell us about it and expect some reasonable feedback to their posts, they should at least put some effort in how they tell us about it all.

I have a bucket load of things i would like to see fixed, but my description of the issue is generally a bit more eloquent and detailed than "plz fix the crap ai/sounds/green fields/flavor of the month whine".

Is it because i'm smarter than most? Not really. So what gives? Well, i'll just go on out on a limb here and make a guess, i think it's e-laziness.

You know, the kind of laziness where i want things to work without any intervention from my part as an end user but at the same time i hypocritically rely on a bunch of other people getting knee dip in it, not all of them developers on a payroll but members of the community as well, to do all the testing, bug hunting/reporting/fixing, FMB tutorial publishing, making new missions/campaigns/tools/etc and what not, so that little precious me can enjoy CoD with all the shiny graphical and audio features of DCS:A-10, ROF and CoD itself combined while at the same having the content, multiplayer user base and seamless functionality of the 10 year old IL2:1946...all that without ever lifting one finger to that effect myself but on top of that, constantly berating those who are trying to move things in that direction.

You see it's a win-win situation: if the other people make it work i get a functional game, if they don't i can gloat and go all "i told you so" on everyone and all the while, i don't really have to do any of the hard work myself and i've talked so much hot air and contradiction over time that i can easily have a bunch of different, conflicting quotes bookmarked to quote depending on how each argument is going, so that i always end up on top...the true essence of a forum warrior.

They just seem too lazy to describe the problem properly, too lazy to try and come up with a workaround, too lazy to search the forum on their own for existing fixes, even too lazy to read whatever little stuff is included in the manual (which usually ends up in hilarious "bug reports" that are actually a case of the user not understanding why things don't work the way he expects, but work perfectly fine if he follows the manual's advice) and the list goes on and on ad nauseum.

If i had a penny for every time i've heard "i'm out of here, game XYZ is so much better", only to have them repeating their message and still be here constantly debating what needs to be fixed in a game they supposedly have no interest in, i'd probably be able to afford a real aircraft by now or at least hire a few extra developers for Luthier. In reality they are not leaving us, they are just trying to coerce everyone else into fixing the gameplay experience for them by a constant stream of complaints



As for the main topic of this thread, i think it's a very balanced assessment of how things are going. Like i said before i've got a load of things i'd like to see getting fixed or improved upon, but it's perfectly clear that if we care to apply a bit of deductive reasoning and revisit older threads to make a comparison between today and how things were immediately post-release, we can all see that:

1) Targets were set and the most pressing ones were met pretty fast.

2) The developers are out of the woods financially (they are planning expansions and hiring a new sound engineer to remake all the sounds from scratch), so work continues on the issues still remaining.

3) Feedback or no feedback, the developers are in fact reading the forums. This can be clearly seen from the fact that they react on the issues mentioned, either by the infrequent development updates or the actual changelog on the patch readme files.

It's just that some people want their hand held more than others, or a bird's eye view of their offices to feel content, but in reality nobody can say they are oblivious to our bug reports, especially since various little details, some of them pretty obscure stuff, that was spotted by certain knowledgeable, dedicated community members has been fixed at various points in time (small details on aircraft and how some aircraft systems operate).

[jimbop]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

3) Feedback or no feedback, the developers are in fact reading the forums. This can be clearly seen from the fact that they react on the issues mentioned, either by the infrequent development updates or the actual changelog on the patch readme files.

It's just that some people want their hand held more than others, or a bird's eye view of their offices to feel content, but in reality nobody can say they are oblivious to our bug reports, especially since various little details, some of them pretty obscure stuff, that was spotted by certain knowledgeable, dedicated community members has been fixed at various points in time (small details on aircraft and how some aircraft systems operate).

Good post, Blackdog_kt. Very true and I agree with it all except this bit. It seems to me there are a few cases where people with IL-2 history have a somewhat more direct channel to the team but more broadly I don't think much attention is being paid to this forum. This reduces incentive to properly report.

Take my case which I'm sure is not unique. Between work and family I have very little time for gaming. When I can actually sit down in front of my gaming machine I have a choice of a) playing a game and unwinding a bit, or b) hunting down bugs, reproducing them and properly reporting them. I would be willing to do b) but only if I am sure that my effort will be useful to the dev team. Otherwise it is a waste of time and time is valuable to me.

Now assume it is the same for many others which I think is a safe assumption given the average age of this forum. The result is that you have many poor quality reports (i.e. 'game is broken constant ctds plz fix yesterday') but relatively few good quality ones.

I would really like to be proven wrong! If the team is reading then let them post. It wouldn't even need to be exhaustive feedback, just the occasional reminder that they are using our feedback.

[Rattlehead]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

You see it's a win-win situation: if the other people make it work i get a functional game, if they don't i can gloat and go all "i told you so" on everyone

Spot on.
Unfortunately I don't expect things to change.

[ATAG_Dutch]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

I have a bucket load of things i would like to see fixed, but my description of the issue is generally a bit more eloquent and detailed than "plz fix the crap ai/sounds/green fields/flavor of the month whine".

You know, the kind of laziness where i want things to work without any intervention from my part as an end user but at the same time i hypocritically rely on a bunch of other people getting knee dip in it

Not to say a little verbose. - Sorry mate, you know I respect your views.

What we're talking about here is a piece of computer software. If you'd paid Norton or McAfee some money for a piece of software, you'd expect it to work out of the box, without any input from any kind of 'community', yes?

Imagine describing 'bugs' to the Adobe company. Are there 'bugs' in photoshop? I don't know. But I'm a consumer, not an unpaid worker for a software development company, and if I was as positive in my approach to the problems with 'Cliffs' as various members evidently are; sorry but I'd expect to be paid for my services.

The work being done by the community in researching online bugs, offline bugs, and designing and building the kind of campaigns I expected when I purchased what was purported to be a 'Battle of Britain' simulation is exemplary, and indicative of the dedication of the community's enthusiasts.

I wish I could be one of those people but unfortunately real life takes up most of my time.

When I want to escape from real life, I'd like to be able to turn to the same software company I've relied on for the last ten years of good times, especially as they promised to produce 'Storm of War - The Battle of Britain', a subject very dear to my heart.

I'm still waiting patiently for this to happen.

[jimbop]

Originally Posted by JG52Krupi

...had the game crash once and my overclock overheated (like my 109 )...

lol, reality and fiction converging! I've come pretty close to melting my 480 overclock but that's a notoriously hot card. Possibly time for an upgrade to 580 since I've been thinking about watercooling but the 480 plates aren't forward compatible.

@furbs: Like JG52Krupi I've never been kicked either. Crashes yes but not kicks specifically.

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by jimbop

Remember Luthier's roadmap?
1. Performance increase. Over terrain, the two things that slow things down the most are trees and buildings. We are currently in final stages of testing optimized buildings that almost double the FPS over London on a test machine.
Tree optimization is a little farther away. You will probably see changes in how trees are rendered, they’ll take longer to appear over terrain, but once again, performance increase should be significant.
If everything tests correctly over the weekend, both of these should be released by early to mid next week.

- Achieved. Always room for improvement but do you remember performance before the Kegetys mod and subsequent official patch?

My game runs worse than it did when it first came out before the first patch.

[Tiger27]

Originally Posted by Gollum

My game runs worse than it did when it first came out before the first patch.

Have you tried a full re-install from steam, most people have seen a large improvement since the early patches, I know CoD has lots of issues but I would suggest in this case the problem may be at your end, worth a try, if you have enough spare bandwidth to download the files again.

Surely having to do a reinstall everytime a patch comes out is ludicrous? We shouldnt be wiping anything. Is it a steam fault as files are not being replaced properly or is it the game not redirecting updates correctly to the right places?

[Blackdog_kt]

What actually happened is that they got rid of a bunch of legacy settings in the .ini files that were leftovers from the pre-release testing times.

This happened 2-3 patches ago but steam doesn't include the documents folders in its patching routine, so it's perfectly possible to be running a current patch with outdated configuration files.

The way it seems to work is that the .ini files in the main game folder (steam\steamapps\common\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover) are used as an initial "blank" and when you run the sim they are copied over to the documents\1c softclub\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover folder. From that point on, whatever change you make in your controls, on-screen overlay windows and so on are stored in those .ini files within the documents folders.

The way to correct it is delete both sets of files and have steam do a file integrity check. This will pull the up to date .ini files and place them in the main game folder, then when you run the sim it will copy them to the documents sub-folder. From that point on you have updated files.

You will need to reapply your realism settings, controls and graphics options. To save you some time, it's possible to go to the controls options screen and save your keymaps to a separate file before you go about deleting and validating files. Then, after you get the new .ini files you can load that custom file back in the sim, its structure is compatible with the new .ini files, to save you the time of having to redo all your controls.