Yet another week of running in the dark.

[Skoshi Tiger]

Originally Posted by Tree_UK

with all the untruths before release

Tree what are 'all the untruths' that you always go on about? Could you please link to the original posts?

We were promised by the developers more accurate flight models and damage models. We got them.

We were promised by the developers highly detailed terrain and objects. We got them.

We were told that a machine that could run IL2 1946 at maximum settings could run COD on mimimum settings, thankfully they were being overly cautious there an any people can run the sim on medium if not higher.

We were also promised dynamic weather, as far i I know we have it but most PC at this stage can't run it so you have to actually go and build a mission that's got it. How many have tried?

We have also been given a list of priorities and bugs that the developers are working towards solving. How often do you want the developers to come here and say "Sorry! Not ready yet" weekly, Daily or on the hour? Personally I'ld rather them being hard at work and tell us when they got something to show us.

Cheers!

[philip.ed]

Originally Posted by Skoshi Tiger

Tree what are 'all the untruths' that you always go on about? Could you please link to the original posts?

We were promised by the developers more accurate flight models and damage models. We got them.

We were promised by the developers highly detailed terrain and objects. We got them.

We were told that a machine that could run IL2 1946 at maximum settings could run COD on mimimum settings, thankfully they were being overly cautious there an any people can run the sim on medium if not higher.

We were also promised dynamic weather, as far i I know we have it but most PC at this stage can't run it so you have to actually go and build a mission that's got it. How many have tried?

We have also been given a list of priorities and bugs that the developers are working towards solving. How often do you want the developers to come here and say "Sorry! Not ready yet" weekly, Daily or on the hour? Personally I'ld rather them being hard at work and tell us when they got something to show us.

Cheers!

I can run Il-2 on max. But I know that CloD will not run on my current system, because RoF won't. (Dual Core processor, 2.0GHZ, ATI 4650 512mb, 4GB RAM). And even if CloD would run on the lowest settings, it would look and play worse than Il-2 or BoB2.
And the promises? Whilst I don't agree with the sentiment the team need to make allowances to suit certain people's wishes, Tree is correct in stating that we were promised many features. Oleg said that the terrain would be 'photo-realistic'. He also alluded to a dynamic campaign (which the original 2006 release said we would get). Other features included the ability to man AAA guns, and the weather model shown in the development shots clearly wasn't implemented into the game.
On the face of it, certain promises were kept, but the game is so bugged, the features just can't be used, sadly.

[Skoshi Tiger]

Originally Posted by philip.ed

I can run Il-2 on max. But I know that CloD will not run on my current system, because RoF won't. (Dual Core processor, 2.0GHZ, ATI 4650 512mb, 4GB RAM). And even if CloD would run on the lowest settings, it would look and play worse than Il-2 or BoB2.

So you don't have the game yet? or did I miss read that second sentance?

ROF is a dog on a dual core that why I did a stop gap upgrade to a quad core q9400. Unfortunately I sold off my dual core to cover costs before COD so I couldn't comment on what in -game performance you could expect.

Originally Posted by philip.ed

And the promises? Whilst I don't agree with the sentiment the team need to make allowances to suit certain people's wishes, Tree is correct in stating that we were promised many features. Oleg said that the terrain would be 'photo-realistic'. He also alluded to a dynamic campaign (which the original 2006 release said we would get). Other features included the ability to man AAA guns, and the weather model shown in the development shots clearly wasn't implemented into the game.
On the face of it, certain promises were kept, but the game is so bugged, the features just can't be used, sadly.

There were many thing talked about since '96 when the game was first announced. Depending upon settings, height above ground, time of day, etc some of the screen shots from game can be fairly close to photo-realistic.

I can remember a lot of people asking for dynamic campaigns, but I aslo remember Oleg stating that he was in favour of static campaigns for Historical events like the Battle of Britain. I think he did state that there was scope for third parties to implement features like that. (I could be wrong about the third parties)

Manning AAA guns would be cool but clearly not a prority at the moment and as stated before the weather system is a resource hog and it'll be a while before we can run it.

Unlike a some others I haven't had any bugs that have stopped me from playing the game. Untill the first patch was released I flew over the ocean. Then I stayed away from the cities.

In it's current state it's fairly good performance wise. (Always room for improvement though Don't want them getting too comfy do we! ) We still need the sound system fixed up (Multi player) and AI raidio communications sorted out, but this is just the usual fixes that accompany a games release.

Both A10 and ROF had similar problems. I can't remember a flight sim initial release that didn't have problems.

I have just spent the last hour or so playing on a dogfight server with a ping of 450 odd (my fault for living in the Antipodies) and about 15 players. In '46 this would have been unplayable due to warping and stutters especially when AAA starts to go off, It was smooth and I only saw 1 plane warp once. It was an absolute Hoot!

Yes there are some problems with the game, but there is alot right with it as well

Cheers!

[philip.ed]

Mate, I agree that some people should just be happy with the fact that there's even a new game out in this area of simulation
But Oleg said a lot of things, and I think the team were just pressed for time. I don't believe that they are unscrupulous in any way, but clearly that impression may come across when looking at the trailers shown, and the comments from the devs in the update threads.

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by ZaltysZ

Some of you want too much. Devs won't give you premature changelog, because it can backfire (i.e. it turns out that something isn't fixed when it has been announced as fixed). In addition, game is "heavy" as software product, it takes sometime to prepare a snapshots for testing, and you need to do enough changes so that snapshots will be worth a testing. You can't just handle a new snapshot to testers every time something small is fixed - it is not effective way to work.

What do you want from devs? I am sure they can write: "We are fixing game..." every week or day, but is that really necessary? They can't always give more details. Hoping for patch every week is a bit optimistic.

P.S. If programmer gets a list of task and required time for completion, but manager constantly asks to update him on progress in detailed manner, programmer can't usually work effectively. People don't like "are we there yet?" question to be repeated endlessly.

+1, that's pretty much my take on things.

Communication and feedback to the community is needed, but it shouldn't be the job of the guys doing the coding because it takes up A LOT of time.

Half the people here continuously post about issues that are mentioned in threads just 2 spots above their own and they manage to miss it because they're too impatient to read.

I've been actively trying to help by sharing my observations on how certain things work in the sim, guess what, i had repeated the same things at least 4-5 times within a week because people just can't be bothered to read. They expect to pop in here, ask something and get a response within an hour or so.

I actually started to copy-paste all of my posts to a text document and compiling some sort of FAQ because, i kid you not, it actually saves me time when someone asks the same question for the umpteenth time: i just paste a wall of text from my .txt file and tell them to use the forum search function, which saves me enough time to test more features and possibly answer something that hasn't been answered a million times already.

I'm not complaining mind you, it's not a job for me and if i was unhappy about it i would stop doing it. What i'm saying is that it's too time consuming.

So, is this what we want them to spend their time on, or fixing the sim?

Then how do we ensure that the needed communication exists?

1) A full-time community manager to babysit these discussions. This is what they said they'll do.

2) A weekly dev update, but don't expect much in that because of the reasons above.

I agree it's not much to spend 5-10 minutes per week on such an update, i really do.

I just don't trust half the forum population to be content with the amount of information a busy coder can provide in the span of 10 minutes. Specific changelogs and bug lists will be demanded and then, if a feature slips past the deadlines and doesn't make it to the patch everyone will be all "torches and pitchforks" once again.

Having a full-time community manager is the more effective solution.

[whatnot]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

I've been actively trying to help by sharing my observations on how certain things work in the sim, guess what, i had repeated the same things at least 4-5 times within a week because people just can't be bothered to read. They expect to pop in here, ask something and get a response within an hour or so.

Your patience and contribution in to this forum never ceases to amaze me. My hat goes off to the detailed support posts you've written so far. Great to hear there is a FAQ in the oven! You should apply for the community manager position..

And I can't blame people for assuming they conveniently get an answer to their questions for a product they've bought without reading through walls of random text. If the information is not part of the manual or similar easily accessible source of support material available there should be answers available in a community of some sort.

[kendo65]

I'd be interested to hear of the longer term roadmap for features like dynamic weather, campaign, DX11, 64-bit exe, etc.

Even a rough outline of what sequence we can expect to see those features appear.

Though I expect there is still too much to be done fixing the current state and getting up to standard with AI, comms, map, etc.

[Tiger27]

Originally Posted by whatnot

Your patience and contribution in to this forum never ceases to amaze me. My hat goes off to the detailed support posts you've written so far. Great to hear there is a FAQ in the oven! You should apply for the community manager position..

And I can't blame people for assuming they conveniently get an answer to their questions for a product they've bought without reading through walls of random text. If the information is not part of the manual or similar easily accessible source of support material available there should be answers available in a community of some sort.

What do you have against Blackdog_kt, wishing this upon him is almost evil

[Rather peeved]

Originally Posted by Skoshi Tiger

Tree what are 'all the untruths' that you always go on about? Could you please link to the original posts?

We were promised by the developers more accurate flight models and damage models. We got them.

We were promised by the developers highly detailed terrain and objects. We got them.

We were told that a machine that could run IL2 1946 at maximum settings could run COD on mimimum settings, thankfully they were being overly cautious there an any people can run the sim on medium if not higher.

We were also promised dynamic weather, as far i I know we have it but most PC at this stage can't run it so you have to actually go and build a mission that's got it. How many have tried?

We have also been given a list of priorities and bugs that the developers are working towards solving. How often do you want the developers to come here and say "Sorry! Not ready yet" weekly, Daily or on the hour? Personally I'ld rather them being hard at work and tell us when they got something to show us.

Cheers!

c'mon mate - we got snowed.

they were showing us videos of the game running brilliantly just a week before release, when it was impossible on any such system to get these results.

they told us they'd gone out and recorded new aircraft sounds and even dubbed real merlin sounds over promo vids.

they spun us some nonsense about how brilliant the new AI modelling was.

Luthier got into some hilarious slanging match with tree a couple of months before release in which he implied tree was off his rocker to suggest the game was not running properly.

all the youtube vids released showing dogfights were done over ocean - not over land because the developers must have known how shocking performance was over land.

Don't get me wrong - i want to see this game come good. But man, if this were any other product I'd be thumping my fist on the counter demanding a refund.

[philip.ed]

That is true; Tinus even said that he played the game at 1/2 speed and then sped it up in order to show that the game was playable. That's fine for film-making, but is completely unscrupulous (note: not Tinus' fault) in showing that the game was playing properly.