Friday Update, January 27, 2012

[Codex]

Originally Posted by Flanker35M

S!

Tota, the rant was not directed towards you nor was taking a stance on the state of CoD code when Luthier took over. It is easier to make bloated code than optimize and as you said, time is different.

But again as a coder you learn over the years how to be better etc. I can say I know a sh*tload more of my work now than when I started, routines have developed and knowledge to even evolve current ways of working and work packages are there. This same is applicable to coders as well, they for sure develop ways to do it better..or am I wrong?

And to add to this. We ALL know that Maddox Games had EIGHT years of previous knowhow on making a flight sim, the original IL-2. And there were other work Oleg was involved with but not in the limelight. No lack of knowhow there, right? So can you say CoD is efficiently made if 8 years of knowledge BEFORE starting CoD, which took 7 years to complete, would not teach anything?

I try to say that the team KNEW, and still do, what they were/are doing, had the experience and lessons from previous STILL living project to make CoD. Whatever happened behind the scenes is out of bounds to speculate, but frankly ask yourself this: How could they improve something already made to be even better, how to utilize knowhow from what has been done to make a product that stands head above the rest. Because IMO Luthier and team can not hide behind a curtain of not having experience nor not knowing what they were doing.

Not an attack against CoD dev team, but voicing my opinions. I wish and hope CoD and it's sequels will make it and be THE benchmarks of WW2 and beyond flight sims. Period.

I agree with what you're saying Flanker but there is the other side of the coding environment which I call tunnel coding (i.e. tunnel vision). It's the type of coding mindset you can get into when you're so focused on a project for so long that you can (not saying you will) loose the ability to try new ideas and / or direction when coding for the same problem. It's soooo prevalent in the gaming world that you can see it. Case in point CoD's AI, to me it's almost a straight copy and paste from IL-2. Unreal Engine, only now has it got DX10 features, Bethesda's combat system (Skyrim / Fallout), pretty much unchanged since Elders Scrolls came out.

It's a catch 22 as well in terms of trying something new, because trying new ideas means increase development time and costs, and if I were investing in a game I'd be saying "if it ain't broke don't fix it, just improve it". The majority of CoD is a complete departure from the old engine, but there is still a lot of IL-2 1946 in there as well, and it's a monumental task in front in front of Illya and the team.