Questions for Luthier

[GraveyardJimmy]

Is it possible to expand on the not before seen special feature that was mentioned? Will it come for the sequel or will it not come out now?

Any news on how the vehicle control will be implemented? Will that ship with the sequel?

[rslot]

Hi Luthier/B6
Thank you for todays update. It has been very helpful.
My questions will mirror many on the forum:-

- Will the Communications with tower and AI work properly?
- Will the Spitfire/Hurricane flight model performance and mixture/temperature issues be resolved?
- Any fix for tree textures and collisions?
- Will the net code be fixed?
- Will there be a better manual for offline mission building?
- Will we get a full SDK release that will help others like Desastersoft develop better campaigns?
- Can we have some guide to the sequel milestone timescales?

I look forward to the detailed Readme with the final CLOD patch.
Many thanks

[JG52Uther]

Please note the first post, this thread is for questions.

Originally Posted by BlackSix

Attention!
Please ask questions for Luthier in this thread. He will try to answer them tonight.

[salmo]

Luthier, Is there any prospect of opening up COD for the community modders to improve content/gameplay & fix bugs? Perhaps with some sort of mechanism to allow 1C/dev's to "approve" altered content. I've always believed that there are community skills that could be utilised "for free" to improve COD which would relieve some of the load on the development team.

[bongodriver]

Originally Posted by salmo

Luthier, Is there any prospect of opening up COD for the community modders to improve content/gameplay & fix bugs? Perhaps with some sort of mechanism to allow 1C/dev's to "approve" altered content. I've always believed that there are community skills that could be utilised "for free" to improve COD which would relieve some of the load on the development team.

That would be the SDK which has already been confirmed as low priority.

[salmo]

Originally Posted by bongodriver

That would be the SDK which has already been confirmed as low priority.

No Bongo. I'm asking about access for modders to improve the gameplay, not about the SDK perse.

[Pudfark]

Dear fans,

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost a year. For myself and for the team the past two years are a blur. Things have been hectic long since CoD pre-release days and there’s no sign of letting down. We work in a constant state of emergency.

We know that even a year after the initial release many of you are still unhappy with many aspects of the game. We are painfully aware of your unhappiness. For me personally, it’s a constant feeling in the back of my head. It drives me and motivates me, and I in turn use it to drive and motivate the team. It is at the same time very humbling. I personally want to apologize to the community once again for the state of the game at release, and I want to thank you for sticking around this long and continuing to give us a chance to redeem ourselves.

I realize that the pace at which we release patches and updates has slowed considerably. The latest patch that has been “almost ready” for months, and it’s even more almost ready today. The graphics rework is basically done. The average framerate has shot up almost twice. Only one relatively minor issue remains that prevents the gunsight, tracers, and bullet decals from being drawn. Of course, this minor technical issue has a huge impact on gameplay, and that is why we cannot release it to the public in its current state.
Secondly, reworking and becoming confident in the graphics engine itself allowed us to spread the net and start identifying additional issues that were causing hick-ups and slowdowns in the game. That is the hardest thing to locate since they are unpredictable and very difficult to replicate. Rewriting the graphics engine fixed many of those issues, and made the others very easy to identify by narrowing down the usual suspects. We have identified some very obscure issues with visual effects, the landscape engine, the texture manager, and with the weather system that were causing the occasional stuttering that by itself arguably had a bigger impact on gameplay than low average FPS.

On our end, we are much more confident in our product today than we were a year ago, and we are also much more excited about the future. The team continues to grow. We are just now beginning to look for a huge number of new applicants that will grow the team by almost 25%. We have a lot of very exciting new things on our plate that we cannot wait to reveal. The general mood of the team is one of excitement. We cannot wait to prove our detractors wrong, crush the competition, and give our fans what they are looking for with our next major release!

Thank you again for your support!


Ilya Shevchenko
Lead Development Producer

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I realize, that was then and this is now. What happened?
Communication the last 18 months has been abysmal, will it
remain the same?

[JG52Krupi]

Originally Posted by Pudfark

I realize, that was then and this is now. What happened?
Communication the last 18 months has been abysmal, will it
remain the same?

+1, please keep us informed.

[klem]

I only just got to my PC tonight. I was typing my question when you closed the thread as I tried to post it. Please include it.

Luthier,

you say that many core problems will be fixed by the sequel but there will only be one more CoD patch.


The fact that the sequel can be loaded over CoD means that CoD will benefit from all of those improvements. These may be net code, LODs etc which we may have to wait for.

BUT!
Unique CoD issues have only one more chance. This essentially means the map and the aircraft. Everything else would seem to be 'core' although I may have missed something.

The BoB was to have been the flagship of the SoW series (as it was originally called) and for a very good reason. It was the iconic air battle of the war and particularly spotlighted air combat between the fighters. CoD cannot even come close if the FMs for the aircraft are incorrect. Anything else is just noise or are core issues that will be fixed anyway.

We still want to fight the BoB on a realistic basis as far as the aircraft are concerned, particularly the fighters.

Will you please confirm that if the FMs are still not close to historical data when we beta test them in the next patch (as regards basic performance like speed, climb and turn) you will put maximum effort onto this important CoD aspect and get them right or promise a final patch that fixes this single important aspect?

We can live with all the other 'core' issues if we know they will be fixed in the sequel but we cannot live with a simulation that 1C walks away from essential unique CoD/BoB issues. We can't look forward to you re-modelling the early Spitfires and 109s for any sequels as they would not be relevant. We would be left without a reasonable representation of the BoB.