Developer Diary, Part I

[Buff1]

I don't post much on any board in any sims. However, I have been a daily part of the flight sim community since SWOTL (Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe), Aces of the Pacific and when Air Warrior was $6 an hour to play on-line in the pre-AOL days when we only had numbers as handles. There are very few WWI and WWII sims, be they online or stand alone, I haven't deleved into with many hours and much affection. To say that IL2 and all it's succsesive add-ons and upgrades were as good as it got would be an understatement.

 

CloD tried hard to take us one step further in graphics and flight control immersion, For whatever reasons, and they are many and debatable, it failed and failed badly on a marketable level.

 

These sims are not made without the makers requiring a sustainable level of profitability. 500 people wanting a clickable toggle switch in the cockpit can not outweigh the needs of the game producers having to sell the product to 5000 people who don't care about the clickable toggle switch. That is a simple bottom line fact in any business venture.

 

The product must work! This is first and foremeost! The end user must have an initial product release they can use and enjoy without endless bugs and issues. We had this with IL2 and look how far that phenomenal series went on its original 'out of the box' merits! We have that now with RoF. That system has proven to be highly worthy and expands and improves with each frequent upgrade and add-on.

 

There has already been some loud grumbling about "going backwards to IL2". Backwards from what? From an absolutely gorgeous, overly ambitious failure! As beautiful as it is, as stunning as the many astonishing mini-movies made from it are, after dealing with all the endless problems, patches and mind numbing adjustments, for almost 2 years CloD has been about as much fun as a perpetual colonoscopy! CloD will forever stand tall and alone as the shining example of magnificent failure and the ultimate example of how not to produce, market and maintain a computer flight simulation. "Going backwards to IL2", in short going backwards to something that worked in order to move forward, is the only intelligent approach!

 

I for one am glad to see a fresh new approach based on simplicity and logical short term goals. With RoF, 777Studios have shown and proven they are commited to serving the end user and doing so with all their end users in mind, not just a small percentage of vocal message board grognards who want their computers to be surrogate fighter planes. We all enjoy living vicariously through our sims, we don't all need every switch and knob to actually activate something in a full working manner to do so. These are the kinds of things that can be worked into a successful sim product down the road. Long term goals are only attainable if the short term product is a success! This is why CloD is dead and why there will be no fantastic upgrades and improvemnts as there could have been had it been handled wisely from the start; It was overly ambitious and therefore was a short term failure. Lets accept the long, successful run of IL2 as the correct and proper model to follow, go back to it with open arms and let fresh minds start us down a new road.

 

With the right attitude, the community can support this effort. With naysaying, nitpicking and demands to please the few and not the many, we can only hinder it. Nobody who reads these boards wants a console game / arcade sim experience! That's why we hold to our powerful PCs. We all want serious realisim and historical accuracy. Without those things there would be no point to our pursuits... But if frozen screens, crashes to desktop or patches that need patches to fix what the new patch broke is the price we all pay for a clickable toggle switch, then God? Please let me just push 'E' to start my engine and play.

Edited December 31, 2012 by Buff1

[=BKHZ=Furbs]

Well said.

[Foobar]

You have to push "I" button.

 

Just kidding

 

Well said! Fully agree.

[Bearcat]

Well said.

VERY well said..

[BlitzPig_EL]

Indeed.

[Buff1]

You have to push "I" button.

 

Just kidding

 

Well said! Fully agree.

Hehehe... Obviously I knew that, but somehow "E" seemed more generic to many of the great sims of the past and not just IL2. I knew someone would make that comment very quickly, but it fit the tone of the post better than "I" and "E" is how you start the engine in RoF...

Edited December 31, 2012 by Buff1

[Skoshi_Tiger]

Hmmm! E for engine, Shift-E for Eject. Can see some amusing online incidents ahead!    

[FlatSpinMan]

"Being interested in history" is quite an imprecise term. Some "interested in history" care about aircraft performance issues, other about nuts and bolts and technical details. Some are interested in the grand scheme of campaigns and battles, others in the "small scale" immersion. I consider myself an avid skinner (the skins for the SAS filter hurries were mine), yet I don't care if the performance is to absolute historic spec. Two of the best campaigns I played in IL2 were Castaway and Fleet Air Arm, both non-historical, yet I miss historical immersion details in IL2, like a fleshed out squadron and a closer relationship with my ride.

 

Historical interest is ... complex.

Yes, THIS. A thousand times THIS. You can have every lever, every unit marking, every tree perfect and the game can still be flat and dull. You need to have the player feel part of the whole thing. I made campaigns for IL2 using historical sources for a base but then elaborating wildly (but still within historicallly appropriate limits I think) and they were very popular. For most players I don't think it's the exact accuracy of the minutiae that is important but the felling of 'being there'.

[hiro]

Nice summarization of the goodstuff from the banana forums

[Fedec99]

why it will be not avaiable on steam?

[6./ZG26_Emil]

why it will be not avaiable on steam?

 

Surely that's a good thing that we don't have to rely on steam?