Developer Diary, Part 132 - Discussion

[Jizzo]

Keep up the good work! 

[Chief_Mouser]

Excellent. Really good news about the SP campaign; just what was needed. Like Lucas I was expecting this DD to be some screenshots, probably of the G-4, but this is way better!

Looking forward to it - and across all three titles as well, there'll be plenty to keep me occupied.

Cheers.

[DD_Arthur]

Good news on the Kuban and career mode.  Liked the landing video a lot!  Wow, no ground looping and no juggling rudder or brakes on the roll out either!

[pilotpierre]

Sounds great, presumably Pilot Level will go by the wayside???

[A-E-Hartmann]

Great news , thank you .

[Comes]

Great News!

I really hope you will find the time, to let the player fly as a wingman. I think this is an important aspect. 

 

Any clues on when the career mode for BoS and BoM will be released? Together with the BoK Release?

[Brano]

@csThor

I'm with you on the remarks and suggestions for bomber campaign and area targets like roads or railways,city blocks etc. I think that implementing such feature as target area and evaluation of damage should be doable within ME.Lets see what devs will come up with.

[Uufflakke]

I LOVE THIS NEWS..

 

But...I would like to ask about the map of Odesa, we were shown days ago. when we delivered this map? 

 

on the other hand, there is also the map of Murmansk. we will be released someday? it is true or false is all what Murmansk map?

 

 

The IL2 Dev team works on the Kuban map.

 

Murmansk is a project started by enthusiastic volunteers. It is on hold now but there seem to be new volunteers who offer themselves to continue working on the map.

 

Odessa is a project recently started by another volunteer (Zeus--) so it might take a long time before it is finished. I really don't know how many guys are working on it.

 

Remember that these guys do it in their free time.

In good old IL2 it takes already about a year for one person to recreate an existing map (ask Cyberolas).

It takes a lot of time and energy to find the right WWII documentation of a specific area, there is no guide or tutorial of how to make maps, the participants live perhaps thousands of km away from each other and and they all have a private life (with all its ups and downs) ánd a regular job.

So yeah, it might take some while before a new map might see daylight.

(Giving birth to a baby goes faster, It takes "only" nine months and needs just two enthusiastic volunteers.  ) 

Edited September 22, 2016 by Uufflakke

[Brano]

Zeus is not working on Odessa. He is just an advisor for the team of 3rd party mapmakers. Zeus is integral member of 1CGS working on official map of Kuban.

[Yogiflight]

Great news about career mode and ground handling. One thing for the ground handling, the brakes of the 110 need quite some improvement. I understand, that you want the aircrafts to have the historically correct way on the runway until they are braked down, but the effectiveness in low speed should be surely much higher.

[Medicated]

Those changes for the SP campaign sound perfect. That is how all SP campaigns in simulators/war games should be! I hardly play SP currently because I don't like the repetition and non-linearity feel of it, but I'm sure this will get me into SP more frequently! Also can't wait for the improved ground physics (no more Pe-2 bounce )

[Boomerang]

Thank you for the continued hard work that is improving this wonderful sim for us all   

Nice landing!   

[SCG_Space_Ghost]

Sounds great!

[Pharoah]

very happy to hear the news about the offline campaign. Looking forward to it.

[BazzaLB]

Looking forward to improved ground handling. My landings always feel like I'm flying a superball

[Grancesc]

I’d like to congratulate the whole development team for reconsidering the SP concept. The campaign as it is announced here sounds great and should meet the expectations of most SP. I strongly believe that VR and this new campaign concept are the key drivers to lead this sim series to success.

[skline00]

Thank you for the update!

[Lusekofte]

Spread the good news on a couple of sites, This might turn out to be the best news since the start. I am very grateful for this

[SCG_Space_Ghost]

I’d like to congratulate the whole development team for reconsidering the SP concept. The campaign as it is announced here sounds great and should meet the expectations of most SP. I strongly believe that VR and this new campaign concept are the key drivers to lead this sim series to success.

 

I agree. VR and a stat-tracking persistent campaign will drive things forward.

[smink1701]

Sounds good! With the new update can you also address some of the launch issues we are experiencing. Many times when I go to launch the game I get the launch has stopped working error.

[Feathered_IV]

This is great news for the SP campaign.  The RoF career mechanics were beautifully designed and a real pleasure to use.  The only thing lacking from a player's perspective was mission variety and reasonable air and ground activity.  If the AI improvements allow for greater numbers of aircraft in BoK, it will be a dream come true.

[Dutchvdm]

Thanks for the writeup, Han. I'm grateful for the sneak peek at the plans for the campaign. There is, however, one aspect that I'd like to put more into focus, an issue that - as I have to admit - may be difficult if not impossible to really "do" in such a campaign engine that has to deliver across a very wide scope of mission types. 

 

It may be relatively "simple" to generate a believable fighter campaign (mission) and make some kind of "award allocation" formula for that. It is pretty easy to count enemy aircraft your character has shot down, after all. A fighter sweep is (broken down to the most primitive level) nothing but a "go there and shoot anything that doesn't sport your national insignia". An escort mission pretty easy as well - because you're "just" trying to keep interceptors off the bombers' backs (the only trouble here is AI wandering off to chase some aircraft while their charges are being plucked by a fresh group of fighters).

 

None of that is true for a bomber campaign. For starters bombers usually attacked area targets, not individual targets (that was one of the major weaknesses of the old Il-2) so missions that may fit a ground-attack aircraft (go there and attack all enemy tanks) wouldn't really generate much immersion because from 4,000m targeting individual tanks is not possible and going down low to attack them individually in aircraft as big as a He 111 or Ju 88 isn't the most sensible course of action, either. (It was done, but only when more suitable aircraft weren't available and usually the losses were exorbitant.)

Not to mention that bomber missions were usually a lot better prepared and structured than a scramble of two fighters ... Taxiing sequence, forming up (left-hand turn or right-hand turn etc), climb, waypoints, weapons load, target area(s), egress, possible rendezvous points with escorts etc etc etc ...And because of the "area target" category counting "kills" is not the suitable category for awards IMHO.

 

Ground-attack aircraft are a bit of a mix between the two extremes, usually they were sent into an area and given priorities what to attack, but they could never be sure that they'd actually find something that was prioritized so one may consider this a kind of "area target" as well. And aircraft like the Stuka were all too often employed against infrastructure (bridges, railway lines, field fortifications etc) that aren't really "AI objects" that one can count.

 

Can such an engine really do such differences and do such missions justice? 

 

I'm asking because I never tried anything but fighters in RoF (as I don't own any bombers there) so I don't know how applicable that campaign was/is to such missions. Thanks.

 

Hi CsThor,

 

I played a lot of Dh4 careers in ROF and those where with level bombing. Targets where railway stations or factory's. Hitting the area was enough to make the mission a success. I think the same will aply here.

 

Grt M

[JtD]

Looking forward to this campaign mode. Sounds really good!

 

When will it be ready - tomorrow or the day after? I'd like to try it out right now. No pressure.

[kestrel79]

Does anyone know if the gamey feature when the ai gets increasingly difficult the further you progress in the campaign will be removed in the new system?

 

That was the big thing I didn't care for in the current system.

 

Thanks for the update sounds good!

[Saurer]

This is great news for the SP campaign.  The RoF career mechanics were beautifully designed and a real pleasure to use.  The only thing lacking from a player's perspective was mission variety and reasonable air and ground activity.  If the AI improvements allow for greater numbers of aircraft in BoK, it will be a dream come true.

 

But that has to do with the nature of WW1 too I think

[Trooper117]

Does anyone know if the gamey feature when the ai gets increasingly difficult the further you progress in the campaign will be removed in the new system?

 

 

I'm sure Jason has said that the Level system was going...

[Nic727]

About Career mode, it could be nice to have features like :

 

- You start from parking at the beginning and you need to follow the leader to the runway and you all takeoff in formation.

- When you land, you need to go to parking to finish the mission. For this one, I was thinking about making multiple parking spot (that you don't see in-game), so if you are in and stopped, it will mark this spot as "used" and AI will go into another parking spot and you will get a "completed missioon" notification.

[rare_bird]

Very good news indeed! Finally a reason (in sight) to start this sim up once again for an SP-only player.

[Nic727]

Also, will it have plane change?

 

For example, you are in X plane, but a this time of period they were starting to use Y plane, so the squadron and yourself will get Y plane and X will be removed.

[SOLIDKREATE]

Great news!

 

 

side note: The shark mouth is incorrect on your La-5 Ser.8. It should look more like mine seen here:

 

 

POST #115:  http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/13719-la-5-series-8-skins/?p=369512

 

 

If you like you guys can have it free of royalty or charge.

[69th_chuter]

Fantastic news concerning BoK and campaign. 

 

In the wheelie video I couldn't help but notice an apparent lack of ground effect which would have blunted the descent rate a bit just before touch down ... but we need to leave something for future updates, right!?!

 

Carry on!

[Stig]

(Giving birth to a baby goes faster, It takes "only" nine months and needs just two enthusiastic volunteers.  ) 

 

Nine months for one of the volunteers; two minutes max for the other volunteer.   

[csThor]

Hi CsThor,

 

I played a lot of Dh4 careers in ROF and those where with level bombing. Targets where railway stations or factory's. Hitting the area was enough to make the mission a success. I think the same will aply here.

 

Grt M

 

I actually hope we don't get any factories to bomb ... because with the exception of Stalingrad and Leningrad (and only temporary in Stalingrad's case - until their destruction) such "factories" were simply not part of the tactical environment we're finding ourselves in. I'd rather have some proper tactical targets (i.e. supply dumps, railroad marshalling yards etc) than the gamey crutch of "factories". Even at Stalingrad the various factories were tactical targets not because they produced tanks or guns (they did, but we have the ruined Stalingrad only - when said factories had ceased production) but because the Red Army had turned them into fortified zones of defense.

[216th_Lucas_From_Hell]

 

 

For example, you are in X plane, but a this time of period they were starting to use Y plane, so the squadron and yourself will get Y plane and X will be removed.

 

 

Since Han mentioned the campaigns will follow the combat path of the actual regiment you choose to join, this should probably be in line with that.

 

On that note, here is a question: how will the regiments carry over between chapters of the war? I ask because I don't think any regiment was present in all three Moscow, Stalingrad and Kuban. Will the player be transferred automatically then?

 

Another question: will there be campaigns including the Odessa or Velikie Luki maps? Odessa serves as a great prelude for Moscow, while Velikie Luki happened just before Kuban, so it would be interesting to have them in even if briefly

[XQ_Lothar29]

The IL2 Dev team works on the Kuban map.

 

Murmansk is a project started by enthusiastic volunteers. It is on hold now but there seem to be new volunteers who offer themselves to continue working on the map.

 

Odessa is a project recently started by another volunteer (Zeus--) so it might take a long time before it is finished. I really don't know how many guys are working on it.

 

Remember that these guys do it in their free time.

In good old IL2 it takes already about a year for one person to recreate an existing map (ask Cyberolas).

It takes a lot of time and energy to find the right WWII documentation of a specific area, there is no guide or tutorial of how to make maps, the participants live perhaps thousands of km away from each other and and they all have a private life (with all its ups and downs) ánd a regular job.

So yeah, it might take some while before a new map might see daylight.

(Giving birth to a baby goes faster, It takes "only" nine months and needs just two enthusiastic volunteers.  ) 

  Thx For your answer 

[Matt]

This is perhaps my favorite diary update ever. Sounds absolutely fantastic.

[andyw248]

Whoaa, what a landing, straight like a pencil... looking forward to the new ground handling improvements. Keep up these continuous improvements of the details!

[1/JSpan_Wind75]

I actually hope we don't get any factories to bomb ... because with the exception of Stalingrad and Leningrad (and only temporary in Stalingrad's case - until their destruction) such "factories" were simply not part of the tactical environment we're finding ourselves in. I'd rather have some proper tactical targets (i.e. supply dumps, railroad marshalling yards etc) than the gamey crutch of "factories". Even at Stalingrad the various factories were tactical targets not because they produced tanks or guns (they did, but we have the ruined Stalingrad only - when said factories had ceased production) but because the Red Army had turned them into fortified zones of defense.

 

 

Hi csThorr,

 

If you are who I knew THOR I'm glad to see you here. few weeks have again instaler a simulator, the BoS and I'm considering buying the Moscow ago.

 

As for the new changes and development of Kuban, it finds very interesting. I do not know if this has ever proposed, but in the COMMANDS section in the "tab" key would not be possible to add those based on each air force, either flying in the Lufftwafe or VVS?

 

Best regards to all

Edited September 22, 2016 by 1/JSpan_Guerrero

[Libel]

The career mode sounds awesome - perhaps the main thing I miss from IL-2 1946. 

A question on, though, are we likely to see things like Patrol missions where you don't see much action - or even any at all - and by extension, will even 'inexperienced' players have a chance of meeting aces and unfair odds?

Oh, and will we be able to tell AI wingmen not to go engage the first thing they see?

[Ceowulf]

As a ROF only guy, both SP and MP, this career news is going to bring me over into IL2 BOX as well.  I'll play ROF as long as it runs, best game ever, but this career mode is the reason I'm going to upgrade my system and come play IL2.  

 

Way to go Devs!

 

Ceowulf<><

Edited September 24, 2016 by Ceowulf