Jason's Briefing Room and Officers Club

[Jason_Williams 28917]

Hello Everyone,

 

Now that the Holidays are over and we move swiftly into Battle of Normandy and our 2020 development schedule I have decided to, at least for a little while, host a thread that answers some questions I see in the community and have a place where I can comment on different issues or draw your attention to certain things. I typically don't like threads like this. I didn't like it when Albert had such a thread and I don't like them in general because the community tends to complain more than praise and responding to a list of complaints on a regular basis, although it's what you want, becomes just a gigantic eyesore for new or potential users to stare at rather than actually reading about what is great about our products and diving in. It gives a hugely lopsided picture of what we are doing. As we have grown over the years it becomes harder and harder for me to be in multiple places at the same time and engage in real-time like I prefer to do and actually get any work done. But for now, I'll use this thread to pontificate on items I feel need answering in an official manner - so long as I feel this thread is a positive and not a negative. 

 

Jason

[Jason_Williams 28917]

2018-2019 Review

 

As you guys have seen 2018-2019 development cycle was very hectic for our small, but talented team. Not only did we have to build Battle of Bodenplatte, but we have coordinated work on Flying Circus and Tank Crew with our third-party partners Ugra Media and DigitalForms. However, just because these partners took on these projects does not mean we did not have work to do as part of those projects. Much was learned and we honestly over extended ourselves and in some cases made a headache for ourselves and caused delays. We also suffered though nasty illnesses, car accidents, brain surgeries, miscalculations, and personnel changes. I asked a lot from my team and our partners the last two plus years. As usual they have performed miracles even if we hit some headwinds at times.

 

Moving forward we will be more careful in taking on new products and evaluating the impact on our core team better. Both Flying Circus and Tank Crew are awesome products in their own right and we urge everyone to grab a copy so we can continue to make these types of products in the future. Our partners have done an excellent job making these a reality and devoted much time and effort to the work. We hope you will recognize their efforts and reward them with making a purchase of either FC or TC. TC won’t be finished until this Spring as we still have a couple more tanks to introduce and a few more improvements to make.

 

We will continue to squash bugs and evaluate these experiments for potential follow-ups in the near future. These two titles were indeed experimental gambles, one was a new take on an older product and the other was something completely new for us. I hope they work out long-term just as much as you do.

 

But before I leave this topic, I must say that the work done by Ugra and DigitalForms in a relatively short time is excellent. FC planes were developed quickly and look beautiful in the engine and the re-work of the ground vehicles is really nice. They also put their own spin on No Man’s Land and added sections of barbed wire and bunkers throughout. NML is such a tricky thing to represent, but they did a great job in my opinion. The towns and village also turned out nicely. They deserve your support!

 

DigitalForms has created, from what I am aware of, the most accurate and detailed WWII tank interiors and exteriors ever made including tanks never modeled before in a PC game. Please correct me if I am wrong, I have not played every armor themed game out there. DigitalForms has thrown a tremendous amount of research and hard work into re-creating these armored beasts and the result is simply beautiful. Our hats are off to both of these teams for their skill and efforts! They also deserve your support!

 

2020 Plans

 

Sometimes I can’t believe I have been flight-simming for almost 30 years and yet another new decade is upon us. It’s been almost 20 years since the first IL-2 product was released. The technology has certainly changed and the hobby keeps evolving and getting more complex, but the enjoyment never ends. In 2020 we will be focused on Battle of Normandy and adding the announced Collector Planes (Yak-9, Yak-9T and Hurricane). If all goes well, they are due in the Spring. They are already available for Pre-Order.

 

First off, we plan to release an update that improves certain aspects of the Rhineland Map. It will add better river banks and coastlines along with 13 new airfields. We will take our experience with the Rhineland map and apply lessons learned to the Normandy map which will also be a challenge. We have hired an additional map artist to help the team build Normandy. And I have to give thanks to Luke Wallace for helping me research and locate a mountain of data on British and French airfields for Normandy. He found and organized a tremendous amount of information before we even started work on the map which will be very useful.    

 

In the next update we plan to release initial support for SimShaker technology. Early tests have shown it to be very nice and adds yet another layer of immersion alongside VR and motion sim support. Combining all three technologies will give you the ultimate IL-2 experience. 

 

In 2020 we will also be working on something called “deferred shading” or DS for short. This is a graphics rendering technique that we are experimenting with that may offer some additional performance and, in the future, possibly allow for even better graphics. It’s still early on in this work, but we will keep you informed of progress.

 

On the MP front we are happy to finally have Marshal mode in testing. It’s really far behind schedule, but it’s in the debugging stage. Beta testers have gotten a small taste and after this update it will be tested further. I have not shown you what it entails to you yet because the feature-set and its organization is fluid and may change from the design in testing. 

 

Our Lead Engineer An.Petrovich will be working to improve our fuel system modeling in the coming year along with drop tanks so you can cover some of our larger maps in a 109 and not run out of fuel! Our engineers have also worked on improving some small details in the damage modeling that have yielded some strange results in the past. In general, we have a huge list of things for the Engineering department to work on in the coming year along with building our newest Flight Models.

 

New Eastern Front pilot models will also be worked on. We made some awesome looking American, British and German pilots for the Western front with oxygen masks etc. and in 2020 we plan to also improve them for our Eastern Front pilots. This will take some time, but this is in the plan.

 

I have also come to an agreement to add some single-player content to Flying Circus in the form of the "Kaiserschlacht" mini-campaign that our friends at The Syndicate have been working on. Maybe I can convince them to turn it onto a full campaign? It will be added to FC for free, but you can also try the current mini-campaign now at 

 

I also plan to sell the Hell Hawks Over the Bulge Scripted Campaign this year that Gambit has been working on for a while. It’s shaping up nicely and should be quite entertaining. You can read about it here. 

 

I also plan to add more SP content in general in the coming year to our product line including some SP missions for BOBP.

 

And finally, more 4K skins are on the way in 2020 from ICDP and BlackHellHound. They have done excellent work so far and we look forward to updating as many planes as possible to this standard in 2020. I also hope ot re-introduce the concept of the Official Skin Pack like we had in ROF this year.

 

This is some, but not all we plan in 2020. I don't want to make any promises we can't keep. As we continue on each year, new features and improvements get more and more complex making it hard to stick to deadlines. There are always surprises along the way. 

 

Please continue to read our Developer Diaries to stay informed of our progress. This is our main line of communication for our products during development.

 

Jason
 

[Jason_Williams 28917]

Q. Jason what order will the planes for BON be released?

 

A. This is the proposed order in the schedule, but I warn you that it will likely change, some may finish early and some may take longer then planned. Also, dates will shift so I'm not going to assign any dates to them. They will be released as soon as they are ready.

 

Yak-9/ 9T

P-47D-22

Hurricane Mk. IIb/c/d

C-47 (AI)

Fw-190 A-6

Spitfire Mk. XIV

Typhoon Mk.Ib

P-51B/C

Bf-190 G-6 (Late)

Ju-88 C-6a

B-26 (AI)

Mosquito FB Mk.VI

Me-410

Ar-234

V-1

 

[Jason_Williams 28917]

Q. Jason what is the final map borders for BON. Have you adjusted it at all since the announcement?

 

A. Yes, I adjusted the map to better include important battles south of the beachheads and to incorporate some more important German airfields pertaining to the Normandy battle and breakout. I have also tried to make the map a little smaller overall to aid in meeting deadlines and improve projected performance a little. All my previous goals for the SP and MP gameplay are still possible within this updated map. You'll have lots of diverse airfields to operate from in both England and France both before and after the invasion. This map presents its own set of challenges compared to previous maps. I'll update the BON announcement with this map.

 

 

Jason

[Jason_Williams 28917]

Q. Jason when will you tell us if there will be another Flying Circus? Please? We love it and want more - it's awesome and I have told all my friends to buy it in the Official Webstore!

A. No decision has been made yet. Infer from that what you will, but I cannot get into confidential info, my bosses would get quite angry. My desire is to always make more products, I create products, that's what I do. Any new products have to make business sense for not only us, but our partners who share in the work. The concept of FC1 presented an opportunity to take a larger than usual gamble and do an experiment. As we know in Las Vegas, once you lose, gambling again may quickly become throwing good money after bad, not a wise move. Same in business. Asking the community to re-invest in a technically improved WWI sim, but with lesser installed content while our earlier title ROF is still a fun, good-looking sim may have been too much to ask for. But this was the only way to try and make a new WWI anything, going back to work on ROF is simply not an option for the team. It's kind of in the hands of the community at this point. I can add some more non-Career SP content (which I have stated already) and adjust the price when I can, but the question becomes how bad does the community want an FC2 to happen? The only way that it will get a green-light is if FC1 proved there was an appetite for more WWI. And even if we say yes we want it, does our partner want to do it? Do I have the resources to make what the community says they want after FC1? So there are many moving parts to this. 

To be honest, I'm a little disappointed with the critiques about FC1's content, because there are infinite SP and MP possibilities with the ME, PWCG and Vander's new EMG. Lots of fun to be had regardless of what we put into it. Many say PWCG is better than our Career so I felt it would be less of an issue it apparently is. But everyone is entitled to buy or not buy. I'm just explaining my side of the story. As I said many times, this was my only option to do anything WWI related any time soon, so I went for it and thought a lot of flyers who owned ROF or owned IL-2 would be interested. No matter what happens, I don't regret it, FC turned out very nice and it's fun to fly. Everyone worked hard on FC1, so I hope I can move forward with another one. Time will tell. Please don't ask me when. It could be next week or next year, I really don't know right now. 

 

That's all I can say on the matter at the moment and probably more than I should. 

 

Jason

[Jason_Williams 28917]

Q. What's the deal with the sometimes invisible planes in MP? What's the cause?

 

A. This issue is a difficult one to solve for many reasons because the root cause is hard to identify. We have “fixed’ the problem a few times already and we are convinced they were first caused by cheaters. We don’t like commenting on cheaters because we don’t want to give anyone any ideas on how to do it, but we tried to eliminate the issue. We thought we had it solved, but it started happening again. This time it’s more complicated because we see evidence of it not being used as cheat and aircraft are seen and not seen by different users on the same server. We also see evidence of it still being used a cheat. Unfortunately, some of the cheat tools out there are very sophisticated and with our custom engine it is easier to cheat then plug the vulnerabilities. Our Security Branch will continue to look for ways to stop cheaters and we will continue to ban those that are caught. Because of the past history with cheaters this invisible plane issue has been muddled and it’s hard to determine the root cause and what is evidence of cheating and which is an actual bug. It’s very frustrating for us to try and solve. We will keep trying to solve it. Please keep filming examples of it when you see it if possible and we prefer you send directly to us in a PM.

 

Q. I'm having trouble spotting aircraft. Am I blind?

 

A. This is a complicated subject and our Lead Engineer Petrovich has agreed to head up our efforts to find new ways to improve spotting. He has spoken about this on the Russian language forum where it is easier for him to communicate. This will not be short process. In the past we received complaints about not being able to see aircraft beyond 10km. So, we improved that and then some complained you could see them too far away. So, we changed it back to something more realistic and the complaints started again. So, I decided to give you two options for spotting at longer ranges and the complaints continue, but in a different way. We understand that the current complaint is mostly about spotting within what most consider close range. i.e. a few kilometers away. This is a bit weird for us, because with each iteration we made no purposeful changes to visibility 0-10 km away. Why all of a sudden this is a problem we don't know exactly. Right now, we don’t have a clear answer and there are different opinions on visual spotting from real pilots we know and then there’s scientific arguments on the subject. Which is right and what should we change is unknown at this time, but we will continue to research the issue. However, a big change is unlikely in the very near future. We want to get it right next time and be done and not keep making changes. As stated above, we have tried to leave visibility the same from 0-10km in each iteration, but all of a sudden it has become an issue after the changes to long distance spotting. It’s a little bit baffling to us as we don't know what exactly changed. 

 

QA Changes

 

In general, our QA program has suffered from a slow decline in effectiveness the past year plus. We had some personnel changes that didn’t really work out as planned, but we have recently hired two new people to help us re-vamp this aspect of our team. Our goal is to first clean up our internal QA, then improve our Beta team QA then eventually have a more publicly visible QA presence. This has been in the works for several months and it should finally start having an impact. We know bugs are annoying and they annoy us too, but in a complex product such as this they will happen. There is no acceptable level of bugs to us, but some take longer to solve than others. What we ask of you is to properly report bugs and not simply point out differences of opinion and call such subjective issues a 'bug'. It's not fair to us and can hurt the very product you want us to improve. If there are no sales, there is no way to fix what you want fixed. As we have stated many times, we operate hand to mouth every year. Bugs that break the game are important. Help us find them and we will do our best to fix them. Keep sated subjective opinions civil and polite please. Today's outrage culture has no place within our community, it doesn't solve anything and hurts the overall effort.

 

 

[Jason_Williams 28917]

Pacific Comments

 

When I took over development of Sturmovik I was convinced we could make a Pacific themed product without too much difficulty and shared that confidence with you. After getting neck deep in our development cycle for Kuban I realized the data and references I had where inadequate and my earlier confidence was a mistake. However, no matter how resourceful I am or how much I believe in the power of a strong will, I have yet to find a viable path to make this product to the standards you expect and within a time frame that pleases my business partners. This is why I have delayed any attempt to make a Pacific themed product to this point. 

 

Since I last spoke about this issue, I have had three different Japanese speaking people do research for me in Japan to help me find needed and known references that will help the team build some Japanese planes to our usual standards and no one came back with anything super useful. I have personally spent quite a bit of my own money and amassed quite a large library of books on Japanese planes and they come close to what we need, but not quite enough. We also face the challenge of building the carriers and support ships of the USN and IJN. Not so easy and an expensive part of the development. Plus, some serious and costly translations are needed to learn about every system and procedure of these planes like we do with our current aircraft. 

 

Building a A6M “Zeke” is not really the issue, there are enough references to build one for Sturmovik, but some of the other main-line but less-famous Japanese planes are more difficult. Committing my team to a product that only has a flyable Zero and a host of flyable American planes is not really a marketable option for our business model. We prefer to continue to build a full plane-set for each of our products. That’s what sells best for us.

 

I will continue to search any resource I find including government sources for actionable and useful info on Japanese aircraft, especially their cockpits in my spare time. And thanks to those who have sent me info through our forum or email over the past two years. I appreciate it greatly. I still hold out hope that we can sail the Pacific at some point in the future. 

 

Jason
 

[Jason_Williams 28917]

Challenges and Changes

 

The Great Battles series has never been more popular and sales have steadily increased since Kuban. However, as I have alluded to above, we have suffered some challenges which I want let you in on here. First, the Marshal feature is way behind schedule. Part of it is that the initial design was revised and expanded (which I approved because it went beyond my original simplistic design), but the work itself became quite difficult unexpectedly. Also, the person behind that work is leaving the company after a very long stint with team to pursue other types of work. So, Marshal will be his swan song. Unfortunately, there are a couple other GUI related features that I had hoped to be completed by now, but I have been forced to set them aside for now. This is a big disappointment for me, but they will come eventually I am certain. The good news is that we are in the final stages of interviewing possible replacements and assuming we find the right guy or gal, work on the GUI will resume. However, there will be a period of training and familiarization. The current situation means big changes to the GUI outside of Marshal will not be coming for a little while.

 

Also, Career chapter videos for BOBP have been delayed and have taken way, way too long. I hope to have them Q1 of this year. I apologize for this, but the video maker hit a creative brick wall on them half way through. It’s been very frustrating for me as the Producer and I'm sure for regular Career players.  

 

Finally, when I  initially announced BOBP, I spoke about Ugra Media making the U-2 (which they did) and then hopefully the Li-2. Ugra did a really nice job on the U-2, but we have decided to not go forward with the Li-2 at this time. I won’t say never though, so I have added the C-47 to Normandy as a first step on the road to an eventual flyable Li-2. Also, I would like to say that the U-2 is a really versatile little plane even if it is slow and I urge everyone who hasn’t purchased it yet to GRAB IT! The more you show love to Ugra built content, the more they can build for IL-2. I plan to add some missions to accompany the U-2 in the not too far future and I am planning to contract with someone to make a female Soviet pilot and gunner model so we can make the fabled Night Witches a reality.

 

When considering smaller content like the U-2 or Scripted Campaigns please ask this question - If not you, than who? Don't assume your buddies will buy it and everything will be Ok. If there is too much apathy to new ideas or unique content, eventually the ability to consider content like the U-2 or Scripted Campaigns will go away and that would be a bummer.

 

Jason
 

[Jason_Williams 28917]

Special Thanks to Special People

 

As a small team we can’t possibly do everything ourselves and so many talented individuals have come to help us along the way over the years. Whether it is mission building, research, artwork, tools, apps, guides, marketing videos, training videos, testing, server hosting, templates, skins, voice overs or amazing product giveaways - this community is full of giving, kind people. We can’t say it enough and because of some negative ninnies such sentiments get lost in the public discourse, but thank you for helping us make this generation of Sturmovik and Rise of Flight way back in the beginning possible and for helping us grow stronger and stronger over the years. We wouldn’t be where we are without your help.

 

The Sturmovik Team

[Jason_Williams 28917]

Notes on Flying Circus Series    

 

We just announced details of what’s included in Flying Circus: Volume II and launched the pre-order period which will turn into Early Access as soon as the first aircraft are ready. We are very excited to be able to continue the series! Getting to this point was not easy and I can already anticipate your comments on issues not mentioned in the announcement. So, I will address some of them here and not dirty up the official announcement. 

 

First, as many of you know, my main goal has always been to essentially re-produce Rise of Flight inside our current engine with all our latest technology and then expand it further with new planes and mission content.  However, to even begin that process I had to find away to make that happen without greatly increasing our cost and destroy our work on WWII focused properties. And to make it worthwhile for our partners we had to minimize the time required to make the content. Therefore, I created the plan for Flying Circus: Volume I even though I knew it would be a hard sell and a gamble. The bottom-line is we had to start somewhere. I trusted the ROF and IL-2 community would want WWI product development to start up again and would get behind FC1. And over time, you did, even if it was slower than we would have liked. However, today, enough FC1 has been sold and the community has grown to a size to warrant an FC2 and then FC3 and if we’re lucky an FC4. With every new volume, Flying Circus becomes less of a gamble.

 

The FC2 Plane-set 

 

I’ve chosen the plane set in FC2 to give the most well-rounded experience when combined with FC1 and flesh out a really strong 1917-1918 plane-set. FC3 will go and backfill most of the remaining planes from our collection. The likelihood of making FC3 is very high, so do not fret if your favorite plane is not included yet. I’m looking at you Nieuport 17 lovers. 🙂

 

The Map

 

Ugra Media built the Arras map for FC1 and they are tasked again with building the FC2/3 map which will expand beyond the Arras map boundaries and the goal is to make a large Western Front map like we had in ROF. However, this is a huge undertaking and the planes will be finished before the map, so the logical step if to make the map in phases. When all the phases are complete, the entire map will be part of FC 1-2-3. We’ll likely keep the Arras map as a small alternative map, much like the Lapino map is for WWII. 

Some of you will ask if Paris will be on the map? The answer right now is no it will not be, as it was not crucial to the air war in WWI and building large cities is difficult and time consuming. However, we’ve given Ugra the option to make it if it proves feasible and they have the resources and desire, but only after the rest of the map is complete. Even so, it is likely special technology will have to be built to support a large city like Paris and we do not have it in the schedule at this moment and it may never be.   

Career Mode

 

Yes, we plan on implementing the Pilot Career mode in FC2/3 as part of the final package, but this is a long-term feature that can only be completed once we finish the Normandy career. What initial mission types will be included will be known at a later date. 

Scripted Campaigns

 

I do plan to include some quality Scripted Campaigns as part of FC2 and future volumes. And I plane other custom single player missions as well. This includes additional mission content for FC1.  

 

And yes, I will work with Pat once again to make his excellent PWCG work with FC2 just as he has done with FC1. I will also work with Vander so his EZ Mission Generator works with FC2 as well. Both Pat and Vander are cherished partners. 

 

New Aircraft?

 

We do plan on working with Ugra to produce at least a couple new aircraft that will be Collector Planes. I don’t want to announce what they are yet as there is a small chance they may change, but they are being researched and will be announced once work on them begins in earnest. Making WWI aircraft is even more difficult than WWII aircraft due to the sparse reference information. 

 

Also, I know some of you would love to see a Zeppelin in the Flying Circus series. Me too! But if it were added, it would likely be an AI machine only. However, such a craft would be a great target and add some fun, new gameplay. Developing even an AI Zeppelin is a big job and would require development of the physics and systems for lighter than air vehicles. It’s on my long-term desires list and if I can find a pathway to make them I will. I’ve long wanted this, but it’s harder than it looks to have a truly proper airship in our engine even as AI. 

 

Damage Model Comments

 

I am aware some of you are not totally satisfied with the current damage model as it pertains to WWI. We recently overhauled our entire damage model for the engine and making further changes to it for WWI will also affect WWII. This requires some thinking and more study, but at this moment I cannot make further changes to just WWI. I see this as a long-term project to somehow change only WWI damage modeling. Even so, there are mixed opinions on this issue. Just because there are some vocal critics out there, does not make the loudest voice correct. As usual, we would need to study the issue further before any more changes are made.

 

And finally, some of you want special ammo like incendiary bullets added. This again is a general wish for the engine that can only come at a later date and would require much work from our engineers and special effects dept. I currently have no ETA on this topic, but we are well aware of the desire to have them. 

 

Join the Fight! 

 

That is our motto and call to action for all our products. We never stop fighting to improve and expand our products and we need you to join this new fight for FC2 and FC3 because that’s what it is – a constant fight to keep working. We are still a small team relatively speaking and we are doing all we can to keep WWI combat simming alive and moving forward. We are likely to be the only team making truly new content with a modern engine for WWI any time soon, but that is no guarantee of success. We ask that you get behind FC2 and make a pre-order. With enough support I can do all that is mentioned above and speed up some of this work.

 

Work has already begun on the project. Wish the team(s) well! 

 

Jason
 

[Jason_Williams 28917]

DVD

 

Jason