…Some thoughts on Development…

[SAG]

 

I’ve recently been going through the forums a lot more again and have seen many posts complaining about this or that, but I’ve also seen plenty praising that or this.

I’ve been around since 2014 and there have been many notable moments in the development that, maybe, the newer faces were not there to see them being released, thus, they haven’t a way of appreciating that the devs here actually care about their product, listen to their player base, and put in a great effort to improve what needs to be improved, and add what needs to be added (eventually)

 

Some things we had to deal with and where changed or added:

Unlocks: we used to need to grind XP in the campaign to be able to use modifications. Yup, that.

Mission editor release

We didn’t used to have a full mission editor available to the players, so they made it available to us.

Skin viewer

Graphic presets

We used to only have the presets Low-Medium- High (or similar) with no further tweaking options

Innumerable FM tweaks and upgrades

Too many to count or remember. Compressibility, for example.

Innumerable graphic changes and features

Too many to count or remember. 4k Support, for example.

Many AI upgrades

Believe it or not, the AI used to be (to me at least) not good at all.

Mouse controls

They added this feature to bring in new players I believe

64-bit engine upgrade if I remember correctly

I don’t quite remember exactly but I think the engine used to be 32-bit

The dynamic visual damage model system (I don’t remember the actual name)

The one where you can get shot anywhere and see the damage exactly where the bullet hit (don’t remember if this feature is finished yet though)

Clouds (Twice)

I think the last was the second time they overhauled the clouds; they are simply amazing now.

VR support

Truly best-in-class VR support. Literally better than any other flight sim. I’m on my 3^rd headset since 2017

Many individual plane systems (e.g auto dive recovery for the Ju87)

Campaign system overhaul (Dynamic)

What we now have as the Advanced Mission Generator used to be our campaign system. Now we have an amazing (in my opinion) dynamic campaign.

Mission Builder features

Not a mission builder myself, but ive read some posts about new features being implemented.

Coop mode

We used to only have the “dogfight” servers.

Significant net code upgrade, we can support 84 player servers (I think it was something like 50 in the beginning)

Enough said, I think it got up to 100 players, but they went back to 84 for performance reasons.

Pilot Physiology

You used to be able to pull as many Gs as you liked for as long as you liked

Windshield effects (raindrops, oil)

There weren’t any raindrops on either your goggles or windscreen.

 

And many, many more. Those are the one on the top of my head.

 

This isn’t a praise-post though, it’s a reminder at best. So, there are still many things to improve or add that are worth mentioning…

 

Fuel system a drop tanks

A long-requested feature that is finally in the works

Tactical markings

It’s partially there for a couple of planes and the vehicles, but no recent news on this as far as I know.

AI “death loop”

To be fair, they did improve this quite a bit. It’s still a prominent problem though

AI taxi

AI sucks at taxiing, often crashing into each other. And they can’t take off or land with any significant crosswind iirc

Cloud visibility bug

It’s been fixed in the past but it seems to come back sometimes.

Some overdue Engine limit revisions (or egine durability overhaul?)

P40 and P39 being the most discussed I believe, hopefully it gets the attention it deserves.

CO-OP career that’s integrated into the game (And why do we need to manually open ports in 2022?)

I think that the team has put this in the back-burner in the presence of Pat’s amazing (3^rd party app) mission generator.

False reflections on the older planes (Lagg and Yak that I remember)

There are false reflections on the canopy glass of some older planes (semi-transparent textures), specially noticeable in VR.

Lo light color banding-

fixed in the nearly-released new sky-tech!

 

And many more...

It must be difficult to be a dev for this title, I’m not talking about the technical expertise though. It must be very hard to work for a community of such knowledgeable and passionate people, many times saying that they know better than the developers, because many times they do, and they support it with data, evidence and expertise of their own. In my eyes, it is hard because devs listen to this data, evidence and expertise.

Again, this isn’t a praise-post, sometimes they seem to ignore some very well documented and discussed matters, but, to be honest, I don’t think they ignore them, they just need their time invested in other aspects of the game, however disappointing that may be to some.

The devs are exceptionally communicative, and I truly appreciate that even if I wished they shed some light on some of those “ignored” topics.

 

…….Shameless plug…anything at all about the pacific?......

 

I wrote this long-ass, poorly-written post, to let the devs know, that in my case at least, I acknowledge both the good and the eventually good things about the sim, and perhaps to remind some other people of the development history of Great Battles.

 

 

[Fafnir_6]

Hello,

 

This is a great recap...and list of outstanding issues.  I would add More detailed sound settings to the list of outstanding issues.  The current settings are very minimalist and I would like to be able to adjust the balance between engine sound, weapons sound and radio messages.  I felt they had it perfect a few patches ago, but it has since been messed with again.  I realize that many people will have different opinions on the balance, so I think making it user-adjustable would be a great thing.

 

Cheers,

 

Fafnir_6

[SAG]

2 hours ago, Fafnir_6 said:

Hello,

 

This is a great recap...and list of outstanding issues.  I would add More detailed sound settings to the list of outstanding issues.  The current settings are very minimalist and I would like to be able to adjust the balance between engine sound, weapons sound and radio messages.  I felt they had it perfect a few patches ago, but it has since been messed with again.  I realize that many people will have different opinions on the balance, so I think making it user-adjustable would be a great thing.

 

Cheers,

 

Fafnir_6

 

This too, heard people mention it a lot over the years. probably didn't remember it since I don't notice "bad" sounds until I hear something that makes me go 'wow'

[percydanvers]

What is the AI death loop? Is that where they just fly straight into the ground sometimes? 

[SAG]

20 hours ago, percydanvers said:

What is the AI death loop? Is that where they just fly straight into the ground sometimes? 

 

When you are on the AI's tail and eventually you end up chasing them in a low speed circle for several turns that ends in you stalling into the ground. The AI seem to never stall in this situation.

[Cybermat47]

It’s been great to see this game being fleshed out more and more as the years have passed, and I’m looking forward to seeing that continue in the future

[percydanvers]

29 minutes ago, SAG said:

 

When you are on the AI's tail and eventually you end up chasing them in a low speed circle for several turns that ends in you stalling into the ground. The AI seem to never stall in this situation.

 

Ahh haha mostly flying 109s and 190s I never get a chance to try turning that many times

[SAG]

27 minutes ago, Cybermat47 said:

It’s been great to see this game being fleshed out more and more as the years have passed, and I’m looking forward to seeing that continue in the future

 

Same here. what do you look forward to the most? I think Id like optimization so we could have more planes and ground units on the ground for the same hardware in SP and MP.

 

5 minutes ago, percydanvers said:

 

Ahh haha mostly flying 109s and 190s I never get a chance to try turning that many times

 

Probably less noticeable when you boom and zoom ? and to be fair, they do seem to break out of the loop now from time to time.

[56RAF_Roblex]

17 hours ago, SAG said:

they do seem to break out of the loop now from time to time.

 

I dont often fly offline but I seem to recall that they stop the loop if you stop sitting on their tail.  A low yo-yo can break the stalemate or just turn away for 5 seconds and restart the attack.