I'm just glad that we have Team Fusion

[Enceladus828]

Regardless of what negative things people say about CloD/IL-2 Dover series and TFS, I'm just glad that we have them.

 

In this day and age with combat flight sims being a niche and having small development teams compared to Asobo Studios which has 200... last I checked... we should be grateful that there are teams willing to make products which depict lesser known or lesser depicted aspects of WW2 such as the MTO, playable Tanks and vehicles, Battle of France, etc. AFAIK, nobody has properly done these before. Making these products takes years and while 1CGS is planning on hiring a dozen more people, that doesn't mean they'll be able to do multiple medium to large maps and 15-20 planes in one development cycle of 2-3 years. Jason said in 2016: "As I have said many times, if everyone who bought the original IL-2, bought our product, we'd have enough money to make everything you want. And there is no practical way to merge the two engines and teams, so the best answer to the allow each team to pursue their vision and look at the results. The deal that was put together is about as win-win as can be expected."

 

That just shows how if we were reliant on just 1CGS for content and some 3rd party companies for a few planes, WW1 and Tank products then it wouldn't be until the 2030s before we got the Battle of Britain and MTO by them. I also feel it's great we that Team Fusion can pump out over 30 new planes, 15 ships (ranging from torpedo boats to Battleships... and has a much better depiction of ships than in IL-2 GBs and even in Pacific Fighters) and 25 ground vehicles in one go while IL-2 GBs at best can do 1/3. If a team can do that then they deserve to be supported. Also, the IL-2 Dover series has planes which you can't fly in any other flight sim (other than in WT) or haven't been in a high-fidelity flight sim in a long time. Without TF, we wouldn't have a very complete depiction of North Africa. Though some feel it's strange that there are two IL-2 games in development, this is something we have to accept; and axing one of them wouldn't make anything better.

 

Focusing our attention now on CloD, there are features in CloD which aren't in IL-2 GBs such as fluttering of flaps, loss of hydraulic pressure causing the gear to come down, drop tanks and the ability for you to select what fuel tanks you want to use, bombsights are more realistic and you have to go to the Bombardier station or the gunner who also was the bombardier instead of in IL-2 GBs where it's always the pilot, no engine-timers, torpedoes, radio comms and commands, interactive cockpits, better visuals, more realistic water landings, better fire effects, aircraft weathering and while now in GBs, the DVD (Dynamic Visual Damage) was in CloD for a long time. And many other things. While CloD has some areas which are clunky, I agree that it has the greatest potential than any other flight sim out there. People need to spend more time and judge CloD for things than simply just than one aspect such as not having VR.

 

Now to TFS. While they didn't have to try and revive a broken game, they did and look how far they have come. When they were just amateur modders making TF Mod 5.0 'Tobruk', they didn't have to add tropical versions of the aircraft (they're modders and there were few trop versions in IL-2 1946) but they did. This shows their commitment to professionalism. I'm glad that 1C was willing to give TF, a bunch of amateur modders, the source code for the original game so their work could be considered official instead of a mod and they could receive some income for their work. The people within TFS continue to work in their spare time for almost 10 years and went over 7 years without a proper paycheck.

 

Just some things to mention about TFS, Buzzsaw made some posts here which indicate that when they got the source code to the release of DW-T there were several setbacks for them: Thinking About Desert Wings (theairtacticalassaultgroup.com)

 

"Do you know how much TF spent on development? ZERO. (if you exclude the approx. $15,000 in legal and business fees we spent out of our pocket to set up the company... a requirement for us to sign with 1C and get access to the code)

 

TF had to deal with these issues. More importantly, we had to fix the issues without any kind of guide or map... we were never provided with any kind of developers guide by 1C... all that was lost when the game was shut down.

 

Take the issue of building a map: We had no information or pathway... we had to start from scratch... solve the issues and find a way. It took 5 versions of the map to finally be able to put something together which worked. One of the reasons we picked the Desert as a starting map is we wanted something simple which could be accomplished in a minimum time period. If we had started with a complex map, we still likely wouldn't be finished."

 

Regarding the second point, I recall reading that the version of the code they were given wasn't the latest version when 1C Maddox pulled out. Without a developer guide, to me it's like saying that you get put into the cockpit of a plane that you are unfamiliar with, and everything is in a language you don't know and can't even decipher the spelling, but you have to explain to everyone what each instrument, lever, handle does and what each instrument is indicating. This along with the difficulties in making the Tobruk map, no wonder Desert Wings-Tobruk wasn't released before 2020.

 

With all of this said, Team Fusion and the game has come a very long way since 2013, they have worked through very difficult times and situations, faced many challenges... even in a non-COVID world... but have managed to give us content and continue to fix the game and make improvements for them. I'm grateful for their strive to keep this game alive and able to move forward. I am looking forward to the Visual Update and hope that Fulqrum will allow TFS to continue forward to TF 6.0. My dream for the next installment would be to fly a Swordfish and fly planes off of aircraft carriers in the MTO. My ultimate dream in this series overall would be flying an Me-323 ?

 

Thank you

 

Enceladus