Cliffs of Dover: IL2 Sturmovik

[Oberon]

Ladies and Gents

http://vimeo.com/60197559#at=0

http://vimeo.com/58826952

Two promising developments in CloD history. ATAG have gotten under the hood of CloD and are doing some excellent work on making this game something closer to what we expected from it.
Furthermore, the excellent Tiger has been playing with the sound files and created something beautiful, and he's still plugging away at it.

Perchance it is not dead, but sleepeth?

[HunterICX]

Talk about the lack of effort by the original dev team after seeying what ATAG has done to it

well....perhaps there's hope after all.
hopefully they'll get the performance of the game tweaked properly and we've got ourself a decent online BoB sim

HunterICX

[GSpector]

I wish there was a group like this for B-17: The Mighty Eighth

Looking good

[Herr-Berbunch]

Originally Posted by GSpector

I wish there was a group like this for B-17: The Mighty Eighth

Looking good

Whosoever owns the rights to B-17: The Mighty Eighth did hint that they might be doing (or plan to do) something along that route. Just got to be patient, and I'm not holding my breath.

[GSpector]

Ya, I heard those same hints. A few years ago

PS: I like your SUBSIM MOD Graphic, I always name my PC HAL and use the lens as the Avatar

[finchOU]

Any word on an overall Campaign fix? To a more IL2 standard lenghty campaign (hell I'd take 20 missions over what they have now).

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by finchOU

Any word on an overall Campaign fix? To a more IL2 standard lenghty campaign (hell I'd take 20 missions over what they have now).

I think that the Campaign is pretty low on their list of priorities at the moment, however there are a couple of user made campaigns by Heinkill (who is, in my opinion, one of the top people for getting sim-BOB news from) which you can find here:
http://bobgamehub.blogspot.co.uk/


However, I have a feeling that it'll be a while before we have the amount of missions for CloD that we do for IL2 at the moment, if indeed we ever do at all, it is quite possible that now 777 are on board for Battle For Moscow, that the IL2 fanbase will skip CloD and go straight to BoM to create their campaigns and missions...that's if it's not another complete train-wreck.
So, in regards to CloD, it's going to be a mainly multiplayer game, split between two servers, ATAG and (I think) SoW (can't remember the name off hand, think it's Storm of War), and when Team Fusion release their patch, and the ATAG server loads it up, well...it's going to be mainly an ATAG server game. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, the ATAG chaps seem good folk and the server is good for whiling away the hours whilst trying to hunt down targets.

Now...if you want a realistic, fully dynamic, playable from both sides campaign which features the Battle of Britain, with squadrons modelled down to the individual aircraft paint schemes and unit codes. If you want dogfights with hundreds of aircraft in the sky at the same time (something not even IL2 can manage properly) with the full chaotic furballs of Summer 1940 recreated.
Well, then, you want to get Battle of Britain II: Wings of Victory.
The graphics are not up to CloD, they are more in the direction of IL2, but it makes up for it in every single other department. The AI is not god-like, the 110 you are chasing may well panic and stall, or do something completely illogical because the AI pilot made a mistake, the radio chatter is much better (more immersive than IL2 and CloD IMHO), and the whole thing is just that much more of a better experience than CloD (as it is now) and IL2. The only real downsides are a few bugs here and there (but the modding group BDG is always hard at work squashing them) and no multiplayer (although that IS apparently being worked on).

So, in conclusion, play BOBII for singleplayer, and CloD for multiplayer for the best Battle of Britain experience.

[finchOU]

Thanks for the quick response. Was blown away by CloD's graphics...then I played the game and was completly disappointed at the campaign and lack of support......pretty much the same feeling with stock SH5. Shocking right? Anyway...i'm assuming I can buy BOBII on amazon?

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by finchOU

Thanks for the quick response. Was blown away by CloD's graphics...then I played the game and was completly disappointed at the campaign and lack of support......pretty much the same feeling with stock SH5. Shocking right? Anyway...i'm assuming I can buy BOBII on amazon?

You join a very long line of people disappointed by the lack of support and the trash heap that is the campaign. I can honestly say that I've never played the stock campaign, and I intend to never do so, just reading a few paragraphs about the RAF campaign and the stupid 'Heartbreaker' thing was enough to stear me completely away from it. Our real hope now for support lies with Team Fusion (who, by the way, will be releasing a new video of their work on their patch/mod at 18:00Z today).

You certainly can buy BOBII on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Britain...ords=BOB%3AWOV

If you buy through the Subsim portal up at the top right of the page you also give a little back to Neal and help keep this site going, so it's win/win really.

Once you have BOBII, you'll want to go here:
http://www.a2asimulations.com/forum/...2ad1720cef9af1

To get the BDG patch, be sure to follow the instructions to install it. Don't play it vanilla because it is rather buggy, but with the BDG patches it has been polished into a fine gem.
Here's some videos to tide you over, some of them feature older versions, but still give a good overview:

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by GSpector

PS: I like your SUBSIM MOD Graphic, I always name my PC HAL and use the lens as the Avatar

We can thank Neal Stevens for that. He put into all our profiles.

[Oberon]

Team Fusion news:

With Friday comes another Team Fusion update, skilfully crafted by Mysticpuma, all taken from a private online dogfight server that ATAG runs for testing. It's looking very nice, including (in a first for a combat flight sim if I'm not mistaken) reflective glints from aircraft canopies that might aid in spotting aircraft at a distance, particularly if they are below you. A realistic and helpful addition to the sim.

http://vimeo.com/61362271



However, there is a darker snippet of news to report on, in a recent interview with LOFT on the il2sturmovik forums, this question and answer occurred:

7) Now enthusiasts from ATAG themselves correct CloD (copyright for this game belongs to you). Whether any cooperation with this team?

So far none of them have tried to contact with me (or with anyone else from 1C-777) and discuss this possibility. This is a bad sign. They don't respect us. If there is no respect for other people's property, any dialogue is impossible. I hope that this is due only to the fact that this boys don't yet know what they want and what they have done. Therefore, they are shy.

http://forum.il2sturmovik.net/topic/...ary/#entry9982

This smells bad to me, of sour grapes because Team Fusion are doing work that 1C-777 don't want to do, and if CloD outperforms BoM because of this then I can see things getting very nasty between 1C-777 and Team Fusion...but I really hope that this isn't the case. We will see, however I do recall Oleg stated early on that he would be very open to modding of CloD, and I see no reason why this should have changed, even though despite what was promised, no modding sdk files were released with the game.

Still, time will tell, in the meantime though, I'm going to hop on to ATAG and hone my aircraft spotting skills.

[finchOU]

http://shop.desastersoft.com/en/figh...xpert-eng.html

Anyone bought and tried this add on? It looks to add campaign missions for 4 different squadrons of 30 plus missions each. This is kind of what I was expecting Stock to be .... looks pretty cool and might go for it if I can get some good feedback..and it is compatible with some MODs out there.

[Oberon]

I've heard good things about their missions, but the producers have some...'interesting' ideas of history, here's an alleged extract from their campaign briefings:

Churchill himself said it very clearly in the summer 1940:
Those who think, we fight this war to fight nazism, are naive. Our intention is to smash germanys economic power.

Wars are never fought for altruistic motives. They always have a egoistic intent. The aim is power and territories, never the people.

None of the nations fighting in WWII is innocent. Not even the victors.

And so was the "Battle of Britain" also not what it was stylized for. For Great Britain it wasn't the fight to survive, and for Germany it wasn't the fight for the invasion of England.
Churchill wanted to fight this war for his own personal power to the bitter end, at all costs. And it did cost! It did cost Great-Britain it's empire. He stood as loosing victor, who did gain his primary war goal, the destruction of Germany, but ruined the homeland entrusted to him. Great-Britain never recovered from this ruin.
In 1939 it was possible to start the war, but not to stop it. He only could take the bull by its horns, in a conflict, lost before it started. And the same was with the Battle of Britain. Continious changing aims of the battle, no strategic concept and a Luftwaffe not suited for this kind of war were the largest obstacles. But the truly biggest obstacle was, that there was no plan for the continuation of the war. So this battle was a improvisation, which was by propagandistic means blown up to a possible decisive battle.
The battle was decided, as soviet troops at 28.06.1940 invaded Romania and occupied large parts of it. From this day on the german high command knew, that the direction of the war would change, if they wanted to survive. Since without the romanian oil the war against England couldn't be fought also. 150 km divided from this day on G.K. Schukow from the decision in favour of the Soviet-union. But he overlooked the chance.
The german chief of staff Franz Halder, as Hitler himself, saw the danger and acted. All planning for a possible invasion of England were waste paper and obsolete with that.

Concluding it is to ascertain, that for England in 1940 was no danger of a invasion. Churchill wanted to get the USA into his boat, and that he did get. Because the USA supported Great-Britain after the Battle of Britain with enormous quantities of weapons wares, planes and ships.

And from the manual:

The one side [Germany] was lacking the means and the will for victory, the other side [Britain] the good sense for peace. This may sound cynical, but peace would have been possible. And in this case, the decision was not Hitler's. In 1939 Hitler possessed the ability to begin the war. But in 1940 he did not possess the ability to end it. Churchill did!

And apparently the author posts on certain forums that also have interesting historical viewpoints, as a simhq member put it:

I am German myself. The moment I heard there would be an add-on for COD I wanted to buy it. So I did some research. I found out that Thomas Voss posts on a website, which is called “political incorrect”. There they promote “free Speech”, which means uttering right wing rhetorics. For example he says that Germany needed to attack the Soviet Union because they prepared for the attack themselves which is laughable. They only want to find ways to excuse the deeds of Nazi Germany. He also promotes the opposition against immigration and if you read his posts you realize quickly that he is opposed to the current democratic System of Germany. Also other members of desastersoft promote Anti-Americanism which is quite common in the far right circles.

(All from: http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3399135/10)

But, politics aside, I have heard good things about the missions themselves, so there is that.

[finchOU]

Well there are always two sides of a story and the Victors write the history....so I don't necessarily disagree with everything he says... but it is always good in my opinion to see different points of view. Do I think he is wrong...based off of what I know... yeah probably... but he does bring up some interesting points. Like any good free market Capitalist, I only care that the product is superior. Mixing politics and business is never a good idea IMHO.

I'm a huge free speech guy. Say what you want and let public opinion decide how serious people take you. As long as you are not physically hurting some one...I that is your right. I'm pro Nationism..... but from a persons perspective...not government (as this lets to control away from the people).... as in I love my country for its freedoms....not to "hate" other countries.

I think the bottom line for the BOB is that the Germans needed to dominate the air war...aka air superiority and the supply war (sea power). It didn't do that....it had a chance (maybe) with their air force....as for Sea Power.... it couldn't dominate the sea lanes with it's small Uboat force or inferior surface fleet. I always thought the War would be won or lost in the East and whether the US would commit to war or not.

That aside....I think I'll def look into one of these Campaigns ...as I do like what I see. Unless there is another third party developer I don't know about.

[Oberon]

Oh, aye, well I'm open to peoples interpretations of history, although I do disagree with a lot of what was written there. However, like I said, politics aside, it seems to be quite good.

Some reviews here:

http://www.simhq.com/_air15/air_538a.html

http://simhq.com/_air14/air_524a.html