luthier1

All right folks, pretty much ready to hit Publish on the new changes on KS that reset the NON BACKER free game to one flyable aircraft. While opinions differ, I will not change anything with any existing rewards tiers. I.e. if you had backed at $1 before, or will back at $1 at any time before Oct 5, you WILL receive the three currently stated free aircraft. I could have locked down the current $1 tier and made the extra aircraft available later, but it'll just add to the confusion. I also just spent a few hours trying to refine the rewards matrix and it's just impossible. I tried once again to simplify everything and bring it up to a common denominator. Just choose a number of add-ons you want, and pledge accordingly, and then choose the rewards you want, manuals, alpha access, etc. It's just a nightmare of confusion even for myself. Most importantly, things just cost differently, and it's already reflected in existing rewards. I cannot price a t-shirt the same as a copy of a FW.190D in DCS World. If I average things out, that makes things look weird and overly expensive compared to old rewards. Most importantly, we already have a gazillion rewards, and I cannot edit or hide these. Changes like these mean adding a whole bunch of new rewards while keeping all the existing ones visible. Trying to choose the correct one then will just drive the new people crazy. Also, yes, the main idea is to add new people to the backers list. I am incredibly thankful to the people who have already pledged, and I'm definitely not saying it enough. Continuing to ask you for more and more money is just plain wrong. Anyway, I'll sleep on the changes to the overall KS, and either hit Publish in the morning, or not. In the end, we have already reached our goal. Is a flyable Me.262 worth making yet another drastic change in the project?

Oh that's not the entire development budget BY FAR. It's stated in the main kickstarter text and I've noted this a couple of times, but I guess it gets lost in all the other text. We would have done DCS WWII anyway even if the kickstarter had failed. We'd just have to do it quicker and cheaper, and therefore not do quite as much not quite as well as we're going to do now. Plus, of course, the kickstarter opened up the opportunity to add more content such as the 262. We're still hoping it can do that. But yes of course, if we only had the 100K and nothing else, we wouldn't be able to do anything.

PS I just realized the perfect way to hit those stretch goals. Add a new $100 reward level. Offer a tell-all novel about the events of the past few years. Oooh. If only :)

All right, what a lively discussion. So, the updated plan to discuss is as follows: 1. Add PayPal. This is a little more complicated than I thought, I have to set something up with PayPal. I hope there'll be enough time. 2. Announce a partial update to the retail strategy at relase. One free plane to be voted for by backers. The rest available for a separate fee. ALL kickstarter backers receive rewards as previously stated. I.e., the project features are exactly as they were announced TO ALL BACKERS. Non-backers - one free plane. Won't muddy the waters with updated pledges. We were happy to give those planes away for free to everyone, so giving them to backers who pledge $1 is no problem at all. Good? Bad? 3. Updated video. Working with MP. We'll probably just put it right up there replacing the current main video. I think KS allows me to do that. Now, some answers: I really can't think of anything I could justify asking 20 extra bucks for. Planes, manuals, it's all in there. The combination of the three free aircraft and the low $40 all aircraft goal is what got us here. I don't mean that in a bad way. If we had originally promised one free aircraft, and priced the all aircraft option at $100 or something like that, the entire campaign might have ran differently. Who knows if we would have reached even the initial goal. Right. I'm sorry if you're losing confidence. Nothing we're discussing affects the actual development. Everyone wins if we hit a stretch goal with kickstarter. Everyone also wins if we make a metric ton of money on initial release, and can put it right back into the project and make more theaters and planes. This is how development usually is. We're way, way, way early to lock anything down, especially in terms of a pricing structure. With a project like this, you'd normally decide on the free vs paid content, their price, etc, well into the beta test. In other words, we're obviously not trying to give you an inferior product. We're trying to find a way to make it more commercially viable - which in turn gives it longer life - and that in turn ends up giving everyone a bigger better flight sim. Those were overly ambitious projects done from scratch. I've already done my overly ambitious project done from scratch. Still feeling the burn. DCS WWII is done on an existing engine, and is specifically designed to be modest. A lot of people would like to add giant multiplayer improvements, AI changes, dynamic campaigns, etc. I am really itching for that too. However we're not doing that precisely because we want to stay lean and clean in the beginning. We could have written out giant specs, priced them out, and added everything mentioned above to the kickstarter, and tried to raise the extra $$$. Would we have? Perhaps. Would I be 100% confident that we'd be able to deliver everything on time? And that's exactly why I did not promise you guys a sky full of diamonds. Perhaps I have not done the best job reaching out to those people, but I'm muzzled and I cannot really offer my explanation on any of those events. That would have made an honest discussion nearly impossible. Like I said above though, if you'll just compare our attitude and our promises when developing the two projects, you'll really notice the difference with DCS WWII, the lessons learned. We only promise the things we KNOW we can deliver. With an existing engine, with tracks already laid down, making airplanes or landscapes is not an unknown. That's how it usually is. Things are very fluid this early in development. Like I said above, none of the changes affect the actual game we're building. The kickstarter, the videos, all of that is done by me personally with virtually no help. Does it inspire confidence? I would hope that the fact that I can identify things that are not working, and not stick with them with a poker face, is actually a good thing. I really appreciate your comments. I'll even take some personal attacks right now if that can help me get better in the future. I'm definitely not perfect, and your comments is precisely what I was looking for, why I started this discussion in the first place. That's a wonderful idea. I think the biggest mistake in this kickstarter is not having one. I'm a very poor PR person, as should be clear to everyone. We would have done infinitely better had we started off with a knowledgeable, dedicated, motivated PR person. I disagree. An uncool airplane is worse than no demo at all. If you don't really enjoy the demo, why would you ever consider giving the project your money? I still believe the free game should be awesome. We're not looking to give you something you try for one night, and then reach for the wallet. Fine, fly and enjoy it for six months, and maybe decide then. Anyway, time will tell. Yes, exactly. Hardware requirements are a hurdle which I really don't know how to overcome. There needs to be a no-hardware entry point, and then the sim itself should make it easy for the players to get what they want. I know how confusing it must be to people who never encountered this. Definitely a great topic to discuss, but perhaps not for right now. That's pretty clear, but it's actually not working. We are sending out press releases. We are trying to reach out to media outlets. The project is just not exciting the unconverted. I'm not sure why that is. It's probably because we're, A, unable to use our old series name, and B, because we're so early in the process we just don't have a very impressive presentation. Right. Going to give the main page a major overhaul right now. That's an awesome list, but like I mentioned above, we're going to hold off on making any promises (but not on attempting to address those things) precisely because we burned so many people in the past. Can we try to improve the damage model? Sure. Can we, as we are today, PROMISE improved damage model? Nope. Something'll go wrong, as it often does, and we're where we were three years ago. Fact is, features like that are just too unpredictable. It's not because I'm a poor project manager or we have idiots for programmers. Everybody runs into problems like that. It's just they're a lot more noticeable in a flight sim. FPS or RTS or RPG ships with moronic AI? Everyone groans but keeps on playing. Flight sim promises great AI but ships with UFOs? Forum explosion. Anyway, thank you guys, keep em coming!

Hey everyone, We're scrambling to figure out how to get the stretch goal. It seems that we've reached saturation point with everything we're doing. A hardcore plane programming talk, and a more casual flight sim talk, a RPS interview, none of those seemed to have any kind of an effect on our performance. Is it possible to reach the remaining 35K in the last 5 days? Other projects have done that in a few hours. Even our kickstarter has easily done that on launch. So, with the right strategy, I'm still very hopeful. It is clear however that we need to do something drastically different. Let's have a discussion. Any ideas? Please let me know. Ideas I have are: 1. A killer video. Lots of you are asking for a killer intro video, which could probably be beneficial if it could inspire some people who have not looked at the project previously. We'll work on that, and if you have any ideas on the subject, please let me know. 2. New rewards? The project is confusing as it is already, I really don't know if adding MORE rewards is going to solve anything. 3. Taking PayPal. Apparently another project has done that in the end of their kickstarter and was able to pull in a large additional sum of money. I'm not sure if we're in the same boat as that project, but do you guys really think this would help? Are there a lot of people who want to back the project but cannot because we don't accept paypal? 4. Changes to project features. This, I think, is the biggest thing we can do at this point. There was a lively discussion on this subject a while ago but I did not think this could be changed so I said no. However the idea did stick in my head. When I was just planning this kickstrter out, I really thought that we'd break through the base and end up meeting a whole bunch of the stretch goals. I really thought that we'd be building a much bigger project than what it looks like today. That is one of the reasons why we decided to offer so many aircraft for free in the initial release. We thought we'd have a lot more aircraft altogether than what it looks like we're going to have. However what this ended up doing was give very little incentive for people to pledge. Lots of people feel they'll get a product for free either way. A bystander effect. Why back when you get the Spit and the 109 and the Jug for nothing? The stretch goals are so far away, giving more money seems unlikely to change much, so why bother? What if we do something extremely drastic and make one or even two aircraft non-free on release, while keeping them all free to existing backers? That would not affect anyone who's pledged already, but would probably excite those who did not. On the other hand, we could have a backlash effect and turn off a large portion of the on-the-fence community? So, this is my dramatic about-face and I'd really love to hear your opinions! It's definitely completely up in the air, everything is open to change. Free version of DCS WWII contains ONE free aircraft (to be voted for by backers). We have new rewards: $1 NEW and $10 NEW: rewards as before, but no additional aircraft (one flyable total) $20 NEW: access to one additional release aircraft (two total) $30 NEW: access to two additional release aircraft (three total) $40 NEW: access to three additional release aircraft (four total) $60 NEW: access to ALL additional release aircraft (six total if we get the Me.262) We'll lock down the old rewards of the same level. Anyone who's already in those OLD rewards tiers, i.e. those who backed the project on the promise of three flyable aircraft, WILL receive the three previously promised planes on release. 5. Any other reason you think people are not backing this project? What can we do? I'm especially interested in hearing your opinion if you have not yet backed this project.

You're not going to hit a map end. You're going to suddenly find yourself flying over deserted langoliers terrain, and think you went back to Jane's WWII Fighters if you go down low. Don't know which is worse. 150K is not a very realistic goal. We can hardly do anything for the extra 50K. Definitely not a map and definitely not a whole new plane. The only thing we can probably try to squeeze in for the 50K is a cockpit for the 262, and that's only because we are already doing the AI version. I am not sure that a flyable 262 is really the aircraft that will rally the community and give us extra 50K in the remaining days. Here's what we can do: 150K: cockpit for 262 275K: extra fighter, to be voted for by backers OR Southern England OR 200K: extra fighter, to be voted for by backers 325K: extra fighter + (another extra fighter OR Southern England) The B-17 would then get pushed back to 425K for the first option, or 450K for the second option. What do you guys think?

I should add a lower stretch goal, but wouldn't it be better as a split thing, half the current next stretch goal? Once we reach it, we'll have a backer vote on which half to make it, the flyable Fort or Southern England. How's that sound?

PS I think I found the solution to the static P-51 canopy transparency issue.

Yes I've just gotten chewed out for it earlier today. Going to make sure to spend a lot more time interacting with the community, and will also try to get some key team members to join in so this does not seem like a one-man game. Thank you. I'm scrambling to shift gears; I've had a whole campaign written out and put together. As the kickstarter got started I realized it was all wrong, since I was doing something for people new to flight sims, I guess expecting an influx of people who have never flown a plane in their life. Now that I've realized that this project can only succeed if I work with the dedicated flight sim fans, I'm redoing and scrapping everything to give you guys what you need, and the clock is ticking, so it's not a pleasant feeling. I have a few more shots of Normandy coming up in a little bit. We did a few more tests, made a PSP runway and a pseudo-airfield with some parked P-51s. Have an annoying problem where static P-51s have issues with a transparent canopy. I really hate releasing stuff that does not look great. We also cannot afford to become a screenshot-taking project, so this is rather annoying. Yes sir.

Hey folks, Sorry for a little delay in responding. We're working on getting it right now. We are coming to realize that a lot of people see this kickstarter as way too early, and it's a real shame. I hope everyone understands that it's a simple matter of timing. If we delayed the KS by say six months, we'd be able to have a much stronger presentation. However deciding on which features to add six months from now would, consequently, delay the release of any of those features by at least six months. Of course. We have a shared agreement. We're not completely out of the picture even if the Mustang and the Dora are the only aircraft being sold; but of course we really want to have other flyables. I wrote a rather long paragraph in response, but then decided it would probably be pointless. I don't know if I really have any words that can convince you that we really are doing what we say we're doing, or what Oleg is really extremely knowledgeable and a perfectionist. DCS is a very different environment from what we used to do. We are not trying to redefine it, and I'm sure we can fit in very well and work within these new constraints, but I guess the only way we can really prove it to anyone is by doing it. The product we're doing is free, so, like I said before, you have nothing to lose by trying it out when it comes out. While we have everything to lose by releasing something inferior. That it does. Working to get lots more footage and screenshots. Hoping for tomorrow, but it's maybe beginning to look like Monday. Working super hard. I think I'm finally beginning to figure out this video editing thing.

Коммерческие тренажеры, это не для PC. Они, насколько я знаю, не предназначены для DCS.

Hello everyone, Many of you have been really waiting for it, so here it is! We’re showing the new EDGE landscape engine today, and meeting the people working on it. Please keep in mind that the Normandy terrain is in the very earliest stages of development. The terrain engine itself is very mature, but is missing some features needed for a proper WWII simulation. So that’s where we started our terrain design. We are using the famous Pointe du Hoc location to test everything we need: bunkers, trenches, and bomb craters. We are doing that with a few simple placeholders and a few low-res textures. Our Normandy still needs most of the French 1940s buildings, airfield structures, and proper French countryside textures. All of those, while time consuming, are no-brainers at this point. Making and placing objects, or texturing terrain, are the kind of tasks the team has done before while making landscapes for helicopter and pilot training simulators. Once we have our bunkers and craters done and tested, the rest of the project is rather routine. Unfortunately, as the other landscapes done in EDGE were done as commercial projects, we are unable to show any part of that terrain. Normandy is the only thing we can show, and it is clearly nowhere near finished. We are also not at the stage where planes can fly over Normandy. We really tried to have a Mustang in a Normandy field today, but ran into some issues, and decided not to delay the video for it. Once we have those tests done, we’ll definitely release those shots. With that in mind, here’s the video:

Добрый вечер, Многие из вас ждали именно этого, так что ура! Покажем сегодня движок ЕДЖ, и познакомимся с командой, которая с ним работает. Должен заметить, что Нормандия находится в зачаточной стадии разработки. Сам движок в отличном состоянии, но многих вещей, которые нужны для симулятора второй мировой, в нем еще нет. Именно с них мы начали нашу работу. Используя известный мыс Пойнт-дю-Хок как тестовый полигон, мы строим там все то, что нам нужно: бункера, траншеи, и бомбовые кратеры. Делаем мы это с помощью простых макетов объектов, и текстур низкого разрешения. В нашей Нормандии еще нет большинства французских зданий, аэродромов, и текстур полей времен войны. Но все эти трудоемкие задачи не вызывают у нас особых волнений. Производство и расположение объектов, текстурирование сетки ландшафта, все это команда многократно уже проходила, все на мази после симуляторов для настоящих пилотов, которые ребята делали на EDGE. В данном случае, мы закончим и завершим бункера и кратеры, и примемся за остальную рутину. К сожалению, другие ландшафты, сделанные на EDGE, являются коммерческими проектами, и мы не можем их использовать в нашем кикстартере. Можем показать только нашу Нормандию, которая, конечно, еще очень далека от финала. Самолеты над ней пока не летают. Мы очень старались поставить Мустанг в поле к сегодняшнему апдейту, но вылезли проблемы, пока не вышло. Решили видео не задерживать. Как только проблемы решим, покажем самолет, похвастаемся прогрессом. В общем, смотрите видео:

Арденны планируем вторым номером. Нормандию я просто сам как-то очень люблю. Не знаю. Особо не обсуждали, как то выбор казался очевидным. У нас же не симулятор Нормандии, а симулятор войны 1944го года. Начальный ландшафт не так важен. Ну и сам я очень хочу по Фалезу поработать на П-47. С зимы начинать не хотелось, с Арденнов, так как еще кое-то весь в снегу. Альфа = 10 долларов. С 40-долларовой простой ступени есть версия с альфой за 50. C 50-долларовой простой есть версия с альфой за 60. И т д. Я сам сильно запутался в этой дьявольской матрице. Названия наград прямо начинаются с группы. Сделайте поиск текста ALPHA, вам покажут все ступени. Так и написано, альфа 1, альфа 2. Вы можете выбрать любую из них. Апгрейд 100-долларовой - за 110, но если вас больше привлекает любая другая, например за 50, вы можете в любой момент пойти и наверх, и вниз. 1. Только доступом к альфе. Группа альфа = ступень оригинал + 10 долларов за альфу. 2. С 50. Но только если указана альфа в названии; есть ступени между 50 и 250, в которые альфа не включена. Простите, я сам в них путаюсь. Вчера, пока создавал, чуть не окосел. (видео про едж почти закачалось, сейчас будет)

Добрый вечер, Будут еще два видео, про ландшафт и про моделирование самолетов. Потом будет видео вопросы и ответы. Олег появится там. Спрошу, может он захочет пока на форумах пообщаться. Проект в базовой комплектации сможем закончить и без кикстартера. Просто будет менее проработанная земля, меньше наземки-домиков, и меньше времени на бета-тест. Со всеми вытекающими. То есть, кикстартер очень конечно хотелось бы набрать. Данный набор самолетов основан не на конкретной битве за Нормандию, а на доступных данных, которые позволят создать наиболее исторически верные самолеты для обобщеной симуляции воздушного боя над западной европой. С исправлением набора для конкретной исторической битвы проблема только в затратах времени. Для DCS самолеты делать долго. За то же время, которое мы можем сделать более правильный 109 и 190, мы можем сделать один целиком новый самолет. Это всегда сложное решение. Пока общий набор самолетов, которые планируем разрабатывать, описан в кикстартере, база и стретчи. Мы в принципе можем устроить голосование по результатам, спросить поддержавших и про настоящее, и про будущее. Мне трудно предположить, что победит, например, пара 190А-8 и G-6, или летаб Ме-262. Да. На данный момент мы очень далеки от конкретной работы по этой задаче, но предполагаю, что да. Решали с Ник Греем между полетами. Он очень хотел Мк 5, потому что именно она есть у него, и потому что он больше всего ее любит. Но конечно 5 совсем устарела для 1944. Решили наконец 9. Гриффоновые спитфайры особо не обсуждали. Предположу, что чисто из эстетических соображений.

Morning folks! I'll try to have it ready Thursday. Friday at the latest. I would guess that a lot of people who backed the project already own the P-51. I also don't own either the P-51 or the Dora. If we were to include them in kickstarter rewards today, the people who do own the planes wouldn't just do it for free. I'd need to buy licenses from them; in essence you'd still just be buying the planes and your payment would be split between DCS WWII budget and paying for the licenses. In other words, this would probably add some money to the project, but a large chunk of backer money for this particular reward would not be going to the project.

I'm starting to think we might need to shuffle things about a little bit. We'll try to change the immediate next stretch goal, and make it a flyable B-17 and British airfields. Move all other stretch goal aircraft one tier up. We'll talk this over and have a decision for you within a day or two. Also going to work on adding some more attractive backer rewards. Oh trust me, I'm very familiar with southern England :) RRG does not currently have a dedicated AI programmer. We could theoretically look into hiring one for this project, which would probably give us tons and tons of cool stuff over the course of the project, but I really don't know how to budget for that. We're already pretty far out there for a stretch goal. I'm kind of cautious about adding too many tiers or too many options. If I add, for example, and intermediate "improved AI" stretch goal, all as a part of all additional stretch goals, that might turn off some other people, and make it seem like the aircraft they really want are too far away. ED has programmers too, of course. We however do not have a current plan for AI improvement. No clue at this point. This new video is basically introduction part 2. Nick Grey is a hugely important part of this project, but it felt like putting him in the initial video made everything way too long. It's also not about passion but about our relationship with TFC. This has immediate, direct, and unique impact on the product. We have access to the actual aircraft and the actual pilot. That's not sentimentality or small talk at all. These are the precise reasons why DCS: P-51 is the best prop simulation available today. I have another talk video all put together, which I foolishly planned to release as video 3, but I realized the error of my ways while uploading video 2 this morning. Video 3 will be a detailed look at EDGE. Video 4 will be a detailed overview of aircraft modeling in DCS. Video 5 will be a video QnA, and then video 6 will probably be the thing I planned for Video 3. I also have to point out that it's all just me. I write the scripts, I direct, I shoot, I edit, I release, I discuss. I don't have a marketing staff, anything like that. I'm learning as I go. Hopefully I can do enough to reach at least one stretch goal in the next 30 days. Please don't let the fact that I'm not a marketing professional or a filmmaker influence your opinion of myself as a game developer!

Добрый вечер, Новый апдейт: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/508681281/dcs-wwii-europe-1944/posts/593803 С новым видео: Субтитры с аннотациями вставляю. Пока, вот текст видео на русском:

Good morning, We have published a short new update here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/508681281/dcs-wwii-europe-1944/posts/593803 and the accompanying video is available here:

Следующее видео - примерно через 12 часов. Видео уже готово, только вмонтировать туда надо только что записанное приветствие по результатам предыдущих трех дней. А так, с контентом мы находимся в неудобной ситуации. Начато много, а закончено мало. В любом другом кикстартере, показали бы мы Тигр без текстуры, бункер с плейсхолдером, наметки на кабину П-47, и все бы радовались. А тут? Выложили бы мы полусделанный Мессер. Кикстартер бы взорвался, и мы бы собрали негативных триста тысяч, то есть я бы еще кому-то выплачивал за моральный ущерб. Мы могли подождать пол годика, и тогда выложить видео Мессера, который стреляет по Спиту, внизу прибойчик, красота - но тогда не было бы возможности уже в основной релиз включать летаб Б-17 и все, что у нас в stretch goal. Поймите, что кикстартер у нас на очень, очень, очень ранней стадии разработки. А фанаты привыкли видеть готовое, и там все по пикселям разбирать. Поэтому сложно. К тому времени, когда в проекте будут конкретные результаты (см выше), уже будет некуда вкладывать. Просто сможете купить вышедшее. С этим нет проблем, это тоже нормально. Но просто если мы сможем достаточное количество людей убедить в ближайший месяц, то у остальных через год будет гораздо больше выбора, что покупать. Делаем этот кикстартер не для того, чтобы предпродать продукт, а чтобы сделать продукт ЛУЧШЕ. Это в принципе другой подход. Деньги на разработку базы самолетов есть и без кикстартера - базовый кикстартер добавляет денег на более проработанную наземку, и на более долгий период тестирования. То есть, конечно, 100т - это сравнительно малая часть проекта. Общую стоимость проекта можете примерно вычислить и стоимостей компонентов stretch goal. Но и туда не входят многие базовые затраты, львиная доля которых приходится на базу.

Let me be perfectly frank here. I just cannot promise it at this time. All I can promise is that we will try. I may have deja vu after my old project, where we've had quite a few instances of saying "we will do this" instead of a more semantically correct "we will try to do this", and where we eventually ended up not being able to deliver what we promised. As it is today, EDGE is still being integrated with the rest of the game. That's precisely what's being done right now, today, having various game objects interact with terrain. Vehicles need to drive, planes need to collide, etc. We're obviously extremely interested in having tree collisions. There's no gameplay or realism reason for why it should not be that way. The only reason why trees would not have collisions is performance. There are obvious algorithms for making this work. There are also less obvious ones. We need to finish the programming, try things out, and make sure everything works well. Need to point out that the people working on this are ED programmers. They're outside my control, and they obviously had absolutely nothing to do with any of my old projects. This is why I personally cannot say with 100% certainty we will have tree collisions. My certainty is, let's say, 93.6%. This may be PTSD talking, but I don't think that's good enough for a promise, especially if your pledge depends on it. Five airplanes total, three of them free. This decision was based on gameplay considerations, not marketing or sales. DCS World is based on decades of content. While there's only one free plane, there's tons and tons of other content that the player encounters, and there's a lot of fun to be had. DCS WWII starts from scratch. We can't do all that much in the next year. If we were to release a free version of the game with a single flyable plane, there'd be significantly fewer options for the player. We want people to enjoy themselves and really have a good, all-around complete product even in the free version. I personally would be very uncomfortable releasing a bare-bones single-flyable free game. We still have to strong paid aircraft in the basic version, and we really hope that the influx will drive enough people to purchase the P-51 and the Dora to keep the series going. Same as DCS at least, and we're hoping to improve on it as much as we can. Like I said in the kickstarter description, we really want to spruce up the MP, but we don't know how much we can do and how fast, so perhaps some major features will be added on later. In other words, we have lots of strong opinions and a lot of plans, but it's way too early to talk about them. We'll only know what we can do in the process of doing it. 100x160 for the detailed terrain, yes. This is the current size of our WIP map. We can extend it at any time but we have not done so yet. I'm personally scared to include England because it really opens up a whole new set of tasks. I am very uncomfortable doing low-quality terrain, especially with all the great things EDGE can do given enough effort. I think we could be shooting ourselves in the foot by releasing low-quality poorly textured inaccurate England with a few major airbases. In other words, I'm potentially open to the idea, but perhaps it needs a bigger discussion with the community. We might try to add on some England and show how it can be done quickly, just so it's there, and then ask and see if the majority of the players would rather have something like that, or have nothing at all. Sorry, we can't do anything with the kickstarter system. Whatever it supports, we'll take. Whatever it does not, we can't. We do have a few more things up our sleeve. As a matter of fact, even with the slowed down pace the project is doing better daily than we might have hoped for. It's just that the first few hours were so unbelievably strong, that's making the current pace look bad in comparison. We really do need to pick up the pace and really get the momentum going again if we really want to hit those stretch goals. A flyable B-17 is my personal dream. There's gotta be a way to get there somehow. Like I said above, this isn't just a kickstarter for the project. The project itself is supposed to kick-start a new WWII flight sim series. We want to start it with a bang. So we really are doing three free DCS-quality planes. Yes. I really hope that you'd trust the guys who give away three DCS-quality planes in order not to nickel and dime everyone not to nicked and dime everyone on another plane :) We want to have a strong series, and we want to build a good relationship with our players. We are not against giving stuff away for free, as you see. FW-190A and FW-190D are really very different planes. That's why we are putting them as two separate line items; please not that we have not released even a hint of the pricing structure for anything because we ourselves do not have it set at this time. I personally only have a vague idea of some sort of a anthology pack for major aircraft that includes various important variants in a single purchase, with a heavy discount for the owners of the initial single-variant package. But like I said, we are nowhere near far enough in the kickstarter, much less the development process, to really have made any decisions about this. We'd want to have individual tree collisions because in my experience with my older projects anything less is not precise enough. When your wingtip passes through a tree with no effect, or you fly a foot away from a tree and explode, that's horrible. And that's what happens when your collision is too rough. If we were to go with blocks of trees, that would really change the look of the terrain. We'd need to have all fields, all roads, all parks, everything, to be a multiple of the standard tree line width. You'd see that right away. The terrain would look horribly blocky, almost Minecraft-like. So we really do need to have fine tree collisions for this to work well. They need to match the shape of the tree, otherwise the disconnect is extremely maddening. There's nothing more upsetting than flying in MP, inching closer to the kill at tree-top level, pulling a hard turn around a tree, and exploding even though the tree is over there, just because the collision is a little too coarse. Anyway, back to video editing for tomorrow morning!

Доброе утро! 20 долларов дает ОДИН самолет во всех случаях. 40 долларов дает ВСЕ самолеты во всех случаях. Если собрали базу, то платных самолетов два - П-51 и Дора. За 20 долларов выбираете один из них. За 40 получаете оба. Если собрали миллион, платных самолетов 13 штук. За 20 долларов получаете один из них на выбор. За 40 получаете все 13. Мы разрабатываем всякие штуковины, но они будут доступны и другим проектам DCS. Мы ничего не делаем только для себя. Например, планируем усложнять и улучшать и визуальную, и физику наземки, особенно модель повреждений. Это не будет ТОЛЬКО в DCS WWII, но, если бы не было DCS WWII, этого бы не появилось нигде. Также делаем многое с ландшафтом, ну и умную системы лодирования самолетов (см ниже). Да. Нелетабы делаем по необходимости. А если есть возможность, если соберем денег, делаем только летабы. Уже ничего нельзя. Народ денег дал, отнимать обещанное никак. Да. Нет! Мы не будем делать тупые боты. Мы будем делать выборочно упрощенные боты. Если летят 100 Б-17 по маршруту строем, то честно считать каждый из 400 движков нет смысла. Считать честно надо только то, что отошло от нормы. Попали в него, или еще чего. Летит себе спокойно по линеечке - упрощаем. Что-то произошло - врубаем все по максимуму.

Evening everyone! FREE for everyone: P-47 Spitfire Bf.109K Paid on release P-51 (from DCS World) FW-190D (from DCS World) If you back at a $20 level, you can pick a P-51 or FW-190D. If you back at a $40 level, you will have both. If you already own a DCS World P-51 and/or FW-190, then obviously no one wants you to have to pay for anything twice. If we reach stretch goals, then the story changes. Free aircraft list will most likely not change. Backing at $20 still gets you one of the larger variety of paid aircraft. $40 or above still gets you ALL of the initial flyables. None of the aircraft released in future updates are covered by any of this. I like the G. It's just we currently can only make one variant of the 109, and we picked the K as we have the best data on it. I don't want to make empty promises or vaguely hint at something, but I really liked having multiple variants of the same plane in my older projects. The overall process is much simpler. Once we have the K, making the various Gs and maybe the F should be comparatively simple. The sidebar description is the most correct. Sorry about the confusion. I'm still unable to edit the description, getting the limit reached error. I guess I'll just honor the bigger rewards in every case, and deliver the maximum or the combination of any two tiers with errors in descriptions. We can extend the map to the entire globe, but manually adding detail will be extremely hard to do. We can have all of England done for the map in virtually no time, but it'll be a general coastline filled with vague generic field. It really makes no sense to spend time making British airfields if you only have AI bombers; a flyable B-17 will obviously need to have a nice-looking airbase to take off from and return to. The way I understand EDGE - and I have to mention that there is a chance that I can be wrong here - is that we can take an existing map and just drag out the outer edges and extend it by any number of kilometers. Creating generic terrain with a vague coastline and some elevation is not a huge task. Making it look good is. Making it historically accurate, i.e. recreating road networks, landmarks, etc, is a huge huge effort. We could take our existing Normandy and tack on England and Paris and Ruhr and Berlin. Theoretically. It's just it'll either take many man-years to polish every square mile, or we'll end up with some empty generic filler across vast areas. And THANK YOU to all the backers once again. We'll have a new cool video released on Monday morning. I'll be around until then to answer questions, so keep them coming!

Это максимум. Есть проект, который собрал за 30 дней 8 миллионов. Посмотрим, что будет. В любом случае, это наши планы на будущее. Не соберем в кикстартере - сделаем за свои после релиза. Ландшафт - только начали делать. Он далеко не идеален, особенно с близкого расстояния. Будет целое видео только про ландшафт. 4е или 5е. Будем видео о разных делах выпускать в среднем каждые 3 дня. Можно закинуть любую сумму, и в любое время в следующие 29 дней сумму поменять. А вот так. Чтобы не возникало впечатление, что доим из вас каждую копейку. Будет и там, и там. В DCS World естественно раньше. Именно. Пока слишком рано обсуждать. Есть только планы и предположения. Посмотрим, как пойдут продажи после релиза, чтобы решить 1 и 2. И надо будет поработать еще примерно пол годика, чтобы понять, что будет с 3. Скрины сделаны в редакторе. Там нет в принципе шейдера атмосферы, он не "красит" ландшафт солнцем. Цвета будут не финальными, будут подкручиваться, еще очень очень долго. Пока нарисовали по быстрому, и не возвращаемся. Подкрутка цветов - задача на более позднюю стадию проекта. Надеемся, что человек, который дает 2000 в проект, не будет делать это в качестве прикола. Будет. Могу сделать только я, а сейчас у меня хронически не хватает времени. Год. В 1944 году в Нормандии немцы особенно не летали бомберами. 262 может бомбить. Наверное нет, это убивает ПС. Сто Б-17 с АФМ строем - кошмар. Не обсуждали пока В течение кикстартера Будет полностью готов, если честно, никогда. Готов к показу на публику во всех его гранях - пол годика. Будет долгое время про землю во время кикстартера, там много неготового. Решим, если соберем денег на бомбер летаб. Конечно, хотим - надеемся, что сможем. Слишком рано обсуждать Конечно, хотим - надеемся, что сможем. Слишком рано обсуждать Бесплатные будут П-47, Спит, и 109. П-51 и Дора - платные. По стретч целям - расскажем как, когда будем к ним стремится.

I'm trying to edit it out and I can't. Very sorry about that, should have caught that before going live. We were thinking of doing a G-something but eventually settled on the K-4. The texts were written earlier and I guess I should fire myself for the oversight. We are doing the K-4. We are NOT doing a Gustav at this time. We (RRG) definitely did not get a monopoly on all things WWII! If other 3rd party developers wish to develop something WWII-y, they most likely can. If ED themselves want to do something WWII-y, they own DCS and they own the engine and they absolutely most certainly can build whatever and whenever they want. No, the free basic version of DCS WWII does not come with all aircraft flyable. If you pledge 40 bucks, you will get the licenses for the non-free aircraft as well. The kickstarter is doing extremely well today, so hopefully we'll be able to reach a stretch goal by October 5th. We're pretty flexible by the way. If we come over the base but under the stretch goal, we're definitely putting all that extra money into the project. So, if not a full stretch goal, we'll do a partial stretch goal, aircraft first, maps second, etc. In other words, $40 gets you something extra either way. We will do as much as we can given the source data we have. If we have as much data for an aircraft as we had for the P-51, the aircraft will be the same quality. If we have less data, we'll be forced to rely on guesswork more, but the general approach and anal retentiveness will remain the same. Yes, it's EDGE. We are VERY early in our landscape modeling. Normandy is basically a mock-up. We're doing something with EDGE that was not done before, such as cliffs, bunkers, trenches, and bomb craters. It's handling everything very well, but we're using lower resolution textures at this time and some things do not look presentable up close.