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Roadmap this weekend?


zone 5

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Dude, do yourself a favour  and stop obsessing about someone's possible intentions for something that 'might' happen at some point in the future ... maybe.

 

Instead, just go hop in the Tomcat and bust up some bad guys. You'll feel so much better. :pilotfly:

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Dude, do yourself a favour  and stop obsessing about someone's possible intentions for something that 'might' happen at some point in the future ... maybe.
 
Instead, just go hop in the Tomcat and bust up some bad guys. You'll feel so much better. :pilotfly:

Word


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You all need to get out of the house...

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3 hours ago, Skysurfer said:

 

No, I do agree with you. There are areas and seemingly simple stuff that still weren't fixed since day one (untextured areas, cockpit typos and wrong instruments, texure glitches, missing bomb clamps), as well as the fact that they have missed pretty much every projected timeline by a substantial amount. As someone who manages projects in the engineering world this is pretty mind-boggling. Don't get me wrong, the Tomcat and the Viggen are my favorite modules and pretty much what got me into DCS to begin with but having to wait for something to be finished and polished up for 2+ years at this point is pretty tiresome as there is still so much to be fixed and added, which at this point I'm not even sure if we ever see all those things fixed like was the case with the Viggen. Partly the reason why I tend to fly the Hornet a bit more as of late since there is a steady stream of visible progress and fixes.


There's also plenty of big, major items that were developed and released in the meantime- if we're being fair. Just JESTER awareness calls alone in this previous patch is a pretty significant investment of development time and effort- one that was not promised, road mapped or announced. Management in the engineering world is not quite applicable to this kind of process with a living design document, one that is often and in large part driven by passion and feature creep rather than strict, calculated execution. 🙂

It does frustrate us too, FWIW: it means you end up breaking a lot of promises as we tend to go where the heart desires, but without this kind of liberal style, we'd end up with a fraction of what most consider to be great in our modules (attention to detail, feeling, immersiveness, etc.). That's without even mentioning the financial strain and risk this puts on us. It's the artistic part of game development, and I can't count the amounts of times we've added something spur of the moment that is now a much loved aspect of our modules. 🙂

That said, we can and will do better, and much of our first quarter activity has been rather muted with this long term goal in mind as we are growing rapidly, expanding and investing greatly into Heatblur for the next decade to come.


Edited by Cobra847
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Nicholas Dackard

 

Founder & Lead Artist

Heatblur Simulations

 

https://www.facebook.com/heatblur/

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5 minutes ago, zone 5 said:

Its time to move on to other things.  If moderator wants to close this thread, thats fine.


Speaking of the roadmap specifically; we will be publishing it later today CET. 🙂
Sorry for the wait! I am the bottleneck currently, unfortunately, as I had a tough drive across Europe to get through.


Edited by Cobra847
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Nicholas Dackard

 

Founder & Lead Artist

Heatblur Simulations

 

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7352ebacec3267957c38ea3c6698113e2648814d

- Jack of many DCS modules, master of none.

- Personal wishlist: F-15A, F-4S Phantom II, JAS 39A Gripen, SAAB 35 Draken, F-104 Starfighter, Panavia Tornado IDS.

 

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52 minutes ago, Cobra847 said:


There's also plenty of big, major items that were developed and released in the meantime- if we're being fair. Just JESTER awareness calls alone in this previous patch is a pretty significant investment of development time and effort- one that was not promised, road mapped or announced. Management in the engineering world is not quite applicable to this kind of process with a living design document, one that is often and in large part driven by passion and feature creep rather than strict, calculated execution. 🙂

It does frustrate us too, FWIW: it means you end up breaking a lot of promises as we tend to go where the heart desires, but without this kind of liberal style, we'd end up with a fraction of what most consider to be great in our modules (attention to detail, feeling, immersiveness, etc.). That's without even mentioning the financial strain and risk this puts on us. It's the artistic part of game development, and I can't count the amounts of times we've added something spur of the moment that is now a much loved aspect of our modules. 🙂

That said, we can and will do better, and much of our first quarter activity has been rather muted with this long term goal in mind as we are growing rapidly, expanding and investing greatly into Heatblur for the next decade to come.

 

 

Cobra,

I appreciate the honesty and still truly believe you guys are a the top of the game currently but having been a supporter of your products from the very beginning I simply had to express my honest thoughts on the way things are going - partly because I truly care about your modules and this hobby. Now, things like the JESTER awareness calls are neat but in my opinion things like missing textures (TCS, LAU-7) or the correct engine instruments for the B as well as fixing some typos and gauge logic in the cockpit should have a much higher priority. I do understand that this is driven by personal passion and artistic motivation but I think the majority would agree with me that these smaller "nice to have" features are rather low on the list of urgency. I also think an option for "boring Jester" would be much more requested since not everyone wants to hear a "420 blaze it" call while dogfighting. I personally find Jester a lot more distracting in BFM/ACM than actually useful - apart from the "he's on our six" call obviously. 😉 

Again, I think everyone  is awaiting the day we'll have a feature complete and mostly polished Tomcat with the correct FM, cockpit peculiarities and advertised "goodies" so to speak. For the future I think it would be rather advisable to be careful with release timeframes or even dates based on the past occurences as it just leaves everyone waiting, twiddling thumbs in the anticipation for something which won't actually come. Not neccessarily because we are impatient but because we are quite passionate about this hobby and excited for long-awaited features and improvements. 

 

 


Edited by Skysurfer
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The roadmap is now live. Apologies again that it took us a bit longer.


@Skysurfer - thank you for your feedback. Also everyone else who gave us their honest thoughts - believe it or not: we appreciate your complaints more than the accolade you so generously give us, because it keeps us on our toes.

Please understand a few things though: The priority list - as you list it - is often more "logical" from an outside point of view, but internally we have to follow the given necessities of development and growing a sustainable business. Which often does not match with everyone else's priorities. But - in the end - it does not matter that much, let me please explain why: The list, no matter how prioritized, needs to be and will be worked off completely anyway. So, in the end, a, b, and c need to be struck off it. It hence does not matter that much, if a comes first or b or c. Of course it matters sometimes more and sometimes less. For example if a bug is game breaking. Or if a certain feature is a major quality of life improvement, or an underlying feature is needed to implement a subsequent one. But in the end: all features and improvements are coming. And, beyond what is visible or "touchable" for you, there is also a lot of background work going on that also needs to fit in.

I often read stuff like "not sure what happened to the Draken, did they ditch it?" or stuff along these lines. Or "why do we get this now, when I wanted that instead first/ when I think this would be more important." As the gest of it. The first question really isn't necessary, because we keep to our promises (except when promising dates heh, but here my opinion remains: we shouldnt give dates at all). The second complaint, if you allow me to call it that, however is also owed to a small misunderstanding which is very obvious for you the customer to make: we work on most things simulatenously - besides the fact that no major feature is missing functionality wise in the cockpit. (Even Jester stuff is basically an extra compared to regular modules.) And just because we release Jester speed calls now, it doesn't mean we stopped working on other things. Everything is being worked on. Only that some things are being worked on more, less, now or later, at any given time (and that shuffles a lot, too), as most required to get to the final goal fastest, not to one checkpoint alone, if that makes sense. But the important thing to remember is: everything is being worked on. And while one team works on FM improvements in the background, another team does Jester, and a third team does graphics, etc. Yet, we have to follow our internal logic, and as much as we would like to prioritize entirely to your preferences (and please believe me that we do try), we cannot and must not. It has to be out of best practice to structure our work internally and to grow our products but also the business itself most sustainably. We do this, so that we can keep working for your pleasure as long and as prosperous as possible. In the end, we do the things we do to make you guys happy.

 

The roadmap and the steps we've taken recently all aim at that direction: better facilitation of structured processes, ergo faster updates, better maintenance and more growth, thus also more things for you to enjoy. Please do not forget: would the Tomcat be like any other normal module, it would have been fully finished on the day of release. But it isn't. It comes with a ton of extra stuff that is important to us for you to have, which all comes at an extra cost, both financially but more importantly: it costs more time. I can only repeat: everything that is on the list, will come eventually. Please do trust us in that. 

As for the boring Jester feature: we early on said that we are not sure if we will offer it, because it isn't feasible as such. We will look into it, if some calls could get excluded generally (like comments during landing), but most jokes that he makes come as a variation, and while not every joke will please everyone, going through all variations and mark them separately is too much work simply to accommodate tastes. Even if we made a Jester who only says affirmative/copy/roger or negative/unable and gives direction calls (BVR or BFM) some jokes will always remain, and we stand by Jester and his persona, as we always did. 🙂

I hope this all makes sense and thank you all again for your honest feedback. We will always try to improve where we can and listen to what you have to say carefully. Thank you!

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Heatblur Simulations

 

Please feel free to contact me anytime, either via PM here, on the forums, or via email through the contact form on our homepage.

 

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3 hours ago, IronMike said:

The roadmap is now live. Apologies again that it took us a bit longer.


@Skysurfer - thank you for your feedback. Also everyone else who gave us their honest thoughts - believe it or not: we appreciate your complaints more than the accolade you so generously give us, because it keeps us on our toes.

Please understand a few things though: The priority list - as you list it - is often more "logical" from an outside point of view, but internally we have to follow the given necessities of development and growing a sustainable business. Which often does not match with everyone else's priorities. But - in the end - it does not matter that much, let me please explain why: The list, no matter how prioritized, needs to be and will be worked off completely anyway. So, in the end, a, b, and c need to be struck off it. It hence does not matter that much, if a comes first or b or c. Of course it matters sometimes more and sometimes less. For example if a bug is game breaking. Or if a certain feature is a major quality of life improvement, or an underlying feature is needed to implement a subsequent one. But in the end: all features and improvements are coming. And, beyond what is visible or "touchable" for you, there is also a lot of background work going on that also needs to fit in.

I often read stuff like "not sure what happened to the Draken, did they ditch it?" or stuff along these lines. Or "why do we get this now, when I wanted that instead first/ when I think this would be more important." As the gest of it. The first question really isn't necessary, because we keep to our promises (except when promising dates heh, but here my opinion remains: we shouldnt give dates at all). The second complaint, if you allow me to call it that, however is also owed to a small misunderstanding which is very obvious for you the customer to make: we work on most things simulatenously - besides the fact that no major feature is missing functionality wise in the cockpit. (Even Jester stuff is basically an extra compared to regular modules.) And just because we release Jester speed calls now, it doesn't mean we stopped working on other things. Everything is being worked on. Only that some things are being worked on more, less, now or later, at any given time (and that shuffles a lot, too), as most required to get to the final goal fastest, not to one checkpoint alone, if that makes sense. But the important thing to remember is: everything is being worked on. And while one team works on FM improvements in the background, another team does Jester, and a third team does graphics, etc. Yet, we have to follow our internal logic, and as much as we would like to prioritize entirely to your preferences (and please believe me that we do try), we cannot and must not. It has to be out of best practice to structure our work internally and to grow our products but also the business itself most sustainably. We do this, so that we can keep working for your pleasure as long and as prosperous as possible. In the end, we do the things we do to make you guys happy.

 

The roadmap and the steps we've taken recently all aim at that direction: better facilitation of structured processes, ergo faster updates, better maintenance and more growth, thus also more things for you to enjoy. Please do not forget: would the Tomcat be like any other normal module, it would have been fully finished on the day of release. But it isn't. It comes with a ton of extra stuff that is important to us for you to have, which all comes at an extra cost, both financially but more importantly: it costs more time. I can only repeat: everything that is on the list, will come eventually. Please do trust us in that. 

As for the boring Jester feature: we early on said that we are not sure if we will offer it, because it isn't feasible as such. We will look into it, if some calls could get excluded generally (like comments during landing), but most jokes that he makes come as a variation, and while not every joke will please everyone, going through all variations and mark them separately is too much work simply to accommodate tastes. Even if we made a Jester who only says affirmative/copy/roger or negative/unable and gives direction calls (BVR or BFM) some jokes will always remain, and we stand by Jester and his persona, as we always did. 🙂

I hope this all makes sense and thank you all again for your honest feedback. We will always try to improve where we can and listen to what you have to say carefully. Thank you!

 

Hey, this is a good feature for you guys to have, certainly something that other devs *cough* *cough* Razbam *cough* could use to keep us informed on progress. That being said, I really wish you guys had a public discord with which we could talk to you guys on, I know that sorta thing usually results in delays keeping people up to date, but those of us running servers can link the 'updates' channel to our own so people who aren't in your discord can see the updates as they're posted.

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Impressive Roadmap, I can see why it took time; by any chance will F-14 traps be  improved? I assume yes since future modules will also benefit from this. Impressive Roadmap, thanks again for putting so much effort into it. 

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I think this roadmap is a great step forward in transparency, and one other module developers could learn from. I just hope it doesn't bite you in the butt with rampant speculations or pedantic checking that this community is known for. Thanks for sharing!

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3 hours ago, zone 5 said:

Impressive Roadmap, I can see why it took time; by any chance will F-14 traps be  improved? I assume yes since future modules will also benefit from this. Impressive Roadmap, thanks again for putting so much effort into it. 


Yes- they will. Sorry, we've missed a few things on this roadmap, such as improved trap physics and TARPS. We will add those elements as we gather more feedback.

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Nicholas Dackard

 

Founder & Lead Artist

Heatblur Simulations

 

https://www.facebook.com/heatblur/

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8分钟前,Cobra847说:


Yes- they will. Sorry, we've missed a few things on this roadmap, such as improved trap physics and TARPS. We will add those elements as we gather more feedback.

such as LAU-138 and wheel chocks still on the list but missed on roadmap too? btw The F-14B will receive the EIGT, the correct engine instruments for its cockpit. Should be digital EIG i think. keep up the great work!

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11 hours ago, IronMike said:

The roadmap is now live. Apologies again that it took us a bit longer.


@Skysurfer - thank you for your feedback. Also everyone else who gave us their honest thoughts - believe it or not: we appreciate your complaints more than the accolade you so generously give us, because it keeps us on our toes.

Please understand a few things though: The priority list - as you list it - is often more "logical" from an outside point of view, but internally we have to follow the given necessities of development and growing a sustainable business. Which often does not match with everyone else's priorities. But - in the end - it does not matter that much, let me please explain why: The list, no matter how prioritized, needs to be and will be worked off completely anyway. So, in the end, a, b, and c need to be struck off it. It hence does not matter that much, if a comes first or b or c. Of course it matters sometimes more and sometimes less. For example if a bug is game breaking. Or if a certain feature is a major quality of life improvement, or an underlying feature is needed to implement a subsequent one. But in the end: all features and improvements are coming. And, beyond what is visible or "touchable" for you, there is also a lot of background work going on that also needs to fit in.

I often read stuff like "not sure what happened to the Draken, did they ditch it?" or stuff along these lines. Or "why do we get this now, when I wanted that instead first/ when I think this would be more important." As the gest of it. The first question really isn't necessary, because we keep to our promises (except when promising dates heh, but here my opinion remains: we shouldnt give dates at all). The second complaint, if you allow me to call it that, however is also owed to a small misunderstanding which is very obvious for you the customer to make: we work on most things simulatenously - besides the fact that no major feature is missing functionality wise in the cockpit. (Even Jester stuff is basically an extra compared to regular modules.) And just because we release Jester speed calls now, it doesn't mean we stopped working on other things. Everything is being worked on. Only that some things are being worked on more, less, now or later, at any given time (and that shuffles a lot, too), as most required to get to the final goal fastest, not to one checkpoint alone, if that makes sense. But the important thing to remember is: everything is being worked on. And while one team works on FM improvements in the background, another team does Jester, and a third team does graphics, etc. Yet, we have to follow our internal logic, and as much as we would like to prioritize entirely to your preferences (and please believe me that we do try), we cannot and must not. It has to be out of best practice to structure our work internally and to grow our products but also the business itself most sustainably. We do this, so that we can keep working for your pleasure as long and as prosperous as possible. In the end, we do the things we do to make you guys happy.

 

The roadmap and the steps we've taken recently all aim at that direction: better facilitation of structured processes, ergo faster updates, better maintenance and more growth, thus also more things for you to enjoy. Please do not forget: would the Tomcat be like any other normal module, it would have been fully finished on the day of release. But it isn't. It comes with a ton of extra stuff that is important to us for you to have, which all comes at an extra cost, both financially but more importantly: it costs more time. I can only repeat: everything that is on the list, will come eventually. Please do trust us in that. 

As for the boring Jester feature: we early on said that we are not sure if we will offer it, because it isn't feasible as such. We will look into it, if some calls could get excluded generally (like comments during landing), but most jokes that he makes come as a variation, and while not every joke will please everyone, going through all variations and mark them separately is too much work simply to accommodate tastes. Even if we made a Jester who only says affirmative/copy/roger or negative/unable and gives direction calls (BVR or BFM) some jokes will always remain, and we stand by Jester and his persona, as we always did. 🙂

I hope this all makes sense and thank you all again for your honest feedback. We will always try to improve where we can and listen to what you have to say carefully. Thank you!

Thank you for such a detailed response, greatly appreciated.

 

I am sad to hear about "boring Jester" though, but I do understand the work it would take.  My opinion is that at times, Jester's color commentary either takes away from the otherwise extremely realistic and high quality of your F-14, and/or is just plain inappropriate and out of place for the situation.  For example, the BFM speed callouts are a great edition, but jokes and his general tone seem very out of place and unprofessional for such a high stress, life or death situation.  Maybe an option to just disable the speed callouts would be easier to implement than singling out specific lines.   
 

Anyways, keep up the incredible work and thank you so much!

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5 hours ago, Alphabet_Ghost said:

such as LAU-138 and wheel chocks still on the list but missed on roadmap too? btw The F-14B will receive the EIGT, the correct engine instruments for its cockpit. Should be digital EIG i think. keep up the great work!

 

Just small items that dont really fit in a roadmap, but are ofc on our list. generally anything we ever said to that it is "tracked", is on the list, and will, eventually, be done.

 

4 hours ago, N0430BM said:

Thank you for such a detailed response, greatly appreciated.

 

I am sad to hear about "boring Jester" though, but I do understand the work it would take.  My opinion is that at times, Jester's color commentary either takes away from the otherwise extremely realistic and high quality of your F-14, and/or is just plain inappropriate and out of place for the situation.  For example, the BFM speed callouts are a great edition, but jokes and his general tone seem very out of place and unprofessional for such a high stress, life or death situation.  Maybe an option to just disable the speed callouts would be easier to implement than singling out specific lines.   
 

Anyways, keep up the incredible work and thank you so much!

 

It is comic relief. Some like it, some don't. The general tone is used similarly, trust me, if he would keep screeming all the time, you'd throw pocket pens at his helmet after a while. This is why variations come into play and why we record as many. So that jokes happen occasionally. 28/30 times he will simply give you the speed and nothing else. 🙂 But tastes are tastes and not to argue with, so I understand where you are coming from. One thing I might do here in time is to record simply more normal variations to make the jokes less frequent even, as they should be. With the speed looping so often, and even with over 1k variations recorded, they still happen more frequently than in other situations where there is little to no loop of him calling the same thing over.


Edited by IronMike
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Heatblur Simulations

 

Please feel free to contact me anytime, either via PM here, on the forums, or via email through the contact form on our homepage.

 

http://www.heatblur.com/

 

https://www.facebook.com/heatblur/

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I don't know whether this would be feasible or too complicated to implement, but I could imagine a "Jester slider" in the special options menu to be a good solution sometime in the future. Set it to 100 and Jester will crack jokes like Chapelle on steroids, set it to zero and he will have the sense of humor of an especially dull Vulcan. Anywhere in between will trigger his funny takes at a certain rate. 🤷‍♂️

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1 hour ago, Jayhawk1971 said:

I don't know whether this would be feasible or too complicated to implement, but I could imagine a "Jester slider" in the special options menu to be a good solution sometime in the future. Set it to 100 and Jester will crack jokes like Chapelle on steroids, set it to zero and he will have the sense of humor of an especially dull Vulcan. Anywhere in between will trigger his funny takes at a certain rate. 🤷‍♂️

To code this you would basically need to assign each track a humor/no humor label. Then you adjust the probability distribution you use to randomly select each voice line based on that slider. The problem with that is, it's one step beyond the boring Jester idea, where you just rule out the "humor" lines when selecting what to play. If a simple boring Jester isn't feasible, this isn't a solution either.


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