homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation DCS World DCS F/A-18C Progress Update.

It's a really sad state of affairs that in almost every sim still around the entire thing can be drastically reshaped by the loss, temporary or permanent, of ONE person.
If your team has no redundancy on any particular feature, you should ensure you do.

Or to sum it up another way, "team is too small." Now I don't know how many employees there are altogether, but when I say "team" I mean "the number of employees devoting significant time to development of a particular product" not people collecting ED paychecks.
To me, a team is more than just each person playing their part, it's about mutual support, so if one person fumbles the others can help carry the load. Sometimes single points of failure are unavoidable, especially if it's a sports team or the fumble is from the lead, but it seems to me in every flight sim project that's underway worldwide we hear snippets of delay or cancellation because of ONE person.

IMO any feature that could be summarily delayed or wiped out completely because this guy got divorced and decided to move away or that guy was in a car accident or that other guy was caught sleeping with the lead's wife and got fired should probably stay unannounced until it's about done.



The Jedi Master

I think the team has grown somewhat since then, but a key person is still a key person. You can say you would like to have a few people trained in able to step in at a moments notice, but its not realistic. I work in a print shop, we are not huge, so if a specific press operator gets hurt, that press might sit idle for a few days. Now maybe we have another pressman that could fumble his way through that press, but he isnt just sitting there waiting for that guy to leave, he has his own schedule to work on and complete. Sure we could hire a guy, but then no matter how many presses he has run, our system is different enough from those previous employers that he still has a learning curve.

A flight sim in development has got to be even worse... sure you could hire an experienced coder, but he isnt experienced with EDs code, he doesnt know how its all tied together, maybe he has no knowledge of what he is trying to code, so he has to learn all that first... so its not just so easy to have a substituted fully trained waiting in the wings... and we are all humans, even ED devs, so stuff happens. Sometimes there is no good answer, you just have to do your best to get through it.

The economy is too tight for redundancy on small teams. I think its probably worse in Russia right now with their economy in the tank right now, its possible the market for quality programmers is higher, and its easier for them to jump ship for a better opportunity...

This is not unique to the gaming industry. I work in the middle of a similar situation. You can add lay-offs to the list of how to lose a key person, too.

WC

Nor from the ED Bug.

You can see the AI version in the sim currently.

That's why I don't get into the whole "When is it going to be released?" issue as a whole, or try to avoid it. I mean I'm a modder for Arma 3 and it's just annoying to see somebody post "When is it going to be released", and the obvious answer is "When it's frakking ready." is what I usually enforce. Of course there are those who just show up so they don't understand the rules either. But on the outset when I know I'm about to make a release I give an estimate, and given it's just Arma 3, I can hold roughly to that date, or projection.

Simple solution really, do not announce you mod work until you have a fairly good estimate when it's done.
Keeps your bloodpressure stable.

Simple: don't announce it; just release it.

No sense getting anyone's hopes up in the first place. I really don't see what the consumer gains in knowing something is coming down the road.

Incidentally I'd be interested to know how much of ED's business is noncommercial (private/military). I know that's none of our business, it would be nice if they just came out and said "We've got bigger fish to fry. In between contracts we'll have more time to work on commercial product; also if one of our clients allows it we'll release a commercial version of their product [.e.: A-10C)." That would quell a lot of animosity for me - just come out and state the obvious, be up-front about it.

When all's said and done ED is the only show in town when it comes to hi-fi modern air combat simming. So wait I must. And yes, I'm still mastering the A-10C. . .

Then you get into ED's situation, so believe me man, you have to simply manage people's expectations to a degree where you're letting them know that updates are coming, and so on. It's not as simple as you think it is after 13 years (at least in my case anyway). Granted I keep my topics updated and let people know, and for the most part keeping to an honest timetable keeps them from bugging me too much. Overall it's a juggling act with people from what you're promising and what you're giving. It doesn't matter if it's a mod or a product. But overall as said I'm yes, impatient for the Hornet/Super Hornet but overall I have SF2 versions to keep me happy, and as a modder myself I know where ED is coming from so I don't get twisted so much as most people over it. They'll release the Hornet when they do, and then people still won't be happy, it's a never ending struggle man.

So you're saying when an AI F-18 is shot down there isnt a damage model ????

Ermm...... I think ya need to try again.

I agree with this.....ED shouldn't have to publish release dates or targets early on, but the crux of the problem for me is that even when ED get close to a release e.g. Edge 2 update in November 14 newsletter where they they stated they were looking for a Q4 2014 release, they still get it so badly wrong!

I'm all for devs keeping quiet up until something is almost ready and can then feed titbits, but please just be honest or at least get the planning right in the first place.

Going back to ED's newsletter, they were 6-8 weeks away from the end of 2014 when they released that news, so unless they are working (or intentionally or subtly stated Q4 2014 as end of the financial year, which for some may be as late as the end of March 2015) then they got something massively wrong. Granted, they did state that there could be problems during the last parts of bug-testing which is absolutely correct but if you're stating that you're 6-8 weeks away from a release then you're talking about something that is pretty close given the QA and release management processes that you need anyway......fast-forward this and to think that they are now up to 6 months away from a PRE-ALPHA shows a monumental miscalculation and/or miscommunication either within the team or to us as customers.

I think the motto should change from 'Everything is subject to change' to 'So near but always so far'

For those defending ED saying they work differently to other companies, it's up to them how they deliver/release etc....yeah they may work differently and it is up to them, but it doesn't change the fact they are getting their dates massively wrong and haven't seemed to learn from their own previous mistakes. I think I've said it before and although I love their products I've got to the point where I can't trust anything they say these days. That means I start to dismiss their announcements and lose interest in their future products.

I think it's more like "Unless contract work comes up and then all this stuff is frozen in time for however long that takes". In other words, just because time passes in the real world doesn't mean that amount of development time has passed on whatever product. In the month of Sept they might have spent a month on it, but in December they might have spent 2 days.
The new 6 month (minimum) delay tells me work is continuing, but not with as many people as were perhaps working on it as before so the rate has slowed, like watching your bandwidth get throttled after exceeding a cap...

While I agree with the "they don't have to tell us everything" sentiment for the most part, the fact is that what they do tell us is clearly an incomplete picture where the pieces they've given us don't always seem to logically fit without access to some Rosetta stone or something.

It's not that I feel slighted, or angry, or excited, or any really vigorous emotion about this anymore. If I had to pick one word to describe how I feel about it now, it would be "weary".





The Jedi Master

Or how about 'Its never enough for some, so why bother at all'

And then you could look at my DCS library and the almost complete set of modules and question why I challenge them before realising it's because I want them to succeed and not throw away this great opportunity that they have!

It's funny you should say that because I sometimes wonder I bother myself, especially when some of their moderating team that represent them are quite rude to the customers that are actually buying their products.

So I answer a rude post with a rude post and I am the bad guy... and then I wonder, why do I bother

Oh right, I am not a customer either than has bought all their modules... I forgot... sorry to interrupt your ED love fest, continue on.

Can I have some of that? I forgot my lunch at home today...

Happy Friday -- beer is food.

Damn skippy-a it is! Holding a cool & frothy Czech lager in my hand as I type... just wonder where are all these beer puddles coming from

Anyway, I agree with Mr. Jedi above - could well be they'd worked on EDGE for a straight month first, but then some government / other pro customer contract came through (read: a chance of earning real money) so they put it on back burner again. Totally understandable, but so is folks getting somewhat annoyed about yet another deadline missed...

As for me, well, I'm generally speaking not an impatient type myself. It'll come when it comes. Just gonna sup some more blonde Czech while I wait

PS. Actually if I _do_ have a gripe with the whole shebang, it's more like BST having not finished the Huey engine / powertrain thermal damage model yet. C'mon guys, the birdie's been released for bloody AGES already