20.08.2008, 22:28
Just my 2 cents here:
Technically you are right. From a user's point of view with knowledge in Java, it seems some bugs could have been corrected long ago, and some enhancements could have been incorporated easily. CONGRATULATIONS FOR YOUR FINDINGS, AND THANK YOU!
Commercially in practice, if you put yourself in the shoes of 1C Maddox Games and their editor UbiSoft, life is different. These are business people. They need to make money, and to make money they need to sell their software to a large crowd. If they are unable to do so, then it is very difficult to dedicate resources for bug fixing and enhancements, even if they would be relatively easy to incorporate.
We are individual users who use our free time to enjoy the sim. But I suppose they cannot afford such free time for the same thing: they need to devote their time to profitable business; this is respectable and necessary.
In my view we got many free patches and should be grateful for the support that this soft has received from their developers over the years, free of charge. I do not expect that they should spend even more time in fixing the numerous things that individually take little time, but which altogether at the end of the day do take a significant amount of resources to implement. Fixing, testing, compiling and distributing patches does cost something. :wink:
But I am concerned that our WWII simming community is rather small and does not generate enough revenue to justify dedicating any more resources to develop, edit, distribute and support such a software.
Microsoft did not have the passion that Oleg and his team have had, and Microsoft exited the WWII sim biz in 2003. We are still waiting for SOW:BOB to be released, and I suspect that delays are related to the limited resources available. :?:
No market, no new sim... :oops:
I do not criticize Oleg and his team for bugs that are not yet fixed. I would rather thank them for still being around, and just hope they will make enough money to carry on. :?
In fact we are lucky that IL2 can now be modded by competent people who accept to spend time and offer their work free of charge, which we should not expect unreasonably from people who make this for a living.
In that regard I admire the efforts of other companies who propose paid add-ons for Il2; I would not expect them to make profit: it does take a lot of time to build campaigns, missions and skins, and it costs money to distribute their work either on the net (site, bandwidth) or by mail (CD). On top of that, they have huge competition from authors of high quality freeware skins and campaigns who offer a lot more choice. Would you venture into that business for a living? :oops:
I also admire the people who devote their time and some of their financial resources to keep sites such as Mission4Today and AAA alive. This does cost money plus other resources, and we should be grateful to their passion, support and efforts.
As a conclusion, I am very happy that we have a basis as good as IL2, which is now adaptable through modding by dedicated and competent people who share with us their free time and even their financial resources, to make it available to all. At the end of the day, this is driven by passion and I cross my fingers that economic value resulting from the WWII sim software developing activity is not too low, otherwise it will be difficult to keep the ball rolling... :roll:
Technically you are right. From a user's point of view with knowledge in Java, it seems some bugs could have been corrected long ago, and some enhancements could have been incorporated easily. CONGRATULATIONS FOR YOUR FINDINGS, AND THANK YOU!
Commercially in practice, if you put yourself in the shoes of 1C Maddox Games and their editor UbiSoft, life is different. These are business people. They need to make money, and to make money they need to sell their software to a large crowd. If they are unable to do so, then it is very difficult to dedicate resources for bug fixing and enhancements, even if they would be relatively easy to incorporate.
We are individual users who use our free time to enjoy the sim. But I suppose they cannot afford such free time for the same thing: they need to devote their time to profitable business; this is respectable and necessary.
In my view we got many free patches and should be grateful for the support that this soft has received from their developers over the years, free of charge. I do not expect that they should spend even more time in fixing the numerous things that individually take little time, but which altogether at the end of the day do take a significant amount of resources to implement. Fixing, testing, compiling and distributing patches does cost something. :wink:
But I am concerned that our WWII simming community is rather small and does not generate enough revenue to justify dedicating any more resources to develop, edit, distribute and support such a software.
Microsoft did not have the passion that Oleg and his team have had, and Microsoft exited the WWII sim biz in 2003. We are still waiting for SOW:BOB to be released, and I suspect that delays are related to the limited resources available. :?:
No market, no new sim... :oops:
I do not criticize Oleg and his team for bugs that are not yet fixed. I would rather thank them for still being around, and just hope they will make enough money to carry on. :?
In fact we are lucky that IL2 can now be modded by competent people who accept to spend time and offer their work free of charge, which we should not expect unreasonably from people who make this for a living.
In that regard I admire the efforts of other companies who propose paid add-ons for Il2; I would not expect them to make profit: it does take a lot of time to build campaigns, missions and skins, and it costs money to distribute their work either on the net (site, bandwidth) or by mail (CD). On top of that, they have huge competition from authors of high quality freeware skins and campaigns who offer a lot more choice. Would you venture into that business for a living? :oops:
I also admire the people who devote their time and some of their financial resources to keep sites such as Mission4Today and AAA alive. This does cost money plus other resources, and we should be grateful to their passion, support and efforts.
As a conclusion, I am very happy that we have a basis as good as IL2, which is now adaptable through modding by dedicated and competent people who share with us their free time and even their financial resources, to make it available to all. At the end of the day, this is driven by passion and I cross my fingers that economic value resulting from the WWII sim software developing activity is not too low, otherwise it will be difficult to keep the ball rolling... :roll: