A member of the IL-2 Great Battles team has recently gone on a Russian speaking podcast to talk about some of the projects that the studio are currently working on. Most of the podcast is apparently not about IL-2, however, Sneaksie on the IL-2 forums has presented us with some highlights that do concern IL-2. There are some interesting revelations both of the “that’s interesting” and the “that’s very interesting” kind. Let’s have a look!
Interesting and then more interesting
Posted to the IL-2 forums earlier today, Sneaksie from the 1CGS team gives us some translated details on what Han recently had to say on a Russian speaking podcast. The podcast was not IL-2 focused but it did reveal some interesting information.
There are some interesting notes such as the original project management chart from the Rise of Flight days wrapping around the office in 8-point font. We learn that the team once considered a move to a commercial engine but decided against it. The decision to not include Moscow on the Moscow map was largely borne out of the fear that it would bog down the project much like creating London did for Cliffs of Dover. We also learn a few fun to know facts like Daniel’s favourite airplane is the MiG-3 and Albert’s is the P-39.
There’s also some more consequential reveals. The first concerns Marshall-mode for multiplayer.
Marshall multiplayer mode was a very ambitious idea (it is basically an online players’ dream), but after half a year working on the project, it became evident it is too hard to develop. Unfortunately it would have been better to put it on hold right away. Then Covid hit and eventually Marshall was stopped. This is even more frustrating because the system was almost finished (in beta-testing stage), but there were many performance problems and bugs caused by its complexity and reliance on network stability and speed. All in all, this system is very complex and hard to implement.
Going by this statement, it would appear that Marshall mode may not be coming or at least not any time soon. The full scope of what it would be able to do was still somewhat uncertain and so we may never completely know what we might have missed out on.
There’s also some talk about aircraft carriers which will surely cause some folks to pay close attention. Here’s what Sneaksie wrote:
Unlike other modern sims where an aircraft carrier, if modeled, is a small fraction of the whole product and any shortcomings of its modeling don’t affect the quality of the whole sim, in the case of an integral, all-in-one BoX title about the war in the Pacific EVERYTHING should revolve around carrier operations and a carrier is ought to be its central part. This means that any shortcomings of the carrier modeling and interaction with it, any performance and other issues that may arise become super-critical, jeopardizing the whole product. In the current situation this makes it a huge risk we can’t afford to spend 3 years on.
This makes some logical sense. If carrier modeling lives up to standards and works well for players then it would be a key component of the experience. If it fails in some way then it could jeopardize the success of the product.
I don’t know if this is intended to steer us away from hopes of a Pacific expansion or simply suggest that carriers wouldn’t necessarily be the focus of a Pacific expansion. It’s hard to know at this point. The series could still do something like the air war over New Guinea without needing to bring carriers into the mix. Even the battle up “The Slot” in the Solomon islands doesn’t specifically require carriers and could make them a sideshow to mitigate the risk.
No doubt there will also be a feeling by many reading this that a Pacific scenario may just not be in the cards right now and I’d be hard to disagree. Still, hope springs eternal for the day that it does.
Finally, an interesting comment was made regarding the departure of Andrey (An.Petrovich) Solomykin (who is now working with Asobo). This one is intended to reassure us that the team is able to continue on despite this relatively high profile departure.
AnPetrovich leaving the company won’t affect our plans because little has changed actually – for the last 1.5 years he worked on an isolated part of the product. We have a strong engineering team that is currently being replenished with new members. The new engineer lead is Roman, you may know him as Gavrick on the forums.
Finally, we’ve learned from this summary that we’ll likely have the Churchill tank available to us in just a couple of weeks.
Stormbirds 
Leave a reply to Stewmanji Cancel reply