Hello.
Today is the 11th of November, 2009. Ninety one years ago, The First World War came to an end. That conflict killed many millions of people, destroyed several empires and pushed human civilization into a new age of technological development. Our project strives to authentically reproduce a technical innovation of the era — the airplane.
Before we had started, I knew almost nothing about this period of history. Now I can easily recognize different aircraft types and the most famous people who were the founders of aviation. It was fascinating research that taught me a lot and changed my point of view on many things.
If I am ever lucky enough to meet a WWI pilot today, I feel confident that I could find plenty of things to discuss and debate with him.
During my last visit to Holland (I attended fsweekend.com), I saw a real Fokker Dr.I. The strangest part was that even though this was my first time seeing the plane in person, I already knew it rather well, like we were old friends. This is possibly the most amusing feeling I ever had working on Rise of Flight.
It excites me to no end that modern technology can so faithfully reconstruct history. Currently, we are only able to reproduce certain elements, mainly technical ones. But I am certain that in the future, we will make bold strides into other aspects and moments of our civilization’s history.
Now, let me return back to present-day events. We have finished a new version of the Rise of Flight Leaderboard. We’ve added more data about pilots, and a new rating — the Aces rating. It counts a player’s victories gained during one virtual pilot’s life. This rating promises to be highly dynamic and it will be updated hourly. I’m looking forward to seeing if anybody will repeat some of the outstanding achievements of well-known heroes of that time: Manfred von Richthofen with 80 kills, William A. Bishop — 72, René Fonck — 75, Godwin Brumowski — 35, Francesco Baracca — 34, Edward V. Rickenbacker — 26, Kozakov Alexander — 20. The Leaderboards are currently in testing mode, and it will be launched, in full, soon.
In this new version of the Leaderboard, you’ll see a representation of your current profile dynamics (with blue and red arrows). By holding your mouse pointer over the arrow’s image, you will get detailed information about players’ position changes. I hope the new and improved RoF Leaderboard system will stoke the fires of competition, anew. As always, we are glad to hear your feedback about it.
For the conclusion of this post, I’d like to show you a couple of pictures of a new vehicle you will get with the next update. These are images of a standard river ship that could be used for freight hauling and transportation of soldiers, but also for anti-aircraft defense. For right now, all ships will be armed with AA guns so be aware when attacking them. I’m sure that after some practice, though, you will manage to easily kill any ship.
That’s all, for now. We still have a ton of things to do in a very short amount of time.