Hello Dear Friends!
Let me tear you away from your joystick for a minute and fill you in on version 1.022. We hope you will enjoy this update because it is very difficult to please everyone in our great and sometimes controversial community. We try to read all of the major forums and we read your messages carefully where you have either praise or criticism of ROF. Our first rule during each development cycle is to try not to break what works and second, try to change some broken items to make ROF better and more enjoyable for you to play. Any criticism sent our way should be constructive and not laced with insults. That turns us off and hurts the image of the community and project as a whole.
Along those lines, when we look at items to change or fix you have to remember the challenges that we face as a developer. We have to please all parties. For instance, many of you have been playing for a few months, maybe years and you know about everything in ROF. And of course, there are issues you want us to change or there is something that you think ROF is missing and you are trying to bring it to our attention. Now imagine a new pilot who joined our community just a day or two ago and is still under the influence from the first flight, first air battle or the first mission in the rain when you are completely lost and could not find your base. There are very different segments in the community due to different levels of understanding of the game and it is very important to find ways to please both these groups. For us, it is important to view both the concerns of the master and the novice pilots equally. Believe me, we are on your side and it is a great joy to know that you enjoy your time flying ROF, but we have very limited resources and thus have to carefully choose the amount of tasks we take on. Some of your requests can be addressed very quickly, but some require several months of work. If you are constructive in your criticism or requests we will try to find the time to read them and make changes to the game. Remember that your opinion is one of many thousands and when you let your emotions do the talking the chorus becomes too loud and we perhaps won’t hear the most important or helpful voice.
Now let's get back to the new version. We are pleased to present you the R.E.8 or “Harry Tate” as it was known. It’s a famous British two-seater which was used as a scout or light bomber. As always, differences in hard data and emotional descriptions of the pilots cloud reality. We expected to get quite a weak and unstable aircraft, but actually, even with all its shortcomings it is a pretty robust platform if flown appropriately. From the moment it entered service early in the war, the R.E.8 became the essential two-seater and will work well in the Career. Of course it has its own character and sometimes it can show in a surprising moment, but if you maximize its strengths and avoid its weaknesses it is a stable and pleasurable aircraft to fly. So get your keys for it, the machine is already in your hangar.
During this time, we were able to revise and clarify the performance of another plane - the Nieuport 17. As is the case with S.E.5a refinement does not always mean better. Of course, this plane has become more dangerous at low and medium altitudes, but now loses all the advantages at higher altitudes. Altitudes higher than 3km are now dangerous for N.17 pilots and to fight high up in this plane is difficult. No one can say more about the plane than the engineer who tuned it. Here is Andrey in his own words:
"The plane turned out interesting, with a character that was different than before, but now it has some special characteristics. Good response to inputs, sharp, nimble, agile, but at the same time possessing a sharp breakdown when you drag the handle. It’s able to work in small areas. For takeoff and landing a piglet size runway of 50-60 meters is enough! It has a high thrust-weight ratio. Immediately after take-off Nieuport 17 can perform a spectacular climb, reaching its maximum altitude at a speed less than 100kph. A large area of ??the rudder and elevators are in a powerful stream of the propeller wash. N.17 pilots can experience fantastic pirouettes in the air at extremely low speeds, but when combined with the unpredictability of the aircraft near the stall envelope requires some skill. Personally, I liked to pilot the new Nieuport 17, once you touch it, it leaves an impression of a daring thoroughbred horse and if you speak its language then you'll be surprised at what you can accomplish with it. It's a real fighter. I'm sure many of you will like it and you'll get real pleasure from flying on this remarkable airplane."
In the future, we hope to revise a few more previously released planes as well. Thanks to all those who helped us in during this work on the Nieuport 17.
We have also completed some changes to the in-game interface. We have copied all the basic settings of the game that were in the launcher to inside the game, as well as added some much requested flexibility. This new flexibility now enables users to assign any button to the Service functions, such as the "Map" key and others which were previously blocked. We know this will be a welcome improvement.
We also took on the huge task of allowing the user to assign a unique Response Curve for each individual aircraft. This is an optional feature and for all those who do not need this additional tuning capability you can be assured; we still provide the ability to us a single curve for all aircraft. Please read the message about how we separated the Key Assignments and the Response Curves from your old input profiles into two separate files. You will be presented with this message after you complete the update and launch ROF.
We’ve also taken a big step with DServer functionality in this update. We have transferred to user’s new abilities and functions in controlling DServer. Of course, this change is almost impossible to see in the game, but we hope that the fruits of this change will be seen on MP servers. Now the owners of servers or users who are familiar with programming will be able to create entire systems to manage ROF servers. This may lead to the creation of powerful projects that reconstruct the various stages and aspects of the air war in WWI. We are very curious to see what comes of this new server functionality.
And finally, we have changed how Mod On mode loads missions so now the load time of Mods On and Mods Off game modes are similar. This should make using and creating mods more popular and enjoyable. However, we have not had a lot of time to test this and we are not sure it is completely perfect, so please use with caution and report any problems to us. We didn’t want you to wait any longer for this change, but again, we are cautious about how well it works. In Beta we had no bad reports, but we need more testing to be sure.
As always, you can find a complete list of changes on the forum. We leave you to begin the preparing of the version 1.023, in which you will find many surprises.
Best wishes!
