Why did they not continue with the original plan and go CLoD then Battle of Moscow?
This is pretty complicated. 1st off, for anyone that has IL2COD, you'll notice the folder that says SoftClub. SoftClub was an investor for Clod. The problem (depending on how you look at it) was SoftClub started butting heads with Oleg. Whether it be about release status, money already spent, readiness of the game, Oleg, as we all know, strives for perfection. The money men at Softclub didn't much care other than getting some return on their investment.
This back and forth goes on for a while, before Oleg finally decides it's not "worth it" to put up with the crap any longer. If anyone has been following Oleg, you'll notice his latest revolutionary achievement with Vizzera (spelling?) is just one more revolutionary piece of software for his portfolio. He's essentially created a software that allows people to have a tour of a proposed house, structure, or any sort of construction project (big or small) before the 1st piece of machinery is on the job site for putting down the correct grade. And this software will show any design flaws before the project is even started. Just like anything else he does, it has made waves across the industry.
So with Oleg throwing in the towel, also goes with him his main programmer. To say IL2COD code is complex is an understatement. Inside sources, which I will not mention, have said IL2FB (yep 2001), is much more complex than ROF code. Now when you realize Clod is 100x the complexity of IL2FB, you get a real sense of just how much there is going on in Cliffs. So imagine the guy that knows everything about the code is now gone. And the person that created the vision for the game is now gone. In comes Ilya, trying to save it all. The new programmer can't make heads or tails of things (understandable as few on the planet probably could).
Just as a side note for complexity before continuing. Imagine you're playing your favorite flight sim and you look at the altimeter. Seems pretty simple to get a reading from the sea level / ground level put in the game from some sort of coding. And you're right, it would be. But no no no, not Oleg. Instead he has to go take the actual engineering and mathematical calculations directly from the company that made the altimeter for the British planes, and then turns around and does the same thing for the German/Italian counter parts. That means the percentage of error, the needle movements, right down to the exacting fluctuations, are all based on the real life altimeters as well. Would you or anyone else notice something like this? Heck no! If we were ever to think of such a thing (how do they figure out the altimeter in game?) we'd just think (use formula that measures distance from the ground to the plane -/+ the elevation of actual ground and we'd get reading in our planes. So, then couple this knowledge, this painstaking detail into the other instruments in the plane, and next thing you know, you realize just how much is going on, and all for something you'd never even notice in the 1st place.
So while Ilya is trying to salvage the sim, and is forced to release the game, he's also on a time table for IL2-Online (BoM). The reason for the lack of fixes, painstaking slow fixes etc., are simply because the programmer had to try to learn someone else's 1/2 finished code and code that is stupendously complex. There's aren't many people on the planet that could probably work with it or make heads or tails of it. Lets just say, anyone who thinks the FMs in IL2COD are simple, should really see the flight model code sometime. You name the parameter, the calculations, the physics of ANYTHING the plane is doing, the math, physics, engineering, and calculations are all there.
Luckily, one of those (1 in a billion) genius programmers is in TF. All the stuff that the programmers couldn't fix with source code, our guy is doing without. The programmer for Ilya worked for months trying to fix the atmosphere bug (planes would only go so high / vanilla game), while our guy, without the code, somehow figures it out, re-writes quite a bit of stuff, some having to do exhaust back pressure amongst other things, and viola, it works. Same could be said about 1000 different things, the mirrors, the track editor, netcode, w/e.
The point is all of this, to be perfectly blunt, they didn't work with the Cliffs engine because, quite frankly, there's no way in hell they'd be able to figure it out. This is not a knock or anything, but they can't even figure out how to put trim on an axis so all us flight simmers could actually use those expensive throttle quadrants we bought.
So in the end, it is what it is. We'd love to make 1C money and we'd love to expand Cliffs. With or without them, we're not going to stop anytime soon. To throw this piece of simulation software away would be the biggest travesty in all of WWII flight simming IMO.
And the reality of the situation is the only reason this got totally dumped, is because 777 went to 1C with their "ours is the greatest" propaganda machine, right when IL2COD was hurting the most. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the original IL2 (2001 release) didn't completely return on it's investment until several expansions later. And through all those expansions it ends up being the best selling CFS on the planet with millions upon millions of copies sold. Cliffs could have and should have gone the same route. Once the engine was fixed and it was a content and feature pumping out machine, they would have been on easy street for many many many years to come. And with that Clod engine (ability to interact with ground forces, tanks, AI, artillery etc) there's well over a decade before anyone would ever think it's getting "old".
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