iEN in tRouBLE

[MrSiD]

Heh, looks like the 3.0 will still be a distant dream for the BrandW folks.. What happened to "we're building the new engine, can't make version upgrades to old engine" crap? Does this mean that 3.0 is in serious trouble and wont be released..ever?

FYI

Cut from AGW:
Jay Littman planned and conducted a WarBirds 2.77 meeting. I’m moving forward with deploying WB 2.77 into paid production.
WarBirds 2.77 Punch list:

*** Bla bla bla.. list of bugs that should have been fixed 1 year ago. Not to mention the old limitations can't be fixed...

I've been hanging around in h2h all this time waiting to see this marvelous 3.0 untill I make my decision between the 2 sims.. And this move makes me think they've been only pulling my chain. This smells like CPR for 2.xx as a last resort to keep customers.

[Dos Equis]

It will be a fine day when we can pitch Warbirds on the scrap heap with Confirmed Kill by EIDOS, and all the other world beaters.

As for iEN, well that's another story. Wild Bill Yonder and all that...

X2

[Torgo]

Anyone remember T.A.S.?

About 2-3 years ago..it was while I was in WB, I wasn't one of the people who signed up for the "Beta" that never happened for it.

Apparently the program never actually existed and it was a huge scam? I never got the whole story.

I remember all the people talking about those CK screenshots that came out every few months and how it was gonna "kill WB" when it came out next month..for about three years :-)

[fscott]

Ouch..you guys are sad. Why are we wishing the demise of a co-ww2 flight sim? Get a picture of reality...WHAT ELSE IS THERE? There's no gaurantee AH is gonna be around forever, and why is it we are so hostile towards Warbirds or any other ww2 sim. I say it's sad.  We don't have the luxury of losing the attention of companies who are putting forth an effort to create a ww2 sim, be it good or bad.  I was looking forward to giving WB 3.0 a try. Besides, competition is good for me, good for you, good for AH.

fscott

[iculus]

Right on fscott!! I'm guilty myself...

Although in retrospect, many of us feel as though we were hosed by WB.  

<S>IC

[AKDejaVu]

Erm.. Warbirds does not belong in the same category as Eidos' "Confirmed Kill".  Irony of the naming asside.

Warbirds re-defined on-line flight simming.  It demands respect for that alone.  Its demise will have nothing to do with the game itself, nor with its community.  It will simply be a result of bad management at the corperate level.  Its sad really.

Do I think AH is better?  Yes I do.  But I realize from where AH came.

AKDejaVu

[Dos Equis]

 

Originally posted by Torgo:
Anyone remember T.A.S.?

About 2-3 years ago..it was while I was in WB, I wasn't one of the people who signed up for the "Beta" that never happened for it.

Apparently the program never actually existed and it was a huge scam? I never got the whole story.

I remember all the people talking about those CK screenshots that came out every few months and how it was gonna "kill WB" when it came out next month..for about three years :-)

TAS I think was started by the very Voss that frequents these boards. I'm not sure whatever happened to that, except that I read some interviews with Voss who told the web mags how nicely it was coming along and how he was leading the bug squash effort.

then POOF.

I heard a rumor that the screenshots were fakes, generated with 3D Studio or something.

Maybe Voss can fill us in...

X2

[Dos Equis]

 

Originally posted by AKDejaVu:
Erm.. Warbirds does not belong in the same category as Eidos' "Confirmed Kill".  Irony of the naming asside.

Warbirds re-defined on-line flight simming.  It demands respect for that alone.  Its demise will have nothing to do with the game itself, nor with its community.  It will simply be a result of bad management at the corperate level.  Its sad really.

Do I think AH is better?  Yes I do.  But I realize from where AH came.

AKDejaVu

Well, from a strictly historical standpoint, I disagree.

Air Warrior redefined what a flight sim could be, it was the first.

HT wrote the film viewer for AW, and then went on to start ICI. He did Warbirds, which started as Confirmed Kill. CK was fun, somebody posted a copy until Pyro asked that it be taken down. It had the first fractal like landscape and the haze, it blew us away at the time.

HT dumped that engine when he fell out with the CK people, and used the engine that is Warbirds. WB had many firsts. The CVs, the excellent artwork by Frying Tiger and others. It rocked.

Then HT sold ICI to Wild Bill Stealey. HT started working on Dawn of Aces, and some space sim, which I never played. I'm sure under pressure to diversify the income and "catch the wave", as if the people he was working with understood the community.

HT parted ways with Wild Bill, and immediately began working on AH. Well, perhaps not immediately, but soon after. Pyro went with HT. Others, like gunjam, left, and some went to Cornered Rat, like Mo.

Now, say what you will, but the historical evidence here points pretty strongly that HT has been the driving force behind innovation. I see squat on WB3 from them. I dont think 3.0 ever sees the light of day.

I've seen and heard ALOT over the years. Bryan Walker came on Usenet. Bryan was some manager from EIDOS, and would talk up Confirmed Kill and show us screenshots. This aroused the Usenet Flight-Sim community, which makes this crowd look tame. He took alot of heat after awhile. I told him then that CK would never see the light of day. I was right.

I don't want no competition for HTC's product. I'm sure HT is always interested to see a Jane's WW2 Fighters or a Sturmovik or a B-17 II come out, to see the state of the industry.

I also know that WW2 Flight sims are their passion, and it shows up in AH. I'm not worried that if Warbirds and Wild Bill go broke (awwwww) and AH is the only game in town, that HT will then take 2 months and go to Bermuda and not work on AH.

X2

[chisel]

IEN canned WildBill Stealy many many months ago.

Heard HS mention on AGW that Stealy formed some other company and rented office space in the same building as Ien. Has an office next to HS.

Say what you want the guys got balls IMO.  

[TheWobble]

I wrote a letter, to Warbirds folk not to long ago to ask about billing and such and they replyed 2 weeks later, with something like "rates are fixed noone gets special treatment" What I had asked was if there were and different payment options and thats what I get back, in other words I hope they go under, they are rude.

[MrSiD]

My post was not meant to be hostile against WB - I had big hopes regarding to 3.0 and I left a huge bunch of mates back there..

I miss them still. The way that 3.0 development has set everything else aside for months and months, and the fact that now all of the sudden they DO have time for fixes to 2.xx leaves me the taste of being screwed. Why didn't they show this interest for paying customers already months ago when it still mattered? What they did instead was giving fake hopes for people about launching a completely new engine in the 'near future.'

I got so tired about the different tweaks in WB modeling in the old engine + the fact that 3.0 never seemed to come out that I canceled my account. Told them I'll be back when 3.0 will be released.. That day still waits to be seen.

[AKSeaWulfe]

I read the same post as you did MrSid, the one where HotSeat gives a sitrep and happily throws in the news about 2.77.

Okay, so they didn't have time to fix the bugs in WB2.xx until just now because they were "busy" with WB3. Where's WB3? And now you are going to finally fix a few things in WB2.xx?

Well, excellent news there.. Although I'd think the paying customers would like to see WB3 over a revamped WB2.xx which HTC built oh so many years ago. No, judging by the replies in that thread they are more interested in the 4 or 5 "bug fixes" that will be incorporated.

Most companies when developing software tend to push forward when they are set on a goal, but these guys must not understand what progress means. They tell the customers "Oh we don't have time to work on WB2.xx anymore, WB3 has priority." Then they wait for everyone to forget that and release something that I could do in Paint Shop Pro in about an hour that they call WarPaint or something like that. The customers think it's the neatest thing since sliced bread, although they still can't fly 'em they're occupied with painting 'em.

Well I guess that's what you get when you put your faith in a group of programmers whose skills are yet to be proven. HTC built WB2.xx and iEN is sure doing a fine job of occasionally cleaning up a few odds and ends, but still I have yet to see any form of WB3 in compiled code on my hard drive waiting for a test drive.

Break out the KY Jelly fellas, you know it's comin'. (This is a post made in angst and absolute hatred toward iEN for having screwed me before. *NOT* at the customer's of WB or the program itself!!!)
No matter how good WB3 is if/when it comes out, I wouldn't even send iEN a flaming bag of dog crap to pay for it.
-SW

[2Late4U]

TAS (Tactical Aero Squadro) was never real.  

Around June/July 1997 Paul "Voss" Hinds got the backing of a few small investor and started boasting about a great new SIM he was making.  He told more than a few tall tales (some of which a certain other game designer of infamy has made also) most of which turned out to be nothing more than lies.  He said he was in the USAF, yet no one could find a record of his service, he claimed to have flown dozens of warbirds at times and in places that just could not have happened.  He claimed a PHD or two, and generally said just about whatever he could to market himself.  

He started spreading screenshots of his new game, and got hundred of beta testers to sign up.  He had them form virtual squadrons, decide on callsigns and made huge promises.  Eventually people began asking when they could actually see the game that they had *PAID* to beta test (never a good sign)....and they asked again....and more people asked.  It soon became apparent that somthing was amiss, and before long it all fell appart.
In the end it all faded away, and the name Paul Hinds fell from the thoughts of everyone.

There was a very brief re-appearance of Paul Hinds attempts to create a SIM in Febuary 1999, as he looked for money for his new project, but by now any support he once had was gone.

In 1998 there were rumors of Mr Hinds having a brain tumor causing his erratic lying, but whatever the case, it was apparent that he was having some type of mental problems.  It was a bad thing for sims, a bad thing for many sim players and certainly a bad thing for Mr Hinds, whatever the reasons, lets hope he is better now.


Here is the only piture I have of the alleged sim.  The screenshots were faked using 3D rendering software and photoshop, there never actually was a game.

 

[Torgo]

Ah.....

All the T.A.S. stuff I'd heard third-hand but it turns out everything I'd heard was correct. I'd not heard that you had to pay to sign up for the BETA. I had heard that this Hinds guy was trying to get large cash "donations" essentially for computer equipment.

Man, what a fiasco :-).  

Essentially, for the last half-decade, in the realistic  on-line massively multiplayer flight-sim market, the only people I've seen produce what they say they're gonna produce in a playable, timely fashion are the Pyro/HT team.

I know a lot of the WWiionline guys are great guys. WBs, I played for years and left when HT and Pyro left, I have no real sense of this Hotseat Character.

But keep in mind that CK actually was farther along before it croaked than either WB 3.0 or WWiionline, as best I can tell.

And I'm awfully suspicious of WWiionline. Those guys are promising the moon and stars. I've started reading that BBS the last couple weeks..what a hoot and a half. The guys picking names and starting squads and giving themselves grandiose titles (everyone apparently is a General commanding a Panzer Division..I bet 90% of them end up a platoon commander in the MPs or something when the game comes out :-) is frighteningly reminiscent of T.A.S. (NOT that I am suggesting in any way an overall parallel...I'm sure WWiionline is a real product :-).


One wonders where WB would be if they'd never made the decision to sell ICI to Imagic and HT and Pyro were still there.

[fats]

You had to pay to become a beta tester for TAS? At least I don't recall having done so. Damn maybe I was conned into some other TAS beta test. Man I was cheated! Uh wait. so was everyone else...

all the CIA missions in my F-16, having scorpion stinger under toe nail and stuff really makes you forget things.


// fats