THE PATCH IS OUT!

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=31759

IMPORTANT!

TURN OFF AUTOMATIC UPDATES to the game in Steam BEFORE downloading and applying this patch.

ALSO! This patch is for those of you running DX10 systems only. This means if you are running Cliffs of Dover on a Windows XP or OLDER machine, you cannot download and use this patch.

Specific details of the patch to follow.

Installation Instructions:
Just extract to your
[Program Files]\Steam\steamapps\common\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover
And play!
Version number is 1.06.17582

We don’t have a complete readme at this time, but a rough list of changes is below.

Known Issues

• Not fully optimized: grass, clouds, and trees. Clouds cause constant FPS drop; grass and trees cause hick-ups. A few extra days of work for this, a few days for grass, few days for clouds, we felt that we could start open testing the patch without waiting for these changes.
• Texture cache failing to draw higher-res textures on close-up objects with lower settings on below-recommended video cards.
• Weathering textures on aircraft appear shiny in shadows.
• No damage decals on aircraft from small-caliber hits.
• The hit flash effects are temporarily turned off.
• Far and medium distance clouds are temporarily turned off.
• Text in dialogue windows in the mission builder may appear bugged with other dialogue windows underneath.
• The front line in mission builder and minimap is drawn incorrectly.

Changes and Improvements

Performance

We've performed a huge amount of work improving both average and minimum FPS in the game. Most recommended-spec machine will see a roughly double average FPS and a significant reduction in the micro-freezes that had previously plagued the game. Their frequency, duration, and overall FPS impact will be greatly reduced or completely redone.

Some of the changes include:

• Completely rewritten render pipeline, which reduced CPU load;
• Rewritten texture manager, reducing stutter when loading new textures;
• Moved landscape geometry generator to its own CPU core, reducing stutters;
• Optimized tree code, reducing stutters when moving across landscape or rotating camera;
• Moved grass generator to its own CPU core, decreasing stutters during low-level flight;
• Moved all building and vehicle damage models to be pre-loaded, rather than dynamically loaded when they are destroyed. This increased mission loading times and memory usage, and reduced stutters when blowing things up;
• Improved multithreading in many other aspects of the code, improving minimal FPS on most multicore machines.

Flight Model

We've performed a tremendous amount of work testing and improving flight models in the game, as well as improving various aircraft engines. We used actual pilot's notes and flight testing data during the process (thank you Sean!). Unfortunately some deeply-set limitations in the engine code do not allow us to minimize the margin of error at altitudes about 7 km (21,000 ft) where most aircraft begin to perform worse than their real-life counterparts. Fixing this requires more extensive code rework and will therefore only appear with the upcoming sequel. However at lower altitudes most flyables will perform much closer to real life. We also have to note that some aircraft, most notably Spitfire Mk.II, had better performance than the real thing. Others, especially their engines, had reduced performance. We've addressed these serious issues and made our planes fly much closer to the real thing.

Partial List:

G.50
Temperature models of the engine were wrong due to incorrect data. The engine could not get up to required power at all altitudes. We've also added +100 boost for WEP mode.

Spitfire Mk.II
The aircraft's speed performance was too good at all altitudes, sometimes 60 mph better than the real thing.

Spitfire Mk.I
Fixed the top speed dip above 18,000 ft.

Hurricane Mk.I
Speed performance was also too good at all altitudes, similar to the Spit II.

Blenheim Mk.IV
Had many problems with the engine model. The engine overheated at normal RPM, the plane could not get up to stated airspeed at all altitudes. Maximum allowed airspeed was too great, and the plane could get up to 560 mph in a dive. A huge amount of work was performed to improve the plane's FM and bring it up to speed.


Artificial Intelligence

Partial list:

• Fixed some non-working orders, removed others from the list. There are no more orders available to the player that the AI does not follow.
• Added a request for available targets;
• Turned off friendly fire for ground battles (improving FPS);
• Added the ability to query current waypoint for scripts;
• Told AI pilots not to commit ritual suicide when their leader crash-lands;
• Fixed out of turn take offs for AI pilots;

Sound

Partial list:

• Fixed two-engine flanger;
• Added detailed engine malfunction sounds;
• Added MG-34 and Bren Mk.II machine gun sounds;
• Added many other sounds: bomb whistle, bomb hit, atmospheric ambient, cockpit ambient, and many more;
• Improved and added engine sounds. For example, the Merlin family contains MerlinIII-RG-Hurricane, MerlinIII-RG-Spitfire, MerlinXII, and Merlin_III which all sound differently under various RPM conditions

Have a great weekend!

Please, somebody will make mirrors for this files. Thanks!

Keep in mind that this is a beta patch. If you experience any crashes, report them on the 1C forum. Luthier and BlackSix will have outlined the appropriate way to log and report crashes and bugs with the patch.

INSTRUCTIONS FROM LUTHIER:

Please enable logging in your conf.ini (Log=1). If the game crashes, send us your log as well as any crash dump files created in the cppdump folder in the main game installation. Email everything to ishevchenko@1cpublishing.eu

How has the new patch been treating the guys at No. 401?

With my system I am able to increase land detail and turn on shadows with an increase of about 10fps. Everything also feels a lot smoother, especially when looking around. No CTDs so far, but I haven't been online yet either.

The way I see, it's the guys with the higher end systems who are getting the shaft with the low res textures, cloud pop in, and no grass/tree optimization. It must really feel like a step back.

So where do we go from here?

I didn't play long, but things seemed smoother. And I was able to crank pretty much everything to max settings.

Yes, the cloud pop in is annoying, as well as all the little bugs.

Didn't experience a launcher crash, but we'll see. I didn't play long enough to really test it.

The lower res cockpits are frustrating. Things are supposed to be improving. It seems in many ways they're just taking things away and then claiming it as 'improvements to graphics engine.'

We'll see.

The thing that bugs me is that I know have to pay $30 bucks to buy the software necessary to uncompress the .rar file. So now I've paid for the game twice.

Have not done it yet. I was too pissed off yesterday to even bother trying.

dnr wrote:The thing that bugs me is that I know have to pay $30 bucks to buy the software necessary to uncompress the .rar file. So now I've paid for the game twice.

Have not done it yet. I was too pissed off yesterday to even bother trying.

What? No. Download winrar.

You don't need to buy anything.

OK I'll look for that instead, was about to hit send on the WinZip purchase. Thanks.

I think I tried downloading a free winrar file yesterday and almost signed up for netflicks for a year. Which one to you trust?

DNR

For future reference, to avoid the annoying winrar pop-up, right click and select extract files instead of just double clicking the compressed file.

dnr wrote:I think I tried downloading a free winrar file yesterday and almost signed up for netflicks for a year. Which one to you trust?

http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm

Use the 3rd group down and select version 4.11, 32 or 64 bit.

I managed ot find a free download through CNET which I trust, extracted the files and found that there really wasn't that much to it. Just starting up CoD now to see how it works. If I can get online with it I test it out on our server.

just started and I'm still showing version 15950 so something didn't take.

dnr wrote:
just started and I'm still showing version 15950 so something didn't take.

Go to your steam library, right click on Cliffs of Dover, select properties, go to the updates tab and select do not automatically update. This prevents steam from downloading the lastest official version which is 1.5950(?).

I've tried three times, set the properties to no auto update and I still get the version 15950 showing on the start up screen. Wasting too much time on this GD thing so on to some yard work. You guys may or may not see me on today.

PS

I forgot to say thanks to Wolverine and StiC. Much appreciate the help.

Cheers

Okay, here's the easiest way to do it.

FIRST: Add your IL-2 directory to your Anti-Virus's list of excluded directories to search. Sometimes the .dll's get flagged and deleted. Bad! Your IL-2 Directory should be something like this: C:/Program Files (x86)/steam/common/steamapps/il2 sturmovik cliffs of dover/

Something like that common and steam apps might be reversed.

SECOND: Turn off your anti-virus stuff for a little bit. Most programs will allow you to turn it off for a timed amount. 15 min should do it.

THIRD: Put the .rar on your desktop

FOURTH: Right click the .rar and select 'extract here'

FOURTH and a HALF: Go into your Steam library, right click on Il-2 Cliffs of Dover and select properties. Click on the updates tab, and then select 'Do not update' or whatever it says. Just NOT keep this program up to date'.

FIFTH: You should now have a folder called "Parts" on your desktop with a bunch of stuff inside it. It all needs to be extracted into its folder structure or it won't work.

SIXTH: Copy the 'parts' fold and everything in it and PASTE into your IL-2 Sturmovik directory. Allow it to merge and overwrite any conflicts.

SEVENTH: That's it!