From:	Leonardo Rogic
Sent:	Thursday, October 25, 2001 4:22 AM
To:	Robert Mitchell
Subject:	Re: Falcon5 and SuperPAK questions

Hi Robert,

Leonardo, (I hope I'm right about this, but you're
"Apollo" right?)

Yes, that's me.


I'm writing an article for Combatsim.com about
FalconV and the SuperPAK project and I was wondering
if I could ask you a few questions about them? Chuck
"Talon" suggested that I approach you with them as 
well. I've contacted Glenn Kletzky, Eric Marlow, Leon
Rosenshein, Gilman Louie, Joel Bierling, Chuck,
Rhino, Scoob, and now you too. If you'd be interested
I'll forward the questions to you. I'd appreciate any 
thoughts and opinions on these that you'd care to
share.

I know you contacted them and that they answered you.

BTW, as you clearly saw, I am not very "public F4
person" and am rarely present in public (I just post
few mails to F4 forums from time to time).

Since I know what you asked some of the people you
mentioned above I will shortly explain my position.

Please note that it is very hard for me to "write
history of what I did for F4".

I also know that this all sounds like some boring soap
opera but since you already started to write your
article and other people contacted you I think that the
truth should be heard.

I know that the "universal truth" is impossible to
achieve but I hope that you would be ale to "wade"
through all this using all sources.


My F4 involvement 
=================

I got F4 sim as soon as it was available. I played it
and liked it a lot but there were, unfortunately, many
shortcomings with initial F4 release (and following
patches).

I made several observations regarding it in F4 forums
and this was noticed by Glenn Kletzky (iBETA CEO). He
asked me to help make F4 better and join iBETA F4 BETA
testing for Microprose.

At that time I couldn't do that because I was involved
in NDA project of another major PC simulation. Few
months later (when my other involved was finished and
that other sim published) I joined iBETA.

Just month after this the v1.08 US F4 patch was
released and then the Microprose was disbanded by
parent company and F4 team was fired.

The iBETA tested more while one last Microprose
programmer worked in his layoff time and created v108i2
EXE.

But after v1.08i2 EXE time the iBETA work was
practically finished and it was almost certain that F4
sim would be left dead.

Then I got idea and persuaded Glenn Kletzky and Eric
Marlow not to disband iBETA and that iBETA should
continue working of making F4 better.

I did it because I was confident in myself and my
ability that I can make changes to F4 data. This
happened because I discovered Beng's XLS sheets with F4
data and I made contact with "Duck Holiday" who taught
me first lessons of F4 HEX Editing.

After that I learned more and more and was able to
directly HEX Edit almost anything in F4 data. I even
made XLS/VBA F4 tool which was inspired by Beng's F4
XLS sheets (to this day 95% of all RP changes were made
by my XLS/VBA tool and not via Julian Onion's "F4
Editor").

The iBETA accepted my proposal/idea and the "Realism
Patch" (RP) project was born.

Glenn and Eric checked with their remaining Microprose
contacts and they said that they have nothing against
this. Therefore they made it clear that what RP was
attempting to do was 100% legal.

At this same time Eric Marlow was in contact with
Jeffery Babineau of 209th sim squadron who had similar
ideas as I had (Jeff was never part of iBETA).

Eric connected Jeff and me and then I and Jeff started
creating the RP patches.

In iBETA days three RPs were made and gradually more
and more people were involved with actual work of data
changing (opposed to pure testing the iBETA initially
did). From data HEX editing we evolved to HEX editing
of EXE as well (all very hard and painfully difficult
tasks).

The iBETA RPG leadership: Glenn Kletzky as iBETA CEO
(not actually involved with RP project at all) Eric
Marlow as iBETA RP Executive Producer Leonardo Rogic as
iBETA RP Associate Producer

After RP v3.x was released Eric Marlow suddenly lost
interest in F4 and both Glenn and Eric decided that
iBETA should distance from F4 and not continue with
RPs.

Almost all former iBETA members then joined me and Jeff
who created the "Realism Patch Group".

To make things more easy to handle we decided on new 3
member leadership: Leonardo Rogic Jeffery Babineau
"Hoola"

In this membership and with many more people joining
the RPG we created the RP v4.x and RP v5.x and still
exist today.



RPG and eF 
==========

The reason why there were 2 major and separate groups
working of F4 was because of "Source Code" (SC) issue.

When SC for late v1.07 appeared the iBETA was still
involved with RPs for F4.

Glenn Kletzky and Eric Marlow forbid even mention of
SC.

They forbid all contact with people making use of it.

This is the root of all differences.

When iBETA left and "Realism Patch Group" established
(with 99% same membership) the gap between eF and RP
was wide because of the reasons mentioned above. In
time, although, the possible merger to only one F4
group was possible but this didn't happen by the time
the G2 (i.e. return of Eric Marlow to F4) appeared.

The F4 users just had the choice of using eF EXE or
modified v1.08i2 EXE. Both EXEs used the RPG data.

BTW. I personally had excellent working relation with
both Joel Bierling and Julian Onions for eF team and we
never had any problems cooperating.

I admire and love their work as much as they admire and
love my work with RP.


G2 
==

When I learned that Eric Marlow become producer for
FalconV and that F4 is bought I had bad "gut feeling".

Nonetheless I congratulated Eric hoping things will be
OK.

I was wrong... :-(


The F4 was dead sim ever since the Microprose abandoned
it.

The only thing that kept F4 alive for 18 months since
then was free and volunteer work of "iBETA Realism
Patch", "Realism Patch Group" and all other groups that
appeared later ("eF Team", "F4 Alliance", "F4
Terrain").

All of us in all groups worked for free and we really
enjoyed what we did by making F4 better.

It was fun.

It was joy.


Unfortunately bad things started to happen because with
G2 coming into picture everything changed.

Both RPG and eF got order to stop working on EXE
changes and got deadline.

Suddenly joy of work turned into forced deadline.

The RP v5.x and eF v1.10 were release in last moment
but it was very hard work and because of pressure
almost all joy and enthusiasm was lost.

Because of G2 (i.e. Eric Marlow) behavior at this time
any possible help to Eric Marlow in his (G2's) project
called FalconV come into question.

All people (experts from RPG) who were supposed to be
involved with FalconV development resigned because of
that.


I later learned that Eric Marlow wasn't honest at all
and that he told all parties involved (like RPG and eF)
different stories.

G2 made good business move by buying dead sim (F4) that
was only kept alive by free work of F4 enthusiasts.
This is OK if you think like businessman -but if you
think about it morally it's completely dishonest.

The idea of someone making money of someone else's free
work is repulsive for me.

As you can imagine this completely ruined all my
personal involvement with Eric Marlow. I told goodbye
to him.


SuperPAK (i.e. F4UT) 
====================

The SuperPAK idea come in public after the RPG experts
resigned and didn't want to be involved with Eric's
FalconV project.

The RPG people who resigned obviously didn't want to be
involved with SuperPAK also. None of the key RPG people
are/were involved with SuperPAK.


While SuperPAK is essentially good idea and because it
will create free F4 for public I don't like the "small
print" issues.

#1 Another deadline and hard work as, essentially,
unpaid G2 employees.

#2 Signing all work to G2 for 1$.

#3 The G2 usage of all SuperPAK work for their
commercial use for free (1$ doesn't count).


I personally don't want to sign 1$ (one US dollar)
contract selling my work to G2.

I personally find the "Greater Good" document shame and
would never sign it.


Because of all reasons described above I am not
SuperPAK member.

I was, though, involved with helping clearing language
of SuperPAK deal with G2 in order not to mention the
name of the group I am leader in such document. That
was all.



Regards Leo "Apollo11"

[EMAIL REMOVED BY EDITOR]

ICQ UIN: [REMOVED BY EDITOR]

Leonardo Rogic Zagreb, Croatia