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Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 5:13:20 PM

jwilkerson

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Greetings:

Sorry I'm a bit late to the party.

This thread will be to discuss any AE related topics that do not belong in the other four threads.

Briefly, the way we have organized this team is around 4 functions teams: Air, Navy, Land and Map. So each functional team has a team lead, a programmer and several researchers and testers. And then I have acted as the overall "helper" with support from the Naval team lead as required.

This project was "born" way back in Aug 2005, but got beyond the talking stage when Joe and Don came on board to work on the 1.8.0.0 patch in March 2006. We then added MichaelM a bit later. During most of 2006 Joe and Don fixed bugs while MichaelM and Nik supported us with ideas, decisions and testing. Then in late 2006 we got the green light to start building the AE and have been working on it ever since.

We started by pulling about 400 suggestions from the suggestion thread and eliminating duplicates and impossibles. I then added about 100 more suggestions I had received from forum members via email. So at that point we had about 250 rows in the spreadsheet. Then each team member (about 8 folks at that point) prioritized the items. About 63 items made the cut for the initial target scope. Since then, if course we have added more, but that was how we got started.

Well I'll shut up now and let the questions drive the discussion and I'll jump in with answers and other narrative as seems appropriate. It seems like we have been working on this just about forever and we are glad we can finally talk about it!

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 5:14:46 PM

histgamer

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You dirty tricksters were working on the expansion before I even got my copy of WITP.

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 5:19:26 PM

ny59giants

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I just started RHSRAO level 7. Is the new map system going to be similar for movement from Panama around South America and South Africa??

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 5:19:29 PM

USSAmerica

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Thanks, Joe!

First general question has been asked elsewhere while waiting for you to arrive late to the party.

Any higher screen resolutions available? The game looks awesome on my 20 inch flat panel, but is stuck in the relatively tiny 1024x768 window.

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 5:21:12 PM

rubisco

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Will there be any improvements to the ledger interfaces?

For example:
Will we be able to see the total ship building requirement to be able to keep ship building on track?
Will we have some kind of ledger detailing resources and oil stocks by location?

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 5:22:48 PM

Hortlund

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Can you elaborate some on the new industry-model?

Will the allied player control production like his japanese counterpart?

Is there a way to "keep" resources/oil/supply at a base, or will it shift around at the whim of the ai?

Can/will avgas be a separate supply entity like fuel is to ships?

Can/will air torpedos, capital ship ammo be a separate supply entity so that not every single tiny base with supply can be used to launch torpedo-havoc Nells, or resupply battleships?

Will there be some sort of overview in the game to see what factory is scheduled for what upgrade for the Japanese player?

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 5:24:32 PM

jwilkerson

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quote:

ORIGINAL: USS America

Thanks, Joe!

First general question has been asked elsewhere while waiting for you to arrive late to the party.�

Any higher screen resolutions available?� The game looks awesome on my 20 inch flat panel, but is stuck in the relatively tiny 1024x768 window.

No, changing the resolution was an "Engine" change and this bordered on a "start over again" rewrite, so this got axed fairly on. Note that AE is "not" to be considered the sometimes mentioned "WITP_II" in the sense that WITP_II usually means a complete re-write. For AE we are sticking with the original WITP engine(which means "UI" in witp code speak) but just adding piles and piles of enhancements to the game code. Some of us still have the idea of doing a WITP_II one day, but wanted to first crawl (do some patches) then walk (do this enhancement add-on pack) then run (do WITP_II).

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 5:27:05 PM

jwilkerson

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Panzerjaeger Hortlund

Can you elaborate some on the new industry-model?

Will the allied player control production like his japanese counterpart?

Is there a way to "keep" resources/oil/supply at a base, or will it shift around at the whim of the ai?

Can/will avgas be a separate supply entity like fuel is to ships?

Can/will air torpedos, capital ship ammo be a separate supply entity so that not every single tiny base with supply can be used to launch torpedo-havoc Nells, or resupply battleships?

Will there be some sort of overview in the game to see what factory is scheduled for what upgrade for the Japanese player?

These are mostly "Map Team" questions in the sense that Andrew Brown also owns all the bases and their data and hence the "economic model" ... as to the naval ammo, navy team can answer, but I do remember that mines do have an "ammo supply" now (with production) so that there will be a limitation on the number of mines at any given point. Not sure torps were handled this way.

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 5:27:08 PM

1EyedJacks

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Hi Joe,

It seems like a good percentage of the people who purchase WiTP play against the AI. Are there any plans in the works to beef up the AI?

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 5:28:48 PM

jwilkerson

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quote:

ORIGINAL: 1EyedJacks

Hi Joe,

It seems like a good percentage of the people who purchase WiTP play against the AI. Are there any plans in the works to beef up the AI?

Well we are just starting to dive into the AI changes - we had to substantially finish the functional changes and also all the OOB changes (the later being the true gating factor) but we have started working on the AI. And yes we do have some definite plans to add some new stuff.

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 5:30:33 PM

jwilkerson

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quote:

ORIGINAL: ny59giants

I just started RHSRAO level 7. Is the new map system going to be similar for movement from Panama around South America and South Africa??

I'm not familiar with the RHS system, but Andrew Brown can provide details about the AE system. We have coded a new off map movement system for AE so I suspect there will be differences.

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 5:33:01 PM

jwilkerson

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quote:

ORIGINAL: rubisco

Will there be any improvements to the ledger interfaces?

For example:
Will we be able to see the total ship building requirement to be able to keep ship building on track?
Will we have some kind of ledger detailing resources and oil stocks by location?

Ship building details can be had in the Navy thread ... short answer from me is that ports and dockyards are modeled in more detail .. but I'm not aware of any changes to the overall shipbuilding management process.

Resources and oil are map team items .. and there are some changes, but the existing list of bases already shows oil and resource stocks, so perhaps I mis-understand your question.

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 5:34:43 PM

Grotius

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Joe, will you be doing a new manual? If so, I might volunteer to index it. I've indexed two published books, so I have some experience with professional indexing. I prepared an index for the original manual, and David Heath expressed some interest in publishing it, but it never saw the light of day.

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 5:37:34 PM

Grotius

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Also, do you need beta testers?

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 5:37:52 PM

treespider

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Congrats Joe!!! Glad to see this finally official.

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 5:40:00 PM

Coupon

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Will you improve the interface? Bigger buttons please

.

And its great that you will take a swing at the AI. I'm not getting my hopes up, but the thought you will even try, makes me warm and fuzzy inside

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 5:40:52 PM

jwilkerson

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Grotius

Joe, will you be doing a new manual? If so, I might volunteer to index it. I've indexed two published books, so I have some experience with professional indexing. I prepared an index for the original manual, and David Heath expressed some interest in publishing it, but it never saw the light of day.

Yes the manual is being reworked. We can talk off line about indexing, one issue will be total number of pages. Every page of index added means a page of content must go. Life is full of trade offs!

Or we could do separate file for index that would not be in the manual but would be separate, that would permit index with no loss of manual pages.

We can discuss, send me PM.

Ok guys I have to head to the day job, but I will check back in at lunch and try to catch up!

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 5:46:51 PM

Jim D Burns

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Will bases have a toggle in the editor that alows designers to make airbases immune to naval bombardments? BB's are far too powerful currently as they are more effective at closing airfields than a large carrier force. Only a small number of airfields should even be within naval bombardment range, but due to the map scale chosen, BB's are far more important in game than they should be.

Jim

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 5:56:56 PM

mlees

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You may wish to "sticky" the various Admiral's Edition threads.

Artwork question: There is a ton of fan based art available. Are y'all going to tap into some of that?

(I noticed that the TF/mission art was still stock in the screenshots.)

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 6:01:55 PM

Grotius

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OK, PM sent. :)

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 6:33:07 PM

ctangus

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1. In addition to the grand campaign, can you reveal any/all of the other scenarios being worked on?

2. Will there be functionality similar to Bodhi's utility and Woos' witpdecoder incorporated into the game?

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 6:45:54 PM

USSAmerica

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quote:

ORIGINAL: ctangus

2. Will there be functionality similar to Bodhi's utility and Woos' witpdecoder incorporated into the game?

These ROCK! We NEED them in AE!

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"Good times will set you free" - Jimmy Buffett

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Artwork by The Amazing Dixie

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 6:47:01 PM

n01487477

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quote:

ORIGINAL: ctangus

2. Will there be functionality similar to Bodhi's utility and Woos' witpdecoder incorporated into the game?

I'd like to second that question as I and another guy are working on a database program, much in the vein of witpdecoder, but highly enhanced & for both sides to use... summer is a long way away, but are we plugging away at something that might be useless in 8-9 months?

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 6:55:05 PM

jwilkerson

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

Will bases have a toggle in the editor that alows designers to make airbases immune to naval bombardments? BB's are far too powerful currently as they are more effective at closing airfields than a large carrier force. Only a small number of airfields should even be within naval bombardment range, but due to the map scale chosen, BB's are far more important in game than they should be.

Jim

Well as this one involves both air and naval aspects I will comment.

In stock, both LBA and bombardments are too powerful, however, these two act as offsets. So there is somewhat of a balance in stock between them. In AE we are trying to tone tone both a bit, but still retain the balance.
And a map aspect is that it is easier to make "inland ports" now, connected to the sea by rivers, and rivers can be BB navigatable or not.
BBs are also "powerful" in stock as "Naval Air Attack Protection" for carriers because if in the carrier TF the BBs will absorb many attacks that would otherwise hit the carriers. It would be a naval team question as to whether target prioritization has been tweaked, but I am not aware that it has.

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 6:57:06 PM

jwilkerson

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quote:

ORIGINAL: ctangus

1. In addition to the grand campaign, can you reveal any/all of the other scenarios being worked on?

2. Will there be functionality similar to Bodhi's utility and Woos' witpdecoder incorporated into the game?

We are still finishing the grand campaign, that obviously has to come first, that should be done soon. And we are still tossing around ideas for the other scenarios so we should probably with hold comment until work on those has progressed across the starting line!
:)

As to reporting enhancements, we are working on that and will provide details as they become clearer.

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 6:57:48 PM

herwin

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I'm very pleased. I'm sure you've picked out my comments in the past that make sense <http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1382302&mpage=1&key=herwin�> and ignored the nonsense.

Here's the card-play posting: Card Play Posting

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 6:58:16 PM

jwilkerson

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quote:

ORIGINAL: n01487477

quote:

ORIGINAL: ctangus

2. Will there be functionality similar to Bodhi's utility and Woos' witpdecoder incorporated into the game?

I'd like to second that question as I and another guy are working on a database program, much in the vein of witpdecoder, but highly enhanced & for both sides to use... summer is a long way away, but are we plugging away at something that might be useless in 8-9 months?

The save file formats are very different, so anything that relies on reading the current stock save file will not work with AE.

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 6:59:01 PM

jwilkerson

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quote:

ORIGINAL: herwin

I'm very pleased. I'm sure you've picked out my comments in the past that make sense <http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1382302&mpage=1&key=herwin?> and ignored the nonsense. Here's the card-play posting: Card Play Posting

Yeah but which were the sensibles and which were not? I guess we will see if we picked right!

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 7:02:50 PM

jwilkerson

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quote:

ORIGINAL: treespider

Congrats Joe!!! Glad to see this finally official.

BTW treespider was our original land team lead up through summer 2007.

He had two major accomplishments before he had to leave the team due to RL considerations.

(1) Designed the complete revamp of land movement, LCU modes and hexside attributes. We think this is one of the major improvements in AE.

(2) Hired his replacement. Of course AndyMac was originally signed up to do Brit/Indian LCU OOB only, but after treespider departed, Andy stepped up to the team lead slot and also completed many of the smaller nation OOBs.

So two major accomplishments for treespider for which we thank him greatly!

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RE: Admiral's Edition General Thread - 12/7/2007 7:03:52 PM

Jim D Burns

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quote:

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson
Well as this one involves both air and naval aspects I will comment.

In stock, both LBA and bombardments are too powerful, however, these two act as offsets. So there is somewhat of a balance in stock between them. In AE we are trying to tone tone both a bit, but still retain the balance.
And a map aspect is that it is easier to make "inland ports" now, connected to the sea by rivers, and rivers can be BB navigatable or not.
BBs are also "powerful" in stock as "Naval Air Attack Protection" for carriers because if in the carrier TF the BBs will absorb many attacks that would otherwise hit the carriers. It would be a naval team question as to whether target prioritization has been tweaked, but I am not aware that it has.

Hi Joe,

So all coastal base airfields can still be hit by naval bombardments?

It�s great to hear bombardments are being toned down, but most airfields in the Pacific other than on Atolls should not be within reach of naval guns. Most islands airbases were too far inland or obscured by terrain too much for any ships guns to reach except for perhaps a BB. The game makes them too powerful in their ability to hit ANY costal base airfield.

Jim

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