Shannon V. OKeets
Posts: 22095
Joined: 5/19/2005
From: Honolulu, Hawaii
Status: offline
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I wanted to talk to David Heath before posting this monthly status report.
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May 1, 2009 Status Report for Matrix Games’ MWIF Forum
Accomplishments of April
Project Management
Firm release date for MWIF product 1 is July 27th, 2009.
Communications
I monitored all the threads in the MWIF World in Flames forum daily and uploaded versions 12.10, 1.00.00, 1.00.01, 1.00.02, 1.00.03, 1.00.04, 1.00.04a, 1.00.05, 1.00.06 for the beta testers. There are 4 parts to a version number: major/minor/release/build. This past month was the first time I change the minor version number from 00 to 01, which reflected my subjective opinion that significant progress had been made.
Patrice revised the map data so it includes the year each of the countries entered the war (only needed for about 80 countries, not all 252). This enabled the determination of how long a country, that might received partisans, has been in a war at the start of each scenario.
Andy and his team are close to finishing the naval unit writeups, but I extended the time they have for doing that to the end of May. Andy has sent me the bibliography for the naval units, which I needed for the Players Manual.
Peter Skoglund sent me another pass on the more complex scripts for setting up Spain.
So far I have received no feedback from the editor assigned to the Players Manual.
No communications with Harry Rowland or Chris Marinacci.
Hardware and Software Development Tools
I have not installed ThemeEngine July/2007 - this status is unchanged. Playing the game under XP emulation works without any problems reported by the beta testers, so there is no pressing need to install an upgrade to Theme Engine - the upgrade would be to support Vista in native mode.
Beta Testing
I uploaded a slew of new versions the beta testers. Some of these had a life span that a mayfly would consider short. Version 1.00.04 needed an immediate patch (1.00.04a) to replace two obsolete data files so new games could be started. And version 1.00.03 was unable to load saved games from 1.00.00 and friends (the programming correction was to replace a ‘00' with a ‘0'). Version 1.00.05 was quickly replaced by 1.00.06. Clearly I find this irritating, but in a more philosophical frame of mind I understand that if I were excessively careful about avoiding mistakes, the speed with which I would get things done would suffer. Still, it drives me nuts.
One of the reasons for the frequent new versions was so I could fix problems the beta testers were finding and let them explore more possibilities that the bugs were not letting them get to.
Altogether for the month, I removed over 100 items from my list of bugs, but the beta testers added 80+. A net gain for me, but this has taken too much of my time from progress on items still in development: NetPlay, PBEM, and AIO. At the beginning of the month I worked on improving land combat resolution. Then I asked the beta testers to focus on the 9 air mission phases and give them a rigorous workout.
Therefore, many of the corrections I made this month had to do air-to-air combat and returning carrier air units to carriers after they perform an air mission over a land hex (e.g., a ground strike). The logic for air missions is very difficult to get right, primarily because of the WIF rules. Besides the ‘normal’ stuff like range, weather, and identifying which units are enemy units, each air mission has 10 subphases, where the eligibility of units participating depends on surprise and cooperation with units already engaged. Then there are the 11 sub-subphases of the air-to-air combat sequence. The multiple possible outcomes of anti-air and air-to-air combat results adds complexity.
Throw in ~20 optional rules, which includes carrier air units either being separate units in the game or temporary units that are generated to represent the air component of carriers, and you have a wealth of opportunities for the code being incorrect. The primary difference between CWIF (where this all worked correctly) and MWIF, is that MWIF needs to determine which major power decides what, at each point in the sequence of play, and to inform all the players (i.e., those running the game on their own computer) who is deciding what. It is a common occurrence for an air mission phase to have the decision maker change from one major power to another 40 or more times!
There are still bugs in naval combat, particularly naval interception combat, that need to be fixed. Processing the queued units from naval combats doesn’t work correctly either.
If I had the time I would add half dozen or so more beta testers. However, the current beta testers are keeping me very busy, and bringing new beta testers on board requires a substantial investment of my time.
Test Script/Plan
Nothing new. I have been pushing the beta testers to use the test plans and scripts, but that is not being done as much as I would like. On the other hand, as long as the beta testers are finding bugs, I can’t complain.
Units, Map, and Scenarios
Patrice provided updates to two of the country data files so they now include the date that each country, which might have partisans appear, entered the war. I do not expect to make any more changes to the data files required for game play: units, map, or scenario.
The authors working on the naval unit writeups expect to complete them by the end of May. They were close to getting them done by the end of April, but as long as I had their bibliography in hand (which I do) giving them another month to add to, buff, and polish their writeups was a no-brainer, which I should have figured out earlier.
I finished the bitmaps for the coastal hexes, rivers, and lakes. I refuse to consider changing them.
Optional Rules
I have moved about a dozen optional rules into a list of tasks that are likely to not get done until post release. It is not that I do not like these optional rules, or have anything against them, other than they require me to spend time on them to make them functional.
Player Interface
Continuing my work from the previous month on tools for debugging NetPlay, I went through all 530+ game record logs and standardized the first four fields: Game Record Log ID #, Entry #, Transaction #, and Entry by ID #. That took me some time to accomplish, since I needed to make edits in 4 separate files, resulting in a couple of thousand edits. The payoff is that I can now have the tracking report start with those four fields. By translating the ID #, I can display a plain text description of what has happened in the game (e.g., Air unit aborts during an air-to-air combat). The rest of the game record log provides details, such as: which unit aborted and to which hex it returned-to-base.
I added 4 new access points, which display 4 new forms, to game internals from the main menu bar. Only a couple of these will be part of the final release: testing NetPlay and PBEM communications. The other two are for: (1) reading in, parsing, and evaluating AIO scripts and (2) monitoring the game record log (as described in the previous paragraph). These are in various states of development, and I work on them when I can find time away from fixing bugs. From my perspective, these are program development tools.
For instance, I can open and examine the Game Record Log now using NotePad (or many other text editors), but since there are over 14,000 entries created just starting a new game, and those entries are heavily encoded, a better tool lets me be more efficient. In particular, when multiple computers are in use, and several people are making decisions simultaneously, the Master MWIF computer needs to synchronize all those decisions and keep the simulations on all the players’ computers up-to-date. The game record log monitor lets me read the GRL on each computer and see if there are any differences between the different copies.
I reworked the Use Oil form based on a discussion with the beta testers. That is now complete (except for one “would be nice to have” feature) and the beta testers will see it in version 1.00.07. I also touched up the production form which is of vital concern to all players. There are another half dozen forms used during the end-of-turn that I want to review and possibly revise. Every 3 months or so I go through all the forms and bring them up to date with my constantly evolving ‘style’ for how the forms should look and behave. These few at the end of turn processing are the last of the 90+ I need to pass judgment on for my most recent pass through all the forms.
Internet - NetPlay
Very little tangible was done on this, other than getting the Game Record Log monitor in place for debugging NetPlay.
CWIF Conversion
Nothing new. There are two remaining forms where Windows style components need to be replaced with better components from the JV library: Choosing US entry options & Bidding for major powers.
MWIF Game Engine
I couldn’t find any time to work on rewriting Supply this past month. The CWIF code mostly works but does have some annoying (non-fatal) bugs that interfere with beta testing. I have to get this working so I can reuse the code for shipping resources and build points.
Saved Games
I fixed a couple of problems with saving/restoring games but there are still a few more that need to be corrected.
Player’s Manual
I did virtually nothing on the Players Manual this month; I am waiting on feedback from the editor before I make the final push to finish this. Well, I did type in a couple more pages for the Section on the Player Interface, and I finished the section on the bibliography for the unit write-ups..
PBEM
I started creating the forms for Standing Orders and I have made one pass through the design I wrote back in 2005 for how PBEM will work. I want to make one more review of the design now that I can see how the forms look. Currently I am of the opinion that this won’t be that difficult to do, primarily because the New Game Engine was designed to support PBEM and I have already written the code for one of the tricky bits: switching control of who decides between sides/computers.
Historical Video, Music, and Sound
I sent Dave and Erik my final list of historical videos I would like to have for MWIF. I’ll do the same for sound and music this month.
Help System and Tutorials
I wrote up the script for the first ‘segment’ of the Training Video. Once I get a copy of the software from Matrix for producing the video, I will play around with recording the first segment. Armed with a better understanding of the tool and how to use it, I’ll write the scripts for the other segments. The first segment covers the main form, which has dozens of components plus all the drop down menus. If I can get that recorded so it isn’t too painful for me to watch, the other segments should follow with only a little effort..
AI Opponent
Peter continues to work on the scripts for setting up minor countries. I haven’t had time to do anything on the parser, and that is still in my task queue. What I did do was start work on reading in the scripts, storing them internally and beginning the parsing steps (e.g., removing unnecessary blanks).
Other
Is there life outside of MWIF? I wouldn’t really know.
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April summary: I am gaining ground on the beta testers but it is measured in inches, not miles. While I managed to give some attention to NetPlay, PBEM, and the AIO, all three of them are off in the corner pouting and muttering under their breath that I don’t really love them. Kids!
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Tasks for May
Communications
Continue monitoring the forum threads.
Beta Testing
Upload a new version every 5 days. [est. 2 hours]
Work on the backlog of bug reports. [est. 95 hours]
Optional Rules
Review, comment, modify, and create code for optional rules. [est. 15 hours]
Redesign of MWIF Game Engine
Add more Game Record Log entries for NetPlay. [est. 20 hours]
Player Interface
Finish the code for determining and displaying supply lines. [est. 10 hours]
Finalize code for the player interface settings. [est. 5 hours]
Finish integrating the Naval Review forms into the player interface. [est. 10 hours]
NetPlay
Implement the bidding capability using NetPlay. [est. 5 hours]
Incorporate the Indy10 code for the two player system into MWIF. [est. 20 hours]
Incorporate the multi-player (more than 2) system into MWIF. [est. 10 hours]
PBEM
Define Standing Orders data structures and create a form for editing Standing Orders. [est. 40 hours]
Modify the sequence of play when the mode of play is PBEM. [est. 20 hours]
AI Opponent
Define LAIO variables with their supporting functions. Finish coding the parser for LAIO. [est. 5 hours]
Begin converting plain text into LAIO rules. [est. 5 hours]
Provide a small interface to monitor the AIO decisions. [est. 5 hours]
Help System and Tutorials
Begin work on Training Video. [est. 10 hours]
Player’s Manual
Integrate text from others into the Player’s Manual. [est 30 hours].
Historical Detail, Animations, and Sound
Decide on sound and music. [est. 5 hours]
Other
A couple of friends of ours are visiting from Boston this month. We’ll spend some time wandering around the island with them.
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May summary: Get NetPlay functioning. Make another cut into the backlog of bug reports. Start working on PBEM. Finish the Players Manual. Start recording the Training Video.
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_____________________________
Steve
Perfection is an elusive goal.
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RE: When? - 
- as I`m sure you know better than any of us. 
RE: When? - 
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