Shannon V. OKeets
Posts: 22095
Joined: 5/19/2005 From: Honolulu, Hawaii Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Zartacla quote:
ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets quote:
ORIGINAL: celebrindal Actually I'd think this would help a few folks continue their game.. things like removing units that should have been out of supply and dead, putting things into supply even if impluse by impulse, removing or adding units on DoW that are not working.. things of that nature. I would rather spend my time fixing bugs so such problems don't arise. Me too. But I've had the game a month or more, and still can't play it the way it's intended to play. Overseas supply, supply in China are still issues that affect the outcome of the game. Partisans working, then not working, then working again, the new bug with removing air units, the one playing Australian units, these are issues that affect the outcome of the game. Then there are crash bugs, which just make the game more frustrating. I don't hold you responsible and I'm glad you're working so hard on squashing the bugs... but put me down as one of the people in favor of having some kind of work around that we can use to fix broken games while we wait. I also think that long term, the debug tool is something I want, something a lot of players will want. The ability to set up positions, change positions, play "what if's", or even create scenarios will be a major selling point for this game. Some nights I don't want to sit down to a long drawn out game, or have time for a shorter Barbarossa, but if someone made a 1 turn Kursk scenario, or a Spain/Gibraltar scenario, for example, that might scratch the itch nicely on those days. A debug tool makes that possible. A player using the 'debug' tool can create more bugs in one sitting than I can fix in a month of Sundays. The bugs that 'feature' creates are not necessarily immediately obvious. They can occur several phases, impulses, or even turns later. And then the players would complain that the game "doesn't work". I've already spent enough time (months probably) trying to fix problems in saved games where the problems were caused by people using the 'debug' feature. A total waste of time by all concerned. I use it very rarely and I am extremely careful to limit its use to just what I need to recreate a unique situation for testing purposes. 98% of the time I work from saved games that I know are 'clean'. I already spend a lot of time simply investigating reported problems, with the majority turning out to not be bugs. If you remove duplicates, the number that I investigate which I discard is well over 90%. Adding spurious bug reports caused by players using the 'debug' feature wouldn't make anyone's life easier. Bear in mind that "one little change" in the game state can have disastrous consequences because of the extremely high level of interactions between the game elements. Repositioning an air unit because you forgot to rebase it can affect: the number of minor country units outside their home country, foreign troop commitments, collapsing Vichy France, neutrality pact restrictions, stacking limits (many different ones), friendly units in enemy controlled hexes, ... Way back in 2006 I used the debug tool to place units from all the major powers in the middle of the USSR (or the USA) just to display the different depictions of unit types and country colors - and solicit opinions from forum members. The debug tool didn't object at all to having units from all the Axis major powers and minor countries scattered hither and yon. In fact, I could have placed naval units in the middle of Kansas or the Ural mountains. That might have caused some problem later during the return to base phase. I have no plans for ever making the debug feature available to customers. A ton of work for marginal benefit and certain to cause enormous headaches later.
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Steve Perfection is an elusive goal.
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