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wdolson -> RE: Im-Possible WITP News (10/31/2007 11:15:45 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: cavalry
Dear Erik,
Thanks for that . I have only one issue and that is I hope whatever it is it can upgrade games in progress as I have less and less time for gaming and I have spent 18 months just on one game already with another at 12 months .
I hope you will have had a complete overhaul considering all the free playtesting - feedback there has been and that you considered all the mods / maps ,etc etc and come up with a definative version .
It is one thing to have the mods but its even better to have a game where mods are not the best version !
Regards
Michael
Modifying games in prgress is unlikely to happen. If something like that was publicly available, cheaters would be able to modify PBEM games. It would make no difference to games against the AI though.
Maybe WitP II is in the works? That would be nice. But who knows. We should be finding out something within 2 months. Just hang back and appreciate that Matrix is still supporting this game at all. That's pretty rare in the computer gaming world.
As for the complaints about the quality of software. A computer is probably the most complex piece of machinery that most people deal with on a daily basis. A car is a mature technology. The core technologies in a car have been around for more than 100 years. Computers are much younger and more complex.
One thing that drives the bean counters mad is that software is still a large degree of art. There is science to it, but the quality of the output is still, in large degree, dependent on the quality of the people doing the work. A programmer has to contend with minor differences in hardware, things out of his or her control within the operating system, as well as what other programmers may have done before on that project. There are lots of variables that cannot be predicted ahead of time.
The bean counters also usually push schedules so the programmers don't have the time to do the job to their own satisfaction. Schedules almost always start out overly optimistic and go downhill from there. Few managers are willing to deal with the reality of how long a project is really going to take.
The technology continues to evolve too. In the computing world, the need to be backwardly compatible makes operating systems more complex. If you look at the evolution of aircraft from 1930 to 1950, you will see a massive change. Planes went from fabric covered biplanes, many still made with wood frames, to mach 1+ jets in that time.
By the late 1950s, the technology began to mature. The layout of the airliners we have today took form then with the 707. Military aircraft stabilized later, but the US military today are mostly flying designs from the 1970s, along with some much older aircraft, such as the B-52.
Aircraft didn't require backward compatability. Super sonic fighters of the 1950s didn't have to support technologies from the 1930s. What was not needed was discarded. In the computing world, we are still carrying baggage from the MS DOS days in Windows Vista. (Not much anymore, but it's still there.)
It's a miracle PCs work at all. What's in there makes a car look as complex as a pointy stick.
Bill
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