|
bwheatley -> RE: Netplay Better than PBEM (12/9/2013 11:14:22 PM)
|
Believe me shannon. I am sorry i was not active enough with my WIF beta access, before it got revoked, to help this stuff along more. Life got in the way but i would have loved to help get these things fixed before launch day.
I also appreciate the coders life as a developer myself I know it's a lot of work. So I try and temper my frustration with the knowledge that it's hard but it's got to get better. I don't know the full process on why the game was released in the state it is but damn it's a disappointment at times. I hope it's going to be similar to WITE where it gets some love and in a year it's top notch.
Anyway good luck!
quote:
ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
quote:
ORIGINAL: abulbulian
BWheatley and I have been playing a lot of MWiF Netplay over the past week, or as much as BWheatley's wife will let him [:(]. We both understand the complexity involved in a game like this, however, there's still a lot of frustration when we run across bugs which force us to either restart save (crash), skip a step (i.e. certain bombing missions), or find bizarre workaround to get game to go forward. Here's are some of the issues we've experience so far. Believe documented on forum, but Bwheatley and I would be happy to elaborate on any of them.
Overrunning ships in port - crash
Resolving bombing missions (w/o escort) - crash
Bessarabia claim (allow or disallow) - no effect
Neutrality Pact Screen (German marker placement) - window frozen
partisans - placement on enemy air cause crash after air lost
shatter result taken - defender not removed
non-phasing play can make attacks with phasing units (just trust opponent [:-])
These along with some other mysterious and non-reproducible crashes have made it somewhat painful to get through first turn. Ok, not through it yet. Still need to do production. The really odd thing given all these issues is that I still want to play on. Maybe that's because I'm also a board gamer and enjoy the global strategy war games. Was a play tester for 'A World At War' (board game) and interested to see the how MWiF plays out.
Erik, really hope that the NetPlay issues that still exist are fixed with prompt extreme prejudice. Believe that they will. BWheatley and I are happy to help expedite the process if possible.
My only suggestion at this point would be to see a little more feedback in the Tech Support forum related to what bugs are validated and are going to be fixed. That feedback could help facilitate more documentation, if for say one of the bugs BWheatley and I submitted was not taken seriously. [:(]
Disclaimer: in my posts have had some bouts with negativity due to NetPlay frustrations, but excited for MWiF to be successful and continue to improve
I've fixed 2 of these NetPlay bugs in the past week: shatter and enemy controlling attacks. I also fixed a major problem with DOW on minors. I've been working on the NetPlay bugs with overruns generating a naval interception and naval combat in general.
It takes me time to respond to individual posts about bugs. That's because to say anything intelligent I need to first understand the problem (which typically requires gathering more information) and then try to reproduce it myself. Only then can I discuss it without simply guessing as to the cause and whether I can fix it. Most of my replies without doing my homework first would be along the lines of 'Interesting', which doesn't do anyone any good.
My progress through emailed reports has been substantial. I've cleared 92% of those in the first 10 days and 93% of those in the next week. But I still have two more weeks to work my way through, where I've got 25% and 35% remaining to be investigated.
Over the past week Paul has created and maintained a spreadsheet of the problems reported in Tech Support - which has been a big help. I asked for and he gave me his list of the top NetPlay problems. I had my own list and I merged the two. We'll weave your list into that mix.
The NetPlay bugs are not related to the processing of the sequence of play, but rather to the information flows between the two computers so both of them 'know' what has happened on the other computer. There are 4 information queues (buffering, etc.) which the program maintains on both computers and those appear to be bug free - since before the game was released. The weird little stuff (e.g., claims, digressions, neutrality pacts) requires special handling in some cases. In many other cases, it executes without any extra code being necessary expressly for NetPlay.
I work on MWIF every day. Most of the massive waves of communications I received after the initial release have abated and I'm getting more "real work" done these days.
Please install each new update - there will be at least one a week for the next couple of weeks - and provide us with feedback on bugs you encounter.
|
|
|
|
