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Shannon V. OKeets -> RE: When? (4/2/2008 6:32:30 AM)
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April 1, 2008 Status Report for Matrix Games’ MWIF Forum
Accomplishments of March
Project Management
December 2008 is the scheduled release date for MWIF product 1. I am planning on attending Origins 2008 and demonstrating MWIF with 2-player capability over a network there.
Communications
Rob Armstrong (graphics) sent me 6 splash screens. They look good in concept but need to have the contrast of their different graphic elements modified. When viewed in a pitch black room, the splash screens are ok. But with any ambient light at all in the room, the text and other details are difficult to make out. The splash screens have 4 principal elements: text (title), a map of the Mediterranean in background, central image of a combat vehicle (ship, tank, airplane), and flames in the foreground. Right now the flame image overwhelms the other graphic elements. As per my instructions to Rob, the splash screens are 1280 by 1024 pixel BMP files that can be cropped to 1024 by 768. I’ll have the program check the system specifications on the player’s machine and use one of those 2 sizes.
Dan Hatchen and I continue to discuss the NetPlay design.
I monitored all the threads in the MWIF World in Flames forum daily and uploaded versions 7.05 and 7.06 to the beta testers. The beta testers send me numerous bug reports for each new release.
Patrice continues to be a tremendous help on the game in general and the map in particular. As for map revisions, we now have Mike Fisher from Australian Design Group reviewing and critiquing the map. ADG created and publishes the WIF board game, with Mike doing the maps for all their WIF versions and add-ons.
Peter Skoglund has helped me finish defining LAIO (Language for Artificial Intelligence Opponent).
Robert Nebel (Nebert) has been getting help from Jimm in developing test scripts and plans. Robert plans on a new release of Test Plans/Scripts in April.
Jesper Pehrson continues to coordinate work on the land unit descriptions (70% complete) written by himself and other forum members.
I have been coordinating work on the naval unit descriptions (50% complete) and have received new writeups from several people. Specifically, Robert Jenkins and Mark Neiswender have combined to provide me with over 50 new writeups on naval units. I have this process set up now so I spend less than 1 hour a month on the coordination task.
Andy has agreed to organize the air units writeups (98% complete). Graham Dodge did all of these and while Graham wanted to finish them, he is starting a new business, which leaves him with very little time for MWIF. Andy’s first task is to put the 1100+ air unit writeups in numerical order so he can determine which ones are missing. There are probably less than a dozen left to do, for units from the WIF 2007 countersheets.
John Zielinski has sent me the rest of his detailed spreadsheets of the units in WIF (covering all the different add-ons and versions), comparing them to historical units.
No information from Erik Rutkins at Matrix about getting a lower price on a printed copy of the map.
No communications with Chris Marinacci.
Software Development Tools
One of the object files for the JEDI component library got mangled and the operating system deleted it from the disk. That meant uninstalling and reinstalling the whole library. Sadly, doing so took me 2 and a half days - what a waste of time. I did upgrade to a newer version in the process, though that seems to have had no effect on anything. I have not installed ThemeEngine July/2007 yet - I am waiting until after we get NetPlay working.
Beta Testing
The main features in Version 7.05 were revisions to the Naval Combat Results report and the form for using Surprise Points in naval combat. Additionally, 7.05 used a new structure for screen layouts. This improvement resulted in there being only 1set of screen layouts for each scenario. Previously there had been 1 set per major power. Besides reducing the number of files by a factor of 8, there is less overhead when a player switches from one major power to another. While I was working on this change I fixed all outstanding bugs for screen layouts and map views. I also changed the file extensions from CSV to SLY and MVW, which makes identifying those file types easy to do.
Version 7.06 gave the beta testers the ability to test the NRD and NRS forms. For the latter, it was the first time they had a chance to see it. Version 7.06 also had improvements/fixes to processing keystroke input.
By the way, the file extension for saved display layouts for the Naval Review Summary form is NRS. I am working towards giving each of the saved file types its own extension. Saved games are GAM; saved setups are SET. I plan on SCP for scrap lists and OPR for optional rule settings - the last two are still CSV presently.
In case you don’t remember, or haven’t read about these previously, Screen Layouts let the player arrange the different forms on the screen the way he prefers them. Most players like to keep the following at least partially visible during play: main form (main menu, toggles for modifying the detailed map, sequence of play, etc.), detailed map, global map, map views list, screen layouts list, and the “units in hex” summary form. Screen layouts also record where the player likes to have the setup tray appear when there are new units to be placed on the map (e.g., reserves, reinforcements). What drives a lot of these decisions is how large a monitor the player is using, and whether he uses a second (or third) monitor. Towards making design decisions for default screen layouts, I asked forum members for their monitor sizes. I also gather suggestions from the beta testers for how to position the different form on the screen.
Units
Unit writeups are continuing, with steady progress on land and naval units. I have great hopes that with Andy’s help the air units can be completed soon. Other than the writeups, there is no work remaining to be done concerning units. Oh, one of the people doing naval unit writeups actually found a mistake in the data for one of the units. Patrice did another review of unit data and found a similar second error. Minor stuff, but I was surprised there were any errors at all remaining in the unit data.
Map
With Mike Fisher looking over our shoulder, we are more comfortable with possibly making some changes to the European portion of the map. Up until now, we have been treating the European map as more or less sacrosanct, although we did nibble on it a bit around the edges. I have set aside the 15th of each month as “map update” day, so I am not doing small changes several times a week.
I made changes to the code for drawing sea area boundaries on the map. This was a major problem for Rabaul. Until this revision the program produced incorrect boundaries around Manila and in northern Japan.
Scenario Setup
Scenario data remains stable.
Optional Rules
No substantial progress on implementing the optional rules that remain to be coded. I have placed a dozen of these on my task list for April. What mainly needs to be done is for me to review the code I inherited from CWIF for implementing the optional rules and make sure it performs in accordance with the RAC (Rules as Coded) design specifications.
Player Interface
I completed the Naval Review Details (NRD) and the Naval Review Summary (NRS) forms. These still have a few linkage issues remaining having to do with Task Forces, but those will be trivial to code once the Task Force Details and Summary forms (TFD and TFS) exist.
I spent most of the last half of March working on the NRD and NRS, which was a lot of time, but I believe the effort was worth it. Happily, I feel that I have been able to fulfill my promise to myself, and to others, to put naval operations on an equal footing with land operations. Although, the task force forms still need to be finished before that is completely true.
I modified the Flyouts display so when you place the cursor over a stack of units, not only do you see each of the units in the hex (up to 9) you also get a strip of text at the bottom if there are more than 9. Clicking on that text brings up the next 9 units in the hex so you can cycle through them all.
The change to the Flyouts is in preparation for making it possible to use the Flyouts (and the Naval Review Details form) for selecting/picking up units from a hex. As I envision it, the player puts the cursor over a stack of units, the Flyout display appears, and the player clicks on one or more units in the Flyouts display to “pick them up”. This should make selecting multiple units for movement much faster, particularly for naval moves, where units have to be moved as a group.
Internet - NetPlay
We continue to grind out the gruesome details of the design specifications. Dan has been writing code for NetPlay, though I haven’t had any to test yet.
CWIF Conversion
I standardized the processing of keyboard and mouse input. CWIF used several different routines which had been driving me nuts trying to figure out where each keystroke was being processed. I now have a single set of processing routines to keyboard input and a comparable set for mouse input.
Yet to be fixed is processing keyboard input from the component TCustomDragListBox. This is a Windows component into whose code I haven’t been able to penetrate deep enough to be able to override its automatic processing of keystrokes. Yes, this is yet another instance of my continual bitching about programmers doing things ‘automatically’. Again I am faced with decisions made by someone else on my behalf that I did not want made the way they decided. And how to modify this code, assuming that is even possible, is not obvious. I hate to completely replace the component since: (1) I am not sure I could find something comparable, (2) writing a new version from scratch would be a lot of work, and (3) it is used in over 200 places in the program, so the replacement process itself would be time consuming. For now, I will just live with the minor annoyances with how TCustomDragListBox handles keyboard input.
Nothing new on the supply line routine, other than the beta testers refining more precisely where the current one does not work correctly.
MWIF Game Engine
I continue to convert game play decisions to Game Record Log entries to support NetPlay. This past month it was for the routines that process naval combat.
Saved Games
I keep this functioning at all times. No major revisions were required in March. However, some of the changes to the map data caused games saved prior to version 7.05 to become obsolete.
Player’s Manual
I’ve received, via Patrice, some minor revisions from Harry Rowland that need to be made to the Rules as Coded (RAC) document. I’ll get around to this some day, but for now it is of minimal importance.
PBEM
Nothing new, scheduled for early summer.
Historical Detail, Animations, and Sound
Nothing new, scheduled for fall.
Help System and Tutorials
I added the context sensitive help text for the NRD and NRS forms. Other than that, there has been nothing new, with the bulk of the work scheduled for late summer.
AI Opponent
With Peter’s help I finished the definition of LAIO (Language for the Artificial Intelligence Opponent). The last piece was how to perform loop processing in LAIO and how the stack would be implemented for nested calls to sub-rules.
Peter finished the script for task AM 05: Air Marshal, Air-to-air combat, arrange fighters and bombers. He also did work on JCS 02: Joint Chiefs of Staff, Estimate the number of impulses remaining in the turn, and AM 04: Air Marshal, Estimate air combat odds and losses.
The last two are calculation routines that the AIO needs to run as part of its other decision making tasks. I had asked Peter to work on calculation routines but after reviewing the amount of LAIO code he needed to write to do these I decided to write all AIO calculation tasks in Pascal instead. Sorry, Peter.
In general, the purpose behind using LAIO instead of Pascal is to enable the author of AIO routines to be able revise them to get better performance. The calculation routines though have very few, if any, parameters to tweak. Rather, they are straightforward calculations that never change. So, I expect all the calculation routines to have maybe a few parameters that can be modified in the LAIO scripts, while the vast majority of the work is done in Pascal. That will make it easier to write the code and it will execute faster.
What LAIO is still missing is a definitive list of variables. I have made a few vague passes on that but there will be hundreds of these by the time it is done, perhaps close to 1000.
Other
The chorus is gearing up for our spring show and I printed out 5000 labels for our flyers that we sent to our mailing list. We also just closed early registration on the barbershop convention (Pan Pacific 2008) we are hosting in late October/early November 2008. It looks like we will have around 750 attendees with 2 choruses from Japan, 3 from Australia, 3 from New Zealand, 2 from California, and 3 from Oregon/Washington/Canada. There’s even a chorus from Alaska seriously considering attending. Right now we have 11 registered and 7 more “expect to attend” choruses. And for those of you who did a little calculation on this, yes the convention takes place precisely when I will be sending the final executable to Matrix for rendering into DVDs. Oh, joy!
The hospital is putting up the last of the columns for their first floor. They have one of the short walls completed.
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March summary: Good progress on naval review forms and keyboard processing. It is also very nice to close the book on the LAIO design. I regret not being able to get a new version of the program to the beta testers every week, but only twice a month. I’m also borderline panicked about NetPlay.
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Tasks for April
Communications
Continue monitoring the forum threads.
Map and Units
Make corrections to the map on the 15th.
Beta Testing
Upload versions weekly. [est. 2 hours]
Redesign of MWIF Game Engine
Continue to work through the sequence of play giving each phase its own module. [est. 105 hours]
CWIF Conversion
Continue converting from CWIF style internet formats to Game Record Log Formats. [est. 50 hours]
Test the new random number generator. [est. 5 hours in June]
Player Interface
Finish the code for determining and displaying supply lines. [est. 15 hours]
Complete the Task Forces forms. Implement Task Forces as a new “unit type”. [est. 40 hours in May]
Create Unit and hex lists for air missions. [est 20 hours in May]
Display the sequence of play (SOP) on the screen so the player knows where he is within the SOP and what is coming up next. [est. 20 hours in May]
NetPlay
Implement the bidding capability using NetPlay. [est. 30 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. 30 hours]
AI Opponent
Define LAIO variables with their supporting functions. Write a parser for LAIO. Create a few more rules as text and encode them for testing the parser. [est. 190 hours in July - August]
Help System and Tutorials
Nothing scheduled until September.
Player’s Manual
Nothing scheduled until May.
Historical Detail, Animations, and Sound
Nothing scheduled until July.
Other
Practicing for the chorus’ spring show looms large. It is important to learn all the words and notes as soon as possible so we can focus on stage presence (movement) and ‘selling’ each song. Our opening number is “Make ‘Em Laugh”, a real rouser.
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April summary: Keep the beta testers busy and respond to their bug reports. Primarily work with Dan on NetPlay. Continue work on Game Record Log conversions to support NetPlay for entire sequence of play. Devote some time to the getting the New Game Engine to advance through the sequence of play. Do preliminary work on the Task Force Details and Summary forms.
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