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Shannon V. OKeets -> RE: When? (1/1/2009 9:28:51 AM)
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January 1, 2009 Status Report for Matrix Games’ MWIF Forum
As I did for the last two January’s, here is a year in review rather than a monthly report.
Accomplishments of 2008
Map
At the start of 2008 the map was done except for touch-ups. Patrice has maintained his interest in the map, and continued his work to improve its accuracy, information, and aesthetics. As always, dozens of forum members contributed to this effort. The map, she be done.
Units
At the start of 2008 we had finalized all the bitmaps for individually named units and for anonymous units. More text descriptions for individual land and naval units were completed during the year and Andy Johnson reviewed and revised all 1200+ writeups for the air units. At this point I am happy with the writeups we have, though some units still have no text at all. The unit writeups are a gloss for the game and not essential for playing it, so the game will be released even if they remain incomplete.
In the spring of 2008 I wrote a utility program to compress the unit bitmaps. That saves time when starting a game, new or saved, and reduces the demand for Windows bitmap resources. The units, they be done.
Scenarios
The data for setting up all 11 scenarios is complete, including all the new unit types (added since CWIF). The setups have been tested quite a lot by the beta testers, and I haven’t received reports of problems concerning the scenario data for months now.
However, I did not make any progress on the 3 scenario items that were on my task list at the beginning of 2008: (1) adding a special subphase post-setup for placing partisan units on the map behind enemy lines, (2) placing units in and taking units out of the Transfer Pool during play for the 2 half-map scenarios, and (3) the special production rules for those same 2 scenarios.
CWIF Conversion
I redid the internal processing sequence for land combat resolution and the forms used during that phase. In so doing I created a series of subphases for land combat resolution. This identified some areas of confusion in the Rules as Written, and let me clarify the order in which events should occur when all the different optional rules are in use. I merged two older forms into one and structured the land combat resolution form to match the air-to-air combat form. The latter also received a lot of my attention during 2008, though not as much as the land combat resolution form.
Game Interface
I completely revamped the main form, giving it a smaller footprint on the main screen, while simultaneously adding a unit data panel. The benefit of having the unit data panel in the main form is that several other forms no longer needed their own unit data panel. Specifically, the setup tray became much smaller. This solved a major complaint from the beta testers with smallish screens that too little of the detailed map was visible during setup, because of the room required for other forms (e.g., main form and setup tray). Other changes to the main form included reorganizing the layout for the buttons, flags (one for each major power in the game), and status information.
I made the flags look different when the major power has nothing to do in the phase. Then, for each little panel of status information, I added a pop-up help message when you click on the panel. For instance, when you click on the current weather, you get the weather report, describing what the current weather is in each of weather zones and what the probabilities are for the upcoming weather in each weather a zone. When you click on the terrain type, you see the help screen describing the different terrain types and their effect on movement and combat.
I did a lot of work improving Flyouts and that is now the primary tool for selecting units from within a hex that contains a lot of units. Using Flyouts, you can scroll through all the units in a hex, viewing up to 9 of them at a time. To make loading units onto naval transports simpler, I modified the processing of mouse clicks so that can now be done using the Flyouts form.
I added a Sequence of Play form in 2008. This displays the sequence of play, identifying the current phase/subphase. It does not show the entire sequence of play since that would take up too much room. But included in the presentation of the current phase/subphase is a clear indication of the phases/subphases that have just been completed and those that are coming up next. One of the motivations of adding this form was to help me debug when the sequence of play wasn’t executing properly. Of course, new WIF players (and there are some of those on the beta test team) find this helpful for learning the sequence of play.
I added a form for Selectable Units which is very useful for moving air units. It also comes in handy in a dozen or more other phases, where only a limited number of units are available for selection. By having a list of the units that can move in a phase displayed in the upper left corner of the screen, players can quickly see what might be done in a phase. Using the form is easy: click to the right of the unit and the map is centered on the unit. Click on the unit itself, and it is just as if you had placed the cursor over the unit on the map and picked it up with a left click. Together with the Flyouts, the Selectable Units form has made finding, picking up, and moving units less cumbersome.
I merged the two forms that reported the weather into one, which now shows both the current weather and the probabilities for the upcoming weather. I created an optional rules form which displays: all the optional rules, which ones are in use for the current game, and easy access to a help message for each optional rule (which describes the optional rule in full). To improve the players’ understanding of the factories and resources they control, I substantially overhauled the Resources-Production form. It now presents information on factories, resources, oil, oil usage, production points, and build points clearly and concisely.
In general, I reviewed and improved all 100+ forms again, with the most common improvement being to make the units appear larger when a list of them are displayed in a form. That happens a lot; in 50+ forms I would guess. The larger images make it easier to understand what units are under consideration, say when required to take a naval combat loss.
I still need to do more work on the Naval Review Details and Summary forms. I did a lot of work on them early in the year but stopped around the start of summer. I need to clean up a dozen bugs or so reported by the beta testers when they put those two forms to practical use. In addition I want to create a little Units Destinations form to go with the Selectable Units form. The idea is to be able to click on a unit in the Selectable Units form and have a list of possible destinations popup. For example, you could see all the hexes where a strategic bomber would have a viable target.
MWIF Game Engine
I went through all the phases, subphases, and sub-subphases in the game and gave each phase its own module (i.e., Pascal file). There are 63 phases, 72 subphases, and 10 sub-subphases. I also created an entirely new way of handling the game events that branch out of the normal sequence of play, which I named digressions. There are 8 types of digressions in the game and they are called from the normal sequence of play in 50+ places.
For example, digressions cover the task of asking a player who has just lost a unit whether he wants to scrap it or not. They also handle the task of rebasing units that are overrun, and relocating units that are ‘teleported’ according to the rules (e.g., when a country is conquered, units belonging to a neutral major power are ‘placed’ in the nearest friendly hex). When digressions occur, it is often a major power on the non-phasing side that makes the decision.
By writing the code so the current decisions makers are saved and then restored once the digression is completed, the program never has to change the phase (or subphase) of the game. CWIF had many artificial phases to deal with this situation and then needed additional logic do cope with the restoring the phase. MWIF uses digressions to do the same work, never changing the phase until it is time to go onto the next phase in the sequence of play.
Processing naval interceptions, was one of my primary motivations for creating digressions, since naval interceptions can be recursive. From my perspective, digressions are wonderful because the phases and subphases in the sequence of play now just chug right along, going down the line with the only loop-backs occurring for multiple impulses in a turn and multiple turns in the game. I think this will make the sequence of play easier for new players to understand and learn.
I am finishing up writing the code for the last 2 phase modules, (the two naval combat phases), and I have 3 more digressions to implement fully: naval interception, correcting overstacking, and collapsing Vichy France. Once I have those done, the sequence of play code will be precisely the way I want it. That will enable me to insert the necessary changes to support PBEM easily.
Saved Games
All the code for saving and restoring games is functioning and I have added the ability to restore games that were saved using an earlier version of the program. This is a vital feature for the final release, so if there are any patches after publication, players will still be able to continue playing games they saved using an earlier version of the program. There undoubtedly will be more changes to the saved games format over time, but those are very straightforward to code and should be no problem.
Internet - NetPlay
I personally wrote the technical NetPlay code for use in MWIF games over the Internet. So far this is only a stand alone test program, but it is in the same language as MWIF (Delphi/Pascal) and will slip right into the main program as a module. This test program will also be included in the final release of MWIF as a stand alone program, so players can test setting up communications over internet with their friends without having to fire up the main MWIF program. That should help get IP addresses and security problems ironed out quickly.
PBEM
I looked at writing technical code comparable to that for NetPlay for sending and receiving email from within MWIF for PBEM play. Based on what I read, that should be easy to do - much easier than implementing internet communications.
Artificial Intelligence Opponent (AIO)
With substantial assistance from Peter, I finished documenting the Language for an Artificial Intelligence Opponent (LAIO). This document serves as the specification for writing the LAIO parser, which I have begun coding. Peter and I worked hard on figuring out how to write viable scripts in LAIO for setting up minor country units. As is typical when doing this work, possible solutions come and go and after trying to write actual scripts, a functional solution evolves. We have now done that and I have 3 sample scripts to use for developing the parser. That is, I have setup scripts written in LAIO for Persia, Afghanistan, and The Netherlands, which I will use to debug the parser.
Throughout last year I would periodically go over the strategic plans I had written for each of the 8 major powers and the other descriptions I have put down on paper for how the AIO will make decisions that are common to all major powers. Choosing the action type for an impulse, for example, will be just one script; there won’t be a separate script for each major power to figure out how to make that decision. Declaring war on minor countries is the opposite. Included in each major power’s strategic plan is how that major power will decide if and when to declare war on minor countries.
Help System and Tutorials
All the Picture and Text tutorials are completed. Besides the sequence of play form mentioned above, there are now menu items on the drop down Help menu for accessing: RAC, Terrain Help, Units Symbols and Numbers Help, and the Picture and Text Tutorials.
None of the interactive tutorials have been started yet. However, I have several pages of notes describing what material will be included in each tutorial. Part of the reason I am holding off on this is that the interactive tutorials will all use saved games as a starting point. When the player starts an interactive tutorial, the program will load a saved game and then ‘coach’ the player to go through a series of actions using the mouse and keyboard. The idea is that the only way to really learn how to use a player interface is to actually USE the player interface. I expect to do one of the interactive tutorials in February just so I can work through all the little problems that are certain to come up. If I can get one of them finished, then the others should follow quickly. Indeed, I am hoping that some of the beta testers will be able to help out with setting up the saved games and critiquing the coaching commentary I’ll be writing.
The only thing remaining to complete the in-game help system is writing a help message for each of the 100+ forms. Only 12 of those have been completed. As noted below, most of the text for these has already been written: it is embedded in RAC.
Player’s Manual
I completed RAC (Rules as Coded), which is taken directly from RAW (Rules as Written) and uses 98% of the text from RAW. RAC is the backbone of the MWIF documentation and the Player’s Manual contains innumerable references to it. With the help of Patrice Forno, Harry Rowland, and others, RAW received massive clarifications and corrections this year (360+ entries). Australian Design Group also released a 2008 Annual which contained a section on errata for WIF. Both of those sources of changes to RAW were incorporated into RAC and will be implemented in the final release of MWIF product 1.
During the summer I worked with Erik Rutins at Matrix Games and the person he assigned to edit and otherwise prepare the MWIF Player’s Manual for printing. We have agreed on the Table of Contents, following the general style guidelines that Matrix Games uses for its games. However, the size of the MWIF Player’s Manual is enormous compared to other games they have published, so Erik made arrangements with their printer to split the documentation for MWIF into two booklets of roughly equal size: 300+ double sided pages, 5" by 7" . For reference, RAC is 152 pages using 8.5" by 11" single sided pages. I expect the Player’s Manual to be about the same length as RAC. Both documents will be included as PDF files with the released product, so if players want to, they can print it out themselves on whatever size paper they prefer.
I also made a trial run of sending the MWIF documentation in WordPerfect format to Matrix and they were able to process it cleanly. Once I finish writing it, they should have no trouble editing it and printing it.
I wrote some more text for the Player’s Manual during the year, putting in a bunch of the odds ‘n ends parts, like the preface and list of appendices. More substantially, I have been writing a new section I added in December, which goes through the sequence of play. The new Sequence of Play section gives a light overview for each of the phases, subphases, sub-subphases, and digressions. It mainly discusses what happens during the ‘phase’, who makes decisions, and when the phase is over.
In the summer, I started work on the help messages that can be called up for each of the 100+ forms in the game. 75% of the text for each help message is taken directly from RAC. The other 25% discusses the form’s components, such as buttons, and how to use the form when you are making a decision, or looking for information about the current game. Happily, each write up for a help message can be transferred, almost verbatim, into the Player’s Manual Section 8, which describes all the forms.
Hardware and Software
I never got around to upgrading to Theme Engine 2007, primarily because I am not seeing a lot of problems running MWIF under Vista. Although, if you have a Vista computer, MWIF currently needs to be run under XP emulation. I expect to install the Theme Engine upgrade before the final release, more as a precautionary step than an essential one.
Beta Testing
I released 31 new versions of the program to the beta testers during 2008. The version numbers ran from 06.00 through 11.06. That is somewhat more than one new version every two weeks. I would have preferred to average one per week, but 31 isn’t too shabby a number.
My next bug report will be numbered 1055 and I have 212 currently active. Things aren’t that bad though, since I can fix about 10 bugs a day when I focus my attention on them. And this doesn’t count the easy bugs that the beta testers find, that I fix immediately upon reading the bug report (i.e., in less than 5 minutes). Those bugs never even get a number assigned.
I have kept the number of beta testers at ~30 during 2008 and will increase that to 40 in January 2209. [I’ll post a request for applicants in the forum once I get version 12.00 uploaded for beta testing.] Presently things are running smoothly, with the beta testers providing me with enough details for me to find and fix bugs quickly. It wasn’t always that way, and when we add the next batch of new beta testers, I expect there to be a few bumps in the road.
Robert Nebel and Jimm have developed a fearsome set of Test Scripts to make sure MWIF performs in accordance with the Rules as Written for WIF FE. Those have all been parceled out to the beta testers, though I do not believe the beta testers are being as rigorous in testing the rules they have signed up for as I would wish; though I could be mistaken - and I hope that I am.
Project Management
I updated my detailed project plan monthly and expect to finish MWIF product 1 this spring. I monitored all the threads in the MWIF World in Flames forum daily, generated weekly status reports for David Heath and Erik Rutkins at Matrix, and posted monthly status reports to the forum on or around the first of every month. Personally, I try to answer every question posted in the forums, sent to me as a forum PM (personal message), or sent via email. I do read everything, and I endeavor to assimilate and accommodate different viewpoints and opinions into MWIF.
Communications
People with whom I had extensive communication during the year were: Patrice Forno and Peter Skoglund. At different times of the year I worked closely with Andi Johnson, Jesper Pehrson, and Robert Nebel. I had little or no direct contact with Chris Marinacci and Harry Rowland. The beta testers posted and sent bugs reports and oftentimes included copies of saved games so I could quickly recreate the problems they encountered.
Because this is a volunteer group, people come and go as other demands are placed on their time and their interest in MWIF waxes and wanes. I’ll repeat myself by stating that I can not say enough about how appreciative I am for the wonderful contributions made to MWIF by so many from such diverse backgrounds.
To all, I say thank you for your help on MWIF in 2008.
Tasks for 2009
Finish MWIF product 1 this spring.
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