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Shannon V. OKeets -> RE: When? (2/4/2009 1:10:25 AM)
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February 1, 2009 Status Report for Matrix Games’ MWIF Forum
Accomplishments of January
Project Management
Firm release date for MWIF product 1 is July 27th, 2009.
Communications
I had a long conversation with Erik Rutins at Matrix Games and we agreed on July 27th as the release date. I am comfortable with that. It provides me with some slack in the schedule and I can always trim a couple of the “nice to have” elements from the program if push comes to shove - distributing them as updates a couple of months after the game is released.
Jim Corbin has offered to do work on video tutorials for MWIF. Erik and David have taken that under review.
Erik is still looking into pricing a printed copy of the map.
I monitored all the threads in the MWIF World in Flames forum daily and uploaded version 12.00 for the beta testers.
Patrice, Christopher, Mike, and Paul sent me writeups for the Players Manual on advice to new players. Patrice also did a few touch ups to the Africa map based on input from a forum member who has personal experience in parts of Africa. Greyshaft has started helping me on the Player’s Manual by taking text from Rules as Coded and placing it into the section on Forms.
Peter Skoglund is nearing the end of the list of minor country set up scripts for the AI Opponent.
Robert Nebel provided revisions to the test plans and scripts with additions that cover naval movement and combat.
Nothing new on unit writeups.
No communications with Chris Marinacci or Harry Rowland.
Hardware and Software Development Tools
I have not installed ThemeEngine July/2007 - the status on this is unchanged.
Beta Testing
I uploaded 12.00 for the beta testers. This version was almost 2 months in the making and included the final conversion of phases and subphases from CWIF Windows Messaging System to MWIF’s Indy10/NetPlay. It also contains conversion from ‘phases’ to digressions for: naval interceptions, naval combat, and aborts from naval combats.
I reviewed how active the current beta testers are and recruited 12 more. They should begin actively beta testing in the second week of February.
Units, Map, and Scenarios
Some of the map changes proposed by forum members, which Patrice has accepted as valid/good improvements, require redoing a few of the bitmap graphics. I have told Patrice that I will make one more pass on those before final release (I run a series of utility programs to generate a compressed file of map bitmaps).
Optional Rules
I spent a few hours going over optional rules, mostly in regard to naval movement and combat. My remaining task list for optional rules is split between reviewing existing code (from CWIF) and adding new optional rules not included in CWIF. Towards implementing new optional rules, I did more work on Convoys in Flames. That has a lot of pieces and I am roughly halfway done.
Player Interface
I changed the air-to-air combat form for how the subphases are displayed so they match the improvements I made for the Land Combat Resolution.
I added a new form for selecting units from the Naval Combat Abort queue. Previously each unit was aborted immediately, so CWIF had no need for this form.
I drastically modified the Plane Role form - for deciding whether to send fighter-bombers and carrier air units as fighters or bombers on air missions and in naval air combat. To support NetPlay, where multiple players are making these decisions simultaneously, I had to give the players a broader perspective on what was happening. For example, if the CW and USA both have carrier air units in a naval air combat, each of those players needs to see what decisions the other is making for fighter and bomber assignments. At the same time, if the German and Italian players are also making decisions for that naval air combat, neither side should see what the other side is deciding. After my changes, information on decisions is communicated between players on the same side but not between those on opposing sides.
I modified the form for landing carrier air units on carriers. Here the changes to the form were mostly minor, but the mods to the logic for accessing the form were substantial. There are 8 places in the sequence of play where carrier air units return to carriers. Sometimes it is an individual unit aborting from a combat, and other times it is a group of carrier air units returning to their carriers simultaneously. In the latter case, it is important to provide the player with the information on all the units - both carrier air units and carriers. That way the player can avoid inadvertently landing his planes such that one of them has nowhere to land. On occasion, there will be nowhere to land (e.g., 3 air units and only room for 2 on carriers). Then the player needs to choose which air unit ditches at sea.
Internet - NetPlay
I didn’t spend any time on NetPlayComTest in January but will do so now that version 12.00 has been uploaded. I should only need a few more hours on the test program and then I’ll incorporate those routines in MWIF proper. First up for really testing NetPlay is the bidding system for deciding who plays which major power groups.
CWIF Conversion
The rewrite of the naval interceptions and naval combat is now done. I just have Overstacking and Collapse Vichy ‘phases’ to convert into Digressions.
MWIF Game Engine
I threw away 2 ‘phases’ inherited from CWIF, and revamped the naval combat subphases. The final list of subphases for the Naval Combat Phase is:
• ChooseSeaArea
• NavalAirSupportA
• NavalAirSupportD
• Commit
• Search
• IncludeSeaBoxes
• IncludeUSUnits
• Surprise
• ChooseType
• AirAir
• AntiAirD
• NavalAirA
• AntiAirA
• NavalAirD
• SurfaceA
• SurfaceD
• ASWD
• SubA
• ASWA
• SubD
• EndRound
• AbortA (voluntary abort by attacker)
• AbortD (voluntary abort by defender)
• NextRound
In the process of making these changes I generated the 40 or so accompanying Game Record Log entries to support NetPlay.
Saved Games
I made a few changes to the format of saved games to accommodate changes to naval interceptions and naval combat. However, I installed a system whereby MWIF checks to see which version of the program was used to save a game and uses branching logic to deal with any changes. The result is that games saved using older versions of the program (e.g., 11.00) can be read and restored by the current version of the program (e.g., 12.00). This works well and seamlessly from the player’s (beta tester’s) point of view.
Obviously this is also how things will work for patches once the game is released.
Player’s Manual
Several forum members wrote subsections of the manual for me on the topic of “Important Decisions”. There are 11 subsections to section 3.4 Important Decisions and 8 of them are completed. A ninth just needs a few edits. Contributors so far are: Patrice, Christopher, Mike, and Paul.
I wrote all 153 subsections for Section 7, Sequence of Play. I then took that text and transferred it into “Help Content.txt” for easy access while a game is in progress. When the player clicks on the sequence of play form, the program displays the text describing the current phase/subphase of the game.
Greyshaft has started helping me on the Player’s Manual by taking text from Rules as Coded and placing it into the section on Forms. For each form I want to have: (1) the pertinent text from RAC for the rules related to the form, (2) a screen shot of the form, and (3) a paragraph or two on how to use the form. In actuality there will probably only be 50 screen shots for the 96 forms. For the simpler forms providing a screen shot would be excessive.
PBEM
Nothing was scheduled.
Historical Video, Music, and Sound
I discussed this with Erik and he has enough information to begin work on the music: a 1 minute piece for each major power, with possible a second for some of the major powers. The first pieces of music would be national anthems (or something comparable). If possible, we’ll try to find a second piece for each major power that is more martial in nature.
As for historical video and sound, I will be reinvigorating those topics in the forum over the next 2 months to finalize: what happens, when, and for how long.
Help System and Tutorials
Nothing new other than what was mentioned under the Player’s Manual. However, once we get the text for the description of the forms done for the Player’s Manual section 8, I will copy that over into the context sensitive help file - like I did for the text describing the phases and subphases.
Oh, and in my conversation with Erik, we decided to put together a short training video for the game. I am thinking along the lines of one impulse where Germany takes a land action and Italy & Japan take a naval and a combined (which does which isn’t clear to me yet). The intent is to play through a single impulse with an on-going narration by the player as he moves & clicks the mouse and enters keystrokes.
AI Opponent
I decided that one way to reduced my task list for creating the AIO is to limit the number of different scenarios that it can play when the game is first released. I’ll do 4 of the 11 scenarios for first release and then add the other 7 as patches in subsequent months. What this removes from my task list is figuring out alternative setups for thousands of units in the 7 scenarios that start late in the war. Each of those scenarios has hundreds, if not thousands, of units on the map at the start of the game. If the AIO always uses the same setup, it becomes too predictable and easy to defeat. But to do a respectable job of designing alternative setups for thousands of units will take time and effort.
The 4 scenarios that will be ready for first release are the ones that will be played the most: the two introductory scenarios (Barbarossa and Guadalcanal) and the Global War scenario (which is virtually the only scenario ever played in over the board games). The fourth scenario is Fascist Tide, which is the European half of the Global War scenario, so it can use the same setups.
Peter continues to work on the scripts for setting up minor countries. I haven’t had time to do anything on the parser lately. But I have started a discussion with Peter (and Patrice & Paul) about the two most complex minor setups remaining: Spain and Turkey. We’ve made some progress on that, so the AIO uses a more abstract system rather than a hard coded “this unit goes in this hex”.
There is a dual purpose behind going to the abstract form: (1) is will actually be easier than trying to hard code all the different combinations and permutations of defenses against the myriad of threats these two minor countries might face when they enter the war, and (2) it is the system that the AIO will use for setting up the major powers. My hope is that eventually the design will be robust enough that the AIO will be able to set up the 7 scenarios that start late in the war without me (or anyone else) having to take time to figure out which units set up in which hexes.
Other
Nothing much other than working on MWIF this past month. The hospital next door is still mucking around with their roof, but the seem to be starting on some of the outlying buildings and landscaping. They’ve put in the ground floor windows, but not the doors.
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January summary: I finished converting all the phases and subphases for NetPlay, though since there are over 10,000 lines of code added for NetPlay (also used by PBEM and AIO) that will need testing.
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Tasks for February
Communications
Continue monitoring the forum threads.
Map and Units
Nada.
Beta Testing
Upload a new version every 5 days. [est. 2 hours]
Work on the backlog of bug reports. [est. 100 hours]
Optional Rules
Review, comment, modify, and create code for optional rules [est. 10 hours]
Redesign of MWIF Game Engine
Fix bugs reported on the newly added code. [est 20 hours]
Player Interface
Finish the code for determining and displaying supply lines. [est. 10 hours]
NetPlay
Implement the bidding capability using NetPlay. [est. 10 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. 50 hours in January]
AI Opponent
Define LAIO variables with their supporting functions. Finish coding the parser for LAIO. [est. 60 hours]
Help System and Tutorials
Nothing scheduled until April.
Player’s Manual
Integrate text from others into the Player’s Manual. [est 10 hours].
Historical Detail, Animations, and Sound
Nothing scheduled until April.
Other
I am scheduled to perform singing valentines again this year: from 9 AM to 9 PM on the 13th and 14th.
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February summary: Get NetPlay functioning. Make a deep cut into the backlog of bug reports.
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