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Shannon V. OKeets -> RE: When? (7/2/2009 6:15:44 PM)
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I had this ready to post yesterday (really, I did!), but I was unable to log into the forums in the afternoon and evening (Hawaii time).
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July 1, 2009 Status Report for Matrix Games’ MWIF Forum
I. Project Management
We are looking at the first week of November, 2009 for product release.
Communications
Barry finished all the historical videos (26 of them).
Jim (sound effects) has been working on the summer releases of other Matrix Games products but should get back to MWIF in July or August.
Mike (Players Manual editor) has been working on the summer releases of other Matrix Games products but should get back to MWIF in July or August.
Ignacio has offered to work on a translation of the Players Manual into Spanish. Though it is still early days on this, Matrix Games is going to have Mike (MWIF editor) make copies of the MWIF documentation available to Ignacio prior to product release. A possibility exists that the translation might be done in time for the initial release.
Andy Johnson (Texas) has begun work on a MWIF fan site. He has received permission and encouragement from Matrix Games for this endeavor. To start with, he has chosen the name WorldInFlames.net for the fan site.
I monitored all the threads in the MWIF World in Flames forum daily and uploaded versions 1.01.00, 1.01.01, and 1.01.03 for the beta testers. The beta testers never got to see 1.01.02, though I did substantial testing using it. Orm and Lars continue to add posts as quasi after-action-reports on Barbarossa and the war in China.
Patrice continues to provide me with screen shots for the Players Manual. More recently he has gone through all the Picture & Text Tutorials and brought those graphics/screen shots up-to-date. He also regenerated his PPS files for those tutorials (PPS is a Power Point Slide Show automated presentation).
Rob Jenkins continues to do an enormous number of naval unit writeups every week. He has taken over as coordinator of the Naval units writeups from Andy Johnson (Idaho) who had to return to working on his ranch full-time.
Alain (Caquineur) has begun work editing the Land Unit writeups. There are over 100,000 lines in those writeups so that is going to take him some time.
Peter Skoglund made progress on the setup script for the French in the Global War scenario. We’re pretty close to having that ready for testing.
Sean Drummy posted my 22 new screen shots to the Matrix Games web site under Games in Development. There are now 34 screen shots therein.
No communications with Harry Rowland or Chris Marinacci.
Hardware and Software Development Tools
I installed Camtasia of which I then made immediate use, producing 6 chapters of the Training Video. I have not installed ThemeEngine July/2007.
II. Sequence of Play
Beta Testing
I uploaded three new versions for the beta testers, somewhat behind my goal of one a week.
Version 1.01.00 was a complete new version, since the patches on the previous version had grown to 10. This version enabled playing the OGG sound effects (for testing purposes), redesigned the Initiative form, revised the weather tutorial so the relationship between the weather die roll and advancing the impulse number is easier to understand, fixed problems with bringing in reinforcements, and cured other small ills.
Version 1.01.01 fixed problems with naval interceptions, naval combat, Vichy France, offensive chits, Flyout/Global map interactions, and other stuff. This version also included Geoff’s tweaking of the bitmap images for the naval counters so they are now centered better with the counter frame. To go with that, I made some small adjustments to the vertical positioning of naval unit names when they required 2 lines of text (e.g., CV Franklin Delano Roosevelt).
I just uploaded Version 1.01.03 today. I had gone through and cleaned up a lot of cosmetic problems the beta testers had found, corrected the calculation of victory conditions for Guadalcanal (which has its own personal set of victory conditions), converted the US Entry form so it uses a component from the JV library and matches all the other grids/tables shown in the forms, revised all the graphics for the 10th tutorial (sequence of play) so there is markedly less clutter, and repositioned more than half the sea area section boxes. The last change was done so all the sea areas are on even numbered rows. This has the effect of enabling a very tight detailed map to be created so 10 separate detailed maps can be viewed simultaneously - one sea area/set of section boxes per detailed map.
Test Script/Plan
Nothing new.
Game Engine Redesign
The code for rewriting the supply routines hasn’t advanced much, though I did fix one bug in what I have written so far.
Units, Map, and Scenarios
Rob continues his weekly updates of the naval unit write ups. Geoff revised the naval unit bitmaps. I removed Sweden from the list of countries involved in Barbarossa.
Optional Rules
Nothing new.
Saved Games
I fixed a couple of problems with saving/restoring games.
III. Player Interface
In addition to the complete overhauls of the Initiative and the US Entry forms (both mentioned above), I reviewed and revised the PBEM forms for Standing Orders. These are still incomplete but I have half of them done now.
After my recent changes to the US Entry form, only the Bidding for major powers form remains to be converted to using a JV component for its grid/table.
IV. NetPlay
With assistance from Karl Lean (Computer War in Europe) I now know how to make NetPlay work at the technical level. I need to turn that knowledge into code.
V. PBEM
I finished my revisions to the PBEM design (Section 6 of the Players Manual - Modes of Play). After all was said and done, there are 22 Standing Orders. The only ugly part of this is rebasing units that are overrun. Overruns can occur during land movement and advance after combat, but more problematic are the de facto overruns when control of a country changes (e.g., conquest, liberation, surrender, Vichy). Because of this, the Standing Orders for how to rebase units are used in multiple places in the sequence of play. Players are going to have to pay attention to what their SOs are for rebasing units when the end of turn occurs and control of a country might change.
Besides creating the missing PBEM forms, I need to define data structures for the Standing Orders.
VI. AI Opponent
I wrote the code for the first four steps for the parser and created a form for presenting the results of each step as the parser proceeds through a script. Roughly, this means the parser is 40% done.
Peter sent me background data for a proposed setup script for France. This is pretty exciting, since it is the first time we have tackled coding the text descriptions I have on how to set up a major power’s units. After a couple of iterations, Peter and I reached agreement on: (1) how to set up the French units, and (2) how to encode that data. I think it looks pretty good and we should be able to start work on the scripts for setting up the other 7 major powers in July.
I also went back over what I have written on the French strategic plan. Last year at about this time, I split the French strategic plan into its component parts for conversion into LAIO scripts. In so doing, I left the rather monolithic first 3 parts untouched. Over the past month, I broke out the first two and I rendered them into data files. As a prerequisite, I created the storage structures for those pieces of the strategic plan: vital hexes and regions of conflicts (land, sea, and air). Once I confirm that this code works, I’ll be able to give the task to Peter of doing the same for the other 7 major powers. It doesn’t require much effort, but the more tasks I can give to others, the better.
VII. Documentation
Happily, section 6 of the Players Manual is mostly complete. I have the subsection on PBEM in place, though it still contains extraneous “notes to self” that I am using for creating the missing forms for Standing Orders. The subsection on NetPlay is blank at this point.
I put together a strange collection of information for Section 11, Appendices. That section is now complete except for a few sentences I am not ready to write at this time. Those concern “other files” that will be included with the released product (there might be some more that I haven’t thought of yet) and a short description of the INI file.
What I did include in the Appendices is a complete list of the unit types, terrain types, countries (and other geographical regions), mouse and keyboard commands, a short overview of the sequence of play, and the two alternative land combat tables. There’s other stuff too, like an explanation of where all the bitmaps are used; so it’s a real mishmash. However, players who are interested in this detailed look at some of the program’s internals should be amused for hours, if not days. For example, there is a full definition of the file structures for the map and unit data.
Other than Section 8, Player Interface, my work on the Players Manual is drawing to a close. When Patrice sends me new screen shots for Section 8, I incorporate them into the Players Manual and write the necessary text to explain those screen shots.
The new event here is Ignacio’s offer to do the translation into Spanish. Clearly, that will not involve me, since “I know nothing senor” (a Fawlty Towers reference).
VIII. Learning Aids (tutorials, training video, embedded help text)
I took the text description of one form from the Players Manual Section 8 and converted it for inclusion in the context sensitive help file. I had done a dozen of these previously and I wanted to refresh my memory about what this task entails. With a little luck, I’ll find a volunteer to do these conversions.
I spent quite a lot of time this past week working on the Training Video. After reviewing and revising the list of topics to be covered, I ended up with 11 chapters. So far I have recorded the first 6 chapters which total 2 hours and 40 minutes (WMV format, viewable using Windows Media Player). I guess these are going to come in close to 5 hours of viewing time. I had been hoping for 90 minutes - foolish me. Even with skipping over stuff, I have been unable to trim the massive amount of information about the game that a player needs to know down to something short and sweet.
The hard fact is that MWIF has 152 phases/subphases/digressions, and uses over 110 forms. A little math reveals that if only 1 minute is spent to describe each of those, over 4 hours would be needed. What remains to do are the chapters: on starting a new game and setting up units (#7), moving land, naval, and air units and having them engage in combat (#8, #9, #10) and production & politics (#11).
IX. Glitz (historical video, sound effects, music, historical unit write-ups)
My main accomplishment this past month on the glitz was figuring out how all the glitz elements are going to work together. I am pretty happy with that design. I’ve got a plan, and that’s what I’ll implement.
Barry finished all 26 of the historical video files (in WMV format). They look great. Once Jim has sent me the sound effects I’ll write the code for playing both during a game.
With the help of Karl Lean, I got the OGG files playing from within the program. This format is used for both the sound effects and music.
I sent Dave my assembled notes for desired music files. While for the video and sound effects I was able to be quite specific, for the music I was rather vague. That’s primarily because I am unsure what is available and the possibility of copyright issues.
We have lost Andy (Idaho) as an editor for the naval unit writeups (he will be missed). On the other hand we have gained Alain as an editor for the land unit writeups.
X. Marketing
Sean’s upload of the 22 new screen shots and Andy’s (Texas) work on the fan site are the only major events in this category. Though perhaps Orm’s and Lars’ After Action Reports in the forum on Barbarossa and the war in China could be considered marketing.
Remaining Tasks
I Tasks requiring a small number of hours
1. Historical video
Integrate these into the program (randomizing when they are shown).
2. Sound effects
Awaiting Jim’s complete set of sound effects, after which I will integrate them into the program.
3. Music
Awaiting Dave’s complete set of music, after which I will integrate them into the program.
4. Unit writeups
Rob continues to generate more naval unit writeups and Alain is editing the land unit writeups. I simply replace the old files with the new when they send me updates.
5. Players Manual
9 of 11 sections are done. I am unsure how much of these Mike has edited. Of the 2 remaining, Section 6, Modes of Play is 95% done and Section 8, Player Interface, requires me to finish the PBEM and NetPlay forms and Patrice to take more screen shots. Then I need to tack on some text describing the forms and how to use them.
6. Context sensitive help
Once Section 8 of the Players Manual is done, I’ll transfer each form’s description into a TXT file for display by MWIF as context sensitive help. There is a lot of that to do, but it’s a mindless task.
7. Auxiliary files
These are starter sets for new players so they can jump right into playing the game without having to make a lot of preparatory decisions. The beta testers provide these and I have accumulated a bunch. I just need to round out my collection.
8. Tutorials and training video
The Training Video is more than half done and I should finish the rest of it this month. Then I will take that work and use it to create the Interactive tutorials. I have a shot at finishing all of these in July.
II Tasks requiring a medium number of hours
9. Optional Rules
For the optional rules that I want to finish, I need to fix bugs and bring them up-to-date with rules changes since circa 2003.
10. PBEM
I’ve done a lot of work on this, but more is needed. The technical task of sending and receiving emails from within the program hasn’t been coded. Work on the standalone program (running on a third party computer) to generate random numbers hasn’t begun. The large task here concerns the Standing Orders: defining and instantiating internal variables, then displaying them in the forms so players can review and revise them.
11. Player Interface
With the exception of the Standing Order forms for PBEM, I have finished the forms (~110). But there have been ~70 bugs reported related to the player interface. Not all of these are serious and many are ‘suggestions’ from the beta testers that can be ignored with little or no effect on the game’s playability. Other items are easy to correct. But undoubtedly fixing some of these bugs will be essential for program performance and difficult to fault isolate and correct.
III Tasks requiring a large number of hours
12. Sequence of Play
There are a slew of bugs related to the sequence of play (~180). I knocked off one of the major ones this past month (naval movement interception) but naval combat abort and supply still remain sullen and unresponsive. Because of the high level of redundancy in bug reports (i.e., multiple reports of the same bug), I estimate less than an hour per item reported.
13. NetPlay
There isn’t a lot to do directly related to NetPlay, but the underlying performance of the program in generating Game Record Log Entries has to be perfect. That’s because the GRLs are sent to each computer in a networked game to keep them up-to-date with the decisions of all players. I have over 530 types of GRLs defined, with their supporting code for encoding them prior to transmission and decoding them upon receipt. Regrettably, I haven’t gone through them rigorously to make sure each one executes at the proper point in the sequence of play. Additionally, I need to instantiate, with actual data, the form used to monitor internet communications while a game is in progress. But the vast majority of this task is getting the GRLs perfect.
14. AI Opponent
Test scripts await testing, which requires me to finish writing the parser. I have the vast majority of the AIO decision making written out in plain text. Taking that plain text and rendering it into rules will require a lot of time. Which leaves the task of calibrating the rules’ performance so the AIO plays well.
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