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Shannon V. OKeets -> RE: When? (10/1/2009 9:52:04 AM)
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October 1, 2009 Status Report for Matrix Games’ MWIF Forum
I. Project Management
I still don’t know how long it will take me to fix all the bugs. The beta testers discover bugs, report them to me (oftentimes with saved games so I can reproduce them), I recreate the problem, fault isolate the bug, fix the code, and then recreate the situation to make sure the bug is actually fixed.
In September I focused 90% of my time on fixing bugs, and that’s what I’ll be doing in October too.
Communications
I had a long conversation with David Heath and Erik Rutins. All of us want MWIF to be bug-free (to the best of our knowledge) before release.
Nothing new from Mike (Players Manual), Jim (sound effects), and Dave (music).
I monitored all the threads in the MWIF World in Flames forum daily and uploaded versions 2.01.00, 2.01.01, 2.01.02, and 2.01.04 for the beta testers. Version 2.01.03 was used by me and the beta testers never saw it.
Orm continued to post his after-action-reports on Barbarossa.
Patrice continued converting text from the Players Manual into context sensitive help for the forms.
Alain (Caquineur) continued his quest to find all the things that I have done wrong. Regrettably what he finds is wrong and needs to be corrected. This past month he read through the picture and text tutorials (125 pages) and found several dozen typos and the like.
Greg has started reading through the draft of Section 8 of the Players Manual and found several errors I have fixed (he’s on page 40 of 150).
Rob Jenkins continues to do new naval unit writeups every week.
Alain sent me an updated version of the Land Unit writeups, which contained new contributions from Adam and David Hughes.
Peter Skoglund wrapped up the convoy setups for all the major powers for the Global War scenario.
No communications with Harry Rowland or Chris Marinacci.
Hardware and Software Development Tools
I have not installed ThemeEngine July/2007.
II. Sequence of Play
Beta Testing
I uploaded four new versions for the beta testers this month, which met my goal of one a week.
Version 2.01.00 (26 changes): added 6 more slots for context sensitive help, fixed a bug where some reinforcements specified in the setup data arrived 1 year late, added a dozen checks in various places for invalid indices (e.g., no unit selected), fixed bugs in restoring games, Flyouts, foreign troop commitment, using oil (when none is available), and improved the main form so the current phase of the game stands out from all the other information shown there.
Version 2.01.01 (29 changes) was mostly to: fix bugs in naval combat, ground support interception, claiming the Baltic States, and Chinese air missions, enable saving games during anti-aircraft fire, improve the information in the partisan table to more clearly explain what is in each column, add help buttons to the MapViews and Screen Layouts lists (the beta testers had many questions about these forms so context sensitive help is important), add help messages to the sequence of play form so clicking on any of the 152 phase/subphase/et al labels displays context sensitive help for that phase/et al. I improved the air-to-air combat process so it is smoother and less confusing to both new and experienced players, and added an MWIF form to display the air-to-air combat results table. I eliminated the ‘phase’ pDestroyUnits from the code. In it place is the New Owner form which appears during conquest when naval units need to be assigned to a new major power. I also fixed a bug so French Indo-China and Madagascar can be aligned by Japan.
Version 2.01.02 (23 changes) added new code so major ports can now be captured (which damages them and makes them minor ports until repaired). This version fixed bugs in naval combat declaration, producing units where the unit type has units with different costs (e.g., repairing ships), overrunning naval units that had nowhere to rebase (e.g., when iced-in), anti-aircraft fire by naval units at sea, several problems with the New Owner form, and forced rebase digressions. Most visible were the changes to the Victory form which now shows the status of all 67 objective hexes - at any time during play.
Version 2.01.03 was never released to the beta testers and just used by me.
Version 2.01.04 (21 changes) enabled sorting the objective hexes in the victory form, added 3 more combat results table forms (naval, anti-aircraft, and ASW), improved the land combat CRT so it matches all the others, and added a new form for restoring games from within an existing game (the opening screen provided information on the saved game prior to restoring it - which I cloned for the new form). There were also several other changes related to the optional rules Convoys in Flames, Amphibious Units, and SCS transport. Some of the bug fixes were to land combat resolution (units both shattered & destroyed), saving games during land combat resolution, and several cosmetic bugs in the Scrap Units form. The major changes with this version were the addition of new code for the Surrender phase (CWIF did not include that phase) and the Liberation phase (where the rules had changed since the CWIF code was written).
Test Script/Plan
One of the beta testers started using the scripts. I am not sure how that is working out.
Game Engine Redesign
Nothing new on rewriting the supply routines.
Units, Map, and Scenarios
Rob continues to generate new naval unit writeups and send me periodic updates of the master file. Alain sent me his current master copy of the land unit writeups, including some new ones from Adam and David Hughes. David is new to the team and is writing very informed descriptions of the Commonwealth units (ask him about his book).
Optional Rules
I checked the code for SCS Transport and Amphibious Units, which now looks ok (there were some changes to the rules since CWIF was coded). I also worked on ASW escorts, ASW carriers, and the special subs (e.g., snorkel).
Saved Games
There are some places in the sequence of play where the player is permitted to save a game but the saved game can not be restored. And sometime the reverse is true, where the program prohibits saving a save, although if it were saved, it could be restored. I’ll go through all this systematically someday, but with 150+ forms and 150+ phases/subphase/et al, nailing this down perfectly is more than a few minutes work. Most of this relates to die rolls, where I do not want the player to just keep cycling through die rolls until he gets one he likes.
III. Player Interface
The New Owner form had a dozen or so bugs, which is about par for the course. As mentioned above, I added 4 new forms for combat results: air-to-air, anti-aircraft, ASW, and naval combat. There was also a new form for restoring saved games from within an existing game. I spent some time running the various combat phases looking for ways to improve how they functioned. Some needed major improvements but they are looking much better now.
I made a serious effort to transform the Victory form from a simple summary into a source of information on where the objective hexes are and who controls what. For new players this will be essential since not everyone knows where Diego Suarez and Taihoku are. It seemed silly for a game of this complexity to not have a decent presentation of the victory conditions.
I have been focusing on fixing the combat processes: some bugs, but equally important is the smoothness of the player interface and providing feedback to the player on what is happening. These all go hand-in-hand. A spiffier form, with carefully chosen wording and presentation of prompts and warnings, plus close attention to the use of keystrokes and mouse clicks to input decisions, makes for less confusion. Just in case, there is immediate access to context sensitive help on every form.
As of today there are 156 slots for context sensitive help for forms, and ~120 of them have completed text messages. There is a different set of help messages for all the 150+ phases et al - all of the help messages are written for these. That’s over 300 context sensitive help messages.
IV. NetPlay
Nothing new.
V. PBEM
Nothing new.
VI. AI Opponent
Peter finished creating and posting alternate convoy setups for each of the major powers.
Ian Wilson (PhD in AI) strongly recommended creating an abstract layer to the MWIF geography, so planning and decision making do not have to be done at the hex level. I had expected to do something along those lines but after Ian’s suggestion, and having worked with Peter on setting up units in Spain and France, my ideas kind of jelled. The result is a 4 level breakdown of the world map: (1) global, (2) theater of operations, (3) area of operations, and (4) sea area groups/land regions. These are hierarchical (1 down to 4), mutually exclusive and exhaustive for all 70,200 hexes.
Patrice has started work on the first cut at this and I spent a day or so digging down into the details too. Each geographical component will have one or more decision makers assigned by the AI Opponent. Now many of these ‘areas’ will be irrelevant to most, if not all, of the major powers. For example, who cares about the Southern Ocean or Hudson Bay (in MWIF)? And Italy’s interest in the Pacific is comparable to China’s interest in the Atlantic - none whatsoever for both.
The benefit for the AIO design is that when a decision needs to be made, (e.g., which naval units to include in a moving stack?), then the AIO has a well define frame of reference for making that decision. On land, this enables the creation of fall-back positions in Russia and China that include a group of hexes. Another gain is that sea area pipelines will be composed of a series SAGs.
VII. Documentation
I got an email from Mike about him returning to editing the Players Manual, but I heard nothing more after my reply.
I made many changes to the Players Manual Section 8. In particular, I reviewed and revised all the screen shots and their accompanying text. In the process of going through these I came upon several instances where the form was outdated in terms of ‘style’. I brought those up-to-date. Right now I have 10 forms which need coding changes, 14 that need screen shots, and 11 which need revised text.
Nothing new on Section 6, PBEM and NetPlay forms.
VIII. Learning Aids (tutorials, training video, embedded help text)
Nothing new on the 2 remaining chapters of the training video: naval movement/combat and production.
IX. Glitz (historical video, sound effects, music, historical unit write-ups)
To the best of my knowledge, the currently active authors for the unit writeups are Robert, Alain, Adam, and David. I am waiting on the sound effects from Jim and the music from Dave.
I did some work on printing out the map. Mostly this was motivated by my need to have something I can examine while figuring out strategic, operational, and tactical decision making for the AIO. Along the way I generated a printed copy that had hexes large enough to hold the counters from WIF FE. To do that I increased the zoom level to maximum (8), took a screen shot, and then increased the magnification of the captured image by 50%. The quality of the output looked great on my not-very-expensive printer, but you would need a lot of paper for the full map. I was taking the screen shots using 300 dpi TIF.
X. Marketing
Andy Johnson says he will transfer ownership of the MWIF fan site he started to set up before his new job prohibited him from working on it. If anyone is interested, just send me an email or Personal Message (PM).
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
I simply replace old master files with new ones when Rob and Alain send me updates.
5. Players Manual
9 of 11 sections are done.
6. Context sensitive help
I need to write a few lines for ~50 minor forms that pop up during play. For example, there is a special form for choosing which of a group of bombers to clear through during air-to-air combat. I also need to write text for the new form I created last month.
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. I need to round out my collection.
8. Tutorials and training video
The Training Video is 80% done. There are still some lingering bugs in naval combat which need to be fixed before I can record the training video on that topic. The same is true of production.
9. Player Interface
With the exception of the Standing Order forms for PBEM, I have finished the forms.
II Tasks requiring a medium number of hours
10. 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 2003.
11. PBEM
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.
III Tasks requiring a large number of hours
12. Sequence of Play
There are still bugs related to the sequence of play, though that number keeps dropping every week.
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 need to instantiate, with actual data, the form used to monitor internet communications while a game is in progress.
14. AI Opponent
Presently I am looking at the geographical breakdown of the map. Once that is done, I will make a quick realignment of the decision making assignments for each decision maker. This will simplify converting the AIO decision making that I have written from plain text into LAIO rules. I need to finish writing the parser. Which then leaves the task of calibrating the rules’ performance so the AIO plays well.
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