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Shannon V. OKeets -> RE: When? (4/2/2010 10:46:32 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: pakron
While we wait for the next update from Steve, I thought I'd take the opportunity to post a summary of Steve's monthly postings. Hats off to him for providing all this information as he has been working on the game! It is rare to see that (actually, I don't think I've ever seen it).
I think this summary shows how hard is it to estimate a project of this size:
Date Estimated Release Delay Reason for delay Quotes from Steve
Aug 2005 Spring 2006 “Shooting for early spring 2006”
Sep 2005
Oct 2005 Spring 2006 “Spring 2006 not hopeless yet”
Nov 2005 Spring 2006 “Spring 2006 not hopeless yet”
Dec 2005 Graphics delayed 3 months “Hopes for the target date of spring 2006 fade.”
Jan 2006 Summer 2006 +3 months “Best guess”
Feb 2006 Summer 2006 “Best guess”
Mar 2006 Summer 2006 “Best guess”
Apr 2006 Summer 2006 “Best guess”
May 2006 Late Sep 2006 +2 months No actual delay according to Steve “My definition of summer is not in common usage”
Jun 2006 Dec 2006 +3 months Graphics won’t be completed in time
Jul 2006 Dec 2006 “still my best estimate”
Aug 2006 ? Lost month of July “December 2006 is too optimistic”
Sep 2006 1st Q 2007 +3 months
Oct 2006 1st or 2nd Q 2008 +3 months
Nov 2006 ?
Dec 2006 July 2008 +4 months “I did my first detailed project plan in mid-October and have more or less kept on track against that to date”
Jan 2007 July 2008
Feb 2007 July 2008 “still on track with the schedule from last October”
Mar 2007 July 2008 “I have lost about 1 week”
Apr 2007 July 2008 “I lost another week”
May 2007 July 2008
Jun 2007 Origins 2008 (June 2008)
Jul 2007 Origins 2008 (June 2008)
Aug 2007 Origins 2008 (June 2008)
Sep 2007 Origins 2008 (June 2008)
Oct 2007 Origins 2008 (June 2008)
Nov 2007 Origins 2008 (June 2008)
Dec 2007 Origins 2008 (June 2008) “To accomplish this [date] I had to move a few features”
Jan 2008 Origins 2008 (June 2008) “more or less stayed on track to deliver MWIF product 1 for Origins 2008”
Feb 2008 Dec 2008 +6 months Bugs “What consumes hundreds of hours of my time are inexplicable bugs.”
Mar 2008 Dec 2008 “I am still planning on attending Origins 2008 and demonstrating MWIF”
Apr 2008 Dec 2008
May 2008 Dec 2008
Jun 2008 Dec 2008 "David Heath (Matrix Games) has persuaded me to not attend Origins 2008”
Jul 2008 Dec 2008
Aug 2008 “There are too many bugs being found by the beta testers and the work on NetPlay has yet to reach the testing stage.”
Sep 2008 Late March 2009 +3 months “There is still some uncertainty about that date, mostly related to NetPlay.”
Oct 2008 Late March 2009 “If Dan can get it working in October, then we should make the above date.”
Nov 2008 Late April 2009 +1 month Dan was unable to find time to work on NetPlay
Dec 2008 Late April 2009
Jan 2009 Spring 2009 +1 month
Feb 2009 July 27, 2009 +2 months “Firm release date “ , “we agreed on July 27th as the release date. I am comfortable with that.” , “some slack in the schedule”
Mar 2009 July 27, 2009
Apr 2009 July 27, 2009
May 2009 July 27, 2009 “I am gaining ground on the beta testers but it is measured in inches”
Jun 2009 October, 2009 +3 months Bugs and other tasks “Too many bugs and too many other tasks remain”
Jul 2009 November, 2009 +1 month
Aug 2009 First week of November, 2009
Sep 2009 "I really don’t know how long it will take me to fix all the bugs I am seeing”
Oct 2009 “I still don’t know how long it will take me to fix all the bugs.”
Nov 2009 “I still don’t know how long it will take me to fix all the bugs, but I am making reasonable progresson them.”
Dec 2009 “I still don’t know how long it will take me to fix all the bugs, but I continue to make progress on them.”
Jan 2010 “Tasks for 2010 Finish MWIF product 1 so I can buy a large screen, flat panel, HD TV.”
Feb 2010 “I spent virtually all of January trying to get Delphi 2010 and Theme Engine 9.10 working correctly.”
Nice.[:)]
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Things I didn't expect when I signed my contract in July of 2005:
1 - that the map and unit graphics would require ~9 months of my personal time. Patrice also did hundreds of hours of work on the map. I had thought that the graphics artist would deliver unit and map bitmaps which I could use directly, which was not the case. And the last major delivery of the bitmaps from the graphics artist didn't arrive until in December of 2007.
2 - that the CWIF forms could be converted automatically using Theme Engine. While that was partially true, in fact, the CWIF forms were small in size, used small fonts, button sizes, and unit depictions (zoom level 4). I needed to go through all the ~105 forms from CWIF and modify them substantially. There were several very complex forms which I reworked extensively: Start New Game, Setup, Scrap, Air-to-air Combat, Land Combat, Production Planning, ... and others. I also ended up adding 50+ new forms, some of which were fairly elaborate: Lend Lease Air Units, Victory Hexes, Flyouts, Naval Review Details & Summary, and others. I created new unit graphics of zoom levels 5, 6, and 8 for use in the forms so the unit depictions on the forms were more legible; and then I swapped out the zoom level 4's with 5's and 6's. The zoom level 8's provided maximum visibility on individual units (e.g., when breaking down a corps).
3 - that the rules from WIF FE would be all that I would need, and the CWIF code implemented them. In actuality, the WIF FE rules were only a starting point, with hundreds of modifications, corrections, and clarifications necessary before I could edit RAW into RAC (Rules as Coded). RAC serves as my design document on how MWIF implements the WIF FE rules. CWIF was not up-to-date with the changes to the rules from 2003. Additiomally, ADG keeps tweaking the rules, which in general is good - just not for the programmer. I finally set a cut-off date of July 2008 for rules changes (there have been some by ADG since then, but for the most part, they are not part of MWIF). I had to review all the code that implemented rules to ascertain whether or not they followed RAC correctly.
4 - that zero work had been done on the Players Manual, and that creating it would be a lot of work. I had thought that RAC would be enough of a "Player's Manual", but that was delusional on my part. New players to WIF do not want to sit down and read the 150+ pages of RAC before playing the game. The need to provide help to new players resulted in the creation of the 120+ pages of the Picture and Text Tutorials, the 13 Training Videos (9 completed so far), 300+ pages of help messages embedded in the game (for 150+ forms and 150+ phases/subphases), and the Plpayer's Manual, which whenfinalized will run to ~300 pages. I still need to create the 10 Interactive Tutorials, though those will follow the Training Videos.
5 - that I would get programming help on coding NetPlay. I ended up doing that myself.
6 - that the CWIF code would be more structured than it was. In CWIF the Main routine was 23,000 lines long (I have since reduced it to 8,500). Without any documentation on the 100,000 lines of CWIF code, and some of its less than desireable programming practices, I spent months of time adding comments and revising the code so it is more structured. The improved structure was essential for adding PBEM, NetPlay, and AI.
I could go on, but those were the big surprises.[X(]
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