Erik Rutins wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2017 7:54 pm
Thank you all for your patience and support of Matrix Games' World in Flames (MWIF) over the years since release. We hope you have enjoyed the game so far and that you will check back with us as we continue to support this release. Steve and I greatly appreciate the community's involvement through bug reports, suggestions and other feedback, both through the beta test program and through the official updates. Your support and feedback has been critical in getting MWIF to the point where it is today and we can only complete the rest of the our shared goals with your continued involvement.
Our Commitment to You
We are committed to continuing to support MWIF, which includes addressing bug reports, completing NetPlay and adding additional optional rules and scenarios. You can find more on our future plans a bit further down.
The State of the Game
Thousands of issues have been resolved over the past few years, but despite that, much more work remains to be done. We recently released the promised new official update, which included an additional 300+ fixes, focused on all modes of play, but including 50+ NetPlay fixes as well. We hope that you find this update to be a significant improvement for solitaire as well as NetPlay, but it is not yet the "NetPlay Complete" update we were hoping to release this year.
After spending a significant amount of time this year during the process leading up to this official update trying to make sure that the solitaire game was made as stable as possible, we will now shift our focus back primarily to NetPlay. The NetPlay issues list has been shrinking and many of the remaining issues are less frequently encountered than those that have already been fixed. We plan to have a new series of internal and public beta updates to progress NetPlay to the point of an official "NetPlay Complete" update.
NetPlay, Our Next Priority
We have been working towards this for far longer than we ever expected and it has seemed to be a Sisyphean task at times, partially thanks to the incredible complexity of MWIF and how fixing one issue can at times uncover several new ones, but based on the progress we've seen to date and the remaining issues on our list, the goal does finally seem within reach. We are aiming for an April 2018 "NetPlay Complete" release candidate, along with additional fixes for all modes of play that come up between now and then. We expect another update later in 2018 with fixes for any additional NetPlay issues that arise from testing the "NetPlay Complete" update.
Once we have evidence that NetPlay for 2 Players is indeed at last working as expected, we plan to proceed with the following in priority order:
Future Plans
1. Additional Bug Fixes
- This will be an ongoing effort, focused on any serious issues that arise as well as areas of the game that still need more attention. Each update, including the NetPlay updates, will continue to include fixes for every issue we can fit in.
2. Low Risk Optional Rules
- These are the rules we are planning to include in this set:
53. City based volunteers (67)
54. Isolated reorganization limits (47)
55. Kamikazes (60)
56. Naval supply units (69)
57. Guard banner armies (70)
58. Rough seas (75)
67. USSR-Japan compulsory peace (50)
3. Additional Scenarios
- This means the two half map scenarios we promised to complete.
Once we reach this point, we would consider the original MWIF feature and content complete, with ongoing support after this point focused on bug fixes and interface polish.
4. AI Expansion (Core Rule Set)
- This means implementing a working AI opponent for solitaire play. The "Core Rule Set" means that the AI will be designed to work with a core set of fixed optional rules, rather than supporting all possible optional rules variations. Needless to say, this will be a big job and for a game this complex no AI will ever be as good as a human player, but we know players love to have an AI to practice against and use as a learning aid and we don't intend to leave MWIF as our only release without an AI opponent. This is also a feature that Steve is very interested in and very knowledgeable about, plus he has already put in place much of the necessary framework.
5. Additional Optional Rules Expansion
We will look at the remaining optional rules not implemented as part of #2 above and decide which can be implemented, possibly as part of the same expansion which includes the AI, possibly as another project. The list to choose from here is as follows:
59. Convoys in Flames (76)
60. Recruitment limits (16)
61. Surprised zones of control (20)
62. Bounce combat (22)
63. V weapons (23)
64. Atomic bombs (23)
65. Frogmen (24)
66. Hitler's war (49)
68. En route interception (51)
69. Limited aircraft interception (57)
70. Flying bombs (59)
71. Ukraine (62)
72. Intelligence (63)
73. Japanese command conflict (64)
74. Partisan HQs (72)
75. Oil tankers (76)
76. Naval offensive chit (a variation on the optional rule for offensive chits)
