When?

[Joseignacio]

Hello. Siestas are originally typical from Spain too, but the timetables of work don't allow most of us to have them anymore, although there are two kind of, the 20 minutes' nap, which is now highly recommended by doctors, and the "pajama" siestas which are not so healthy. [:)]

The 20 minutes some people still can do sometimes, in fact, for those who live far from work and have "divided timetable" (a horror where you work 8 hours anyway but you have 1, 2 or 3 unuseful hours for "Lunch time", so you "lose" 9,10 or 11 a day) you can go to some places where they rent you a bed for 30 min paying a fortune (it's more focused on executives' productivity).

As for me, I almost never had one. [:D]

Now, going back to seriousness, I have been lurking and I even wrote in a couple of threads other than this one...

I was terribly dissapointed with the last delay but I understand there cannot be a fixed date and I know Steve is doing his best to get this title out ASAP and bug-free, and besides, it's in his own interest too. So, it will be done when it's done, I assume that.

[morgil]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

MWIF Game Engine and CWIF Conversion
In one of the beta testers’ games the USSR had conquered Persia (which aligned to Japan) and then Italy aligned Iraq and had Iraqi units ready to enter and liberate Persia. Here the general rule would prohibit Iraqi units (minor country aligned to Italy) from entering Persia (minor country aligned to Japan, on the same side as Italy). But since Persia is completely conquered, it is now ‘owned’ by the USSR, with which Italy is at war, hence the Iraqi units are free to enter Persia. At least that is how I have coded it. My change is that if a minor country on your side has been completely conquered, then the FTC requirements no longer apply.

Another example is when the Collapse of Vichy France causes Vichy France controlled minor countries to become owned by an Axis major power which has a unit present in the minor country. For instance, if Italy has a unit in Vichy France controlled Tunisia, then the rules state that Tunisia goes to Italy. But the rules say nothing about if there are both German and Italian units present. I decided to count the number of units and ‘give’ the country to the Axis major power with the most units present.

Both the above examples are not covered by the WIF FE rules, so I put in additional code to cover these gaps in (what I consider) a reasonable manner.

You were almost spot on, except the bit where it not being covered, anyhow, your interpretation is quite close, and works for most cases.

In the first example;

Rule 11.11.5
• minor country units can’t enter a hex controlled by another minor country aligned with their side unless they satisfy the foreign troop commitment rules.

So that means that the Iraqies in question could waltz around in any Persian hex, provided it is controlled by the russians.

However Rule 18.2
A minor country unit that ends any step in the home country of an aligned minor country on the same side is destroyed unless:
• it started the step there; or
• it started the step elsewhere and the unit satisfies the foreign troop commitment limit.

But Rule 13.7.1 Conquest,
Complete conquest
When a major power or minor country no longer controls its own or any aligned home country, it has been completely conquered.
Thereafter, it is at peace with everyone it was at war with.

This would suggest that a completely conquered country is no longer aligned to anyone, hence 18.2 does not apply.
When the Iraqis then liberate Persia, it becomes aligned to Italy, and the Iraqi units started the step there so no need to FTC.

However this creates special cases, where the country would not be completely conquered, but minors could enter it, and liberate it, but would still be destroyed.
e.g. Germany has incompletely conquered The Netherlands and DOWed Belgium, then Belgian forces could enter The Netherlands home country, because the hexes are controlled by Germany, but they would be destroyed at the end of any step because they are in another minors home country.

Second Example;
Rule 17.4 Running Vichy France
Vichy French collapse
If Vichy France collapses, it ceases to exist as a major power. All of Metropolitan Vichy France is now conquered by the Axis major power that installed the Vichy government (see 13.7.1).
Each home country or territory aligned with Vichy France becomes conquered by any Axis major power that has a land unit in it.
Other home countries and territories aligned with Vichy France align with Free France (or become Free France with a new home country if it is currently completely conquered).
Rule 13.7.1 Conquest
Territories
If more than one major power from the same side controls ports and cities in a territory, the major power with the greatest influence is the conqueror.
Use this priority to determine who has the greatest influence:
1. Whoever controls the most ports and cities in the territory.
2. Whoever has the highest garrison value (see 13.1) in the territory.
3. Whoever occupied the territory’s last city or port.
Other home countries
If more than one major power from the same side controls the capital and printed factories in a home country, the major power with the greatest influence in that home country is the conqueror.
Use this priority to determine who has the greatest influence:
1. Whoever controls most factories in the home country (with the capital counting as an additional 3 factories for this calculation).
2. Whoever has the highest garrison value (see 13.1) in the home country.
3. Whoever occupied the home country’s last factory or capital city

This also gets interesting if the WAllies have DOWed Vichy, and also has a unit in Tunisia, and then you have the whole Incomplete conquest thing going on...

[Shannon V. OKeets]

July 1, 2011 Status Report for Matrix Games’ MWIF Forum

Accomplishments of June 2011

Project Management
I monitored all the threads in the MWIF World in Flames forum daily.

Rolf fixed a couple of bugs in the sequence of play (yay!). Mitchell is revising the stand alone program NetPlayComTest, which he should be ready to incorporate into MWIF proper the first week of July.

Hardware and Software
The open items for Theme Engine remain unchanged: (1) scroll bars for the detailed map, and (2) its inability to display detailed listings of file directories (i.e., the dates and stuff when opening or saving a file). Neither of these is important. I bought Aaron a copy of HyperSnap so he could retake all the screenshots for the Players Manual.

Beta Testing
I released versions 8.03.03 (3 fixes), 8.03.04 (15 fixes), 8.03.05 (3 fixes), 8.03.06 (9 fixes), 8.03.07 (15 fixes), 8.03.08 (3 fixes), 8.04.00 (9 fixes), 8.04.01 (2 fixes), 8.04.02 (14 fixes) and 8.04.03 (6 fixes) to the beta testers last month. This totals 10 new versions and 79 fixes, which is way under my average number of fixes for a month. That’s because some of those ‘fixes’ were changes to multiple places in the code to accommodate NetPlay. In total, I made 79 changes to convert the last of the CWIF code to MWIF Game Record Logs to support NetPlay. Those changes for NetPlay sometimes introduced fatal bugs - hence the quick uploads or new versions that contained only 2 or 3 fixes.

There are 83 bugs remaining in the sequence of play. I keep driving the number down to the low 70's and the beta testers drive it back up to the low 80's. Sooner or later they have to run out of obscure things to find. During the past month I made changes for:
• Splitting convoy units when using the Pools form, so the arrival year is now correct.
• Japan sending a saved oil point to Italy and Italy using it in production.
• Building units ahead where sometimes the program mistakenly took a unit even further ahead than intended.
• Selecting which one of multiple conquered units arrives as a reinforcement.
• Checking French Foreign Troop Commitment in the United Kingdom after the UK has been conquered and some hexes retaken by the US. Since the US owns the hex, the French do not have to check FTC. When the Commonwealth retakes a hex, the French do have to satisfy FTC.
• Collapsing Vichy France so Vichy French naval units in the Construction and Repair pools are transferred to the ownership of the major power that collapsed Vichy France.
• Checking the Naval Combat Abort Queue processing so units that do not cooperate can no longer be moved into the Chosen to Abort Group. This prevents problems later when they would be unable to stack in the same port.
• Processing the naval abort queue so if a second naval combat occurs while there are still units in the queue from the first naval combat, then any newly aborting units are added to the front of the queue. For example, if there are 2 units in the abort queue from the first combat when a second naval combat occurs that causes 5 more units to abort, the 5 new units in the abort queue are processed before the 2 from the earlier combat. The logic here is that the naval combat abort queue is a LIFO (last in first out) queue as far as a series of naval combats is concerned. However, within each combat it is a FIFO (first in first out) queue. I decided on LIFO for multiple naval combats since that is the way the Fighting Through stacks are processed. For example, suppose that the first naval combat was a naval interception combat with 6 units that aborted, followed by 4 of the aborting units moving as a stack, being intercepted, and provoking a second naval interception combat. From the second interception combat there are 5 units that are added to the 2 units still in the naval abort queue. The processing sequence is now: (1st) 5 newly aborted units, (2nd) naval moving stack of 4 units that provoked the second combat - assuming some have survived, (3rd) 2 remaining units in the naval abort queue from the first combat, and (4th & last) the naval moving stack that provoked the original interception combat - again assuming that some have survived. Clear as mud, eh what?

The queue numbers for units that abort from the first naval interception combat begin at 1001 and go up by 1 as each group of units aborts from the combat. For instance, there might be units from both sides that abort in the first round and they would be numbered 1001 and 1002 (different numbers for each side). In the second round there might only be units from one side that abort, which would be numbered 1003. And so on. If after the first combat reaches quiescence there is a second combat due to aborting units moving through another sea area and being intercepted, then units aborting from the second combat will have queue numbers starting at 2001. This numbering scheme enables the program to have all the units from the second combat abort/move before the units remaining to abort from the first combat. It also permits the program to detect when all the aborting units from the second combat having been returned to base so the moving stack that provoked the second combat can be returned to base before the remaining units in the abort queue. Note that if a naval combat is initiated during a naval combat phase, then the queue number for units that abort from that combat start at 1.

Saved Games
Nothing new.

Map and Units
Rob and Adam continue to send me new and/or updated naval and land unit writeups, respectively.

Scenarios and Optional Rules
Michael has prepared 5 Fast Start saved games. Here is an edited except on that from the Players Manual:

Many people like to jump into a new computer game as soon as it is installed, picking up the rules as they go. To facilitate this, MWIF comes with Fast Start saved games for 5 of the most commonly played scenarios: Barbarossa, Guadalcanal, Fascist Tide, Global War, and Missed the Bus. To access these games, click on the Restore a Saved Game button and select one of those 5 scenarios. Note that all of the Fast Start saved games use the solitaire mode of play and the Novice set of optional rules.

The Fast Start games begin at the first major decision of the scenario. For instance, Barbarossa starts with Germany deciding whether to align Hungary or Finland. Global War starts with the Commonwealth about to set up the Poles. These saved games are particularly useful for newcomers to the World in Flames game system, since they begin after the possibly intimidating Setup phase; Lend Lease, Scrap Units, and Unit Setup subphases have already been performed. Fast Start games also use very few optional rules, allowing new players to get a feel for the basic game without having to deal with the more complex optional rules.

I am making some hard decisions about which optional rules will be in the initial release. There are 56 optional rules already coded and debugged. I have 7 more that I would really like to include in the first release, some of which are already mostly coded. That leaves 17 that will definitely not be part of the initial release. See the last section of this report for the list of those 7 and 17.

MWIF Game Engine and CWIF Conversion
I finished converting the last 79 places in the sequence of play where CWIF used Windows messaging to communicate over the Internet. The new code uses Game Record Logs and Indy10 (a Delphi software library that employs TCP/IP for internet communications). The number of unique calls to SetGRL is just under 400. You can translate that as 400 unique record types, one for each decision/event that occurs in the sequence of play (for an example of what one of these record type looks like, see the end of this report). That number will probably go up once we get into testing NetPlay. I have embedded notes in the source code to check a half dozen places where I believe another GRL needs to be created. There are also a bunch of optional rules that will need their own personal GRLs (e.g., Guard Banner Armies, Kamikazes, and Naval Supply Units).

On average, each conversion required about 50 edits, spanning a dozen different modules. That comes out to around 4000 edits for GRLs last month, and having to jump around from module to module for each conversion increased the likelihood of me making errors. The beta testers found about ten, which from their point of view popped up in code that had previously been functioning without problems. But the conversions are essential for NetPlay and PBEM (that is: whenever more than 1 computer is being used). The hardest conversions to make were for moving units, especially naval moves, because of all the information required to keep track of exactly which units are moving through which hexes to reach their destination. Once the units arrive at their destination, what happens next depends on where they started and various other conditions. For instance, did the naval units start at sea? Were they out of supply? Were they intercepted in their arrival sea area? And so on.

Another group of GRL conversions had to do with bidding for major power groups at the start of the game. That code will not be tested until NetPlay is up and running. Which should happen this month (July).

Player Interface
Nothing major here. I modified the code so the UnitData panels and the Status Indicators show when a unit is flying a night mission and/or at extended range. This helps when returning air units to base after an air mission since now you know which ones flew at extended range. It also is of value when choosing targets in an air-to-air combat and for anti-aircraft fire.

Internet - NetPlay
I finished converting the CWIF code to MWIF Game Record Logs, as discussed above.

Mitchell started working with Aaron testing NetPlayComTest, version 2.0. A few problems with handling disconnects and the like had been discovered the last time Mitchell worked on debugging this with Paul earlier in the year. Mitchell’s goal for version 2 is to solve those problems.

For those of you who don’t know, NetPlayComTest is a stand alone program (written by me and improved by Mitchell) which uses Indy10 to send and receive messages over the internet. It deals with all the issues of establishing communications between two or more computers. Then it permits the users to send messages back and forth. Its original purpose is to test the software for use by MWIF proper. But it will also be included in the released product so players can test their communication links without having to run the game itself. If as a player you can get NetPlayComTest to work for communicating between all the players in your game, then MWIF should run NetPlay without problems. Some of the issues it needed to deal with are IP addresses, port numbers, and firewalls - all that good stuff.

Mitchell is also taking a serious look at the MWIF code’s side for handling Internet messages. Once a player has made a move and a GRL (Game Record Log) has been created, Message Control passes it to Mitchell’s NetPlay code for transmission. At the other end, NetPlay receives the message and hands it off to Message Control on the second computer for processing. The design for Message Control is as Spartan as I could make it. So far the feedback I have gotten from Mitchell is that Message Control does not need to be modified.

I am a firm believe in compartmentalization for software. The purpose behind those 400 GRLs is to isolate and completely remove the NetPlay and Message Control code from all the details as to how the game/simulation operates. NetPlay gets a simple string value with an identifier (ID number). It then sends it to its twin on another computer. That the game being played is World in Flames never enters into the NetPlay code. The data it sends and receives could just as easily be orders for tulip bulbs.

PBEM
Nothing new.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Peter finished the geographic breakdown for the AI Opponent. It looks great.

I have asked him to look into the Data Structures necessary for AIO strategic plans. I had already done some preliminary work on that. The goal is to design variables for holding all the information necessary to define a strategic plan for a major power. The 3 main elements are: (1) objectives to hold/take, (2) geographical areas to defend/attack, and (3) time lines for declarations of war/offensives, with accompanying production schedules. Some of the data will define conditions for when something should happen (e.g., when to start building garrison units). Defining data structures for conditionals is always difficult, but Peter and I already did some of that when we were working on setup scripts.

Player’s Manual
Aaron has been editing the largest section of the Players Manual: 8 Player Interface. As he makes changes he sends me replacement paragraphs. He has also taken on the major task of retaking all the screenshots needed for the Players Manual. He tells me the most recent count is 206, of which he has done ~150.

The biggest editing changes he has made have been for Production Planning. That form is very complex, since the tasks of fulfilling trade agreements, routing resources to factories, and saving oil/build points can potentially span the entire world map. Those are also critical tasks, since they directly affect production. Every player wants maximum control over these decisions, and a clear understanding of what is happening for his major powers as well as those commanded by other players.

What Aaron and I decided upon was to add a dozen or so small insert figures that are pieces of the overall Production Planning form. This means that when the text discusses, say, Filters for the resources and factories list, a little picture of the Filter radio buttons is shown. The overall effect is that it is much easier to understand the text by referring to the little figures instead of having to look back to a previous page and locate where the Filters are on the full-page form. I am now real happy with how this section reads, instead of being anxious about it being incoherent.

Tutorials, Training Videos, and Context Sensitive Help
I reviewed the training videos I made about 2 years ago. All 9 of the chapters I have recorded have small discrepancies when compared with the current version of the game. But to my eye those are mostly minor differences, and not worth re-recording an entire chapter (some of them are over 30 minutes long). I need to redo chapter 6, since it references the production planning form and uses a completely out-of-date screenshot of that form. But the other 8 chapters I think I’ll leave as is. I still have 3 more chapters to do: 10, 11, and 12, which cover naval movement & combat, production, and politics (i.e., declarations of war et al).

By the way, Erik Rutins of Matrix Games is reviewing my existing Training Video chapters and will either bless my decision to leave them as is, or tell me I need to redo them.

I updated the Status Indicators Help page to include Extended Range, Night Missions, and Flying at Sea when Not Engaged in Combat.

Historical Video, Music, and Sound Effects
Dave and Erik of Matrix Games are working on getting the sound effects and music to me so I can insert them in their proper places in the sequence of play.

Marketing
Nothing new.

Communications
Nothing new.

----------------------------------

Optional rules not yet coded, that hopefully will be included in the initial release:
5.1 Unlimited breakdown
5.2 Rough seas
5.3 Naval Supply Units
5.4 Convoys in Flames
5.5 Guards banner armies
5.6 Kamikazes
5.7 City based volunteers

Not included in the initial release:
5.8 Flying bombs
5.9 V-weapons
5.10 Atomic bombs
5.11 Partisan HQ
5.12 Frogmen
5.13 Japanese command conflict
5.14 Hitler’s war
5.15 Naval offensive chit
5.16 USSR-Japan compulsory peace
5.17 Recruitment limits
5.18 Oil tankers
5.19 No ZOC During Surprise Impulse
5.20 Bounce combat
5.21 En-route aircraft interception
5.22 Limited aircraft interception
5.23 The Ukraine
5.24 Intelligence

---------------------

TRL_TNM = record // Try making a naval move.
MsgID: Integer;
EntryNum: Integer; // Game record log entry number - increments each time an entry is written.
TransNum: Integer; // Game record log transaction number - increments each time a group of entries are sent.
By: Byte; // Who originated the GRL (e.g., major power ID).
PlayerID: Byte; // Which player originated the GRL.
UUnitPlace: Byte; // New Location for the naval unit stack. This may be to an off-map pool or On Map.
UColumn: Integer; // Only used when moving on the map.
URow: Integer; // Only used when moving on the map.
UProdTurn: Byte; // Only used when moving into the production pool; denotes arrival turn.
UOldUnitPlace: Byte; // Old Location for the naval moving stack.
UOldColumn: Integer;
UOldRow: Integer;
UOldProdTurn: Byte;
USentry: Byte; // Whether the stack goes into sentry mode when it stops in a sea area.
UHostile: Boolean; // Whether the stack makes Vichy Hostile when stopping in a port.
UStartedAtSea: Boolean; // Whether the stack originally started its move at sea.
UUndoSave: Boolean; // Whether the move can be undone by the player later.
UCheckInterception: Boolean; // Whether the moving stack might be intercepted in New Location (if a sea area).
ULoadedInPort: Boolean; // Whether the moving stack has loaded a unit in port before it started moving.
NavalMPUsed: Byte; // How many movement points are used to reach New Location.
NavalRangeUsed: Byte; // How much range is used to reach New Location.
NoNavalMoveCount: Boolean; // Whether the move counts against naval movement activity limits.
NavalUnitCount: Byte; // The number of naval units in the moving stack.
UnitCount: Byte; // The number of units in the moving stack.
Units: TMovingUnitArray; // The ID numbers of the units in the moving stack.
end;

[bo]

July report looks good Steve thank you, one question about net play, I am fortunate enough to have high speed verizon internet. Download speed as high as 4.5 megabytes a second but normally about 3mgs a second. If I am playing someone with dial up or a very low download speed will that effect the net game play?

Bo

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: bo

July report looks good Steve thank you, one question about net play, I am fortunate enough to have high speed verizon internet. Download speed as high as 4.5 megabytes a second but normally about 3mgs a second. If I am playing someone with dial up or a very low download speed will that effect the net game play?

Bo

It should have no effect.

As Mitchell pointed out to me, any delay is likely to be caused by transmitting messages over the internet. For instance, there might be delays caused by the IPs at both ends of the transmission. But sending and receiving messages is still pretty fast - just not virtually instantaneous, like your computer responding to your mouse and keyboard.

[kwypto77]

Man, this seems as close as at its ever been. You are doiong a great job. I'm a software developer myself, and attempting to write this game would seem like taking the world on my shoulders. I so look forward to playing it once you are done. The regular game is probably favorite ever... If you need any more beta testers, please let me know!!! Thanks for your hard work and perseverance!

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: kwypto77

Man, this seems as close as at its ever been. You are doiong a great job. I'm a software developer myself, and attempting to write this game would seem like taking the world on my shoulders. I so look forward to playing it once you are done. The regular game is probably favorite ever... If you need any more beta testers, please let me know!!! Thanks for your hard work and perseverance!

So that's why I have been walking stooped over!

Thanks for the words of encouragement. The currently beta testers are keeping me very busy already - more people telling me what needs to be worked on isn't really neceesary at this point in time.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

August 1, 2011 Status Report for Matrix Games’ MWIF Forum


Accomplishments of July 2011


Project Management
I monitored all the threads in the MWIF World in Flames forum daily.

Rolf fixed a couple of bugs in the sequence of play. Mitchell finished the stand alone program NetPlayComTest which I incorporated into the main source code. He is also making progress on the sequence of events for one player starting a NetPlay game and other players joining the game in progress.

Hardware and Software
The open items for Theme Engine remain unchanged: (1) scroll bars for the detailed map, and (2) its inability to display detailed listings of file directories (i.e., the dates and stuff when opening or saving a file). Neither of these is important.

Beta Testing
I released versions 8.04.04 (15 fixes), 8.04.05 (31 fixes), 8.04.06 (37 fixes), 8.04.07 (8 fixes), 9.00.00 (13 fixes), and 9.00.01 (5 fixes) to the beta testers last month. This totals 6 new versions and 109 fixes, which is slightly under my average number of fixes for a month.

There are ~90 bugs remaining in the sequence of play. My lack of progress on reducing this is because I have been finishing up the Players Manual and doing work on the optional rules and the Interactive Tutorials. During the past month I made the following changes:
• Eliminated a MadExcept error (i.e., fatal crash) that had been plaguing us for most of this year.
• Fixed a bug in how Flyouts were closed which had been causing MadExcept errors for several months.
• Fixed some bugs in Liberation caused by scenario initialization of when the countries were conquered.
• Revised the Main form drop down menus to include menu items for Supply Sources & Paths and NetPlay forms.
• Fixed a half dozen bugs caused by the Game Record Log changes in June.
• Fixed several bugs in how the Sequence of Play form appears. Numerous additions to the SOP had rendered it out-of-date.
• Made changes to the Status Indicators to show when units are using an Offensive Chit bonus and when the Naval Supply Unit is upgrading a minor port.
• Fixed a half dozen small problems with land combat resolution, only a couple of which had any serious effect on the outcome of the combats.
• Fixed several bugs related to US Entry Options that were found by Rob W.
• Enabled adding US naval units to a combat while the US is neutral - this involves several US Entry Options.

Rob W. went through all the US Entry Options and US Entry Actions to make sure the code functions correctly. As any experienced WIF player would expect, several questions about rule interpretations arose. After adjudication, Rob ended up identifying about a dozen bugs that needed to be fixed; only a couple of which concerned US Entry Actions. What was really impressive about Rob’s work here was getting the game to the point where each of these could be tested. He now has saved games for each of them so he can determine whether my corrections work or not.

Saved Games
Nothing new.

Map and Units
Rob and Adam continue to send in new and/or updated naval and land unit writeups. Happily, Jimm has returned to working on the land unit writeups (Italians). Aaron keeps all those master files and send me replacement files periodically.

Scenarios and Optional Rules
I worked on the 7 optional rules that I want to include in the first release. In particular I added 4 more subphases to naval combat: Voluntary Abort by Walther Submarines, Kamikazes, and 2 ASW Pre-fire Attack subphases. In preparation for finishing up these 7 optional rules I analyzed what changes would have to be made to data structures and forms. None of them required a new dedicated form, but several of them require using a tailored variation of the ubiquitous Unit Dialog form. For instance, when the Japanese player chooses whether his naval air bombers are flying as kamikazes, a Unit Dialog form will appear with all the possible bombers and the player will select which ones should wear head scarves.

The only optional rule of these 7 which is difficult to code is Convoys in Flames, and that’s because it has so many pieces. The other 6 are: Kamikazes, Naval Supply Unit, Unlimited Breakdown, City Based Volunteers, Rough Seas, and Guard Banner Armies. The last will also need a tailored Unit Dialog form.

MWIF Game Engine and CWIF Conversion
Added some missing code for the factory destruction phase. That is a little tricky because there are a couple of occasions when a player might want to destroy his own blue factories. The two that come up are: France destroying a factory in Vichy France before Vichy France is declared, and the USSR destroying a factory in the Ukraine before Germany declares the Ukraine as a separate country.

Player Interface
I created a new form for displaying the US Entry Actions. This is purely informational but I think it is a much cleaner presentation of the information and should make the concepts easier for new players to understand. I added a couple of shortcut keys for accessing the US Entry Pools and US Entry Action forms. The third in this group is the US Entry Options form. Together with the new section on US Entry that Aaron put together (see Players Manual below), this crucial concept of the game should be easier to learn and figure out while playing. I updated the Help page for the Keyboard and Mouse Commands to reflect these changes.

Internet - NetPlay
Mitchell sent me a final version of NetPlayComTest and I added it to the source code. I also converted it to use Theme Engine for the form’s components so it matches all the other forms in the game. Together Mitchell and I worked out the data structures and protocols for sending Game Record Log messages between players. These were the fine details of how it all works. Presently Mitchell is coding that up for testing.

I made a preliminary pass at revising the Chat form. CWIF had 3 forms for sending a single message: Chat, New Message, and Recipients. I have reduced that to a single form. The list of who receives a message isn’t very long, since is a maximum of 6 players in a game. The form now just has a checkbox for each player.

PBEM
Nothing new.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Peter continues to work on the data structures for AIO strategic plans. That is slow going because he keeps coming up with questions for me to answer and I haven’t had enough time to be as responsive as I would like. But some progress is being made. It isn’t easy to take all the amorphous advice provided by the forum members and render it into a rigidly structured outline for processing by a computer program.

Player’s Manual
Aaron finished editing the Players Manual gigantic Player Interface section. He also took new screenshots for the entire Players Manual. As of his latest count, 238 screenshots are final and 11 still remain to be done. The missing ones are for NetPlay (4), Screen Layouts (6), and Supply Sources & Paths (1).

After querying the forum members Aaron wrote up a new section on advice to players for section 3.4 of the Players Manual. Composer99 provided the heart of this material. I made some final edits and now new players will have a better chance of understanding the US Entry Options, Actions, and Pools.

The beta testers were provided with the latest and greatest version of the Players Manual and given the opportunity to make suggestions over a period of 2 weeks. Aaron collected their comments and added a bunch. I went through all 400 pages of the Players Manual and made over 500 edits of my own. After typing in all the changes I uploaded the Players Manual with all the new screenshots for the Matrix Games Editor to begin working on.

There is only 1 hole in the text for the Players Manual: NetPlay instructions for starting, joining, and resuming a NetPlay game. There are a couple other bits associated with that too: chatting with other players and monitoring internet communication links.

I also uploaded the final version (number 46!) of the Rules as Coded (RAC) document for the Editor’s to-do list.

Tutorials, Training Videos, and Context Sensitive Help
I wrote some sample pages for the Interactive Tutorials. Each tutorial will have a dozens or so pages with 6 lines of instructions on the ‘front’ of each page and 7 lines of commentary on its ‘back’. The player can toggle between the front and back of each page, seeing either very terse instructions or commentary. The latter is the equivalent of a “voice over”.

The design for the Interactive Tutorials and the code to implement them is done except for a slight glitch. What really remains to do now is generating the 100+ pages of instructions with commentary.

Historical Video, Music, and Sound Effects
David Heath expects to send me the complete set of music and sound effects files in a couple of days. Then I can place them into the sequence of play and hear how they work. My design calls for letting the player set how often the sound effects et al are played. That can range from never, to periodically, to always. Periodically would be like “every 10th time an armored vehicle moves play the sound effect.”

Marketing
Aaron is working with Sean Drummy of Matrix Games on updating the World in Flames screenshots displayed as part of the game’s description in Matrix Games’ list of products. I did the 34 that are presently there, but that was several years ago. So virtually all of them are out-of-date, and Aaron should be able to come up with another dozen new additions.

Communications
Nothing new.

[CrusssDaddy]

*tumbleweed blows slowly past*

[brian brian]

[bo]

ORIGINAL: CrusssDaddy

*tumbleweed blows slowly past*

Wow Cruss your still around, even with your profound negativity[:-] you still manage to peek in now and then, looking for something Cruss, [;)] by the way for your information there are no tumbleweeds in Oahu and if Steve ever found one he would be glad to send it to you, [I think[&:]].

Bo

[bo]

ORIGINAL: brian brian

Very very clever brian [;)] but can't you slow down that tumbledweed a little [:)], just a thought, but I do hope it was not a dig against our very positive, charming, intelligent, charismatic, patient, expert programmer and seeker of the truth at all costs, CrussDaddy [&o]

Bo

[composer99]

I kind of want to know where brian brian dug up the tumbleweed emoticon, seeing as I didn't see it turn up in the table included with these forums when I click on 'more smileys'

[Red Prince]

Probably an uploaded GIF

[brian brian]

tumbleweed smiley

ADVapologiesANCE can't help but show y'all cool websites that you can have fun with elsewhere.....I thought I used to come to this website when I wanted to borrow the tumbleweed but I wuz wrong.....there's galaxies of smileys out there but this isn't the thread for that

[Arron69]

After waiting for this game another 6 years, I have to say the same as many others:

This game is never gonna come out with a good AI. 6 years of programing, and the AI are not even incorperated in the game, 90 bugs with out it, how many with the AI, once its done?

Sorry steve, you have tried, but I have lost faith[>:].

Andi.

Now all the devout followers can flame me[8D].

[bo]

ORIGINAL: Graf Zeppelin

After waiting for this game another 6 years, I have to say the same as many others:

This game is never gonna come out with a good AI. 6 years of programing, and the AI are not even incorperated in the game, 90 bugs with out it, how many with the AI, once its done?

Sorry steve, you have tried, but I have lost faith[>:].

Andi.

Now all the devout followers can flame me[8D].

I will not flame you Graf, I also have waited many years for this game that I don't even know if I will like it or not, I bought War in the Pacific and I had to shelve it because it took the AI two months to do its moves[:@] I am a beer and pretzel player [do not like long games] but I am looking forward to this game because I like challenges [not hard ones though[&:]] I am not a fan of Matrix for several reasons other than this game, everyone here knows that this game has gone way beyond the time they expected it to be done, their tenacity amazes me and I really have great respect for how positive most of the posters have been, I pull no punches Graf about how I have felt in the past about this game being finished, just read some of my posts [;)] It is what it is and we have to live with it, I changed my posts not because I went to a MWIF revival but because there is no more point in being nasty in the posts not that I feel you were nasty in anyway, just frustrated.

Bo

[HansHafen]

I just am not sure a good AI could ever be programmed for a game such as this by anyone. There are just so many variables, some of which depend on other variables, which further depend on more variables...
 
The chess program seems simple compared to this game board. This is like 100 chess boards, which are not separate, but inter-related. Arrrgg.
 
 

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: HansHafen

I just am not sure a good AI could ever be programmed for a game such as this by anyone. There are just so many variables, some of which depend on other variables, which further depend on more variables...

The chess program seems simple compared to this game board. This is like 100 chess boards, which are not separate, but inter-related. Arrrgg.

Yeah, isn't it a great problem?[:)] Solving this is the only reason I got involved in this project. All that I have done so far is prelude.[:D]

Two elements to the solution of creating an AI Opponent for MWIF are:

1 - numerous decisions are isolated/compartmentatlized (e.g., Assault or Blitz? Intercept these naval units? DOW Italy? Align Siam? First invade Manila or Singapore? Send resources to the USSR?). Binary decisions are not that difficult to make, especially if you are working from a strategic plan that lays down preconditions for the more important decisions.

2 - a universal measure has to be defined so the trade offs between different types of decisions can be evaluated. For example, what units are built depends on the needs of the forces in the field, and whether to take losses or give up territory depends on how many units you have and how much ground you have to give up. To solve this I am using a metric based on the combat value of an infantry unit (CV). A bland 6-4 infantry has a CV = 6. Increased/decreased movement changes the CV. Armor et al have other multipliers which yield a different CV. Air and naval units are converted into the universal CVs too. The trickiest part is converting hexes into CVs. A simple example of the last is determining the value of a hex adjacent to Paris before France has fallen. Time is another tricky element, which primarily affects production decisions. But time also comes up when making operational decisions about deploying reinforcements. The US has this problem throughout the war and the Axis has it whenever units need to travel overseas.

Now to return to debugging the sequence of play - a vastly more difficult task than writing a mere AIO.

[peskpesk]

It took the chess computer from the mid-70's to 1997, before Deep Blue (chess-playing computer developed by IBM) won a six-game match by two wins to one with three draws against world champion Garry Kasparov. I believe the AIO in WIF will be a strong opponent for many players. And I have peeked inside the black magic box that Steve is working on.