So What Do You Think of the Upcoming Features in SPWaW v5.0 & Mega Campaign

[MaxGross]

Hi there,

I must congratulate all of you who have worked so hard on V.5. It seems very promising.

Please excuse my ignorance but there is something I am confused about. I only play the AI. I also create my own scenarios as well as play the ones provided. You refer to "computer opponent" buying this or that, and at reduced points. (#14,#19,#20).

Is that the AI your talking about? Who is buying what without your direct control in seting up a game?

I would be grateful for any clarification you could provide.

Looking forward to the new version.

Thank you.

[Wild Bill]

Charles, I have not rejected anything. That is not my job at Matrix. I simply stated what I was told by programmers. They did the rejecting, not I.

I asked for that feature some time ago and was told flatly that it could not be done. So I was only passing on information.

To say, "Since Wild Bill has basically rejected..." is certainly a very cold way of stating something that is not ture.

I get rejected all the time. You ought to see my list of "wants." It's bigger than any of yours.

And I now have most of them as reality as most of you do. I don't have them all and I probably never will.

But in case you folks have forgotten from whence we came, I strongly reommend you play or try to design a scenario in SP1.

Certainly a marvelous game at that time, but look where we are now.

I'm not angry, but I am rather disappointed that this is the tone for what I felt was a sincere reply to be informative on my part.

I guess I oughta keep my mouth shut and let someone else stick his head in the noose for a change. In fact, I think I will do just that!

Wild Bill

------------------
In Arduis Fidelis
Wild Bill Wilder
Coordinator, Scenario Design
Matrix Games

[This message has been edited by Wild Bill (edited March 03, 2001).]

[Randy]

Once again guys, you've out done yourselves. To watch the game evolve over the past 6 mos has been great. Plus, in a small way you let all of us be part of the process with our commments and suggestions. Thanks, you'll get my money!!
Semper Fi
Randy

[kao16]

The only thing I remember wanting that isn't there (except being able to shoot at an abandoned vehicle) is the idea of allowing units to fire smoke dischargers in OP fire.

If recce units retreat when confronted by tanks (do they?), can they fire their SD to provide cover?

[David Heath]

Ohhh we tried and tried.... the smoke being allowed in Opfire can not be done ..... sorry.

[LeibstandartePzD]

Excellent, Excellent job gentlemen. Again Matrix out does itself. My only question is about the Mega campaigns. Where are they going to be available at and who do I send the check to?

Thanks again Matrix, but please switch to something I can pay for. I want to insure that you are around for a long, long time.

------------------
Former member of the 8th US cavalry and a grandson of a Leibstandarte tanker. Former name on these boards was Leibstandarte.

[ruxius]

Hey Bill , I am very sad you have always to repeat things about our manners... I AM SURE
YOU ALL ARE DOING THE VERY BEST FOR US !!
We have so a huge opportunity to be here and to express our wills that we have to think about if it's really the case to throw this out!
As for me I have the problem that I do not speak in English except for what I studied at school (but I think you have noticed about this )))))) )
So maybe I am misunderstood in the sense and politeness an d in what I would say ..
I NEVER intended to be bad behaved against you I hope this is clear despite my way to bad express myself !
So please BIll don't ignore us .your work is very precious !
By from a friend !

[Figmo]

A few answers:

MaxGross - the Computer Opponent and the AI are the same. In Generated Battles the AI does pick it's own units - with guidelines set up by the programers. They continually trying to improve it's selection - it's not perfect yet IMO - but much better than it use to be.

ruxius - Your English is much better than my Italian - actually I don't know Italian at all - argh!! I wouldn't have known if you hadn't said anything!!

Wild Bill - But the noose fits so well - we even have one pre-fitted just for you!! Especially after all those nasty - er uh - wonderful surprises in your battles. I think that's part of why you don't sleep - you're thinking of more devious ways to get us with mines and such!!

Figmo

[Reg]

Just a question about the distribution media for your Mega Campaign. You intend shipping a product that is half propietry and half publicly redistributable.

Normally this wouldn't be a problem but considering the size of the download and the difficulty some people have had trying to get it, I would suspect that a manufactured CD with Ver 5 on it would be a fairly sought after item. This could cause problems with the propietry half of the CD if this were to happen.

I hope that the two products will in fact be separable so the public half can be copied to save some massive downloads!!

I for one would be very keen to have a CD with SPWaW V5.0 that is freely distributable and separate media with the Mega Campaign that is not!! Is this possible or will this run into the old licencing agreements??

Thanks,
Reg.

[Kharan]

43) Fixed bug with loading non-infantry on trucks.

The bug also allowed you to load non-infantry on gliders and cargo planes. For example you could load a VC Firefly (weight 230) in a Canadian Douglas C-47 (carry 221) and drop it as a para.


Here's my anally-retentive wish list again (bear with me, I've added and took out things appropriately)

Bugs:

-Reinforcement flags are randomly left out in random battles with a custom map. Workaround is to load the map once in a hotseat game before starting the real game. Also, R-flags do not get saved in a map. (http://www.matrixgames.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=004057)
-All slot 4 weapons which have a warhead greater than 3 have a 360 degree firing arc. (http://www.matrixgames.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=004219)
-Prevent the receiving party of an airstrike seeing the opposing player's troops.
-Vehicles immobilized in the editor often get fixed at the start of the scenario.
-If you set a lot of spec ops target hexes and then set artillery priority hexes, spec ops targets are reset to your artillery targets. Probably vice versa too. (Hard to reproduce.)
-With C&C on, clicking on each recon unit for the first time does not display the movement range correctly.
-Fix vehicle crews being added automatically to kill score (if you kill them, they are counted twice).
-AP ammo is loaded to a unit only in the same hex, HE ammo is loaded for units in surrounding hexes also.
-Unit availability is rerandomized every time you enter reinforcement screen and is not carried over from the initial troop purchase phase.

Modifications:

-Make CBF powerful. (http://www.matrixgames.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/002616.html)
-Add 1-3 turns randomly at the end.
-Make tanks avoid buildings when retreating.
-Make retreating smarter, away from the enemy first, only then towards the retreat hex.
-Optimize pathfinding for tanks (15-28 moves) instead of halftracks (30-50 moves).
-Immobilized turretless tanks have many times too wide a firing arc (90 degrees).
-Firing on a routed unit should not make it revert to pinned 95% of the time like it does now.
-Add a toggle for fast artillery sound. Or at least make it play the normal explosion sound instead of the long one if that was causing crashes. Anything but the silence.
-Do not show the loaded units when you right-click a enemy vehicle.
-Limited intel shouldn't abstract player's own troop icons.
-Let player fire smoke grenades in op-fire.
-Disallow mine buying in meeting engagements and allow them only for the defending player in Assault/Advance games.
-Having all victory hexes ends the game always. Shouldn't force morale also be low?

Trivial stuff:

-Fix encyclopedia changing to display fort data when the cursor has passed over a button.
-Planes which don't have or have run out of bombs shouldn't display the bombing message.
-Add scands, a key buffer and a word wrap to the log. Also sending messages would be more convenient by using the player's number instead of name.
-Add "D - Fire smoke grenades" in gamehelp.txt.
-Add "more breakdowns" in forests in terrain.txt.
-Set live delay to 0 by default in the preferences.

[Charles22]

Wild Bill/David Heath: My mistake. I was generalizing and wasn't trying to stir up a ruckus; if it can't be done, it can't be done. I did, however, go through the trouble of saying it was "basically" rejected by Wild Bill, not so much because he was being allegedly cold or anything, but because the use of the word, 'basically', was meant to show to generalization of the chances of that request being executed. My failure lied in not being more specific in mentioning any details apart from the fact that Wild Bill was the messenger (though I didn't say 'messenger'), or indeed that it's something he got from others. It's one of the few times I cut to the quick, and now you can see why I don't do it very often. I figured what WB said was accessible and current enough, and that there was no reason to get specific.

No, if I haven't made it clear enough by now, WB, was the messenger only, and not the rejector. It doesn't matter to me who rejected the idea, and I didn't think generalization would lead to this, though I certainly could've worded it better. The rejection, in whole or in part by anyone doesn't matter to me, I didn't even post a frowny face to the post. No attempt to complain, really, just another post on my part. I could've just as easily have been talking about turret traverse.

[Charles22]

Here's a portion the message Wild Bill gave me:

You'll see a lot of great things in 5.0, but you won't see wider maps. That is a change that would involve many, many hours of coding work.
It is something that I too would like, but I have to understand and accept the fact that Matrix programmers have to get to work on other projects.

After 19 months of work (can you believe that!) on SPWAW, we have to move on or move out. That is an alternative that we do not want to face.

So perhaps one day...but not in 5.0, I fear.

I'm sorry, but that looks like opinion to me. Sure that opinion could, and as it turns out was correct, but there is no mention of "others" rejecting it. It's WB's opinion that they don't have time for that specific request to be done; it would involve too much coding work and there's no mention that anyone asked anyone else about it, though I know better now.

I'm not upset, still. Just a misunderstanding that's all

[Charles22]

Wild Bill: Since you, like I, would like the wider campaign maps, consider the following if you would. Perhaps you've had this issue settled in your head long before this series just now, and perhaps you're wondering why I've pressed this issue more than once. For one thing it seems as though I'm the only one pressing it, so if I don't, it certainly will fall by the wayside (unless someone like yourself is all fired up about it, but then I don't know what goes on at Matrix - [trying to not generalize here, so excuse me if this gets irritating to read]).

Now, given that you may had been satisfied that there's no way this will ever be done except in the very distant future, I have seen a thread which seemed to be hopeful, and is partially why I'm still pressing this point. Perhaps you haven't seen the thread to which I speak, but in it this subject came up, and Warhorse "or somebody" basically all of the sudden had a brainstorm on how it could seemingly be easily done. Maybe it's my fault, but I don't ever recall, whoever this was, coming back and mentioning that their idea could or could not work. I would guess that thread was no more than a month or two old. Maybe his idea couldn't work, but I don't recall anything further about it.

[Figmo]

Geez Charles - Now I'm having to think!!

I don't remember the specific post but the only way I can think of to get a really big map in a generated battle is by placing a pre-made one in there when you start.

I know there's a way to do it - but for the life of me I can't remember! Hopefully somebody else can help with this - although a separate post might be best for the explanation as this thread is for suggestions - which yours is a good one - if it happens or not!!

Figmo

[Warhorse]

Charles22, ok now you peaked my interest!! What was the idea to get the maps in there?! Other than manually entering them in by changing the save to scenario, I don't know how to do it Would be really cool if a couple folk could provide a campaign alteration service. They would change opposing forces, maps, etc, then send back the save, but this would be time consuming(about half hour sometimes per),no pay either, which sucks but oh well!! Me and my brother do this for each other, and it rocks, but if you compound this by all the many players, it is indeed unthinkable, I believe, still nice to dream of. I wouldn't be able to do it, as I'm working on CL, but if I had the time, I would, really, I get a kick out of assembling forces, setting traps, and customizing large maps for my own and my brothers campaigns!! Just a thought.

------------------
Mike Amos
Meine Ehre Heisst Treue

[ruxius]

Originally posted by Figmo:
ruxius - Your English is much better than my Italian - actually I don't know Italian at all - argh!! I wouldn't have known if you hadn't said anything!!

uhm...this means my english is very poor as what you say about your italian is true..
LET ME TELL YOU THAT I DO AGREE WITH YOU !
Eh eh eh eh !(that means ))) )
(A very terrible thing trying to having a sense of humor into another language...)
By the way ...here we expect a little more from an typical italian surname as Faletti is !

[Figmo]

[/b][/QUOTE]
By the way ...here we expect a little more from an typical italian surname as Faletti is ![/B][/QUOTE]

OOPS!! Busted!!

If it helps any - I know two phrases in Italian!!

The really embarrassed Figmo
P.S. OK - I'm going to get a "Learn Italian" CD today - give me some time - geez - the pressure is on!!

[Mark Ezra]

My wish list for SP was fully met when SPWAW came out. Everything since then has been icing on the cake. This latest offering will obviously take SPWAW to a new demension. More like adding another level of cake! Outstanding work, thanks for all your efforts!

[Paul Vebber]

One of the problems with a forum like this that lots of ideas get floated from lots of people, including us "insiders".

At the end of the day those of us who help translate those ideas into things the programmers can do, get left with a list of a whole lot of good ideas and a time budget. The programmers give fedback on the features and implementation ideas and how long they thing it will take. Then we fit what features we think make the best fit with the time and "play well together" and the programmers march off.

Usually they come back in a few days and say - "that one I thought was real hard was easy and that easy one I just can't do, and this other one shold work but for the life of me can;t figure ou why it doesn't. Then the playtesters come back with a handful of bugs from out in left field (like teh desert terrain button in the editor suddenly not working as a recent actual example) so now that has to be fixed.

It is quite litereally a nightmare that I am fairly in awe of Davids ability to keep straight!

We generally end up adding 2 weeks and 2 more weeks and finally we get to a point where other projects start falling behind and David say OK thsese features we thought we could do are out, these couple that turned out we could are in and when we fix the bugs we can fix in the next two weeks we release. Otherwise it quite literally could go on for ever.

So please understand that our comments here are often preliminary and the "facts" don't show themselves and often, except for the programmers, we don't know the final feature set until we are ready to ship something. We understand and share your frustration, believe me. So understand Wild Bills frustration when he seemingly gets dumped on for bringing bad news. Shoot me if you want as I often am one of the Evil ones that have to "just say no". Often to a thing I personally want very badly, but have to leave on the floor, for now, for the good of the product overall.

What Tom and Mike have done with undocumented code is nothing short of brilliant. To implement much of what you (and we) want simply takes creating a new game to do it. That is why we are moving on to Combat Leader and having to cut back on our support of SP:WaW to once or twice a year from the level of effort of 5 major and like a dozen minor realeases since 1.0 came out.

As to the "proprietary" and "free" parts of the mega campaingn, there is little we can do to those of you who would give away our "for profit" games. Just remember, if you do it, you are directly responsible for hammering a nail the coffin of "real wargamming". Our business goals are modest, but our market is tiny and while you are free to copy the free part of the game if you want, if the give away the "Pay" part, and we go under, its on your conscience that you contributed to our demise.

Its not that hard to copy the setup file for the game to your hard disk and transfer that to a CD. Before you add the Campaign files you bought for that buddy, think about the fact that you are hammering that nail...If we are going to ever get to teh pile of "game proposals nobody ever does" we have be successful with the ones that turn a buck.




[This message has been edited by Paul Vebber (edited March 03, 2001).]

[Panzer Capta]

Paul, i think i speak for nearly all the SPWaW community in saying that it would be a complete and utter disgrace if anyone stood in the way of the Matrix Team seeing a return in your greatly appreciated efforts (i.e., by "stealing" what you hope and deserve to make money on).

I think we all understand (or should) that you need to draw a "line in the sand" with respect to SPWaW and move on to profitability you so deserve. The constant requests for additions/improvements to SPWaW
are well intended, but from a business perspective, it is a vicious cycle.

What you have literally given to us is priceless, and it is time to realize that WE MUST GIVE BACK. This way we all win.

Regards,

Panzer Captain