About the possibility of open Source code

[Ranger6]

Bob, you're the man.
Thanks from the TOAW community.

[Curtis Lemay]

Bob, you're the man.
Thanks from the TOAW community.

When I look at the code I don't feel like the man. I feel like I want my mama!

[Rosseau]

Well, God bless you and your Mama, Bob!

This game remains legendary, and I'm still trying to free up time to due it some sort of justice. And I continue to fawn over the original paper manuals from TalonSoft (once in a while). Memories are important when you get to me my age.

[rhinobones]

Time to update this again, since I just completed another 12,410 lines:
"Note that 17,253 + 1,518 + 38,200 + 12,410 = 69,381 lines of code I’ve written since starting. Since the entire code of TOAW is about 239,074 lines, I’ve written about 29% of TOAW’s code."

I know enough about coding to know it can be time consuming and has a myriad of ways to produce unintended consequences. Therefore, if your 69k lines operate as intended, congratulations on the achievement. But before we get carried away with the accolades, there are some shortcomings to consider.


Unfortunately, 69k lines of code tells us nothing about the nature of the changes or when it might be available to the TOAW community. As you can tell from the activity level on this forum the TOAW community is rapidly diminishing, and I am sure few are impressed that you have written 29% of the total code; especially since no functional sample or description of an updated engine has been presented.

What I do know about the changes are two things 1) there are some nice little minor additions to the main screen side bars and 2) you are adding little pictures of commandants with characteristics such as charisma; something I personally have no desire for or use.

To stimulate renewed interest in TOAW, suggest you provided a bit of detail regarding what 4 years and 69k lines of code gives the community. What still needs to be accomplished. Also, it is becoming critical that you reveal your target completion year and quarter. You seem to be working in a vacuum (offers to help with coding have been universally refused). A positive response on your part is required.

[Curtis Lemay]

I know enough about coding to know it can be time consuming and has a myriad of ways to produce unintended consequences. Therefore, if your 69k lines operate as intended, congratulations on the achievement. But before we get carried away with the accolades, there are some shortcomings to consider.


Unfortunately, 69k lines of code tells us nothing about the nature of the changes or when it might be available to the TOAW community. As you can tell from the activity level on this forum the TOAW community is rapidly diminishing, and I am sure few are impressed that you have written 29% of the total code; especially since no functional sample or description of an updated engine has been presented.

What I do know about the changes are two things 1) there are some nice little minor additions to the main screen side bars and 2) you are adding little pictures of commandants with characteristics such as charisma; something I personally have no desire for or use.

To stimulate renewed interest in TOAW, suggest you provided a bit of detail regarding what 4 years and 69k lines of code gives the community. What still needs to be accomplished. Also, it is becoming critical that you reveal your target completion year and quarter. You seem to be working in a vacuum (offers to help with coding have been universally refused). A positive response on your part is required.

Predicting when a project will be done is a fool's errand. My post allows fans to at least know that a significant update is still being worked on.

Matrix frowns on premature discussion of an update's details for reasons I've listed before. They feel that there is a golden moment for that. And that moment has not yet arrived.

[rhinobones]

Predicting when a project will be done is a fool's errand. My post allows fans to at least know that a significant update is still being worked on.
Matrix frowns on premature discussion of an update's details for reasons I've listed before. They feel that there is a golden moment for that. And that moment has not yet arrived.

Appreciate the reply. It was about as I expected, and I hope my point about building interest within the TOAW community is taken seriously. My post also contained requests for basic information regarding the update and the projected timeline. Unfortunately, you fudged the opportunity to give the TOAW community something tangible to look forward to. The number of code lines fiddled with over the last four years is not tangible.

Fudge #1. A minimal description of accomplishments to date and tasks remaining was requested. This is not a detailed description of the update and if handled well would give the community something to cling to while not violating the golden moment. I’m sure you are capable of writing a simple bullet list that would not annoy Matrix.

Fudge #2. Completion date, a fool’s errand? I find it astounding that you would express such a distain for project management. This indicates that you have no objectives, no intermediate goals, don’t know where you are, don’t know where you should be and don’t know when you’ll get there. There is no end game. I’m sure you’re better organized than that but that’s not what you’ve just told the TOAW community.

Suggest that you drop the secrecy and get the community involved, build their interest and develop trust that you are actually producing a credible update. To do so, over time plan on posting a short series of standalone beta patches and let the community do the testing. Get the people involved and capitalize on their test input. Not only will the forum light up, but since the development team is depleted, test time for the finished product should be reduced. You can fill the beta patches with small changes and save your big mother for the finale.

[Curtis Lemay]

Fudge #2. Completion date, a fool’s errand? I find it astounding that you would express such a distain for project management.

Just to give an example: When I began the project I estimated the completion time to be three months. We're at 63 months currently - off by a factor of 21 and counting. It's a fool's errand.

[rhinobones]

Fudge #2. Completion date, a fool’s errand? I find it astounding that you would express such a distain for project management.

Just to give an example: When I began the project I estimated the completion time to be three months. We're at 63 months currently - off by a factor of 21 and counting. It's a fool's errand.

My guess is that you're a victim of self-inflicted mission creep.

[cathar1244]

Fudge #2. Completion date, a fool’s errand? I find it astounding that you would express such a distain for project management.

Just to give an example: When I began the project I estimated the completion time to be three months. We're at 63 months currently - off by a factor of 21 and counting. It's a fool's errand.

Bob,

Has the crash-to-desktop bug associated with placename fonts and failure of TOAW to release allocated RAM been found and fixed as part of your efforts ?

Cheers

[biddrafter2]

Predicting when a project will be done is a fool's errand. My post allows fans to at least know that a significant update is still being worked on.
Matrix frowns on premature discussion of an update's details for reasons I've listed before. They feel that there is a golden moment for that. And that moment has not yet arrived.

Fudge #1. A minimal description of accomplishments to date and tasks remaining was requested. This is not a detailed description of the update and if handled well would give the community something to cling to while not violating the golden moment. I’m sure you are capable of writing a simple bullet list that would not annoy Matrix.

Fudge #2. Completion date, a fool’s errand? I find it astounding that you would express such a distain for project management. This indicates that you have no objectives, no intermediate goals, don’t know where you are, don’t know where you should be and don’t know when you’ll get there. There is no end game. I’m sure you’re better organized than that but that’s not what you’ve just told the TOAW community.

Rhinobones is correct (and also kind).

Lines of code is irrelevant. Customers don't care. Project management and shipping code is all that matters to the consumer. I do this for my living. I know.

Curtis Lemay is, essentially, bragging about an irrelevant statistic while the rest of us watch him fondling his personal build of TOAW for multiple years. Congrats, I guess???

Regardless, I was waiting to see how many replies this thread got before posting anything. I sent an email a few months back asking Matrix the status of this game. They admitted in their reply to me that the game, in current form and with current developer, is dead.

If one dev gets a private build and Matrix believes the game is dead, it is time to open source the codebase for real. That will be its own form of a disaster but at least we can all do what we want.

[Erik Rutins]

To be clear, we don't consider TOAW "dead", but it has effectively been dormant for a while. It's a title that we do care about. Some of you may recall back from the 90s that TOAW was one of my favorite wargames and that led directly to us eventually getting the rights from TalonSoft and Norm to keep developing it and publish TOAW III. However, at this point the previous development team no longer exists as a team, though Curtis who was part of it has on his own continued to try to improve TOAW behind the scenes. In order for major improvements to happen or a new release, an expanded team would need to be constituted and likely more internal resources assigned and actively managed.

We've been discussing TOAW fairly actively this year in terms of what we as a publisher might want to do in the future, but those discussions are still just discussions at this point. I mainly just want to let the community know that it's not forgotten. If anyone in the community wishes to contribute to our discussion about TOAW's future, feel free to PM me or e-mail me at erikr@matrixgames.com

Regards,

- Erik

[Curtis Lemay]

Lines of code is irrelevant. Customers don't care. Project management and shipping code is all that matters to the consumer. I do this for my living. I know.

It is relevant when the opening of this thread was to claim that development has "stagnated" since 2006. And lines-of-code is currently the only metric I"m allowed to post.

Now, if Erik thinks the time is right, I'll happily post all sorts of details. But I still think that golden moment is not yet here.

[larryfulkerson]

Bob:
I really appreciate all the hard work you've already contributed and I think you for your "vision" for future versions and new features. I'd really like to resurrect my program that listed the combat losses for the turn but I notice that TOAW no longer puts out a CSV file or at least I never found a way to do that. That used to be the input file for my program and it held all the combat results data. If the code still exists to do that I'd respectfully ask you to turn it back on if you would.

And about moving TOAW to open source: I'm not sure if you know this or not but there are several very good programmers in our community and they would be more than happy to help you. I would and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. I'm currently working on a program that will allow the user to change the color codes for the user, outputting a COL file for the changes. I want it to show the before and after colors while I'm at it.

I'd also like to write a visual programming sort of environment for TOAW so that it will display the numbers of soldiers remaining, number of aircraft catorized by type, etc. while TOAW runs in the background. It would involve a database file so that prior turns can be reviewed, etc. But so far it's over my head but I'm looking into it.

I've downloaded the latest version and so far it's a winner.

I gotta go.

fall-fail.gif (1.05 MiB) Viewed 2162 times

[Erik Rutins]

Lines of code is irrelevant. Customers don't care. Project management and shipping code is all that matters to the consumer. I do this for my living. I know.

It is relevant when the opening of this thread was to claim that development has "stagnated" since 2006. And lines-of-code is currently the only metric I"m allowed to post.

Now, if Erik thinks the time is right, I'll happily post all sorts of details. But I still think that golden moment is not yet here.

I'm not aware of us putting any restrictions on discussing the work you've been doing. Normally we would do that if it were part of a new commercial release, but that's not the case here, so you are welcome to do so. I would expect that discussing it with the community and providing a public beta in the future would be more helpful than keeping it under wraps.

Regards,

- Erik

[Curtis Lemay]

Lines of code is irrelevant. Customers don't care. Project management and shipping code is all that matters to the consumer. I do this for my living. I know.

It is relevant when the opening of this thread was to claim that development has "stagnated" since 2006. And lines-of-code is currently the only metric I"m allowed to post.

Now, if Erik thinks the time is right, I'll happily post all sorts of details. But I still think that golden moment is not yet here.

I'm not aware of us putting any restrictions on discussing the work you've been doing. Normally we would do that if it were part of a new commercial release, but that's not the case here, so you are welcome to do so. I would expect that discussing it with the community and providing a public beta in the future would be more helpful than keeping it under wraps.

Regards,

- Erik

Ok, Erik, I'll work something up. Would you like to see it first?

Also, Larry Fulkerson, who I know has a programming background, just offered to help on coding. Are you OK with sharing the code with him?

Bob

[Erik Rutins]

Ok, Erik, I'll work something up. Would you like to see it first?

Sure, why don't you e-mail me and we'll take it from there?

Also, Larry Fulkerson, who I know has a programming background, just offered to help on coding. Are you OK with sharing the code with him?

Please ask Larry to e-mail me as well at erikr@matrixgames.com. When it comes to sharing code with anyone else, that does have to go through us.

Regards,

- Erik

[larryfulkerson]

email sent 08/08/2024 21:15

[MonkeyBrain3]

Nice to see something going on.

A little trivia from my old interview with Paul Reiche III,Jon Freeman and Anne Westwall - creators of legendary Archon for Commodore 64. Anybody played it?:)

Back in those days (1982) when pixels were size of your thumb it took only 5 months to make Archon.

And, Trip Hawkins was the salesman with Charisma 18-00, alrhough he. paid bad royalties and low advances ))

Back then in 1982. Electronic Arts was supposed to be called Artronic but they have to change it to Electronic Arts as that name was already taken.

Game history.

I know that it has nothing to do with TOAW but Archon is amazing game - still! after 42 years (gulp)

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/gxa8y4z2 ... ymzac&dl=0

Link to my interview.

[ncc1701e]

TOAW 4 was out in 2017. So there is still time before stating it abandoned for public domain.

[Curtis Lemay]

TOAW 4 was out in 2017. So there is still time before stating it abandoned for public domain.

TOAW I (1998) hasn't been abandoned for public domain.