How's it going lads?

[JudgeDredd]

Any news on this game yet? Snippets of...price...medium for buying...erm (whisper) release date (/whisper)...erm...

[Greyshaft]

Start holding your breath...

[Cpt. Canuck]

ROFL!

[JudgeDredd]

Yep...al....most....de..ad

[Marc von Martial]

Price: TBA
Medium of delivery: "digital download" and "game on demand" directly through us
Streetday: very soon [:'(]


Now before somebody asks what is "game on demand". Well, that´s your option to have the game shipped to you as a standard retail box version.

[Paul Wykes]

Now I am getting excited....

Will this arrive in time for my birthday? (november 1st) I`ll start dropping hints now[:D]

[IronManBeta]

We need just 11 more sound effects, the rules back with the screenshots and then a final reality check. We are 99.99% done.

Cheers, Rob

[Greyshaft]

11 more sound effects...

Burp, Belch, Slap, Scream, Sigh, Kapow, Blam, Bang, Crunch, Grind, Zoom

... the rules back with the screenshots ...

Do unto Them before they Do unto You... everything else is commentary

...a final reality check

D'oh. This isn't my strong point. Sorry Rob.

[JudgeDredd]

Ok...but what I want to know is...How long is the 00.01% going to take?

AND...you must have an idea on price now...please?? I need to try and embezel some funds from our joint account!

But great news, though!

[Paul Wykes]

Hi, This is good news...

I second Judge Dredd, is there some price guide now, so I can see where I need to "materialise" the money from somewhere[:D]

[IronManBeta]

Price - the original concept was that this would be a quickie game aimed squarely at the new gamer to the genre at the bottom end of the usual price range. Ahem, things kind of got out of hand and the scope of the project escalated over time. The last time price came up I wrote to David and asked him about it. He repeated that it would be priced at the low end of the scale even now but I notice that he did not write that particular email in blood or any other contractually binding material. He may have just winged it off the top of his head without any careful thought. That would be most unlike him to do so, of course, but I suppose the possibility exists.

All I can really say is that the price will be what David says it is going to be at the end of the day. All indications so far are that it will be attractively priced. You can't hold me/us to that (!) but that is my best information at this time.


Time - I winkled out the email address of the people doing the sound effects and started corresponding with them directly just today. Very efficient! We are comparing lists to see what happened to the missing 11 (actually now down to 8) and it is possible that they have been done already and just need to find their way to me.

The rules? Mike E is a wonderful guy and Matrix loads him up to the eyebrows and then some with work. He has taken my prose from the last big documentation binge in January and has formatted it to the Matrix style. The text needs to be clarified a bit more (you can tell I wrote parts of it at different times and in different frames of mind so it truly needs a good editing to clean that up) and the screenshots added. His latest draft runs to 85 pages. To me it looks like just a couple of days work and he may have finished it already if he has not been grabbed for something higher up the list.

After that I have to make the final release build and supply a complete installation file list to David for assembly. Doubtless at around that point a bunch of people will look at it that haven't gotten around to it yet and will stop the presses while we fix various last minute items. Then it will be released. I'll collapse for a couple of days and then get working on incorporating feedback and answering questions.

Cheers, Rob.

[Paul Wykes]

Thanks for the detailed update.

Any chance of some last minute screen shots, now that the final build is near[:)] Just to finally wet our appetite!

Not problem if not possible, as I`m sure everyone is very busy during the final few weeks.

Also, will we see any previews on any of web sites (wargamer.com) for example?

[Oleg Mastruko]

ORIGINAL: RobertCrandall

After that I have to make the final release build and supply a complete installation file list to David for assembly. Doubtless at around that point a bunch of people will look at it that haven't gotten around to it yet and will stop the presses while we fix various last minute items. Then it will be released. I'll collapse for a couple of days and then get working on incorporating feedback and answering questions.

Any ETA on the first patch??












[:D]

O.

[IronManBeta]

You are the devil indeed!

Laughing, Rob

[SlapBone]

ORIGINAL: RobertCrandall

All I can really say is that the price will be what David says it is going to be at the end of the day. All indications so far are that it will be attractively priced. You can't hold me/us to that (!) but that is my best information at this time.

You really should get $59.99 US or more from your game unless your not as good of a programmer as the guys over at SSG. I mean if David were to put any less of a price on the product that would just prove he doesn't have any faith in the product.

I mean you're a programmer. Why should those guys get paid premium for what they do and not you?

[IronManBeta]

Ah, the economics of the wargame business. I've written a couple of replies to this point and then scrapped them. Too dark. Lets just say that the market is a niche and somewhat price sensitive, and that the price charged hass to be what the market will bare and has nothing to do with the costs of production such as my time. Sort of like the music business except for the niche limitation. Most music CDs are unprofitable, but the successful ones are taxed to keep the whole machine going. Wargames don't (can't?) produce hits on that scale and it hobbles the whole industry. Brutal but true.

Matrix will treat me fairly but we have to deal with the world as it is, not as we would like it. This is a labor of love for me and the 3,000 hours or so that I have put into it buys me a seat at the table of published game developers - a group who's company I enjoy and get pleasure from being in. Money? Never entered into the equation. My expectation is that when all is said and done that my programming day job will greater than 40x more on an hourly basis than wargame programming. I will keep the day job to stay alive, and do the games as a creative outlet for years and years to come.

The US Department of Defense, especially the Air Force, has been putting on a push to do more simulationa and analysis (ie. wargaming) and is looking to the private sector for 'serious games'. The CIA possibly might be in that marekt too but you can never really tell. These are not price-sensitive consumers and in time we might see a significant number (ie dozens) of people developing for them and getting paid something close to their market worth for their trouble. Apart from that you just have to hope for a cross-over hit of some sort like the old Panzer General series. There haven't been a lot of those though.

If you are interested in this kind of stuff there are a couple of web sites now that discuss it. I also saw a book for Indy Game Developers on the shelf at the local bookstore too that dealt with this, but I'm on a budget and couldn't spring for the $60 or so. I'm saving my pennies for the AI books - they are _much_ more interesting to read! Developing the FPG AI over time is going to be a lot of fun for me. All parts of the game are interesting of course, but now that it all works, the part that I get charged up thinking about is the next step in the evolution of the brains of the game. That is what makes the whole exercise worthwhile to me.


Cheers, Rob.

ORIGINAL: SlapBone

You really should get $59.99 US or more from your game unless your not as good of a programmer as the guys over at SSG. I mean if David were to put any less of a price on the product that would just prove he doesn't have any faith in the product.

I mean you're a programmer. Why should those guys get paid premium for what they do and not you?

[SlapBone]

Sorry I forgot the smilies in my other post. I was really just trying to yank Matrix' chain, not yours.

Our government is really going to buy simulation software from a Canadian? [:D]

In other news I heard the French government was in the market for a "retreat" simulator [:D]

Don't pay any attention to me I'm just rambling, and I'm cajun too, meaning I have at least some roots in both of the maligned countries above [:)]

[IronManBeta]

ORIGINAL: SlapBone

Sorry I forgot the smilies in my other post. I was really just trying to yank Matrix' chain, not yours.

Our government is really going to buy simulation software from a Canadian? [:D]

In other news I heard the French government was in the market for a "retreat" simulator [:D]

Don't pay any attention to me I'm just rambling, and I'm cajun too, meaning I have at least some roots in both of the maligned countries above [:)]

I wasn't all that serious either. The day job is giving me grief right now and I guess that coloured it a bit - I'd rather just do wargame development all day instead and live a life of eternal bliss. Working on Flashpoint and the other projects coming up is a blast and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Cheers, Rob.