Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: JWE

Woof, lotta love in this thread. From all the CHS error this, and CHS error that, I'm guessing all the people who play CHS just don't know enuf to know how badly they are being hosed. Oh well.

The code isn't hard to figure out. Just look at it, using approved National methodology(Herwin/Cid, EU law expressly allows a personal decompile, for precisely this reason, so no worries). Code is relatively well laid out, just a few ambiguous calls. It's also relatively simple; lotta lines, but also a lotta conditionals. I'm certainly no expert on it, I have just looked into a very small section, and only for my own purposes. Syntax is not obscure.

Basically, it's a game. It's not an operational simulation, as the professionals use the term. It's purpose is to provide hours (years??!!) of spice and enjoyment in the context of an historical conflict. If you require precision, then HLA/DIS/MILES/GSM and about $1.7B just may get you to where DOD was 3 years ago; an 'acceptable', 'interim' solution.

ORIGINAL: el cid again

As a person who has written code - all the way down to machine code - I can also testify that any program of significant length is very hard to understand - if you wrote it! It is terribly easy to get things happening you did not intend, and almost impossible to get exactly what you wanted, no matter how carefully you plan and organize. In this age, the kind of planning once normal in the US (and even more in the USSR) is gone: this is the age of sphagetti code, modularization run wild, for lots of sound reasons - but with the tragic side effect that no one knows how things really work. The closest to knowing lies with techncal testers and operators - and knowing is not the same thing as wanting, planning, liking, etc.
Commercial code suffers from the horrible technical problem of cost limits on testing: if the vast majority of your software budget is not spent on testing it is bound to be buggy. But Matrix does it the other way around - and All Glory to Matrix for it. In spite of the technical problem of bugs, Matrix is profitable, and for that reason able to survive when other companies die in this hard to serve market. Any company that is not profitable will not be around to support past products or generate new products.