Beta Testing

[macgregor]

I recieved company and was forced to be brief. I'm sure I could've softened it up with a longer post. I remember a conversation long ago with a game designer who told me how difficult and lengthy putting together an AI for WiF would be. Sorry I can't be of more help.

[DavidFaust]

With little honest Jonny on the war path, we have decided to not move for a few years.
I wonder how many ppl will be jobless today.

[pak19652002]

ORIGINAL: Greyshaft

ORIGINAL: Norden

Its a mood point, numbers can only have one "," [:D]

Norden

In Australia and in the US the ',' symbol is used to group thousands and millions etc.
The decimal point '.' is used to separate the decimals from the whole numbers.
So in my country a number can have only one '.' but can have lots of ','.

Yes, yes. I've never gotten used to seeing my trusty old "." decimal point replaced with a comma. Seems un-American...and I suppose it really is! Next they will be telling me to use "thousand million" instead of billion. Oh, the humanity.

Peter

[JanSorensen]

In Danish a "billion" is 10^12 while a "milliard" is 10^9 - so it takes a little getting used to the US using a billion for 10^9.

The fact that dates are written as "month/day/year" in the US system is also a cause for great confusion - compared to "day/month/year".

[Norden_slith]

Yes, well. Im living in Denmark, beeing a very small country, where english is used for lots of stuff, including sciene and most PC stuff. So I am very aware of that, hence the smiley. Stuff like that can be troublesome, I tell you. And the datething mentioned can be worse. One can never tell what it is, until there is a day appearing in the second slot thats higher than 12...
Then there are inches, feet, yeards, various miles, ounces, pounds, at least 2 kinds of tons - [&:]

Norden, expatriate German

ORIGINAL: Greyshaft

ORIGINAL: Norden

Its a mood point, numbers can only have one "," [:D]

Norden

In Australia and in the US the ',' symbol is used to group thousands and millions etc.
The decimal point '.' is used to separate the decimals from the whole numbers.
So in my country a number can have only one '.' but can have lots of ','.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

I had to write a modification to my save and restore routines so they would not depend on periods as the delimiter between the integer and decimal portions of a real number. You see, I was writing out comma delimited files and beta testers using European style format for real numbers had this extra comma where I didn't expect it. I also had to adjust for the possibility that the negative sign would trail the number instead of preceding it: 14- degrees instead of -14 degrees.

Mercifully, I am not using days and months in this program, just bimonths: jan/feb etc..

I also have all the text in what are known as "resource strings". Theoretically, someone will be able to process them from English to (say) French and the program would run without any other modifications. I do wonder about the spacing though - whether there will be enough room for all the text after translation.

[tigercub]

any chance of a couple of beta screen shots?

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: tigercub

any chance of a couple of beta screen shots?

I'll pass along the suggestion to the beta testers.

[vonCommander]

Oh, have I heared the word "screenshot"?![X(][:D]

[YohanTM2]

ORIGINAL: vonCommander

Oh, have I heared the word "screenshot"?![X(][:D]

Be still my heart

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Provided by Patrice to show the new Swamp terrain.

[vonCommander]

This ist the most beautifull swamp I have ever seen and I have seen a lot of swamphexes in my live[:D]

[Shannon V. OKeets]

From: wfzimmerman

Caption: The Soviets are trying to knock Rumania out of the war early, which leaves the Red Army vulnerable to overruns west of Kiev.

[tigercub]

screenshots nice to see thanks, bit confused german armor 5&6 movment whats the idea/need? ok the german were a bit rag tag but seems a little odd.

[Froonp]

From: wfzimmerman
Caption: The Soviets are trying to knock Rumania out of the war early, which leaves the Red Army vulnerable to overruns west of Kiev.

I believe this one is with the old style Swamps.
Patrice

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: tigercub

screenshots nice to see thanks, bit confused german armor 5&6 movment whats the idea/need? ok the german were a bit rag tag but seems a little odd.

In WiF FE, nearly all ARM Corps have a move of 5 or 6. Same for MECH.
Rare ARM units (DIV I believe) have a move of 4 only.

MOT units have a move of 4 or 5.
INF units have a move of 3 or 4. Some rare INF have a move of 2.
MIL units have a move of 2 or 3.
GARR units have a move of 1.

[Matt242]

Nice screenshots indeed. Overall it looks very good.

A few (personal) comments:
1) I hope that all the beautifully drawn planes will find their way onto the counters.
2) The factory symbols are a little small, i guess. Any way to make them a little bigger and easier to find (and count)?
3) All units have a thin white line on top which is divided into six parts. On some units some of the little white boxes are shaded grey and dark grey. What does this mean?

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Matt242

Nice screenshots indeed. Overall it looks very good.

A few (personal) comments:
1) I hope that all the beautifully drawn planes will find their way onto the counters.
2) The factory symbols are a little small, i guess. Any way to make them a little bigger and easier to find (and count)?
3) All units have a thin white line on top which is divided into six parts. On some units some of the little white boxes are shaded grey and dark grey. What does this mean?

1 - Yes. Also the naval units. I intend to have 3 different levels of unit resolution. The high res will have a lot of detail, the medium res less, and the low res only a number or 2. The idea is that as you zoom out and the counters get smaller, the details will be removed, so the numbers can be larger and legible.

2 - A single hex can have a lot of icons: factories, resources, city, and port symbols. Some have all 4. Another problem arises when part of the hex contains ocean. I do so dislike placing the factory symbols in the waves. Removing the flags (a toggle switch does that) makes the icons easier to see, because then there is less clutter. You do have an excellent point that finding and counting factories and resources is a problem when playing. I will have to think about how best to do that. Suggestions are welcome.

3 - The status boxes at the top of the unts indicate supply, disruption, transporting other units, and other stuff. I want to reduce the number from 6 to 5 (possibly even down to 4) so they are somewhat larger. Perhaps varying their size too, so the disruption status box is the largest. All of that has yet to be reviewed in excrutiating detail (my favorite way to do that analysis). When I get to it, I'll post the design for review and critique by the forum members (before rewriting the code).

[Matt242]

Thanks for the infos on that.

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

2 - A single hex can have a lot of icons: factories, resources, city, and port symbols. Some have all 4. Another problem arises when part of the hex contains ocean. I do so dislike placing the factory symbols in the waves. Removing the flags (a toggle switch does that) makes the icons easier to see, because then there is less clutter. You do have an excellent point that finding and counting factories and resources is a problem when playing. I will have to think about how best to do that. Suggestions are welcome.

To me, showing hex control all the time (and keeping hex space for the icon) is not that crucial. It would be better not to flow the map with too many icons. One loses overview quickly.
Umm, two quick ideas:
1) Give a hotkey to show hex control. Highlighting the owned/opponent hexes in this mode would help and could be switched off afterwards.
or
2) Show hex control via special colors around the edges of borderland-/front hexes. Many games incorporate this technique and it suits the matter fine, i guess.

[JanSorensen]

ORIGINAL: Matt242

To me, showing hex control all the time (and keeping hex space for the icon) is not that crucial. It would be better not to flow the map with too many icons. One loses overview quickly.
Umm, two quick ideas:
1) Give a hotkey to show hex control. Highlighting the owned/opponent hexes in this mode would help and could be switched off afterwards.

You appear to have missed that Steve posted that it is already in the game to turn those flags on and off:

Removing the flags (a toggle switch does that)