Matrix Games Forums

Thanks for the added screenshot 8)
Was mainly concerned about the Whiteprint germans, but this shot makes them look much better.

Absolutely stunning graphics the maps and particularly the counters look fantastic.

Great Work.

I realise that this is just a screenshot for demo purposes but my tiny little brain blew a fuse trying to imagine a set of circumstances which would have resulted in the deployment shown on the map.

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

ORIGINAL: Baelfiin

I wish the whiteprint numbers had a little black outline but maybe they are better "in person".

The white numbers do have a black outline when displayed against a light color background. For example, for the French and Chinese. And of course for the Danes and Yugoslavs, which have a pure white background. Similarly, the black numbers have a red background for the SS units (and Belgians and Afghans).

Basically, I went through all the units in the game and added outlines for the numbers if they became illegible. For instance, Japanese Tank Buster numbers are shown in red on red, so I added a Black outline. A lot of this stuff had to be coded for individual units - a real pain to do.

The screenshot is at zoom level 8 (maximum).



EDIT: I just threw some units on the map in the Balkans. In retrospect, I could have made better choices, since the SS and Belgian units don't show the use of the red outline.

Oh man.....I just can't wait!!!

MWiF is going to be the greatest!!

I like to watch the progress.

October 1, 2012 Status Report for Matrix Games’ MWIF Forum

Accomplishments of September 2012

Project Management
My body is getting in the way of me working on the game - arrgh.

I missed 6 days working on the game traveling to Philly for an annual followup on my eye surgery to treat my melanoma. Then I lost another 5 days due to headaches caused by muscle pain in my neck and shoulder. Pretty much a lost month as far as the beta testers are concerned.

My health, in short:
• My kidneys are fine, with a September sonogram showing no sign of new kidney stones.
• My heart is fine; but the healing from the bypass surgery on my breastbone aggravated a 25 year old injury (broken clavicle) which caused the neck and shoulder pain. I have 3 sessions scheduled this month with a physical therapist which hopefully will abate that discomfort and provide me with exercises to avoid having it reoccur.
• The melanoma in my left eye is dormant and has less than a 5% chance of reoccurring. But a cataract completely blurs my vision in that eye. Wills Eye Hospital in Philly gave their go-ahead to get the cataract removed, so I have that scheduled here (in Honolulu) for October 24th.

Hardware and Software
Matrix/Slitherine Games programmers made more revisions to the code at the NetPlay server end. I haven’t tested those changes yet.

The open items for Theme Engine remain unchanged: (1) scroll bars for the detailed map, and (2) its inability to display detailed listings of file directories (i.e., the dates and stuff when opening or saving a file).

Beta Testing
I did not upload a new version for the beta testers in September. That is a first since beta testers began working on MWIF in early 2006. I should be able to do much better this month.

Saved Games
Nothing new.

Map, Units, and Scenarios
I received some more naval unit writeups from Warspite.

Optional Rules
Nothing new.

Game Engine
I spent all of my working time this month on supply. In pondering possibilities I discovered several unusual situations:
• An HQ could be out of supply, yet still act as a secondary supply source. The obvious example here is Gort supplying Egyptian territorial units by tracing a path to an Egyptian city.
• A secondary supply source might use multiple paths to reach primary supply sources. For instance, if von Leeb were cut off from primary supply sources in Germany, he might be able to reach cities in Rumania, Bulgaria, and Hungary. In that situation, he could serve as a secondary supply source for Rumanian, Bulgarian, and Hungarian units, but he would need to use 3 different supply paths.
• Besides supplying minor country units, a secondary supply source might use multiple paths to supply major power units too. Here the example is Clark in southwestern France tracing paths to a French city and a British city. Clark, although unable to trace a path to the US, could supply US, French, and Commonwealth units, but would need to use two separate supply paths for the units belonging to the cooperating major powers. Assuming that the Axis had control of Cape St. Vincent, US naval units in Malta could trace to Clark and from there to a French city. But Commonwealth naval units in Malta would be out of supply since the supply path would have to go overseas twice.
• A tertiary supply source might also need multiple paths. For example, if von Leeb is cut off from primary supply sources in Germany, he might be able to reach Antonescu and Mannerheim, both of which could reach a city in Germany. In this circumstance, von Leeb would be in supply and capable of supplying all German, Rumanian, and Finnish units. But he would not be able to supply Italian or Hungarian units. Note that to supply the Rumanian and Finnish units, von Leeb would need to use different supply paths.
• Another odd instance is where German units could trace to Bucharest (secondary: capital of aligned minor country) and from there to Trieste (primary: city belonging to cooperating major power), even though Italian units could not use Bucharest and Rumanian units could not use Trieste.

To accommodate all the above, I had to add some variables to store multiple paths for secondary supply sources. I also renamed some variables to make their purpose easier to understand.

Besides straightening out multiple paths, I worked on eliminating supply path searches. That is the only big problem remaining with supply: reducing the time required to calculate all supply paths from scratch. What I have done is consolidate all the searches for railway supply paths from a secondary-to-primary to just one search for each secondary supply source. The search starts by looking for an overland path to a primary supply source for the major power (M) which controls the secondary supply source. If that succeeds, then no more searches are necessary, since the secondary can then be used to supply all of M’s units, as well as units belonging to major powers that cooperate with M (if they cooperate with the secondary), and units belonging to minor countries aligned with M (if they can make use of the secondary).

But if that search fails, then a quick review is made of all the hexes that were just examined, looking for primary supply sources belonging to cooperating major powers and aligned minor countries. If any are found, then those paths are stored. This followup to failed searches eliminates the need to search later for possible uses for the secondary supply source. In fact, minor countries do not need to perform any searches for secondary-to-primary paths, since any secondary that they might use was already been checked when the search was performed for its controlling major power.

Lastly, failed searches also initiate a further review of all the hexes that were just examined, looking for ports. Ports might be used for extending the search overseas. There are other routines that perform the overseas searches and combine the three links (overland, overseas, and overland) into a single path. Exactly the same as for the overland routes, overseas routes might require storing multiple paths. But the key point here is that for each secondary supply source, only one search is conducted trying to find a railway path to a primary.

Still left to do is:
• read through the code for determining tertiary supply for major powers and seeing if that code can simultaneously make the same determination for minor countries (this is what I did for secondary supply as described above),
• write a routine to determine if a supply path, that was previously valid, is still valid; this will drastically reduce the time required to recalculate supply,
• check and evaluate when supply is calculated/recalculated during game play (the beta testers have reported instances when it hasn’t been recalculated when it should have),
• check if the time required to calculate supply the first time (i.e., from scratch) is now acceptable.

Player Interface
Nothing new.

Internet - NetPlay
Nothing new.

PBEM
Nothing new.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Nothing new.

Player’s Manual
Nothing new: both the Players Manual and Rules as Coded are in the hands of the Matrix Games graphics person, who is doing the final layouts for how those will appear as PDFs and in print.

Tutorials and Training Videos
I still have one bug to fix for the tutorial on Production (so production can be performed for multiple countries within the tutorial). Otherwise the tutorials are done.

I need to re-record the 6th and create the last three Training Videos: 10th, 11th, and 12th. The 6th (main form and drop down menus) needs redoing because I have seriously modified some forms since I recorded that video in December of 2009. The last 3 training videos are for naval movement, naval combat, and production/politics.

Historical Video, Music, and Sound Effects
I now have all the files I need as WAV files. What’s needed is for me to insert calls into the sequence of play to activate these glitz elements.

Marketing
Nothing new.

Sorry to hear things are not going as well as you would like on the health front Steve. Hope your eye surgery goes well this month and your overall health makes a come back soon.

First, I'd like to send you my best for your continued recovery and successful cataract surgery, which I know will be a relief for you.

The Supply situation is ever so interesting. It really is amazing all the things we do in a game without thinking about how exactly we're doing it, especially when there are conditionals to consider. Not mention how relatively quickly we process a set of conditions. It sounds as if the supply problem is almost completely finished. It certainly is important to the game -- as long waits for computations can be game killers. Oh those early era games that seemed to get stuck in a loop.

My body is getting in the way of me working on the game - arrgh.

I missed 6 days working on the game traveling to Philly for an annual followup on my eye surgery to treat my melanoma. Then I lost another 5 days due to headaches caused by muscle pain in my neck and shoulder. Pretty much a lost month as far as the beta testers are concerned.

My health, in short:
• My kidneys are fine, with a September sonogram showing no sign of new kidney stones.
• My heart is fine; but the healing from the bypass surgery on my breastbone aggravated a 25 year old injury (broken clavicle) which caused the neck and shoulder pain. I have 3 sessions scheduled this month with a physical therapist which hopefully will abate that discomfort and provide me with exercises to avoid having it reoccur.
• The melanoma in my left eye is dormant and has less than a 5% chance of reoccurring. But a cataract completely blurs my vision in that eye. Wills Eye Hospital in Philly gave their go-ahead to get the cataract removed, so I have that scheduled here (in Honolulu) for October 24th.

O My!!!!

Heart, kidney, eye, clavicle, neck, shoulder, ... [X(] Sorry to hear that guy!!!

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
My body is getting in the way of me working on the game - arrgh.

Steve, the most important thing : do not let working on the game get in the way of improving your health.
So please spend as little time as possible on this project, at least for the time being, until you feel really as fit as a fiddle, as fresh as a daisy, and roaring to go !

And thank for the update

Alain (from Aix en Provence) back on the MWIF forum (and I hope on beta-testing) after three years' leave for personal reasons (not enough time, too much to do)

PS : Steve, I've sent you a PM – if you didn't receive it, could you please send me one (or an e-mail) with your e-mail address ? Thanks. I'd like to help again if I may.

I bought my first computer in 1995 simply because I knew CWIF was about to be released Obviously, I've been waiting a while (as all of you) for this project to see the light of day. That said, it is wholly unimportant compared to your health, Shannon. Please continue to take care of your life - there is no save file with which to start over!

Pretty much a lost month as far as the beta testers are concerned

its the main weakness of only having one man on the project

ORIGINAL: michaelbaldur

Pretty much a lost month as far as the beta testers are concerned

its the main weakness of only having one man on the project

Sorry to say this, but Amen

Bo

Interesting project here, i was just wondering how the combats will be laid out? Throwing in dice animations or combat situations?

Slowly Steve, please slowly. I think it is very good that you are slowly recovering. Also I like the way you are spending your time on the project on the supply routes. Stay focused on this and forget about the rest at the moment. Those are simply bugs, the supply issue is a main problem...

But do it slowly. I rather don't have an update on the program this month before having to read again of health problems...

December 2006 as a release date is still my best estimate - unchanged from last month.

lets just say it is many years ago

ORIGINAL: RisingSun

Interesting project here, i was just wondering how the combats will be laid out? Throwing in dice animations or combat situations?

Nothing fancy for the random numbers. There is some (optional) historical video footage and sound effects for movement and combat. The video pops up occasionally/rarely rather than being shown every time something occurs.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery, Steve. I'm astonished at the depth and sophistication of what you've been able to develop on this project, and the countless hours of hard work put forward by you and your supports in the community to make it as good as it can possibly be.

Regarding this month's update, I had a question about the streamlined Supply logic. I can absolutely see how it works to make the process much faster during player-controlled turns, but I'm wondering about its implications for eventual AI use.

It may be that I'm not understanding it fully, but it sounds like, using this revised logic, the AI will be unable to determine how many supply routes (above 1) exist for a given hex. I'm sure you'll agree that isolating and flipping units can be a critical component of most coordinated strategies; I'm just unclear how, using this new process, the AI will be able to determine when and where to attempt to cut supply. It would seem to me that, on AI turns at least, the engine needs to evaluate ALL supply for opposing hexes in order to identify targets of opportunity and incorporate them into its evaluation of priorities for actions.

As I said, this doesn't appear to be an issue for PVP, which I understand is the development focus right now, but at first glance it would seem to be handcuffing eventual AI development.

Thoughts?

ORIGINAL: Ohio Jones

Best wishes for a speedy recovery, Steve. I'm astonished at the depth and sophistication of what you've been able to develop on this project, and the countless hours of hard work put forward by you and your supports in the community to make it as good as it can possibly be.

Regarding this month's update, I had a question about the streamlined Supply logic. I can absolutely see how it works to make the process much faster during player-controlled turns, but I'm wondering about its implications for eventual AI use.

It may be that I'm not understanding it fully, but it sounds like, using this revised logic, the AI will be unable to determine how many supply routes (above 1) exist for a given hex. I'm sure you'll agree that isolating and flipping units can be a critical component of most coordinated strategies; I'm just unclear how, using this new process, the AI will be able to determine when and where to attempt to cut supply. It would seem to me that, on AI turns at least, the engine needs to evaluate ALL supply for opposing hexes in order to identify targets of opportunity and incorporate them into its evaluation of priorities for actions.

As I said, this doesn't appear to be an issue for PVP, which I understand is the development focus right now, but at first glance it would seem to be handcuffing eventual AI development.

Thoughts?

While individual hexes are recorded for each found path, you are correct that not all possible paths are tracked.

On the other hand, the units being supplied from primary/secondary/tertiary supply sources is recorded. So the AIO has immediate access to how many units are tracing supply to Kiel, Konigsberg, Tripoli, or through a sea area (e.g., Western Med, Baltic, Black Sea). As for cutting supply paths (or worrying about the AIO's own supply paths being cut) it would be possible to hypothesize the loss of control for certain hexes/sea areas and then rerun the calculation of supply paths for a unit or secondary/tertiary supply source. As long as the calculation is just for one unit, then the time required should be negligible.

During games against the AIO I expect all supply calculations to be run by the program (including hypothetical ones for the AIO) while the human player mulls over his decisions.

Elapsed time for supply determination is really only critical when playing solitaire, or maybe also for head-to-head games.

Of course the AIO will have to be careful of falling into the trap of making an attack when it thinks the units are OOS, only to find the perfidious human has used Emergency HQ Supply to turn the attack into a monster loss-taker. [:'(]