Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: bredsjomagnus

Great work so far with the manual. Nice with all the space. Makes it easier to read.

One question:
Will you be able to check out any charts for say strategic bombing or air to air combat before you decide to do the mission?

/Magnus

Right now a PDF of the tables et al provided with WIF FE can be called up at any time. MWIF jumps out of the program to execute Adobe Acrobat, but that isn't a big deal. when you close ADobe Acrobat, you're back where you left in MWIF. I would like to improve the charts presentation too, but not for MWIF product 1. It would be nice to have, but not essential.

ORIGINAL: brian brian
I'm confused about how you are going to replace "dice". Not having any experience with other computer wargames here
maybe adds to this confusion. But it would seem to be a frustrating experience to never know what the dice turned up
and just read the combat results the computer generates for you. This would seem to be true in many 'dice' parts of
the game - naval search dice, air combat dice. I mean when your opponent rolls a 2 in land combat you have a feeling
this is less likely to occur again. And yes, I know, a 2 or a 20 is equally likely on every roll in the game. But in practice
you don't see too many of them during a game. Some people play whole games without even rolling either one, so
one of those numbers, especially in land combat, is fairly memorable. A 1/10 split in naval combat is similar, though
more common.

I'd suggest leaving the dices where they are in the document, as even computer wargames also have dices.
I'd even suggest that MWiF shows the die roll results when it roll dices, either as a simple number, or as an actual dice graphic.

ORIGINAL: Froonp

ORIGINAL: brian brian
I'm confused about how you are going to replace "dice". Not having any experience with other computer wargames here
maybe adds to this confusion. But it would seem to be a frustrating experience to never know what the dice turned up
and just read the combat results the computer generates for you. This would seem to be true in many 'dice' parts of
the game - naval search dice, air combat dice. I mean when your opponent rolls a 2 in land combat you have a feeling
this is less likely to occur again. And yes, I know, a 2 or a 20 is equally likely on every roll in the game. But in practice
you don't see too many of them during a game. Some people play whole games without even rolling either one, so
one of those numbers, especially in land combat, is fairly memorable. A 1/10 split in naval combat is similar, though
more common.

I'd suggest leaving the dices where they are in the document, as even computer wargames also have dices.
I'd even suggest that MWiF shows the die roll results when it roll dices, either as a simple number, or as an actual dice graphic.

Well, I'm old school - I always think of a die as having 6 sides. But WIF using 10-sided dice, which I found confusing when they converted (originally it used 6-sided dice). So when the WIF FE manual mentions dice, I think the average person in the street thinks of the 6-sided dice used in the casinos.

For those reasons, I am going to replace the mention of dice with something about random numbers. Those have the advantage of being base 10 and talking about fractional parts is a lot easier too. And, once again, I prefer accuracy in writing; since MWIF will not use dice, its "No dice!" to dice.[:)]

Here are a few more screen shots of the RAC document. I've darkened the color for optional rules to a dark red/rust. This looks good on both the screen and the printed page.

I changed the color for examples to a darer blue. All screen shots by Patrice.

3rd and last in series. This continues the discussion from the previous page about supply paths and has another picture.

Finished the first pass on the RAC.

Here is how the Index/Glossary will look. I never understood why they called it a glossary until I did this edit and found that there were definitions embedded in the fine print. I've colored them blue (which is consistent with how I am showing definitional items in the text).

I like the font and color choices you have selected. If anyone on these forums can comment on the selection  of colors for people with color blindness it would be nice to know we have a winner in all respects.

ORIGINAL: abj9562

I like the font and color choices you have selected. If anyone on these forums can comment on the selection  of colors for people with color blindness it would be nice to know we have a winner in all respects.

I'm agree with abj9562 - colors are well chosen and make the rules more easily to read.

Great job Steve!

A couple more pictures of the RAC document in development.

2nd and final post in series. Patrice is doing all the screen shots for the RAC.[&o][&o]

One more screen shot from RAC before I turn my attention elsewhere. These are actual counter graphics, enlarged of course.

Very nice, and may I say awesome screenshots, Patrice! [&o][&o][&o]

Here are the 3 latest figures for RAC.

Oops, I got them out of order.

3rd and last in the series.

The orange and red are too close in color as shown here, but that won't matter during game play. The position of the indicators is more important. The one on the right is always supply: bright green for primary supply source (HQ after using supply point - optional rule), dark green for secondary (most HQs), yellow for out of supply, and red for isolated. Arrgh, I told Patrice red and it should be yellow! The position for disorganized is one in from the left and any time that indicator is on it is orange and the unit is disorganized (face-down for those from the old school).

Here is an example we had to rework a little.

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

3rd and last in the series.

The orange and red are too close in color as shown here, but that won't matter during game play.

I know this is not the correct forum for this; but, will there be a way to set our own color values within a csv or ini or other type of file?

ORIGINAL: abj9562

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

3rd and last in the series.

The orange and red are too close in color as shown here, but that won't matter during game play.

I know this is not the correct forum for this; but, will there be a way to set our own color values within a csv or ini or other type of file?

I started out with that objective in mind but reality interfered.

For the map, the terrain colors mostly come from bitmaps but I am using a separate program to merge the outlines of the coastal hexes with the terrain for the land portions of each coastal hex. So if you change the terrain bitmaps, none of the coastal hexes will match.

The units colors are accesible for change, but again, there is a problem with bitmapped images. The bitmaps use antialiasing to improve the clarity of the images (a lot). To do that, they have to be drawn against a fixed background. So if you change the color of the US units to a different shade of green, all the naval and air units will use the old one, since that is how their graphic images were created by Rob (at my request). I gave him specific colors for each major power, which he used as the backgrounds when creating the 2800+ bitmaps for the units.

All of this falls into what I consider a WIF design kit, and outside the purpose/goals of MWIF product 1.

Thanks for the info.