Release date

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: Kid

I'd never joke about a thing like this. Just about finished my review of the 148 page manual, Mike Eckenfels has done an outstanding job. The scenario designers have until Monday to finish up, so I would say we are getting close. Please remember Gold does not mean published. It jsut means we've stopped making changes so the programmer can set up the master files and created the install.

Is there some place where the principals can actually discuss issues like project management and coding standards, design principals and such that do not seem appropriate for this kind of forum? I almost took a job about five years ago with Legend Entertainment (a developer of First Person Shooter and RTS games) as their chief design engineer but never could come to terms on the compensation package. I am current a senior design engineer/project manager for a software firm that develops financial settlement software for the banking industry, CIT (Computer Integrated Telephony) and reservation systems for the Transportation Industry and such. Been programming and managing projects and IS departments now for almost 25 years.

Project management styles in the gaming industry facinates me. Software development and system design, however, leaves me bewildered quite often, as I've never seen so many primative techniques used for what amounts to such demanding software specifications. I was flaberghasted, for instance, when someone told me that instead of using C++ toolkits like wxWindows, Fox, or (gag) MFC to present standard GUI widgets (dialogs, frames, toobars, statusbars, menubars, etc...) to the user you guys rolled your own even though most toolkits these days allow for all sorts of ownerdrawn widgets, even with textures??? Kind of like reinventing the wheel. I'm sure there is a reason, but I could never figure it out.

Stuff like that..... I've even toyed with start my own gaming development firm once I get my kids out of college and off the dole. But before I ever did something like that I'd need a good feel for why game developers do things the way they do and why it seems so at odds to what business software developers do.

[freeboy]

hello ZOOMIE1980,
Go to 2by 3 games home page and hit the contact button and write these most excellent game developers an email.

[ZOOMIE1980]

Yea, I know I could e-mail directly, but I was looking more for a place (maybe one of those general purpose Matrix forums) where a more multiperson public forum for technical development discussions could take place between professional software developers both inside the game business and outside.

I am most curious about what is about the software design that, at least based on developer posts here, make the thing so rigid and seemingly inflexible. It seems that modifcations that in mainstream, Object Oriented, business software systems, would be trivial, such as adding a string member and UI element to allow users to name their TF's, are so difficult to implement in this design? I can understand, why, with only a week or so before locking down the code, even trivial changes must be rejected, but this was case even two years ago. Time and time again, it seemed almost everything was "too hard", "too much code", etc.... And so many things appear to be "hard coded". I can't remember the last time I've ever "hardcoded" ANYTHING into a software module other than an error or trace message.

I'm sure there must be some reasons for these things, but they are not very forthcoming with them. I suspect some of it has to do with Gary Grigsby, himself. I have the source code to most of his old Apple IIc games and PACWAR and War In Russia DOS games. He used a lot of hard coded, fixed size arrays and accessed data using array indexing, all in AppleSoft Basic or 'C'. If that basic coding style has carried over into UV and this game, it answers a LOT of questions. But then I don't really kno what his role is in this any more anyway........

But you can see how some folks could get wrapped up in these kinds of discussions and why just plain e-mail is not most desirable method. It would be very illuminating and some of us more techie types a greater appreciation for how these games are actually designed, written and brought to market.....

[Greyshaft]

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980
Is there some place where the principals can actually discuss issues like project management and coding standards, design principals and such that do not seem appropriate for this kind of forum?

Double Amen to that brother.

I'm happy to add my 20 years of software development experience to the fold and am currently putting in the yards with the Beta Team at Flashpoint Germany. Much of the work has been reinventing the rubber roller especially with the classification of bugs etc.

I'm not being negative here... I know that Matrix works on a shoestring and you rely a lot on unpaid volunteers but surely we can work more effectively. Fr'instance, now that Robert has killed all of my FPG Bugs I'm now starting to write the Tutorials... but I'm doing it from scratch. I've written software training manuals for a living so its not rocket science, but it's always easier when you're using templates. What are the chances of scamming the tutorial portion of the WiTP manual as a template?

Just looking to make a big job a little easier and get FPG out the door a bit quicker...

[jhdeerslayer]

Hey guys! You are hijacking probably the most improtant thread on this forum! [:D]

[kaleun]

More like: The ONLY important thread in the forum at this time[:D]
However, this will bump it up and keep it at the top[;)]
WHEN CAN WE PREORDER?
WHEN CAN WE PREORDER?
WHEN CAN WE PREORDER?

To be followed later by "When does it ship?"

[ZOOMIE1980]

Forget preorder, I just want a digital download link as soon as it's ready.

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: Greyshaft

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980
Is there some place where the principals can actually discuss issues like project management and coding standards, design principals and such that do not seem appropriate for this kind of forum?

Double Amen to that brother.

I'm happy to add my 20 years of software development experience to the fold and am currently putting in the yards with the Beta Team at Flashpoint Germany. Much of the work has been reinventing the rubber roller especially with the classification of bugs etc.

I'm not being negative here... I know that Matrix works on a shoestring and you rely a lot on unpaid volunteers but surely we can work more effectively. Fr'instance, now that Robert has killed all of my FPG Bugs I'm now starting to write the Tutorials... but I'm doing it from scratch. I've written software training manuals for a living so its not rocket science, but it's always easier when you're using templates. What are the chances of scamming the tutorial portion of the WiTP manual as a template?

Just looking to make a big job a little easier and get FPG out the door a bit quicker...

That seems to be the general tendancy in the gaming world. They always reinvent the wheel over and over. At least some companies are beginning to settle on some standard tools like the Unreal Engine and such. But I find it shocking that they even roll their own UI???? I can't imagine how much time that took, especially seeing as how MFC and other toolkits are PERFECTLY suited for that kind of stuff. Same with the manuals. Manual templates that give one a skelatal manual would be a very big time saver.

[FirstPappy]

Yes, digital download - the only way to fly!

[Greyshaft]

ORIGINAL: Deerslayer
Hey guys! You are hijacking probably the most improtant thread on this forum! [:D]

Political Announcement
Be Quiet! I order you to be Quiet!
We are fully paid-up members of the PLF (Programmers Liberation Front) and we are protesting against the violence inherent in the system. We have kidnapped this thread and are giving Matrix three days to dismantle the entire apparatus of their Management Team except for those staff involved in the production of WiTP, FPG, WiF, WAW, EiA and any other software of benefit to Wargamers of both sexes and hermaphrodites.

/Political Announcement

D@mn... Forgot to mention the Wine...

[ZOOMIE1980]

Speaking of Wine......I see where people are running some recent Matrixgames stuff on Linux using Wine???? Don't know how that is possible if the game requires DirectX? But they are doing it.....

[kaleun]

I thought wine was a request by the hijackers!as in "Send some wine too or else .
Goes to show how much us grognards know about programing.

[Greyshaft]

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980

Speaking of Wine......I see where people are running some recent Matrixgames stuff on Linux using Wine???? Don't know how that is possible if the game requires DirectX? But they are doing it.....

Would be slow as a wet weekend with all those hardware calls working their way through multiple abstraction layers. Bring back DOS I say!

[kaleun]

BTW my wife has said (and of course she is always right) that we in this forum are all a bunch of old farts. Are there young farts too here?[:)]

[ZOOMIE1980]

How "fast" does a turn based wargame have to be??? All the CPU cycles are used to resolve combat, not draw real-time graphics. Hell, for the most part, the graphics are nothing but static bitmaps, GIF's or Jpegs....even the little combat animations (which I always turn off) seem to be nothing more than animated GIFs.

Seriously, how many hardware calls does a turn based wargame ever have to make? Hell, why do they even need to use DirectX for anything? We're not talking HalfLifeII or Madden NFL 2004 here...

[byron13]

Okay, we're impressed with all the programmers' skills. Start your own thread.

When can we preorder?
When can we preorder?
When can we preorder?

Followed by: When will it ship?

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: kaleun

BTW my wife has said (and of course she is always right) that we in this forum are all a bunch of old farts. Are there young farts too here?[:)]

Yea, anyone that uses an emoticon has to be a youngster, don't they? We crotchity greybeards can't stand those things. This forum sometimes looks like a figure skating fan forum populated by teenage girls.....

[Greyshaft]

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980
How "fast" does a turn based wargame have to be???

Fair point but it depends on the Wargames you want to play. I like a combination of strategic and tactical.

I loved the old "Battle of Britain" and then its later cousin "Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe" game where you plotted out your strategic moves and then got to fight in a tactical mode for one of the battles. Your success in the that tactical battle determined how well you were going in the strategic war. Great fun until I discovered the trick in SWOTL that when you fly under 200 feet all of the Germans completely ignore you!!!

Eventually I got to the point of actually *landing* my allied bomber in Germany and taxiing up to a factory or oil refinery to avoid the AAA and fighters. I could take out the gun emplacements with my turrent gunners then take off and bomb the Hades out of the now defenceless target. If any enemy fighters turned up then I would land again till they went away. Guaranteed to win the war inside three months [:D]

uh... we seem to have drifted off the topic... more wine please...

[kaleun]

I used to play SWOTL but never discovered that trick!
It was fun flying the B17 IRL I've only flown single engines.

[Greyshaft]

ORIGINAL: ZOOMIE1980
Yea, anyone that uses an emoticon has to be a youngster, don't they? We crotchity greybeards can't stand those things. This forum sometimes looks like a figure skating fan forum populated by teenage girls.....

What! Don't you dare insult my emoticons you young whippersnapper you. Why when I was your age I was already ten years older and I wasn't even allowed to speak until I had been born. And the name is GREYSHAFT... not GREYBEARD... he was some d@mn tree somewhere growing hobbity things in his branches as I recall.

Yes... let's bring back DOS and use the old five and a quarter inch disks the way nature intended! more wine! The youth of today can only manage three and a half and doesn't that tell you something! The wouldn't know Assembler if it came up and bit them in the backside. I'll check my own Syntax thank you very much mutter... mutter... mumble... sounds of loud snoring

oh blast it all, my disk's gone all floppy again