SITREP

[wodin]

Oh great news..surprising though. I will finally get to boot the game up again esp with the COTA pack or if I bother with HTTR.

[decaro]

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

Yes I am aiming to. I will probably go for a public beta just so you all can get your hands on it. I need to check with Matrix re their capacity to release this before Xmas.

Great news as I usually run a Bulge scenario around this time of year.

[ComradeP]

ComradeP it's sadly a fact that eventually you have to upgrade an OS//XP has been around for over a decade now so it's had a good crap of the whip. Win7 is an excellent OS..as good or better than Win XP so I see no real negative reason for people not to update (unless they have less than 2 gig or a netbook or something as it struggle son those machines). Eventually things move on and if XP is holding up further games or if new features etc can't be done due to having to be XP compatible I feel it should be put to bed.

I agree that after some time, moving on to a new OS is natural, but it would be unfortunate if that has to happen because of 1 bug whilst the original game works fine.

My main problem with it no longer being XP compatible is that it would require that I essentially buy a new PC (because just a new OS, which my current hardware can't really take advantage of, would be somewhat strange) and that it would mean I'd need no less than 3 different PC's to play my wargames (Win 98, Win XP, Win 7 or 8). That's a moment I'd rather face in a few years and not now.

The people who don't see the problem with older game compatibility with a new OS must have a pretty new game library, but if you have older games as well, it can be a real pain to make everything work.

[SapperAstro_MatrixForum]

Agreed ComradeP. Dosbox makes things easy for the ancient stuff, as do emulators...

However, from the win95 stuff onwards, it can be pure pain getting some of these games to work. This is another reason I am making more of an effort to get the old gaming crowd back together, and finding new people too, for some 'around the table' gaming. You can always make a board wargame work[:D]

Just as an aside, from all reports Windows 8 is a flop. Vista mk 2? I am now in a holding pattern, as I was going to jump straight from XP to 8, but have given that up, so will be looking to see if 7 is the new XP or merely an ME until the Next Big Thing arrives after Windows 8 is put out to pasture. The maker of 8 is already sacked after all...

Oh, and to keep on topic, very much looking forward to the patch..

[wodin]

I do love old games..but have to come to terms with the fact I can't play them...

Sapper..you really can't go wrong with Win 7..worse case scenario you notice no difference between it and XP.

[gexmex]

Battles from the Bulge demo runs like a champ on my Windows 8 laptop. No problems. Takes some getting used to but I really enjoy the new OS. Aside from no start button, the desktop looks and functions identically to 7, etc.

[wodin]

Thing is gexmex many game developers hate it..thats the main issue. It's the start of a closed platform that will cripple games in the long run.

[gexmex]

Ah ok. I didn't realize that. [:(]

[BigDuke66]

Well what can you expect of MS, they've taken the world as Hostage with the operating systems long ago and now they just tighten the grip.

[Fishbreath]

I hate to be that guy, but how's it looking for a beta patch in the next week or so?

[vj531]

I'm lurking here waiting to see the answer![;)]

[wdkruger]

Fishbreath:

I'm glad someone had the balls to ask! Bought the HTTR expansion, but waiting for new patch to play.

Warren

[Arjuna]

We are very close. I have been working flat out on this and I have to get the files to matrix by the 17th at the latest. It's going to be touch and go.

I have been overhauling the formation code as this was one of the last remaining gripes about BFTB. The complaints about the forces being too tightly packed and not in the right positions were valid. There were a host of factors at play here but the main one was that the formation code as it stood relied on the hub being in the centre and then compressing the other units to fit. I have had to rewrite the code such that it calc where the hub will be and positions the units accordingly. I have broken the back of it and have the new version working for Vee formation, including offsetting the task bounding box. I hope to account for depot and fire basing today as well as making some changes so the other formation types work as well. Here is a screen dump of how it looks now.

[wodin]

Superb..I have thought for awhile now that things didn't look right and I rarely saw anything that resembled formations like the screenie above..

[Fishbreath]

That looks incredible. Keep up the good work.

[Arjuna]

As of 7pm my time I have run through a complete game of the BFTB tutorial with the new formation code and it appears to be working fine. Tomorrow I will endeavour to get the other formation types working and sign off on this issue. That will leave the weekend to sort out the XP issue and Monday to build an installer.

[Phoenix100]

And the rest of the week to do your christmas shopping......

Great stuff. Courage! Looking forward to a christmas release.

[pekische]

We are with you, Arjuna....

[vj531]

Sounds interesting - nice one Dave.

[Arjuna]

It's taken me most of the day to overhaul the formation code for Line formations. Here's a snap. This was with the frontage and depth set to the default "Auto".