Development Update - September 2025
Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2025 1:28 pm
Hey everyone,
We know things have been quiet for some time, but we just released a bug-fixing public beta. See HERE for details.
On behalf of Steve, we'd like to share what has been going on in the background and what the current development efforts are.
"It has been a year since the last public beta of World in Flames was released. That’s too long a time between updates. However, things in my personal life have interfered with me having time to work on World in Flames.
Our 36 story condominium had major renovations to our plumbing over a period of 14 months, running from April of 2024 to May of 2025. During that time a group of plumbers replaced all the drain pipes in our building. Their basic approach was to knock down walls, take out the old cast iron drain pipes and replace them with new cast iron drain pipes. Apparently they will have to do that again in 50 years. Our apartment needed to have two walls removed in the master bathroom and two more removed in the kitchen. For us, that meant we had our living (and my working) space in disarray from mid February 2025 through to the end of May 2025.
To avoid having our custom built cabinets et al destroyed, we hired our own contractors to remove many of our cabinets to a safe location and place protective coverings on those that were not removed. After the plumbers were done, we had our contractors return and restore our apartment to its previous condition. For 5 weeks, in the midst of the plumbers coming and going, we had no water and no drains from 8 in the morning to 5 in the evening 5 days a week. They gave us one working toilet, sink, and shower during the evenings and over the weekend. No clothes washer and dish washer though. For those 5 weeks we rented a B&B, where we hided off to every morning at 8 during the week and returned at 5 in the evening. Obviously I did not have access to my computer development system during that time.
Once the dust had settled, we replaced all the wall-to-wall carpets in our apartment. Moving bookcases and large furniture was exhausting. Thus June and July passed into history.
Since Microsoft is removing support for Windows 10 in October, I bought a new computer system, running Windows 11. To accompany that change, I upgraded my version of Delphi from 10.4 to 12.3. While I am transitioning from my old system to my new one, I have two computers running every day.
Version 8.0.0.0 of World in Flames, which I just made available as a public beta to all users, was created using my old Windows 10 computer system and built with Delphi 10.4.
Delphi 12.3 requires more memory to execute World in Flames (MWIF) as a 32 bits Windows application. Now Windows memory limits were a problem for me back in 2006, when creating MWIF. I got around that by some clever programming to reduce the bitmap requirements for MWIF. Specifically, the graphics for the map coastal hexes and the graphics for the air and naval units are compressed. With Delphi 12.3, I am out of tricks to try.
The solution is to change MWIF from a 32 bits application to a 64 bits application. A 64 bits application has essentially unlimited memory - as far as MWIF is concerned. As may be expected, converting an application from 32 bits to 64 bits requires a lot of tedious work on the code. Without going into details, I spent a good portion of July, all of August, and I’m well into September trying to get the 64 bits version of MWIF running cleanly. It compiles and builds okay but fails when I execute it. By the way, Delphi reports the number of lines of code as 1,080,000.
Just to keep things interesting, Embarcadero released version 13.0 of Delphi last week. It is suppose to make creation of 64 bits applications easier. All leading edge technology can be called bleeding edge technology. Now where did I put my band-aids?"
We will share more news when the time comes.
We know things have been quiet for some time, but we just released a bug-fixing public beta. See HERE for details.
On behalf of Steve, we'd like to share what has been going on in the background and what the current development efforts are.
"It has been a year since the last public beta of World in Flames was released. That’s too long a time between updates. However, things in my personal life have interfered with me having time to work on World in Flames.
Our 36 story condominium had major renovations to our plumbing over a period of 14 months, running from April of 2024 to May of 2025. During that time a group of plumbers replaced all the drain pipes in our building. Their basic approach was to knock down walls, take out the old cast iron drain pipes and replace them with new cast iron drain pipes. Apparently they will have to do that again in 50 years. Our apartment needed to have two walls removed in the master bathroom and two more removed in the kitchen. For us, that meant we had our living (and my working) space in disarray from mid February 2025 through to the end of May 2025.
To avoid having our custom built cabinets et al destroyed, we hired our own contractors to remove many of our cabinets to a safe location and place protective coverings on those that were not removed. After the plumbers were done, we had our contractors return and restore our apartment to its previous condition. For 5 weeks, in the midst of the plumbers coming and going, we had no water and no drains from 8 in the morning to 5 in the evening 5 days a week. They gave us one working toilet, sink, and shower during the evenings and over the weekend. No clothes washer and dish washer though. For those 5 weeks we rented a B&B, where we hided off to every morning at 8 during the week and returned at 5 in the evening. Obviously I did not have access to my computer development system during that time.
Once the dust had settled, we replaced all the wall-to-wall carpets in our apartment. Moving bookcases and large furniture was exhausting. Thus June and July passed into history.
Since Microsoft is removing support for Windows 10 in October, I bought a new computer system, running Windows 11. To accompany that change, I upgraded my version of Delphi from 10.4 to 12.3. While I am transitioning from my old system to my new one, I have two computers running every day.
Version 8.0.0.0 of World in Flames, which I just made available as a public beta to all users, was created using my old Windows 10 computer system and built with Delphi 10.4.
Delphi 12.3 requires more memory to execute World in Flames (MWIF) as a 32 bits Windows application. Now Windows memory limits were a problem for me back in 2006, when creating MWIF. I got around that by some clever programming to reduce the bitmap requirements for MWIF. Specifically, the graphics for the map coastal hexes and the graphics for the air and naval units are compressed. With Delphi 12.3, I am out of tricks to try.
The solution is to change MWIF from a 32 bits application to a 64 bits application. A 64 bits application has essentially unlimited memory - as far as MWIF is concerned. As may be expected, converting an application from 32 bits to 64 bits requires a lot of tedious work on the code. Without going into details, I spent a good portion of July, all of August, and I’m well into September trying to get the 64 bits version of MWIF running cleanly. It compiles and builds okay but fails when I execute it. By the way, Delphi reports the number of lines of code as 1,080,000.
Just to keep things interesting, Embarcadero released version 13.0 of Delphi last week. It is suppose to make creation of 64 bits applications easier. All leading edge technology can be called bleeding edge technology. Now where did I put my band-aids?"
We will share more news when the time comes.