ETA release & info update

[Jo van der Pluym]

It's now all more then 2 months that matrix games has the rights. And soon is't Christmass. Is there all news for a release date for a patch, and about the fixes/changes etc?

[scout1]

My guess is this will be a two part release. The first will do away with the current CD protection and add a few scenarios. The second release will be much more extensive in terms of changes. The first probably won't occur before Spring with the second around next Christmas.

The news about Matrix was/is incouraging, but it takes time to pick up a product and "run" with it .......

[Jo van der Pluym]

ORIGINAL: scout1
the second around next Christmas.

[&:] Next Christmas. That's by me in about a week. Or have I mis understanding here?

[scout1]

My information is entirely unofficial and my own opinion. My description of next Christams for a descent change/release is Christmas 2006. Just a guess based on past experience....

[06 Maestro]

ORIGINAL: Jo van der Pluym

ORIGINAL: scout1
the second around next Christmas.

[&:] Next Christmas. That's by me in about a week. Or have I mis understanding here?

Yea Jo, it's a misunderstanding. This Christmas is 9 days away, next Christmas is 374 days away. It's a strange language sometimes.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: scout1

My information is entirely unofficial and my own opinion. My description of next Christams for a descent change/release is Christmas 2006. Just a guess based on past experience....

Based on my own understanding, your assessment is pretty much spot-on.

This sort of speculation is all we're going to get anyway, due to non-disclosure agreements and so on.

[rich12545]

ORIGINAL: scout1

My guess is this will be a two part release. The first will do away with the current CD protection and add a few scenarios. The second release will be much more extensive in terms of changes. The first probably won't occur before Spring with the second around next Christmas.

The news about Matrix was/is incouraging, but it takes time to pick up a product and "run" with it .......

I think there will be at least two parts. But there's already a copy protection patch. I think the first part will be released with bugs fixed and include the cp patch and that's about it. I would guess sometime in January, probably late. Toaw has been out for a long time and is pretty much a finished product. Fixing the bugs and publishing shouldn't take long.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: rich12545

I think there will be at least two parts. But there's already a copy protection patch.

From what I've heard, the game will also be made more compatible with NT-based versions of Windows (ie, XP)

I think the first part will be released with bugs fixed and include the cp patch and that's about it. I would guess sometime in January, probably late. Toaw has been out for a long time and is pretty much a finished product. Fixing the bugs and publishing shouldn't take long.

That depends on what you define as a bug- among other things. I'd guess your statement is based on optimism alone. Bug fixing might be done quickly- or it might not. We don't have anything like enough information to make an informed estimate.

[rich12545]

Of course we're all just whistling here. That's a given. But they've had it a couple months. Norm has already fixed many of the bugs in an unpublished patch. He's agreed to help make it more xp compatible. I still think it'll be out by the end of January. Then refinements will continue at least through the end of the year. We'll see.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: rich12545

Of course we're all just whistling here. That's a given. But they've had it a couple months. Norm has already fixed many of the bugs in an unpublished patch.

You're refering to the patch that was hinted at after 1.06 but before Matrix bought the rights? I am not even sure that any of the work done on such a patch can be used by Matrix. As I recall from the time, Norm noted that it had been so long since he worked on the code that he was not even sure what a lot of it did himself. This would indicate not only that it is unlikely he fixed bugs in that time (the only change I recall being mentioned specifically was hexside rivers), but also that it will be a lot of work for Matrix' developers to pick through the code to find out which parts need to be changed in order to fix known bugs.

[rich12545]

Time will tell. You might be right. I might be right. Or maybe it'll be February and neither of us will be right.[8D]

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: rich12545

Time will tell. You might be right. I might be right. Or maybe it'll be February and neither of us will be right.[8D]

Yeah. Since Matrix seems to be quite serious about this non-disclosure business, we'll have to wait and see.

[Crimguy]

This is definitely the quietest I've seen Matrix regarding an upcoming release.

You can hear a pin drop in this forum.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Crimguy

This is definitely the quietest I've seen Matrix regarding an upcoming release.

You can hear a pin drop in this forum.

It could be worse. Check out some of the other forums in this section.

[Siberian HEAT]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for your patience. I really wish I had more news to share...but currently we are working on testing the latest patch sent over by Norm (several weeks ago). His latest patch is going to most likely be referenced as 2.0, and it fixes the flaw introduced in 1.06 and adds in some other minor tweaks. We haven't really been given the green light to say what those tweaks are, but it is safe to say they won't be major revisions to the code. As most have suspected, so far the plan is to release the game with just a few small tweaks and bugs fixed on digital download format (along with a batch of good scenarios)...to be followed up with bigger changes down the road on the 2.x platform. The main delay is thoroughly testing everything so that this first release is as stable as it can be.

So, in short, the team is working on this (some slowdown for the holidays of course)...and as of this minute I don't have any firm estimate on when we will have the first release ready to go.

Sorry I don't have more to offer.

[8D]

[rhinobones]

Thank you, much appreciated.

Regards, RhinoBones

[Widell]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious
From what I've heard, the game will also be made more compatible with NT-based versions of Windows (ie, XP)

Interesting - I have never had any problems running it under any Windows version including 2k and XP. OK, I need to set the compatibility manually on the 2 exe files, but that´s not a major issue. Maybe I´m just a lucky b*stard [;)]

/Widell

PS Thanks for the update on "v2" - Looking forward to it, whatever Christmas it arrives for DS

[sol_invictus]

Sounds like this puppy will be released earlier than I had expected.[:)]

[DanNeely]

I've had major issues running acow300 (esp the scen editor) on two different 2k systems when fully loaded. So far, I've been unable to replicate the issue on my new machine. Not sure why, and since my new XP box runs rings around my old one (2x2.4 gig a64 vs 1x1.4gig athlon, ram at 440mhz instead of 266, twice as much of it too) I haven't managed to get it as heavily burdened.

PS, what was compatability mode supposed to fix? I haven't had any problems running without it.

EDIT: actaully, I've managed to have 2 copies of acow 300 running at once on my new system, I had to open a 3rd to get the 'not enough resources' bug that's plauged me since upgrading from 9x.

[Widell]

ORIGINAL: DanNeely
what was compatability mode supposed to fix? I haven't had any problems running without it.

Honestly, I don´t remember exactly. All i recall is that it didn´t want to run properly until I set compatibility to Win 98 or something like that. Haven´t had any issues since, but I probably didn´t take it to the edge either since I don´t do much scenario editing these days. Opening the editor and running the usual game works fine both for the regular exe and the 300

/Widell