CHS and RHS Release Date (Estimate)

[el cid again]

Having consulted with Andrew Brown, coordinator for the CHS Team,
I have learned that CHS may need "a week or two" to release - in its present form - or longer (unspecified) - if changes to the Soviets are to be incorporated after all. He plans to release more than one version of CHS, and may do so in phases, rather than all at once.

For entirely different reasons, CHS and RHS teams have discovered some technical issues that were best addressed by detail changes in the location file. CHS worked on Soviet units, and found some strange things were hard coded into certain slots. RHS began a whole series of tests and found similar strange things hard coded into certain slots. We quite independently decided to modify the files to be more respectful of that built in code. Not only does this mean the AI performs better - it means it does not mess up things not intended to work with it. But these matters have imposed some delays on the packages.

It was my present plan to release RHSCVO (and a companion with Russians active) on Tuesday - 18 April. I tentatively hoped to have RHSBBO (and a companion with Russians passive) about 20 April and the political point option a few days after that. Since RHS is dynamic - updates are permitted as often as required - it does not matter very much when release occurs. But every delay means more bugs are worked out - and more features are added. More players have begun to generate feedback in the testing process - and many of their ideas are being adopted.

Since I do not wish to wait a good deal longer to release, a decision needs to be made about what to do - now that CHS won't be releasing as hoped. My present brainstorm is to do a "pre-release" of RHSCVO (the main variant insofar as it is a clone of Scenario 15 as such) for anyone who is smart enough to install without a completely developed installation package. Using comments generated from such "semi-testers" we might identify things that could be better. The "official release" would then occur together with CHS - whenever that is.