How this project coming around?

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: bommerrang

So....Shannon, using abj's development cycle where is MWIF? (if you respond "Vista", I will be nervous)

The program currently runs under Windows XP, Vista, and Win 7.

[gw15]

Well, I was joking about the Vista part. I really meant his bold face product development steps. Is MWIF still Beta or is it maybe Alpha?

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Everything for the first release is in beta testing.

There are some (~10) optional rules that are partially alpha, partially beta, which will be provided to purchasers of the initial release as 'patches' (i.e., at no additional cost). There are also a few training videos that I need to record - so they haven't even reached the alpha stage yet. But the vast majority of the game is ready for production (having passed through beta testing): tutorials, players manual, and the rules as coded (RAC) document.

I am working on bugs with the one big area that is still in beta testing being NetPlay. For that the beta testers are waiting on me to fix the bugs they have already identified (which stop the game dead in its tracks) so they can do more testing. In particular, the end-of-turn phases need extensive testing and some of the more complex combat resolutions (air, naval, and land).

It's a lot like repairing a very long road after the winter storms.[:(]

[Shannon V. OKeets]

I thought I would give you a look-see at the kinds of bugs I still need to fix. There are 5 air mission bugs on my task list. I worked on one concerning damaging oil resources (printed on the map) yesterday and I should be able to finish with that this morning. Here are the other 4 air mission bugs remaining. By the way, besides the 8 air missions in the game, I also throw air rebase into this mix when I am sorting new bug reports into my task list.

My debugging 'style' is to first fix any bug that is easy to correct (e.g., spelling and cosmetic bugs), then to work on a group of bugs that relate to the same section of code (e.g., land moves, land combats, naval moves, naval combat, partisans, conquest, etc.). I try to correct all the bugs in a section/phase if I can do so without getting bogged down. When faced with dozens of bugs in a section/phase, I'll make a good faith attempt to clear a lot of them, but typically leave the more difficult ones for later.

My goal here is to keep making progress, rather than spend a week on just a couple of bugs. I've found that if I ignore a bug for a while, I sometimes have a better idea of how to fix it later. In fact, oftentimes the beta testers will reproduce the bug under different circumstances which will give me a better understanding of what is wrong and how to remedy the situation.

What you see below are 4 of the more difficult bugs to fix, since they require additional code to perform something new (not previously coded).