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Section Leaders:
Steve's comments on the state of things: 01-18-2000 Unfortunately, we have no idea when Combat Mission will be done. Never have and never will until the day we send it off to the replicator. The last bit of development is taking far, far, far more time than we expected. The game itself is about 99% done, but there is more that has to be done than just the game core. Things like interface look and function, documentation, graphics, variable balancing for DYO, final touches on scenarios, etc. are all being worked on now. So we are in a bind here. If we make yet another prediction, it might very well be just as wrong as the others and people will go nuts. If we make no prediction people go nuts. So there is no winning solution here for us. When we feel comfortable with making another prediction we will do so. Until then, the predicted shipping date is "sometime later" . If you want one that is a bit more specific, "sometime in 2000" We'll narrow that down when we can! Steve Steve's general update message: 12-27-1999 Well, here is a bit of an update. We had hoped to get CM to the duplicators before x-mas, but this became a pipe dream in early December. Quite simply put, we based our expectations on how complete the game itself was. Unfortunately, CM needs quite a bit more polish before it will be ready as a whole. In very late November we started working on "cleaning things up" for final release quality. It was then that the weight of CM's depth and feature set hit us squarely between the eyes! There is SO MUCH in CM that it is taking us much longer than we anticipated to get CM totally finished. Although the bugs and tweaks are becoming fewer each and every day, we are NOT yet happy with things as a whole (DYO needs a bit of work for example). We also have a lot of UI, sound fx, graphics, etc. polish to do. In addition to that, the documentation is a real bitch to do The problem is that Charles needs to spend at least one week filling in gaps, but he is still spending 16+ hrs a day coding. So until Charles gets over the last coding hump the documentation can't be finished. Obviously we need both the game AND the manual to ship. So the bottom line is that CM is not ready to go. Since we are basically on "vacation" until after News Years Day, we haven't yet figured out where CM stands in terms of release date. We don't mean to be stringing you guys along (nobody wants CM to ship more than us!) but the release is a big guessing game and we have so far underestimated how much work there is to do. Sigh... that's the curse of game development. Everybody wants to hear a date (including us!!), but one never knows if it is doable until the date has come and gone. In other words, we can tell you with 100% certainty when CM *DIDN'T* ship, but not when it will ship. Steve Steve's message regarding another Demo Scenario We are not releasing any more scenarios for the existing demo. Making maps is a VERY time consuming process because if I use even ONE object that the demo doesn't know about a crash out. Making Chance Encounter was a PAIN in the BUTT. The other big reason is that the Beta Demo is very old now. We rather not spend even a day doing anything for it, and that is the minimum time requirement for me to make a new scenario. I can not just slap something together and then let thousands of people download it. It needs to be extensively tested and tweaked. Plus, the volume of posts that would follow the release of a new scenario would also be a drag on the release. Nope, it is time you people remember that the Beta Demo is just that. You were only supposed to get about 20 hours of play time out of it. Each hour you have received after that is a bonus, and by the looks of it most of you have already milked many times that. Steve Steve general comments on Combat Mission 12-7-1999 Hi all. I won't give a detailed status report, but will let you in on some things. It is now the end of the second week in December. We have roughly one more week before the Holidays. Charles and I are planning on doing the unthinkable and actually taking time off to enjoy them. Yeah, I know, we are terrible people. This has made a Jan 1 Gold Date undesirable. [note, we never had such a date, just a point of reference!!!!] Here is why... For about two weeks (or three?) we have been in Feature Freeze. This is a hugely important milestone as it signals the beginning of the end of the last phase of development. During this stage nothing radical is going into the game which involves ground up work. Tweaks, necessary improvements (like changing how artillery TRPs work), and bug fixing are all we are concerned with from now on. There is also the manual, which although largely done requires a decent chunk of Charles' time to flesh out and correct. Obviously he has been busy coding up until now. One of the downsides of such a huge and full featured game is that it is huge and full featured. This means that there are a WHOLE LOT of little things that need to be played with and tweaked. It is amazing how much impact a single variable can have on a game, and we need to make sure that they are all fine and dandy with the 1.0 release or there will be a lot of (justifiable) grumbling. For example. I am currently testing the bounds of the DYO setup options. This is going to be used more than the editor IMHO, so it is VERY important that we bang on this sucker hard. Although it has been pounded on and is (as of today) bug free (not to mention a blast to play!), the ramifications of the setup parameters haven't been checked out well enough yet. This is not the way a game should be shipped. To illustrate my point, I found that as the attacker I could purchase WAY too many "Support" units. These are largely defensive type units, and are largely useless for the attacker. Yet there I was, with a small battle setup being able to purchase 20 HMG42s or 10 Pak40s (for example). This is not only unrealistic, but from a game play standpoint... stupid. My suggested change will take Charles only a few minutes to do, then another round of testing, tweak, and repeat if necessary. End result will be something that everybody is going to be thrilled about, instead of annoyed or even pissed off. These are the types of things we are concerned about right now. As the old saying goes, the Devil is in the Detail. The game is basically done, but not polished enough. Sometimes that last 1% of work can make the other 99% shine or look like crap. Obviously we need things to shine Everybody is busting their butts to get this done ASAP, but nobody wants it to go out before it is totally ready. A special thanks goes out to our scenario designers and testers. They have largely completed their tasks and are working with tenacity to finish testing and tweaking the remaining scenarios. You guys are going to be singing their praises for sure. The stuff they have come up with is top notch. So where does that leave us? With a lot of little things still left to do. Major stuff is all done (except for TCP/IP) as far as the game goes, but the last bit of the development cycle that we are in now must be done correctly or much of the hard work we have done over the last two years will be sidelined by relatively silly problems. We will give you another update after the Holidays and let you know where things stand. Until then, we have our noses (what's left of them!) firmly to the grindstone! Thanks!
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