Yeah, I know... we're late with the British Module. We're always late, aren't we? Definitely not for a lack of caring, that's for sure
At present the only thing we're working on are the scenarios, the Campaign, and whatever little tiny bugs are still waiting to be discovered and corrected. So from a development standpoint the Module is basically done, but it isn't ready for release quite yet. How much longer? I'll let you know in a couple of weeks.
So... the question has come up before about how we could be much later than the original 4 months we had expected each Module to take. Currently we're running just about twice that. Well, as I've said in other threads this is all new to us and we simply underestimated a couple of things. Although the Marines was our first Module, two issues that came up with the British Module were new to us.
The first is that we're working with outside talent (i.e. not Battlefront employees) to develop CM content for the first time ever. It's been going REALLY well and we're extremely pleased. However, there was some up-front investment in time to get the other team's members fully versed in the processes of making stuff. Especially all the little quirks that anything of this complexity has with its development environment.
The good news is that this was a one-time hit to the calendar. This same time is going to do lots of other Modules for us, including NATO, so the time spent learning the environment is done and won't need to be repeated. On top of that, the team has already got a bunch of the vehicles for NATO and first WW2 Module done before we have even officially started them.
The other issue we ran into is one that is systemic and needs to be worked around for the future. I speak of my own personal Hell... TO&E On the plus side it is extremely flexible and highly detailed. Not only that, it is open to me directly instead of the CMx1 method where a good portion of the tedious work had to be done by Charles. The issues we're having with it now is that there are no tools to manage the THOUSANDS of TO&E entries that span several interconnected files. It's a flipp'n nightmare to work with because it is extremely difficult to spot errors by eyeball before testers find them.
Since there are thousands of things which could be potentially wrong, it takes the testers a LONG time (and a ton of deliberate work) to uncover the issues. This just mucks up the whole system because until the TO&E is finalized no serious work can be done on scenarios due to the fact that basic changes to the TO&E break scenarios. And since I'm the only one that knows how it all works (other than Charles, of course) I'm trying to work on several TO&Es at once in addition to my other work. Definitely not something we want to continue going forward.
The solution I'm pursuing is making a "fool proof" relational database front end which will churn out "code ready" data for Charles to import. This is going to take me a couple of weeks to develop, believe it or not. Nobody else can help with this either since getting it "fool proof" requires knowing what a fool can screw up. Since I'm the only fool using it, I'm the only one who can outsmart me
All in all the reasons for the delay of the British Module are not worrisome for us. Obviously we don't like short term problems that affect us and you guys, but short term problems can be worked around once identified. The sorts of long term problems we had with the CMx1 code, for example, spelled "death" to us. Which is why we decided to ditch CMx1 before we even finished CMBB And every single day we go to work we thank ourselves for that decision. The little bumps we've still got to iron out are peanuts compared to what we had to go through to get where we are today.
More news as it becomes available
Steve
