Progress. Things are looking up.

thewood

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I agree on the overplanning aspect, but you have a guy, Steve, who is supposed to be doing the planning/conceptual design thing. The stuff being talked about has been talked about since the CMBO days. It should not come as the surprise that it seems to be something people want in a WW2 game. I am a little stunned that the command delay thing is only getting some discussion from Steve now and not earlier when he dismissed it. Same with defensive enplacements, blue bar, bocage, etc. What it says to me is that have really only now started tackling the really thorny stuff. Yeah, some knucklehead has modled a Tiger. But what about on map mortars, scenario triggers, QBs, et al. There is still a lot of stuff missing from CM2 that was in CM1. When does the discussion start on that.
 

Redwolf

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I agree on the overplanning aspect, but you have a guy, Steve, who is supposed to be doing the planning/conceptual design thing. The stuff being talked about has been talked about since the CMBO days.
If Charles is anything like me he does whatever he likes anyway no matter what :)

It should not come as the surprise that it seems to be something people want in a WW2 game. I am a little stunned that the command delay thing is only getting some discussion from Steve now and not earlier when he dismissed it.
I think that some deficits just popped up as demands from the userbase that now made it into a package of features that would be considered worth having at the expense of delaying coding.

You also don't know whether Charles is the bottleneck. Maybe artwork or other stuff is further behind right now, so BFC opens up to feature demands.

Same with defensive enplacements, blue bar, bocage, etc. What it says to me is that have really only now started tackling the really thorny stuff. Yeah, some knucklehead has modled a Tiger. But what about on map mortars, scenario triggers, QBs, et al. There is still a lot of stuff missing from CM2 that was in CM1. When does the discussion start on that.
I bet command delays are trivial to implement.

I think the AI with designer control features will definitely still suck at release time and QBs probably will, at least random maps (if any).
 

Mustang2.0

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I'm thinking it will be closer to 6 June 2010.
Steve wrote, in one of those "foxhole" threads, that they Have Not written one line of CM:N code yet.

After CM:SF-BRITISH they might do CM:SF-NATO Forces or something similiar.

As long as they stick with the SF/Modern theme they are playing with house money (to an extent), it is all a paid-for public beta.

Have fanbois pay for a beta while you hash things out, maybe even introduce the new foxhole system in the Nato release, whatever, then when ready move on to WW2.
They can not make a mistake on WW2.
 

Sirocco

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I disagree, in particular in a one-programmer shop.

These are things you can try to code and if they don't work out and/or are too hard you just skip to the next item.

Overplanning is the death of projects like these. Imagine somebody says "command delay must be in" and it turns out hard. Then what? Delay the release by 3 months?
I think with a small team it's more important than ever to plan ahead.

As a programmer you know how much harder it is to put something in that hasn't at least been taken into consideration in the initial stages. You need flexibility, yes, but things like command delays are known about. It's not like someone came up with a cool idea from nowhere. The whole engine was built around clean code, but the more stuff you pull out of thin air and try to implement the dirtier it becomes.
 

Mustang2.0

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Is THIS what they mean by a "Design Document"? (link is to a discussion on another forum about an upcoming game)
...My design team, which consisted of about 6 guys, went over the game design for about a year and a half and we debated, axed, added, clarified, etc, each component of the game system until we were all happy. The process resulted in over 350 pages of game design text and technical specifications...
 

Redwolf

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I think with a small team it's more important than ever to plan ahead.

As a programmer you know how much harder it is to put something in that hasn't at least been taken into consideration in the initial stages. You need flexibility, yes, but things like command delays are known about. It's not like someone came up with a cool idea from nowhere. The whole engine was built around clean code, but the more stuff you pull out of thin air and try to implement the dirtier it becomes.
Nah. The proper way to deal with that is to rip everything apart and do it right even if it means backtracking quite a bit.

I mean it's different for different styles of programming. Business programming might be different.

But in my position, and I think games that nobody ever did before are about the same, all that pre-planning goes right out of the window. The pre-planning is like for a military operation. You don't expect to come up with a plan that's anything like the events that will unfold. And that brainstorming and "planning" is just to stretch your mind to react to events as they unfold faster.
 

dalem

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There has to be something coming out in the interim between now and late 2010, no? TOW and CM:C and the CM:SF modules (British and possibly one more) may all appear between now and then, I suppose (or not at all). I just wonder if we won't see something else pop up in the interim.
Sure, the last gasps of CMx2 will get pinched off and maybe some other titles that they publish but don't actually code. But WWII CM? Has to be almost 2 years away if they're really not even sure about terrain and the other things being discussed.

-dale
 

thewood

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Nah. The proper way to deal with that is to rip everything apart and do it right even if it means backtracking quite a bit.

I mean it's different for different styles of programming. Business programming might be different.

But in my position, and I think games that nobody ever did before are about the same, all that pre-planning goes right out of the window. The pre-planning is like for a military operation. You don't expect to come up with a plan that's anything like the events that will unfold. And that brainstorming and "planning" is just to stretch your mind to react to events as they unfold faster.

This IS business programming. The gaming business. How can you run a business without some kind of plan. You have to have some foundation to start from. Maybe that is why all games are screwed up, buggy and late now. Because if I delivered my company's SW in the state CMSF was in, I would be out of a job.
 

Redwolf

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This IS business programming. The gaming business. How can you run a business without some kind of plan. You have to have some foundation to start from. Maybe that is why all games are screwed up, buggy and late now. Because if I delivered my company's SW in the state CMSF was in, I would be out of a job.
I don't think the latter had to do with lack of planning.

All I'm saying is that overplanning doesn't do you any good when the thing you are trying to do has never been done before. So what if the plan says you must have trenches with FoW if you just can't do it time-wise?

Efforts with larger teams are a different matter of course.
 

Michael Dorosh

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I agree with Redwolf mostly as far as CM:SF's release state not being the result of poor planning. The features were abominable, don't get me wrong - the hotkeys? - but they had been planned out in advance. Their planning is crippled by having a smaller quorum than perhaps other companies which Steve seems to be giving the "appearance" of rectifying in the last of couple of days on the forum. But it's all for show and it's all because the release of the Normandy title is months if not years away and there is nothing else to talk about, and maybe they really don't have any idea how to do these things, who knows.

But CM:SF - I got the sense they did have a roadmap. It was discussed very little on the forum in the pre-concept stage, and when I came on as a beta tester, it was already fully fleshed out and presented as a formed concept to which we had little input as far as design features. Speaking for myself, I was eager just to design scenarios so I didn't follow whatever discussions there were on how well the hotkeys worked all that closely but conceptually I think Steve had a clear vision which may be why there is so much confusion now? That clear vision has been proven to be unpopular and has been shredded to pieces, and must be

a) a confidence shaker and as far as his own judgment
b) leaving him wondering what needs to go back in and what doesn't

How many features got taken out of that vision? Some technical issue (blue bar, map making) but much by choice - left click menu, QBs as we knew them (i.e. with cherry picking), kill counts, etc. etc. - that are being put back in.

So I guess we can't be too, too hard on them for being slow in adopted a new vision to move forward with the new flagship - World War II is the bread and butter and like everyone here keeps saying - they can't afford a poor release.
 

Sirocco

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But it has been done before, with CMx1. Yes, there will be new stuff added, and sometimes that will require replacing code, and you might lose some elegance in the process. But backtracking is something I wouldn't want to have to do if I were in their position. At least I'd want to keep it to a bare minimum. There's nothing more frustrating, or wasteful, than having to go back over old ground. But without concrete information it's all speculation as to how Charles approaches his code.
 

Redwolf

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But that's the thing.

All these plans to replace the codebase that's "too messy to teach new tricks" always, and I mean always, end up with something that is not so much better and easier to work on that it warrants the trouble or re-writing from scratch.

Just keep your code flexible, always be willing to re-do a major chunk when it's in your way, right away, and then pick off features as they come in with the best payoff/effect ratio.

Did I mention I don't like overplanning software development?
 

Michael Dorosh

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But that's the thing.

All these plans to replace the codebase that's "too messy to teach new tricks" always, and I mean always, end up with something that is not so much better and easier to work on that it warrants the trouble or re-writing from scratch.

Just keep your code flexible, always be willing to re-do a major chunk when it's in your way, right away, and then pick off features as they come in with the best payoff/effect ratio.

Did I mention I don't like overplanning software development?
Perhaps we agree then that we shouldn't beast on Steve and Charles too much then, if CM:N seems under-conceptualized at this point. :(
 

jwb3

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...major features like bocage and command delays which apparently they haven't even conceptualized yet. Wow.
I think they did have this stuff conceptualized, and they did have a roadmap.

And I think that the concept said that there weren't going to be any command delays, and there wasn't going to be any WEGO, and there wasn't going to be any blue bar, and so on. Because Steve's concept was Righteous, and its Sh!t was Tight. And anyone could see that just by looking at it -- if they weren't all gamer-anal. And the gamer-anals were such a small part of the base that would be attracted to the concept that they could be ignored.

If I'm right, then the seeming lack of a roadmap at this time is simply what happens when you realize the roadmap you were looking at is for a different state, and now you're frantically trying to dig another one out of the glovebox and get it open, with one hand, while driving down the twisty highway at 80 MPH, because you're late for the job interview.


John
 

Redwolf

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I think they did have this stuff conceptualized, and they did have a roadmap.

And I think that the concept said that there weren't going to be any command delays, and there wasn't going to be any WEGO, and there wasn't going to be any blue bar, and so on. Because Steve's concept was Righteous, and its Sh!t was Tight. And anyone could see that just by looking at it -- if they weren't all gamer-anal. And the gamer-anals were such a small part of the base that would be attracted to the concept that they could be ignored.

If I'm right, then the seeming lack of a roadmap at this time is simply what happens when you realize the roadmap you were looking at is for a different state, and now you're frantically trying to dig another one out of the glovebox and get it open, with one hand, while driving down the twisty highway at 80 MPH, because you're late for the job interview.


John
It's the classic example of why I don't like overplanning software.

Software development, at least as practiced in games is an art in doing things that nobody has ever done before.

You don't just run a risk of nailing down the wrong stuff in your plans, you are guaranteed to.
 
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