Game Development Status 11/23/04

monthly total 20 hours 52 minutes; yearly total 338 hours 57 minutes, more or less

I've been getting back up to speed here in the latter part or the month. I had almost 6 hours on the clock today. I've been working through some game system and UI bugs the last couple of sessions, at the request of Chris. Let's see...I'm (again) improving the toolbar button and context menu handling to be more consistent, and to prevent your opponent from issuing orders to your units. Yeah, I thought y'all would like that. I fixed the artillery so you can fire it more than once a game, and I set up a new Command Orders phase toggle to keep it from automatically attempting to shoot during movement phase if you prefer. The game again displays the charge zone when you are selecting your charge target. I also fixed a few memory leaks and a couple of AV's. I'm trying to setup the toolbar formation and movement plot buttons so they are disabled where appropriate, instead of displaying an error message when you try to do something against the rules.

I've been lurking on CSW for a couple of weeks now. It's part of my daily surfing, along with Yahoo news and PvP. I've noticed the discussions on house rules and the upcoming 5th edition. It's way too early, but I have started speculating on how we might support 5th edition rules and how we might make it easier to change the rules in order to support popular house rules sets. This is very blue sky for now...gotta get to market first. I am going to ask Charlie if we can post our PC Eylau rules (adapted from 4th edition) on the beta site. I'm hoping this might generate more interest in the beta program.

In the meantime, I have another couple of hours to put into the current set of bugs and enhancements, then I'll get back to the AI. I should be putting in another 20 or so hours this week/month.

Game Development Status 11/13/04

Monthly total 9 hours 23 minutes; yearly total 327 hours 28 minutes.

Well, it's been a busy week in real life. My employer moved to a new building this weekend, so we have been pulling an all-hands drill through the weekend to complete the move. I have done less work than I would have preferred by this time in the month.

Good news, though: I have completed my sweep through my bug and enhancement list. 84 tasks were completed or closed out due to prior completion. I'm back to working on the AI. I'm currently working on a number of issues with command point and manuever unit processing, the ultimate goal of which is to make all division level commands move and fight in the game according to the high level AI's plan.

I'm looking forward to the week of Thanksgiving, when I should be able to put in 30-40 hours on the game.

Game Development Status

November total 3 hours 35 minutes; yearly total 321 hours 40 minutes.

I recently made a sweep through my TODO list in order to reorganize it into several parts:

• a "quick fix list" of tasks that might already have been done or could be done quickly
  
• a list of AI tasks pertaining to Command Points and Maneuver Units
  
• a list of all other AI tasks
  
• all other bugs and enhancements
  

I also further categorized the list(s) by whether a task needed to be completed before the Beta or before the RC.

This evening I started working through the "quick fix list". I made good progress. I quickly closed out a half dozen taks that had already been completed. I moved some hex utility functions out of the AI and the document into the CHexMinus class. I also implemented one feature: when you click through a stack of units on the map, the top unit you see now becomes the top unit in the stack. Previously, the game would show you all the units in the stack as you clicked through them, but would not rearrange the stack.

I think I have another 4-5 hours to work through "the quick fix list," then I will get back to the AI, starting with CP/MU stuff and rapidly moving through the divisional attack and defense doctrine implementations. We'll see. At this point things are looking iffy to reach Alpha (feature complete) by the end of November. I'll know more by Thanksgiving, as I am working on the game full time that week.

Bill N.