Questions on unit classes for Andy/Don

[DRG]

I appreciate what you are trying to do but this OOB or your's has had a longer gestation than an elephant.

Had we spent that much time on each OOB the game wouldn't have been released until 2169.
( 92 OOB's x 22 months each / 12 + 2001 )

Maybe it's time this OOB of yours saw the light of day ?


Don

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by DRG

I appreciate what you are trying to do but this OOB or your's has had a longer gestation than an elephant.

Had we spent that much time on each OOB the game wouldn't have been released until 2169.
( 92 OOB's x 22 months each / 12 + 2001 )

Maybe it's time this OOB of yours saw the light of day ?


Don

I was thinking a whale, longer gestation period then an elephant.
Well unlike you guys I don't have the luxury of working on this full time, and I'm SERIOUSLY considering not creating the new Picklists to save me a ton of time. This of course means the new OOB will totally unable to be used by the AI for force selection, limiting it to player selection only. But I'm sure there will be suggestions (and not a few loud screams) when folks get a look at it, and of course there will be typos and other mistakes that need fixing.
All I can do is quote you guys - "It'll be done when it's done."

[DRG]

Originally Posted by Suhiir

Well unlike you guys I don't have the luxury of working on this full time,

When we started this I was working shiftwork full time AND putting in well over 30 hours a week on the games. There was no "luxury of working on this full time" That only started a couple of years ago when I retired but the amount of time I spend on this now is less than I did back in 2001. When we were working on spww2 in the early days there was many a time I was up to 2 am working on the game then up at 5 am to go to work. I don't do that any more becasue it was stupid then and stupid now but that's what it took to get this to where we are now

Originally Posted by Suhiir

But I'm sure there will be suggestions (and not a few loud screams) when folks get a look at it, and of course there will be typos and other mistakes that need fixing.

You could check it 100 times yourself and somebody will spot one right off.

Originally Posted by Suhiir

All I can do is quote you guys - "It'll be done when it's done."

Yes but when we say that there's a time period attached to the statment and we always release within a week or two of when we say it's going to happen. I suppose I could make it easier on ourselves by not doing that



Don

[Imp]

I must admit to following its albeit slow progress with intrest. Pick lists were mentioned I know its a dark area to be messed with on a backup copy but how do you adjust them? I have found the files but have no idea how to open them but would like to be able to set some up. Mainly for Green & Red so picks what I want as in govt or militia & for a few countries less tank intensive picks. The game does seem to pick diffrently vs diffrent opponents even terrain & realise if I play with I am on my own.

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by DRG

When we started this I was working shiftwork full time AND putting in well over 30 hours a week on the games. There was no "luxury of working on this full time" That only started a couple of years ago when I retired but the amount of time I spend on this now is less than I did back in 2001. When we were working on spww2 in the early days there was many a time I was up to 2 am working on the game then up at 5 am to go to work. I don't do that any more becasue it was stupid then and stupid now but that's what it took to get this to where we are now

Don

Ack!
I assumed (yeah, yeah, ***-u-me) you guys worked on this 20+ hours a week, with two of you that made it a full-time job.
Myself, if I have the time/inclination I get maybe 5 hours in a week. With the occasional most of a day on a weekend or when I'm off from work.
We won't get into that I'm more-or-less rebuilding the whole OOB from scratch while trying to make as certain as possible none of the date changes destroy the ability of existing scenarios to use the OOB.
I won't comment on what I've had to do to the formations other then to say there is no way in hell the existing picklists can be used with the OOB.
Were I just adding a handful of units and doing some tweaking I'd have been done long, loooong ago. But in a fit of utter stupidity I decided to do the job "right".

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by Imp

I must admit to following its albeit slow progress with intrest. Pick lists were mentioned I know its a dark area to be messed with on a backup copy but how do you adjust them? I have found the files but have no idea how to open them but would like to be able to set some up. Mainly for Green & Red so picks what I want as in govt or militia & for a few countries less tank intensive picks. The game does seem to pick diffrently vs diffrent opponents even terrain & realise if I play with I am on my own.

Without getting into a lot of detail the picklists look mostly at the date and the enemy OOB (i.e. a mech or infantry strong nation) and in the first pass always pick some sort of mortar and AA/MPAD unit so the AI is never completely without something in these categories. Then it cycles thru the formations available on the given date with an eye toward the enemy's mobility (i.e. if the enemy is infantry heavy select less AT weapons) selecting armor, infantry, artillery, and air type formations until it runs out of points.
This is both elegant in it's simplicity and very, VERY easy to screw up totally when you mess with the lists or (god forbid) alter the formations an OOB uses.

[DRG]

Originally Posted by Suhiir

Were I just adding a handful of units and doing some tweaking I'd have been done long, loooong ago. But in a fit of utter stupidity I decided to do the job "right".

Well......"right" remains to be seen.. Yes ?? It's only "right" if it "plays well with others". It might end up being so "right" it doesn't work with the rest of the OOB's in the game and you're left with 500 hours of work that is an interesting curiosity to you and handful of others and that's fine if that was your intent. Lot's of people have dumped hundreds of hours work into personal projects that were based on SP over the years that end up as a niche curiosity. There's a thread about a guy who did an SP Naval game that nobody can find a copy of now and from what I saw of the screen shots I would love to have copies of his ship Icons just for my personal records.

Everyone needs a hobby. I'm not trying to get up your nose about this but my point about your OOB is ( IMHO ) it would have been better to issue it as a WIP once it got to the playable stage then deal with the problems others find and the suggestions they make and use that as a starting point to make improvements or changes, No matter how long you tinker with it so it's "perfect" that will never be and I've been doing this long enough to know that as a carved in granite fact

Don

[Imp]

Without getting into a lot of detail the picklists look mostly at the date and the enemy OOB (i.e. a mech or infantry strong nation) and in the first pass always pick some sort of mortar and AA/MPAD unit so the AI is never completely without something in these categories. Then it cycles thru the formations available on the given date with an eye toward the enemy's mobility (i.e. if the enemy is infantry heavy select less AT weapons) selecting armor, infantry, artillery, and air type formations until it runs out of points.
This is both elegant in it's simplicity and very, VERY easy to screw up totally when you mess with the lists or (god forbid) alter the formations an OOB uses.

I bet that last statement is a major understatement but I do like to tinker stops the brain imploding what program do you use to edit them. As people should not really be messing with due to impending disaster so dont think its appropriate for forum plese feel free to PM me the details. Think this could be another case of subjecting myself to distess all in the name of fun, go figure got the swear box ready.

[Marek_Tucan]

PM sent.

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by DRG

Well......"right" remains to be seen.. Yes ?? It's only "right" if it "plays well with others". It might end up being so "right" it doesn't work with the rest of the OOB's in the game and you're left with 500 hours of work that is an interesting curiosity to you and handful of others and that's fine if that was your intent. Lot's of people have dumped hundreds of hours work into personal projects that were based on SP over the years that end up as a niche curiosity. There's a thread about a guy who did an SP Naval game that nobody can find a copy of now and from what I saw of the screen shots I would love to have copies of his ship Icons just for my personal records.

Everyone needs a hobby. I'm not trying to get up your nose about this but my point about your OOB is ( IMHO ) it would have been better to issue it as a WIP once it got to the playable stage then deal with the problems others find and the suggestions they make and use that as a starting point to make improvements or changes, No matter how long you tinker with it so it's "perfect" that will never be and I've been doing this long enough to know that as a carved in granite fact

Don

Oh I know folks will scream about some of the changes I've made to weapons data.
However, the unit name/availability date data and the formations themselves shouldn't be an issue. If folk want they can change the weapon data back to the original (with the need to create data for a couple weapons I've added) and it should work just fine. One thing I've tried to be VERY careful about is making sure no existing unit is deleted (tho some are marked as "unused" and given "3" for rarity) and the availability dates match as closely as possible with those in the existing OOB is that it can be used with existing scenarios. Fortunately the USMC OOB (unlike many others) has sufficient open slots.
And it's that compatibility checking that makes this process very time consuming.

All that said, yeah, I'm an anal-retentive perfectionist, heck why do you think I started, and kept going on, this project?