I know that they were trying to be helpful, but... By default, Windows 7 will run at the resolution that the screen has and make everything bigger in software by changing some settings, that makes things less blurry. The fonts on my laptop were bigger than the fonts when I connected to my test machine. I spent about 6 hours chasing google snipes until I figured it out finally. I'm on 3.4.0.160, BTW. Each of those number is a change that I made, some major, some minor.

Ralph

First, I haven't ported the code to the iPad, I'm using the iPad to connect to my main computer using some other software that I purchased.

I've been playing with an iPad lately. I wouldn't play FitE on the iPad, but I haven't played FitE on my PC either. Playing TOAW on the iPad is actually a decent experience.

I've found out that some of the features I just added work pretty well when combined with the iPad. It's an awesome experience, the screen size isn't as big a problem as it could be since you can easily zoom in and out using the iPad zooming.

I'm currently using the iTap rdp client, mainly because It seems to be the fastest of the ones I've tried.

I've made some modifications of the TOAW experience specifically for touch. These also work with Windows 7 Touch, and it's a better experience on a 16" screen. The iPad's 9" screen is a bit cramped. You can also connect from the iPad to a Windows XP computer, and everything works as expected, it isn't using anything specific to Windows 7.

Things that work with touch on the iPad (also using a mouse, or Windows 7 Touch)... They don't work in the editor, sorry. email me if you are working in the editor using an iPad and want this feature, someone has a padded cell reserved for you.

You can drag the map around using a finger. I don't repaint the map or do any of the nice experience things that are normal because they aren't practical without a major rewrite. Using the mini map for navigation works better for me, but when you want to move only a couple of hexes, it's a good choice.

You can drag the mini map around using a finger. I don't repaint the map or do any of the nice experience things that are normal because they aren't practical without a major rewrite. This actually works better than dragging the main map for me.

You can now drag units around using a finger. This does the expected things, move or attack or bombard or cancel attack, etc. You can still turn off the menu delay, and when you take your finger off the unit, it will pop up the menu just like you had clicked the right mouse button.

I've done everything I can to make the iPad remote experience as close to playing on a board as I could, and I think it's pretty darn close, I can't check the accelerometer and scramble the pieces when you bump it (yet.) Please understand that it does require some special software (I'm using iTap rdp client right now), and you need to be able to connect to a running PC, this isn't a native iPad app. There is a freeware rdp client for the iPod, but it hasn't been ported to the iPad yet, and I haven't tried it.

This presumably works from an iPod as well, but I think anyone trying that is a true diehard! You'd have to open a port and allow direct access from the internet. You'd also have to set up a dyndns.com account and hook it to your router so you had a known way to acess your PC by something like insane.dyndns.org. You'd also be working with a very small screen. I don't have an iPod and I'm not a masochist, but it's presumably there.

You could probably do it with TOAW 3.2, but the right-clicks required make playing it more difficult.

I may fine tune things a bit before release, but it's working pretty nicely now.

Ralph

I had to kill a feature today. I had added code (I don't remember if it was 3.2, or 3.4) to allow for you to hold the <CTRL> key and use the ScrollWheel in order to switch to and from 3D view.

Microsoft decided that if using a touch screen, pinching would do a CTRL-ScrollWheel, so touch became less useful.

If anyone actually want's that feature, I can maybe add it in as Shift-ScrollWheel instead or something else.

Ralph

Still here,still working away. I had some issues, but everything should be cleared up now, so I'm ready for the final sprint to get everything finished, packaged, etc.

Here's my new development environment.

8Gb Quad core laptop running Windows 7 64-bit.

Visual Studio 2010 for development and release builds.

I'm using a productivity tool called CodeRush from DevExpress.

I'm using TFS for my source code control and bug tracking.

My backups are being done right now wilh Microsoft 'Live Mesh' I'm backing up TFS, I'm also backing up my development directory, and several other directories. These backups are going both to three other machines on my home netowrk, and also up to 'the cloud.' Live mesh gives you a free 5 Gigabyte account which has been enough. I also pull off DVDs about once a month. The TFS backups are daily, and the backups of my development directory are near real-time.

I'm also doing daily backups to a second drive attached to the system.

Ralph

Here's one reason I swithced over to TFS. I can now do reports like this instead of keeping noted in 'readme' files. I can also like match each one of these changes to the files and lines of code which I changed in order to fix them.

Before, i didn't really have this link. I know that 119 fixed these three items, but I couldn't tell which files were changed for that fix, except in general. It means that I'm hoping it's less likely for me to forget to make a change, and to make it easier to be able to fixure out what I changed when I make a mistake. I feel like it's saving me time over reading and editing files to keep track of this stuff.

Release State       Reason Title
119       Resolved Fixed     Lockups in unit screen
119       Resolved Fixed     Allow you to turn off PNG files support
119       Resolved Fixed     Editor/unit report/deployment closes unit dialog

If anyone is setinng up their own TFS system, there are a couple of things to know.

You're going to have to learn a bit of SQL Server in order to put the data files in a reasonable location (NOT C:\Program files which is the default).

You're going to have to set up a scheduled task to do backups.

If you've got a lot of binary files, keep the binary files in a separate 'Collection'. I've got one collection for all the graphics, and a separate one for the daily code. I do this so that I can do reasonable sized backups on a regular basis.

I've been working with Damezzi to add a new set of PNG graphics with Alpha support.

For the non geeks, this means that it should be possible set the transparency of each pixel from 0 (transparent) to 255 (solid). It should be possible to add in things like clouds that don't obscure the terrain beneath, but are semi transparent. There may be a slight performance hit, but I don't think it will be noticeable. I'm still working on finishing up the code, so we haven't seen the finished item, but I think it should look pretty cool. Once I get everything working, I'll upload a sample.

I think it would be neat to be able to see where the coulds are without having to toggle them on and off. I'm sure that there are some other more important things that are going to happen with this, including cleaner fonts, but for some reason the clouds fascinate me. They're very nice to know for some scenarios, but a pain in practice.

I know that the high end products like Adobe support Alpha, but there's also an Alpha editor add on for Paint.Net (free) which I haven't tried out. I have enough problems with the simple red green blue without the added alpha channel!!!

Ralph

3.4.0.95 was sent out to the beta testers and put into subversion. That's 95 separate builds that I felt were good enough to send out.

We're still making progress. I did a chunk of work this weekend, and I think I've got most of the things in that we're going to do for this release in now, although I need to go back through the list to make sure. If that's true, then we're just in for a load of testing, packaging, etc. to get things packaged up. That always takes a lot more time than I expect.

Never again will I do anything crazy like being this ambitious abut what's going into a patch, that was just too wearing. The number of major changes is jsut too many.

I'm going to play some TOAW now and wait for the bugs... Bob's too good at finding where I hid them.

After this goes out, the next patch will probably be early next year with any bug fixes that I put in and a few features that I didn't have time to get in.

Ralph

I think that we've about finished with the changes for ant attacks. I've got one more change, then I move onto trying to make things a bit more configurable. The biggest bear about that is the testing.

I may need to make the comments moderated. Nobody has posted naything offensive, but the spammers have moved in. I've kicked them all out I believe, and I'm going to work faster at pruning them. Most of them were pretty mellow, but the last one just was out and out spam, so I decided to kick them all out.

 Man, that was a rough patch. I really have to apologize for that.

 On my day job, I've been going from being a team lead to trying to transition everything over to two new people (a manager and a developer.) In addition, with the economy the way it is, everyone wants everything 'NOW'. I've finally got almost everything turned over, but I'll be lending a hand for the next two weeks making sure that everything is stable. AFter that, it's going to be figuring out what an Architect does.

 I finally got a chance to get some serious work done on TOAW. We've got a potential way to deter the 'ant' attacks that's being tested. We'll also be putting out a call for scenarios in the near future, and I'll be fixing up the language files and I'll ask for a couple of new translations. Packaging everything, and finishing playtesting will take a bit longer, but we're in pretty good shape.

 One interesting idea that I'm trying out that didn't take long to program is whether or not a 'one-click' interface is usable. The idea is that a right click will take the default action (move, attack, bombard) while a click and hold will bring up the menu after a configurable delay. The code was pretty simple to throw together, I'm waiting for some feedback from the group.

   I like it, I never did like the fact that if I had a group, if I right-cliecked, it would pop the menu, but if I had one unit, it would move. That never did make any sense. This way, the operations I do most are very accessible, while the other are still available. Of course, I like the tooltips too, and nobody else uses them. I hope that between them, they're going to make the game more accessible.