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.

We added in a debugging feature that's intended to help some designers fine tune how Elmer plays the first rounds of their scenarios, and to understand how Elmer plays. It's pretty rough, but I think some of the designers may use it. In a single player mode, you can press a key (the | key right now, but I'll change it before release) and it will move all your units the way that Elmer would, does overruns and sets up the attacks, all you have to do is press the 'E' key and the '1' key to end they turn, yes I'm sure. Or you can fine-tune Elmer's decision to meet the strategic demands.

We now allow single player games to be loaded into the editor, edited, and played. I figure between those two features, there is probably 1-2 players that may try playing solo games by allowing Elmer to move each side with some guidance from them. (I've seens one request on this blog from someone that did it in CoW, so hopefully he's listening ;)

I definitely want to expand on this for the next game, and I'm sure I'll get some feedback on it, both 'why are you wasting your time' and 'great idea, but...'.

Obviously, Elmer plays better in some scenarios than others, but...

Here's the quote from one of the TOADs, it wasn't me, but I'm getting the same feeling... 

Elmer does a better job than me in setting up first round battles and leaving a large percentage of my turn for further movement and combat... I'd rather see this feature disabled in PBEM mode

Getting a little closer. I just pulled the player options out of the save games and into an ini file, and a dialog. Having some of the options like the air assistant in the save game files got annoying since they'd revert to the last save game played.

I posted a request on gamesquad for some translations.

Ralph

Here's some more of the untranslated readme.

Thease are arguably the two biggest features. New Turn Order was a major rewrite, but now the two sides are symmetrical. New Supply Order was a major rewrite of the supply to make it a continuous instead of the jumps the old system has. That is a good change, and it also open the way for events to adjust the supply of individual points up and down and trun them on and off to better simulate beachheads, encirclements, etc.

Cheat Prevention
There is now a PORandomSeed in the INI file. If set to 0 (default) it will always use the next randon number. If set to -1, it will always use the random number stored in the save file. If set to a number it will use that number. PBEM games are always treated as -1. This means that reloads of a PBL PBEM game will produce the same results. This also means that I will be able to reproduce bug reports.

New Turn Order
The old turn order option used to do all calculation for supply, recovery, and other items occurred between turns and was a bit unfair. The new turn order splits that processing inot three parts. There are now things like air combat and weather which still happen at the beginning of the turn. Things like supply and movement recovery now happen at the beginning of each side's movement instead of at the beggining of the turn.

New Supply Order
Instead of being a 3 level approach, we now use a formula based on the movement points of a virtual "Supply Unit" which has motorized movement and a 50% unit density.
The exact formula is 1.10 / (1.375 ^ (SupplyDistance / SupplyRadius))
Designers can also set supply levels for supply points either initially or through events.
Supply Units also have an enhanced effect, they will effectively move the unit closer to the supply point based on the supply radius.
Take the case of the supply radius is 5 hexes and the supply unit is 10 hexes away and the unit is 14 units away. Because the unit is less than 5 (supply radius) or less heses away from the supply unit, we enhance it's supply by moving it 5 hexes closer to the supply source.
Supply Radius 0 is treated like supply radius 1 by the new rules.

Elmer wasn't always using his airborne, and when advancing more slowly wasn't being aggressive enough. He was also sometimes doing the pee pee dance. That's changed.

I don't have a picture for some reason, but the tutorial is becoming harder and harder. It's going to be tough to hold Pusan.

You can probably recover, but it's a different game (I hope)