"Shadow" schedule

[iamjooish]

Originally Posted by Nikis-Knight

The other half remember way back last winter when they were waiting for Fire. This phase will come quicker thant the previous since we aren't concurrently working on AoI.

You people were nailing down AoI while you were releasing/working on fire? Clarification: purely an emphatic question


(apologies if this was posted in an earlier thread)

[Bob Morane]

Cool, those are great news. Thank you for sharing this.
Previous experience for FFH showed schedules are respected better by the team then by commercial companies, so if Kael announced this, this is because he thinks the mod will be available in time.

Originally Posted by jprc

... so please, use this schedule as an internal milestone, but first and foremost do NOT speed up a process for racing on a date: QUALITY FIRST.
Thousands of us have voted for having this mod ranked NUMBER 1.
It is not because it is the fastest, but the best.
Keep it that way...

The mod will not be perfect when first released. It was not perfect when the first "light" version was released, and quite buggy too when the first "fire" version was released. But they can't bug-hunt everything themselves. They will need the users to hunt bugs, so it will be a (nearly) complete shadow version, with some nasty bugs that will be corrected in the first few patches. It you want a polished mod, you will be better to stick with 2.25 for 1 more month, while the first users will beta test shadow. That's the way a non-commercial mod works.

[Psychic_Llamas]

cant we all be civil during this time of joyous news?

yay! i cant beleive its this early either, i was expecting Feb to be the release date for some reason

@ Onedreamer: Empyrean is one of the new religions (i belive focused on Malakim) along with the Council of Esus (not sure what thats based on, presumably the Svatalfar?)

[[NWO]_Valis]

What a merry Christmas gift

[Calavente]

these are great news !!

but just to play the bad guy :

-I think that currently, 2.25 fire (last version for fire) is much less polished than light final version. much less 'bug free'. some not-game-breaking-but-still-annoying bugs are still being reported in the bug thread;
it seems most of the new mechanisms are mostly bug free, but some old mechanisms were lost, and balance in fire 0.25 was not pushed to the same level as to light or v0.21 /0.23. (under the valid argument that why balance all when effect will change...?) I'll argue back : because version light/fire/shadow where announced as almost stand-alone beta games. with an increase of depth, lore and mechanisms with each upgrade. it was not annouced that they would be unbalanced versions.

IMO, 0.25 being unbalanced / not totally polished is ok.
what disturbs me is saying that there won't be any other patch for fire.
I would have thought that fire would be called for good in version 0.26, with few bugs, not all mechanisms, but more balance.

But in the end, I'm always happy of anything that happens with FFH, and I'll take what is offered... it will alway be best than what I can propose by myself

[Bob Morane]

Originally Posted by Psychic_Llamas

cant we all be civil during this time of joyous news?

Uh, did you react to my post cause i didn't got the feeling i was harsh, it wasn't my intent anyway. I didn't insult anyone, didn't complain either ...
This mod is a GREAT job. However, they can't kill every bug themselves. Even commercial companies often can't catch every bug before a game is released This was in no way an attack against the team.

[Bob Morane]

Originally Posted by Calavente

these are great news !!

but just to play the bad guy :

-I think that currently, 2.25 fire (last version for fire) is much less polished than light final version. much less 'bug free'. some ...

OK so ...
2.23 was sort of the final "fire" version. 2.25 is some sort of in-between fire and shadow version. It was announced that the first version of FFH using BTS would be shadow. So as i understand it 2.25 is an effort to port the mod to BTS, in order to work on shadow next. However, rather then keeping it for themselves, they released it, both to allow people to play FFH with BTS earlier, and to fasten the bug-hunting process, because they need our help to catch all bugs and fine tune everything (that was the point of my previous post, which was misunderstood).

So : 2.23 was really the last "fire" version. Those who want a polished version have to stick with it, those who want the most recent version must know they will face some bugs, and while new features will be present, some old ones might not work that great. Maybe i can understand this better than others as i'm used to working with open-source software, but WE are part of the creation of this mod, at least those who play the latest version and fill-in bug reports. Those who wants the most stable and polished version must stick to 2.23.

In Open Source software, there is always a "stable" branch, that's 2.23, and a testing branch : that's 2.25. 2.25 is part of the migration process to shadow, as is, it does not need to be as polished as 2.23 or "light" last version.

I hope i won't be misunderstood this time

[wilboman]

Bob, you got that exactly right. The reason there are so many bugs in 2.25 is because it is the BtS port of FfH. You'll notice that there are precious few bugs in 2.23, and it is to a certain extent more balanced. But as you said, 2.25 is really a "non-version", released for you guys to help with the bug hunt.

So you're all right: 2.25 is a bit buggy and less than perfect, but that doesn't matter as much as it did with "Light", because 2.25 is not a final version, 2.23 is.

[jprc]

Thank you Bob Morane. It is very clearly explained. Even "La Main Jaune" would agree on this...

[Lucius Sulla]

GREAT!!!

And for the impatient, allow me to say that it is still a very tight and short schedule for the amount of work and testing involved.

[Black Whole]

Yipppee!

I am VERY happy now because the release date is much much earlier then the on e of fire. Only one and a half month until shadow.

Since there won't be many articles before the release (compared to 'fire'), will there be a changelog, which shows the changes to the civs, mechanics, etc.?

[Calavente]

ok, point taken, it was very well explained...

but still ...
v0.23 still had bugs and was a bit unbalanced ... according to forums.. as I do not encounter those "bugs" while playing. but I cannot find enough time to play a lot so I'm not a reference on buggy features. (for those interested : I see no pb related to combat odds with FFH 2.23 latest patch ==> that was a bug noticed after FFh team release the latest patch and announced they will do no more patchs.)

So as for your definition, Bob_Morane, in retrospect I will totally agree with you and take my comments back .. and play 2.23 until shadow 3.0000x is released and then I will buy BTS and play-test shadow....

3 Cheers for the team !!!

[[NWO]_Valis]

Since there won't be many articles before the release (compared to 'fire'), will there be a changelog, which shows the changes to the civs, mechanics, etc.?

I hope so. The "Fire developer Diary" was more important to me than real world news

[onedreamer]

Originally Posted by Psychic_Llamas

@ Onedreamer: Empyrean is one of the new religions (i belive focused on Malakim) along with the Council of Esus (not sure what thats based on, presumably the Svatalfar?)

aha, thanks for the info. I must admit I had never heard of it before, in fact I seem to remember that Malakim's God was someone starting with an L ? But it's good to know another coupla religions will make it in, and I hope in the return of the Cult (of the dragons) too.

[Bringa]

Having myself some experience with volunteer projects, I know how important it is to set deadlines. Doing so publicly is indeed, as another poster said, a gutsy move. Best of luck with everything!

[wilboman]

CotD will be back, but not quite in the form you are used to.

[Kael]

Time spent on new development vs support is always a concern. Please remember that you are playing a beta and although we did schedule the additions so that the game would remain playable through the milestones my goal isnt to make a test version perfect, it is to make the end version perfect.

I know there is some balance required between those goals. And I think we are pretty aggresive about releasing patches but at some point the value of adding new features is higher than tweaking old ones. Also remember that I am not a professional programmer, in fact im not a programmer at all. I taught myself to program playing with Civ4 so there will be errors and bugs that are the result of my inexperience or that I am unable to fix. In time we resolve everything, but it does take time.

So, for example, I probably won't be looking at CtD issues on 0.25 anymore. Those take hours to troubleshoot and since the codebase has changed significantly they may or may not be relevant anymore. Its also not as simple as fixing it on the old version and pasting it into the new version (code is a jumble of intertwined relationships) and working in two versions is a sure way to introduce even more issues.

But some reported issues do get looked at on the new code. Right now Im really digging into why the AI seems to be leaning so heavily on siege workshops, chariots and catapults. So I do try to clean up issues like that between versions as well. Just please dont think that its as simple as just tweaking a value (well it is probably that simple, I just have to find the right value ).

The BtS conversion was a much bigger technical challenge than I suspected. Initially I didn't plan to release 0.24 and 0.25 as "Fire" versions on BtS. But after seeing the challenge I realized I would need a lot more playtest feedback and help reporting issues than I thought so I broke the BtS conversion out into smaller pieces to get your help.

"Shadow" is the last real phase FfH2 ("Ice" is just scenarios and tweaking, no major features). The team and I are really eager to get these last features in and working. At that point the playtesting and troubleshooting becomes even more important because it reflects the final game. We are almost there.

@iamjooish: Yeah, we were working on AoI and "Fire" at the same time. Which was a challenge for me personally, Im so much happier to be able to focus on one mod at a time.

[Psychic_Llamas]

Originally Posted by Bob Morane

Uh, did you react to my post cause i didn't got the feeling i was harsh, it wasn't my intent anyway. I didn't insult anyone, didn't complain either ...
This mod is a GREAT job. However, they can't kill every bug themselves. Even commercial companies often can't catch every bug before a game is released This was in no way an attack against the team.

no, it wasnt directed at you, sorry if it seemed i was having a go at you our posts must just have got crossed (you posted yours after i started typing mine, and by the time i was finished i realized there were more posts busy thread )

[jprc]

... it is to make the end version perfect

.

well!!
just add "almost" between "version" and "perfect" and I guess it will be more than enough!!

[Dora190]

Cmon guys its a schedule. Very few mods and a few games don't even have those. I've been waiting for RTR for almost a year and there's still no light at the end of the tunnel. FFH2 as it currently is is a better game than civ 4 vanilla.

I'm impressed.