When?

World in Flames is the computer version of Australian Design Group classic board game. World In Flames is a highly detailed game covering the both Europe and Pacific Theaters of Operations during World War II. If you want grand strategy this game is for you.

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NeverMan
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RE: When?

Post by NeverMan »

ORIGINAL: SamuraiProgrammer

Speaking from experience, I can tell you that the more people you have on a project, the more time is wasted in 'meetings'.

It is like this... two programmers get the job done in 65% to 75% of the time taken by one - at twice the cost.

Three programmer might get the job done in 40% of the time - at three times the cost.

We have a saying in the business... There are three qualifiers - Fast, Inexpensive, Quality. Pick any 2. You are not allowed to have all 3. EVER!

This is mostly pure nonsense, just sounds like piss poor management to me.

So you don't think there is any advantage to parallelizing work? Why not just have one programmer do everything? Would that be even faster? LOL, nonsense.
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SamuraiProgrmmr
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RE: When?

Post by SamuraiProgrmmr »

Think about it... The more people on the project, the more time is spent on meetings.

More people on the project means the project will be done in less 'CALENDAR' time. Unfortunately, it also means that it will be done with more 'MAN HOUR' time.

Is there anyone who has actually managed a project that will refute that statement?

Oh and by the way.... I have spent 85% of my 27 year career being 'one programmer on a project'. Small businesses needing custom software can seldom afford it any other way.

The last project I did solo ended up being 140,000 lines of code - so we are not talking about dink projects.



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vonpaul
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RE: When?

Post by vonpaul »

A very cynical view SamuraiProgrammer, and IMO an incorrect one.

People working together effectively is much more efficient than working separately. Especially in creative and technical job types. It does require management so if that is poor than it might be better to work alone however.
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MajorDude
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RE: When?

Post by MajorDude »

One productive scientific research method used in some engineering schools is to "pair" two student researchers together who actually have almost diametrically opposed approaches, styles, opinions, and even preferred methodologies.

The constant need to "prove" things to one another tightens up the scientific credibility of the ongoing work and often leads to a stronger position and quality in the final presentation.

This type of collaboration is thus seen as productive and not wasteful. I don't see why the same could not be true of computer programming, unless it would take too long to bring a new colleague up to speed and be sure of retaining that individual once he/she becomes acclimated to the project.
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SamuraiProgrmmr
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RE: When?

Post by SamuraiProgrmmr »

ORIGINAL: MajorDude

One productive scientific research method used in some engineering schools is to "pair" two student researchers together who actually have almost diametrically opposed approaches, styles, opinions, and even preferred methodologies.

The constant need to "prove" things to one another tightens up the scientific credibility of the ongoing work and often leads to a stronger position and quality in the final presentation.

This type of collaboration is thus seen as productive and not wasteful. I don't see why the same could not be true of computer programming, unless it would take too long to bring a new colleague up to speed and be sure of retaining that individual once he/she becomes acclimated to the project.


'Better result' is not the same thing as 'less man-hours to reach a result'

Clearly 'two heads are better than one'. I am only saying that two heads are more expensive than one and that because of the time spent communicating, two heads will be slight more than twice as expensive as one.


To vonpaul...

Your remarks seem to say that by adding a second person the number of man-hours to complete the project are reduced.

Is that correct? I have a hard time believing it.
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michaelbaldur
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RE: When?

Post by michaelbaldur »


there are no need for this discussion.

by the time we get another programmer up to speed. the game will be finished.

this was a discussion we should have had years ago
the wif rulebook is my bible

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Joseignacio
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RE: When?

Post by Joseignacio »

ORIGINAL: SamuraiProgrammer

Think about it... The more people on the project, the more time is spent on meetings.

More people on the project means the project will be done in less 'CALENDAR' time. Unfortunately, it also means that it will be done with more 'MAN HOUR' time.

Is there anyone who has actually managed a project that will refute that statement?

Oh and by the way.... I have spent 85% of my 27 year career being 'one programmer on a project'. Small businesses needing custom software can seldom afford it any other way.

The last project I did solo ended up being 140,000 lines of code - so we are not talking about dink projects.




I have absolutely no experience un computing but a lot in managing teams. For me, what Sammurai Programmer says is the pure truth. The key is the part that I mark in bold.
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Joseignacio
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RE: When?

Post by Joseignacio »

ORIGINAL: michaelbaldur


there are no need for this discussion.

by the time we get another programmer up to speed. the game will be finished.

this was a discussion we should have had years ago

Had this discussion with what purpose?

Steve is the one who will take the decissions and he can take a helper or codeveloper only if he wants to.

Unless somebody wanted to ask Matrix to press on him or cancel the contract, which I think is extremely unprobable.

It's good to debate but let's not forget we are just opining, not deciding or trying to.
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composer99
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RE: When?

Post by composer99 »

Warning: Non sequitur ahead.

I hope Steve's April update will not come with a cruel April Fools' joke beforehand.
~ Composer99
Shannon V. OKeets
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RE: When?

Post by Shannon V. OKeets »

ORIGINAL: Joseignacio

ORIGINAL: SamuraiProgrammer

Think about it... The more people on the project, the more time is spent on meetings.

More people on the project means the project will be done in less 'CALENDAR' time. Unfortunately, it also means that it will be done with more 'MAN HOUR' time.

Is there anyone who has actually managed a project that will refute that statement?

Oh and by the way.... I have spent 85% of my 27 year career being 'one programmer on a project'. Small businesses needing custom software can seldom afford it any other way.

The last project I did solo ended up being 140,000 lines of code - so we are not talking about dink projects.




I have absolutely no experience un computing but a lot in managing teams. For me, what Sammurai Programmer says is the pure truth. The key is the part that I mark in bold.
I actually took a course in building teams and then taught it to the first level managers who reported to me (oh, and also to some other first level managers who reported to my peers).

I use those concepts in developing MWIF with the help of the forum members. Some basic rules are:

1 - listen to everyone's ideas and comments; things from "out-of-left-field" can often provide an unexpected insight
2 - merge different ideas to make a better one
3 - when a task is best done by one or two people, have him/them work on it (i.e., don't add a bunch of non-contributing others); math calculations are a good example of where majority rules is a bad idea
4 - strive for consensus; by having everyone agree, you have a better chance of having reached a near-optimal solution; more importantly, if everyone agrees, performing the task is orders of magnitude easier [a long list of why that is true can be generated]
5 - delegate tasks to those best able to do them (a more general form of #3)

There was more stuff but I am working from memory 20+ years ago.
Steve

Perfection is an elusive goal.
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Justascratch
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RE: When?

Post by Justascratch »

Well said Shannon.

I do think there is a point in which diminishing returns (adding more staff) can create a situation similar to samuri's argument. But most managers can spot that problem instantly and pare down quickly to improve efficiency.
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mavraamides
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RE: When?

Post by mavraamides »

ORIGINAL: NeverMan

ORIGINAL: SamuraiProgrammer

Speaking from experience, I can tell you that the more people you have on a project, the more time is wasted in 'meetings'.

It is like this... two programmers get the job done in 65% to 75% of the time taken by one - at twice the cost.

Three programmer might get the job done in 40% of the time - at three times the cost.

We have a saying in the business... There are three qualifiers - Fast, Inexpensive, Quality. Pick any 2. You are not allowed to have all 3. EVER!

This is mostly pure nonsense, just sounds like piss poor management to me.

So you don't think there is any advantage to parallelizing work? Why not just have one programmer do everything? Would that be even faster? LOL, nonsense.

SP is spot on. The only time I've ever seen multiple programmers more efficient than one in terms of total man hours is when they are working on a job where different areas of expertise are needed.

For example, say you are building a website where you need an html/javascript programmer for the front end, a C++ programmer for the middleware and a SQL programmer for the backend. In that case, 3 different people with the appropriate expertise would likely be more efficient than any one of them trying to do all three. But that is only because each person is more efficient in their area of specialty.

And that is the rare exception. The vast majority of time, the more people working on a project, the less efficient the outcome in terms of total person hours to get to the final result.

There are all sorts of reasons for this:

Communication takes time. You can't be meeting and working at the same time.
8 people in a 1 hour team meeting is an entire man day not getting any real work done.
Multiple people working on the same source code can lead to locking each other out or lengthy and buggy code merges.
Etc....

FYI, I'm VP of Engineering for a high tech software company so I have more than a little experience on this issue.
CarnivalBizarre
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RE: When?

Post by CarnivalBizarre »

I'm just amazed you guys seem to spend so much time in meetings. A meeting a month is just about right for a five people team.

If I did the work I did at my job alone in a basement my productivity would not be at the same level as in the team.

But I guess it depends on what you are doing. We are developing a roof construction/timber design software that has been going on for a few years now.
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RE: When?

Post by Shannon V. OKeets »

ORIGINAL: CarnivalBizarre

I'm just amazed you guys seem to spend so much time in meetings. A meeting a month is just about right for a five people team.

If I did the work I did at my job alone in a basement my productivity would not be at the same level as in the team.

But I guess it depends on what you are doing. We are developing a roof construction/timber design software that has been going on for a few years now.
Depends on the project.

When I was jointly managing a team of 30 AI project managers/programmers, we met once a week for 1 hour. The rules for that meetiing were very exacting:
1 - all reports had to be submitted by the day before; no boring stuff in the reports, just the important news (e.g., decisions made, action items that needed approval).
2 - during the week, agenda items were posted on a common board by whoever wanted to discuss something - with an estimate of time needed.
3 - the final agenda was created by whoever was chairing the meeting about an hour before the meeting, based on the items on the board.
4 - the agenda had start and stop times for each item.
5 - the meeting started on time and ended on time with no exceptions.
6 - the first order of business was to agree on the agenda.
7 - the person who posted an agenda item was in charge of the discussion on his/her item.
8 - as the meeting progressed through the agenda items the clock was watched carefully; if an agenda item took too long, the meeting was stopped and a decision made about taking the time from some other item, or aborting the discussion on the current item.
9 - often a difficult item was assigned to a subgroup to deal with and report back to the full group. Note that those reports where emailed to everyone before the next meeting.
10 - the meetings always ended with a 5 minute go-around-the-room where everyone said what they liked/disliked about the meeting that just ended.

Because the time limits were so strictly enforced, people didn't blather about unimportant stuff, or go into their standard soapbox speeches. Focus on the crux of each topic was vital if you wanted the group to reach a decision about your item. The ending pluses/minuses segment made for continual improvement in the meetings. Indeed, the 10 points I listed above came about gradually based mainly on the feedback from numerous ending segments.

The result of handling meetings this way was that everyone arrived on time. The meetings were always informative and productive. We used email extensively for communications within the group but even so, the face-to-face meeting time was extremely useful - rarely did anyone miss the weekly meeting.
Steve

Perfection is an elusive goal.
BumMcFluff
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RE: When?

Post by BumMcFluff »

Well, it's been two years since I last checked in here to see when this dreadnought would be completed. I was roundly chastised for my lack of faith and my doubts etc. It's now two years later, and ... we're still waiting. But hey, who am I to complain? I certainly don't want to spark off another 'this is a big job' or 'maybe if you helped' or 'you don't know the difficulties' or whatever.

- Yes, it's a big job, bigger than anticipated, but so was fighting the actual war, and that only took six years (less if you're American, more if you're Japanese or Chinese).

- I don't help car manufacturers, plumbers or electricians either, because they're supposed to know what they're doing.

- No, I don't know the difficulties, but I don't explain the difficulties of my job to my clients, because it's not professional.

Oh well, see you in another two years. I expect I'll be bagged in my absence, but I would prefer the effort went into the game instead.
They do say, Mrs. M, that verbal insults hurt more than physical pain. They are, of course, wrong, as you'll soon discover when I stick this toasting fork in your head.
wargameplayer
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RE: When?

Post by wargameplayer »

I was on these forums 2-3 years ago and said one person is unrealistic to get this project done.
The developer (Steve)--told me more people would slow him down. He asked me to repost the conversation because he didn't believe it and I did. The guy can't keep his story straight.

I got universally flamed by all the faboys on here by posting back then...

But here are a couple of thoughts.

1) A team is needed to do a project this big.
2) many people waiting for this project literally died waiting. The developer posted misleading reports about how far he was. Sorry, but two years ago, we were seeing posts "almost done". It wasn't almost done.
3) The developer spends way too much time on the forums here. I don't really care about how you are doing i your men's chorus. Sorry, I just don't.
4) The fanboys come on here and flame anyone who says the project is off track. Hey if you guys hadn't been such blind followers maybe the project would have been assigned to someone with the resources to actually get the job done.

Really angry and frustrated with the misleading status reports. This license should be pulled and it should be assigned to a dev team that can deliver on it's promises.

brian brian
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RE: When?

Post by brian brian »

I think what a lot of critics miss is that the market for this game is not a lucrative one. MWiF will not lead to a TV ad campaign and a bitchin' new rock soundtrack the way the new Call of Duty game has. I don't think there actually are a lot of options to just put a team of slick game programming professionals on this project and just pop it out in a few months the way many wish it could be done. Maybe if Steve Ballmer played WiF or some other patron of the arts wanted to spend some of their personal fortune but I can't see any other scenario to make it go any faster from what little I know of the strategy gaming business. The hard-core players of World in Flames are already playing it with their computers (for free though generally after buying everything ADG will sell us) and everyone else who refuses to explore those options while waiting for MatrixWiF is just being stubborn and bitchy. IMO. But here we go round in circles, here we go round and round. If you excuse me, I'm off to blow a precious spare hour tinkering with my new German strategy on Cyberboard. I think I'll get another such hour tonight when the new episode of 'The Pacific' sends the heroes of Alligator Creek in the 1st Marine Division to shore leave in Australia. Yawn.
bo
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RE: When?

Post by bo »

ORIGINAL: wargameplayer

I was on these forums 2-3 years ago and said one person is unrealistic to get this project done.
The developer (Steve)--told me more people would slow him down. He asked me to repost the conversation because he didn't believe it and I did. The guy can't keep his story straight.

I got universally flamed by all the faboys on here by posting back then...

But here are a couple of thoughts.

1) A team is needed to do a project this big.
2) many people waiting for this project literally died waiting. The developer posted misleading reports about how far he was. Sorry, but two years ago, we were seeing posts "almost done". It wasn't almost done.
3) The developer spends way too much time on the forums here. I don't really care about how you are doing i your men's chorus. Sorry, I just don't.
4) The fanboys come on here and flame anyone who says the project is off track. Hey if you guys hadn't been such blind followers maybe the project would have been assigned to someone with the resources to actually get the job done.

Really angry and frustrated with the misleading status reports. This license should be pulled and it should be assigned to a dev team that can deliver on it's promises.

Amen Wargameplayer,[&o] you must say it nicer than I did, I was accused of trolling [whats trolling] when I said these things, You sir are in line for a warning![:-] for speaking the truth. Honestly people I am really trying hard to stay cool.
Bo
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HansHafen
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RE: When?

Post by HansHafen »

The only option is for all the forum user's and potential buyers to fork over about a thousand dollars each for salary for programmers. If we have 300 or so dudes ready, willing and able I think we can get this done! Please respond with a yes and send me the money, and I'll keep track of the cash. Sweet idea dudes! I should have thought of it sooner!
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michaelbaldur
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RE: When?

Post by michaelbaldur »

really don´t understand the point in does posts ...

do you really thing that the game will be finished faster, if Steve stopped and somebody else have to start all over..

on another note. I don´t see my self as a "fanboy".

I´m one of the people in the world.that have spend most time playing MWIF. I think that I have a realistic view on. the progress on the game.

do you even know the progress of the game. how many hours have you spend playing the game .....

something else: when I say I have spend time PLAYING the game. I mean that the game is playable.


the wif rulebook is my bible

I work hard, not smart.

beta tester and Mwif expert

if you have questions or issues with the game, just contact me on Michaelbaldur1@gmail.com
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