So, when is the new patch coming out?

[DD696]

I managed to log in, so figured it was time to give Curtis Lemay a very firm, but polite, kick in the posterior.

So, when is the new patch coming out, or has their been no time to be involved with any precious coding time due to your overwhelming verbosity in numerous threads over the past year plus? Lots of very hot air, but it appears so little results. I am still whistling past the graveyard, but, hey, what do you expect? I am a Marine. We expect more than cigar smoke.

[WG]

I was told a year ago that the bugged Select New Game menu would be fixed Real Soon Now. [&:]

I wonder how many new players have given up on the game in the meantime because they have never found the tutorial document.

[FaneFlugt]

[:D]

[lion_of_judah]

how about adding the option to have more than just two sides!

[Simon Edmonds]

I think the executive of Toaw are being treated for depression after seeing WitE2. Lol (Tongue in cheek guys)

Seriously though; we still have Fire in the East. In the next patch double the map size. Double the place names. As so on. Then we can have the whole of Europe at 5km or even 2.5km. That is something the opposition will probably never reach. Pacific Theatre and WW1 too.

[sPzAbt653]

The loveable symbol for TOAW III was the tumbleweed. Here is the one for TOAW IV:

[woos1981]

Haha, you mean the game is like being abandoned?

[Lobster]

No, that's an antique just waiting for someone to haul it home and give it some love. [;)]

[sPzAbt653]

Yeah, Jack's interpretation is closer. It's more like it ran off the road and got wrecked by unfriendly forces. It's a sticky off-road problem. Matrix is having trouble finding the proper rescue crew.

[Lobster]

One of my favorites:

[Hellen_slith]

It may be an old hooptie but I like it. Would be nice to see the Commander patch, but <shrug> I am content the way it is. Who wouldn't be after 20 plus years of enjoyment? I'm not interested in having every little detail of minutiae correct and proper historically. I just like to play. YMMV.

[Lobster]

ORIGINAL: Hellen_slith

I'm not interested in having every little detail of minutiae correct and proper historically.

Don't worry. It will be far from that. [;)]

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Hellen_slith

It may be an old hooptie but I like it. Would be nice to see the Commander patch, but <shrug> I am content the way it is. Who wouldn't be after 20 plus years of enjoyment? I'm not interested in having every little detail of minutiae correct and proper historically. I just like to play. YMMV.

For my part I'm more concerned with performance; I hop between TOAW III and TOAW IV for a couple of reasons and the slow response times in IV are really noticeable, and if you're doing something like setting arrival conditions for sixteen units in the same formation it becomes quite painful to do it through the interface. The game is also a lot more buggy than it was in the past; I had a crash bug in the editor whenever the game autoselected a particular piece as the next unit to deploy which I had to workaround by putting in a dummy undeployed unit which was then deleted. This cost me an hour's work.

New features are nice- on a stable platform.

[Lobster]

The unfortunate fact is, the more you make an old horse pull the slower it gets. If all of the planned bangles are loaded on the cart the horse may well refuse to move at all. [;)]

What do you suppose will happen when the game has to determine supply for three different types of supply for a few hundred units across a large map?

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Lobster

The unfortunate fact is, the more you make an old horse pull the slower it gets. If all of the planned bangles are loaded on the cart the horse may well refuse to move at all. [;)]

This is sort of nonsense. The software I deploy for a living is almost as old as TOAW and is many, many times more complex than it was back then, and handles far more data. At no time has anyone rebuilt the code base from the ground up, but it still works smoothly.

Deploying new features should not have a material effect on performance. It really doesn't make a whole lot of difference if the map reference you're entering has 90,000 different possibilities (a 300x300 map) or 490,000 (700x700). The problem is that since the move to TOAW IV, changes to the code base have been apparently been applied in an ad-hoc manner and without rigour, in order to deploy new features faster on a very limited resource.

This is understandable as Matrix is a business and they want a return on their investment, and people will only buy a new product if it has some significant enhancements over its predecessor. But it leads to a frustrating end user experience.

[Lobster]

After you just stated how TOAWIII has faster response times than TOAWIV. Maybe faster machines will mitigate that a bit but even that can only do so much. [;)]

I really don't know to what extent the thing can be optimized. I really do hope it all works out great and it purrs like a kitten. [:)]

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Lobster

After you just stated how TOAWIII has faster response times than TOAWIV. Maybe faster machines will mitigate that a bit but even that can only do so much. [;)]

I think if anything this is due not to being the "old horse", but rather a new one, as these changes go hand in hand with the change in interface (first thing I do when I open a save is make the two clicks necessary to revert to the old, non-ugly interface).

[jmlima]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

... The problem is that since the move to TOAW IV, changes to the code base have been apparently been applied in an ad-hoc manner and without rigour, in order to deploy new features faster on a very limited resource.
...

That would be the case if, by now, performance had been somewhat optimized. Since it was not, I think the issue is of a far more fundamental nature.

In any case, it's all irrelevant. It's not going to change positively in any significant form. (feel free to quote me when I'm proven wrong)

[Lobster]

I remember the days of opening FitE with TOAWIII and leaving the computer for 15 minutes or more while it loaded. Now it takes no time at all. Much better machine.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Lobster

I remember the days of opening FitE with TOAWIII and leaving the computer for 15 minutes or more while it loaded. Now it takes no time at all. Much better machine.

You changed PCs?

When I first played TOAW, if it was a big scenario, turns could take way more than 15 minutes to load- and sometimes they'd time out altogether. That was on the hardware from over twenty years ago, though.