All fault for any issues with our game production lie squarely with Brian and I. We forgot about the future.Sunbather wrote: ↑Fri Dec 22, 2023 2:54 pm For me personally, it was a mix of all those things above and some others:
- a bit too high of a price for a "new" series from a "new" devloper (I know you guys made a game before) and having no ability to refund here, every purchase is an all-in situation
- inconsistent UI (although remedied with mods by now)
- the map itself looks very low res
- as I understand there is no weather system (which would be fine for the scenarios depicted here but limits the engine's flexibility for a possible DLC or modders) [EDIT: I see now in the manual that there are indeed 3 different weather conditions in the engine but this game only uses one, which - again - is understandable for the depicted scenarios)
- no snow scenarios; game ends in November 1942 when clearly the whole Stalingrad affair took until February 1943 (it is commendable though that some of the pre-Stalingrad maneuvers made it in)
And yet, I am on the verge of buying the game, especially since the community seems very active but this is also the biggest problem: in the modding subforum you can find quite a few user scenarios already conceived or even built, some of them even depicting stuff like the ACW or American War in Vietnam, but all of them are on hold since the creators wait for the new patch to arrive - which is reasonable enough, of course. BUT this very thread here was opened 1.5 years (!) ago and since then there was not a single patch.
Now I understand that work is going on with the new titles but by the time this game (which people already paid for) gets patched, the momentum might be gone and the planned mods and scenarios will never get published. Sure, you could say that maybe they then switch over to the new game but if the current game is anything to go by and seeing the schedule for your upcoming games, the "new" game will also take the back seat in regars to the new, new release.
EDIT: Here is the thread in question. Apparently the bugs are already fixed but who exactly does that help if the patch, or rather the hotfix is not being released?
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 6&t=394877
The bug report was from Nov 2022; the scenario by user "governato" ready in July 2023; patch still not out in late December 2023. Talking about losing momentum...
The problem with this is also that one can pretty much calculate how long the next patch is going to take if another semi-critical bug arises.
The original game engine was designed by Brian so he could learn Java for his IT job. He posted his results on The Wargamer forum some 12-13 years ago...gratis. I saw it and downloaded it. I enjoyed how open it was to modification and started doing what I do best--scenario creation, artwork, and playtesting. He liked what I was doing, got inspired and kept at it; expanding the capabilities of the game to do North Africa "right" over the years that followed. Desert War was never a "game system design"; it was a labor of love for our computer wargame hobby. It lasted about 6-7 years where we FAFO'd...and all of it was published free to the public. Fun times.
Much later...Matrix/Slitherine approached us when Desert War had matured a bit and made an offer to publish the game--we accepted. Having gone through that publication experience--I never wanted to do another wargame. But Desert War did very well financially (from our perspective)...so what to do next? Well...the engine was only designed to do war in North Africa. What to do?
Close in type to the North African desert terrain are the steppes of Russia...sooo...lets add/change a few terrain to make that happen...and some bombardment stuff...and then some asset mission profiles, etc. And thus, the Stalingrad engine was born...an engine that was no longer compatible to the Desert War engine. We were too nearsighted to see...cuz..only two game engines to patch--right? How hard is that?
Then we caught the WEGOWW2 as a system TRUTH. A long term commitment to compete with The Operational Art of War and Panzer Campaigns! How do we accomplish this? You need a standard game engine.
It is too hard and too time consuming to maintain three or more game engines. Soooo....One engine rules them all. And that is now the goal. Once we have one engine, we have more time to develop content--faster for our WEGOWW2 fans. Updates/patches can happen across the suite of our WEGOWW2 games. Monty's Front will set the standard.
That is what we are doing now--two guys at a time while doing our day jobs. We are pleased to have Don Timian now on-board as an OB researcher, and Frank Costanzo as the ever present ALPHA playtester/devastator of things.
Nobody is sitting on their thumbs on our game projects. We are working as fast as we can to accomplish the good. We are trying as hard as we can to remember the future.
