Page 8 of 13 FirstFirst ... 678910 ... LastLast
Results 71 to 80 of 124

Thread: 17-09-2019 Forty-Third Field Report: Artillery Progress Update

  1. #71

    USA General of the Army

    Bravescot's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2014
    Location
    Perthshire, Scotland
    Posts
    2,626
    Quote Originally Posted by brentcarter View Post
    When did you ever had a community manager?
    It was Hinkel.

  2. #72
    LeFuret's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2019
    Location
    Belgium
    Posts
    48
    I agree with you all. I mean, it's way easier to be told to wait (years) when you know what is coming on. A little sneak peak or summary every week or two would be great. And for ONCE I must agree with PLM. If you have the kind of money to develop the game for many more years, why not try hiring more people in your team and speeding-up the process? If you can't afford to hire more people, just tell us.

    This game is unique, it's a niche game and therefore your community is very loyal and passionate about it. We are not bots either: we understand that this is alpha state, that is why we would not mind any problem in early builds. Don't be scared to show us new things and to let us try them. One day, most of us will grow tired of waiting. The more we wait without real pieces of news, the more we speculate. The more we speculate, the more disappointed we could get after a new release.

    Anyway, another rock thrown into the ocean.

    Don't get me wrong, i'm not crapping on your boots here. I'm just trying to express myself (and english is not my mother tongue)
    siiiiiip, yup.

  3. #73
    WoR-Dev TrustyJam's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Denmark
    Posts
    5,133
    Thank you all for your feedback.

    We will try to do better (we always are trying to).

    Yes, Hinkel held the Community Manager in title, not as an actual job. It was a leftover special forum title from the the very early days when he joined the crew back in like 2013 or 2014 where he took a good part of his mod comunity with him and thus thought it was a good idea to also act as the official community manager of the game. We've never had a hired, full time (or part time) community manager.

    This is from the field reporting regarding what sort of artillery features we're currently working on as well as what features we would like to work on in the future:

    The very first artillery implementation which we’re quickly headed towards will be a work in progress (as most if not all things in an alpha are) and will thus feature both limited game mechanics as well as a lot of new exciting bugs for you to enjoy.

    That being said, it will feature the core mechanics of functional artillery:
    Different artillery classes with different tools and weaponry.
    Unlimited artillery crew slots - if a team wishes to use all available battery pieces (or none) they can do so.
    Pushable cannons (by wheels) by two players at once.
    Ammunition and powder pickups from limbers.
    Different types of loads (such as explosive shell and canister shot).
    Horizontal aiming adjustments by lifting the tailspike of the cannon.
    Vertical aiming adjustments by turning the elevation screw of the cannon.
    Firing by fixing a lanyard to a primer and pulling it.
    Recoil from firing will require the cannon to be pushed back to its initial position in order to maintain accurate fire.
    Pushable limbers in order to make sure that the supply for the cannon can be moved with it should it be deemed a good idea to relocate the gun.
    Here’s a short list of some of the things we’ll be looking to bring to the artillery system in later released iterations:
    Artillery specific team damage punishment system (the first release of artillery will have friendly fire turned off).
    Chance of normal and catastrophical misfires without proper maintenance of the cannon.
    Dry sponge & worm tools for properly clearing stuck embers after firing.
    Chance of explosion when hitting the limbers.
    Chance of explosion when hitting the shell while it is being carried over to the gun for loading.
    Vent hole plugging step while loading.
    Fence destruction.
    Horse drawn artillery.



    Here's me going into details about the counter-attack mechanic design, the latest major addition to the gamemode several months before it was ready to be released, giving you direct access to our design doc which was thought up and created largely because of your feedback - as was the picket patrol mode earlier: https://www.warofrightsforum.com/sho...ll=1#post97691

    We do try to inform you of what we are working on - and I see several of you that feel the development is going too slow (as well as those that feel we should communicate more with you).

    The question is if you would rather have more communication but less actual content (the money spent on a community manager's full time position can only be spent once). This will also mean that the communication that is indeed put forward will be largely filler based (one can only say "we're developing artillery" in so many interesting ways).

    I see some of you ask for George videos and The Fighting Men of War of Rights ones too. While they did contain historical information, they were more PR videos than anything else (containing little to no game development related content).

    We're not witholding any information from you that is super awesome and just about to drop or anything of the sort and we're most certainly not afraid of people stealing our ideas (or we wouldn't put out design docs months in advance even of their implementation).

    As I feel like the two posts as of late I have made in relation to the status of artillery isn't what you're looking for I would like to ask you what kind of updates you would like to get from us.

    I'm sorry to see there's now being spoken of an "Anti-dev camp". That is not a good starting point for dialogue at all I think.

    - Trusty

  4. #74
    WoR-Dev TrustyJam's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Denmark
    Posts
    5,133
    Here's a bit of an experiment.

    Would you like screenshots such as this posted?

    The screenshots below are directly from two of our dev branches showing the commits we've made since the last alpha update two weeks ago. The overall asset branch (Assets) and the overall code branch (WarofRights):





    I don't think it's possible to get a more unfiltered look into what we're doing.

    - Trusty

  5. #75
    Would it be possible just to throw up a test server up that has all the W.I.P. buggy stuff on it so we can still get our hands on new stuff even if we will experience issues? If you make it clear what it is I don't think people will have a problem with it and it will give your dedicated community something to get their hands on while they wait for progress. Just a thought or maybe just give us that open drill camp map with both Union and Rebs so we can have at it on an open map (Sandbox Mode). We need something to keep us coming back while we wait for what is understandably a very slow process. Thank you!
    Last edited by TRaider; 12-13-2019 at 01:34 PM.


  6. #76
    WoR-Dev TrustyJam's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Denmark
    Posts
    5,133
    Quote Originally Posted by TRaider View Post
    Would it be possible just to throw up a test server up that has all the W.I.P. buggy stuff on it so we can still get our hands on new stuff even if we will experience issues? If you make it clear what it is I don't think people will have a problem with it and it will give your dedicated community something to get their hands on while they wait for progress. Just a thought or maybe just give us that open drill camp map with both Union and Rebs so we can have at it on an open map (Sandbox Mode). We need something to keep us coming back while we wait for what is understandably a very slow process. Thank you!
    Thank you for the suggestion.

    We don't think it's a good idea to have, effectively, two alpha branches running at the same time. Not only can this cause a lot of developmental issues issues down the line (merging the branches) it will also drastically increase the amount of time we spend on replying to reports about broken features which we're already aware of (hence it not being release ready in the first place) it will also split the community in two: those who play on the WIP branch and those who play on the live branch. We don't think our community is big enough for that to be a wise thing to do.

    That being said, such secondary branches work very well for time limited, focused tests (which we expect to be running on the artillery implementation when it is test ready prior to a live build release).

    I realize that many of you want to get your hands on the WIP features before they are ready for a broader public release - the days of us adding something that is extremely early in its development cycle to the actual live build of the game are over, however (if we can avoid it that is).

    Many early access users expect to get fully working (and also very polished) game updates to what they often consider finished games, not alphas ( their train of thought being something like: publically available via steam = released game = if not finished, then at the very least extremely well developed game).

    We will of course consider doing more focused tests (the guy who mentioned that we promised 200 players is wrong by the way - the 200 player tests were just that - focused tests) depending on how well the WIP arty test branch turns out in terms of feedback and bug catching.

    - Trusty

  7. #77
    Quote Originally Posted by TrustyJam View Post
    Here's a bit of an experiment.

    Would you like screenshots such as this posted?

    The screenshots below are directly from two of our dev branches showing the commits we've made since the last alpha update two weeks ago. The overall asset branch (Assets) and the overall code branch (WarofRights):





    I don't think it's possible to get a more unfiltered look into what we're doing.

    - Trusty
    Having that is far better, but I think plenty of people would still be wondering “Well does this mean, is progress is good, slow, do they have issues, etc” so you could have a very brief post giving a status update of the major stuff as well as that.

  8. #78
    WoR-Dev TrustyJam's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Denmark
    Posts
    5,133
    Quote Originally Posted by McMuffin View Post
    Having that is far better, but I think plenty of people would still be wondering “Well does this mean, is progress is good, slow, do they have issues, etc” so you could have a very brief post giving a status update of the major stuff as well as that.
    Thanks for the feedback.

    If the progress is good or bad is a bit of an interpretation thing so kind of hard to give such an answer.

    Progress is good if one considers daily improvements to be good progress. Progress is not good if one considers good progress to mean "we're ready to release arty within a few days". Issues is a tough one to pinpoint objectively as well. Most if not all commits will have run into one issue or another, some very minor ones, some very large ones as game development is hugely based on issue solving. These are overcome/worked around of before the commit is pushed to the branch.

    We obviously have several major alpha-related issues (such as servers mass booting players), some of which we have spent close to a year's worth of full time working on (rewritten how the server is handling connections), but there's more often than not no major stopping issues when developing new features and so we can't list them. There will be annoying ones for a few hours or possibly days or in extreme cases weeks (those are rare). The major issues of new features tend to show themselves during broader testing (where you'll all become aware of them as you'll be the ones primarily triggering them for us to see and fix).

    The above screenshots give you an unfiltered insight of what goes into each patch (but not the actual challenges/issues faced before being able to push a single commit to the branch - this is impossible as we'd have to ask each employee to write a short essay of their entire process from design to implementation to internal testing to revisions which would require a huge amount of time). Whether or not the time required to get the patch out to you is worth it is something you will have to decide when the patch is released for testing.

    - Trusty

  9. #79

    USA General of the Army

    Oleander's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2016
    Posts
    646
    Those screenshots are good insight since we can at least see what progress has been made. Just from what I can see, artillery is in the final phase before release and it looks like there are some more terrain texture improvements in the works.

    As for additional info, the short list of things I think most of us have pertaining to artillery are:

    -Bare minimum numbers to man a gun
    -Are implements position specific or can anyone in artillery class use them
    -Are implements tied to a specific gun
    -Are you only able to pull ammo from the limber attached to your gun
    -Are you only able to use a gun tied to your specific unit
    -What maps will have playable artillery ( I know the screenshot shows all maps on Harper's and SM will have arty positions, but what about Antietam)
    -Are the cannon locations in game where they will be on release
    -Since we will only be able to use 3 inch rifles upon initial release, will there only be one or two available for use based on current cannons in game per map
    -Can any arty class role work any position on the gun, i.e. a cannoneer working as a gunner, and can you swap implements at will

    I know it takes time to sit down and answer questions, and that time can be dedicated to development. We are just a little in the dark in terms of what we should be anticipating. I think I speak for most people in saying we are trying to plan for the release so we can utilize the time spent in testing more efficiently. Most units will be using their line grunts as artillery so having an understanding of how this will work and how many they should plan to dedicate to it is pretty crucial.

    As far as updates, I don't think anyone is asking for an essay on what was done. Just quick notes on what has been accomplished, similar to what you've shown in the screenshots. It doesn't have to be a major list, just quick points saying we're close to an update or we've hit a snag and it will be a bit longer.

  10. #80
    WoR-Dev TrustyJam's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Denmark
    Posts
    5,133
    The information below is all subject to change.


    -Bare minimum numbers to man a gun

    1

    -Are implements position specific or can anyone in artillery class use them

    Anyone that is an artillery crew can use them.

    -Are implements tied to a specific gun

    No.

    -Are you only able to pull ammo from the limber attached to your gun

    No.

    -Are you only able to use a gun tied to your specific unit

    No.

    -What maps will have playable artillery ( I know the screenshot shows all maps on Harper's and SM will have arty positions, but what about Antietam)

    The skirmish areas where there was artillery engaged or at the very least close to, if not inside the current skirmish area bounds will feature artillery at their historical positions: not only area specific but also time specific (a certain battery may be at one position during the dunker church skirmish and later nowhere to be found on cooke's countercharge which takes place on the same ground but at a later point in time for instance). Not all skirmish areas of Harpers Ferry or South Mountain (the "all" in the commit refers to all skirmish areas actually to feature artillery) or Antietam will feature artillery.

    The more loosly histocially based skirmish areas will feature artillery where it makes sense from a level perspective.


    -Are the cannon locations in game where they will be on release

    Some are but a lot aren't.

    -Since we will only be able to use 3 inch rifles upon initial release, will there only be one or two available for use based on current cannons in game per map

    No, the game will feature as many cannons as if we had all versions in-game. The 3 inch'ers which we're starting with will be replaced as more and more cannons are introduced.

    -Can any arty class role work any position on the gun, i.e. a cannoneer working as a gunner, and can you swap implements at will

    Yes.

    - Trusty

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •