Question about Matrix and WiF

[Asid]

*I should've apologised for my curt response. I did actually think you were having a laugh though.*

That's exactly why I asked the question.

The typed word is often misinterpreted due to the absence of emotional cues. It's all good :)

[Bletchley_Geek]

a viable stop gap

Quite a few of those, in WiF. Viable, as long as your upload bandwith allows you to 'stream' your desktop on real-time. Given how, ehm, agile WiF interface is in general, I am not looking forward to try that.

To be honest, I am not either impressed with the official statement. It's interesting to see beta testers like bo, publicly stating that they're not happy with the state the game was released. But as Sgt Rock says, there have been signs of this state of affairs for years. Steve kept posting religiously on the progress he was making on WiF, and I did indeed spot quite a few red flags over the years - I've got white hairs in my chin meanwhile - pointing out that things weren't well at all.

First, that the whole thing is programmed in Delphi, which isn't renowned precisely for game development (I liked it, it used to be a good alternative to the typeless zanyness of VisualBasic, but then VB.Net came, saw and conquered) nor widely used any more (it was discontinued a while ago by Borland). I also got the impression that Steve is one of those programmers that fix problems by adding a new ELSE IF, rather than taking a step back and tearing things down to start from scratch when it's necessary. This thing of trying to be as faithful to the ruleset is also a problem: rulesets written in English, structured for humans that can read the language and can use human powers of reasoning to execute the mechanics encoded in the rules. That sounds like a reasonable thing to translate into code, but the Devil lies in the bits I marked in italic.

Second, that the work on the AI was stopped at some point - I do remember that Steve had invented an scripting language to program the AI behavior, LAIO, was its name I reckon - after a massive investment of time, not to mention that inventing an scripting language for that was reinventing the wheel. I can also recall clearly posts by Steve - or beta-testers - showcasing the AI for Nationalist China, quite a few years ago. Probably it wasn't a WIF master level of play, but sure it could do a better job that the AI in WITP:AE or early iterations of HOI.

Third, Steve got hit hard by health issues - an eye cancer, no less - and that most likely threw him off rails for a while (yet I can't help but admire Steve resilience, after that, if I were him I would have given up or passed the torch of development to someone else and adopt a more 'managerial' position). That's a problem since the technical team had, precisely, one member, Steve.

So I can't - personally - blame other than myself for having acquired WiF. I wanted the books, and I wasn't very sure about the software. My concerns regarding the software have been confirmed, yet it's much less tight than I'd expect from a product developed behind closed doors for so long.

Perhaps the problem has been this "developed behind closed doors for so long" bit. A "release early, release often" approach usually works better than developing in a cocoon to come out and get bitten in the a** by furious, rabid clients asking for refunds and otherwise heaping all kinds of sh*t on you and your project. Been there myself, a long time ago, and it isn't a very happy situation.

For those that didn't have any information whatsoever - the example mentioned on this thread about "wifes and relatives getting it as a present" may sound dramatic but I reckon it's cutting very close to the bone for a few - I'd expect the possibility to get some kind of discount or reedeemable reward, based on realistic expectations about WiF future development. Compared with the possible cost of recalling all those books or, let's hope things don't get there, a class action suit, I think Slitherine/Matrix would be wise to take the opportunity to generate good will while they can.

[JasonPratt]

I should probably clarify that I don't even remotely blame Steve; and that I normally support Matrix strongly, and that I even like Erik and the other chief guys there. And after all, I haven't been burned (but only because I had enough sense not to buy another WW2 strategy game after all the other ones I've bought, many from Matrix not incidentally).

Maybe all this comes down to Matrix wanting to try to get some money to Steve after all his work under harsh r-l conditions.  :-\