Fire and Rubble

[Commanderski]

[Dan Dare]

[Modernrocco]

[Vencini]

Edited April 6, 2021 by Vencini
image

[Aragorn2002]

On 4/4/2021 at 12:47 PM, Ultradave said:

Maybe after release someone (Elvis?) will describe what some of the recent holdups have been. As always though, they are about getting it right.

Dave

Personally I would like to move on as quickly as possible and forget the whole shambles.

[DerKommissar]

[zulu1966]

20 hours ago, wadepm said:

MD, are you saying Cold War has an actual release date but F&R does not?

If cold war comes out any time in the next 6 Months I will eat my hat. Quite willing to eat something much worse than that to get it in my hands - so win - win from my perspective.

[DesertFox]

19 minutes ago, zulu1966 said:

If cold war comes out any time in the next 6 Months I will eat my hat.

This month. Enjoy your meal.

Pre-orders for Combat Mission Cold War are now open. - Combat Mission Cold War - Battlefront.com Community

[MikeyD]

Slitherine and Steam are very enthused about Cold War and played a big part in pushing for the very quick turnaround. Slitherine, being a proper company, is used to operating on deadlines. We're on track to hold up our end of the bargain, what Slitherine and Steam are doing on their end is beyond my field of vision.

Progress on Fire and Rubble, by comparison, is being driven by embarrassment that its taken so long. Its now a matter of self esteem that we get this darned thing out the door at last. A couple months back there was a request for significant 'other' work ('other' work has plagued the F&R schedule) and Charles said no. No more interruptions. We finish what we got and deal with other stuff later.

Edited April 6, 2021 by MikeyD

[Aragorn2002]

38 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

Slitherine and Steam are very enthused about Cold War and played a big part in pushing for the very quick turnaround. Slitherine, being a proper company, is used to operating on deadlines. We're on track to hold up our end of the bargain, what Slitherine and Steam are doing on their end is beyond my field of vision.

Progress on Fire and Rubble, by comparison, is being driven by embarrassment that its taken so long. Its now a matter of self esteem that we get this darned thing out the door at last. A couple months back there was a request for significant 'other' work ('other' work has plagued the F&R schedule) and Charles said no. No more interruptions. We finish what we got and deal with other stuff later.

Not sure what to think or say, but I can appreciate your words more than those of the forum members who in the past months and years tried to defend the indefensible, ridiculed people who rightly were annoyed by the endless delay and tried to give the impression everything was as it should be. They should be even more embarrassed than BFC.

I personally feel that BFC did not hold up their end of the bargain with me as a customer of their products. The fact that Charles FINALLY said no does not impress or console me at all. 

Edited April 6, 2021 by Aragorn2002

[MikeyD]

Some 'other' projects you just can't say no to, especially if that 'other' project was something you wanted to see happen for 20 years. So you do the 'other' project.

[Aragorn2002]

4 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

Some 'other' projects you just can't say no to, especially if that 'other' project was something you wanted to see happen for 20 years. So you do the 'other' project.

I get that. What I don't get is giving the impression release is near for years and years and even now keep folks in the dark about it. I bet we won't see FR before CW. 

[Anonymous_Jonze]

Any scenarios that depict the breakout attempts after Hitler's suicide? Specifically the Charlotten bridge attempt. I could see that being especially challenging!

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, Aragorn2002 said:

I get that. What I don't get is giving the impression release is near for years and years and even now keep folks in the dark about it. I bet we won't see FR before CW. 

Well, that's not even remotely fair, though it doesn't surprise me as the chip on your shoulder is a well known fixture on this Forum. 

You might have been expecting the game's release was "near" years ago, but we didn't say it was.  Especially because for most of that time we hadn't even started on it.  That said, we did think we'd have it out sometime last year.  But Red Thunder turned out to be a lot more work than any of us thought it would.  Mostly because we kept adding things, which in a way is a good thing.  More for your money, even though you had to wait longer.

Customers always think that we know exactly when something is going to be done and therefore can gauge the release date.  This flawed logic makes people think that if we aren't constantly updating people it's because we're withholding information.  The fact is we keep release times fluid until the last minute because we don't know how long something will take until it's done.  CMSF2, a revamping of something we already made, took about a year longer than we expected.  Cold War took about a year less.  If you had asked me before we started either game I would have thought it would be the other way around.

So where are we with Fire & Rubble's state of development?  As MikeyD said, currently it is classified as Beta.  Which means absolutely nothing as it's just a label.  Every developer has its own way of doing things, but in our experience the next stage (Final Candidate) and the last stage (Release Candidate) takes between 2-4 weeks in total.  Based on this morning's examination of the remaining ToDo List items... I think we're at the point of Final Candidate.  I don't know how much more time is needed from there to release, however being very conservative about moving into release mode means we aren't likely to get tripped up by anything time sucking at this point.

A quick note about firm release dates with Slitherine.  They operate a traditional publishing model and that requires a fixed amount of time to promote ahead of a fixed release date.  That's not the way we like to do things ourselves, which is why we don't have a traditional publishing model.

Steve

[BletchleyGeek]

12 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Every developer has its own way of doing things, but in our experience the next stage (Final Candidate) and the last stage (Release Candidate) takes between 2-4 weeks in total.  Based on this morning's examination of the remaining ToDo List items... I think we're at the point of Final Candidate. 

Thanks Steve for moving the progress bar. @BFCElvis explanation of the process was clear and informative too.

 

FWIW I think Battlefront.com is a "proper" company, even if it doesn't follow the standard publisher model of Slitherine. It has to be incorporated according to the laws of the state of Maine (?) at the very least

 

Having deadlines like that are good for managing expectations. But quality at release may be less than expected, as a host of small items which are unimportant individually, and were thus deemed low priority for fixing, in  the aggregate can make quite a dent in the perception of a game. And I am talking about a very big WW2 wargame that came out recently which I was the lead tester for two years until late last year.

Edited April 6, 2021 by BletchleyGeek

[Anonymous_Jonze]

Always onboard with adding more content. Cheers.

[Cobetco]

sounds like we're a month out, sad but whatever. the Rome to Victory wait was worth it,  (even if I'm still salty about no gebirgsjäger in QB) so I'm gonna be content just sitting around playing Italy for my CM fix.

[Bubba883XL]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Well, that's not even remotely fair, though it doesn't surprise me as the chip on your shoulder is a well known fixture on this Forum. 

You might have been expecting the game's release was "near" years ago, but we didn't say it was.  Especially because for most of that time we hadn't even started on it.  That said, we did think we'd have it out sometime last year.  But Red Thunder turned out to be a lot more work than any of us thought it would.  Mostly because we kept adding things, which in a way is a good thing.  More for your money, even though you had to wait longer.

Customers always think that we know exactly when something is going to be done and therefore can gauge the release date.  This flawed logic makes people think that if we aren't constantly updating people it's because we're withholding information.  The fact is we keep release times fluid until the last minute because we don't know how long something will take until it's done.  CMSF2, a revamping of something we already made, took about a year longer than we expected.  Cold War took about a year less.  If you had asked me before we started either game I would have thought it would be the other way around.

So where are we with Fire & Rubble's state of development?  As MikeyD said, currently it is classified as Beta.  Which means absolutely nothing as it's just a label.  Every developer has its own way of doing things, but in our experience the next stage (Final Candidate) and the last stage (Release Candidate) takes between 2-4 weeks in total.  Based on this morning's examination of the remaining ToDo List items... I think we're at the point of Final Candidate.  I don't know how much more time is needed from there to release, however being very conservative about moving into release mode means we aren't likely to get tripped up by anything time sucking at this point.

A quick note about firm release dates with Slitherine.  They operate a traditional publishing model and that requires a fixed amount of time to promote ahead of a fixed release date.  That's not the way we like to do things ourselves, which is why we don't have a traditional publishing model.

Steve

Don't change your ways, lol I mean hell yeah I guess we'd all like a title / add on quicker. But I love the way you guys have stuck with these titles offering us upgrades. Fantastic way to keep game fresh and playable

[Commanderski]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Well, that's not even remotely fair, though it doesn't surprise me as the chip on your shoulder is a well known fixture on this Forum. 

You might have been expecting the game's release was "near" years ago, but we didn't say it was.  Especially because for most of that time we hadn't even started on it.  That said, we did think we'd have it out sometime last year.  But Red Thunder turned out to be a lot more work than any of us thought it would.  Mostly because we kept adding things, which in a way is a good thing.  More for your money, even though you had to wait longer.

Customers always think that we know exactly when something is going to be done and therefore can gauge the release date.  This flawed logic makes people think that if we aren't constantly updating people it's because we're withholding information.  The fact is we keep release times fluid until the last minute because we don't know how long something will take until it's done.  CMSF2, a revamping of something we already made, took about a year longer than we expected.  Cold War took about a year less.  If you had asked me before we started either game I would have thought it would be the other way around.

So where are we with Fire & Rubble's state of development?  As MikeyD said, currently it is classified as Beta.  Which means absolutely nothing as it's just a label.  Every developer has its own way of doing things, but in our experience the next stage (Final Candidate) and the last stage (Release Candidate) takes between 2-4 weeks in total.  Based on this morning's examination of the remaining ToDo List items... I think we're at the point of Final Candidate.  I don't know how much more time is needed from there to release, however being very conservative about moving into release mode means we aren't likely to get tripped up by anything time sucking at this point.

A quick note about firm release dates with Slitherine.  They operate a traditional publishing model and that requires a fixed amount of time to promote ahead of a fixed release date.  That's not the way we like to do things ourselves, which is why we don't have a traditional publishing model.

Thank you for the update...

 

[Grisha]

Appreciate all the explanations about R&F's development. I dropped out in 2014 then coming back at a few months ago, and for me it's just a wait of a few more months. I have to say though that upon coming back it was a bit of a shock that in 6 or 7 years no other content was officially added on to Red Thunder, other projects or no. I realize that BFC has been anything but a 'regular' game developer studio(which is a good thing in my book) but coming back to see a game has sat dormant for 6+ years left me wondering. Glad to see it was not forgotten(no pun intended, Olga Berrgolts).

[Battlefront.com]

11 minutes ago, Grisha said:

Appreciate all the explanations about R&F's development. I dropped out in 2014 then coming back at a few months ago, and for me it's just a wait of a few more months. I have to say though that upon coming back it was a bit of a shock that in 6 or 7 years no other content was officially added on to Red Thunder, other projects or no. I realize that BFC has been anything but a 'regular' game developer studio(which is a good thing in my book) but coming back to see a game has sat dormant for 6+ years left me wondering. Glad to see it was not forgotten(no pun intended, Olga Berrgolts).

Yeah, clearly we've had way more things to do than we have had time/resources to do it.  Keep in mind that there's a lot of you out there and you definitely do not agree on what our priorities should be.  Or more accurately, everybody agrees their priorities, and not anybody else's, should be our top concern   In a perfect world we would be able to make everybody happy, but it isn't so we haven't.

For various reasons we've prioritized open up totally new game environments vs. adding content to existing ones.  We felt at the time, and still do, that is the best way to make the most amount of people happy over time.

The good news is we've figured out some ways to make adding content to existing titles easier to do.  We do expect to step things up a bit in the near future.

Steve

[Anonymous_Jonze]

3 hours ago, Cobetco said:

sounds like we're a month out, sad but whatever. the Rome to Victory wait was worth it,  (even if I'm still salty about no gebirgsjäger in QB) so I'm gonna be content just sitting around playing Italy for my CM fix.

Gebirgsjager are in QB though. Germany Army/Gebirgsjaeger Battalion. There's even a uniform option for them. What's a real travesty is no armored support for Brazilian and Indian battalions in QB.

[t34577685]

I have nothing to say,only waiting.

yes,I am a good boy,Keep watch alone

[Cobetco]

2 hours ago, Anonymous_Jonze said:

Gebirgsjager are in QB though. Germany Army/Gebirgsjaeger Battalion. There's even a uniform option for them. What's a real travesty is no armored support for Brazilian and Indian battalions in QB.

 

this is what QB selection looks like for me in which the months they should appear, the Aufklarung battalion is available but not the bread and butter Gebrigsjager, do I have a bad install or something? please let me know because while I can build scenarios with them they are missing on this list. 
(doing a clean install now)

Edited April 7, 2021 by Cobetco

[Aragorn2002]

8 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Well, that's not even remotely fair, though it doesn't surprise me as the chip on your shoulder is a well known fixture on this Forum. 

You might have been expecting the game's release was "near" years ago, but we didn't say it was.  Especially because for most of that time we hadn't even started on it.  That said, we did think we'd have it out sometime last year.  But Red Thunder turned out to be a lot more work than any of us thought it would.  Mostly because we kept adding things, which in a way is a good thing.  More for your money, even though you had to wait longer.

Steve

Not even remotely fair? Some examples...

June 1, 2018

Steve: The one you're all interested in is the first Module for CMRT.  Let me tell you a bit about it. When will it be available to you?  As always we have to be vague about it, however we're very sure it will be before the end of the year. 

Steve: It's been in the works for a significant amount of time already.  Most of the forces have already been plugged in and all of the vehicle models are done.  As you can see from the snapshot of the Berlin map, there's been substantial work done on the scenario side of things already.  What's really helping is that the CMRT Module doesn't require much internal development resources at this stage, which in turn means it's not being held up by CMSF2 or CMFI R2V work (or vice versa).

July 11,2019

MikeyD: The CMRT and CMFI modules have been 'almost complete' for awhile. Much of the CMRT module artwork was finished 2 1/2 years ago.

 

 

Edited April 7, 2021 by Aragorn2002