Realease Date Request

[Rick CAN]

BTS;

Can you advise of an anticipated release date. Not trying to pin you down to an exact date or anything, but will your product be released within the first or second quarter of 2000?

It appears from reading a few of the threads

that your project is approx 90% done, however I would like to hear from you gentlemen that this is the case.

PS received Flight Commander and recently downloaded the mission builder.....excellent work!!

[Guest Stabsfeldwebel]

oh i'd say just from what i've read that they are much closer than 90%, i'd be willing to guess 98 or 99% done.

After all steve himself said that it was pretty much done except for some tweaking that needed to be done.

I'm still betting that we'll get the gold demo by the 20th of January.

[Boris Balaban]

What I would like to know but not for BTS to waist time replying to my question and it is:

When the game goes GOLD how much time will the DEMO take to release?

If I have my numbers right the GOLD will take about 3 weeks to get to my home .

For Febuary 18th is my move date and I will have to have the game redirected. So a release date of Jan 20 is perfect .

[Guest phoenix]

Please people. The game is almost done. Sit back, relax, have a Fresca. Continual questions about when it will be done won't speed things up.

BTS said that THEY would post something when THEY felt there was news to post. Lets leave them alone so they can finish the game we all want to see so badly!

Just my .02

[Zamo]

I don't understand all this interest in a "Gold Demo", Aren't you people sold enough? Is ther anybody in this forum who is NOT ready to buy the finished product? Why even consider playing the demo when you can toodle down to the neighborhood game-o-rama and buy the real deal? Two or three days wait? Come on. Get a life.

Chris Sehmel

Who will probably download the Gold demo anyway himself...

[Moon]

Zamo, the game will NOT be available from the "neighborhood game-o-rama". Check out the main Battlefront site and look for their MANIFESTO to know why.

[Guest L Tankersley]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>I don't understand all this interest in a "Gold Demo", Aren't you people sold enough? Is ther anybody in this forum who is NOT ready to buy the finished product? Why even consider playing the demo when you can toodle down to the neighborhood game-o-rama and buy the real deal? Two or three days wait?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

It's probably more like three or four weeks. Speculation is that the gold demo will be released and available for download soon after the game goes gold master. After GM status, the game has to be duplicated and packaged before it can be mailed to the customer. That process typically takes a few weeks.

Plus, CM will not be available at your local game-o-rama -- it's ONLY available through orders placed online at battlefront.com.

Leland J. Tankersley

[Zulu]

Fresca? Real men drink beer but it's ok to eat quiche . Sorry, I haven't mastered the smily face thingamajigs yet.

I'll certainly d/l the gold demo. It will probably be about a month before the full game shows up here considering customs, snail mail etc so the gold demo will keep me busy playing with new features etc.

[Guest phoenix]

Sorry Zulu, just making an obscure Caddyshack reference.

PS - Zamo, the interest in the gold demo is that it will allow us to try out all the new goodies that have been added since the beta we have all played to death.

I hope you placed your order already as you now know, the game will not be available in stores.

Doesn't anyone read the FAQ?

[This message has been edited by phoenix (edited 01-06-2000).]

[TZEENCH]

Yep.....

See the gold demo is to get us old beta guys ready while it ships up to date with all the cool stuff they did with the Ai.

And selling it direct is so much of a improvement that getting it from Games R us- A. It avoids the Burn and Run, and cuts out he middle men and retail hassels, and gets the game quicker to us(HOPE,HOPE,HOPE ).

I rember muzzle velosity(Buched that one)order it and it came 2 days later.. Still have it (doom meets CC)

And all the money goes tot he Company that made the game and the people who deveoped it.

[Guest srare]

I thought I read that the game would not be ready until March. I believe it was because they still had a lot of work to do on TCP/IP. I hope it is early March not late March.

If the game was going to be released in January don't you think BTS would have announced it by now?

I would think they would be able to give a fairly sure release date at least a month before the game is finished. A lot of games are able to predict when it will be finished more than a month prior to being finished.

I hope it is early March not late March though.

[Guest Captain Foobar]

I know we're all chomping at the bit, but from what I can figure, BTS is holding off on making an announcement, because the details that they're troubleshooting are difficult to estimate, as far as completion time. If I was them, I'd want to tell everyone, but it looks like they are working with some variables right now. What a bootlicker I am.

It's the not knowing that sucks though....

[This message has been edited by Captain Foobar (edited 01-06-2000).]

[citizen]

srare--

Big Time Software has gone about their business in a non-traditional way. They have abandoned the following traditions most game companies honor:

1. Promising a specific release date, then missing it by two months.

2. Promising the game will be "realistic," then watching the grognards cringe at the innaccuracies.

3. Taking suggestions from loyal fans, then chucking them out the window.

4. Releasing unfinished products, then patching it up over the next few months to bring it up to basically no more than a beta version.

5. Selling through game stores, then wondering why wargames usually lose money.

I'm sure there are more, but on to more important things... like not worrying about when this and that will happen.

citizen

[Zulu]

Just funning you Phoenix

Ya, now I rememember Caddyshack, what a funny movie.

220yards. He pulls out the ole 9 iron.

He hit's it.

It's in the hole, it's in the hole.

The crowd is going crazy.

Figured out the smileys too.

[rich12545]

There is some talk about why a beta demo. The reason is that the demo doesn't work on some machines, like mine. I've downloaded several times (hoping) and it freezes solid not long after starting the scenario. If I can get it to work, I'll buy it. But it needs to work first.

[Guest srare]

I was not really chomping at the bit to get the game. I had read that the game would be out in March probably because that was the soonest TCP/IP could be done.

If things have changed and it has moved back to April, May or later I can live with that also.

I do think that if you give a date such as March - even though it is a probable date the game should come out no later than 4-6 months after that unless there are extenuating circumstances that are explained.

For example if the game was not going to come out this year then I think it is bad business to say that the game may come out in March. I am not at all implying that this is going to happen or is happening with this product. I am just stating that it has happened with other products and it is downright irrating because after a while you have no trust in them.

BTS seems like a very well put together team. They don't seem like the type to knowingly mislead their customers. With that in mind I believe that their date of March will mean something to them so I would expect to see the game ready for sale at the begining of June at the latest. There are always minor delays and a couple months leeway should be expected.

[Doug Beman]

srare, I believe BTS made (as is still sticking with) the decision to ship CM sans TCP/IP support, and release TCP/IP in a patch when it is ready. (probably the patch will not be JUST TCP/IP, as BTS is very on about fixing problems ASAP and not "we'll patch when there are enough problems to warrant one")

This decision was made on the basis of popular vote a couple weeks before Christmas; response was overwhelmingly "ship asap ship ASAP SHIP NOW SHIP SHIP SHIP {heart attack}"

DjB

[Rick CAN]

That was my understanding to Doug!

If they are 90-98% complete as the above threads seem to indicate, then it would appear to me we would be looking at date between February and March???

Im certainly not a computer programmger/marketer but does that appear accurate to the more veteran users of this site?

All I would like is a approximate anticipated release.....if its April-May so be it! (I think I can hande that )If the later would be true would it not indicate that the project is less than 95% complete?

[Doug Beman]

Hey Rick, the problem with giving even estimates on release dates for a game that won't ship until it's ready (as opposed to game companies that give a date and hold it regardless of the game's status) is that each change that BTS makes (ESP in the AI) will have an effect on just about every other part of that aspect of the game. This situation was most pronounced a while ago when BTS made some sort of change (I can't remember what) and it turned out that the game then had serious troubles with Voodoo2-based graphics cards; troubles which had not been there before. So they had to go back into areas of the code that were not a problem beforehand and fix problems caused there by a change in some other area of the game.

It is compounded even more in that the vehicles are actual code, and not just a group of settings like "Armor=20, gun=54," (is my understanding correct?) BTS can't just change a setting in a "unit editor" window (games like Command&Conquer and Baldur'sGate had these "unit edit" windows for fast changes). In order to alter, say, the behavior of a Tiger when confronted with a Firefly they have to open up the code for the Tiger and mess with it, then watch for any problems that change might cause.

Phew. That was a ramble. Bottom line is that even BTS probably won't know the game is ready until they give us a URL to the Gold Demo.

DjB

[Fionn]

Actually Doug I think your description is wrong...

When BTS say that the Tiger is "coded in" they mean that the data of the Tiger is part of the executable and not some other file.

All that resides in the executable is raw data. There aren't any codes to deal with what a Tiger does when facing a Hellcat or a Kangaroo or anything like that.. That is all left in the hands of the TacAI which performs all that threat assessment stuff itself based on the data it knows about the various vehicles.

------------------

___________

Fionn Kelly

Manager of Historical Research,

The Gamers Net - Gaming for Gamers

[Doug Beman]

Yeah, that's what I was trying to get at; vehicles are part of the base-code, and not a separate file.

Either way bottom line is unchanged: fiddling with the game (as with any computer program) is difficult.

DjB

[Guest srare]

Ah! I had not heard it was not shipping without TCP/IP. That should speed things up a bit.

Wise on their part not to set a new relase date if they are not sure what still needs to be done.

I would much rather not have a release date then one that is totally wrong!

[Guest Mikeman]

I really feel sorry for those of you who do not possess my psychic abilities. The gold demo will be out February 9 and the game will begin shipping March 8. Trust me on this one!

Mikeman out.

[Guest L Tankersley]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>If they are 90-98% complete as the above threads seem to indicate, then it would appear to me we would be looking at date between February and March???

I'm certainly not a computer programmger/marketer but does that appear accurate to the more veteran users of this site?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

As a software developer/project manager, I can tell you about something we like to call the "90-10 rule" (sometimes also known as the "80-20 rule"). Basically, it says that 90% of the effort is taken up doing the last 10% of a job. This is often true of other endeavors, but seems to be especially fitting for software development. It's relatively easy to sketch out the basic framework of a program; it takes a huge amount of time and effort to get everything just so, fix all the little quirks, get all the data checked, and produce a professional-looking product. It's also notoriously hard to predict how long software will take to develop - you can anticipate there will be bugs, but some bugs take minutes to find and fix, while others can take days or weeks.

Since CM has been basically feature-frozen for some time now, BTS is likely well into this last 10-odd % of effort. I have no inside information on their schedule or progress, but I wouldn't be surprised if they went gold around the end of January, which would probably put the game in our hands in late February (of course we'd probably have the gold demo to play with while we waited). They'll release it when it is done, and they won't know it's done until they look at it and see that there's nothing more to do. Hang in there, Rick!

Leland J. Tankersley