Happy New Year!

[cothyso]

Hello guys,

First of all, I wish you all a Happy New Year to you and all your beloved ones!

And some news regarding the so long awaited FoG(U). I know it has been a loong time, much longer than it should and had the right to be, and that all of you were, some more patiently than others, next to us along this very rugged road. And we thank you all for this.

The FoG(U) is really finished, and we have only a few minor things left to tweak before a full official release: some modifications for the MP DAG games to bring them up to the latest game flow improvements and some tweaks to the AI DAG deployment system. Other than that, everything is fully working by now (including a full working AI). The new PC build will be released sometime between the middle and the end of the next week. The tablet versions (iOS and Android) are also almost ready, and just need a few more tweaks and tests before being fully ready too.

The FoG(U) is a huge step forward from the FoG(RB) and for the FoG franchise: it is written in C# using a modern game engine (latest Unity v4.6.1f1) and, even if started only as a simple remake of the old FoG(RB) it ended up having so many new game systems, features, improvements and modifications that, even if it uses the FoG 1 TT rules, we can frankly say it's a new iteration of the FoG game series. That's why the current FoG(U) version is 2.0.00.964 (compared to the old FoG(RB) v1.8.1). I don't have yet a full list with all the new things added in FoG(RB), but I will put together a list after the new build will be released.

Other than that, we really look forward meeting you all on the FoG(U)'s battlefields.

Thank you all for your patience and support, it meant a lot to us!
Happy New Year!
Dan Antonescu

[stockwellpete]

This is fantastic news, Dan! And I am very grateful that you have timed it perfectly in-between FOG Digital League seasons!

Can I just ask - I think you are entitled to a good rest after this but will you still be there to deal with any queries and suggestions we might have in the foreseeable future? Obviously the priority for us all in the short term will be to learn the new version, but I can think of a few areas where it might be productive to talk to you in the first instance. From my point of view, I have over 100 scenarios done now which I would like to be officially available to everyone (I don't want payment for them) and there are some of mine that are already official scenarios that either need modifying back to the way I actually designed them, or they need historical victory conditions added to the text that is provided (these have usually been omitted in the past). Of course, many of the regular players will have their own ideas about what they would like to see added in future - a campaign editor and new graphics would be high on many people's lists, I guess. It would be good to know how you and Neurosoft will be involved in the coming months and years. Thanks.

[voskarp]

Happy New FoG Year!

Many thanks for the great work Dan.


/Oskar

[Calvitious]

Happy New Year too !

That's really good to read such news. Hope you didn't work too much during this special time of the year. Allow yourself some time for health and family.
Anyway: fingers crossed for the release date. I want to believe you despite all the previous posts I read about unexpected delays

It was a long way but it's almost done. Wish you all the luck for the crunch time !

[cothyso]

Amongst it's many features, FoG(U) has a full old FoG(RB) scenarios converter to the new formats (which also works in a batch converting mode). It also has a packaging system, meaning all files belonging to a scenario can be put together into a FoG(U) scenario pack, or even packed together with other scenario's files into a FoG(U) collection pack.

I'll personally be available to fix, modify and extend the current FoG(U) code base. I don't plan to leave any time soon. And you guys should remember that I am not only a lead designer and lead programmer, but first of all I am one of you, a passionate lover of ancient military history and of ancient tactical wargames, and I really want to have the best possible game to play too.

For myself, the very next thing I want to be added into FoG would be a trigger system, part of which is already laid out inside the actual code base. This would allow us to have dynamic scenarios, not played in similar ways all the time.

Actually the FoG(U) code is full with a lot of new systems (in various states of development) which, once finished, would be great additions to the wargame engine: a full game recording/commenting/replay system (a system which is actually working and almost fully completed, allowing full SP & MP scenarios & DAG game recording, storing and replaying, with a lot of complex features (as various playing modes, turn phases skipping, stopping the replay and taking control of the game, adding commentaries, etc), separate nations control (another system which is actually working and almost fully completed), doublesized battlegroups, reinforcements, DAG games dynamic balancing (also allowing for handicap games), weather system, scenario triggers, AI personalities, AI difficulty levels, dynamic interactive map generation, and so on.

But first things first: let's just have the monster out of the woods for now, and have whatever quickfixes might prove to be needed, and then we'll see what comes after that.

[old banshee]

Great news Dan, Happy New Year.
Can't wait to see the game. Hopefully I can get involved with the modding side of things.
Thanks for all your hard work.
Frank(Old Banshee)Mullins

[stockwellpete]

Amongst it's many features, FoG(U) has a full old FoG(RB) scenarios converter to the new formats (which also works in a batch converting mode). It also has a packaging system, meaning all files belonging to a scenario can be put together into a FoG(U) scenario pack, or even packed together with other scenario's files into a FoG(U) collection pack.

I'll personally be available to fix, modify and extend the current FoG(U) code base. I don't plan to leave any time soon. And you guys should remember that I am not only a lead designer and lead programmer, but first of all I am one of you, a passionate lover of ancient military history and of ancient tactical wargames, and I really want to have the best possible game to play too.

For myself, the very next thing I want to be added into FoG would be a trigger system, part of which is already laid out inside the actual code base. This would allow us to have dynamic scenarios, not played in similar ways all the time.

Actually the FoG(U) code is full with a lot of new systems (in various states of development) which, once finished, would be great additions to the wargame engine: a full game recording/commenting/replay system (a system which is actually working and almost fully completed, allowing full SP & MP scenarios & DAG game recording, storing and replaying, with a lot of complex features (as various playing modes, turn phases skipping, stopping the replay and taking control of the game, adding commentaries, etc), separate nations control (another system which is actually working and almost fully completed), doublesized battlegroups, reinforcements, DAG games dynamic balancing (also allowing for handicap games), weather system, scenario triggers, AI personalities, AI difficulty levels, dynamic interactive map generation, and so on.

But first things first: let's just have the monster out of the woods for now, and have whatever quickfixes might prove to be needed, and then we'll see what comes after that.

These new features sound fantastic, Dan. Full replays of games is something that was on my wish-list and with all the extra features you have mentioned it will transform the game. I expect that it will help to raise the quality of play over time as players will be able to study their matches, identify weaknesses and mistakes, and then seek to mitigate or avoid their repetition. "DAG game dynamic balancing" sounds intriguing too and something that might be appropriate for competition play - there are far too many DAG mismatches at the moment, in my opinion. And handicapping too! Eric will be so pleased!!

I do think there is an issue with the maps. You will recall that I sent you about fifty new ones last year that you have included in the game. However, some players were complaining that they never saw these maps. I think it was because they were choosing "open" or "very open" maps because I managed to access them easily enough when choosing "crowded" or "very crowded" maps. I remember talking to the previous developer, Keith from HexWar, about the maps two or three years ago, and he told me the game's engine classified the maps "open", "crowded", or whatever, by the proportion of hexes the map had containing certain terrain features (e.g. steep hills, scrub, broken ground, rivers etc). So my new maps, because I had used quite a lot of terrain features in them, were mainly falling into the "crowded" or "very crowded" categories. So I will be very interested to see how your new map generation system works. At the moment there are some fairly dull and poorly designed maps in the game (in my opinion). Some of them were given very little thought by the looks of it and may have been designed very quickly. Are all the maps going to be transferred over to the new version or have you done some weeding at all? In any case, hopefully, in time, we can increase the quality of maps in the game. I am sure there will be a few of us available to write new maps should you need them so that we can keep the game nice and fresh for everyone.

[cothyso]

Pete, all the maps you've sent me are already included into the game, together with some other maps sent by Lysimachos. As I'm sure all of you understand, I didn't had any time to allocate to make new (scripting) content into the game (like new scenarios and maps) by myself, as I already had more coding work to do than one could do in a few years, or so. But at some point, I do plan to make some by myself, though that might be nowhere near the foreseeable future, as my time would be better spent by adding code features to the scenario and map creation tools rather than make scenarios and maps by myself.

As I've told above, the map generation system is something I have in plan to do (and I aim for an interactive one, with players spending "map points" in exchange for choosing/banning specific map features they want the generated map to contain), and it is not in the code almost at all right now. Maybe you were actually referring to the system picking up the maps presented to the DAG initiative winner to pick up.

The map density value is the one responsible for determining map's category, and the map density has an algorithm counting tiles weighted densities (against the highest hex terrain type density) to which it also adds some extra weighted density coefficients for special terrain features like rivers, steep hills and center map features).

FoG(U) has code atm allowing for more map choosing systems:
- a flag allowing the addition of the scenario maps too to the pickable maps list
- a flag allowing the presentation of the full maps list, with the user being able to pick any map he wants to from all existing ones
- a completely random list of 10 maps the user can chose from

[stockwellpete]

Pete, all the maps you've sent me are already included into the game, together with some other maps sent by Lysimachos. As I'm sure all of you understand, I didn't had any time to allocate to make new (scripting) content into the game (like new scenarios and maps) by myself, as I already had more coding work to do than one could do in a few years, or so. But at some point, I do plan to make some by myself, though that might be nowhere near the foreseeable future, as my time would be better spent by adding code features to the scenario and map creation tools rather than make scenarios and maps by myself.

Oh yes, I am quite happy that all my new maps are in the game now.

As I've told above, the map generation system is something I have in plan to do (and I aim for an interactive one, with players spending "map points" in exchange for choosing/banning specific map features they want the generated map to contain), and it is not in the code almost at all right now. Maybe you were actually referring to the system picking up the maps presented to the DAG initiative winner to pick up.

Yes, I was referring to that. If, right at the start of a game, both players were to choose "open" or "very open" maps then the winner of the initiative would not get one of my new maps in the four they get to choose from, but if both players chose "crowded" or "very crowded" then the winner might get two, three, or even four of my new maps in the selection window.

The map density value is the one responsible for determining map's category, and the map density has an algorithm counting tiles weighted densities (against the highest hex terrain type density) to which it also adds some extra weighted density coefficients for special terrain features like rivers, steep hills and center map features).

I did feel that maybe in the current version the map density values needed adjusting so that most of my maps would fall in the "normal" middle category rather than "crowded" or "very crowded". It will be interesting to see how the categories work in your system.

FoG(U) has code atm allowing for more map choosing systems:
- a flag allowing the addition of the scenario maps too to the pickable maps list
- a flag allowing the presentation of the full maps list, with the user being able to pick any map he wants to from all existing ones
- a completely random list of 10 maps the user can chose from

These sound like excellent additions to the gaming system.

[Brigz]

Happy New Year and thank you Dan for all the hard work. Can't wait to see the new FOG... This news has me feeling like a little kid waiting for Christmas morning.

Dave B.

[Jonathan4290]

This is just excellent.

[Asterix_von_TWC]

Salivates

[TheGrayMouser]

Just saw this thread, so it appears Unity Fog will be released over the next few days!?
Cant wait, thanks Dan!

[cothyso]

A small update:

Our SVN server had failed during the last weekend, and I've spent most of this week recovering server's data and rebuilding FoG(U)'s SVN. I've just finished the SVN's rebuild (after a very loong night), so everything's back to normal now (even better as the new FoG(U) SVN ended up with an improved structure, and without any kind of data loss).

This event will unfortunately result in a few days delay of the release of the build, from this week's end to the middle of the next one (wednesday).

Cheers,
dan

[ianiow]

My god man, what have you done to deserve all the bad luck and setbacks over these past 3 years? I can only imagine you have stood on a mountaintop in a thunderstorm shouting "All gods are b*****ds", while strangling a leprechaun and kicking a black cat!

You surely deserve an A* for dedication and perseverance though! A truly Homeric task, almost completed!

Good luck on Wednesday!

[old banshee]

Thanks for the update Dan,
all the best,
Frank

[cothyso]

Guys, let's not exaggerate. Things like these tend to happen, now and then, specially over a long period of time. That's why things like SVN servers, NASes and RAID HDD arrays do exists.

On the other hand, maybe I will put up a pre-release build with the accepting MP DAG games disabled (waiting for the fix in the MP DAG gameflow modifications) for this weekend..

[ianiow]

What's the fun in life if you can't exaggerate once in a while?

If you can find some time to put it up, I for one would be happy to give your game some testing over the weekend Dan (with or without the MP DAG)

Great job.

[voskarp]

Will the Mac version be released at the same time as the PC, or some time later like iOS and Android?

[TheGrayMouser]

Guys, let's not exaggerate. Things like these tend to happen, now and then, specially over a long period of time. That's why things like SVN servers, NASes and RAID HDD arrays do exists.

On the other hand, maybe I will put up a pre-release build with the accepting MP DAG games disabled (waiting for the fix in the MP DAG gameflow modifications) for this weekend..

If you can load it up for single player, that would be great!