Battle of the Bulge Released and Streamed!

[freejak]

You are not replying to the repeated request to make the old version of this (once) beloved game available to those of us who want to play the game vs. act as your beta testers. Why not?

I do not like your attempts to make excuses about the horrible state of this game. If it hadn't been tested, it should never have been released.

You've brought this sh*t storm upon yourselves, now instead of continuing to avoid a simple request that would actually make your (unwitting) customers happy and attempting to dodge your responsibility for the crap quality of this game you've totally dorked up, how about making something playable available until you get your act together?

p.s. While you're at it, you could update your "How To Report A Bug" section so that the description there describes something a) contemporary and b) accurate. The 'tap tap hold' doesn't work, and the follow on 'change a setting' is meaningless since there are no BoB settings now. I've had this once fantastic, now absolute crap, so-called 'game' freeze twice the two times I've tried to play it.

[BiteNibbleChomp]

I've responded in other threads but the engine was dead and the only way to bring it forwards was to write it from scratch. We tried to replicate everything but clearly missed some things.

While I don't want this to turn into a massive argument, I do believe that Iain has already explained why they can't bring the old version to the new system.

- BNC

[Redwing6891]

BNC, permanently, yes, as an interim solution until things are fixed, no.

I give you that Iain has responded calmly to most posts and acted as a true moderator. Very impressive to keep his cool in the face of some of the posts. I really repect this. However, he consistently dodged addressing the proposal to roll back temporarily. I suspect he is under orders there.

Sometimes, retreat is the only option to succeed later. But it seems like Slitherine are determined to hold this ground to the last shell - or iOS player.

[BiteNibbleChomp]

By the sounds of things they have tried to probperly test the game, though I understand it can be very hard to do this if you get only a small amount of applicants (and this is what the discussion is telling me).

Also, When I quoted him before I attempted to give the reason as an answer to why they can't just roll back - If you use a dead engine then you will get a dead game, unfortunately.

One also must remember that new releases don't turn out perfectly (and Bulge has only been out for 4 days). Often the initial wave of negative feedback is what makes a decent game into a very successful one - Civ 5 was ranted about for months after its release, but given time has evolved to what people wanted. Now it isfrequently in the top 10 list of games.

- BNC

[Sourdust]

BNC, I agree Iain has been a model of politeness and restraint...

On testing, yeah but no. Testing a product is the responsibility of the maker of the product, not its users. Well-made games are based on extensive internal design and testing. In fact, there was a time before open betas even existed when developers actually made entire games, some of them outstandingly well balanced and designed and implemented, with no public feedback phase whatsoever!

Public feedback can be a useful input, but it cannot be the whole enchilada. It should not require public feedback for a developer to realise, for instance, that a game is running at about one third the fps as an earlier version, or that the main combat display in the game is, in fact, entirely unreadable.

In another thread, I listed 19 things that should be fixed in this game. That took me about one hour of playing the game and writing it up. Any designer or programmer should have easily been capable of the same thing.

If Slitherine can't justify the designer and programmer time to get it right on the iPhone, I understand - they're a commercial enterprise and they have to make business judgements. But in that case they should have just said "hey, we can't justify the cost to do this right for the iPhone, so we're just going to focus on PC and tablet where the money is".

[IainMcNeil]

The problem here is that you guys have played this version for a long time and are intimately aware of every tiny change. The game was tested a lot. I personally spent many hours and the issues you noticed were not issues for me or the rest of the team. We have spent a massive amount on this already so there is no issue with allocating resources. I've played the iPad version a lot and I didn't notice any issues compared to the previous version. The PC players have pretty much all the same issues that iOS players do but they are very happy. The differences are very subtle to anyone not familiar but glaring obvious to someone who knows it as well as you do. As I've said we had almost nobody volunteer for the beta test and very little feedback. Now we have the feedback we can do the polish. I think once we've fixed a couple of key points you'll start to see the benefits of the new engine as it can be updated. The old engine was dead and could not be updated. This was the only way to bring things forwards. Hopefully now we can get iOS players added to the future beta test to identify any issues earlier. Also, we'll fix the issues reported so they wont be in the next game. There are many little things that are better. I've seen complaints about AI and we're tweaking it as it became a little aggressive but the AI is vastly improved. This was one of my main com,plaints about the original and an area I wanted the team to focus on. Cross platform play will be beneficial as it massively increases the number of available players. We'll add tournaments for those that are interested and various other quality of life improvements but this is all only possible with the new engine. Please give teh guys some time to address the issues and you'll see the benefits in the not too distant future.

[Redwing6891]

... and well dodged again. No answer is also an answer.

It's obvious that I won't get what I am after so I'll just say 'Goodbye and Good Luck'.

[IainMcNeil]

If you are asking to revert to the old version we've stated very clearly a number of times that it is not possible.

[freejak]

I don't get this insistence on "impossible".

It can't be the case that everyone who ever downloaded (and stayed with) an old version of BoB has had the game stop working. It that was true, along with the growing number of 1 star reviews of the latest version there would be piles of 1 star reviews about how the older version(s) suddenly stopped working. There aren't any of those, so the old version is viable.

It also defies logic to make the leap that now the game engine is "dead" and a total rewrite was necessary. Quoting from the Slitherine announcement about taking over Shenandoah Studios, "The US-based developer was a breath of fresh air bringing innovation to the strategy genre on iOS thanks to a clever, streamlined game design and a state-of-the-art game engine."

So in a few months the BoB game engine went from "state-of-the-art" to junk that 'must' be immediately rewritten? Slitherine could have WANTED to do a rewrite, but please don't fan the flames and insult our intelligence by insisting that this process was somehow compulsory.

As far as testing, the game hangs and stops dead. Your stated methods of bug reporting don't work. Will you tell me/us now that the game simply not running is also "impossible"? Are there no avenues for your customers to even try to help?

Your intransigence is bizarre. What's the point of "forums" where the Slitherine company line is pig-headed denial of problems and refusal to provide workable alternatives?

[pipfromslitherine]

Please point out where anyone has denied problems exist. Also, the engine needed to be rewritten to be cross-platform capable, as well as to add features to it, and make it easier to maintain in the future.

Cheers

Pip

[mboog12]

From a technical point of view: the old version is 2.0, the new one is 2.14. To roll back to a previous version we have to resubmit the IPA with a version number higher that 2.14.
We don't have the old ipas. We have some folders on a server that don't compile on the newest XCode, and figuring out how to assemble them would take maybe even more time than to directly fix these issues in our own version.

Also, regarding the old engine's status. The engine was written in objectiveC using a lightweight 2d framework. We couldn't have brought that engine to PC. That is why the game was re-written in a cross-platform engine.

Also, we could not do maintenance on the old code. None of us understood completely how things worked in there. From my point of view this was a discontinued project where we took the assets and re-wrote.
I agree that I don't see the game the way you do, I'm not such a hardcore player of BotB. Please excuse our ignorance if we may have played airplane sounds in the first days of Race to the Muse or made the map panning less smoother.
We simply didn't know that was important to you.

tldr:We don't have the means to rollback the version. Only you as hardcore players can help us capture all the finer aspects of the original and remake them in the newer version.

[freejak]

mboog, the game doesn't run.

I don't care about the airplane/machine gun/charging elephant sounds, I'd like to get past turn 3.

How about starting with updating how to capture and report that to your support group?

As I described above, the ways I can find documented in the support section of this site do not work.

Pip, if you read this thread, you will notice the word "impossible" used over and over as the response to 'why not try this' 'why not try that'?

That kind of stonewalling = denial of the problem.

[IainMcNeil]

Freejak if you haven't already please post your issues to a new thread with your device and OS. The game does run on all the devices we tested on and we have them all so it must be some kind of hardware/software compatibility issue that we need to dig in to. What exactly is the issue you see and when does it happen?

As stated the team do not have the original version and are not able to build it. It does not exist and cannot be re-uploaded. That makes it impossible.

[boone737]

I found a rules bug that I'd like to report, but I can't find the report button like the old version used to have. How do I report a bug now?

FWIW, a breakthrough tank attack didn't use the breakthrough, so in the subsequent phase move it was allowed to move as if it wasn't activated. Also. If one wishes to move a mechanized unit to capture an adjacent specs and return to its original position, the software does not believe the player wishes to move, so you must remain in your original position and pass, or move to the space you wish to capture. No touch and returns allowed as before.

[zakblood]

viewforum.php?f=343

post them in there as it will get seen quicker ^^

[Trisztessa]

Hi, i get 1 question will it give a Steam Key to redeem it like all other games? plz. And i get Vietnam at steam but i cant find the Serial there and Register is also not possible at Slitherine then, because no Multiplayer the game has. The other games have Multiplay by ppm so it work to Register them if i start a multiplayer partie over steam.
Thx

[VPaulus]

You'll receive a key that you will be able to register in your Sltherine/Matrix accounts and also activate the game on Steam.

[IainMcNeil]

Newer games use the serial number we supply as the Steam key. Does this help?