Section Leaders:
Steve's general update message Well, here is a bit of an update. We had hoped to get CM to the duplicators before x-mas, but this became a pipe dream in early December. Quite simply put, we based our expectations on how complete the game itself was. Unfortunately, CM needs quite a bit more polish before it will be ready as a whole. In very late November we started working on "cleaning things up" for final release quality. It was then that the weight of CM's depth and feature set hit us squarely between the eyes! There is SO MUCH in CM that it is taking us much longer than we anticipated to get CM totally finished. Although the bugs and tweaks are becoming fewer each and every day, we are NOT yet happy with things as a whole (DYO needs a bit of work for example). We also have a lot of UI, sound fx, graphics, etc. polish to do. In addition to that, the documentation is a real bitch to do The problem is that Charles needs to spend at least one week filling in gaps, but he is still spending 16+ hrs a day coding. So until Charles gets over the last coding hump the documentation can't be finished. Obviously we need both the game AND the manual to ship. So the bottom line is that CM is not ready to go. Since we are basically on "vacation" until after News Years Day, we haven't yet figured out where CM stands in terms of release date. We don't mean to be stringing you guys along (nobody wants CM to ship more than us!) but the release is a big guessing game and we have so far underestimated how much work there is to do. Sigh... that's the curse of game development. Everybody wants to hear a date (including us!!), but one never knows if it is doable until the date has come and gone. In other words, we can tell you with 100% certainty when CM *DIDN'T* ship, but not when it will ship. Steve Steve's message regarding another Demo Scenario We are not releasing any more scenarios for the existing demo. Making maps is a VERY time consuming process because if I use even ONE object that the demo doesn't know about a crash out. Making Chance Encounter was a PAIN in the BUTT. The other big reason is that the Beta Demo is very old now. We rather not spend even a day doing anything for it, and that is the minimum time requirement for me to make a new scenario. I can not just slap something together and then let thousands of people download it. It needs to be extensively tested and tweaked. Plus, the volume of posts that would follow the release of a new scenario would also be a drag on the release. Nope, it is time you
people remember that the Beta Demo is just that. You were only supposed
to get about 20 hours of play time out of it. Each hour you have
received after that is a bonus, and by the looks of it most of you have
already milked many times that Steve
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