Rapid escape of air

[Midnight]

OK.. so AHII release has been postponed. Very little information was given by Pyro and now we are in limbo as to when it might be released. Could be two weeks or two months.

Worse over is the fact that the beta release will be for offline only to check for graphics, etc. Then who knows how long after that before we see it released to the MA....

Sigh... Oh well.

[acetnt-2nd]

know what you mean bro

[jonnyb]

What concerns me is the lack of information given besides, "We're very close to an open beta..." That statement covers quite a broad spectrum of time.  Furthermore, the open beta will be for offline system compatibility testing.  This raises the issue of how the new damage model/flight characteristics are to be tested.  I could fly to an enemy field and hover over the ack hoping to get hit in such a fashion that I would be able to test different damage areas and their effects on flight.  However this is at best impractical.  I can't control where the ack hits my plane.

I suppose there could be a second phase to this open beta which includes an online component.  I could get together with somebody and we could test things out by damaging particular areas of the planes and noting the results.

This leads me to a final point.  While we are in the beta, we will need some kind of reporting mechanism to inform HTC of our findings.  This forum, although a handy way to chat simply isn't organized enough to handle the kind of data that would be gathered for testing.  Moreover, as super-human as the folks at HTC may be, there are a very limited number of them.  The amount of collected information will be quite overwhelming.

[B17Skull12]

Originally posted by Midnight


OK.. so AHII release has been postponed. Very little information was given by Pyro and now we are in limbo as to when it might be released. Could be two weeks or two months.

Worse over is the fact that the beta release will be for offline only to check for graphics, etc. Then who knows how long after that before we see it released to the MA....

Sigh... Oh well.

good thing to. that means more time to save up for new video card.

[JB73]

Johnnyb .... by your statments you seem to conclude there will be major holes in the program.

i myself have alot of faith in the HTC crew. after talking to Dale @ the con... he knows WTF he's talking about wioth planes and the math involved with programming. the guy should be teaching at MIT almost LOL.

my guess is "beta" will last about 3-4 weeks tops with AH Classic full version being released right quickly.


the maps are another topic. there is bound to be bugs. look at baltic. been around for how long? still bugs.

it's too bad a ton will whine about the map bugs when the game and FM itself will be amazing.

oh well another lame thought by yours truly

[Lazerus]

I'm not sure, but I think that the offline beta will include the drones that we have now, which will enable us to target specific parts of the plane and review the damage in the film editor. It might even be possible to enter a drone's plane, just like you can another player's plane in the FE. I don't know if it's possible now, but having the ability to change the plane type of the drones would be great.

As for reporting bugs found while testing, I'm sure HTC has been thinking of ways to do this in a fairly regulated maner. They could create a thread for each plane, or even sections of the map, and assign each member of the production team a number of threads to sift through and compile a report that could be used to impliment fixes. This is the first time I considered this aspect of the release, so that was off the cuff. I'm kinda curious to see how they organize the reporting by all the random testers.

As for a release date, I would appreciate at least another target date. End of Q4 would be fine, or end of Q1 '04 if thats the case. The open endedness of the post by Pyro gives us no time to set in our minds as an end to our waiting.

Regardless of what transpires, I believe that 99% of us will be very pleased with the final outcome. The other 1% will never be happy:D

[jonnyb]

JB73, I am not concluding that there will be major holes in the program.  I am speculating on how some of the features will be implemented.  There are some features in particular that I think will deserve the most testing.  Namely, these features are the newly designed flight model, the newly designed damage model, the interaction between the two, and of course the all new graphics engine.

The graphics engine and the flight model are the two elements that can be thoroughly tested offline.  However, the damage model and the interaction between the flight and damage models cannot be effectively tested in an offline mode.  Lazerus points out that there might be drones that can be picked apart.  Unless the folks at HTC have completely re-written the AI code (which they very well may have in anticipation of TOD), the drones will fly in circles completely unaffected by any inflicted damage until they explode and re-spawn.

So, we may be able to see what damage we have inflicted on the drones.  We may even be able to join the drone planes via the film viewer.  However, we will not be able to feel the effects of the damage on the performance of the aircraft.

Lazerus, off the cuff I'd expect some sort of bug reporting tool such as bugzilla to be utilized.  I feel that utilizing the bulletin board will simply be too chaotic for the HTC crew to manage.  Even if there is a thread for each plane, many things will be reported more than once.  There is also the other side of the spectrum where general issues will not be able to be reported effectively.  For example, what if the 20mm hispanos were coded incorrectly?  This would affect a broad range of aircraft and would need a report of it's own.  Again, these are just off the cuff.

I'm one of the happy 99% and have been so for close to three years.  HTC has done very well in the past with releases and news.  I feel that with the release of AH2 we the community have been rather neglected.  It concerns me that we have not been informed of an updated release date.  Third quarter has been a known value for many months.  Now that it is over, all we've been informed of is that TOD will no longer be a part of the initial release, and the initial release will not be done on time.  Our only bait is that there is an offline beta whose release is "...very close."