Patch em all up please ...

[Glenn Saunders]

I've always wondered how you chose which games will be patched. It seems to be sort of random. Is it random?

No - patches are and have always been done on an as needed basis.
(LOL - something I said the other day as A$$ needed basis and someone called me on the typo which I thought was humourous

For example, we patched up a bunch of the MC series for the big nato battles in Germany and then Al Sandrik came along and said - "Jeez Glenn, I'd like to use the new MC rules for Nukes in a ME67 thing I am doing - can you help me out" And we did!

Patching and patch testing take away resources - from John all the way down to the guys working to test the new EXE.

Lets take Sicily for a second - the game is good - no bugs but is someone looked at the Budapest changes.txt file and saw:

" - Change so that Commandos are always in command and never isolated."

....and they figured this was a cool thing and they wanted to play a game of Sicily and use this rule - then I could perhaps get the game patched and have that person play a scn - not just test that rule but look at everything to make sure he game is stable - don't crash and all the basic things work. If after a few days of a couple guys playing with the patch, there are no issues found, we release it to HPS and they post it when they get a chance.

But we're not going to Update Sicily as a make work project - have you seen the list of development things John has on the go - see the news at johntillersoftware.com - then consider all the titles in all the series that John has created. Does anyone have a game of 1812 on the go that needs a new feature update? If so let Rich Hamilton know.

I see Sealion is up now on the HPS Site and that game had not been previously patched. There was nothing really wrong with it Sealion - not a single bug reported and only one incorrect value in the OOB reported. I think I did something in one of the scenarios too - but it was all pretty minor. I don't know of any feature anyone wanted - but I figured we should fix these things if nothing else.

So - bottomline - there is a lot of John Tiller Titles out there and they are all supported by a crew of people who do what they can and respond to the reasonable requests by the community. Requesting that ever game or even special consideration be made for every PzC Title to be updated before any new games are considered is I feel, not something that is reasonable to expect from John Tiller.

Glenn

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Why wouldn't those games that have gone longest without a patch be patched first?

Because maybe nobody was playing one of the games and asked for a patch to support the game.

Patches are NOT make work projects for people with nothing to do - they are done on an as needed basis.

Glenn