Normandy 1944: European Theater mod for Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts

8 comments by Twitchy_ET44 on May 16th, 2013

Hi everyone!

First off, I must sincerely apologize for the lack of any updates! My final exams for this semester were towards the middle and end of April; so I was rather focused on that for the time being. They finished on the 22nd of April, however I was so exhausted from school and partially modding.

Finally after over four months of me basically sitting in a corner and modding everything myself; I actually uploaded the modification to an SVN-like utility so that others could assist me in development.

I am finally starting to get over the "Culture-Shock" as it were of being out of school for the next four months completely. Having said that, my freetime is still fairly minimal. In order to pay for my tuition (Which, although fairly cheap in comparison to other individuals studies is still something that requires some effort and foresight to acquire and raise) I have started working full-time at my occupation, which I normally work part-time throughout the year.

I am working between 36 and 40 hours a week at the moment. However, I'm not letting this die/falter/wither or anything of that nature. It's just been a rather slow go of it as of late. But everyone here has been rather patient with me and with things in general. So I'll happily outline the current plan for everyone as to where I would like development to go for the moment.

First off, I have noticed that many individuals are having issues using the Soviets in the new Steam version of Company of Heroes as Relic has swapped servers. (I personally enjoy this move as I've always hated Relic Online in comparison to Steam servers, but the issue of it breaking the Soviets is quite the bother.) And in that regard all I can currently say is..."Well, fuck. Be patient, please!"

I'm no Coding guru, in all honesty. However as I regularly am active within the modding community and I regularly speak with those who work on the Eastern Front mod, I can safely say in confidence that if anyone else figures out how to solve the issue, I will solve it in a heartbeat.

I would like to ask that people test how the AI plays on the current version you have, as I know that in some other cases modifications AI has simply broken entirely. And I'd be...really bloody pissed to say the very least if that was the case here.

Now, onto my basic plan of attack for development!

1) General Bugfixing: As I have finally uploaded my files to an area where others can help me, I have asked for all those who offered coding help to start working on removing as many bugs as they can. Primarily at this point in time any bug which genuinely skews balance or outright breaks/crashes the mod.

2) Implementation of Minimums, Tweaks to Upkeep and removal of "Test" like mode:
I will be providing very basic solutions to the first two of these items mentioned. Basic minimums will be applied equally for all factions for the moment, and the Upkeep upgrades will be added to those who do not have them (I believe the English miss out on this, for example) and their effects boosted quite heavily for the moment.

In the future I will heavily tweak how both of these work, by not only making the minimums different based on your Doctrine choice but upgradable also. As for Upkeep later there will be a full rework of it for all units, however at the moment it is simply a rather daunting task. I can completely mitigate it's heavy derailing factor on gameplay by making a few simple changes now so I can focus on more important things, like reworking Armour/Artillery and then Upkeep and costs in general.

The removal of the "Test" like resources setup on "High Resources" will also be redone, and I will probably end up slightly increasing the amount that "Standard" gives the player also. Unless that is unwanted by users, (If it is, please simply drop a line in the comments anywhere. I'll find it.)

After those have been done, I intend to release what I have at the moment to the public (As in you, :) )

This will not only spur on further enjoyment and fun for you guys (And more realism, I would hope!) but it will also keep this following alive and possibly help it grow. It will also show you guys that I'm not just talking out of my ass here, and that if I were to ever put up a paypal or something of the sort that donating to it would actually warrant something as you will notice that content is actually being updated and released, instead of everything being done behind closed doors forever.

I hope this has been informative for you, I cannot speculate an exact date of release, nor will I. However redoing the Minimums/Upkeep abilities will take me all of ten to fifteen minutes, so I am really just waiting on my coding gurus to have the free time to fix the gamebreakers at the moment.

Hope you enjoyed the read! :)