Progress Update news - Warlords of the Rim Colonies Mod for Mech Commander 2

I like to give an update on the development progress.

The original timing idea was to release the "Warlords of the Rim Colonies" campaign and the new gaming system "wolfman-MC2X /Revision 25) during the first quarter of 2013. To develop a high quality 25+ mission campaign from scratch including testing takes around one year as I am a one-man show.
This means already working on it every day for hours. I started in the second quarter of 2012 and thus the plan was OK.

I started to like the idea of large grid maps (dominantly 240x240 instead of 120x120 terrain grid points that much that I decided to base the campaign on that large map size. My gaming system MC2X (Rev 20) supports grid sizes up to 160x160 quite stable but not beyond. I was able to get the mission editor into a state that I can create 300x300 maps without mayor crashes or issue under winxp and win7 by now .This prerequisite for a large grid map campaign allowed me and continues to allow me to work on the missions design for the campaign in the desired dimensions. I implemented several improvements over Rev 20 into the new revision that took a lot of time. New design features and commands for scripting as well as plenty of new inventory was included into MC2X (Rev 25) already and will be used in the campaign; there is more to come. I lost around 4-6 month against my original plan on this.

I have still two open issues that need to be fixed before any campaign can be released based on R25.The QuickSave/QuickLoad function does not work yet for maps beyond 160x160 grid.
Gamers expect rightfully to be able to use the standard functions as in the original MC2 without high crash rates; the gamer does not care or give credit for technical difficulties in the implementation; it simply has to work. All QuickSave/QuickLoad issues must be fixed; I can not put a time line around this fix.

I was able to get the gaming executable into a state that I can game through all the large size missions I created already; testing any of the missions is not a problem. The big unresolved issue is that after the completion of any large size mission the game crashes when it is expected to load the next mission of the campaign or go back to the MC2X Main Menu. Same logic like for the QuickSave issue applies; it needs to be fixed prior any release.

Both issues seam to be closely connected as the crashes occur with similar error messages and the debugger points to the same area of code. The solution is not visible at this point but every day another attempt is made to fix it and my persistence overcame in the past plenty of hurdles like this; I am sure it will be fixed one day.
I have two options to continue;
#1: stick to my plan of large grid maps and fix the engine and delay as long as it takes to create a campaign I personally love and enjoy
#2: switch to 160x160 grid size and change all missions and use the proven MC2X (Rev 20) as a base.
I decided to go for the first option.
Overall I believe now it will more likely the last quarter of 2013 to release the campaign.

Hang in - there are more pictures and videos and updates and finally a great campaign to come.