Sadly, after all these years, I think it's time to call it a day...

[Simon]

Every six months or so, or at least when a patch is issued, I test the game to see if it is anywhere near playable. Here are the the results of the latest 20 minute session (I will keep it brief): -

Nonsensical commander messages.
Dreadful user interface. Impenetrable and useless information on the units.
Far too dark.
Apparent distance between units far too great.
Commanders and units still run around in little circles. Impossible to attack.
Regimental battalions mixed all over the place.

I could go on. Sadly.

At this rate, the “game” is simply never going to be playable. A serious, rational taking stock of the situation needs to be done urgently. At present this is a failed project. The truth might hurt but it has to be faced.

[sandman]

Every six months or so, or at least when a patch is issued, I test the game to see if it is anywhere near playable. Here are the the results of the latest 20 minute session (I will keep it brief): -

Nonsensical commander messages.
Dreadful user interface. Impenetrable and useless information on the units.
Far too dark.
Apparent distance between units far too great.
Commanders and units still run around in little circles. Impossible to attack.
Regimental battalions mixed all over the place.

I could go on. Sadly.

At this rate, the “game” is simply never going to be playable. A serious, rational taking stock of the situation needs to be done urgently. At present this is a failed project. The truth might hurt but it has to be faced.

Yes, basically critics are justified, cos many things didnt work far as soon as they were announced.

But here the timing is a bit questionable. If things dont turn completely wrong we will see a major patch in a couple of days or maybe weeks. So it actually would make much more sense to do testing after its release.

"Dreadful user interface. Impenetrable and useless information on the units."
> Developers admited this issue & new UI is under development.

"Far too dark."
> Are you talking about HW: Les Grognards? Most people, I guess, play the new HW "Napoleon" and its allright there. I am sure this can be fixed.

"Apparent distance between units far too great."
> Take into account the scale. Imagine 1:1 scale fills the space much more as might be displayed. Furthermore the units need room to maneuvre, so they cant be too close to each other.
Another point is the lengh of the deployment-lines. If people try to cover the whole width of the maps, they most certainly cause bigger gaps. But this might not be the way playing a real simulation. A real commander must not deal with limited maps. So HW maps are big enough to allow outflanking or bypassing maneuvres. If you yet want to cover the whole maps front, you rather cause a fatal inconsistency of your forces.

Commanders and units still run around in little circles. Impossible to attack.
> If you mean the certain blocking-bug?! I think this has been much improved to early versions. Also the river crossing is much better than before. I think this progress justfies to be more optimistic.

Regimental battalions mixed all over the place.
> Take notice that there are 2 different engines working: inner simulation and 3D view displaying engine. They dont work perfectly simultanious. As far as I know they are continiously optimizing this matter. On the other hand "battailons mixed all over the place" is napoleonic warfare & chaos of battle. At some point accurate order mostly turns into a mess.

I suggest you test again after the upcoming patch. And keep up being critical.
But if you dont want to risk to miss the chance playing the best napoleonic wargame somewhen, you probably need to overthink your relation to the 4th dimension. This unfortunately might be what every napoleonic wargamer has to do talking about HW.

[oho]

You're right Sandman. One thing we need to consider is Division and Brigade comand. This is a big source of another series of bugs and much more complicated than whipping out the last bugs I would guess. As these bugfixes needed over a year since Napoleon started, I would rather get a good working game without Brigade and Divsion comand than a buggy with brigade and division.

[Simon]

Thanks for taking the trouble to respond in detail. I could have posted a much lengthier review with literally scores of queries but I have pretty well accepted my own conclusions about the game. It is the Napoleon version that I have been trying (my second purchase of the game).

It’s not simply a case of the queries per se. Serious problems (such as units and leaders running around in circles instead of doing anything productive) have been present for several years. I have absolutely no confidence therefore that the next patch will suddenly resolve everything. That’s not prejudice but experience.

There are also serious problems with the design concepts. Let’s take one particular example of the user interface - and here I am not talking about the presentation aspect of it but rather the information content. The unit detail box has icons which are useless because they do not convey an immediate meaning. Worse, the information is presented numerically. Worse than that however, is the overload of specific numbers.

People do not assimilate lists and numeric data as readily as graphic data. The whole of this area should be replaced by shapes/sliders/colour coding. I’m informed that morale is “24” - what the hell does that mean? I have no threshold by which to judge it - on its own it is meaningless, giving no clue to the unit being either on top of the world or at breaking point.

It would take too long to go through everything (which would still include that issue of mixing up of regimental battalions). What I am saying is that after so many years, if the game isn’t working even close now, it’s unlikely ever to do so.

It is said that without the Apollo 1 launchpad fire, the project would never have reached the moon in 1969. NASA was forced to rethink everything and implement a complete overhaul of its administrative procedures. Unless a similar reassessment of the game is implemented, I cannot see it ever being playable. It is very sad that such a promising and well meant project seems to be coming to nothing, despite the passing of many years now.

[Gunner24]

I’m informed that morale is “24” - what the hell does that mean? I have no threshold by which to judge it

This is a bad example for you to pick.

Moral is rated zero to 100, guess what, 100 is better than zero, and so it so follows 24 is also better than zero, but not as good as 50, or 75, or 95........the higher the better, the lower the worse............you can replace that with a "graphic" but I find it hard to believe anything could be any simpler to understand than a sliding scale of 0 to 100.......check the units moral, very high when safe and not in action, higher for Guard and Elite troops, lower for line and lower when in danger or sustained loses.

[[NBC]Friant]

I actually wrote this yesterday and wasn't going to post, but hey that's what forums are for?
Don't know what to say if anything to make people change their mind a wait a bit longer...
After a promising release of HWN, and a comprehensive list of future updates to the game, things went sadly wrong.
I think the complexity of the engine is unfortunately making things very difficult for everyone. One slight change here to rectify this or that invariably leads to problems somewhere else. Unfortunately they are not always blindingly obvious...
Version 5.5fg is or has been beta tested, (seems to be only 2 people prepared to spend time doing this?) but unfortunately there are still some minor issues, I say minor as they seem minor, but in the world of game coding, maybe a bit more complicated to fix.
To all intents and purposes it is still a one man show, with another person working solely on the graphics and another on the new interface. I have great confidence that the graphics and interface will both be very good, but, it is now undeniable that the game engine should have been functioning superbly well before now.
But who is to blame, is there any point in blaming anyone. I think the community, myself included played the game and accepted too many slight problems early on and recently it has back fired because more and more people have stopped playing or have left because of general lack of communication on the forum.
I don't think you have said anything wrong Simon, in fact, behind the scenes there are a lot of people feeling like you, I would disagree on some of the comments made, but that is more about Napoleonic aesthetics than criticism of the long wait, and disappointment.

It would take too long to go through everything (which would still include that issue of mixing up of regimental battalions).

This is one thing HW does well, although the internal engine and 3d have difficulty displaying with 100% accuracy.
Reading any Napoleonic book will tell you, that confusion reigned in these battles, a regiment was made up of battalions and a battalions were the currency of the field, ie 2 battalions from one regiment would support battalions of another regiment, in the doctrine editor, what that is set at will make a difference, is the doctrine editor set to send battalions from one regiment to support another?
You mentioned spacing, the average regiment needs 300m to deploy in line, its all in the manual, if you have 20 units deployed over 2km with 50% reserve, that is 200m per regiment, now, is your doctrine set to engage enemy line formation with line formation? Suddenly one engaged infantry does not have the room to deploy into line... These are all the considerations that are unfortunately missed and the game appears to not do would it should do, but after spending so much time reading the manual there is more that this game does right than it is given credit for.
Deploy 10 units of infantry over 1km with reserve of 50% 1/2 scale spacing looks about right to me.
The great pity is about 3 or 4 years ago there were some minor problems but the whole package was a lot bigger than what we now have in HWN, and once most saw the great change in graphics more than a few were reluctant to go back to the old version.
The sad thing is all that time ago there were minor issues, and unfortunately a few years on there still is... But they are slowing getting rectified.

One thing we need to consider is Division and Brigade command. This is a big source of another series of bugs and much more complicated than whipping out the last bugs I would guess.

This now concerns me too.
Presumably Simon you have HWN, therefore you have bought your place to return at any point you wish, because the new GUI at least cannot be that far away...
I will hang in there, because I think and hope something good is coming...
BUT what I am most bemused about and cannot for the life of me understand is the secrecy, if it is that and total lack of 'tasters', ie screenshots, information and what we may have to look forward to. We will be told that everyone is busy doing their bit, but how long does it take to post a screenshot or line or two?
I do sometimes wonder if this forum is just here for the petit quiz?
Anyway, you have paid for your copy, so will be entitled to any further patches etc, the man working on the GUI at the present I am certain will do a good job...

[Simon]

Gunner24 - your evident lack of understanding of the point being made makes your sarcasm look not only misplaced but silly. I could explain the issue to you in detail but I (really) doubt that it would be much use to you. Just some things to help though...

At what range of values  are troops (due to current morale) breaking/halting/raring to go/quitting the field/etc.? From the changing values, (often erratically),  how do you know, battalion by battalion, the rate at which morale is being eroded. Two digit values are meaningless and far, far too precise. No-one is bothered about a 1% difference. A scale of 1-5(ish), with definitions would be much better. That's the trouble with much of the design generally - there appears to be little appreciation of what is needed.

Or try...

Which is the third longest line below? : -

1 -----------------------------------------------------------
2 -----------------------------------------------------------
3-----
4--
5-----------------------------
6------------------------------------------------------
7-----------------

Easy eh? Quick too!  Now... which is the third largest number in this list?

46
48
39
42
18
81
42
45

Get it now matey?

[Gunner24]

makes your sarcasm look not only misplaced but silly

Ha, perhaps you better read it again, I was not sarcastic or silly.

You like graphics, I like numbers, that is called a difference of opinion, nothing more.

[Gunner24]

How about the "old" system, used with the "G" key to switch back and forth - which I still use most of the time..........a line and a figure :

[Scots Grey]

Sadly I gave up a long time ago.
I posted in Simon's other thread about six months ago and nothing has really improved since then.

I check in on the forum from time to time (it used to be every day) to see if things are moving along but alas one year after release and promised features this version appears to be heading the same way as LG. Very little in the way of information is frustrating too. All seems to be a huge secret.

Even the die hard supporters of the game seem to have their doubts.

More work needs to be done on the game play to make it work rather than spending time on how pretty the units or terrain look. I would settle for matchstick men if they acted like they were suppose to. Dress a pig up in fancy clothes , it is still only a pig that looks good. It may pay dividends if the programmer takes note of Simon's analogy about the Apollo space program.

My only solace is that I only paid for the basic version. Would have been even more annoyed if I had paid more for this apparent failure. Twice now by the way. Three times if you count LGA at Austerlitz all those years ago.

Disappointed. Valuable lesson learned though. This game only takes up space on my hard drive now in the hope that I might get to play it one day. Don't even have a cd to use as a coaster.

As I said before. Hope I am proved wrong, but........

[Soldat Louis]

Surprising...
You may consider that the lack of activity on this forum is a bad sign. Actually we play multiplayer battles every week and we are happy with the present version of HWN: no news, good news. There are still some improvements to be done but overall the game is good, at least better that all what is existing. It seems to me that all the critisisms are coming from too much expectations by experts or by a misunderstanding of the game itself coming from gamers who what to have a total control on their units or corps. I hope that JMM will be able to correct this in the future tutorials

[Belliard]

For HWN actually still a lot of work.
he took in more than 20 patches for HWLG ... Let's be patient for HWN and amuse ourselves with what we have.
With HWLG we still have a game that is about enough, we play multiplayer very regularly and we are in the DI from the 3rd campaign.

[Soldat Louis]

"a lot" of work is exagerated (that's my humble opignon).

[Scots Grey]

Well thought I would check in to see if anything was happening.
The silence is deafening. I was half expecting tumbleweed to be blowing around.
Still a lack of meaningful information or updates.
I feel that this is definitely going to go the same way as LG. Please prove me wrong.
Will pop by in a month or two. Got other games that work a lot better than this to keep me busy.

[JMM]

Just waiting for the new patch with a lot of bad behaviours fixed... just some days...

JMM