When?

[carramba66]

So, AlberoC and others: WHEN?

[zakblood]

when it's ready, will be the answer, but no date

[PeteMitchell_2]

Well, I guess both the question and the answer seem fair given the overall communication to-date.

However, going back one step, are there already any preliminary time indications when (public) beta testing might start, e.g. in the order of magnitude of Q2, Q3, Q4 of 2019? Thanks!

[zakblood]

as part of the others in the first question, i have no idea but hopefully someone from staff may know and while normally nothing of the nature is given away, some ideas must be known and a general ruff idea maybe hinted on hopefully, maybe

[dalfrede]

The game is in second round of alpha testing.
The first round found issues that took a month or two to fix.
They need to fix any problems found in the alpha and have a short campaign written before they do the beta.

[PeteMitchell_2]

Oh wow... thanks!

[funat]

LOL, second round of alpha testing? There are rounds? What about CI, continuous testing, testing automation, machine learning (playing AI against AI)?
I am looking forward to the second anniversary of the announcement (March 17), and not even having a date.

Maybe we could all get together and play Risk with some pizza and beer around:D

[PeteMitchell_2]

LOL, second round of alpha testing? There are rounds? What about CI, continuous testing, testing automation, machine learning (playing AI against AI)?
I am looking forward to the second anniversary of the announcement (March 17), and not even having a date.

Maybe we could all get together and play Risk with some pizza and beer around:D

Interesting thought with the second anniversary of the announcement, this post is from 8 March 2017:
http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtop ... 64&t=76388

On the other side, they have already admitted that they had announced it too early maybe...

[dalfrede]

LOL, second round of alpha testing? There are rounds? What about CI, continuous testing, testing automation, machine learning (playing AI against AI)?

The design team is ~5 people total. This is not IBM with millions to spend on development.
They take as many rounds as they need.

Other than these forums I have no 'inside' info. But from these forums I have determined that yes that they are on a second round of alpha testing if not third. Since 'the first rule of alpha testing is you don't talk about alpha testing' I will not give you the details, if you look hard enough, and think a little you can see it also.

testing automation, machine learning (playing AI against AI)?

The market for PzC2 is people, not AI, they want a game that people like to play, I doubt than many AI will buy the game, even if they love playing it.

Maybe we could all get together and play Risk with some pizza and beer around:D

Risk? PanzerBlitz!

PanzerBlitz.jpeg (42.49 KiB) Viewed 2428 times

[Rudankort]

Hi guys!

The game has been announced way in advance, perhaps a bit too early, but it is not necessarily bad, because this has given us the opportunity to accumulate a lot of ideas (both here on the forum and via Ideas section on Flashback site), and we were able to actually incorporate many of these into the game. In one of the future dev diaries I'm thinking about writing some sort of a report to the community: how many ideas we got, how many were integrated, and how many were added to TODO list to be integrated at a later point. Needless to say, when a game is announced like half a year before the release, nothing like this is possible.

As for the beta, I can tell that by now we have enough functionality in the game to run beta testing. It's definitely more advanced than the first Panzer Corps 1 beta we launched. The reason why we don't start it is, most of the problems which beta testers will report at this stage will be ones we already know about, so it is a bit redundant. As soon as we deal with all the most obvious problems, the beta can be started. I don't know how many weeks this will take, but it's not too far away now.

[plagus]

Excellent news, can’t wait!

[gfrohlich]

Thanks Rudankort for the update. I'm pleased to see that the development team are making sure that playability issues are being identified and addressed rather than making a premature roll out.

[funat]

Another soon.

[verstaubtgesicht]

I am beginning to feel like Didi and Gogo...

[Erasermarek]

There is nothing wrong you announce PzC2 early... its great. We need time to finally finish Grand Campaign

[Akkula]

Guys, dont impatient.
And lets be realistic, a typical game takes near a year to be released AFTER the first beta version is made public (except of course the EA-money hunger games). So give the dev team some time and be patient.
With LUCK we should have this game by the end of the year, otherwise we should assume next year.

In the meanwhile lets keep sticking with PzC1

Regards,
Akkula.

[funat]

They cannot commit to anything - not even 2025. So I conclude that it's a pet project at Slitherine and has no real budget.

[PeteMitchell_2]

They cannot commit to anything - not even 2025. So I conclude that it's a pet project at Slitherine and has no real budget.

Well, what surprised me a bit is that additional new games were announced in the meantime... sure, you need some sort of project pipeline… but well, let’s maybe finish some here and there, too?

[funat]

They cannot commit to anything - not even 2025. So I conclude that it's a pet project at Slitherine and has no real budget.

Well, what surprised me a bit is that additional new games were announced in the meantime... sure, you need some sort of project pipeline… but well, let’s maybe finish some here and there, too?

Exactly. I very much admire the work of developers working on it there - but it's clear to me that Slitherine management is either lost or doesn't care. Also - I am smelling scope creep with all this map generation Settlers like additions. It looks like the whole project is under question and they are afraid that they lack differentiation or enough additions from the original. IMO - they are making a mistake. They have a good starting point (PzC 1) and should simply work towards better rules, possibly opening and API for community and introduce some smarter AI instead of pure scripting (if possible). Graphics is obviously solved with a high level engine, so they can focus on the important stuff. If they did that - they would be able to plan it properly and commit to a quarter.
The fact that 2 years after announcing they cannot even commit to a year (let alone quarter) is alarming. It's like someone there does not believe in the project.

[George_Parr]

They cannot commit to anything - not even 2025. So I conclude that it's a pet project at Slitherine and has no real budget.

Well, what surprised me a bit is that additional new games were announced in the meantime... sure, you need some sort of project pipeline… but well, let’s maybe finish some here and there, too?

Exactly. I very much admire the work of developers working on it there - but it's clear to me that Slitherine management is either lost or doesn't care. Also - I am smelling scope creep with all this map generation Settlers like additions. It looks like the whole project is under question and they are afraid that they lack differentiation or enough additions from the original. IMO - they are making a mistake. They have a good starting point (PzC 1) and should simply work towards better rules, possibly opening and API for community and introduce some smarter AI instead of pure scripting (if possible). Graphics is obviously solved with a high level engine, so they can focus on the important stuff. If they did that - they would be able to plan it properly and commit to a quarter.
The fact that 2 years after announcing they cannot even commit to a year (let alone quarter) is alarming. It's like someone there does not believe in the project.

I think you are making a few too many assumptions. At some point you even make a big assumption that isn't based on anything, and then define that as them making a mistake. That simply doesn't make a whole lot of sense. You can't state a theory and declare that an outcome of that is a mistake on their part, if your theory isn't based on any actual information. Such a judgement should be based on actual facts and knowledge, not some speculation that you just created out of nowhere. Otherwise you aren't judging what is actually happening, but what you made up in your mind.

Projects getting delayed is hardly unusual. Announcing a title too early isn't good, but it happens. There is no reason to assume that this one issue somehow means that there are issues all over the place, or that Slitherine somehow is lost or doesn't care. And if your first release estimate was off, because you underestimated some things, it is completely normal not to throw out another release date but to wait instead until you know for certain when you will be ready. Nothing is worse than to constantly make release date announcement only to postpone them again later on. That's project management and marketing 101. Just because they haven't made an announcement to the public, doesn't mean that there isn't an internal date set. That date is all that matters, not the point at which the public gets to know about it. In the end, there is no advantage to the public to know if the release of a product is X months away or X+2. As long as they take enough time for their marketing, and the game doesn't just drop from the sky from one moment to another, it doesn't make any difference to the public. Apart from being able to play the game sooner if the release date isn't as far away, there isn't really a difference between a game being 4 months away, 6 months away or and unknown amount of time that turns out to be 4 months away. In all circumstances the game will come out at a set date, and the knowledge about it doesn't change that it can't be played until that date is reached.

As for other games being announced; you do realize that Slitherine is a publisher and doesn't necessarily have the same people or even studios work on these different projects, yes?
Other games being developed somewhere doesn't have a whole lot of an impact on Panzer Corps 2, unless the people directly involved with its production would be moved to work on a different project*. That seems very unlikely, especially when you consider that Panzer Corps isn't just some random product to them, but one of Slitherine's most well-known titles. If issues would arise, it would seem more likely that they put more effort into it, not less.

* Ignoring that there are different stages of development and that some developers may very well be done with their job on the project and move on to the next one, while others still have work to do