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**Important Victory! News**


RTGRuss

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Hi Guys,

 

Well, today was far more exciting than I had anticipated and there is some bad and good news to share :blink:

 

For the bad news, I got surprised today by the Victory! processing computer that appears to have finally died of old age :cheers: Victory!, for those of you who have haven't been with us that long, was designed specifically to run on a Macintosh computer back in 1991 and the last hardware/code upgrade was around 1994. The game remained popular and continued to run well despite its age and various game mechanics quirks so we kept putting off designing its' replacement even though we knew the hardware was getting ancient. The old computer was hanging in there and it was a dangerous situation but we were just hoping we could continue until we could get some time to develop the next version of Victory! and move over to a modern system before something bad happened. It's tricky when the admin dept, processing dept, design dept and every other debt for the entire company is staffed by the same two guys though :blink: There just never seems to be enough time in the day :(

 

I've got a few more things to try but I'm not confident that I can fix issue, which appears to be hardware related. Replacement hardware is not available and I can't bring backup data over to a different computer, the hardware and code are just too old and different. I am hoping I can get the computer up and stable long enough to run the end of game routines for each game so that we can at least see who was winning in each game as of December 18th but I think that may be a long shot. Without a Christmas miracle of some kind I'm afraid that all Victory! games have, in effect, ended early :( I do have copies of the last turn results run for every position so we can look at those for winners and such. The original Victory! had a good run, over 18 years, and it remained popular and a good game...it just got tired of waiting for an update :cheers:

 

The good news in all this is that I now have time for a development project :angry2: Given the popularity of Victory! over the years I think the best thing to do at this point is to immediately start work on Victory! II with the idea of getting the game updated to modern equipment/code and with the game design revisited so that we solve any quirks of the old game, add as many new things as we can and make a new Victory! game that will be even better! I know it is disconcerting, to say the least, to have your ongoing wars end so abruptly and to face the prospect of time without Victory! to play but Pete and I aren't going anywhere so this is just a break in the action - we'll have you back playing Victory! and beating on each other as soon as we can :thumbsup:

 

I have some SuperNova related work to finish up on tonight but I'll be getting started on Project Victory! tomorrow ;) I'll be setting up a Project Victory! area here on the forums and I'd like as much input as I can get from you guys. Look over your old turn results, think about past games and think about what you liked, what you didn't like, what you'd like to see in a new version, etc. and we'll get to work. My current thoughts are to stay with the current game map (for a variety of reasons) and to keep as much of the good stuff as we can. We still want it to be Victory! and we want to have a game to play soon so we want to keep the parts that work and then improve on it and add new stuff where we can. New features (standing orders for example), new units for existing tech trees, new tech trees (Italian, French, etc.), special units (V1 rockets, etc.) new combat routines and whatever else we can come up with are all possible. Games that start before 1939, last after 1945, a WWI version, a Korean War version maybe...lots and lots of possibilities :ranting: The first order of business, of course, is to get the base game ready so we can get Victory! going again but with this new version to work from the future for Victory! will be very bright and very interesting :cheers:

 

It hasn't been the most pleasant of days here and I know how sad this turn of events is for everybody who loves Victory! and was having fun crushing (or being crushed by) their enemies but I hope we can turn it around and focus on the positive aspects of getting a new version of Victory! for us to work and play with :thumbsup: With some hard work on this end and a lot of help from all you Victory! vets I think we can get a new version done within a couple months or so (the sooner the better of course) and when it's ready we'll have a better game for everyone to play (and for us to run) :ranting:

 

Take care, happy holidays and best wishes for the new year!

 

Russ

 

P.S. Please pass the word to allies and friends (who may not visit the forums often or at all) so that we can get the word out as fast as possible. It's not a happy day to be sure but we'll get through it and hopefully the future will be a lot more fun and exciting when we do.

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Hi Guys,

 

Ok - a ray of hope. I found a local Mac outfit that handles used Macs as well as doing repair work, etc. The guy I talked to believes it's a logic board issue and if that's the case he has a used Mac there that he thinks will serve as a replacement and we can try to shift the hard drive and see if we can get a working Victory! machine that way. They have the machine now and I expect to hear from him once he has had a chance to look at it and determine the problem for sure. I'm paying the "rush" charge to move up the queue but it will probably still be a few days (particularly on Christmas week) before I know for sure if this is going to work - maybe next Monday, hopefully sooner. Keep your fingers crossed and I'll let you know as soon I know anything else.

 

In the meantime, I'm still going to open up the Project Victory! forum here in a little while. The Victory! II project is still a good idea and it's probably wise to press on with it in the meantime just in case that game is needed sooner rather than later.

 

Thanks for all the help, advice and support - greatly appreciated :rolleyes:

 

Russ

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Hi Guys,

 

Ok - it looks like we've got some good news (I'd say 'great' but I'm being cautious :unsure: for the time being...). I've got the replacement set of hardware from our local MAC shop and it seems to be running fine (hardware wise it's actually better than what I was running before). Just to make it exciting though I had some software issues that popped up after I plugged in the new hardware and ran some diagnostics... For a while it was looking grim but several nerve-racking hours later and I think I was able to solve the issues (there goes another year of my life and a significant increase in the percentage of grey hair I have... :wacko: ). All my Victory! tests have gone ok and I've generated end of game results for every game as of the 18th (just in case).

 

I'm now in the process of running and getting out the Victory! turns that were in and due to be run when all this started (i.e. Saturday the 19th and Sunday the 20th). I'm watching the runs closely and checking every single turn result by hand to watch for any trouble. So far everything has run ok and looked good. If that continues I'll be sending out turn results here in a while for the 19th/20th so those of you who had turns eligible for those days will be getting them soon. Check them over and let me know if I've missed anything (the game data is separated onto different drive partitions than the one I had a problem with and I'm fairly confident that all that data is ok but check them to be safe).

 

Once you see game results in your mailbox (or see folks talking about their new results on the forums) it'll mean that everything seems to be going ok and, barring any problems in the next few days, we'll be back online with Victory! :thumbsup: Get the word out to your friends, enemies, allies, etc. about Victory!...tell them the news and/or have them check in here on the forums to get the latest. Send me an email (either to my personal email acct or to the one for Victory! turn submissions) so I know that you are aware of the news. Tell your friends, enemies, allies, etc. to check in with me as well. I'm going to have to come up with a processing plan to catch us up on Victory! processing days and I need to know when everybody knows the situation. If you have already submitted turns for turn processing days after December 20th, please resubmit them. I should already have them but I'd prefer to take in new .trn files if possible as we get going again.

 

At this time, I don't have a plan finished for our Victory! processing catchup phase. I'd like to get started with processing again by tomorrow (the 30th) but we'll see how things hold up and how fast the word spreads. Right now it looks like I'll be getting close to the 24 hour mark before I'm done for the day so once I'm finished with the 19th/20th I'm going to fall in bed and pass out for a while. I'll be back at it later today :blink:

 

Thanks to everyone for their support, advice, assistance, etc. during this event. Hopefully we are past the worse of it now and will be able to play out the existing games of Victory! without any more unpleasant interruptions :thumbsup: Once I'm caught up I'll be looking at some other options to reduce the risks and we'll continue with Project Victory! so that we'll have a new Victory! (a better one with more modern code/hardware) down the road. Game 88 was getting close to the initial start point (about 70% of the way or so) so we'll see how things go...if everything stays stable and we get caught up on the current games then we'll probably set that up as the last game of original Victory! then work on having Victory! II ready for games after that.

 

Thanks again and best wishes to everyone for the coming new year!

 

Russ

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