Resumption of Hostilities

[caravel]

Hey Caravel, good to see you back in action.

My computer woes are still ongoing (I'm trying to get the motherboard fixed/replaced now). While I'm fairly optimistic that it shouldn't be too much longer before I'm back up and running, by now I know better than to give a specific date as to when I think that'll happen -- it'll "be done when it's done", etc. I'm of course still more than happy to contribute what I in the forum here, but I'm unable to actually playtest the mod for the time being.

Quite the epic tale of one computer's struggle against overwhelming odds, etc...

How long is it now? Six months?

[ULC]

Nice to see you again Caravel, for a while I thought we had dropped off the face of the earth (very bad... ). I may be working on DATW, but that doesn't mean I can't spare time for the Pocket Mod. Speaking of which, if any one of you wants to send some help my way, that would be most appreciated!

I may lose contact for a while though, as me and the phone company struggle over payment issues ( ). I really need to be a little more timely next time .

[caravel]

Good to see you all still around.

YLC, I would prefer that you weren't sidetracked from your own project by the resumption of the PoM. Feel free to borrow/utilise any ideas you pick up here as well as contributing your own. I wouldn't like the PoM to be the cause of your own mod foundering (like so many others).

I'm going to be doing some organising over the next few days with a view to setting out a plan of action, to avoid leaving any of you too much in the dark over this, the map looks likely to be the first stage for now. The map has been started and does need to be finished before we can proceed. As you have seen I have done a lot of work in the near eastern, north African and Anatolian regions. The next stage will be to work on similar areas in other parts of the map. Without historical map sources in order to add further province or redraw existing ones, this won't be possible. I am also open to map changes for game-play reasons as long as there is some historical basis of course. All of this needs to remained focused until completion. Going off on a tangent adding factions, units or features will result in having ten half finished tasks instead of at least one finished one. I will continue the map discussion at the map thread.

Those of you working on unit balancing that wish to contribute your work to this mod will need to post up actual code so that others can try it out. Simply posting something like "I increased their defence to 2 and decreased their attack by 1" doesn't really help any of us. The unit balancing will need it's own thread and should come much later, once the foundation of the whole thing has been lain. Unit balancing should be off the agenda for now, as we simply cannot hope to deal with all of this at one. Imagine we are building a house. I am busy digging a foundation while someone else has started work on the roof, and another person is arranging some flowers in the front room. Result? Double work, a huge mess, waste of time and resources and ultimately a disaster.

Also those of you playing an overly diverse and much evolved version of the PoM v1.6 need to be aware that you are not playing anything like what will be PoM v1.7 and very dissimilar to the v1.6 that others may still be playing. If this is to be a success we need to all work in unison. I have no problem with distributing testing versions to those of us involved, in order that we should all be working on the same thing, on the condition that they are not further redistributed. I will work on getting a pre release version (v1.6c) out to interested parties in the next week or so. If you need it drop me a PM ASAP to be added to the list.

Regards

Caravel