Remember 82nd Airborne? No? You’re probably not the only one. The wargame has been in development for years, with barely a peep from anyone connected to the project. Shrapnel Games was formed specifically to deliver 82 Airborne, a sequel to Empire Interactive’s 101st Airborne.
Well, Shrapnel’s Timothy Brooks promises that it is still being worked on and that it will be completed once they work some bugs out
Microsoft’s Vista, that oh-so wonderful operating system of theirs, has a rather annoying habit of breaking things in All American: The 82nd Airborne in Normandy. Like network play on previous OSes. And there are other issues with Vista. So thanks to this crap OS we had several choices:
1. Strip All American: The 82nd Airborne in Normandy of the features that didn’t work with Vista, or had problems under Vista.
2. Not make it Vista compatible. Tempting, very tempting.
3. Recode the whole thing for DOS, since folks will probably have better luck running it under DOSBox in Vista than if it was Vista compatible.
Stripping features is not an option. Not making it Vista compatible would solve a lot of headaches but look, after all these years in development we’re not going to then shut out part of the market. And obviously the DOS thing is a joke. Doing it in Flash would be much better.
So, no release date. But progress of a fashion.
Freaking hilarious comments about Vista. If it weren’t for all the games, I’d use Linux. Still happy enough in XP land, though Windows usually does something to piss me off each and every day.
I have not had the urge to upgrade to Vista yet, and after reading that post… I had a good chuckle!
I’m sorry, I know Vista breaks things and isn’t all that, but most of the things planned to not be in Vista have been known for years.
Directplay (what I guess they’re complaining about when it comes to networking) has been deprecated for years (Feb 2006 at least!)
I’m sorry they’re stuck with trying to improve an ancient code base from 101st Airborne, and I’m sorry that programming and APIs have moved on, but at some point, I can’t help but blame the people developing the thing for not having the people to work on the game to get it to a releasable state.
Jeez louise, look at the screenshots for that game. It looks like a slightly prettier version of Steel Panthers: World at War — another rescued-from-DOS game, which Matrix Games has been giving away for free for years.
At some point you have to look at a project and ask if it’s still worth pushing it ahead to completion. Do they expect to sell enough copies of 101st Airborne to even recoup the costs of so many years of development?
Sorry, I meant to include this link to the screenshots in my original comment…
I’m sorry they’re stuck with trying to improve an ancient code base from Windows 2000.
I remember hearing about this almost ten years ago; I’m still waiting for it to come out.
@Alan: Nine years ago. Not ten. Nine. ;)
@Jason: And we’ve been giving away winSPWW2 and winSPMBT for years too. Which by the way, are the original “supermod” Steel Panthers games. World at War was developed when Camo Workshop parted ways with Matrix in response to the schism.
As far as recouping the cost? There are enough folks right now still playing the original game that even if they’re the only ones who pick it up we’ll be more than happy. You also have to consider that we’re pure indie; it’s not like we’ve been burning through millions of dollars of VC on penthouse offices or whathaveyou. In fact, as I mentioned in the press release that’s actually the main reason for the delay. It’s not like Shrapnel has been able to work on the game 100% of the time because Tim, the designer and creator, has been knee deep in making sure Shrapnel’s wheels keep on turning. If we could have solely focused on the game it would have been out years ago…
As far as graphics go…yeah, it ain’t Brothers in Arms, but that’s not our market…