Official Napoleon's Campaigns Code Patch 1.07

[Bohémond]

Hello,

Attached is Zip files with Rev1 modified files.

To unzip in your NCP root directory. (program files\Napoleon's Campaigns for example). It will overwrite some files.

You will need to make it on a NCP fresh installation.

Regards

Bohémond

[BigDuke66]

Thanks!

Could you give us a rough overview what you changed/corrected?

And are specific settings(difficulty, etc.) recommend for using your files?

[Bohémond]

Hello,

Attached is readme file for Rev1.

No specific settings, most of modifications are DB ones.

Regards

Bohémond

[Bernadotte]

Thank you very much Bohémond !
Now I'm waiting impatiently for Pocus's fix

But with RoP and WiA im still somehow "busy".

Regards,
Bernadotte

[Pocus]

Hi all!

We have a very important milestone to complete for VGN, but once it is done (2nd part of April), we will have some days where we will slow down a bit before the final long run. During this week, I think we can integrate Bohémond good work into the official NCP patch!
So please, be patient a bit more... 15-20 days.

[BigDuke66]

YEA sounds great!
I hope Omnius spelling and typo corrections make it too.

[Omnius]

I give Bohemond my permission to use my spelling and text changes in his many fine database changes if he and others so desire. While Bohemond has stated he doesn't have time to test my changes I no longer have any enthusiasm left for AGEOD Paradox France games to do the task myself. If someone else wants to get the xls file from Bohemond to test my changes that's cool with me. It does include a notepad text file with every change documented.

I've decided that I no longer wish to play AGEOD Paradox France games because of the poor scenario designs that never get corrected by the AGEOD team who should take responsibility for their less than excellent work. I have no interest in learning the scripting language just so I can play NCP scenarios after I've corrected the problems the AGEOD team should have but refuse to. Why should having fun be so much work?

I hope the AGEOD Paradox France team remembers the sage business adage that the customer is always right and pays more attention to customer complaints. Dropping the price of PoN to $20 tells me that they're Desperately Seeking Customers, new customers to replace the many old customers who have been disappointed by their products and who decided against being repeat customers, like me.

I thought that BoA was a good first game and had high hopes for the AGE engine but NCP has shown me that scenario design isn't an important issue to them while it is to me. I thought the scenario designs of BoA were pretty good but the ones in NCP seem to be a step backwards as there really wasn't one NCP stock scenario I enjoyed playing. There were many NCP scenarios that could have been totally awesome but are flawed with problems that the AGEOD team should have corrected. The 1806 Danube or Thames scenario could have been one of the greats had Brune's corp of 30,000 been included just as Napoleon historically left them to guard Boulogne against British invasion.

Replacements are another deal breaker for me, the waste of precious artillery replacements on out of the way fortress artillery has frustrated customers for many games and despite customer complaints AGEOD Paradox France has lent deaf ears to them instead of paying attention and making them more realistic. The 1805 scenario certainly didn't incorporate the fact that the French captured 500 cannon when they captured Vienna or that in 1809 after losing at Aspern-Essling Napoleon made sure to incorporate captured Austrian artillery to increase his cannon count from 144 after that battle to 500 for the battle of Wagram a few months later. Plus so many light artillery replacements that are never used because there are so few designated light artillery units in the game. Instead of giving customers lazy lame excuses that they can mod them themselves the AGEOD Paradox France team should pay attention to customer frustrations and do something to alleviate them themselves.

Making good scenario designs is really important because you want customers to have several really good scenarios which are enjoyable to play right out of the box. Once they've enjoyed playing some good stock scenarios then if players want to tweak some to make them even more fun for themselves that's what you want so those predisposed to modding can extend their enjoyment. If not then as with me the only Mission Accomplished is "Scratch One Customer"!
Adieu!

Omnius

[BigDuke66]

While I can understand the frustration if a game you like seems to have been dropped by the company, I have some of those too, I can't really see the sense behind this drastic step.

No matter where you run to it will always be the same, business is business and if there isn't enough money made then the support goes down.
I can agree that Paradox is a parade example of releasing stuff that seems to need much more support than other publishers releases and few Paradox games real get what they deserve.
Matrix Games seems to be a better example of how games should look on release and even when not their support stays for a very long time but even they must bow themselves to the rules of business.
Some of the support for their older games is composed of just one guy(thank god it's usually a dedicated guy but still just one) and I see similar problems with some of their games like you see with NCP, "War in the Pacific:Admirals Edition" is an example of the greatest Strategic game covering the Pacific theater of WW2 and I bet it made a lot of money and still makes some cash every month but its stock scenarios won't be developed or patched anymore and so only code patches that develop the game engine come out but at least a lot scenarios made by users/groups take the places of the stock scenarios and even surpass them.

As I said business is business and the usual customer doesn't seem to acknowledge how cheap the games still are today, games usually cost now as much as I paid for them in the 90's and I wonder if there is anything that is still that cheap.
That is also why some companies try a different approach to get more money out of the customer, "Rise of Flight" is a good example as they make money with every plane the bring out and so they accomplish the task of keeping the game not only support but to still develop it with new planes, graphics,etc. and hopefully next month with a career mode for single players that will greatly enhance the game but all this only by getting as much money out of a customer as he would have paid for 2 or even 3 games.

So if you want to bail out here you have to bail out of a lot other corners in the PC game market because the situation does not get better, it gets worse and most corners can't adept a business model like the one for RoF and so they are stuck with cheap games where they only can hope to make enough to give the game the support it deserves and not to bail out before the job is done.

The Bottom line is NCP will finally get a patch after a damned long time and it's good to see that old games are still supported even when only the code is worked on and the rest is up to dedicated guys like you & Bohemond and so it is even more important that these guys stay around no matter how bad it sometimes looks.

All the points you mentioned sound interesting and maybe some could be included in the scenarios especially now with yours & Bohemonds fixes the game is hopefully the way it was intended, so the way is free to even improve those scenarios altogether it is just a great chance to bring NCP a big leap ahead so please don't bail out in such an important moment.

[Pocus]

I'm sorry you feel this way Omnius. Your premise is not true though. You believe we don't want to fix things that would need fixing in NCP. This is not the problem. The problem is that we can't, because we don't have right now the physical time to invest in NCP. This is particularly true with Pride of Nations released in one month. But there is hope in the end of the tunnel, because I believe we will be able to produce one patch for each game in May... So don't give up.

[BigDuke66]

Is the new patch on the horizon?

[Pocus]

Hopefully before end of May yes.

[BigDuke66]

Great!
Thanks!

[Bernadotte]

Hopefully before end of May yes.

Excellent
I also thank you !

[NefariousKoel]

I loaded this back up recently and tossed 1.07 in it.

I'm not seeing the fortification breach symbol on the map after creating breaches (that weren't repaired). They're in NCP like the rest, right?

[Pocus]

they should yes.

[NefariousKoel]

they should yes.

Thanks Pocus, I'll un/reinstall everything before firing it up next time.

[NefariousKoel]

I just had a crash with this, too, after clicking on a fleet. It does say "release candidate 1" still on the main load screen. Had just reinstalled the whole thing, also.

I posted the log and the save file in the Tech support section.

[Bernadotte]

You probably ran into the same bug then BigDuke66 and I (s. message #4 and #21 in this thread)
Sadly Pocus loaded up a wrong version as release candidate ! That's why we all se "Ver. 1.07 release candidate 1" instead of something like ""Ver. 1.07".
I moved back to "Ver. 1.06" until Pocus releases the correct patch, which will hopefully be soon !!

[Pocus]

Yes soon, operations should resume within a fortnight hopefully. I would prefer to have the help and expertise of Lodilefty though.

[cbd]

So the file that is currently posted is not the correct file?

[BigDuke66]

Looks like, something went wrong when it was made that's also why the version numbers don't make sense.
Altogether just a bad situation, we have all ready regarding typo fixes & scenario fixes but without a working EXE that has it integrated or at least a mod based on the older working patch NCP will be piling up more and more dust.

[cbd]

Looks like, something went wrong when it was made that's also why the version numbers don't make sense.
Altogether just a bad situation, we have all ready regarding typo fixes & scenario fixes but without a working EXE that has it integrated or at least a mod based on the older working patch NCP will be piling up more and more dust.

I assume several people are waiting for the correct patch?

[BigDuke66]

I guess so but who knows how many are still on Napoleons path after this long time.

[caranorn]

Until Lodilefty is back to speed and/or Pocus has time off PoN there probably won't be an update...

I'm not sure what version I'm running right now (looks like 1.07.1 but not sure as I usually keep the games up to date), anyhow, other than the occasional click on certain elements CtD that version is stable...

[cbd]

I am hoping to provoke some activity by demonstrating that there is still interest in this project.

[berto]

i am hoping to provoke some activity by demonstrating that there is still interest in this project.

+1

[BigDuke66]

+1

[Bruit Bleu]

there is still interest in this project.

Indeed there is !

[Bernadotte]

Indeed there is !

Yepp, there absolutely is

[Carnium]

Sure there is