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Junior Member
Join Date: Nov 2005
Posts: 28
December 30th, 2005, 08:34 AM
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I have witnessed several discussions regarding the cost of upgrading AB 2.0 to 3.1. Most of the discussions revolve around a single point purchase price and yearly fee. To me, this is a non-issue, the cost of Army Builder is less than I spend each year on beverages. This argument typifies several of my friends who will spend $400 on an army, 2 months painting it, and then balk at spending $6 on a box to carry them in. I find this truly ironic.
One discussion did have an interesting point, however. There are several rulesets out there, such as Blitzkreig Commander, many of the data files work fine and have a large following. These systms may not have data file authors willing to put in the time to convert to AB3.1 to re-implement a working datafile for AB2.0. New users to AB3.1 simply would not have access to these files. I am assuming that AB2.0 is no longer for sale as well. My suggestion is to provide AB2.0 to AB3.1 customers. How you do this is up to you. An integrated solution would be great, but very difficult to achieve given the rewrite of the interface. Including AB2.0 to paid subscribers, could be a solution that would make sense. The licensing mechanism could be updated to use the same interface as AB3.1, or simply provide a gratis 2.0 license. Financially, this could draw additional users to the AB3 fold. They would have access to all data files of both versions. This could result in more AB2.0 discussions and possibly additional support issues in the interm. I believe this would be offset by the additional revenue generated by new users. Obviously, this is a financial and product planning decision on the behalf of Wolf Lair. I make the suggestion as a registered user of both AB2 and AB3. Best regards, Todd |
#1
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Senior Member
Lone Wolf Staff
Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 8,232
January 8th, 2006, 06:09 PM
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Not long after we released V3.0, we made available a data file conversion tool. It will take a set of V2.x data files and convert those files to work with V3.x. This tool is still available on our website.
The tool is NOT perfect, and will usually do a suboptimal job compared to re-writing the data files from scratch. This is because V3 does many things RADICALLY different from V2, so the "proper" way of doing things in V3 entails a completely different approach from V2. However, the tool will typically yield data files that are about 98% viable. That means someone only needs to spend a day (sometimes just a few hours) cleaning things up to have a working set of V3.x data files. The tool will not work for a few game systems that were incredibly complex or used V2 mechanisms that simply couldn't be converted reliably. In general, those game systems either have already been re-written (e.g. 40K) or are long out of print (e.g. Clan War). I don't know which specific game systems you are referring to (beyond Blitzkrieg Commander), but the converter ought to support them. When we released V3.0, we considered the various options you propose. As you surmised, the amount of work of supporting V2 data files directly in V3 was prohibitive. And, as a tiny company (two full-time staff and two part-time), we are stretched to our resource limits already, so actively promoting the use of V2 in parallel with V3 was similarly prohibitive. Consequently, we invested the time to develop the converter in an attempt to streamline the transition to V3, assuming that someone who spent weeks developing data files for V2 would be willing to spend less than a day with the converter. For the games that have not been converted over, all I can say is that we were wrong. :-( Unfortunately, with more than a year having past since V3.0 was released, we're not in a position to change course. Maybe a nudge to the authors of the V2 files to give the converter a try would be the best course of action at this point. It's possible not everyone is aware of the converter, or they figured the amount of work would be significant. Either way, it's worth a shot. :-) Thanks, Rob At 09:34 AM 12/30/2005, you wrote: Quote:
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#2
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Junior Member
Join Date: Nov 2005
Posts: 28
January 10th, 2006, 07:04 PM
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Thank you for the considered reply. I understand these decisions are difficult to make.
Best regards, Todd |
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#3
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Junior Member
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 5
October 12th, 2006, 04:51 AM
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hey do u guys have a converter that changes V3.x to V2.x
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#4
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Senior Member
Lone Wolf Staff
Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 8,232
October 17th, 2006, 02:05 PM
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No, we don't. We produced a converter to take V2.x files to V3.x, but there's no reason to go the opposite direction.
-Rob At 05:52 AM 10/12/2006, you wrote: Quote:
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#5
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Junior Member
Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 2
February 19th, 2007, 11:53 AM
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where on the site can i find this tool?
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#6
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Senior Member
Lone Wolf Staff
Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 8,232
February 20th, 2007, 04:20 PM
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At 12:53 PM 2/19/2007, you wrote:
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-Rob |
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#7
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Junior Member
Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 2
February 21st, 2007, 08:03 AM
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You mean Construction Kit?
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#8
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Senior Member
Lone Wolf Staff
Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 8,232
February 21st, 2007, 01:17 PM
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At 09:04 AM 2/21/2007, you wrote:
Quote:
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#9
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Junior Member
Join Date: Dec 2005
Posts: 7
March 14th, 2007, 04:50 AM
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How excactly can one convert something with this program. Downloaded and installed it, but so far I didn't see how it works out to "morph" old 2.2 data into 3.X
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#10
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Linear Mode
