tau update

[Valace2]

Was wondering if we would be seeing a Tau update soon.

Thanks for all the hard work, loving the new Tau and looking forward to building lists without pen and paper

[jlong05]

Was wondering if we would be seeing a Tau update soon.

Thanks for all the hard work, loving the new Tau and looking forward to building lists without pen and paper

Yes, it is being worked on. it is currently going thru the first round of internal testing.

[Valace2]

So no, not very soon

[Wraithlord]

Not at long as you think. We are getting the bugs out quick and it should be ready to go soon.

[shaso_iceborn]

Not at long as you think. We are getting the bugs out quick and it should be ready to go soon.

I am sure we all really appreciate the hard work you guys (and gals if applicable) do for all of us. Keep up the awesome work and we look forward to seeing the file/s soon.

Iceborn.

[dbgoldberg323]

Let me start by saying that my dumb ass can't code an AB file so I'm SUPER APPRECIATIVE of what you guys do for the 40k community. Without you, I'm sure we'd have some shoddy files up made by less competent people, and we'd have to rely on things like BattleScribe and other widely supported army list builders that just aren't as good, up-to-date, or easy to use (in my opinion).

However, I am confused by the reasons you guys give for the delays.

Are you truly forced to wait 30 days to release an update? It seems it's not actually GW's policy because the Warhammer Fantasy AB files come out faster than that, and they still have unit summaries and item descriptions included (which means the 40k updates are technically quicker). Of course it's possible that GW sent just you guys a C&D letter regarding how to proceed (which can be ignored because according to British IP laws, they're also required to attack the Fantasy files and have thus far not done so), but again I feel that many of us keep asking these questions because we don't know what your guys' process is. We know your policy, but not the why behind it (and I personally believe that explanation, whatever it may be, flattering or not, would go a long way into shutting us all up).

May I also ask what is being done during those 30 days? If it's been the full month, then what testing/bug-fixing have been done during that time? I only ask because with the little to no information we users have, it *appears* that nothing is even started until that arbitrary 30-day mark.

I fully expect this post going to be met with vitriol but I can only hope your reply is informative and insightful, since as I've stated I think that will help us all understand the process and drastically reduce the questions we have.

Again, thank you for your time, your effort, your un-paid volunteer work, and your understanding. Regardless of the delays or bugs in previous AB40k files, I am immensely grateful for the tools you guys give us and I'm eternally in your debt for making my AB purchase constantly worth it.

You guys rock!

[Silvadine]

As you stated these guys volunteer their time for this, and up until this year, they usually only had to update every 3-4 months. GW's recent release schedule of 1 codex almost every month I'm sure has created a huge flow of work for these guys in their, I'm sure, limited fee time to devote to this project. Yes, we all want the update and we want it now, but relax and let these guys do their thing as they need to, because I know I don't want to have to do it myself.

[Spack]

I'll try to answer some of the points raised. This is a one-off post that will hopefully give a little more insight into why and how things are done in the 40k team, which will hopefully show that the guys don't sit around for a month and then frantically start on a new release.

Firstly, the 30 day minimum wait period is self-imposed, but with good reason - GW have never approved of any of the files we create (nor any other set of files for GW games), and over the years the decision was made to delay release to reduce the risk of legal action (and as far as I'm aware was the result of attempted action by GW many years ago, but that was before I was involved in the AB40k team), as that would provide GW with an "exclusive" period during which the stats for units could mostly only be obtained from the codex itself. GW have made it clear over the years that they are not happy about the 40k files, or any others, and there are public posts in the Lone Wolf forums about their own troubled history with GW. I can't discuss any possible contact we have had with the GW legal team, however the suggestion that we could simply ignore any C&D letter is a dangerous one - nobody should ever ignore a legal document. dbgoldberg23, are you an IP lawyer? If so then you should know better than to make sweeping statements without having been involved in an IP case specific to GW; if not then you should not be making suggestions about what to do with legal requests to anyone. I'm not a lawyer, IP or otherwise, so I'm not going to pretend to know what is and isn't applicable in UK law (and that only covers part of the problem - GW and myself might be based in the UK, but that's not to say that anything else is or isn't, and a public forum is not the place to discuss any of this anyway), and I'd never suggest to anyone what is and isn't applicable even based on my own previous experiences with copyright and IP issues (my employment means that I do have to get involved in copyright and IP issues from time to time in a company that is involved in the distribution chain of printed material, so it's somewhat relevant to the matter).

As to the Tau files and testing (and this applies to other codexes too), they have been worked on pretty much from day one of the codex release, and each time bugs are fixed they have to be retested to see if those changes affect units that were fine before. Also fixes to other races may impact too due to global rulesets and definitions, so it's a lengthy iterative process. While the test team try to cover every combination of option in every unit it's not possible to track down all errors, and often bugs that were missed in early testing raise their head later and cause problems which require changes from the core up. So far the Tau files have gone through around 6 days of initial coding, followed by 12 major and minor revisions, alongside fixes to other races and continued work on IA and Apocalypse. Given that the maintainers are all volunteers and have a life outside of working on these files, and some of those major revisions have taken days to work on, I don't think there has been more than a couple of days in the past month where something hasn't changed. Another round of testing was completed only yesterday and 6 minor issues appear to be outstanding.

As to the 40k updates being "quicker" due to the lack of rules text, that's simply not true - lines of text take almost no time to type in, the bulk of the time is spent cross-linking units and options and coding rulesets to make sure that validation works according to the unit entries. It's also not helping that the page numbers in the printed codex and the iPad version don't match up, which means it takes longer to figure out page references for the rules.

I realise that this post doesn't contain too many details, and it may well raise more questions that we simply cannot answer at this time, but hopefully you can understand that the process of creating and testing the files is a long process and is not taken lightly. I'm fortunate in that I get the easy part of the "job" - all I have to do is keep this website up and running  The more observant of you will have noticed that there was an outage of around 12 hours earlier in the week, that was in part my fault for using a default configuration on some security software running on the server, and in part the fault of large number of automated attacks on various services apparently originating from China - the config has been updated to prevent the same thing happening again, and the Chinese didn't get in so any potential disaster was averted successfully. Nothing to see, move along in an orderly fashion, everything is tickety-boo, stiff upper lip and all that.

[Thunderbolt]

Considering the new ways Suits can be equipped and all the entry changes..... i have to double check my non AB Lists just to make sure i am valid.

Thanks for the informative post Spack! cant wait to dig into the new files!

[Valace2]

The purpose of my post was not to question the effort of the coders or the testers, it was merely for an idea of when it might be available seeing as how we are past the cooling off period.

Thanks for your response it was very informative as to how the process works. While I am focused on the Tau aspect of it, it didn't cross my mind that you might have fixes from other codices in there as well that you need to hash out. As for the waiting period it makes perfect sense, that while you technically do not have to wait the 30 days, why stir up the hornets nest. Call it professional courtesy lol. As for Games Workshops attitude towards Army Builder, it's simply textbook Games Workshop. If you are a fan of the game and don't question some of their decisions there is something wrong with you. Games Workshop should have developed their own list building software by now, or simply bought Lone Wolf, it is an invaluable resource for gamers. Honestly especially with more and more entries in AB saying see pg 40 of the codex, you really can't play 40k based on what you see in Army Builder. What you do get is your prep time cut in half, and to a limited extent some knowledge of the armies you might face in the hobby.

Again thanks for the hard work and I look forward to seeing the finished product.

[Spack]

From what I can gather the Tau release is only a few days away (don't quote me on that though!) - however, it depends on whether the current bugs that are holding up release can be sorted easily.

As to GW releasing their own list building software, they already done that and failed - twice. In the last release, around 2004, there were two Interactive Army List CDs at $30 each, one for the Imperium (Armies of the Imperium), and one for the everything else (Enemies of the Imperium). Updates were horrendously slow - at one point there was almost 18 months between updates. GW let it die after around 2 years, with no reason given. I did read somewhere that they only had 1 guy supporting it who either left GW or simply didn't want to deal with it any more.

[brentil]

Thank you guys for the Tau update along with the rapid fix and release of bugs.

From your description GW's attempts at make their own app sounds very similar to Wizards and their endless failures of making their own.