April development progress report

The last month I work most of the time on the new mystery project, but also got in some good time on Decisive Campaigns 3 which is really slowly taking off. Since the mystery project is still classified I want to use this post to talk a little bit on DC3.

The working title is ‘DC : Clash of Titans’ and I am planning for this title to remain on the eastern front. However the scale is going up to 1 week turns, 30km hexes and mostly divisionally-sized units. Its a big change, but after doing SG:EF and DC : Case Bue I felt ready in doing a fully detailed eastern front game. I thought about keeping the scale the same as in the previous DC titles. It would be nice to have this detail over this huge front, but a lot of players were already overwhelmed by the unit count of Case Blue. Actually with the current chosen scale the unit count will be more or less the same as in DC:Case Blue, and would explode to 3 or 4 times that if I would keep the scale regimental.

Due to this new scale there will be a higher unit density per hex, which will help the AI, since it really has difficulty with cat-mouse like tactics in areas where real front lines are missing. I also hope to expend the AI a bit further especially on the strategic considerations level.

I am not sure yet if i am going to focus on Barbarossa only or do the whole war, I think i’ll do the whole war.

Almost most importantly I am doing a big, very big, overhaul of the way scenarios are setup and creating a new editor called “the Simple Editor”. My aim is that anybody should be able to make his own scenarios with this editor. As people who tried the DC editor know, it is quite complicated to do anything else than making small changes. Not impossible as the recent release of the recent Tannenbaum Blitz scenario proved, but just a bit to hard.

What I am trying to do with the “Simple Editor” i am now designing for DC3 is giving the scenario designer a streamlined model to set up a scenario in a number of steps. First the designer chooses a map file. Second he imports a number of troop&equipment libraries. Thirdly he imports some historical unit libraries. Then he can change the ownership and VP value of the hexes and place units, and basically the scenario would be ready to play.

Though with this steps only there would be no victory event, high command orders or weather or anything… For these last things to be in the scenario the designer has to import the event libraries he wants to use. For example the “Victory Condition Library” which would allow him to set through a special more user-friendly interface (no scripting!) the conditions for the different victories the game can end in. The same for example with a “Reinforcement Units Library”, “Wheater and Seasons Library”, etc…

Basically my aim is to make design of a scenario just a matter of putting some pre-made building blocks together and giving each some special instructions that are well documented and done through a better interface.

By splitting up the different tasks involved in making a scenario it will also allow for some designers to focus on their strengths. Like for example some will be able to compile Commander libraries, some OOB libraries or Troop&Equipment libraries, some might just create map files, and some will want to create their own event libraries. Probably i’ll even create special editor modes for making maps, troops&equipment, commander and historical unit libraries.

I think if all goes as planned we’ll see much more user/third party scenarios made with DC3 than with my previous games.

Also I plan to make an offer for joint-ventures for proven scenario designers who want to make fully new games from scratch with this engine and commercially sell their creations.

As always I conclude with the statement I hope to tell a little bit more about the mystery project the upcomming months :)

Happy gaming all!
Vic