Two bloggers battle it out with Decisive Campaigns : Blitzkrieg. Check out the Bzura battle between sugarfreegamer and fogofwargames.
I’d like to wish all Decisive Campaigns and Advanced Tactics players and their families a very merry christmas and a happy 2011! May all your dreams come true!
On the moment this blog entry is written I am still working hard on completing Advanced Tactics Gold. So far as I can see… there is a pretty good chance it will make release in the end of Q1 2011. But as said before: no promises!
One of the problems I ran into while coding and adding features is that the existing Advanced Tactics game was already a feature heavy game. Adding more stuff to it has proven more involving then I thought it would be. I think I discovered a law of game design here… More probably: rediscovered…
The law I rediscovered is the law that every extra feature added causes more and more complications and interactions with the existing features. There is a semi-exponential relation between game complexity and coding time. Especially if your not starting from scratch but ammending and changing an existing game. On the AI front the relationship between features and coding time needed is actually beyond exponential. On that front I had to cut some corners, but the AI opponent is there and slightly better (among others I added the option to overrule its production) and much faster then before.
At the time of writing I have completed adding in all the features into AT Gold that I wanted. But it took more time then expected.
I think it was worth it… Because on the positive side of things the added features will give scenario designers the same exponentional increase, but this time in scenario design options. The adding of the feature to play action cards on hexes or units… and adding the features of hex sharing (alliances) and resources… combined with all existing features will make a lot of creativity possible.
Which leads me to pose a second law… If you have three properties of a game you desire to make: (1) good AI, (2) completeable in a reasonable ammount of time and (3) wargame design kit… you can pick only 2 of those. In the case of Decisive Campaigns I chose for 1+2 and in the case of Advanced Tactics Gold I chose for 2+3.
And yes there are lots of nuances to the above law as well as other reasons for doing things as they are done. But I hope this blog has provided some insight to the choices VR Designs had to make and the difficulties encountered.
Also I want to thank all the players,testers and scenario designers and may I say in some cases… fans… that have been playing Advanced Tactics throughout the years… and in some cases Peoples Tactics before it! Without them I could never have brought the game to the stage of Advanced Tactics Gold. A lot has been done already, but the series’ horizon seems to extend even further! And if people keep playing and designing scenarios I can keep improving the game.
Best regards,
Vic
Some new reviews have been published. One giving it 8/10 in the french language PC4WAR magazine and one giving it 84% in a german language review on GamersHall.de.
Some more news about AT Gold! In this posting a preview is presented of all the features that will be added to the engine in AT Gold.
The most important ones are the speeding up of the AI, with about a factor of 100 times, the adding of alliances (hex sharing between regimes) and the use of resources. For modders and scenario designers the possibilities have been greatly extended as well. AT Gold can justifiably be called a wargame construction set.
In future preview postings the new random games will be discussed in more detail and later on some screenshots will be put up for preview as well.
Here follows a selection of new features the AT Gold engine will be equiped with:
-Actioncards that you can play on specific hex or on specific unit
-Extra layer of landscapetype graphics you can paint on a hex to display extra information or symbols
-Conquest of a hex can result in an actioncard being triggered (“You conquered Paris!”)
-Battle Stack point rule for normal, artillery and air attack. This rule will terminate the gamey exploit of attacking the same hex over and over untill it breaks.
-Original Owner rule option so that reconquered original territory from ally returns to ally when liberated.
-Items can belong to upto 4 different ProdMod categories. Each people has 4 different prodmods. This will allow much more complicated ownership influence of production.
-ItemTypes can set XP, Mor, People, MoveType of what they produce
-Production prediction takes into account resource use, and resources can now be seriously presented and used by the player. For example: Raw, Fuel, Manpower…
-LocationTypes can be drawn by overdrawing a graphic over the hex graphic instead of replacing the landscape of the hex.
-LocationTypes can now require research and resources to be build
-LocationType building can be limited to certain value in certain areaslot.
-Building a locationtype can change the value of an areaslot
-Messages can now play a sound file when they are shown to player
-Version is checked and remembered per player. so in PBEMs you can see who’s on which version. This will be usefull when patches will come up later for possible cheat bugs.
-Regimes can mirror their siluet pictures for their SFTypes
-Research cards can have cost in Resources instead of in Political Points.
-MoveType overrule on subformation level
-Readiness loss per Attack is an option
-Penalties in first rounds of attack for attacker rule is now an option
-Prevent Hit statistics for SFTypes (like a halftrack can catch a hit for an infantry) is now an option
-Defensive Hitpoints for each SFType to per unitgroup that attacks them. To create special vulnerabilities.
-Resource rules that can influence movement and attack scores of SFType. Can be used to model Fuel.
-An enormous load of new EXECS and CHECKS (like 100 extra checks and execs)
-Stringlists as seperate data-object, they allow easy importing and exporting of data sheets for scripting purposes.
-Tempstrings in event editor, so you can now dynamicly build text replies for messages.
-Lose EP on movment rule option
-Allow Free Movement rule (for making for example a free deployment phase) option
-Resource costs can be charged for road and bridge building
-Declare War costs rule option
-Battles can cause movement delays (ap penalty on hex) rule. This makes it very hard to attack in waves if there is a serious defense.
-Airfield Surprise Rule
-Air Intercept Chance Rule , these 2 new air rules will make it possible to eliminate the huge air stock always wins problem.
-Naval Movement can get ambushed rule
-Alliances!
-allies share recon rule
-Allies support ally in combat versus other ally rule option (or stay neutral in that battle)
-3 Zoom modes
-Campaign Room functionality (a scenario without map stuck in command center screen with special background and title)
-New Random algorithm
-Neutral Sea Hex sharing rule (for example japan and american naval units can share hex)
-Giving of units to ally
-Giving of hexes to ally
-Giving of research to ally
-Resource window (with predictions of next round levels after and before production uses resources)
-Full hide enemy rule option (for free deployment phase)
-Moddable systemgraphics (everything is moddable)
-Execs to play background music and wavs
-Watch the AI move while its moves come in while its making it.
-Scriptable startup of game through startup text files and optional mod files to chose from
-A combat detail screen for those who like to study exactly how each modifier was used.
-The AI has been increased by almost a factor of 100x on huge maps.
-option to give locationtypes NoHQ or AutoProd settings
–A hell of a lot of small changes to rules and bug fixes
-Save/Load speed improvement
-AI works in seperate thread now.
-Extra hex painting, roads and rivers graphics options
-And probably a lot more i forgot i even added.
VR Designs is looking for 1 or 2 motivated, patient and knowledgeable scenario designers for the Decisive Campaigns engine. Click here to read up on the job requirements and how to apply.
