September Screenshots

[IainMcNeil]

View the latest screenshots at www.slitherine.com/commander/screenshots.htm

They show the inner zoom level where unit detail really starts to stand out.

[anguille]

The gameplay looks nice...

To be honest, i am not so sure about the colours of the main map...too grey imho...i'd like to see more colours.

Will it be possible to display the map by countries (various colours by countries)? that would be a must...

Cheers

PS: will there be a beta-test? it's the kind of game i master the best and would be happy to take part.

[SMK-at-work]

Did I ever mention how much I HATE game systems that base everything around a generic 10 point strength??!!

And it's officially Gravenhage, or unofficially Den Haag, if you're going to use the Dutch.....

[IainMcNeil]

We have just finished implementing a colour tinting system to show ownership of the land. This will be on a toggle so you can view with or without it. It makes it much clearer what is happening. We'll show it off in the next version.

As for 10 strength point units, just think of it as the modern decimal system. We could pick some other arbitrary value, but not sure what that would achieve. Changing it is not that difficult, we're just struggling to see what would work better.

[firepowerjohan]

I see variable strength as an alternative to stacking, where you would have one strength-20 unit instead of 2 strength-10 units.

But, we do not need any larger concentrations of units due to the large scale of the map.

The way we solved it was by having a survivability attribute for units, which reduces taken damage. That means instead of doubling a untis strength you can double the survivability atrribute and therefore having a longer lasting unit.

Or did you just mean we should have same max strength for all units but at a different scale, say 1-100?

By the way, the color tinting we use for next version using 4 tones (axis, allies, ussr, neutral), plus tones for FOW really makes the game look nice.

[dulak]

firepowerjohan,

Wanted to check ... are you going to use tinting to color the units? ... I hope so ... the screen shots looked great; my only gripe was that without a tinting or something to the units it would be hard to tell the difference between them at first glance (even with the markers on the counters).

Great looking units thou IMO

[uxbridge]

Excuse my ignorance. What's the meaning of "colour tinting"?

Any chance that we could have a look at the "real counters" soon?

Map looks very good; land, sea, forrests, rivers and coastlines are combined in a very nice way. One exception may be the Quattara, that have the resemblance of someone stepping on a tomato, but it's minor. The return of real hexes, instead of squares or those ghastly areas, is such a joy that tears almost comes to ones eyes.

Question regarding future modding: Are the cities, industry, resources and the like merged into the map bitmap, or could these be changed?

There's so much one would like to suggest for this game, but since Iain admitted that there was at least a goal to have it compledetd by Christmas it must be at a rather advanced level by now. Not much hope for any major changes in other word. I will therefore refrain myself for now, try it out once released, and then start to bombard Iain and Johan for changes where I think it constructive.

[firepowerjohan]

Yes, the gameplay is practically complete, remaining are alot of UI programming and some AI (though AI is quote ok at curent state). We use hex based color tinting which means a German hex will look more Grey, Allied hex looks more yellow and USSR hexes look more red. But the tinting is semitransparent so that means you can see the underlying terrain.

Terrain is merged into the bitmap (forest, rough, clear, mountain, desert, dune) while Production resources are placed by coordinates on top of the map (their locations can be changed) meaning you can replace them . Resources are City, Capital, Mine, Oil Field, Fortress, Sea Port.

A fine thing when it comes to future editing is that when a hex has both a terrain and a resource, then the hex counts as "No terrain", meaning if you want to place a city in a mountain then that city will not have any mountain bonuses. This means resources can be moved around easily without having to consider the terrain under them.

[fundin]

I see variable strength as an alternative to stacking, where you would have one strength-20 unit instead of 2 strength-10 units.

But, we do not need any larger concentrations of units due to the large scale of the map.

The way we solved it was by having a survivability attribute for units, which reduces taken damage. That means instead of doubling a untis strength you can double the survivability atrribute and therefore having a longer lasting unit.

Or did you just mean we should have same max strength for all units but at a different scale, say 1-100?

By the way, the color tinting we use for next version using 4 tones (axis, allies, ussr, neutral), plus tones for FOW really makes the game look nice.

1-100 makes more sense to me. I just don't think you can offer the vast variet of unit strengths with just 1-10. Plus i notice you don't have experience down as an option anymore (or do you? it was on old screen shots, cant see it onnew ones), so 1-100 would perhaps help this factor.

[firepowerjohan]

Experience is in the game and we show it as "german/allied cross symbols" in the unitpanel, not as a digit. Experience will increase quality and survivability.

[uxbridge]

Terrain is merged into the bitmap (forest, rough, clear, mountain, desert, dune) while Production resources are placed by coordinates on top of the map (their locations can be changed) meaning you can replace them . Resources are City, Capital, Mine, Oil Field, Fortress, Sea Port.

Just a quick one: Would it be possible (maybe for Commander II) to add another "resource" called Town or something? This would be just a small black dot with the possibility to write the name of this urban place. In some areas there will be far between larger cities and the maps look rather barren. There will be no effect whatsoever for such a resource, but it may work as a point of reference between players in multi, or just to get the impression that people acctually live in these empty areas.

What I'm suggesting here, obviously, is that this feature is something to be used by map-modders and not the developer.

[SMK-at-work]

As for 10 strength point units, just think of it as the modern decimal system. We could pick some other arbitrary value, but not sure what that would achieve. Changing it is not that difficult, we're just struggling to see what would work better.

The 10 point "normal maximum" system is flawed IMO, and it reminds me of games like Panzer General and SC that zare rather sub-standard wargames.

IMO a much better system would be to leave the strength of "units" open-ended, and to make the "size" of each unit depicted something like a count of Divisions (eg 1 size point = 1 division) - pulling the game counters back into a concrete connection with history rather than them being abstract divisions of power.

Each division within a counter would contribute some points to whatever types of combat factors are used, and would record its own strength - probably as a sinple % in steps of 10% - losses and replacements would be assigned on some basis such as a simple pro-rata, so divisions (points) could be moved among on-table counters without too much bother.

Certainly it involves more work, but I think CEAW is trying to be a bit more of a "real" wargames than PG or SC2, and needs somethign like this to firmly identify it as somethign more than those games.

[Redpossum]

As for 10 strength point units, just think of it as the modern decimal system. We could pick some other arbitrary value, but not sure what that would achieve. Changing it is not that difficult, we're just struggling to see what would work better.

The 10 point "normal maximum" system is flawed IMO, and it reminds me of games like Panzer General and SC that zare rather sub-standard wargames.

IMO a much better system would be to leave the strength of "units" open-ended, and to make the "size" of each unit depicted something like a count of Divisions (eg 1 size point = 1 division) - pulling the game counters back into a concrete connection with history rather than them being abstract divisions of power.

Each division within a counter would contribute some points to whatever types of combat factors are used, and would record its own strength - probably as a sinple % in steps of 10% - losses and replacements would be assigned on some basis such as a simple pro-rata, so divisions (points) could be moved among on-table counters without too much bother.

Certainly it involves more work, but I think CEAW is trying to be a bit more of a "real" wargames than PG or SC2, and needs somethign like this to firmly identify it as somethign more than those games.

Stalin, I'm used to you and I disagreeing, but this takes the cake.

Panzer General was sub-standard? Compared to WHAT?

I mean, you do realise you're talking about one of the most popular and commercially-successful computer games on the subject ever published, right?

And you want to award one "point" per division? That would make the average corps a 3-4 point unit, thus making for far coarser graduations than a flat 10-point system. Instead of having the potential to show 10% losses, you'd not be able to accurately portray any losses less than 25-33%.

And you call that better?

Need I say that I emphatically disagree?

[SMK-at-work]

PG was substandard as a wargame - I owned it and PG 2 and enjoyed them, but as "serious" wargames they were pretty much rubbish.

Being popular does not make a game good - it makes it popular.

You missed my point about points "Points" would be a matter of size, not strength, and I see no reason why a single unit has to be only a corps. With an open-ended system you could deploy a single division in a unit if you wanted to - or a whole army - up to whatever "stacking limit" you think is appropriate to a hex in this scale.

Losses would be recorded by division rather than by the points size of the unit - eg if you had a 6 division unit then the 6 divisions in it might be at 80, 90, 70, 60, 100 and 55% strength, so you might represent the unit as 6/5 (being 6 divisions, but about 5 divisions worth of troops after losses).


It also anchors the game more firmly in history IMO to speak of divisions rather than "points" of any sort - hence I'd call the "size points" = Divisions, and use "divisions" instead of "points" in all literature, etc.

we have more computational power on a single table-top these days than existed in the whole world only 30 or 40 years ago - I'd like to see jsut a little more of it used on systems such as this to tie games into history more firmly. After all it's mainly a matter of record keeping - at which computers are very good and which actually uses little space or resource - there'll still be plenty left for eth pretty pictures!!

I'm afraid that without something better than the ol' points systems I'll keep playing TOAW WW2 scenarios where I can move divisions and Corps around, watch them degrade & rebuild, make strategic moves with armies, all without worrying about resources per se and still find it a much better game than PG or SC because the "atmosphere" is better.

[IainMcNeil]

The dvision strength point idea is one we've talked about but its too radical a change at this point. It's something we'll look at in future and see if it works out as we think it will. It was the board game Hitler's War that inspired this idea from our end.

[joe98]

I presume the Poles have British markings because thay are controlled by the British player?


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[joe98]

Looking good.

But looking forward to the proper wargaming counters


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[fundin]

Maybe you could have 1-100, and units that have been enhanced in some way can go over 100 so like if the infantry get an upgrade it can go to 110. Like HOI i guess, i like the way it goes from 0-140ish with technology. Maybe a step to far for this though