My name is Dan Antonescu, and I'm here to present you all a little project of mine I've worked on lately.
I love ancient wargaming since I was a kid, "recreating" hundreds of bloody battles with hundreds of LEGO plastic toy soldiers following imaginary rules. Since then, I've ended up loving ancient history, specially the military ancient history, and playing all the wargames related with the subject which appeared in the last 25 years.
For almost 10 years by now, I was also working in game development business, as lead game designer and senior producer, and still I am
This was the major reason which finally made me do this: none of all the game I've tried until now satisfied my always growing demands and needs from an ancient tactical wargame. Some went pretty close at some point, like the old Great battle Collector's Edition (from iMagic, made after the Great Battles tabletop rules, which still remains the best PC ancient wargame), and recent Ancient Warfare (from HPS) or Field of Glory (by Slitherine, following again some tabletop rules). Also pretty close went the awesome De Bellis Magistrorum Militum (the imperator of them all, be them tabletop or PC) or the Warhammer Ancient Battles tabletop games.
Yet.. none of them was there where I wanted it to be.
And as you all know, the best game is the one you are making it yourself! So, I've kept telling myself, with each new game coming out and falling short, that one day I'll start making one by myself. Two years ago, I've finally decided it is the time to do this. So.. here we are!
It's a project I've started sometime at the end of 2010, while I was working in Great Britain on a BT project. I've worked on it in time I've managed to take away from reading and playing other games, from the already few free time I have. This, coupled with long periods of not working at all on it (but rather on other projects, like the late IL2CoD Dynamic Campaign generator I've fumbled with for a few months, until I've decided I'll shelf Cliffs of Dover for good until it will get properly fixed), led to a very very slow pace.
A couple of weeks ago, I've un-dusted AWG, and started working on it again. And last night, I've finished the last part of its backbone, namely the map saving and loading systems. It will be a loong walk, as I'm doing this only in my free time, but if you'll bare with me, I promise you that you will not be disappointed at the end of the road!
AWG is wanted to not only to have rules, terrain maps, units, army lists, replays, single and multiplayer battles. And not only a campaign map. I aim high above just that: I intend to make it an ancient military history portal, incorporating wikipaedia articles (displayed in an internal AWG broswer), book lists, book reviews, primary sources, JSTOR articles and so on..
AWG is not only another wargame project, as well as it is not only an ancient battles simulator. It's just a dream I have about making ancient military history come to life, share it, and made with be loved by other people too.
