Status of Old Games

[catwhoorg]

Played Warlords quite a bit.

Warlords II was much much better.

[parusski]

ORIGINAL: catwhoorg

Played Warlords quite a bit.

Warlords II was much much better.

Haven't touched that in forever. I did just purchase and enjoy the entire Baldur's gate series from COG.com. FUN FUN.

[berto]

ORIGINAL: catwhoorg

Warlords II was much much better.

Aside from Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic (they just announced AoW III, incidentally; check out: http://www.ageofwonders.com/aow3live/), Warlords III was one of the few fantasy games (HoMM was another) I've tried.

And loved. I played the heck out of Warlords III. But as a war game. I basically ignored the game's fantasy aspects. I'm a war gamer at heart. The truth will out. LOL. [:D]

[parusski]

ORIGINAL: berto

ORIGINAL: catwhoorg

Warlords II was much much better.

Aside from Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic (they just announced AoW III, incidentally; check out: http://www.ageofwonders.com/aow3live/), Warlords III was one of the few fantasy games (HoMM was another) I've tried.

And loved. I played the heck out of Warlords III. But as a war game. I basically ignored the game's fantasy aspects. I'm a war gamer at heart. The truth will out. LOL. [:D]

Oh, I meant to say I love Age of Wonders. Still play it every now and then. My sons and I are discussing getting the old gang together this summer for a week and playing D&D, Warhammer and some great board war-game. Oh what fun we will have. No sleep for seven days.

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: RockKahn

......
It has Battlefront:Panzer Battles, Battles of Napoleon, Conquest of Japan, D-DAY: The Beginning of the End, Decisive Battles of the Civil War, Global Domination, Gold of the Americas, Reach for the Stars, Sword of Aragon, Wargame Construction Set II: Tanks!, Warlords, and When Two Worlds War.

....

I remember several of these. i used to have several of these for the C-64 many many years ago.

One that I would really like to see revisted is Battles of Napoleon. At one point there was a effort to work on new BoN. I wish it had continued.

rick

[gazfun]

ORIGINAL: pzgndr

Erik Rutins recently posted this:

Hi guys,

In response to the many requests late last year, I just wanted to let you know that we are very interested in continuing to develop and improve TOAW, including the possibility of a TOAW IV in the future. We've been in contact with Ralph, who we would really like to be the developer going forward as he has been in the past. Ralph is going through some tough times and I think it will be some time before he is ready to start a new project or invest significant development time. Our preference is to give Ralph some time and hope that he will be available in the medium-term, but I know a lot of you are impatient for faster progress. Unfortunately I don't have better news right now than to say that whatever may come, it is not our intention to "retire" TOAW, it's our goal to continue and improve it.

We appreciate very much the work of all members of the TOAD team and the community in helping us improve TOAW to date and we're also interested in your feedback on where we should go with TOAW in the future.

Regards,

- Erik

Which is great. But it would be nice to get some official updates from Matrix on other games that are not on the "Discontinued Games" list; i.e., still sold and supported. Lots of games seem to hit a plateau and die in place, when perhaps a little more TLC would help a lot. For Liberty!, Commander Napoleon at War, and Empires in Arms come to mind, among others.

This begs a question, and I know it's a sensitive subject regarding developer's priorites and propriety rights and such, but can't Matrix/Slitherine do a little bit more to encourage its developers to continue game improvements or, at some point, promote 3rd-party developers to help keep old games alive? A good example is the Grand Strategy mod for Commander Europe at War. If the original developer cannot or will not continue to improve a game, then let someone else work on it.

We at TGHQ have a lot of players who love this game, we still are getting increasing membership to Play EiA "Empire in Arms" which probably one patch away from fixing this, so then there will be no bugs to speak of.
But the other issue is that this should be updated so that the use of new Tablets and Smart phones can play this, because the game is quiet popular, once people get the idea, they stick around with this game.

[pzgndr]

ORIGINAL: Iain McNeil RE: The Future Of Complex Wargames Looks Bleak

On the issue of why are we not using PC performance to make bigger/detailed games - The PC has far more processing power than AI would actually need if programmed well. The performance really only comes in to play The issue is that creating a good AI is something that is specific to a game and its set of rules and a huge huge task that gets exponentially more complex as the game gets more complex so doing it for the complex games takes a lot of time and money. The AI has to be scripted to some extent in complex games as its impossible to really evaluate the rules and game situation. Even chess AI can beaten by a human and that game is extremely simple in terms of rules and scope. You cannot reuse the good AI from one game to the next so you start from scratch on the next game as it has different rules. There are sometimes elements you can reuse but it doesn't save much time. The other issue is the AI has to evolve as the game evolves. Lets say for example you add a small feature near the end of development - this could completely break the AI unless it properly accounts for it. Lets say you re-balance some stats - again this could break the AI.

This was a good point made in the other thread. Creating a good AI is a huge task and requires lots of time to maintain, improve and enhance. Along with adding numerous other small features to a game after release, the question remains how to encourage developers or 3rd-parties to continue development of older games that still have life left in them. Perhaps there is no good answer except for the developer genuinely wanting to continue development as a hobby effort, which isn't common.

[Kuokkanen]

ORIGINAL: pzgndr

This begs a question, and I know it's a sensitive subject regarding developer's priorites and propriety rights and such, but can't Matrix/Slitherine do a little bit more to encourage its developers to continue game improvements or, at some point, promote 3rd-party developers to help keep old games alive? A good example is the Grand Strategy mod for Commander Europe at War. If the original developer cannot or will not continue to improve a game, then let someone else work on it.

Other examples:
SPWAW
WinSPMBT
WinSPWW2
Jagged Alliance 2 v1.13
[&o]