Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: Karri

The road in Lapland, from Finland to Russia, should definetly be white(that was the worst, right?). It was more of a path than a road anyways.

Most probably it will be white because the map will be tuned in the finale stage of development and during beta tests.

Is it still true that this will only be for Mac OS ?

Hmmm I`m surprised...Where can I find such “revelations”?

The game is meant to be played on PC (with Windows and maybe with Linux) and maybe on Mac OS. PC with XP/Vista/Win7 is a native environment for the game.

And finally North America:

This looks good. I am really looking forward to this game.

For North America (at least in the USA), the road network changed over a span of a few years. For example, the Alaskan Highway was finished shortly after Pearl Harbor, if memory serves. Also, my Grandfather kept a bunch of old Life magazines from the war, including the period between the start of WWII in Europe and Pearl Harbor. In one of them, there was an ad that mentioned how much time had been cut off the drive between San Francisco and Los Angeles by the new highway over the Sunol Grade. From the zoomed out picture, I think there is a red road down the east side of SF Bay, if so it would be this road over the Sunol Grade. (To see the Sunol Grade as it is today, go to your favorite map site, and look at Interstate 680 and Automall Parkway in Fremont CA, then pan north up I680. The grade is the rugged area between Fremont and Dublin.).

So, this brings up the question, is the road network a "snapshot" in time, or does it change over the course of the game (either by player construction or assumed to follow historical construction)? If it is fixed, what year is it fixed at? For much of the world, it probably makes little difference on the scale of the game, but for the US it might matter.

The road network can be easily developed by players during any scenario.  This map (basic) is based on 1933 maps as the first scenario starts at this date.  Beside possibility to construct roads, there is “the dark side” - roads are affected by bombardment (planes, artillery, ships) and by any land combat (so in effect they can be temporary damaged and sometimes even partly destroyed).

What about rail networks? will drawn on the map like roads?

In order to limit number of entities in hexes (we have port, airport, radar, various resources, fortress and more) roads and rails are represented as one parameter which depending on its value is interpreted/represented as a road or as road and rail. So “red” and “violet” are rails and roads,  “yellow” and “white” are only major roads.

This game seems utterly fascinating and the decisions regarding the combat modelling especially so. I hope to read some thoughts into how the game engine works and what kind of details you face during development. I don't mind if the things are still work in progress, it would nice to hear how it's going if you can release any details [:)].

Indeed things are in progress, however I`m quite open about speaking about game mechanism. Further more I`m going to restart regular devdiary when proper screens form  the game are available, I mean a new GUI and terrain (now, during development process, the game is quite ugly :], our ambition is to make the game quite pretty).

Considering development process amount of data to gather and input into game is one of the biggest challenges faced by us. Imagine almost one hundred possible (but not necessary) values for a single hex and... ~70k land hexes (out of 211k in total). Three men, geographers, have been filling the map with data for teen months... Beside the map there are countries` settings, units, leaders, politicians, events, and so...

The other big or maybe even bigger challenge is the size of the game, I mean the source code, which now is at least tripled in size in comparison with code of “Storm over the Pacific”. Without going into details, we make a lot of effort to keep it up to standard.

If you want some more specific info just ask questions  about what you would like to know.

If you are looking for a topic for your next update, then how about something about the combat model?

It's interesting to read that units are made of platoon-sized elements of various types. But how do you calculate the results of combat with such and who will be casualties? How does randomness come into the results? What if you have a surplus of some equipment after a fight (captured or losses of men)? Is the surplus returned to the logistics centers?

Also how are ships handled? Are these considered to be units like everything else with some "equipment"? How do you handle damage to them? Do they have more than one damaged state? And can tanks be damaged or only destroyed/operational? Lots of interesting stuff [:)]

It's interesting to read that units are made of platoon-sized elements of various types. But how do you calculate the results of combat with such and who will be casualties? How does randomness come into the results? What if you have a surplus of some equipment after a fight (captured or losses of men)? Is the surplus returned to the logistics centers?

In short a platoon to destroy is chosen randomly with preferences to destroy combat platoon in advance of services. However a platoon has a chance to defend and instead of being destroyed a unit may lost part of its conditions. The better the platoon is the biggest chance to survive.

While a platoon is part of  a unit men and equipment are united into one entity. A destroyed platoon means lost of soldiers and their arms. Of course there are some exceptions, for example during combat enemy can capture enemy platoon (without men...).

Capturing logistic centers and buying platoons (as weapons) also is possible. Imagine  a German unit  in Russia composed mostly of  German equipment with addition of a few Russian T-34 and some captured weapons in other European countries (Czech, Polish, French), and some bought abroad (Swedish, Swiss). As it was...

Also how are ships handled? Are these considered to be units like everything else with some "equipment"? How do you handle damage to them? Do they have more than one damaged state?

Naval units are indivisible, but configurable before build (there is a detailed ship constructor in the game). Instead ships have status and condition. Status  is responsible for ship integrity, condition is responsible for minor damages and breakdowns.

And can tanks be damaged or only destroyed/operational? Lots of interesting stuff

 In case of land units you can treat lowering of units` condition as a temporary damage of some equipment, or as temporary  loss of combat capabilities due to disorder,  but also as fatigue (combat and movement “consume” condition). Condition is very important parameter, sometimes even more important then units` strength.

A big screen

Ingame climates:

I'm surprised that "Bitter Glory" does not have it's own sub-forum in the "Coming Soon" section here. Any idea why this is?

Still it is too early.

This game could be a geeks best friend!

Industrial centers in Europe  (the first revision)

Very nice, great looking map! [&o]

And excuse me for asking a question, but is there an industrial centre in the Northern part of Holland? The part where it almost hits the North Sea? (that's where I live) I am not aware of any industrial activities there, then or now.... [&:] So yeah, there was an important airbase for German interceptors in my home town (well it's still there actually) but that's not an industrial centre.
Sure, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and then some Southern cities (Philips)... but that Northern one puzzles me. [:D]

Thanks for the update and the screenshot.

I think I understand it better after looking longer at the map. Most cities have an industrial center, my town (Leeuwarden) and the other Northern city (Groningen) probably are considered minor industrial centres, the large cities have major industrial centres.