Pacific Theatre

[Numdydar]

WitP AE would probably fall into your criteria but that seems to be doing pretty well with an active forum. Although I have not posted there in some time. I actually wrote an article about the game for the Wargamer called 'Queen of the Pacific'. Although I have no idea of sales numbers.

I would agree that less people would buy a game like that, but as far as I know, many people are still buying both the board game and computer version of World in Flames. So I do think there is a decent market for a larger scale map WWII game, Europe, Pacific, or both. However, would the profit made offset the effort involved?

In both AE and WiF, AE was community made so making money was not as important as making the game better. Steve, the only developer for the computer version for WiF is doing this because of his love of the game. While I am sure making some money off his efforts is nice, I'm also sure he is not living off that income.

So if you want to do game design full time and live off the proceeds, then games that you think will sell the best are the ones you need to do. Which leaves people like me complaining about the lack of larger map games lol.

For reference, every so often on the AE forums someone asks about 'someone' making a War in the Pacific 2 game. The best estimate that some of the people that developed the AE version of WitP came up with was around 200-300K USD. It could go higher depending on 'feature creep' and other factors. If we use 400K as a worst case number, which is about a 35% project buffer, and the game sells at $100 (to make the math easy [:)], that means the game would need to sell 4,000 copies to break even or make a small profit. Needless to say more copies would need to be sold if the pricing was less than $100. Of course if 10K people would buy the game then it would be a slam dunk to make it lol.

But one more thing to consider is that you would not have that 4k of people (or 10K) buying the game in a short period of time. It could take months, if not years, to reach that break even point. If you want to make some extra cash and you don't care how long it takes, then you would be fine with waiting. Otherwise most of us cannot afford (or do not want to) to have to wait like that.

So we will have to wait for someone like the developer of WiF to come along and do this as a labor of love versus wanting to make a reasonable amount of money in a reasonable amount of time.

And that is the reason 2 by 3 has not done this yet [:)] Not to mention I'm sure they are knee deep in Steel Panthers 2, War in the East 2.0, plus some things I'm sure we do not know about.

[Worg64]

We all need to survive. It is few people that just can do whatever they like with its time and still being able to survive, rent, food etc etc. This is not just about what you want it is what you can do as well.

I for one find the work Alvaro Sousa has made on this game and what he continues to do with great passion fantastic! I understand the passion he has for this game and the effort and hard work he puts into it on a daily basis.
I hope Alvaro that you keep the passion alive and continue making warplan the best strategic wwII game ever. I for one love this game as it is but of course it can be improved as all things can.
That said it is impossible to make all people happy, we all have special ideas, suggestions that are important for us for various reason. I just hope Alvaros work makes as many as possible happy!
And that we all can enjoy a good game! [:)]

[AlvaroSousa]

I don't need much to live. Possibly when I have enough to retire I will make a monster game. But I have a family to take care of so I do need to invest my time properly.

As for the scales of the other games.
WitE AE is what 45m per hex? Mine is about that.
WiF board game is actually only 50% the size of my Euro map.

My combined WarPlan will be 4x the size of the WiF maps (euro and pacific)

The guy doing CWiF has to be retired and is doing it for fun. He worked on it for I think 7 years before it was released. These games are not easy to do. Writing an A.I. for WIF is I think about impassible.

[lecrop]

IMHO the dedication to AI programming is a waste of time.

I think it is preferable to dedicate all efforts to have a multiplayer wargame with no bugs and well designed.

[Numdydar]

ORIGINAL: lecrop

IMHO the dedication to AI programming is a waste of time.

I think it is preferable to dedicate all efforts to have a multiplayer wargame with no bugs and well designed.

Then you would love World in Flames as that is exactly what that game is currently like [:)]

[lecrop]

Yes, I'm a MWiF player [:)]

[Numdydar]

ORIGINAL: Alvaro Sousa


The guy doing CWiF has to be retired and is doing it for fun. He worked on it for I think 7 years before it was released. These games are not easy to do. Writing an A.I. for WIF is I think about impassible.

He did work on it quite a while before release. Plus the proceeds have to be split up three ways too lol. Australian Design Group the owners of the board game version, Matrix, and the developer of the computer version.

Steve's, the developer of MWiF, background is in AI development. From many of his comments he seems pretty confident that a good AI can be developed for the game. A lot of work has already been done on the Strategic level AI.

But until someone that is good at adaptive AI development decides to make these kinds of games, the AI is going to pretty lame compared to a human player.

[AlvaroSousa]

Since I had a break from the bugs back to work on the Pacific. A little glimpse at the 50m scale map.

You can't tell me this isn't enough room for action. To give perspective for those who want 25m scale map.... Japan would be 4x the size.

[AlbertN]

Curiosity / Idea - Will Chinese troops all be considered static, due to their inertia through the war? Pratically just good to defend themselves if anything more than attacking?

[AlvaroSousa]

Right now I am just in map making stage. I will have to redesign some graphics and see what features I will add that fit the Pacific.

Not even close to OOB and their function yet.

[Numdydar]

Thanks for sharing the map start. It appears to be a little too small to me but am willing to wait to see how other areas of the map look. Especially around New Caledonia.

[AlvaroSousa]

Its the same scale as WitP AE I believe

[scout1]

ORIGINAL: Alvaro Sousa

Its the same scale as WitP AE I believe

WitP AE scale is 45 miles per hex ….. If my old guy memory is correct ...

[Numdydar]

That is correct. The original War in the Pacific scale was 60 miles per hex. The community thought the map needed to be bigger as they thought the 60 miles made the map too small for the PTO.

So when the community team started working on the Admiral's Edition of the game they changed the scale to 45 miles per hex. And vastly improved the game in the process. Not to mention the rest of the features they added to the AE version [:)]

So if 'Warplan: PTO' version uses 50 miles per hex it 'might' be ok. But like I said earlier, I'd like to see other areas of the map to make sure.

What would be cool would be to just get permission to use the WitP AE map and save a whole lot of effort making a new one Especially since the ETO and PTO maps will not be unified areas anyway.

[FirstPappy]

I resurrected this week-old subject just to say that one of the two reasons I just purchased Warplan was because of your comment: "Due to the better than expected reception for WarPlan and players asking about the Pacific I have already started generating the base scenario." I'm supporting you in this effort. The other reason for this purchase is I like the easy to comprehend game mechanics that take me back to the old AH games like Afrika Korps, Battle of the Bulge , D-Day et al. Thank you Alvaro.

Pappy

[raxulus2]

You deserve your rest Alavaro, you are doing a great work.
Thannks [:)][&o]

[AlvaroSousa]

Thanks. I take days off bit I really enjoy working on this.

[sfbaytf]

I find the PTO more interesting. Not many games do it well. I've played Witp both the original and AE edition. Played 1 full PBEM game of both that took months at a furious 2-5 turns a day pace. I also bought the first War in the Pacific in the 90's and spent hours against the AI. Programming a competent AI for the PTO is probably impossible? I haven't really seen one yet, but maybe there is one I haven't experienced. I haven't played Witp AE in a long time so I don't know if the AI has been greatly improved. HOIT4 is probably going to be a forever work in progress. I've played more SC War in Europe than World at War. In any case the air and naval aspect is highly abstracted.

This game engine seem like it holds lots of potential for the PTO, but it looks like a 1 man shop so it would be a very daunting task.

You hear so much these days about the dangers of rapidly advancing technology and AI. I'd be happy with a deadly, cunning and ruthless PTO AI that has a killer instinct and takes no prisoners.

[AlvaroSousa]

Unless I can get an Alpha Go computer A.I. will never be even remotely close to as good as a human for a game of this scale on a personal i7 gaming desktop. It just won't happen for any game.

[TrogusP96]

Yeah. The Pacific is very cool and seems very tough to game. A huge land compaign in China, the political element as FDR really had his eye on keeping Japan from attacking Soviets, US sympathetic to China and then the vast distances and time scales - naval combat - to use Alvaro's favorite example the Battle of Denmark Strait only lasted a few minutes before Hood was sunk. POW hung there against both the Eugen and Bismarck. For another 18 or so salvoes I cant recall. But the ships take years to build and can be sunk in a few minutes.