Matrix Games Forums

The new project seems to have good potential. I do have a couple of questions though.
1) Is this going to be similiar to the old SSI "Decisive Battles of the American civil war ", series. I think that was the title. I havent played the Battleground series, so I'm not familiar with that.
2) Will you be able to edit both the maps and the OoB?
3) How are leaders handled? Are they there in name only or do they fit into the game?
4) How are things such as Gunboats, Forts, and Railroads handled? Any chance of blowing up a train on a siding ? Just kidding.
5) Will you be able to create large battles , such as Gettysburg, or the Wilderness, or will it be broken down into sections of the battle?
One last comment. Do hope the graphics are better than some of the stuff I've seen out there. They look like something out of the 80s.

good luck
Nova

Thanks for your questions, which I'll take in order:

1) I never played the SSI game, but from what I know there are some similarities. Perhaps one of the testers can answer better.
2) OOB's, easily. Maps, no. Maps will be graphics that cannot be changed once they're done. (Which is why I was trying so hard not to make mistakes.)
3) Leaders play a big role, from the regiment/battery level on up. This thread has some info: tm.asp?m=2528528
4) None of that is really relevant for the first release, though Williamsburg did have a smallish fort and some redoubts. Gunboats we'll have to figure out for future releases.
5) Big battles are our goal. While we will have some scenarios that sort of zoom in and just have a famous part of a larger battle, the idea is that we have maps that can go up to 50 square miles, and that means every battle can fit (though the full area covered by Cold Harbor, as I recall, is tough to fit, if one wants room for maneuvering).

Gil,
Thanks for the reply. As for the SSI game, it was a great one for its time. The non editing of maps is kind of a let down, but the scale of the ones provided seems pretty good though. I alsways liked games like Steel Pantheres and TOAW where you could make your own maps. I guess I'll just hang out and wait to see what the finished product turns out to be .
Take Care,
Nova

If you read back far enough in this forum you'll find that somewhere I made a promise to work with modders who want to create maps. Essentially, any battle that WCS plans to do as part of the BAB series -- right now, though would be roughly 20 battles -- would be excluded from the offer, but in other cases if some of you out there have the requisite graphics skills to make a map then I'd give input along the way and do the map-editing so that the code can read it. (The map would have to be given away freely on the Matrix site, and would have to meet a minimum quality standard. If both of those requirements are met I'm happy to help grow the number of battles available to BAB players.)