Upgrading PW: AE .....Real-time on a server

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Rusty1961

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

The strength of WITP-AE is in the game engine's calculations that determine contact and combat outcomes. It does not have any programming that would make 3D animations possible and if I understand the professional programmers, the engine cannot be so modified.

You are talking a whole new game here, and that subject has been beaten to death. Until someone comes forward with the money to pay for a design and programming project of at least three years plus all the legal copywrite issues, it ain't gonna happen. There is a thread in the Tech section (stickied, I think) in which players were invited to submit their wishes for game improvements. The response was so overwhelming (and beyond the programmer's ability to address) that nothing further happened. Around that time our moderator informed us that the developers who had kindly been donating time to tweak the game were no longer able to do so.

Players can make scenarios in the editor and make a few simple tweaks like map changes (if they have the skills), but the game engine is copywrited so player re-programming will never approach making the game a real-time tactical game.

We're just dreaming. I don't see a problem with people giving their thoughts on what they would like. I didn't it would be so distressful.

It was not clear to me that the people posting knew they were posting dreams rather than actionable suggestions. I did not want to squelch dreaming, but to be sure they knew their wish lists were not actionable unless someone spends a lot of money (for no financial return). Our agenda should be to get Paul Allen hooked on this game! [:)]

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: durnedwolf

There used to be a game - Great Naval Battles by SSI. You could take control of an individual ship and be in charge of navigation, gunnery, and damage control. I loved that game. If you could do that - pick a battle and control just one ship or airplane or tank of your choice per turn... That'd be soooo cool.

I have that game. I never got good enough at running any of the stations your could take over - i.e. I wasn't bad on the rangefinder at hitting the enemy but the enemy seemed to always knock out the ship before I could do much damage to him. OTOH, when I stayed in Admiral mode I could always outmaneuver the enemy and win the battle with the pixelcrew handling the ship stations. Graphics would be blocky by today's standards but were good enough for the computing power available at the time.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

ORIGINAL: Rusty1961

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

The strength of WITP-AE is in the game engine's calculations that determine contact and combat outcomes. It does not have any programming that would make 3D animations possible and if I understand the professional programmers, the engine cannot be so modified.

You are talking a whole new game here, and that subject has been beaten to death. Until someone comes forward with the money to pay for a design and programming project of at least three years plus all the legal copywrite issues, it ain't gonna happen. There is a thread in the Tech section (stickied, I think) in which players were invited to submit their wishes for game improvements. The response was so overwhelming (and beyond the programmer's ability to address) that nothing further happened. Around that time our moderator informed us that the developers who had kindly been donating time to tweak the game were no longer able to do so.

Players can make scenarios in the editor and make a few simple tweaks like map changes (if they have the skills), but the game engine is copywrited so player re-programming will never approach making the game a real-time tactical game.

We're just dreaming. I don't see a problem with people giving their thoughts on what they would like. I didn't it would be so distressful.

It was not clear to me that the people posting knew they were posting dreams rather than actionable suggestions. I did not want to squelch dreaming, but to be sure they knew their wish lists were not actionable unless someone spends a lot of money (for no financial return). Our agenda should be to get Paul Allen hooked on this game! [:)]

You know he died recently, right?

[LargeSlowTarget]

ORIGINAL: durnedwolf

There used to be a game - Great Naval Battles by SSI. You could take control of an individual ship and be in charge of navigation, gunnery, and damage control. I loved that game. If you could do that - pick a battle and control just one ship or airplane or tank of your choice per turn... That'd be soooo cool.

+1. Bought my first PC when I stumbled over GNB II in a computer shop. I usually left gunnery to the AI and concentrated on damage control, trying desperately to plug holes, pump-out flodded compartments and fighting fires, with quick dahses to the Admiral's bridge to give orders to the task force. The "continuous time" concept with event-triggered pauses was great.

I dream of a game on a zoomable Google Earth-type map which runs in "continuous time" (with acceleration option like in Silent Hunter for example) with event and report triggers that will pause the game when necessary (like "TF xy has reached destination, awaiting orders" or "Coastwatcher at Buin reports 50 enemy planes heading south" or "Guadalcanal base reports critical shortages of food, ammo, avgas and medical supplies - urgently requests resupply").

Each type of report should be configurable to be triggered by player choice in either "real-time" (for ex. when combat-related) or grouped in "phases" of 1 - 24 hours to avoid interrupting the game every x minutes (for ex. when logistics etc. are concerned).

There should be "Standard operation procedures" that could be defined for each event, like "Patrol" or "RTB" when a destination has been reached by a TF, "Scramble CAP" when bogeys are being reported etc. to automate tasks by player choice to keep things managable.

Any lottery winners with money to spare on the forum? [;)]

[tarkalak]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: Rusty1961

ORIGINAL: tarkalak



I played something like that a long time ago called Imperia, or something.

You have to be online all the time to be rally effective. Imagine that raid coming at 4 a.m. Your time. How will you ever get enough sleep or anything else done?

You would have default orders for each base, air group, TF, etc. The processing power of our computers today allows that.


We need to advance beyond the stage in our hobby of tolerating another incarnation of Panzer General for excitement.

We do?

To the original post, that's an entirely different game. It is not WITP, and is more akin to a game that is an arcade/simulation crossbreed.

Strategy games are turn-based for a reason.

There was a real time 24 hours campaign of Crossfire.

http://www.lloydianaspects.co.uk/wargaming/crossfireWorldDay.html#mainSection

It is board game and separate teams over the planet played different scenarios from a campaign.

[RangerJoe]

Think of a Civ type game where when there was a war, it would then open up a smaller tactical/strategic game just to handle the war. Smaller units and such on a smaller map where the turns weren't the entire Civ turn. Think if this game started out small as you had to take a small farming village to a larger city with outposts for defense, mining, and such like.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

It was not clear to me that the people posting knew they were posting dreams rather than actionable suggestions. I did not want to squelch dreaming, but to be sure they knew their wish lists were not actionable unless someone spends a lot of money (for no financial return). Our agenda should be to get Paul Allen hooked on this game! [:)]

You know he died recently, right?

No I did not. Now I am wondering about all those posts recently about his discovery of Wasp et al. There are timeline issues here.
But I will settle for Elon Musk's support since he seems determined to spend all his fortune ...

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

It was not clear to me that the people posting knew they were posting dreams rather than actionable suggestions. I did not want to squelch dreaming, but to be sure they knew their wish lists were not actionable unless someone spends a lot of money (for no financial return). Our agenda should be to get Paul Allen hooked on this game! [:)]

You know he died recently, right?

No I did not. Now I am wondering about all those posts recently about his discovery of Wasp et al. There are timeline issues here.
But I will settle for Elon Musk's support since he seems determined to spend all his fortune ...

I checked the articles also, thinking maybe it was a discovery from when he was still alive that just needed verification before publication, but no - he founded/funded the group that made the discoveries, and they've been continuing to work after his passing.

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: durnedwolf

There used to be a game - Great Naval Battles by SSI. You could take control of an individual ship and be in charge of navigation, gunnery, and damage control. I loved that game. If you could do that - pick a battle and control just one ship or airplane or tank of your choice per turn... That'd be soooo cool.

There were at least two games in the series, if not more. I had the Atlantic one and the Guadalcanal campaign one. Played the heck out of the GC campaign one.

It was both an operational and tactical simulator. You organized TFs to bring supply and troops to the canal, engaging in real time simulator naval combat when encounters occurred. You could jump down from the operational level to the bridge of any given ship and take control of it in the fight, or leave them all under the control of the tactical AI.

Just like with Silent Hunter (reloaded Wolves of the Pacific and started a campaign last night) when you zoom downward enough on the map the TF icons break up into individual ships. Same would happen in Great Naval battles with incoming air raids. You can leave the zoom at the operational level and see an air raid icon or zoom further and see individual planes.

This concept worked well for an operational campaign. Don't think it translates well to a grand strategic level.

[LargeSlowTarget]

The GNB series contained five games. Never played the first GNB but AFAIK it was North Atlantic only. GNB II was about Guadalcanal and was great, glad I purchased my first PC in order to paly it. GNB III "Fury in the Pacific" was fun as well but buggy and was more focusing on single battles like Coral Sea, Midway, Leyte Gulf etc.than on a drawn-out campaign like Guadalcanal. GNB IV was about the ETO and Med, was okay but I preferred the PTO and quickly moved to Gary Grigsby's Guadalcanal, then UV/WitP/AE. Part V of GNB was about World War One, only dreadnoughts and no aircraft. It was only available in a box containing all four previous games, I abstained. Still have the CDs and manuals for parts II-IV, but they need Windows 95 to run. May try DOSBox one day time permitting. Wish there would be a remake, or WitP-AE II with tactical battles.

[Rusty1961]

With today's processing power it is comical to say or think we can't do a game like I suggested. It just takes good programmers now, something this hobby used to have, but doesn't any more.

[RangerJoe]

Think of all of the time involved to get everything working correctly. Hobbyists would be able to do it very fast and the risk of burn out is very high.

Why don't you do it all yourself?

[Rising-Sun]

Love that GNB Series, got the Fury in the Pacific. Too bad there isn't any game out there like that with better engines and graphics.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

Think of all of the time involved to get everything working correctly. Hobbyists would be able to do it very fast and the risk of burn out is very high.

Why don't you do it all yourself?

+1 to this.

If it "just" takes good programmers and that it's comical to suggest that with today's processing power (which isn't really that relevant...it wasn't relevant a decade ago under original WITP either), then maybe Rusty should just do it.

Also disagree with the notion that this hobby "used to have" good programmers but somehow doesn't anymore. We must be experiencing entirely different gaming universes.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

Think of all of the time involved to get everything working correctly. Hobbyists would be able to do it very fast and the risk of burn out is very high.

Why don't you do it all yourself?

+1 to this.

If it "just" takes good programmers and that it's comical to suggest that with today's processing power (which isn't really that relevant...it wasn't relevant a decade ago under original WITP either), then maybe Rusty should just do it.

Also disagree with the notion that this hobby "used to have" good programmers but somehow doesn't anymore. We must be experiencing entirely different gaming universes.

I get the feeling that WITP-AE was a "labor of love", expected to just break even on sales while the current environment is to push out more and more "first-person-shooter" games with dazzling graphics and lots of explosions - just like Hollywood action movies. No wonder kids are getting hooked on Red Bull!

All the really talented coders seem to be going into cyber warfare or cyber scam work ...[:(]

[Rising-Sun]

A person with good programming skills isn't going to be enough. You gonna need someone with good graphics and art skills, also need someone do the paragraphing and texts and manual design. Debugging the codes, making sure the game running smooth. And finally dealing with WWII details, unless they are willing to share that infos from here with them. Researching these WWII facts can take a lot of man hours and even correction too. Then finally having it copyrighted and place it on the market.

If I had a lot of money to burn or win a lottery ticket that suitable for the tasks, I would support it.

Infact I can do some of these things I mention above, but not all of it.

[HansBolter]

Hasn't this already been done?

Isn't HOI a 'real time' strategic simulator?

Believe most of us likely played it. I certainly did.


Was a fun game, but extremely unrealistic in its 'real time' implementation.


Troops loaded on transports and and transports left the docks and started their journey's 5 minutes after the loading started.


The difficulty in implementing a real time grand strategic game is not with processing power or programming its with creating an interface that allows a player to review the status of and issue orders to thousands of units across two thirds of the globe in real time.

Even trying to manage tactical real time battles games all too rapidly degenerate into arcade style rapid click-fests.
Most strategy gamers eschew arcade click-fests.

So much of orders and control would have to be automated that the player would be relegated to making only sweeping policy decisions at the grand strategic level. The issuance of operational orders, as we do in the way the game is structured now would have to be taken away form the player to make this animal workable and game appeal would drop commensurately.

[RangerJoe]

A person would be too busy sending out orders that there probably wouldn't be enough time to watch the action. Trying to coordinate things would more than likely be very difficult. But he should endeavor to do all of the coding himself since he thinks that it is so easy to do.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

Think of all of the time involved to get everything working correctly. Hobbyists would be able to do it very fast and the risk of burn out is very high.

Why don't you do it all yourself?

+1 to this.

If it "just" takes good programmers and that it's comical to suggest that with today's processing power (which isn't really that relevant...it wasn't relevant a decade ago under original WITP either), then maybe Rusty should just do it.

Also disagree with the notion that this hobby "used to have" good programmers but somehow doesn't anymore. We must be experiencing entirely different gaming universes.

I get the feeling that WITP-AE was a "labor of love", expected to just break even on sales while the current environment is to push out more and more "first-person-shooter" games with dazzling graphics and lots of explosions - just like Hollywood action movies. No wonder kids are getting hooked on Red Bull!

All the really talented coders seem to be going into cyber warfare or cyber scam work ...[:(]

I feel like this isn't a complete or accurate assessment of the current game development environment, either.

It's a bit paradoxical. There are more indie and niche games being made than ever before and they are more accessible to anyone who wants them than games ever have been before - because gaming is more popular.

However because gaming is more popular, the giant AAA titles or extremely popular games are even more visible in culture than the most popular games of a decade (or two, or three) ever were. This gives the impression that "all" that the games are is what the kids are playing these days. Fortnite or whatever the flavor of the year is.

That's just not true. One need only look at the ENORMOUS variety of games available on Steam and/or Humble Bundle on a regular basis to see what's truly out there.

I mean we're getting high fidelity ports of board games to the PC on the regular these days. While that was true of the most popular games in the 90s and 2000s, such as Axis & Allies and Risk and so on, nowadays we're getting digital versions of board games most people have never even heard of. Carcassonne, Brass, 7 Wonders, Splendor, etc. And these games make money for the developers, or they wouldn't keep getting made.

[RangerJoe]

Some of those board games being turned into digital games might just be taking a basic gaming engine and then putting in the information for the game. Then that is polished by testing. What he wants is a lot more complex. I think that he should do it and and have it ready by this time next year since he thinks that it is so easy. [:D]