Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: Anachro

SH4 works fine on Win10 so probably works fine on Win7. At least for me. Not sure about SH3.

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ORIGINAL: Anachro

SH4 works fine on Win10 so probably works fine on Win7. At least for me. Not sure about SH3.

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ORIGINAL: spence

In spite of all its foibles I still play WITPAE and I have yet to find another game I prefer. I have ordered Strategic Command but I haven't gotten it yet so we'll see on that one. I've tried quite a few different ACw and WW1/WW2 titles but none have really caught my fancy.

I'm old enough to remember the "olden days" when Simulations Publications had the USN game as a magazine game in S&T. That game ended in about June 1943. And that was about the last point in time when Japan had any chance at all of winning a strategic victory and holding onto any of its preWW2 holdings. It was fun for both sides. It did not waste a lot of time or effort on the Chinese Theater of Operations which had already PROVED to be a drain on the Japanese economy/military and had already PROVED to be something very close to an utter stalemate. The strategic premises of the game had not been totally readjusted to permit Japan to win the game. Something similar to reality prevailed.

I've been playing this game or variants for 5 years: except for once as Allies. In most cases the game has ended because the IJ Player gave up about the same time that I got modern fighters and bombers and enough carriers to bring them in range of the IJ Player. Frankly I'm tired of playing a game that tends to end about the same time that I "get to feel like I'm winning too".

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ORIGINAL: Anachro

Silent Hunter 4 (not the more recent 5) is actually a lot of fun. There are some great mods that really expand the depth of the game: increased and extreme realism, more varied ships and enemies (air ASW, etc.), more dynamic AI and a better focus on including historical convoys, fleet movements, and battles. Of course, Silent Hunter 4 focuses on the American submarine war against Japan and not the Battle of the Atlantic; it might not be for everyone.

That said, installing mods for it is quite an effort in and of itself.

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ORIGINAL: geofflambert

Silent Hunter is borked. If it were realistic to the extent of WitP-AE you would have to putter around for at least a month (real time) before you even had a chance to acquire a target. Ship's log: Day one: nada. Day two: saw a pelican. Day three, Seaman Second Class Lambert put one of his boogers on a hook and caught a grouper! I hope the USS Neon Tetra survives so I can report this to HQ. Day four: ...

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ORIGINAL: warspite1

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ORIGINAL: Jorge_Stanbury

long time passing?

I think the biggest problem is the complete lack of creativity/ talent. Very few new developers are now coming with new ideas, instead they just recycle old concepts in better interface or "eye candy" graphics.

There are of course some exceptions, but few

warspite1

I suspect its not a lack of talent - its a lack of money/reward i.e. good old fashioned economics.

A few comments I have seen on forums here in recent weeks pretty much confirms what most have suspected for a long time. The hobby is niche and the returns are probably just not there for spending time/resource on experimenting with new games/concepts and different subjects (that may or may not sell).

Look at World In Flames. It's not like someone had to invent a game. An award winning, brilliant, beautiful game was there and ready. It just needed someone to bring it to the computer in a way that was economically feasible..... Well that's where the problems began.

Look at DC: Barbarossa. Decision cards may not be for everyone (and fair enough) but here was something a little different, a little exciting - perhaps the start of something. But the economic reality is that is unlikely to be the case.

There is a period of WWII that screams out to be war gamed. A game that is genuinely winnable by both sides without having to insert faux balancing items, a game that could appeal to the naval war gamer, the air man and the land war devotee in equal measure. One problem. The War in the Mediterranean is not the Battle of the Bulge, The Soviet / German war or any of the other 'staples' that cost conscious developers need to concentrate on. As was pointed out the other day in the DC:B forum, if it doesn't sell in the US then forget it, the returns are just not there.

No, I suspect there is a world of talent and creativity out there. But this is the wrong area of the gaming world to get their attention.

WitP AE - Test team lead, programmer

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ORIGINAL: geofflambert

Silent Hunter is borked. If it were realistic to the extent of WitP-AE you would have to putter around for at least a month (real time) before you even had a chance to acquire a target. Ship's log: Day one: nada. Day two: saw a pelican. Day three, Seaman Second Class Lambert put one of his boogers on a hook and caught a grouper! I hope the USS Neon Tetra survives so I can report this to HQ. Day four: ...

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ORIGINAL: wdolson

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ORIGINAL: warspite1

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ORIGINAL: Jorge_Stanbury

long time passing?

I think the biggest problem is the complete lack of creativity/ talent. Very few new developers are now coming with new ideas, instead they just recycle old concepts in better interface or "eye candy" graphics.

There are of course some exceptions, but few

warspite1

I suspect its not a lack of talent - its a lack of money/reward i.e. good old fashioned economics.

A few comments I have seen on forums here in recent weeks pretty much confirms what most have suspected for a long time. The hobby is niche and the returns are probably just not there for spending time/resource on experimenting with new games/concepts and different subjects (that may or may not sell).

Look at World In Flames. It's not like someone had to invent a game. An award winning, brilliant, beautiful game was there and ready. It just needed someone to bring it to the computer in a way that was economically feasible..... Well that's where the problems began.

Look at DC: Barbarossa. Decision cards may not be for everyone (and fair enough) but here was something a little different, a little exciting - perhaps the start of something. But the economic reality is that is unlikely to be the case.

There is a period of WWII that screams out to be war gamed. A game that is genuinely winnable by both sides without having to insert faux balancing items, a game that could appeal to the naval war gamer, the air man and the land war devotee in equal measure. One problem. The War in the Mediterranean is not the Battle of the Bulge, The Soviet / German war or any of the other 'staples' that cost conscious developers need to concentrate on. As was pointed out the other day in the DC:B forum, if it doesn't sell in the US then forget it, the returns are just not there.

No, I suspect there is a world of talent and creativity out there. But this is the wrong area of the gaming world to get their attention.

Many years ago there was an editorial in the Avalon Hill magazine The General about the size of the wargame hobby. I believe the writer was one of the head people at AH and knew the industry well. He pointed out that a mega hit in the wargame industry like Advanced Squad Leader would sell around 10,000 copies over its entire lifetime. The popular games sold by Hasbro all sell more than 100,000 copies a year. Hasbro drops games that don't meet that threshold. When Hasbro later bought AH people were scratching their heads because AH was such small potatoes compared to everything else in their line up, but they were looking to the rights to some of AH's more popular multiplayer games like Diplomacy to turn them into online games. That never really happened, but that may have been their thinking.

The computer game industry is a bit different from the physical game industry, but the same scale of economics apply. Games like Grand Theft Auto sell millions of copies and the studios that create those games have lots of cash to invest in new games. Though they still do all they can to recycle the old game engines because creating a game engine from scratch is not easy and once you get something right, you milk it for all you can. Games that can be played on multiple platforms are also desirable in the industry. Games limited to one platform are limiting their market from the start.

In the gaming business real time games sell better than games that take time to play. Those who don't play real time games, tend to be on game systems like iWin or play Facebook games that have fairly simple game engines compared to what it takes to run the sort of wargame Matrix releases. The sort of people who have the patience for a slowly unfolding game like AE are few and far between. And of those people, there is some percentage who wouldn't be interested in the subject, and another percentage who never heard of Matrix.

I can't go into details, but having seen the extent of the guts of AE, it would be a pretty daunting task for anyone to build an all new engine that did the same thing better. For a lifetime sales of 10,000 if you're lucky, the payoff is not worth it to most developers. Playing in the mainstream game arena where a big hit can bring in millions vs a niche game that might make $100K-$200K over its lifetime of the entire engine, only those who are doing it for the love of the game are going to bother.

AE was developed by a handful of people who were fans of the game. If we did it for the money we'd all be living in cardboard boxes now.

Bill

England expects that every man will do his duty. Horatio Nelson October 1805

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ORIGINAL: patrickl

Agree with TS. Just AE is not enuff to occupy us. I have just bought Hearts of Iron 3 from Amazon to play. We can only hope Matrix can quickly come up with another superb game like AE.

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ORIGINAL: Zigurat666

I must be old...most if not all of these are computer games. Nothing beats head-to-head with some beers and a friend. This Sunday Im having a game of Civil War by Victory Games with a buddy. Takes two days to play at around 6-8 hours a day but much fun.

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ORIGINAL: SheperdN7

Silent Hunter 4 is the first entry I ever played in the series and I loved it, even without any installed mods. It led me to getting SH3 which is even better and the graphics (IMHO) still stand up today. SH5 is very avoidable, it had such great promise and potential but utterly failed mostly with the DRM debacle and it is more buggy than an ant hill.

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ORIGINAL: wdolson



Many years ago there was an editorial in the Avalon Hill magazine The General about the size of the wargame hobby. I believe the writer was one of the head people at AH and knew the industry well. He pointed out that a mega hit in the wargame industry like Advanced Squad Leader would sell around 10,000 copies over its entire lifetime. The popular games sold by Hasbro all sell more than 100,000 copies a year. Hasbro drops games that don't meet that threshold. When Hasbro later bought AH people were scratching their heads because AH was such small potatoes compared to everything else in their line up, but they were looking to the rights to some of AH's more popular multiplayer games like Diplomacy to turn them into online games. That never really happened, but that may have been their thinking.

The computer game industry is a bit different from the physical game industry, but the same scale of economics apply. Games like Grand Theft Auto sell millions of copies and the studios that create those games have lots of cash to invest in new games. Though they still do all they can to recycle the old game engines because creating a game engine from scratch is not easy and once you get something right, you milk it for all you can. Games that can be played on multiple platforms are also desirable in the industry. Games limited to one platform are limiting their market from the start.

In the gaming business real time games sell better than games that take time to play. Those who don't play real time games, tend to be on game systems like iWin or play Facebook games that have fairly simple game engines compared to what it takes to run the sort of wargame Matrix releases. The sort of people who have the patience for a slowly unfolding game like AE are few and far between. And of those people, there is some percentage who wouldn't be interested in the subject, and another percentage who never heard of Matrix.

I can't go into details, but having seen the extent of the guts of AE, it would be a pretty daunting task for anyone to build an all new engine that did the same thing better. For a lifetime sales of 10,000 if you're lucky, the payoff is not worth it to most developers. Playing in the mainstream game arena where a big hit can bring in millions vs a niche game that might make K-K over its lifetime of the entire engine, only those who are doing it for the love of the game are going to bother.

AE was developed by a handful of people who were fans of the game. If we did it for the money we'd all be living in cardboard boxes now.

Bill

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You can get some wacky results with Black Ice (I'm looking at you Western Front where I can grind down the German juggernaut along the river lines of France and Holland, massive disparity in casualties due to crazy defensive bonuses).

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For people who enjoyed Close Combat and/or Combat Mission there is this, Graviteam Tactics.
See their website http://graviteam.com/ and a review on Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

I haven't played it but it certainly is on my list.

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AE was developed by a handful of people who were fans of the game. If we did it for the money we'd all be living in cardboard boxes now.

Bill

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AE was developed by a handful of people who were fans of the game. If we did it for the money we'd all be living in cardboard boxes now.

Bill

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ORIGINAL: SheperdN7
Bill, when development started, did you ever have any idea that the end product would be this special?

WitP AE - Test team lead, programmer