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Joel Billings -> RE: 2by3 Russian Front Game? (3/7/2008 7:36:36 PM)
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Our Russian front game is no longer on hold. In fact, Gary has been very actively working on it for the past 6-8 months. He has been putting in some time on War Between the States, but that game is mostly waiting on Keith to finish the last few items on his to do list (and Keith has been making good progress the past month). Keith has even spent a little time helping Gary with a few GUI issues with the new Russia game. Since last summer Gary has probably spent 50-60% of his time on Russian Front. The big breakthrough came in late January when Gary finally figured out Keith's GUI engine enough to be able to get the game up and playable. The alpha map and data has been around for years, and starting late last summer Gary started recoding most of the combat and supply system which was started in 2001. By January he was ready to put in a basic GUI but was having problems. Thanks to some work he was doing on WBTS, he finally figured out how to get Keith's engine to do some things he needed to do. In February, he started adding a basic GUI so the game can be played. The GUI will have a long way to go, but at least he can start testing things. He's got the AI now playing against itself and is working through the opening moves.
The game is 10 miles per hex (about 190 by 140 hexes). He said in his opening tests it takes the AI nearly 15 minutes to complete the first German turn. It's not that things are particularly slow, it's just that at 10 miles per hex and division scale, the first turn of Barbarossa is a massive undertaking. We were kidding yesterday that the first 2 weeks of the war could be its own scenario that could take a few hours to play (how far can you get in 2 weeks). This will probably compare to the first turn of War in the Pacific for turn length, but we think the game system will give it a higher "fun factor" (and addictive quality) as you make your move.
The game is turn based with an integrated movement and combat phase. That means you move units, conduct attacks (hasty and normal), and then continue to move additional units and conduct additional attacks (including airstrikes). We think production will probably happen during this phase as well, although there is a chance it will be broken out into a unique production phase. When one player is done with their turn, the other player gets to make their moves/attacks/production. The only things that are "automatic/simultaneous" are air interdiction missions that can hit moving units, and automatic CAP that flies to meet enemy airstrikes. I think some kinds of air missions also fly automatically during your turn, while others are plotted. The land game is totally different than War in the Pacific. The air game has some similarities to WitP, but is also quite a bit different. The game uses the "engine" code from A World Divided, but a player would never know that as this only involves under the hood issues and not what the player sees in the game. I think some of the air code is similar to War in the Pacific, but it's probably been changed so much that you wouldn't recognize it.
We still have a long way to go as this game is massive, and the testing time will be long. Since it is weekly turns, we're looking at 200 turns instead of the over 1000 in WitP. This should speed testing, although we're still not sure how long a normal turn will take for players or the AI (once the front is stable). The guts of the simulation doesn't scare me as much as the GUI. Gary's been doing War in Russia games for 25 years now and he knows how to make a good simulation. It will take time to balance but we'll get that right with testing. The hard work will be in getting the interface done in a way that makes it as easy for players to play as possible. Since doing advanced GUI items will involve Keith, this part of the job will probably drag on longer than the work on the underlying code. So we may be doing our initial testing with a GUI that will change dramatically during development. That said, we're hoping that we can start initial testing within a few months. The process usually goes like this:
1) Gary gets the game up and running enough so he can test basic items (basic map, data, and interface).
2) Gary gets a basic AI into the game so he can run AI vs AI tests of his various systems (combat, movement, supply).
3) I get involved testing the basic interface and design.
4) The game gets to where a player can do all of the things that a player needs to be able to do (although with rudimentary GUI), Gary starts improving the AI based on my input.
5) At this point we often will try to have a few people testing the game (me, our data editor, and a few core testers). Work begins on improving the interface, refining the design and improving the AI. At this point the game is usually very difficult to play given the rudimentary interface and number of bugs.
6) We add alpha testers when the game is more stable and a bit easier to play.
7) Testing and development continue, often for many months (or years) until we reach beta, at which point we add more testers and move to finish development.
We're now far along on step 2 and about to reach step 3. I'm looking forward to finishing the last work on WBTS so I can focus on Russian Front. I can't say when we'll get to step 5 and are looking for our first testers, but things are looking much better now than they did even two months ago.
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