Questions - Resolution, and New Battles

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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Brother against Brother: The Drawing of the Sword >> Questions - Resolution, and New Battles

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Questions - Resolution, and New Battles - 4/17/2015 9:14:17 PM

RobearGWJ

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Enjoying the game quite a bit. I have two questions. First, the obvious - when can we expect more battles, and which ones are coming? I'm in, definitely.

Secondly, why 1024x768 as the native resolution? I can't get picture a scenario where a game *needs* to be developed in such a low resolution these days... Any plans to upgrade it to something higher? Or is this moving to tablets where that might, conceivably, be a useful res? Or simply ease of development of sprites and the map?

Just trying to understand why that resolution was chosen.

Post #: 1

RE: Questions - Resolution, and New Battles - 4/17/2015 9:37:24 PM

RockKahn

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From: USA
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I use 1920x1080 on a 23" and it looks great.

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RE: Questions - Resolution, and New Battles - 4/17/2015 9:49:42 PM

ericbabe

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Thank you for the kind words. 1024 x 768 is simply the minimum resolution necessary to run the game and fit everything on the screen. There is no "native resolution" in the sense that certain types of displays have a native resolution.

< Message edited by ericbabe -- 4/17/2015 10:50:06 PM >

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Post #: 3

RE: Questions - Resolution, and New Battles - 4/17/2015 10:20:14 PM

Erik Rutins

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From: Vermont, USA
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It certainly does not run only in 1024x768. I run it at 1920x1080 as well and I find that it looks excellent at that resolution. You can see me playing at 1920x1080 in the livestream. Brother against Brother will adapt to your system's resolution and resize itself to match.

Regards,

- Erik

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RE: Questions - Resolution, and New Battles - 4/17/2015 11:08:59 PM

RobearGWJ

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That answers the one question... What about other battles? Is there a timetable yet? What's next? :-)

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Post #: 5

RE: Questions - Resolution, and New Battles - 4/17/2015 11:27:22 PM

Erik Rutins

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From: Vermont, USA
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Will WCS and Matrix be selling more scenarios for "Brother against Brother"?
We will regularly be providing more scenarios for each battle, but these will be provided for free. So, yes to new scenarios, no to having to pay for them.

What's next for "Brother against Brother"?
BAB was envisioned as a series of releases which can be condensed or expanded depending on how successful it is. Each release would have 3-5 battles, normally 1-2 major ones and 2-3 minor ones, which means that we could have as many as six or seven titles, produced at a rate of 1-2 per year. But if there isn't as much demand we would limit ourselves to just the really big battles and then move on to other things. Right now, we plan for BAB#2 to be entitled "Lee Takes Command" and be devoted to the Seven Days Battles and 2nd Manassas, and if sales meet expectations the next release after that would be "The Civil War in the West (1862)," devoted to Shiloh, Pea Ridge, Fort Donelson and one or two others.

This engine obviously can be used for other battles of the gunpowder era. Do you have any plans to do this?
We would like to do that, especially for the Napoleonic era -- but time, of course, is a major factor. BAB is produced by a three-man team (programmer/designer, map/OOB/scenario designer, artist), so working on, say, Waterloo or Yorktown would come at the expense of Shiloh and Gettysburg. But it is not out of the question, especially for Napoleonic battles, since we already have most of the era-specific code we would need from our game "Crown of Glory" (e.g., cavalry screens, infantry forming squares). (On a related note, we do have plans to use the naval combat engine from "Crown of Glory: Emperor's Edition" into a game devoted to historical Napoleonic naval battles, giving essentially the BAB treatment to that game's randomized battles involving generic forces, instead using the actual orders of battle.)

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RE: Questions - Resolution, and New Battles - 4/18/2015 7:12:16 AM

Gil R.

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Erik failed to note that he is quoting from my FAQ thread that's pinned to the top of the forum, which has other information about the game.

By not giving me proper credit and passing my words off as his own I believe that Erik is guilty of plagiarism.

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Post #: 7

RE: Questions - Resolution, and New Battles - 4/18/2015 12:41:37 PM

RobearGWJ

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My apologies for missing the FAQ, and thanks Gil! :-)

I'm very hopeful demand will support a plethora of new battles.

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Post #: 8

RE: Questions - Resolution, and New Battles - 4/18/2015 5:01:35 PM

Erik Rutins

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Gil R.
By not giving me proper credit and passing my words off as his own I believe that Erik is guilty of plagiarism.

Consider yourself flattered, Gil.

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RE: Questions - Resolution, and New Battles - 4/21/2015 5:47:09 PM

gexmex

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From: Nashville, TN
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I'm curious to know if anyone has tried playing this on something like a Surface, or Lenovo Yoga...my Yoga II's high resolution 13" screen has resulted in some scaling issues with several of my games from Matrix. I was just wondering if anyone had experience with BaB on small, high resolution laptops/tablets and could speak to how it looks.

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Post #: 10

RE: Questions - Resolution, and New Battles - 4/21/2015 6:27:00 PM

Crimso

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While I already consider you (i.e., all y'all) to be geniuses, you would be elevated to legendary status if you end up doing a release combining Stone's River and the Tullahoma Campaign (consider it the West in '63; Chick/Chatt being a release unto itself). More specifically for Tullahoma, the battle of Hoover's Gap. There wasn't much else in that campaign that might be interesting to do in this system, but hypotheticals would be way cool. Major fights at the other gaps, Bragg making a stand at Cowan (or the Elk River), Wilder following orders at Hoover's Gap and relinquishing it to the Rebs (followed by a major effort to hold it by Stewart, et al.). Mmmm mmmm mmmm.

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RE: Questions - Resolution, and New Battles - 4/21/2015 7:38:44 PM

Gil R.

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Crimso

While I already consider you (i.e., all y'all) to be geniuses, you would be elevated to legendary status if you end up doing a release combining Stone's River and the Tullahoma Campaign (consider it the West in '63; Chick/Chatt being a release unto itself). More specifically for Tullahoma, the battle of Hoover's Gap. There wasn't much else in that campaign that might be interesting to do in this system, but hypotheticals would be way cool. Major fights at the other gaps, Bragg making a stand at Cowan (or the Elk River), Wilder following orders at Hoover's Gap and relinquishing it to the Rebs (followed by a major effort to hold it by Stewart, et al.). Mmmm mmmm mmmm.

We definitely plan Stone's River -- which I enjoyed visiting many years ago, picking up the troop movements map at the gift shop in anticipation of this -- though it is unclear to me whether we would do it for BAB#3, on the western theater in 1862, or a subsequent release. It will partly depend on how successful BAB is, since greater interest will translate into a greater number of releases.

I am ashamed to admit that I do not even remember Hoover's Gap, but will consider it. Wikipedia tells me it was corps vs. corps, so it's certainly big enough to be included as a small battle. The factors affecting our decision will be how well we think it would work in BAB, and how many total BAB releases there will be. But since it's an 1863 battle it wouldn't be seen until BAB #4-6, depending on what those are. (And there are various ways to mix and match 1863-1864.)

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Post #: 12

RE: Questions - Resolution, and New Battles - 4/21/2015 9:45:09 PM

Crimso

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I kind of cheated with Hoover's Gap. It is fairly obscure, although of some historical note. The left of Rosecrans' army was to advance on Bragg via Hoover's Gap (Beech Grove, TN; I24 runs right through it) at the outset of the Tullahoma campaign. Wilder's Lightning Brigade (mounted infantry armed with Spencers and a horse arty battery) was to seize the northern end of the gap so that the infantry could come up and assault the gap. Wilder found the northern end picketed by a small no. of KY cavalry and ran right over them to the southern end of the gap. They planted themselves there and fought off what amounted to a Confederate division to hold the gap until support could arrive. Turns out the Confederates decided to quit the fight before the infantry arrived. It has been said that Hoover's Gap was the first time in the history of warfare that repeating rifles were used by an entire brigade (scarcely a week later repeaters saw relatively large scale use at Gettysburg), and that Wilder's advance through the gap was probably the fastest that amount of firepower covered that much ground in the immediate presence of the enemy up to that point in military history. Wilder's men had the mobility of cavalry and the firepower of at least a division. Longstreet heard Wilder's brigade crash into the left of his assault on the 2nd day at Chickamauga, and from the sound of it he briefly thought a new Federal corps had entered the battle. You'll find Wilder in the OOB for Stone's River, but not like this. He mounted them and got them Spencers in the months after Stone's River. Am I gushing too much? Can we have a release of nothing but Wilder?!?!?

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Post #: 13

RE: Questions - Resolution, and New Battles - 4/21/2015 9:46:15 PM

Crimso

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I like to call Hoover's Gap "the birth of the blitzkrieg."

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RE: Questions - Resolution, and New Battles - 4/22/2015 3:41:09 AM

Gil R.

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That does make it more intriguing. And I just checked the map again, and the area looks doable (4 x 4 miles, perhaps). So I have a note to keep this in mind down the road. (Also, the use of those guns makes it appealing -- BAB has a guns file with nearly 60 different types of firearms and artillery pieces, and it would be good to have more battles with the repeaters.)

I checked my notes, and as mentioned there are different possibilities for handling the western theater in 1863, depending on the demand for BAB. Right now, if Hoover's Gap were to be included it would go into a release that would have the title �The Army of Tennessee Takes the Field (1862-3),� though I personally refer to it as �Braxton Bragg�s Biggest Battles.� It would have Stones River, Chickamauga, and Missionary Ridge, so a smaller battle would fit nicely. But again, there are a number of ways we can do the releases from #3 onwards.

< Message edited by Gil R. -- 4/22/2015 4:42:14 AM >

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Post #: 15