I finally pulled the trigger on BftB during the sale, and in most ways it's exactly what I expected - CotA, but in the Bulge and with some changes here and there. So I'm about 99.9% happy with it, except for one thing: E Company, 506th PIR has no unit history. Seriously, why bother having the card in there if you're not going to use it for one of the most famous units of the war? Clearly not every mortar platoon etc needs a detailed description, but HttR at least had an, "As Seen on Band of Brothers" kind of thing there. It seems like such a weird oversight, and just confirms my fear that it wasn't worth $80.
Hopefully enough people will buy it at $60 though, because it's definitely worth that. Fantastic game all around, and really a must for anyone with even a passing interest in the subject.
Yes, thus why they are racing ahead of the leg infantry (and could go farther, if I wanted my lines to be completely exposed - the values on each counter are combat strength/movement allowance, which change dynamically as the turn progresses).Originally Posted by Wisbechlad
As an FYI, Empires of Steel is now $20 at the Battlefront Store and there is an updated demo out that incorporate the latest updates (forgot..no links for this guy yet. You will have to search all by yourself.)
I thought $45 was crazy for a game of this type, but $20 is a justifiable addition to the backlog.
I want to see if Lum won the game at Turn 2.
As of the last 24 hours, Empires of Steel is now being sold with no DRM. Just thought I'd let everyone know.
Have a good Christmas.
Full disclosure: I'm the developer of Empires of Steel.
Heh, I'll post a screenshot in a bit but suffice to say that that was a very close-in view of the border. I'm a long way from Moscow.
Just for wargaming fetish: http://www.cesspit.net/misc/cb.jpg
Yeah, Case Blue is a monster-gamer's monster. I really like the system it's based on, but pretty much all of the games in that series are just too big for me to find playable.
I noticed it's the exact layout of this: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic523778_lg.jpg (see the northernmost part of the map)
the screenshot I posted is also a very small part of the map since the module for Vassal is Guderian's Blitzkrieg II + Case Blue, and the hugest part is south.
Also, for comparison because it's fun:
http://www.cesspit.net/misc/cb.jpg
http://www.cesspit.net/misc/cb2.jpg
Last edited by HRose; 12-10-2010 at 07:24 PM.
So what is that? Is that Vassal or is it some new Computer Wargame that I haven't heard about?
As I said it's Vassal. Also playable since the manuals are available, but Vassal the program won't do much beside giving the map and counters.
Surely it won't give the AI ;)
I wonder why PC wargames don't really offer comparable graphic. Apparently tabletop wargames have usually a wonderful look.
Wow. I'm surprised at how good it looks, I've never used it, but always assumed Vassal graphics would either look very rough cut or like they had been scanned in. If you look carefully, it looks like there's a bit of a map fold scanned in on the lower-third of the screenshot. But it all looks very nice.
Some Combat Mission: Normandy screenshots:
More here.
Looks great! But damn, I'm still upset about them charging for the vista patch.
Should I get over it?
Wait and see what people think about CM:N. If everyone loves it, then get over it. If everyone hates it, than you can remain upset until they release something you really want to play ;-)
This is how it looks at the proper zoom level (with Hitler counter added for fun)
And this is the full scale.
The other OCS modules look even better with a more colorful map.
GROGNARD PEDANT MODE ON: That's actually the SS Der Fuhrer regiment, not Hitler himself. I'd be impressed if Hitler had a 10 combat value.
Nice. Have they ever said if CM:N will use the "we go" system from the older CMs?
I was holding off purchasing because of the $80 price point but thanks to the sale it will now be mine by Christmas, oh yes.
Should have the option to either play using the standard wego from classic CMs or pausible real-time.
There's no reason to think CM:N won't be excellent, since they got all the wonkiness out of the engine with CM:SF. I think they've confirmed both pausable real-time and WEGO, just like SF.
Also, I'd get over the Vista patch thing, but then my coat isn't brown...
How is the AI? Always heard good things about COTA, but the price point and my limited time have always kept me from pulling the trigger on these games.
I heartily recommend you guys playing WitE to disable in-game music and play this in the background: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlBxRr4-Gu4
It's one of those obligatory experiences.
(and to not just troll: a beta patch is already out and can be installed without breaking save games)
Also this:
War in the West (43-45) and War in North Africa are the next two games we will be working on. Eventually plan to link them all (that is the plan anyway).
Last edited by HRose; 12-11-2010 at 03:41 PM.
There's this Wolf3d mod coming out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCUcw44l9F8. One of my students showed it to me the other day. Fairly interesting, if a bit grim.
This is absolutely of no use to anyone here, but I have to say that my time spent as a tester for a number of Grigsby's games, some years ago, completely turned me off of his wargames. This from a long time hard-core grognard.
I suspect one could get sued for libel or slander, so I'll be careful in what I say, but I was extremely disappointed in his corner cutting and apparent disdain for the actual quality of the games. A lot of what happened behind the curtain in those games would have really turned off a lot of wargamers.
And this from someone who spent a gazillion hours with every SSI (and SSG) wargame, and still counts Guadalcanal Campaign as one of my all time faves.
Assholes. (Them, Wombat, not you.)
An episode connected to the revolt at Birkenau haunted Primo Levi - a good and profound man - his whole life. In his first memoir he described it in a chapter called "The Last One."
Maybe someone could communicate that in the form of a Commander Keen mod.. . . Is there to be a roll-call? It is not a roll-call. We have seen the crude glare of the searchlight and the well-known profile of the gallows.
For more than an hour the squads continued to return, with the hard clatter of their wooden shoes on the frozen snow. When all the Kommandos had returned, the band suddenly stopped and a raucous German voice ordered silence. Another German voice rose up in the sudden quiet, and spoke for a long time angrily into the dark and hostile air. Finally the condemned man was brought out in to the blaze of the searchlight.
All this pomp and ruthless ceremony are not new to us. I have already watched thirteen hangings since I entered the camp; but on the other occasions they were for ordinary crimes, thefts from the kitchen, sabotage, attempts to escape. Today is different.
Last month one of the crematoriums at Birkenau had been blown up. None of us knows (and perhaps no one will ever know) exactly how the exploit was carried out: there was talk of the Sonderkommando, the Special Kommando attached to the gas chambers and the ovens, which is itself periodically exterminated, and which is kept scrupulously segregated from the rest of the camp. The fact remains that a few hundred men at Birkenau, helpless and exhausted slaves like ourselves, had found in themselves the strength to act, to mature the fruits of their hatred.
They said he had contacts with the rebels of Birkenau, that he carried arms into our camp, that he was plotting a simultaneous mutiny among us. He is to die today before our very eyes: and perhaps the Germans do not understand that this solitary death, this man's death which has been reserved for him, will bring him glory, not infamy.
At the end of the German's speech, which nobody understood, the raucous voice of before again row up: "Habt ihr verstanden?" Have you understood?
Who answered "Jawohl"? Everybody and nobody: it was as if our cursed resignation took body by itself, as if it turned into a collective voice above our heads. But everybody heard the cry of the doomed man, it pierced through the old thick barriers of inertia and submissiveness, it struck the living core of man in each of us:
"Kamaraden, ich bin der Letzt!" (Comrades, I am the last one!)
I wish I could say that from the midst of us, an abject flock, a voice rose, a murmur, a sign of assent. But nothing happened. We remained standing, bent and grey, our heads dropped, and we did not uncover our heads until the Germans ordered us to do so. The trapdoor opened, the body wriggled horribly; the band began playing again and we were once more lined up and filed past the quivering body of the dying man.
At the foot of the gallows, the SS watch us pass with indifferent eyes: their work is finished, and well finished. The Russians can come now: there are no longer any strong men among us, the last one is now hanging above our heads, and as for the others, a few halters have been enough. The Russians can come now: they will find only us, the slaves, the worn-out, worthy of the unarmed death which awaits us.
To destroy a man is difficult, almost as difficult as to create one: it has not been easy, nor quick, but you Germans have succeeded. Here we are, docile under your gaze: from our side you have nothing more to fear; no acts of violence, no words of defiance, not even a look of judgement.
Alberto and I went back to the hut, and we could not look each other in the face. . .
I'm always conflicted about things like this mod. Using the Holocaust for game fodder is fairly cringe-worthy, yet I was intrigued to see the students who showed it to me (this in a senior-level game production capstone, where I was team-teaching as the general education partner with the program faculty member) actually showing an interest in history and the Holocaust for once; they ere even debating the merits of the mod and using that subject matter for games.
I guess it's sort of an Inglorious Basterds type of thing, perhaps. I can't help but think it fails in the end to be much more than a gratuitous and lurid fantasia. Hmm, sort of like Tarantino's movie....
It's a shitty game to make, in my opinion. Every revolt, every escape meant mass retaliation against the slaves in concentration camps. And the chances of becoming a slave, if you were Jewish or Gypsy or gay or a Jehovah's Witness was extremely slim: the typical holocaust experience was that you were loaded on a train, and then sent to shower (gassed) or simply shot. Those stories don't survive, however, for obvious reasons. Why not make that into a mod? The horror of the cattle cars and the expectation of water? The prussian blue on the walls as the Sonderkommando clear out the dead, packed so tight they are still standing after death?
I don't think it's wrong to try to make the game. Games need to be pushed in uncomfortable directions. But I think it's shitty.
As always, the big asterisk on this conversation is "until I play the game itself it's hard to say definitively how good it is as a game or an educational tool". But given that this is a thread about wargaming, I'm assuming we're all here because in some form or another we accept the abstraction of war's grim realities into game mechanics as a compromise that occurs on a spectrum of tastefulness, educational utility, and entertainment. At the same time, I think that context can blind one to the most interesting aspect for me, which Wombat describes above: it's going to seem more gratuitous and lurid to people that have better examples of ways to interact with the historical event in question. No one here had to look up Primo Levi even if they hadn't read that particular work, and that's simply not the case for many people out there of a variety of age groups. In their case (and in my case, for issues I am less informed on), I welcome the well intentioned efforts alongside the crass ones (that means you, Hurt Locker) because they open the door to more substantive conversations via a format that is already familiar to the less informed person, whether it's an action movie format or the original videogame "Nazis are fun to shoot in a consequence free environment" scenario.
I don't expect people to accept them without particular criticisms about exploitation and the like, since that's part of what needs to be talked about openly. But those standards shouldn't be applied only in cases of taboo thresholds being crossed, because there's no advantage in pretending there's a binary distinction between one atrocity and another.
I don't mean this as an argument against anyone here, I'm just speaking generally as to the question posed with the Wolfenstein link.
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