SB: Dien Bien Phu Released

[TheBigRedOne]

I had been thinking that this war would be a great subject for a mod of ToD or Vietnam, but I guess HPS beat me to it. No problem there. I'm pretty excited about this one. Here are a couple links for anyone who wants to do some prepatory reading. The first one is by some wargaming historians, and it has some neat stuff.

http://indochine54.free.fr/index.html#top

http://hksw.org/vietnam.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Indochina_War

Edit: Can't HPS shake up the artwork a little though?

There are a couple of really good books about DBP and the French War in Indochina in general. Hell in a Very Small Place by Bernard Fall and The Last Valley are two very comprehensive books on DBP.

As for the graphics, that's a tough one, and a sentiment I actually do agree with. Fact is, we've been spoiled by IronX's graphics work, but keep in mind that graphics for a commercial release aren't free. Andrew's pumping out really killer stuff, but he's doing it on his own time, and with the idea of selling those skills to the greater wargaming community. It's his investment towards a commercial wargame graphic design free-lance career, so of course he's going to go all out on his graphics enhancements. Smart business move, really.

There's a cost involved for the commercial graphics, and I'd imagine with a limited budget, most of the money goes towards the coding for the engine changes, where coding is a premium cost. There's always a tradeoff. I'd rather have more games produced with slightly less flashy graphics, than having one game every 5 years with killer graphics. Just my opinion, of course.

My disclaimer is that I do playtest for HPS, I do not get paid and I have absolutely no knowledge of anything related to the cost or budget of any of the SB work. I'm merely hypothesizing on the cost structure....