Insight into the sort of freak event that can delay a HPS project!

[Mr Grumpy]

Gents,
I just received my copy of WSF and it looks like a very interesting title especially as i am a big desert warfare fan, i had been aware that the title had been delayed by a unspecified problem and reading through the designer notes i came across these paragraphs which show how a project can be delayed by the most unexpected events......:eek1:


"War on the Southern Front is perhaps the longest HPS Game we’ve been involved with helping John Tiller to produce. We got started shortly after the release of The First Blitzkrieg in 2005, but an unfortunate event caused massive water damage to the Wig Graves basement where he kept years of research covering many aspects key to creating this game and others. Many of you may know Wig Graves is one of our key researchers and the person responsible for doing all the original basic scenario layouts. He is also the person who devised the system for rating the various combat values for the complete series Order of Battle (OOB). Because of the flooding, Wig suddenly spent many hours with a hair drier salvaging whatever information he could from the disaster.

After that set back, the project was prone to periods of enthusiastic scenario development. This was followed by long periods where this title went on the backburner, as the designers involved worked on other projects. John Tiller offers us a very flexible environment for game creation. Unlike most commercial developments where this is the primary employment for the scenario design team, we all have families, days jobs, and other distractions – even other responsibilities on other game projects. So, unfortunately, War on the Southern Front kept getting put on the back burner."


I changed some of the text to bold to highlight an important point about the way HPS projects are developed and explains the often long periods between title releases. ;)