How do we make maps?

[Strela]

All,

I answer a simple request from Compass Rose and we're now in a business model discussion!!!  

Firstly, the decision around editors to be released or not has dated back as far as Talonsoft. John Tiller has continued that approach for a number of reasons around quality and commercial viability.

Whether we agree with that or not is a separate discussion, but there is a belief that with the range of titles (Panzer Campaigns) released there are plenty of maps available for modders to go crazy on.  The first two big titles I worked on were mods - I did Volcano Man's Korsun mod and PZC Kharkov '43 was a mod that I was going to release with 15 - 20 scenarios as an add on for Kharkov '42. A random reach out to Glenn Saunders resulted in that title being published.

I don't view the lack of map editor for Panzer Campaigns as an impediment to modders - there is not people out there wanting to do it is more an issue in my view.

For Panzer Battles we're taking a slightly different approach, we have trained up a number of people to use the map editor, which is a big improvement from where we were 12 months ago. With Dave Blackman passing away in the last 6 months we lost the most experienced map maker for all series and we didn't want to risk that single point of dependency.

The people trained up bring a lot of new skills to the team and in a number of cases are active modders already - see Chris M's page here  http://thesharpendgaming.blogspot.com/ for a number of his unique scenarios built using the map editor. Chris's current scenarios work with Kursk, but we're looking at ways that we can get free content out to ANY potential player without requiring a purchase or ownership of a prior title.

So what does this all mean? We're looking at ways to bring you professional, reviewed content in a quicker way. This includes full titles as you've seen in the past, but we're also looking at how we can get additional content for purchased titles as well as free standalone content. Using this approach we have a chance to build a strong in house team of modders/scenario designers and we can get more stuff out quicker to you all at the quality we think is required for professional release. There are projects underway as we speak.

A final word on look and feel. A number of the requests made here are graphics mods - height graphics, slope hex sides etc. None of the graphics you're seeing are final and as the team know I tweak constantly until release day. Some of the requests made here though are modernising the engine, changing graphics formats, user interface etc. We're looking at all these and we don't disagree with a number of the areas suggested for improvement, These need to be prioritised against work on new titles and patches as well as programming resources. Just be aware we want to improve these things as much as you do - we play these games too....!

David