New Panzer Campaign Graphics

[phoenix]

I'll repeat here what I posted in WDS, more or less.

Since these JTS games have been my favourite games for a long time, I confess to being a little frightened every time you announce you’re going to change the graphics. So, with the Napoleonics, which I've played more than any, via some modding, the games all look great to me now, much preferable to the ACW series graphics, which I don’t like as much, and hence I don’t buy them.

So I’m relieved that with the PC series (and I hope the Napoleonic too?) you say the old graphics will be an option, including, I hope, the option to get keep the old graphics without the Jison-type hard hexes, which – seriously – if I had only the option to play with those things, I really would not play (or buy) any of these games. I really really do not like the Jison hexes, and I know I'm not alone in that. I know there are people out there who love them, but all they do for me is make a cluttered mess of the map, making it nothing like an actual map at all. Whilst adding nothing. What do they add, I wonder, that a simple optional hexgrid (such as already exists) does not provide?

But I hope, therefore, that there will be a version of the new title – Scheldt 44, which I was really looking forward to – which will not have either the Jison-type hexes or only the new graphics you display above. Because for me the GOLD maps are RIGHT NOW really nice (the non Jison variant). They look the closest we’ve come yet to actual maps at that scale. The towns, cities and urban areas are particularly excellent representations – and yet now, having only just come up with them, you intend, it seems, to get rid of them and have Panzer Battles type '3D' buildings as 2D towns/urban areas? But I feel a map at this scale (the PC series scale), from this period should not have little buildings representing cities as if it were drawn by a Napoleonic staff officer. It should look more like the cities you already came up with in the Gold releases. There should be an attempt to match the scale to the scale of the features – if you’re seeking a natural, normal appearance, as close as possible to an actual map. I fear that all the features – trees, buildings, hex edges etc – seem to get gradually bigger and further removed from a representation of their actual size in relation to the terrain, making all the maps look more and more like a squad level map, which they’re not.

That said, the graphics in the Scheldt pictures look very beautiful, and, indeed, if you get rid of the hex centres, amongst the least hexy stuff you’ve done – the rivers, roads, streams etc are very rounded and smooth, instead of angular, which makes a big difference. The trees are really nice – though why fill them in right to the very hex edges, as you have, which makes them into rigidly defined hex blocks of forest such as you might see on an old style board game? The polder graphic is lovely. All of the unit graphics look great.

I wonder why can’t we have different updates for game changes and graphic changes? Then anyone who didn’t go for all or some of these graphics changes could stick with what they bought and still be up to date? I have bought 38 of these JTS games and it would be nice to not have to worry about, for example, graphics changes which totally change the appearance of the game I bought, not have to worry about Jison-type hexes (or someone’s ‘top-down’ mod that I didn’t even like) being transplanted later into games which I would never have bought if they’d been in there in the first place.

As said above, we will all have our views, but certainly, we all appreciate all this effort, David. Thanks.