Quick CEF Update

Sgt_Rock · 07-31-2018, 04:00 PM,

With this being the "dogs days of Summer" (104F in Boise on Tuesday is the forecast) the guys on our teams tend to take time off and do things with their families. Such is the case on the playtest team several of our guys taking a break from the playtesting the Campaign Eylau-Friedland (CEF) game.

Good news is that the images for the Units.bmp file are finished. Mark Adams is looking over and adding the units to the file after a bit of touch up work now and then. I am anticipating that sometime next month he will send me the images and the Units.bmp file for review.

Joe Amoral is hard at work on the 3D images and eventually the game screens. This will take all of the Fall and into part of Winter for him to finish. Should be ready to roll with the game release by February-March time frame (leaning to March I think ... will probably miss the anniversary date of Eylau ..).

Meanwhile, several of the playtesters are still hard at work on testing the game. Many have been helping with the solo scenario testing which led to finding some errors I had missed. The Battle of Friedland testing is up to turn 65 of 90 turns. I have kicked off "Round 2" of the Battle of Eylau testing. I have one team playing the battle and have another group of guys ready to go soon.

My last big "graphics hunt" is to find the leader images we need for the project. I will work on that in August so I can be finished with that part of the work.

Xaver · 07-31-2018, 07:50 PM,

Thanks for update, maybe is not the nap title i was waiting but well, is a nap title hehehe.

Damn, i expected title this year to do a megabuypack but well, better later and well done.

OFF-TOPIC: is true that you are going to jump from nap ship to a new one??? something WWII???

Sgt_Rock · (This post was last modified: 08-02-2018, 04:03 AM by Sgt_Rock.)

Yes, I am moving over to work on WW2 games. I cant say anymore about it at this time and the days of me broadcasting the project status is over. I now work with a team as a Scenario Designer mainly building the scenarios but also doing some OB and map work. I will have some say in the values in the OB files but want to keep things pretty much "standard."

I am excited about what the future holds. So far things have been moving along very well. I am reading up on two game projects with one of them having a higher priority. There are a lot of titles out there for me to work on and I am going to be busy I hope for the next 4-5 years on these projects.

Lohengrin · 08-03-2018, 03:43 AM,

I appreciate the update. The Poland Campaign is one I've really been waiting on, so please take your time and do it right rather than rush it. I don't need any product so badly that I need it ASAP warts and all.

Sgt_Rock · 08-04-2018, 04:15 AM,

We do our best with the time we have and with the materials we can procure. There is no doubt going to be errors in the values (strengths) - I will tell you that right off. The Polish campaign is very difficult to research. For one thing I do not have personal access to the documents that many historians use. I cannot get out of my house and walk over to the French archives.

This game has been in development for almost 16 years. Rather than forever tweak it I am all for seeing it released. I also do not have an infinite amount of time to work on a product.

Check out the RBR game. If you like what we did there you will enjoy the CEF product. RBR has a lot of unit strength data that is suspect. Just know that both games suffer from a lack of attention from historians to produce accurate OBs. Again, I dont have time or funds to fly to Europe (or pay someone to do that) and check out the archives. I do my best and the guys on the team think that the game is very good.

So far the error ratio for RBR is much less than for Marengo. I think that the amount of time we spent proofing the RBR product has paid off. We will do the same for CEF.

Xaver · 08-05-2018, 12:46 AM,

Thanks for the reply Sgt_Rock, expect you have luck in your new work.

Is sad you cant release some info-leak-bone to know what could be coming in our HDs soon™ but doing a blind shoot ... could be great if you be working in "Steel Tigers", even when in "Steel Panthers" i play hard the battle generator i still remember with a lot love classic scens like "When Tigers pounce", when a scen is well done and offer problems to solve from both sides is.... the first tactical scen i play in a serious wargame 22 years ago Whistle

Even when i like Marengo maybe i recommend over it RBR because offer a lot of variety in actors... even you have like in other late Tiller titles a battle for Paris... you can burn it and use salt to prevent the rise of metal falic tower and a million of romance movies based in Paris Big Grin2

Again thanks for info and good luck, maybe i change my mind about Polish campaign title.

Sgt_Rock · 08-05-2018, 08:21 AM,

I used to play Steel Panthers a lot. Great background music and sound effects too!

My first computer wargame was "Eastern Front" on the Atari 800. Does anyone remember that game? ;) That goes back to 1983-84 time period. My friend in the military had an Atari 400 (with the membrane keyboard) and he showed it to me when he got his computer. I later bought a WW2 tank game for the Atari but I cannot remember the name. It actually was a good game and the Atari had the best graphics for its time.

krmiller · 08-06-2018, 12:10 AM,

Bill,
I saw Eastern Front demonstrated on an Atari at an Origin's convention in New York. Bought myself an 800XL when they came out in 1983 and that's how I got started with computers. Had quite a libray of wargames before I moved to an IBM pc and later bought discs for the same games for the IBM. There were many fine wargames in the 80's and 90's, especially when you consider a lot of them were developed for machines with only 64K of memory and they had to be adapted to several different systems. I can remember waiting for the disk drive (512K floppy) to load the next phase of the program. Many of those were the IPlot/UPlot/WeGo type that went out of favor with the advent of PBEM gaming.

I still have my 800 in the attic along with some of those old games. Haven't had it out in years and no longer have an old analog tv to hook it up to so not sure if it still works. I have downloaded an Atari emulator and some of those old games that are now in the public domain and on occasion I'll start one of them up. The graphics are terrible by today's standards but the games are still good, especially the WeGo type and some of the Igo/Ugo ones had better Command Control systems than what you see today.

phoenix · (This post was last modified: 08-06-2018, 06:53 PM by phoenix.)

You doing JTS WW2 games, you mean, Bill? Whoever is employing you should be happy about you telling people that you're on the team as for everyone here who knows your work and style you being part of a project is a great selling point.

Sgt_Rock · 08-07-2018, 02:55 PM,

Ty Phoenix ... this is new to me and so far I am loving it. I am no longer doing all of the design work. Its fun to work with a team, do my part, move on to the next title and so on ... just got to a major point in the new work too. Really excited about it and love working with the new folks. That's all I can say for now. It was a real "breakout move" for me. I have wanted to do more WW2 since I did the Battle Academy: Fortress Metz project.

BTW: the door is still open at Slitherine Ltd. for me to work on the games they release. I just have to find a project that I can get in with. For now that is on hold as I have a Nap. series project to develop that I hope to release with them.

For now I am balancing my time between CEF and the new WW2 project.