The Europe Saga Continues

Balancing the map took longer than expected but was done before the weekend. I lost a day helping a friend move but unit placement has begun. This process is going to also take a while but I had anticipated that since combined together, there is a LOT of military equipment to be found in Europe. Looking at the lists it seems that the units from France, Germany and Poland are some of the largest lists but with so many countries crammed into this map there’s just a lot to do. I still hope to have the map finished in a few more days if I can keep plugging away at it.

-- Chris

Will anyone notice if...

Will anyone notice if the border between Argentina and Chile at the bottom of South American isn't quite right? Will anyone notice if some cities along the Indian Ocean are moved slightly to accomodate river terrain? Will anyone notice if the Trans-Canada highway isn't quite in the right place? Will anyone notice if the National Debt of Portugal is incorrect?

These are just a few examples of questions that came up in recent days as we try to model the world with a very high level of detail. It's quite a task, but our main guideline is "do it right"; I guess that explains why we've been 5 years in development! Cities, populations, industries, roads, economies, debtloads, and so much more - all modelled on accurate world data.

Those players that play SR2010 as a tactical military game will probably never notice all the details, but we think that some people certainly will notice, which is why we're taking so much time to get details as accurate as possible. I'm sure we won't get everything perfect the first time (hey, the world is a big place!), and the variable scale of different scenarios is causing us to make some generalizations, but all in all SR2010 is going to be a very impressive "simulator of the world".

-- George.

North America at War...

This week's Dev test game was North America, the map David has just finished. (Well, almost finished, the units for Mexico and Central America still to go...) This is one of the handful of 'big' maps that will come with SR2010 - hundreds of hexes wide, 25 km to the hex. In other words, big. In fact, this is the size of theatre that just can't be done with most other strategy/wargames, whether they be games such as the Civilization series or more traditional wargames.

To some extent, a game map this large doesn't make for the best multiplayer games, at least not one that you want to finish in a single sitting. Two of the players, 'Canada' and 'US West', have regions so large that they are hard to monitor and manage in real-time mode. For many players, this will be a good type of map to play over time in turn-based mode.

In the end, Mexico/Central America made a good showing, using cheap labour to build up a Military infrastructure from scratch, and used the 'but it's only Mexico' sympathy ploy to trade for the best technologies from the other regions, eventually launching a Tomahawk attack on Florida. There was a 'Hunt for Red October' type chase as two of Mexico's aircraft carriers (purchased from the US West) made a daring raid and then escaped back to home waters. But in the end, a web of intertwined alliances and attacks had everyone at war, and the large land and air forces of US West and US NorthEast dominated. It was called a draw between those players after over 6 hours of play.

Touring Europe

Well, I’m fairly certain David will win. I’ve only gotten one of the eleven products balanced and it’s taking some time. The game uses a map wide variable to set output levels of each product and getting the right value for the right levels for 32 players and then setting the industries for 32 players is turning out to take some time. I spent most of the day still working on it but was also distracted by some graphics work that needed to be done and testing aircraft carriers each time George thought he got it working. Generally it does but there are some minor issues about what happens when 5 squadrons are sent to a carrier that can only carry 4. Looking at the Kentucky map I can imagine that players will be able to make some interesting attacks since they start with F-14s, F-18s, multiple Nimitz class carriers and amphibious assault ships. Perhaps I could load them all up and take a Florida vacation :) …

-- Chris

The race is on ...

There's a challenge to see who can get their maps done first. Chris is working on Europe, David on North America and I'm plodding through the World. I guess you can say that I won't be done first. I think I've been placing cities for over a week. After cities comes setting non-city hex population (exciting stuff), then placing upgrades such as bases and facilities. Then it's a numbers game to get joined regions working properly in areas of production and commerce by setting items such as GDP/c, treasury, debt and supply and demand of all eleven game resources. Setting technologies and placing units will complete the World map just in time for release. The only thing that will save me time is it's all a matter of copying from sub maps. All research is done. All regions are decided.

While looking over the World map and how it could play out, I wonder who will get Greenland and Iceland as they are not part of any of our sub maps. They will certainly make viable hopping points for regions planning on crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Are there other islands that are being overlooked that could be used for strategic points of entry or defense of a continent? I guess it's a matter to decide when I start drawing regional borders.

So, who will win between David (North America) and Chris (Europe)? Stay tuned...

-- Daxon

Recurring visions

Having just finished the Germany scenario there is something strange about working on the population of Germany again, but I’m now working on the map of Europe. This map is moving along at a good pace since for once I have no research to do. All players for Europe are the winners from the sub-Europe scenarios. The players are Italy, Balkans, Germany, France, Nordic States, British Isles, Greece and Ukraine, all of which are sub maps where a winner would already have been decided. This map does still pose many challenges since the map scale is at 18km/hex and all the maps I’m copying from are smaller, usually 10-12km/hex. Fitting all the bases, industries and cities into such tight quarters is proving interesting. I doubt it would be possible if we did not support two sizes for on map upgrades, a larger one as default and a smaller size for the large scale maps such as Europe or the World.

-- Chris

What, another war in Germany?

We tested the Germany scenario in our weekly multiplayer dev-team slugfest. A new twist was the fact that AI regions were now getting randomly involved using their new "kill all humans" strategy (this is more for testing purposes than anything else, they will be a little bit more diplomatic in regular games). The two most powerful regions on the map (NW Germany and Southern Germany) were left in AI hands, and caused some tough moments before they were taken out. (Latvia, on the other hand, fell quite easily!)

When it was down to just the 5 humans, the diplomacy and influence-peddling began. Against his better judgment, Chris (Hungary) settled for a land deal that gave me (Belguim/Netherlands/Luxembourg) a chunk of land bordering Daxon (Poland). (Maybe the $5 billion and high tech fighter aircraft designs helped convince him). Some heavy "meat grinder" battles ensued, and after over a thousand battalions destroyed the eventual winner was David playing as East Germany. Sometimes the best way to win is to keep a low profile until everyone else is beaten and bruised!

While the Germany map is somewhat crowded due to the density of population and industry in Europe, it should certainly be a popular map due to its interesting strategic options coupled with its strong historic elements.

Midnight Oil

Well, half past midnight, but Germany map is balanced and units are placed. We're planning to use the map for tomorrow night's (tonight's?) Dev team test game, a weekly ritual, so I needed to get it completed. It should prove very interesting as it offers a number of powerful players. As part of the storyline Germany is divided into North West, South West and East. Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg are united as the BeNeLux region but Poland, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary are each their own region. Kaliningrad, Latvia and Lithuania finish the set. With so many players pure chaos should follow. The only down side is that there aren’t any carriers in the map so even if George finishes the implementation we’ll have to wait for next week to see carrier battles.

--Chris

Here come the Aircraft Carriers...

One of the last major unimplemented unit features, "Aircraft Carriers", has just started to see the light of day. A few quirks and issues still to work out, but now carriers will be able to do more than be expensive resupply ships. Should be interesting to try to use them in really large maps that have a major water portion (the world map comes to mind...) Of course, now I need to make sure I build carrier-capable planes if I want to use them on a carrier!

-- George.

Working weekend

It's been a fairly standard weekend for me, spent the day working on maps. Completed placing starting units in South Asia's Vietnam player which owns Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar by that point in the campaign. Took another look at the Ukraine map that I'd been reworking but couldn't get the numbers to work right so set it aside for now. I also finished balancing the Germany map so that all players have the right quantity of industry and produce enough to keep their GDP/c semi-stable. I'll be spending the evening placing the military units into that map. Hopefully I can finish it by lunch tomorrow.

-- Chris

I should have stayed awake during high school geography...

The terrain layer in the WORLD scenario is almost complete. At 405,000 hexes in size this one element of our largest map has taken us several days to complete. Research on the world for resources and land types are all complete so it's just a matter of visually copying from each of the nine sub maps in the campaign tree. There is a challenge with working with a larger hex size. As a point of comparison, the sub map of Europe is 18 km per hex while the world map is 35 km per hex. Trying to fit resources into hexes that span larger areas while still keeping locations consistent and relative to our satellite imagery is not always easy.

While map editing isn't as fun as playing the game itself, it does allow us to improve our geography knowledge, which does come in handy during our development test games.

-- Daxon.

Lots of little details...

Have been working to make our Production Commodities make a bit more sense - in particular, items like "Consumer Goods" that used other raw materials (ore, oil, power) did not take into account the price of the raw products. Now they do.

This will make it easier to profit from exporting finished goods; and a bit more painful if you have to import the stuff. Even Power generation has been affected, since it is dependent upon the cost of the individual raw good - hydro electric power is now a lot cheaper to generate than Petroleum power.

Also been working on the equipment list, taking into account unit weights (goods cost) and other factors. Now when the game reports a dollar cost for something, that will be a combination of the treasury dollars and the goods cost (the 'real bottom line' cost)

-- George.

Welcome...

Welcome to our latest venue for keeping you up to date with our development efforts as we approach the release date for Supreme Ruler 2010.

While our forum ( www.bgforums.com ) has been an immense help in discussing ideas and development plans, this blog will help us to further communicate what we are working on as the weeks go along. For those of you on our beta, it will give some details as to what is being changed or implemented from our latest beta releases. For everyone interested in SR2010, we hope to include some tidbits of the design process and the decisions that we make as we put together what is shaping up to be a very "epic" title.

For more information on SR2010, be sure to check out our website ( www.supremeruler2010.com ). For questions and feedback on the game, or on topics we touch on in this blog, please feel free to join us in our forum and ask away.

-- George Geczy, Lead Programmer, BattleGoat Studios