Brother against brother

[Gil R.]

Permit me (= a developer) to jump in and say what's what, as well as both what might be what and what will be what.

The first "Brother against Brother" release contains four battles and five battlefields (since for Mill Springs there are two areas that are about ten miles apart).  While we will be providing new scenarios for these four battles, we will not be providing new battles freely.  So whatever battles we do next -- and in the coming weeks I'll resume work on 2nd Manassas that I began several years ago -- these would go into a separate product that would be sold separately.

The suggestion that we provide maps and let modders work on them underestimates the enormous amount of time and effort that it takes to create a map for these battles; but, at the same time, we certainly appreciate the potential value of modders, and believe that if a strong modding community develops it should be possible to produce new releases more quickly, in addition to there being more scenarios.

"Conflict of Heroes" is indeed the primary reason that BAB took so long, though it was also delayed at times by our original graphics artist's career demands -- he's an architect who had to take on some large loads at his firm -- and by my at times being too busy.  Eric of WCS and I recently agreed to a plan with Erik of Matrix that would lead to there being two new BAB releases within a year, and right now I see no reason why we can't meet that.

Have a great 4th!

[dinsdale]

The suggestion that we provide maps and let modders work on them underestimates the enormous amount of time and effort that it takes to create a map for these battles; but, at the same time, we certainly appreciate the potential value of modders, and believe that if a strong modding community develops it should be possible to produce new releases more quickly, in addition to there being more scenarios.

Hi Gil, appreciate the response but to repeat,  the suggestion was not that you provide maps to modders, but sell them to owners of the game.

While I fully understand that you deserve to make a ton more money on this product than will ever be possible, finding a way to allow your game to be moddable would dramatically increase re-playability and hopefully grow your base so that your expansions sell more. Easier said than done of course.

Best of luck, I truly hope you are successful and get to use this engine across a bunch of campaigns.

[Gil R.]

Oh, gotcha.  It's an interesting idea.

Right now our immediate plans involve two releases within the next year that are comparable to the first BAB, in terms of our doing maps, scenarios, etc.  With that said, we will certainly be paying attention to mods and modders, and if there are any demonstrate that they could make a contribution it would be great to get them involved.  Our current division of labor is that Eric does all coding, I do all map research and scenario work, and our graphics artist turns my research into the finished maps.  Now that the coding is mostly done, other than improvements to the engine over time, I become the main choke point, since I have a real job and therefore cannot churn out maps and scenarios as quickly as I might like.  So I can certainly see the value in encouraging modders.

Speaking of which, as I think I previously mentioned in this thread, the full text of the Modder's Guide has been posted over in the Matrix forum for a few weeks now.  Unfortunately, the actual final PDF, which will be made available in-game, isn't released just yet, but will be next time WCS and Matrix have to make a new patch.