Next Wars I: Orange Crush, is going to need some love soon.
here's where things stand:
- Game rules are basically done.
- Counters are done
- Map is done
- Player aids and 90% done and might get tweaked for aesthetics, but unlikely to have big changes
- Command Cards work as cards, but may need to get re-created as a check-box sheet, depending on production costs. Maybe the cards become a stretch goal for a KickStarter campaign
Scenarios? There's the rub
First scenario is good - played multiple times and seems pretty solid. Tough for the Russians, but they can succeed if they put the right support chain in place to get across the map quickly, and use their partisans to max effect
Second scenario seems good, but only played 1x to completion and needs a few more runs to truly know
Third scenario was an unbalanced failure the first time it ran, being rewritten to rerun it
Fourth scenario not yet tested
Now, I do have some space / time to try to get some more testing done, but it wouldn't hurt if there's someone out there willing to give the game a once-over, with the understanding that you'd be sent a bunch of PDFs and would have to print/assemble the entire thing yourself, as I'm not in a position to help provide any components. There's a big-ish map, a set of cards, a counter sheet, rules, scenarios, play aids. Let me know if you're interested and I'll see what I cam pull together for you
I'd give it a shot if I had an opponent. Maybe you should (or get someone else to) make a Zun Tzu box version to play test. It also might save myself and others of my level of coordination a few paper cuts and a possible running with scissors type accident.
no idea how to build a vassal or zuntzu package for the game, or I'd consider it
I don't have the ability to print-and-play anything right now, but would be glad to help with proofing or anything like that.
Quote from: bayonetbrant on January 29, 2014, 07:18:06 PM
no idea how to build a vassal or zuntzu package for the game, or I'd consider it
The Zun Tzu program is supposedly easy to use. I'll look into it if you want me to.
I'd give it a go, and double if it can be done in Vassal or the equivalent.
Quote from: bayonetbrant on January 29, 2014, 07:18:06 PMno idea how to build a vassal or zuntzu package for the game, or I'd consider it
Quote from: Staggerwing on January 29, 2014, 07:58:23 PMThe Zun Tzu program is supposedly easy to use. I'll look into it if you want me to.
Quote from: panzerde on February 04, 2014, 07:44:43 PMI'd give it a go, and double if it can be done in Vassal or the equivalent.
Anyone who has the knowledge and inclination to build a VASSAL module, let me know and we can try to work something out
I may unfortunately have some extra free time on my hands for the next week or so. I'll look into VASSAL. It's been a while and I only dipped my toe into the process but VASSAL does allow for both WIN and MAC. I just found out that Zun Tzu is Win only (directX).
What components does the game have? How many counter sheets, how many tables, dice per roll, and how big is the map?
I could try a 'quick and dirty' conversion with single attribute counters (no built in clickable fired/moved/multistep/facing adjust) but the player could just drop a separate fired, etc counter on top of the unit for now. The chrome could be added later as I figure it out.
1 countersheet, some of which are admin counters - attached below
rarely more than 1 die/roll but varies d6 or d10
map is pretty big - 22x28 or so printed
I'll get files over to you later
Ok. I can get started cutting up the counters into individual pieces with an image program. That will keep me busy for a while.
Brant, would you also have the files in .png or something? In case my image program doesn't like PDFs?
I can convert them, but it'll prob be tomorrow b/c I teach tonight and won't be home early enough to mess with them
Stagger/Brant, if you want some help with cutting/creating images of counters, let me know. I have CS6 at home and CC on my work laptop. Won't have time until tonight but would be glad to if needed.
Talk to Stagger. If he needs them tonight, sure. If not, I can get to them over the next few days.
thanks!
Thank BC. I just discovered that Preview lets you export to png (among others). Do you know any shortcut to individually separating every counter one at a time from the master and saving them as individual images? I only have GIMP and whatever other free tools there are out there to D/L for Mac (preferred) or WIN7. Ideally, I'd like to have some kind of grid that would let me 'chop out' equally sized pieces and then auto save them as something like pt_1.png, pt_2, etc or whatever works. I can rename them later to specific unit name files.
a lot of web-design-tied apps will let you do "slices"
I know photoshop does
What I need is a way to do 'tiles' corresponding to each counter where each gets saved as a different image file. It looks like there may be some way to do it with a script but that kind of thing is deepest, darkest unexplored jungle for my meager skills. Still, no time like the present to learn a new thing, eh? :)
that's what the slices do - it segments the images as though they were each going to be separate 'tiles' (image files) in an overall grid for a webpage.
Macromedia Fireworks used to do it very easily.
After adobe bought macromedia, they rolled some of those functions into photoshop, but not as elegantly b/c PS is designed to really be doing other things
In Photoshop, there's a Marquee tool in the tool bar - it looks like a dotted square, or circle, depending on what was last selected. It's basically like a Crop tool - you click, drag, and frame what you want to 'pull out' of the image at hand.
What I usually do is do a grab like that, then copy-paste it into a new window, and if it looks perfect I'll use that new window as the place where I save all my PNGs (or whatever) from. Then you just go back to the original image, reselect the counter layer, and do it again...copy, go to new image, paste, save as PNG or what have you, and rinse/repeat.
HyperSnap lets you crop, although it's not as precise as Photoshop, in my experience. Basically you crop it, save it, then undo it back to the original image and repeat.
I don't know GIMP, although I know what it is, I've never worked with it before.
That basic select tool is in GIMP as well. I was hoping to create a multiple-tile 'cookie cutter' that saves each clip as a separate file in one pass, requiring me only to line up right the number of cut-lines along the x and y axis. It would save a lot of time but I can do it the old way, one counter at a time as well. The only tile option in GIMP is one that takes your image and then creates multiple tiles from the entire thing, not just individual sections. I'm still checking out some options but ran out of time shoveling snow and what-not.
Oh, duh. Photoshop DOES do that, but it's a bit of a pain. You basically do one Marquee tool selection (click-drag-let go), then press and hold SHIFT and do multiple selections off the one layer. There's also a way to mess with masks, but I'm not as familiar with masking in Photoshop (though I do it all the time in Flash). I'd have to trial-and-error it to see if I can get it to work in PS. If you want to e-mail me a file that I can 'play' with I'd be glad to give it a shot, though it likely won't be until tomorrow. PM me if so.
It looks like the 'click-drag-let-go then shift-click-drag-let-go' thing works in GIMP as well. The problem is you can still only save all selections into just 1 new file (leaving any space between the sections as empty or transparent, i'm guessing). I'm going to check out a few things I found on the net but if that fails I'll probably just 'click-drag-let-go-crop-save-as' for each counter. I've already cut up the counters into nationalities to make it a little easier. Luckily the 'disrupted' etc, only need to be saved once.
It's a labor of love, isn't it? ;)
Tru dat. :D
Who know, after this I may decide to start up again on my Cruiser Warfare module I put down about 6 years ago...