I'm thinking of buying HPS Rennaissance

[Toonces]

I appreciate the feedback guys.

I have several HPS games and I'm not in love with the UI, graphics, etc.  Bleeding eyes is a good description.  And I don't think I've ever really gotten my full money's worth out of any of them.

However, my options are pretty limited here.  I'm going to think on this a bit more.  $40 isn't going to break the bank, but I don't want to just flush money down the toilet, either.

Really it's the scale of the battles and the campaigns that have me leaning towards REN over FoG.  I probably ought to just pony up the cash for both, but that's a lot of clams for two games I might not even like. 

This is tough.   ???

[spelk]

I doubt this is what you want, but if you want Medieval battles, from Middle Ages to the Rennaissance, Jeff Lapkoff has this quite old title. Graphics are very basic, interface very quirky/homebrew, but I believe he's working on an updated version (Vengeance: Medieval 3.0) .

http://jlssg.com/medieval.html

"Next up for JLSSG is a complete update of the Medieval 2 game system entitled 'Vengeance'. Vengeance will offer stronger command and control modeling, more detailed armor and weapon handling (including horse barding), a wider range of scenarios including the Dark Ages, a more powerful scenario editor (with army presets), an updated look and feel, and last, but not least, direct head to head play via the web. No projected release date has been set for Vengeance. "

Here's a sneak teaser peak at the Vengeance Scenario Editor

[southern_cross_116]

Actually, it's not Tiller so much as Joe Amoral.

Technically Dean Beecham did the 3D graphics for REN, and what gets me thinking is how do you show pike units and then retain the larger scale? I don't think that you can, namely because the pikes themselves have to fit in the confines of the hex itself too.

Add to that, in a perfect world when in block formation (which I am sure would have to be abstracted) -even with pikes down (or not marching in other words) -you still have to show them within the hex.

If I were doing it too I would want to change around the bases (not a big fan of the two colour schemes) -there is a complication with those too, aside from not being entirely sure all of the alignments are correct -that is the base for block formation... something happened to those ones and they are not in the same order as all of the other bases so you have to watch yourself after going through all of the other bases ... all of a sudden things are in a different order ( my guess is it was not intended that way - but they just went with it.... still, it can throw you off  ;) ).

Personally I am more inclined to show scope as opposed to individual graphics (which I guess makes me more of a 6mm (or smaller) miniature gamer than a 15 - 25mm (or larger) gamer... that being said I have no idea how it would come out ... so I might have to start playing around with it... and mind you the sole reason is to fit pikes into the defined space -you cannot really do it and retain the same scale given that the entire image has to fit in an exact spot (well not without some guys looking like Wilt Chamberlain next to some very small in stature pike guys).

I saw the more 'recent' (quotes for the relativity of the term) screenshots -those are all well and good but the thing is - the Jeff Lapkoff title if you look at his one artillery guy all the way to the right - that basically is a 2d map with some 3d-esque attributes. The Vengeance scenario editor image --same sort of thing - the hex dimensions are not the same (but then again it is an interesting approach since the hex dimensions are already going to be known in JTS), I'll have to grab one of those and see how many pixels there are to work with -although offhand it looks like the hex dimensions in that shot are significantly larger than what you will have in a JTS title (at this point and unless they add another native resolution), which is probably not going to be possible -assume that you have to work with the dimensions that you have got.

====

This is sort of interesting and semi-related to HPS' Ancient Warfare series (not a Tiller developed title -as that gets chucked out there all of the time - it is wrong). The same sort of discipline might apply there as well (actually I think it would) -although I only ever really thought about reworking the 2d maps to something more 2d (as they stand right now the 2d res for that series is basically using 3d style graphics as well)... I never got around to it but I guess I could use more graphic challenges.

[Nefaro]

====

This is sort of interesting and semi-related to HPS' Ancient Warfare series (not a Tiller developed title -as that gets chucked out there all of the time - it is wrong). The same sort of discipline might apply there as well (actually I think it would) -although I only ever really thought about reworking the 2d maps to something more 2d (as they stand right now the 2d res for that series is basically using 3d style graphics as well)... I never got around to it but I guess I could use more graphic challenges.

The Ancient Warfare series could desperately use some 2D terrain to replace the "3D" mode's terrain.  I think the units look great in 3D mode but any tall terrain (trees, huts, etc) just blocks out anything behind them.  Not good when you can't see units in trees or on the other side of certain terrain without having to constantly rotate the map.

Or at least shortened versions of said view blocking terrain.