Scourge of War: Waterloo! announced

[besilarius]

"Paddy Griffiths famously wrote that wargaming took a sharp, wrong turn when it made a fetish of little, metal men.  All the other bizarre evils of TTG pedantry, in my own mind, flow from the false sense of verisimilitude that the minifigs -- which I love -- can bring.  Shako II, Volley and Bayonet, Empire in its iterations, Carnage and Glory, Blucher, &c., all contain abstractions of one sort or another; heck, Shako II keeps its ground scale a bit of a secret and admits that both its artillery and musketry ranges are distorted to make "sense" one with another.  All that remains is for the game makers to tell us of their concessions and leave us to make decisions as to whether or not those concessions make a bit of difference."

In terms of being historically exact, versus "feel", don't forget the original Squad Leader by John Hill.
There was a huge firestorm that erupted in boardgaming over what a hex represented.  The game was so damn playable and gave the right feel for small unti tactics, that people let it go.
I think that loose definitions of distance are endemic in all aspects of gaming.  The grognards grumble, but the pragmatic gamers outnumber them.

[Asid]

Beta Patch 1

We are working on updating the readme then should be good to go for beta patch one. We see no risk at all in installing this. I will fix the crashes that people have reported. We've fixed all of them that we know of, so it's a good patch. There is a fix to the grog toolbar mod. I'll post the readme once it's done. We're doing this tonight, just got the last bugs worked out. It's only a crash fix, nothing new.

We are working with Matrix on the game install to fix the issue with the black boxes, as this can be set by the installer, and we're providing them a new starting resolution for those that have this issue. Once we have the bugs worked out we're going to work on getting out the SDK. Right now the team is hitting pakfront's tools hard. We'll get them to you soon.

SOWWL Beta Patch 1 (5.1MB) : http://www.norbsoftdev.net/NSDTeam/Downloads/SOWWLBetaPatch1.exe

Now the patch should have removed some files from the grog mod. Please check the grog mod folder and see if it worked.

Layout/Media/Language/LanguageEnglish.xml
Layout/Media/SOWWL_Media/ToolbarButtons.xml

There are other files in there now, but the two above should be gone now. It worked in our testing. It was the file that was causing the crash.

Posted by Norb

[Asid]

Concerning the Beta patch 1

When I applied the patch. The files were still there so I manually removed them!

File locations:
Scourge of War Waterloo\Mods\Toolbar Expanded - Grog\Layout\Media\Language\LanguageEnglish.xml
Scourge of War Waterloo\Mods\Toolbar Expanded - Grog\Layout\Media\SOWWL_Media\ToolbarButtons.xml

[panzerde]

Concerning the Beta patch 1

When I applied the patch. The files were still there so I manually removed them!

File locations:
\Scourge of War Waterloo\Base\Layout\Media\Language\LanguageEnglish.xml
\Scourge of War Waterloo\Base\Layout\Media\SOWWL_Media\ToolbarButtons.xml

Thanks for posting the patch information, Asid!

Be careful which files you remove - the files to be removed are actually located in the Toolbar folder in the Modifications folder. There are also files with the same name in the main SOWWL folder with the paths above. I believe those files probably need to be there, and are overridden by the ones in the Modifications folder when the toolbar mod is enabled.

To be safe, I would suggest disabling the Toolbar mod before running the beta patch, and then checking the Modifications folder to see if the files were removed. If not (and they weren't for me) remove them only from the Modifications folder and not from the base SOWWL folder.

If all of that sounds daunting and dangerous or confusing, it's probably best to wait for an official patch!  :)

Also, I think I've identified an issue with the Grog toolbar and the D'Erlon's Attack scenario. It seems like if you have the toolbar enabled, it isn't possible for the French player to occupy La Hay Sainte or gain VPs from it. Without the toolbar, it is possible. I've reported this on the SOW forums (along with others) and the devs are investigating.

In short, while I love the Grog Toolbar, it seems to me like there are some issues with it right now.

[jomni]

FYI.  They couldn't do the rockets because of the memory limitations again.  For a game using 2d sprites, you would think it would run smoother than 3d games.
They really need to work on a new engine. 

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3881512

[Asid]

Hi panzerde

I accidently posted the wrong first section of the links.

My files were still there also. They did not delete.

Thank you

[panzerde]

Hi panzerde

I accidently posted the wrong first section of the links.

My files were still there also. They did not delete.

Thank you

Hey Asid - I didn't mean to direct those cautions at you, but rather in general to anyone else that might be looking at the beta patch. I know you are well-versed in handling things like this! Poor wording on my part!


Thanks again for pointing out the patch availability.

[Asid]

Hey Asid - I didn't mean to direct those cautions at you, but rather in general to anyone else that might be looking at the beta patch. I know you are well-versed in handling things like this! Poor wording on my part!

Thanks again for pointing out the patch availability.

Hi panzerde

It's fine :)

Regards

[Cyrano]

Re: rockets, it should be clear that they're thete, but abstracted graphically.

Besides, as the forum posts notes, they were largely a curiosity that Nosey distrusted greatly and, despite the number fired, did not have a dramatic effect on the battle.

[panzerde]

Re: rockets, it should be clear that they're thete, but abstracted graphically.

Besides, as the forum posts notes, they were largely a curiosity that Nosey distrusted greatly and, despite the number fired, did not have a dramatic effect on the battle.

"Only good for frightening horses!"


The degree to which I suck at corps command in this game can not be understated...

[besilarius]

Perhaps you should try some scenarios as the Prince of Orange.
And in the future, some of the Russian or Austrian corps commanders.
The French had the most experience, so starting off comparing yourself to them is unfair.

[jomni]

I'm reading more about the courier system in Gettysburg (didn't play it a lot) and realized that the new right click context menu where you can chain commands in Waterloo is a graphical interface of the said courier system. Though commands are limited and only show the essential ones. How cool is that?

If you open the "courier bag" of the sub unit, all your previous commands are there written in text form.

[RyanE]

I think one of the problems with some of the anal Nappy miniatures players is they look at this as just minis on the computer.  Some of the innovative features of SOW, like courier system, are not only lost on them, but completely misunderstood.

[jomni]

I think one of the problems with some of the anal Nappy miniatures players is they look at this as just minis on the computer.  Some of the innovative features of SOW, like courier system, are not only lost on them, but completely misunderstood.

Then they should not be complaining that the game is not 1:1 because minis are 100:1.

[Asid]

Maybe one day some CO OP or PVP with some of our GH friends from here?

Also for SOW Gettysburg.

I think it would be great fun :)

Regards