============ OGRE/GEV list, February 1st (Last: January 26th) ============= ===== Breakthrough ends: Pan E Marg. Victory ! From: ccamfield@mailhost.cyberus.ca (Christopher Camfield) ===== THE DIGITAL BATTLEFIELD From: johnson@ccnet.com ===== Digital Battlefield / V_MAP From: "Todd A. Zircher" ===== GEV Ceasefire Collapse Game Ends From: "Todd A. Zircher" ===== OGRE/GEV list (contribution?) From: mleaman@agate.net (Mark Leaman) ------------------------------ From: ccamfield@mailhost.cyberus.ca (Christopher Camfield) Subject: Breakthrough ends: Pan E Marg. Victory ! > From: peletier@grolen.com > > The Pan Europeans (ccamfield@cyberhome.cyberus.ca) defeated the Combine > (faguirre@students.wisc.edu) in a game of basic Breakthrough today. THe > game was played by E Mail (PBEM) with peletier@grolen.com GMing. > Combine did a great job getting up the map fast and splitting the Pan E > forces in half. The Pan E decided to use a Howitzer at 1505 and a > couple of LT Tnks in the West with a Msl tnk: Heavy Tanks in the east. > > However, the Combine made a fatal mistake in bogging down at the city > hexes of 0409 and then 'kissing' 4 points of infantry. The PanE infantry > just overran two GEVs and took away any chance of Combine Victory. > However, the PanE left a hole in the lines and let six GEVs run up the > extreme west end of the board, with 2 getting disabled in the Forrest. This news report by the Combine News Service ignores the valor of the PanEuropean Western Sector forces who courageously went on the offensive when they had a local superiority of force (before the rest of the attackers arrived), and deliberately enticed them to take cover in this city, thus negating the advantage of their high speed. Although suffering near-annihilation, it was their efforts which checked the Combine advance and made victory possible. The repeated groupings of attacking GEVs in close proximity was effective at discouraging early infantry overruns, but cost in spillover fire. PanEuropean Subsector Command, out. PS I would really have killed for a unit which had a longer strike range (movement phase 1 plus range) than the GEVs. The following could be really nasty... it's 1 AU by the original formula, so it's probably about right... Fast Missile Tank: D2 M4/as HVY 2/4 ----- [MHWZ has a strike range of seven to the GEV's six, same for the GEV-PC with Heavy Weapons infantry. (For the price of three missile tanks, you get the one time strike of three missile tanks, with a one-hex bonus) -HJC] ------------------------------ From: johnson@ccnet.com Subject: THE DIGITAL BATTLEFIELD >All that is needed to use the Digital Battlefield is any vector-based >drawing program that allows multiple levels of zoom, the ability to >group objects, the ability to rotate objects, and preferably, the >ability to import and rotate bitmaps. Bingo! I've been experimenting with the exact same idea. In my case, though, it was severely complicated by the fact that I've got a Mac. Try as I might, there does not yet appear to be any good cross-platform standard vector (draw or object) graphic formats. The Mac has its own (PICT), and the Windows world is just starting to get something being pitched by Microsoft, the Windows Metafile Format (.WMF). But translations between them proved problemmatic. On the bitmap/image side, GIF and JPEG are nearly universal, but we need individual drawn objects to pick up and move! >I use Corel Draw 7.0 and Corel >Xara because those are two programs I have and they both work extremely >well (Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Freehand are two other common >drawing programs). Of these programs, I would recommend Corel Xara >because it does all that is needed and only costs $100. If anyone knows >of a cheaper program that has all these functions please let me know. >Also a raster-based "paint" program is also helpful for unit and terrain >preparation/modification. Even though I've got a Mac at work, my home machine is a low-end Windows 95 box. For that I picked up ClarisWorks 4.0, which includes a drawing package with the features you list, as well as some painting ability, too. It was only $50. One other useful feature (which I have on ClarisDraw at work, but not ClarisWorks at home) is layers. By doing all of the map, charts, etc. on one layer, then locking it, another layer with counters can be used during the actual play of the game without fear of disturbing the map. (Sort of the electronic version of sneezing! :) >* Another advantage for email play is that file sizes are very small. >With vector units, file sizes are about 20-50K for the largest battles. Well, I take it you're playing low density miniatures games (such as Full Thrust, which you mentioned). In my case I've tried three small hexmap wargames, with limited terrain and a small mix of counters. Even that amounts to about 150-200K per file. Doing a big land battle, such as WW2 east front game with tons of counters and varied terrain, might be prohibitive. Something I still have to experiment with is converting the static portions of the graphic file (i.e., the map) into a single paint image, which probably is smaller and displays faster, having eliminated all of the object information. As for performance, my work machine is a PowerMac 7500 with 20" monitor and 64 megs of RAM. So it sings. My home machine is a 486-100 running Windows 95 with a 14" monitor and 12 megs of RAM. So it..ah...works. :) Mark Johnson, johnson@ccnet.com Microgame HQ and / \ http://www.ccnet.com/~johnson/ Tri-Valley Boardgamers \__/ ------------------------------ From: "Todd A. Zircher" Subject: Digital Battlefield / V_MAP >From: Paul Calvi >[snipped a lot of good stuff] >WHAT IS NEEDED >All that is needed to use the Digital Battlefield is any vector-based >drawing program that allows multiple levels of zoom, the ability to >group objects, the ability to rotate objects, and preferably, the >ability to import and rotate bitmaps. I use Corel Draw 7.0 and Corel >Xara because those are two programs I have and they both work extremely >well (Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Freehand are two other common >drawing programs). Of these programs, I would recommend Corel Xara >because it does all that is needed and only costs $100. If anyone knows >of a cheaper program that has all these functions please let me know. >Also a raster-based "paint" program is also helpful for unit and terrain >preparation/modification. I don't think my wife would approve if I spent $100 on a drawing program considering how many paint programs can be had for free or a smaller registration fee. On the theme of the digital battle field, I'm developing a virtual map program called V_MAP. It's already undergone some testing in a PBEM OGRE/GEV game that was recently finished. A lot of good experience and feedback came out of that test run. When the next set of improvements are finished and I'd gotten SJG's blessing/license, I'll make it freely available to the general gaming public. >[more good stuff snipped that was relating to vector mapping] >* The big advantage to the mentioned drawing programs is that they allow >one to import bitmaps (For FT players this allows you to use the >beautiful B5, etc. ship counters available on the Web). > >* Another advantage for email play is that file sizes are very small. >With vector units, file sizes are about 20-50K for the largest battles. >With bitmap units, files get larger (200K+) but can be controlled by the >bitmaped files' sizes and color depths. Of course with compression >programs even these files could be made very small for transmission to >your opponent. V_MAP (which will work with many other games besides OGRE) uses text files only a few thousand bytes in size. By passing the text files, the bandwidth overhead is reduced and every e-mail program can handle text without worrying about UUENCODE/BINHEX/MINE compatibility. OGRE/GEV bitmaps will be included with the inital distribution. New or modified maps will have to be passed as part of the setup. True, bitmaps can be seriously compressed. I've seen compression ratios in excess of 90%. >[snip] >**A seeming limitation to the Digital Battlefield is finding players >with a compatible drawing program. This limitation can largely be >overcome using common graphics formats. For example, Corel Draw 7.0 on >Windows 95 can read and edit Adobe Illustrator .eps files from the >Macintosh. Thus, in this case, players with completely separate, and >seemingly incompatible, systems can still play as if they had the same >system. This can be a problem with 'dedicated' game utilities also. V_MAP is written for Windows and I'm working on a DOS version. While other platforms would have no problem passing text files, I can't create programs for any other platform. (Well, there's X-Windows. But, I think that's a pretty some segment of the PBEM gamer group.) >OTHER COMMENTS >HPS Simulations has a DOS "game" called Aide de Camp that allows players >to play any board game on a computer. It has many features that my >Digital Battlefield system does not have (dice rolling, unit tracking, >etc.) but also has many limitations (including a fixed sequence of play >and a poor aesthetic look). A Windows 95 version was supposed to be >available soon, but I recently spoke with Scott (the owner) and he said >version 2 may be a year or more away due to problems with the program's >compiler. This is a real shame as a professional, flexible system such >as this is sorely needed. Players should still give Aide de Camp a look, >for many games it works very well and a number of board game company's >sell pre-made ADC modules for their games. There's also Assist and Electronic Cardboard. Like ADC, they offer more features than a drawing program or V_MAP. But, all three cost money to register and they can be very complicated for the novice to use. V_MAP can be learned in a minute or two. For those that are interested, I'll post a message when V_MAP is ready for release. I plan on distributing the binaries via a web site. Hopefully, it will become readily available at other FTP and BBS sites. Todd A. Zircher "Venimus, vidimus, dolavimus. (We came, we saw, we hacked.)" ------------------------------ From: "Todd A. Zircher" Subject: GEV Ceasefire Collapse Game Ends >From: peletier@grolen.com >My critical assement: Due to the fact the Eastern zone was strung out >like Sid and Nancy (RIP Punk Rockers) and the Western zone was one huge >mass - it would have been possible for the entire Western strategy to >attack the northeastern units in mass - a 2-1 advantage, and then move >down to the Southeast to wrap up the entire eastern forces at a 2-1 roll >the whole way. The opportunity lost was Todd's error in being too >conservative when a possible 2-1 advantage was at hand. As a rebutal to that critical assement, the Combine forces consisted mainly of heavy tanks. The only speedy avenue of attack lay down a single road. Charging en-mass would have resulted in the PanE Ogre running over my bunched forces like a bull in a china shop. The PanE Ogre proved that stepping into harm's way is an invitation to attack. If I had been more careful in my infantry placement, the Combine forces would have been victorious. Hopefully, Tom and I will have time for a re-match. Maybe even a 're-hash' to see if a blitz would have been survivable. Todd A. Zircher ----- [Heavy Tanks are the second least affected unit by lack of roads. -HJC] ------------------------------ From: mleaman@agate.net (Mark Leaman) Subject: OGRE/GEV list (contribution?) Greetings OGRE fans! I was just setting the board up for a game of OGRE/GEV with some old friends. After I finished setting up the table, I glanced over at my old Battletech mini collection, and my old green grass mat, trees, etc... You get the idea. I shuddered at the idea of how much money I blew into those minis, on a game that I don't play anymore. What's worse, all the hours that went into painting them. It seemed like such a waste. Then it struck me like a ton 'o bricks... "Wait a minute... Those B-TECH hovercraft look a lot like a GEV." Then I went over to the box looking over the tanks and after a moment, ran down to the store and picked up a copy of OGRE MINIs. Sure enough, the Ral Partha Battletech miniatures of vehicles, infantry, even Mechas work out nicely! DOH! It seemed so obvious once I'd thought of it. For the OGRE simply use a B-TECH, Behemoth tank. Now that big green battle hex mat won't collect dust for at least tonight. OGRE MINIATURES courtesy of Ral Partha... (Not really, but they work, and I totally missed the last run on OGRE minis. If someone has already come up with this notion and posted it to the list, please disregard this post and have mercy on my slowness. :P Tanks, Mark Leaman, Gaming Evangelist Merrymeeting Games http://www.agate.net/~mleaman/mmg.html ------------------------------ Henry J. Cobb hcobb@io.com http://www.io.com/~hcobb All OGRE-related items Copyright (c) 1997, by Steve Jackson Games.