Battlefront's New Joint

Games
1

Looks like the Battlefront guys have a new one in the works. And because I too wish to be like the big gaming news/link sites, I’ll do nothing more than copy/paste the press release. Voodoo Extreme, here I come!

“Strategic Command 2 Blitzkrieg” Announced!

Currently in development (scheduled for a Q4, 2004 release), the new grand strategy masterpiece from award winning game designer Hubert Cater! Combining the ease of play and accessibility of the original “Strategic Command”, “Strategic Command 2 Blitzkrieg” adds tons of new features including many player submitted suggestions. Bigger, better and expandable, Strategic Command 2 Blitzkrieg is an evolutionary as well as revolutionary new grand strategy game.

ULTIMATE STRATEGY:

Command the forces of 28 different countries, (6 major and 22 minor) including Germany, UK, USA, USSR, France, Italy, Spain, Canada, Poland, Finland and many more

Command 16 different unit types (each with up to 26 different characteristics) covering all the major facets of land, sea and air combat, including new units like Paratroops, Engineers, Partisans and Amphibious Transports

Enhanced diplomatic model that will not only be driven by game events and player pressuring but will allow opposing sides to engage in active counter diplomacy

ULTIMATE FLEXIBILITY:

Advanced event engine that will allow players to script/create custom events like troop transfers, supply, territorial surrender and annexation rules

Greatly expanded editor that will give you the control to create custom maps and sizes, place and/or delete any unit/resource/terrain, edit each unit characteristic, set build limits, even edit and create new unit types and
countries! An entire game engine at your fingertips!

ULTIMATE MULTIPLAYER:

Multiplayer will include Hotseat, PBEM, as well as Network (TCP/IP) play
allowing for up to 6 different players to be connected and play at once

AND MORE…

Sophisticated AI, Weather, Fog of War Effects, Convoy Routing, Lend-Lease, Scorched Earth Tactics, Siberian troops, Soviet Winter, Urals Industry, Malta Effect and much, much more!

The official game webpage with more details and first game screenshots can be found at www.battlefront.com

Direct link: www.battlefront.com/products/sc2/

2

Well, it’s a third-party game, a sequel to the decidedly lackluster Strategic Command. Battlefront seems to do ok selling a mix of third-party games in between the very occasional release of their own Combat Mission games. I hope SC2 is better than SC 1 though.

3

I tried the Strategic Command 1 demo. First it drove my monitor out of range and I had to do horrible things to get the PC to reboot. Then I found out it was written in Eiffel and just got wierded out.

4

actually, s. com. is pretty damn fun.

5

Huh. That has to be the only commercial game (or the only game, period) to date that’s written in Eiffel. I thought all Eiffel programs were guaranteed to be bug-free thanks to design by contract? :wink:

6

What pray tell is Eiffel. Other than a tower.

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Its a programming language. A not-very-used programming language, unlike C, C++, or Java.

8

Its a programming language. A not-very-used programming language, unlike C, C++, or Java.

Oh, so it’s the European Ada?

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Similar in syntax and conception to Ada – it has Pascalish syntax with begin/end instead of curly braces, and it was specifically designed for complex systems and a high degree of verifiability, if that is a word.

European only insofar as the inventor, Bertrand Meyer, is Swiss. He’s living in America and his company, Eiffel Software, is also based there. He has written one of the fundamental books on object-oriented programming. Uh, or so I hear since I haven’t read it.

Eiffel never became very popular. The “official” implementation by Eiffel software is very expensive, and competing implementations are freeware products of questionable quality. I’m not sure about the standardisation status, but judging by the "TM"s Meyer drops wherever he goes I think the language is still proprietory, like Java – but without Sun’s money behind it.

10

Thank you for the information! That’s kinda interesting actually.

11

they also mentioned two new games : a fighter one and a modern naval battles one.

Body science

12

And all I wanted for Christmas was Combat Mission with SUPER graphics… but I guess this is good for the wargame diehards…

etc

13

Both based on old tabletop games, including Modern Naval Battles, which was designed by none other than Alan Emerich (MOO!).

The other game, FYI, is Down in Flames, and modules, etc., are still available through GMT Games.

Should be interesting to see how they do the conversions.

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I am looking forward to Down in Flames. The description reminds me of old PC games Over the Reich and Achtung Spitfire.

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Here’s a link to the boardgamegeek entry to Rise of the Luftwaffe,one of the Down in Flames series boardgames.They’re really nice,playable,relatively simple games,easy to explain to newbies.I hope they keep a lot of the flavor of the cardgames for the computer version.

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Looks like it’s just about done. It’ll be nice to check it out.

I have a friend in Houston who wants to play Across The Reich using Vassal. He’s big into strategic games, so I’d like to find something we could play via email, server or head to head instead of having to setup the boardgame in the den and hope nothing gets moved.

17

Damn but I played a lot of Modern Naval Battles on WestPacs. I wish that game wouldn’t have gone out of print. From what I understand, it’s available free on PDF, but it’s a bunch of work to get that stuff on cardstock.

–scharmers

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StratCom is actually very accessible. It’s sort of like what a diehard wargamer might imagine a beer-and-pretzels wargame would be like.

  • Alan