Safe assumption.
@Mr_Bismarck Thanks. That video was great. Now I might be able to make some sense out of the command & control system.
I think I have owned every version of TOAW, and I also am pretty sure I’ve never played it very much. The concept is intriguing, but for whatever reason the game never gets its hooks in me. The interface, the way logistics gets handled, sometimes the sheer ugliness of it, whatever, something keeps me from really digging in. I’m still tempted though, thinking maybe this time. But I’ll probably pass until and unless it goes on big sale. Maybe.
https://web.archive.org/web/20051001031354/http://www.wargamer.com/reviews/grog_toaw.asp
Reminds me of this. You can set-aside the micro level detail and, well, grognarding, but the key point that bottom-up modelling based on lots of arbitrary factors can easily go awry is still valuable. Abstraction but tuning the outcomes to reality does get you further.
http://web.archive.org/web/20000817195215/www.gamesdomain.com/gdreview/depart/jun98/realdet.html Or indeed, some bugger who wrote this had some good points.
Actually reading Bruce’s article 20 years later unavoidably reminds me of Star Citizen’s realism creep.
So its TOAW 4 a new game built from scratch or the old one revamped? I am having a hard time telling from the screen shots & vids.
Wasn’t it originally going to be a patch for TOAW3? Then it got so big they decided to slap a new number on and call it a sequel.
Whoever this Bruce guy was, he had a tongue purtier than a $20 whore :)
It is a continuation of the old engine. There have been modifications, but like TOAW 3 it is based on the old code.
Almost there!
Thanks both. Yeah I will wait and see. Polished up decades old windows code feels like it could be a bit janky.
Yeah, cool find. Pretty much what I’ve been saying ever since Norm Koger started putting out games–counting rifles and mess kits to figure out what value to give to a unit isn’t my idea of how to do it. Numbers and TO&E have a role to play, but these bottom-up systems generally are based on simulating realism via data overload rather than analysis or modeling.
It’s interesting, because I always had the impression TOAW was a very abstracted game, almost a modern (bloated maybe to some) game of go.
It appears to be quite the exact opposite, from all that reading.
Even getting merely 10% there sufficed to kill the flight sim genre, didn’t it?
There were those Ancient Art of War games way back, from Broderbund, which were more abstract, I remember. But TOAW was always a Norm Koger count the bullets special.
Oh, and check the Matrix forums for some stuff about TOAW IV. Seems some folks are pissed at the number of scenarios that actually support single player play, and there are some other oddities that might be off-putting for anyone not a dyed in the wool TOAW fanboi.
Personally, I have zero interest now in a game like this. One look at the screenshots and one look through the forums reminded me why I never really got into this game before.
I do think sometimes my true grog days are well behind me. I simply can’t get into most of these games with abysmal UIs, dreadfully complex and poorly-explained systems, and the polish and sophistication of a poxy two dollar whore.
Brother, I hear you. I feel the same way. Once upon a time I would have been on this like stink on a chimpanzee.
I think I agree with that article more than Bruce does, considering his love for Gary Grigsby games!
Grigsby at least has a lot more range than Koger. He’s worked with a variety of game systems and approaches, and his monster games have a lot more actual systems modeling it seems. Still way too fiddly for me, but I do think he’s evolved beyond the let’s count how many bayonets are in the division, at least in part.