First impressions

[Nick Thomadis]

In our first announcement of Ultimate General: Gettysburg I shared the main features 
that you can read in summary in the first page of our web site (http://www.ultimategeneral.com)
and in the Development's blog (http://www.ultimategeneral.com/blog/from-darthmod-to-game-design). 

How do you find the main concept?
Would you be interested in such kind of game?
Do you have any concerns?
Please lets us know by commenting below.

[DocDooM]

The design style seems kind of tilt-shift filtered. Is it so?

 

Very neat.

[Nick Thomadis]

The design style seems kind of tilt-shift filtered. Is it so?

 

Very neat.

Exactly

 

Well this is temporary pre alpha promo art. We plan to make it better and have more realistic aspects.

[KERA_AK]

Hi Darthy

 

Must say that i´m very impresst by all the infos and the pre alpha photos i seen so far

It reminds me of the magical moments the young age era with strategi games alot, and the best of all, it´s North & South.

 

I cant wait to hear, read and see and in motion or better what, to play the final version and to experiment with the nature world and the AI it self

 

Think i need to cool my self down, this summer just of sudden really become HOT Darthy hehe...

 

Awaits steady and strong and eyes on you 24/7  ^.^  A new Epic era as arrived ladies and Gentleman.

 

 BR AN.

[DocDooM]

I must say that I do like the style of the promo art, however. What is the art direction you have in mind? Because the current art style reminds me of those old 1960s Civil War Trading Cards a la these ( http://www.authentichistory.com/1860-1865/3-1962cards/index.html ) I think unit cards in this style would be awesome and act as a good nod to the retro world.

 

There are so many strategy games out there that look photorealistic, which is nice, but seeing a historical game wit a more creative design, whilst retaining accuracy would be even better.

[TwentySided]

I was a little over excited and I ended up posting in the section of the naval battle game but, h-here I go!

 

I loved this game at first impression as of a few hours ago, looking for a tablet knowing this game would be on there pushed me over the edge. I can't wait, also, how will matchmaking happen and is this a strictly 1v1 game? can there be 2v2's?

[llewelyn]

First I just want to say I'm huge fan of Darthmods, they make TW games a vastly more enjoyable experience. Ages ago the first strategy game I grew up playing was Sid Meier's Gettysburg and I like that this looks like an updated version of that old game. I noticed on the website that this game will be available for tablets, would it happen to be available for chromebook as well? I'm dying for a decent strategy game to play and this looks like it could be the one. 

[SoldierKing]

Love it, where do I enlist?

[vashiyusuf]

DarthMod to the rescue. I love the sounds of it - and if what DarthMod did to the AI in TW is any indication - this one is going to be exciting! Especially like the evolving campaign .......  Awesome!   The balance between playability and realism - right on.  The game should convey a sense of the battle and feel for eb and flow and events - not recreate them in detail... Excellent.   I'm with SoldierKing - where do I enlist?

[abbierevo]

Sign me up.

 

I always wondered why someone as talented as you wasn't making games instead of fixing CA's messes.

 

Will there be any simulation of communication delay? Or is the scale all in bugle range?

 

Will the campaign have (semi) randomized weather?

 

Also, is chain of command implemented in any way? I suppose this is a scale question again. 

 

Again, very very excited about this game. 

[ramcord]

Very excited about this game, DarthMod. I'm a gameplay programmer at a big publisher on a MASSIVE team, and I'm always interested in the development of games like yours. I love to support crowd-funded projects, give feedback, and keep up to date with the latest news. With that said, I have some questions/ideas/advice:

 

Questions that a lot of people might want to know:

• Do you plan on crowd-funding this project?
• Is there an over-world campaign map, or is this simply one battle that is played on an enormous scale?
• Besides realistic graphics, what are your team's limits?
• What will the differences between PC and tablet be?
• Will this be available on iOS AND Android tablets?

 

Ideas for the game:

 

You're probably looking to set your game apart from the Total War series. Obviously the Civil War is one period Creative assembly has left out (probably because the studio is outside of the U.S.) which is a great idea and I'm sure everyone loves this as much as I do. But there are other ways you can do so.

• No over-world campaign map. The entire game is one simulating battle that is happening in real-time. This is difficult performance-wise, but the large PC rigs will appreciate it, and you probably shouldn't be targeting graphics on a tablet anyway with a large scale strategy game. To do this, you use LOD to your advantage. Zooming out shrinks armies into single objects and shows large text and landmarks, while zooming in reveals smaller units and groups and allows for control. You can separate micro and macro strategy but allow them to play together. When zoomed out, the game relies on statistics to resolve conflicts. But zooming in relies on precise A.I. and player control. The player can pause the game and give precise orders or use time controls to fast forward through night-time, conduct night raids, etc. Having a real time simulation with time controls makes the world seem a whole lot bigger and can give a single battle dozens of extra hours of gameplay. This could put Total War's turn based gaming to shame. 
• More than just combat and movement. Supply lines, civilians, bridges, and attrition, were important factors of the Civil War, and have not been micro-managed well in Total War games. If you're fighting in the North, there should be civilians that must flee to the north to seek shelter with Union troops. Likewise, southern armies have the opportunity to raid civilian properties for supplies, or hold up in them over night. destroying bridges can hurt the enemy's supply lines, and staging ambushes on caravans could be a cool mechanic. Supplies must be transferred to the front lines every day to feed the men who need them the most.
• More scripted events. Total War battles are not very scripted, which is not necessarily a bad thing. However, if you're not going to have a clear and interactive over-world campaign map, then individual battles will need more things to happen to make them lifelike, interesting, and fun. Imagine men of the local population joining the South because the Union soldiers burned their houses down. Caravans can move around the map and deliver supplies. Bridges can be destroyed, forcing troops to find other ways to cross rivers. If your army is forced to retreat, maybe you choose to burn everything in sight and leave nothing for the enemy. But that could cause more militia to side with the enemy. Artillery may destroy a forest that could have been used for cover. Prisoners can be taken. Dead bodies need to be cleared. Wounded need to be tended to.

You may not consider a lot of these ideas because of development resources, another vision, or you simply don't think they're that interesting. Doesn't matter. Just something to think about.

 

Friendly Advice:

• Crowd-fund it! What do you have to lose?
• If you do crowd fund it, be sure to include some footage of whatever sort of prototype you have. It goes a long way to see a single cool feature in action.
• Release developer videos
• Talk with other developers. A video of a conversation between you and a Creative Assembly designer or someone else would be really cool. Brainstorming sessions can excite a lot of the community.
• Don't forget to talk about what this ISN'T. Your history with the Total War series will continuously come back into this development process and you don't want people thinking you're making a Total War clone of the Civil War era with this game. Set yourself apart, but you also don't want to get caught up in debates about.
• Do some videos of you playing strategy games and talk about what you like/don't like about them that your game plans to address.
• Don't give up, although you don't seem like the kind of person who does.

 Good luck, and I look forward to hearing more about Ultimate General: Gettysburg in the future!!!

[general_burgoyne]

WOW....mate, you are finally breaking CAs unpleasant monopoly! Plenty of admiration heading your way!!

 

Anyway, just briefly, i 100% back Mr ramcord on his advice about supply wagons having to regularly resupply troops. Its a must. And its never been attempted before.

 

Thing about it, a soldier goes putputput oh outofammo....no, an ammunition cart has to come along! and THIS is the reason you must never get cut off and surrounded (besides your ace morale reasons! ). Also, for soldiers recovering behind the front line, think of the morale boost if general lee gave them access to a wagon of the finest southern tobacco! THey'd practically volunteer to lead a Pickett's charge! THis is a mechanic that i must see in your games!!
 

Thanks so much!

[JaM]

Nick/Darth, I'm glad seeing you doing something like this,  it looks really promissing.

[Nick Thomadis]

Thank you for coming to our forum!

I wil reply to you one by one asap (being terribly busy but will do). 
Please keep posting ideas, impressions, thoughts.

[JaM]

Ammo ressuply is a must, for artillery and infantry. In ETW there was just no point in keeping artillery in reserve, as there was no need to preserve ammo for important part of battle, which was quite essential for sucess.. Anyway, regarding infantry ammo, it was not strictly restricted to supply train only. On lots of occasions reserve units just game their ammo to front line, cavalry units passed their cartridges to infantry etc...

 

Anyway for any pre-battle movement and maneuvering, speed of march was important. For infantry major factors impacting speed of march was food supply and having boots. While it might sound silly for some, having undamaged boots had great impact, and practically whole Battle of Gettisburgh happened just because Union Generals had info about large supply of new boots in Gettisburgh warehouses.

 

Also, while role of cavalry during ACW was not as big as during Napoleonic Wars, Cavalry was crutial force for finding enemy line of march, identifying their main forces, attacking their rear guard, and fighting any delaying actions. Cavalry practically tranformed into all Dragoon force, where usually cavalrymen fought dismounted, anyway would be good to see cavalry fullfiling their true role being an Eyes of the Army.

 

Oh, and one very important and quite overlooked thing is the smoke. Smoke played a big part in battles, obscuring the battlefields making any long range accurate fire impossible. Units accuracy should decay fast after first few salvos due to smoke and confusion until a point where continuing fire was just a waste of ammo. Anyway direction and strength of wind should also make some impact on battlefield awareness, where smoke could obscure certain parts of battlefield making it harder to identify enemy units..

 

And i'd like to mention the formation issue (but you are for sure well aware of this), there should be several standard formations unit can have, like Line, Column or skirmish order,where each formation should have its own benefits and negatives. Column for example should be the fastest moving, should allow transformations into other formations (it was quite hard to do anyformation or movement changes while deployed in Line) etc, but should have limited firepower and be quite vulnerable to artillery. WHile ACW columns were not as tight as Napoleonic columns, artillery effectivity improved dramatically so columns were much better targets than ever before. Anyway even such dissadvantage didnt prevented Europeans to use them sucesfully (Stoss taktik) during Prussian-French and Prussian-Austrian wars. While American historians defend ACW forces to be superior at ranged combat, truth is, Prussians and French used much more advanced weapons (rear loaded early bolt action rifles) and still using the colums tactics for attacks instead of undecisive ranged shootout of two line formation at the range. Weapon argument is quite popular, anyway weapon accuracy was not that great either. During 1991 Austrian Military Museum in Graz performed live fire tests of their exeplars at shooting range and found some quite interesting facts. For example 1861 rifled musket was found having just average accuracy at 100m, matched by late 16.century (high quality) heavy Matchlock musket! or short flintlock pistols having similar performance and dispersion at 30m as modern Glock 9mm pistols..  so clearly quality of manufacture was quite important for weapon performance, and standard issue rifled muskets were not well known for overall quality.. (i will try to find one study about ACW which investigated this issue in more detail)

[Niuyoi]

So first off, wow this looks really good. Very excited to hear that Darth is making a full game as I loved the Darthmod series and was the only reason I picked up Shogun2. Now for some questions.

 

How will the behaviour of the AI be set? Will it be randomised or can you set it?

Will soldiers in the back lines end up shooting their teammates in the back by accident since the bullets were unreliable?

How much will weather impact a battle?

 

If you guys need any testers I'd be happy to give you my assistance, I also have some old laptops that I could use to test the software on.

[rosa89n20]

Hello Darth! Very happy to know you start develop your own RTS game!

What game engine you planning to use?

[gelo]

Hello, Nick

 

Very intresting project, I don't know if you can zoom in your game but if not I think it's a good thing! It will be easier to make the game pretty, and it will stay a strategy game... 

I don't know what are you finicial possibilities but like Ramcord told if you can crowd-fund the game it may have a succes. If you can stay as far as possible from CA it will be nice  .

 

Your game have a very great potential, will follow it.

 

Good luck !

[BlueDropBear]

Love the look!

From what I can see each brigade is represented by the correct amount of soldiers, unlike the Sid Miers games, is that right?

Good luck guys... Because you will be getting compared to the Sid Miers games and they were amazing! So looking really forward to this one!

[Zin]

Hello Nick,

 

I am always quite excited for new Civil War games coming out.  If there's any historical research/input you may need, I am beginning my doctoral studies at Mississippi State University in the fall, with history, with an emphasis on Military History.  I will do what I can to help!

 

Have you ever played Sid Meier's Gettysburg or Antietam?  Or Civil War Generals 2?  If not, I'd recommend a quick look at those.  The Sid Meier games remind a me a lot of this one, as they are RTS without the game building aspect.  Purely strategy, (realistic LOS, rallying for tired and wavering troops).  The Sid Meier games also had one soldier represent 20 I believe it is, due to the system limitations of the late 20th century.  CWG2 was a turn based game released in 1996 by Sierra, which contains unit supply, morale and excellent use of terrain, and some of the best LOS attributes I've ever seen in a game ( though the AI was lacking).

 

Another game you may want to take a look at is Take Command and Take Command 2 at Mad Minute Games. http://www.madminutegames.com/  Perhaps any and all of these games can provide some insight or inspiration on where you want to take this, or ensure you don't repeat their mistakes etc!

 

One aspect of the Total War series I always appreciated was the ground littered with the dead bodies of soldiers who fell in battle.  Unlike FPS games (like COD or Battlefield) which remove bodies of dead players frequently during the course of a match, you gain a true appreciation of the sacrifice these soldiers make.  As a commander, it is your duty to attempt to win with the fewest casualties possible.  One way to realize this responsibility is to have as many men as possible represent the fallen on the field.  

 

___________________

 

I would also like to see the ability to replay the battle once finished, from a top down view as such:

 

 

For history gamers (as I am sure many will be drawn to this game), this would be a very welcome addition.  I suppose the map could be represented as it is in Supreme Commander, that kind of top-down view the commander has.  It gives the player a chance to analyze mistakes, missed opportunities and the ability to develop AARs should one be so inclined.  One print screen later and now viewers can follow the battle as if it was an actual historical engagement.  

 

Or time stop moments, such as above.  Or "critical moments" in the battle, where major engagements occurred that shaped the course of the battle.  These decisive moments in review I believe would add much more depth to the playing experience, and would be utilized to great effect.

[eviltenchi]

Really excited that someone is finally making a new Civil War RTS. Haven't been able to get my fix since SM:G and SM:A.

 

Just like in the SM games and in Total War, I think you should try to have commanders out there as their own unit. It could be something like the further the commander is away from his respective unity, the worse the unit fights and the close he is, the better it fights. Obviously, enemy units would be able to target said commanders. Also perhaps make different types of commands, brigade commander, division commander, etc. Each tier higher could have a larger sphere of influence and give different bonuses based on who and what they are (i.e. Longstreet maybe gives a defensive bonus to all units in his sphere of influence).

 

Of course I am not telling you how to make your game, these are just things that I would personally find pretty cool. Anyways, good luck and I look forward to seeing the final product  .

[NoRb4k]

Happy 150th anniversary of Gettysburg all!

[Vastator]

Wow, this is awesome! Just read on an italian site and followed the link and i discover Darth is developing his own game. Good!

Unfortunately it's not my best historical period, but realistic RTS like these, with good gameplay an AI are really welcome.

I wish you the best luck.

PS: have you considered starting a Kickstarter campaign to help funding the project?

[Kensai]

Great news, Nick, can't wait for you to deliver your terrific ideas! Can you tell us a little bit more about the parent software house "Game Labs" and how you came about with this title? The miniaturized soldiers look awesome in the first screenshots. I do hope for epic scale maps though and confrontations that last more than half an hour. Anyway, whatever your creation will be, I will definitely get it.

 

Τα σπας, αδερφέ!

[Jordy]

I really like the graphics in the screenshot and the idea of deep stratigical gameplay, striking a balance between simpel controls, with not too many options and depth.

 

However I was wondering, is this meant to be only singleplayer? Because I think that would be a real shame..