New Engine?

Forum dedicated to the Scourge of War Game set during the Napoleonic Wars. Scourge of War: Waterloo follows in the footsteps of its American Civil War predecessors and takes the action to one of the most famous battles in history. It is by far the most detailed game about the final battle of the War of the Seventh Coalition.

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Ostwindflak
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New Engine?

Post by Ostwindflak »

The screen shots so far look very good. I was wondering if this game is going to run the old Scourge of War engine or be implementing a new one? It would be nice to have a large Army vs. Army battle in a sandbox mode without to many system resources being used so only a fraction of the units on the field are engaged in battle while the rest stand and watch.
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Jim_NSD
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RE: New Engine?

Post by Jim_NSD »

The Waterloo game will be using a new generation game engine. We are making a lot of structural changes to properly handle the additional complexities of NW era combat. This is not a de novo creation but a generational change and expansion of capabilities.

-Jim
Design Lead: Scourge of War

"My God, if we've not got a cool brain and a big one too, to manage this affair, the nation is ruined forever." Unknown private, 14th Vermont Infantry, 2 July 1863
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Ostwindflak
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RE: New Engine?

Post by Ostwindflak »

Excellent. Thank you for the response Jim. I look forward to playing it. God speed to you and the team!
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ETF
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RE: New Engine?

Post by ETF »

If a new engine....please do tell what Mutiplayer options will be included. Anything new?
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Phoenix100
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RE: New Engine?

Post by Phoenix100 »

Can I ask, Jim, will you move to 1:1 rendering of the battlefields (as opposed to the 1:3 rendering in SOW, I believe - I mean everything is three times smaller than in real life, right?) I think it would be an exceptional attraction to actually model the battlefield as it was, to exact 1:1 scale. I live about 10 minutes drive from the battlefield and the core parts of it are in great 'unspoilt' condition - very similar to how it was then.
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RE: New Engine?

Post by ETF »

+1
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Phoenix100
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RE: New Engine?

Post by Phoenix100 »

Another try to get a response. Can anyone answer my question above? Cheers. I'll put it in a new thread also, to try to attract the dev attention.
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RE: New Engine?

Post by Phoenix100 »

Hello? Any chance of an answer? Thanks.
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RE: New Engine?

Post by RebBugler »

ORIGINAL: phoenix

Can I ask, Jim, will you move to 1:1 rendering of the battlefields (as opposed to the 1:3 rendering in SOW, I believe - I mean everything is three times smaller than in real life, right?) I think it would be an exceptional attraction to actually model the battlefield as it was, to exact 1:1 scale. I live about 10 minutes drive from the battlefield and the core parts of it are in great 'unspoilt' condition - very similar to how it was then.

Regardless of what sprite ratio is used as the default, presently SR4 (1:4), the Options Menu will still provide the player with his choice of sprite ratios.

Yes, SR1 would be the ultimate representation, but impossible as of yet with today's game engines, or at least with ours or any I'm aware of. To represent the full day battle of Waterloo 180,000 sprites would have to be rendered, plus the map would have to be huge. Still, a nice futuristic wish list thing.
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kipanderson
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RE: New Engine?

Post by kipanderson »

Hi,

“To represent the full day battle of Waterloo 180,000 sprites would have to be rendered”


The above explanation does say it all.. :).

I too had not stopped to think enough about it to fully realise the difference from say Combat Mission type densities.

BTW... may I just quickly ask how things are coming along.. I ask because with some other developers I know from experience how long certain types of project take.. but have no idea here.

Are we very roughly aiming at middle of next year?

Very roughly...

All the best,
Kip.



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RE: New Engine?

Post by Phoenix100 »

To represent the full day battle of Waterloo 180,000 sprites would have to be rendered”

Well, it doesn't quite say it all, Kip.

How many sprites can the engine handle? How big a map? If these are the limitations then you make design choices, I assume, as to how to handle them, as do all other games. SOW has thus far decided to handle the limitations by distorting reality in a certain way, by scaling everything 1:4 or 1:3 or whatever it is. Not just the numbers of sprites chosen by the user (which wasn't really what I was talking about) but the map itself. The maps are all one third life size. But you could have decided, perhaps (not sure - just asking)to deal with the limitations by sticking rigorously to life size maps and 1:1 scale (because surely that is important, because, in reality a 1:4 representation of a piece of ground bears very little tactical resemblance to the actual thing, no?) but dividing the battle area into several different maps? Say the engine can't handle 180,000 sprites, or the entire Waterloo area - why not break it down into scenarios. The battle itself does break down like this, at least in the usual accounts. For me this would be a much better solution. It would have the added attraction of reducing the command spans to make the command experience more realistic also, surely?

There would be other, coding type solutions also, I suppose - rendering the sprites into an abstraction as they are a certain distance from the user? Ditto the map. I'm guessing, but this seems to be what other games do. It's a design decision to make the SOW series a miniature type rendition, and all I was saying was that my preference would be to see it life size. Others, naturally, wouldn't want this at all. They might wish to fight the entire battle on a single map and turn a blind eye to the fact that the map is a quarter the size of reality and the number of forces similarly reduced. They might find that compromise with the limitations preferable. But it's a design choice (and a player preference). You could choose to dish it up in smaller chunks at 1:1 scale.
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RE: New Engine?

Post by 76mm »

in reality a 1:4 representation of a piece of ground bears very little tactical resemblance to the actual thing, no?)

You kind of lost me here...for instance, a 1/35 scale model of a tank bears a striking resemblance to the real things (albeit smaller of course). And a 1:50:000 topo map bears a striking resemblance to the actual ground...

Therefore it seems to me that if a piece of ground was scaled down to a 1:4 representation things would work fine as long as everything else (movement rates, weapon ranges, etc.) were scaled down accordingly. Are you suggesting that they're taking some other approach?
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RE: New Engine?

Post by zakblood »

i have no idea what all the above comments mean tbh, just looking for game info so keep looking here and reading whatever i can, and will sign up for alpha or beta once released, as to me i don't care what size what it tbh.

i just want to test it[&o][&o][&o]
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Phoenix100
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RE: New Engine?

Post by Phoenix100 »

You kind of lost me here...for instance, a 1/35 scale model of a tank bears a striking resemblance to the real things (albeit smaller of course). And a 1:50:000 topo map bears a striking resemblance to the actual ground...

Therefore it seems to me that if a piece of ground was scaled down to a 1:4 representation things would work fine as long as everything else (movement rates, weapon ranges, etc.) were scaled down accordingly. Are you suggesting that they're taking some other approach?

Maybe. I'm not totally sure what approach they take. But I know that if you look at any chunk of the Civil War battlefields in photos or on google earth/streetview then it looks very different (in scale) to how it looks in the game - the most obvious difference being that the real life images look much bigger. For this to be the case I'm assuming there must be modelled a scaling difference - ie that the map is scaled differently to most (if not all) of the objects on and in it (including the sprites) - otherwise reality and game would look the same. So - to use your example - it's more like you're playing on a 1/75 scale map, say, but with 1/35 scale models (of houses, trees, people etc) - actually with a greater difference than that though (it's more like, in the game, you're playing with 1:8 scale models on a 1:32 scale map). How tactically accurate this is would depend on how los and movement and cover etc are modelled, to a certain extent, but, to take a simple example - say a ditch in real life was 16ft deep and men were able to shelter in it, fire from it etc, be in cover, in the game this ditch (as a map feature, not an object) would appear to be only four foot deep compared to the men, with different los, cover effects etc. That's how I've always thought of how they have done it, and that's how it looks when you compare the real battlefields to the game - everything looks smaller, lower, less wide etc, in terms of the landscape, or, alternatively, the houses, trees, people etc in the game look way too big for the landscape (if you have in mind the real life landscape). And for it to appear like this, like I said, I assume that relative to the landscape/map features the objects placed must be at a different scale (four times larger, I think). This has the coincidental effect of making a unit one quarter the size of the real life unit (say 200 sprites, to represent 800 men) take up roughly the same space (on the map) as the real life unit would have, but only because each sprite is four times larger than a man would be if modelled at the same scale as the map. To consider the tactical effects imagine what it would be like if you were magically transported to the Waterloo battlefield and, somehow all the men, horses, houses, trees, walls, were gigantic, four times larger than real life. That's what the game does, I think. It would have a massive tactical effect, of course, when dealing with any aspect of tactics which had anything to do with the terrain.

The game works beautifully, I think, and I really like it. But I would much prefer, myself, that this distortion wasn't there, even at the expense of having smaller scenarios/engagements. Hence I asked the question about the new Waterloo project. Which I think has now been answered - the scale will be the same as the SOW series. So no need to go on discussing this for my sake (unless I've got any of the details wrong, in which case I'd love to stand corrected), especially since I feel most players are more than happy with the distortions I've described. [:)]
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RE: New Engine?

Post by Redmarkus5 »

Obviously Phoenix is correct. If you create a 3D map on which 100m = 400m in real life, but without adjusting time, movement rates and the size of every man, tree and building to the same degree, then the entire battlefield will be distorted. If you do adjust everything to the same degree, then you are back where you started.

Nobody playing on such a distorted surface (with different degrees of scaling) will experience anything resembling the historical battle in terms of decision making and fog of war.

In my view, Waterloo is indeed best represented as a series of scenarios. Historically, neither Wellington nor Napoleon could see the whole field of battle, much less influence events at its extremities.
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RE: New Engine?

Post by Redmarkus5 »

If the devs do one single thing with the new engine, please let it be to make bodies of troops march, wheel and form line in a realistic fashion.
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RE: New Engine?

Post by freeboy »

this looks like a must have PLEASE
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RE: New Engine?

Post by freeboy »

do we have a beta? release date >
??
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RE: New Engine?

Post by Champagne »

additional complexities of NW era combat

Napoleonic tactics were more complex than US Civil War tactics. IMHO, the game developers will have a real challenge before them as they try to code things like Infantry squares protecting artillery crews.
Only the dead have seen the end of War.

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RE: New Engine?

Post by histgamer »

ORIGINAL: Champagne
additional complexities of NW era combat

Napoleonic tactics were more complex than US Civil War tactics. IMHO, the game developers will have a real challenge before them as they try to code things like Infantry squares protecting artillery crews.

You are indeed correct that the combat and combined arms tactics were more complex, you can also be assured the development team is already hard at work on these items. [;)]
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