Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

The Campaign Series: Middle East 1948-1985 is a new turn-based, tactical wargame that focuses on conflicts in the Middle East.

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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by Jason Petho »

Here is the latest article over at our website. The article talks about US intelligence in Vietnam. Quite fascinating!

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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by Rosseau »

Had no idea about the scope of the game, which makes my comments totally irrelevant. [8|]

Just realized this week is the 51th anniversary of Tet. Good article on intel, but too bad the generals back then didn't believe them. Just a tiny slice of what you are planning to portray. Congrats on making this happen, hopefully this year.
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by Jason Petho »

Yes, the scope is fairly vast.

Another reason for the delay, it's a monster game with hundreds of hours of play time.
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by Jason Petho »

Campaign Series Vietnam: OOB's. The Australians have had a historical make over. They are fantastic now, down to monthly OOB changes as they progressed through the war. Of course, they are also complete between 1948-1985 making them Cold War ready. A HUGE thank you to Enocm McKbeer!!

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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by berto »


Another recent (private) Dev Team Forum post:
ORIGINAL: berto

In his scenario battle plan for VN_631124_Hiep_Hoa.scn, Jason had specified this:
Airstrikes are available after turn 4.
Ah, interesting. In the standard game, there is no delaying mechanism for airstrikes. In the standard game, all airstrikes are available from the very beginning.

How to satisfy the specification? Here is one way:

function init_luavs ()

...

init_luav("NUMBER_US_AIRSTRIKES", air_support(SIDE_A))

...

end

That is, save to the NUMBER_US_AIRSTRIKES luav Side A's airstrikes # as the game begins (when init_luavs() is first called).

Then, in on_next_turn(), do this:

function on_next_turn (turn) -- DO NOT REMOVE

if turn == 1 then
set_air_support(SIDE_A, 0)
elseif turn == 5 then
set_air_support(SIDE_A, luav(NUMBER_US_AIRSTRIKES))
end

That is, at Turn 1 (and after the NUMBER_US_AIRSTRIKES initialization), set the US side (Side A) AirSupport level to zero. Then at Turn 5, set AirSupport to the initial NUMBER_US_AIRSTRIKES as earlier saved in the luav.

Does it work? Yes! With this debug diagnostic set:

function on_air_attack (hc, pid, name, side, nation, points, strength) -- DO NOT REMOVE

log(LUALOG, LOG_INFO, "air attack on turn " .. current_turn())

end

After a test game, I see:

rober@Rob10rto /cygdrive/r/Temp/Logs
$ egrep "air attack" lua.log
2019-01-30 08:14:18 vnengine.exe: [INFO ID 10] air attack on turn 6
2019-01-30 08:14:27 vnengine.exe: [INFO ID 10] air attack on turn 6
2019-01-30 08:27:20 vnengine.exe: [INFO ID 10] air attack on turn 8
2019-01-30 08:31:12 vnengine.exe: [INFO ID 10] air attack on turn 10

No airstrikes Turns 1-4, only after Turn 5.

I also verified in the HexInfo Box that the Side A Air Power switched to 0 at Turn 1, remaining at that level until Turn 5, when indeed it switched back to 4.

This is a really cool example of how, with a clever CSEE implementation, we can add new features, and feature variations, to the otherwise standard game engine. In the legacy game engine (and without going to the trouble of implementing a Visibility #-#[#] #-#[#] ... like system), AirSupport is set from the beginning. With the CSEE, we can set and reset it as we please!
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by berto »


And another recent (private) Dev Team Forum post:
ORIGINAL: berto

With the addition of

[*]the new Variable, Asymmetric, Turn-Based Victory [Objective] Points System

and the widespread proliferation of

[*]Event Points, assigned for all manner of in-game events

it is getting harder and harder to assess scenario balance. Without thousands of hours of hands-on human testing (which we don't have, needless to say), how can we be sure that the Victory Points thresholds -- for Major Defeat, Minor Defeat, Minor Victory, Major Victory -- are reasonable?

Here too, the CSEE to the rescue!

With the implementation of this

Image

after an auto-test game of VN_631124_Hiep_Hoa.scn, in lua.log we have this:

rober@Rob10rto /cygdrive/r/Temp/Logs
$ cat lua.log
2019-01-30 10:11:25 vnengine.exe: [INFO ID 10] at turn 1, loss points A 0, loss points B 0, event points A 0, event points B 0, objective points 0, total points 0
2019-01-30 10:12:41 vnengine.exe: [INFO ID 10] at turn 2, loss points A 0, loss points B 6, event points A 0, event points B 0, objective points 0, total points 6
2019-01-30 10:14:08 vnengine.exe: [INFO ID 10] at turn 3, loss points A 0, loss points B 15, event points A 0, event points B 0, objective points 0, total points 15
2019-01-30 10:15:47 vnengine.exe: [INFO ID 10] at turn 4, loss points A 0, loss points B 24, event points A 0, event points B 0, objective points -7, total points 17
2019-01-30 10:17:19 vnengine.exe: [INFO ID 10] at turn 5, loss points A 0, loss points B 33, event points A 0, event points B 0, objective points -14, total points 19
2019-01-30 10:19:01 vnengine.exe: [INFO ID 10] at turn 6, loss points A 0, loss points B 42, event points A 0, event points B 0, objective points -21, total points 21
2019-01-30 10:19:01 vnengine.exe: [INFO ID 10] air attack on turn 6
2019-01-30 10:19:06 vnengine.exe: [INFO ID 10] air attack on turn 6
2019-01-30 10:20:42 vnengine.exe: [INFO ID 10] at turn 7, loss points A 0, loss points B 71, event points A 10, event points B 0, objective points -28, total points 53
2019-01-30 10:20:43 vnengine.exe: [INFO ID 10] air attack on turn 7
2019-01-30 10:22:16 vnengine.exe: [INFO ID 10] at turn 8, loss points A 0, loss points B 80, event points A 15, event points B 0, objective points -35, total points 60
2019-01-30 10:23:58 vnengine.exe: [INFO ID 10] at turn 9, loss points A 1, loss points B 80, event points A 15, event points B 0, objective points -42, total points 52
2019-01-30 10:23:59 vnengine.exe: [INFO ID 10] air attack on turn 9
2019-01-30 10:36:14 vnengine.exe: [INFO ID 10] at turn 10, loss points A 1, loss points B 108, event points A 20, event points B 0, objective points -49, total points 78
2019-01-30 10:37:41 vnengine.exe: [INFO ID 10] at turn 11, loss points A 7, loss points B 120, event points A 25, event points B 0, objective points -56, total points 82
2019-01-30 10:39:03 vnengine.exe: [INFO ID 10] at turn 12, loss points A 7, loss points B 123, event points A 30, event points B 0, objective points -63, total points 83
2019-01-30 10:43:00 vnengine.exe: [INFO ID 10] at turn 13, loss points A 8, loss points B 134, event points A 30, event points B 0, objective points -70, total points 86
2019-01-30 10:45:23 vnengine.exe: [INFO ID 10] at game shutdown , loss points A 8, loss points B 143, event points A 35, event points B 0, objective points -77, total points 93, major defeat 50, minor defeat 100, minor victory 200, major victory 300

Now here's the deal:

[*]With the csttrun script, I can easily automate test trial games of every scenario.
[*]I can repeat the autotests, round after round. (On up to a half dozen systems I have available for testing purposes here.)
[*]From test run to test run, I can save the above highlighted lua.log entry by dumping it to a common victory.dat file.
[*]I can develop another script to analyze the autotest victory results, to highlight the outliers, also to highlight scenarios consistently tilting towards one side or the other.
[*]For greater variety of test results, it would even be possible to switch off the normal SAI (Scripted AI) and just test the scenario with the legacy AI.

By these means, we can get a better handle on which scenario victory conditions might need tweaking, or not.

New uses for the CSEE (Campaign Series [Lua] Event Engine) just keep suggesting themselves!
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by Jason Petho »

Assimilation - The Battle of Saigon (Screenshot from the scenario editor, not the main game)

April 29, 1955

[Saigon, South Vietnam]: [SIDE B/H2H][HIS][CSL]: Prime Minister Ng Dinh Diem issued an ultimatum for the private army of the Binh Xuen organized crime syndicate to surrender their arms and come under state control in early 1955. The Binh Xuyen was a private army within the Vietnamese National Army, as decreed by Emperor Bao Dai and was funded with revenues from legally running brothels and casinos. The group consisted of five battalions and armed with similar weapons as the VNA. In reaction to Diem's call, elements of the Binh Xuyen attacked the VNA Headquarters in Saigon, beginning a series of engagements throughout the city. As the VNA funneled more forces into the city, house to house fighting became prevalent. The Binh Xuyen was pushed into the Cholon District, where they had their fortified headquarters established. Eventually the VNA was forced to use heavier artillery, destroying much of the Cholon District, causing hundreds of deaths and displacing thousands. Seeing their position as being untenable, the Binh Xuyen escaped south into the Rung Sat Swamp. [ALL][CSEE, Variable Objectives] [NOTE: The Binh Xuyen Forces are portrayed with US armed Viet Cong platoons] [1.00]

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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by DM729 »

Looks like a fun scenario indeed!
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by Andrea G »

It's impressive the amount og historical research you guys are piling up for this game
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by Oberst_Klink »

ORIGINAL: Andrea G

It's impressive the amount og historical research you guys are piling up for this game
Everybody in the team is dedicated. Also feel free to communicate with CSLegion via FB and Twitter.

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My Blog & on Twitter.
Visit CS Legion on Twitter & Facebook for updates.
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by Big Ivan »

Just caught up with this thread.

The new variable airstrikes and turn based victory conditions are huge leaps forward IMHO. They can bring
a new dimension to larger scenarios, night to day and vice versa transition scenarios and dare I say a
"Campaign Game".

The top down presented graphics too are very pleasing to these old eyes.

I like these changes a lot!

The new game code is proving its worth with these kinds of additions to the game.

Nice job Development Team![:D]
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by Crossroads »

ORIGINAL: 76mm

FWIW, those counters are way too busy for my tastes...I much prefer a solid-color background and simple unit graphic/silhouette or NATO symbols.

Those are the Alternate Chits, 76-mill. Standard Chits are monochrome (and chits can be modded, of course). Here's a quick snippet with Standard Chits + NATO symbols and Alternate Chits + Unit Images:

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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by Crossroads »

Or, you could opt to show Unit Images on Standard Chits, too. It's all in the Options menu [:)]

This is all under the 2D Boardgame view, by the way. There's also the 3D Miniatures view (as what I call it as a boardgamer [:'(] ) still available too, shown in some other screenshots.

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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by berto »


Also with optional on-counter unit stats, of course. So many ways to customize the look and feel of this game!
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by Crossroads »

ORIGINAL: berto


Also with optional on-counter unit stats, of course. So many ways to customize the look and feel of this game!

I went to us "unbusy" as I could [:'(]

Here's the busy scale at the other end, with Alternate Chits, Unit Images, and On-Counter Stats. And each unit's On-Map Thermometer as well:


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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by budd »

I'm really digging pretty much the whole presentation, especially the map, kudos to the map maker. Don't suppose the game or any scenario is far enough along for a bit of an AAR[;)]


Are you guys re-doing and/or adding more effects to the game? Meaning dramatic explosions for the gunship rocket strikes or napalm, maybe a little screen shake option for the really big strikes[:D] I think the games sounds could use some love also, mainly the weapon and explosion sounds.
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by Crossroads »

ORIGINAL: budd

I'm really digging pretty much the whole presentation, especially the map, kudos to the map maker. Don't suppose the game or any scenario is far enough along for a bit of an AAR[;)]
Thanks budd! Team effort [:)] No AARs quite yet.
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by berto »

ORIGINAL: budd

I'm really digging pretty much the whole presentation, especially the map, kudos to the map maker. Don't suppose the game or any scenario is far enough along for a bit of an AAR[;)]
I hope soon to present more before and after game (auto)play videos showing the difference between the old and the new AI.
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by BigDuke66 »

AFAIk there was mentioning of the amount of scenarios, so maybe someone can also point out what areas in South Vietnam are covered?
And are there any scenarios outside SV, Cambodia maybe?
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by Jason Petho »

Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam

Time span covers 1948-1979, covering a wide variety of actions in that time frame.
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