En bref. Cet ambitieux projet en chantier depuis plusieurs années change son fusil d’épaule et adopte le moteur de jeu Unity. Ce qui en résumé devrait permettre si tout va bien au jeu de sortir cette année.
En résumé les trois éléments déjà existants, éditeur d’armées, éditeur de cartes et éditeurs de scénarios, vont permettre une fois associés à un bon moteur graphique d’obtenir un meilleur résultat à l’écran. L’ancien moteur graphique initialement envisagé est donc abandonné. Il n’y a plus désormais qu’à attendre les premières captures d’écrans montrant le résultat final. Qui pourrait s’avérer très intéressant, spécialement pour les amateurs des périodes concernées par le système de jeu.
Pour plus d’informations sur General Staff – Black Powder Wargaming System (précédemment intitulé General Staff – Game of Military Tactics & Wargaming System), voyez le site officiel. Et éventuellement l’ancienne campagne initiale sur Kickstarter.
Communiqué
General Staff will Ship in 2022
The General Staff: Black Powder Wargaming System is comprised of four separate programs: the Army Editor, Map Editor, Scenario Editor and the actual Game Engine, itself. The first three have been done for some time (it’s what I use to produce scenarios for testing the AI). They were written in C# using Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) which is often used for creating desktop business applications. This decision made sense because the Army, Map and Scenario Editors function not unlike a suite of business applications that create and share data with a common look and feel. However, while WPF was a good development decision for the Editor programs it turned out not to be a great tool for creating the Game Engine.
What the Game Engine does is it takes data created in the three Editor programs, displays them in a visually exciting way, enables the user to make input (orders), and simulates those orders (as well as the AI’s orders) and the resulting combat to the highest degree of accuracy possible. That sounds like a lot, but it really isn’t. And the heavy lifting that the Game Engine is being asked to do is all visual: making everything look good on the screen.
Recently, I’ve been looking at Grand Tactician: Civil War which is an immersive voyage into 19th century American typography, cartography, tactics and grand strategy. I eagerly look forward to having the time to do more than gaze upon it in amazement 1). I reached out to Ilja on their development team and he convinced me that we should complete the General Staff Game Engine in Unity (which is what they used for Grand Tactician). What they accomplished visually with Grand Tactician was precisely the look and feel that I wanted for General Staff 2).
Consequently, we are officially announcing that we are abandoning writing the General Staff: Black Powder Game Engine in WPF and, instead, will be creating it using the Unity engine. We believe that this will produce a far superior visual experience 3).
Because Unity is designed to facilitate the creation of computer games, this move will greatly accelerate the completion of the General Staff Game Engine and will allow us to ship General Staff: Black Powder this year.
I am certainly not U. S. Grant, though I like to think I have some of that bulldog determination. Like Grant before Vicksburg, I’ve had to acknowledge that our first attempt will not succeed and we’re moving on to another plan. I am sorry for the delay in the release of General Staff and am confident that, with Unity, we will soon be reporting some good news.
