Commander Wars

[Robosturm]

Well, some new Updates are done:

I've added a new Rule to the Gamerules!
This allows you to manipulate the Map the way you'll see!

Map designed in the editor!


Normal!

Snowy!

Desert!


This doesn't only change the visual style but also the movment costs so playing in Desert doesn't give you the CoW-Desert-Costs but that of the Normal Plain Terrain!
Have fun laying on the beach with a drink and watching tanks fighting!

You may also relize another future!
You can now place Meteors, Fire and some other terrain on top of desert or Snow and other Terrains!
This allows you to create a lot more maps!

For Multiplayer i've added a Button that shows you your IP's so you don't need to search them with CMD or something else to give it to your opponent.

I've changed some other minor stuff and some codes for nice futures lay around as well!

But my current work is a brandnew and stronger AI for CoW!

At the end i want to say thank you to Lord Spyro (also known as Kohaku Sama, King Greyfield) for his work on Commander Wars!
It was a nice time and the project get some good new stuff!

[GipFace]

With the discovery of a working AW4 wi-fi emulation implementation, this project is pretty much obsolete. Sorry, Robosturm. Don't waste your time on this unless you really want to play last-gen rules.

[Blame Game]

RoboSturm, Gipface is a crazy person clinging to a game that has been dead for years, keep on trucking please. I haven't been posting in any AW forums recently but just know that I have been paying attention with some interest for some time!

[Sven]

i think your status as an aw groupie is far more disturbing than gipface's love of a children's war game.

[Blame Game]

that would probably be the case if the year weren't 2012.

[Robosturm]

I wouldn't stop working on the project at all, solely because GipFace thinks that CoW is a simple DoR-Clone for PC, which it isn't at all.
But i was to lazy to argue with him about his opinion!

The real problem is that i don't have much free time for CoW!
Studying needs to much time in the moment!

[GipFace]

I'm right once again. Development has stalled and now it'll probably die. I was part of a game-creation system community back in the late 90s. I know how things like these work.

- Good fan-made games are usually unannounced until substantial work has been done
- All the rest get announced by an overzealous teenager, then becomes vaporware

See, here's the truth. You took the Custom Wars base and all you've done is add in a few pigeon "features" which don't really matter in the long run. You're going to need a lot more than that before your game becomes viable. I wouldn't even focus on the map editor right now, and instead improve on the overall interface and aesthetic. Like, you know, getting map animation down, and improving the menus, because they look freaking hideous.

By the way, go to college and take a course on Game Design. I'm sure the professors will tell you that they absolutely love the Comic Sans font.

[Robosturm]

You might assume that CoW dies as i don't say what we're doing at the moment.
Though i don't have the time to do all the stuff needed for the next version.

You assume i use the Code of Custom Wars?
The whole Code is written from Scratch and then i used some of the ideas like CO's for Commander Wars.
And i know that Comic Sans MS looks better than Courier New, but as i needed to write all the Buttons, Numerics and stuff myself for DirectX it was easier to calculate the Font width when every letter has the same size.
And therefore the Numerics don't look nice as i'm not a good spriter.
And the Ingame-Menu is very similar to that of AW.

And if you don't like the project you don't need to play it.
It's that easy.
Just saying the project is bad and dead doesn't help anybody!
Play AWDC\Dor and be happy.

[GipFace]

Comic Sans MS looks better than Courier New
Wow. I was implying that your font choice was terrible. Both of those fonts should never be used in a game. (Courier New is fine for things like editing code or for ASCII art)

if you don't like the project you don't need to play it.
If you don't like criticism, then you shouldn't have shown anything until you had something proper to show. Announcing something and then never finishing it just makes you look like 3D Realms. If you think you're special, note that many other people have tried making an AW client, and all have failed. Custom Wars was programmed by some nerd who didn't care about the charming aesthetic that separates AW from the sea of terrible TBS games out there. You're headed on the same path.

Right now your game design skills are horrid and you shouldn't bother wasting your time. I wouldn't even attempt this project unless you had some way to vector-ize all the units so that it's no longer sprite-based. When I was in that game-creation system community back in 1999 (when I was in high school), I entered a competition as a newcomer and got 3rd out of around 30 people. Then the next season, I won it. So while my programming skills may not be as awesome as yours, I think I know a little about game aesthetics and design.

[Blame Game]

Actually, the best way to complete a project is to put consistent time and effort into it-- not this weird political stuff about "withholding announcements until substantial work is done." While it's true that most projects with "premature announcements" fail, that's only because most projects fail period. The ones that get announced after lots of work has been done succeed more often, but, shocker, that's because lots of work has been done on them. No surprise, here, that such a "unique" command of logic has steered Gipface's professional career away from actual programming, and instead towards the shimmering stardom of bullying random programmers over the internet.

On that note, I would like to point out how brazen Gipface is to laugh off the CW programmers, who to this day should probably be recognized as the most important people ever to have any part of this community, putting hundreds of man-hours into an incredibly ambitious project with bleak prospects and insufferably entitled "users." I pretty much just will not tolerate anyone crumpets on the likes of urusan and Captain Vimes, and the many others who spent their time trying to grow this community into something vibrant and sustainable.

Of course, Gipface has even shown open contempt for amarriner, whose impact on the AW-playing community is second only to Intelligent Systems' by a longshot-- so maybe I'm naive in thinking I can deter this sort of ridiculous behavior. I can only hope that people like Robosturm (and others who are working on or contemplating similar projects) are not discouraged. What a shame it would be if they were to drop everything and do something silly, like, say, begging foreign companies to arbitrarily hire them out of the blue!

[Lord Spyro]

On that note, I would like to point out how brazen Gipface is to laugh off the CW programmers, who to this day should probably be recognized as the most important people ever to have any part of this community, putting hundreds of man-hours into an incredibly ambitious project with bleak prospects and insufferably entitled "users." I pretty much just will not tolerate anyone crumpets on the likes of urusan and Captain Vimes, and the many others who spent their time trying to grow this community into something vibrant and sustainable.

Of course, Gipface has even shown open contempt for amarriner, whose impact on the AW-playing community is second only to Intelligent Systems' by a longshot-- so maybe I'm naive in thinking I can deter this sort of ridiculous behavior. I can only hope that people like Robosturm (and others who are working on or contemplating similar projects) are not discouraged. What a shame it would be if they were to drop everything and do something silly, like, say, begging foreign companies to arbitrarily hire them out of the blue!

I thank you for the recognition and I am pretty sure Robosturm will thank you too, I own Commander Wars with Robosturm. I don't tolerate trolls like Gipface either. I have a zero tolerance policy for them.

[Sven]

Actually, the best way to complete a project is to put consistent time and effort into it-- not this weird political stuff about "withholding announcements until substantial work is done." While it's true that most projects with "premature announcements" fail, that's only because most projects fail period. The ones that get announced after lots of work has been done succeed more often, but, shocker, that's because lots of work has been done on them. No surprise, here, that such a "unique" command of logic has steered Gipface's professional career away from actual programming, and instead towards the shimmering stardom of bullying random programmers over the internet.

On that note, I would like to point out how brazen Gipface is to laugh off the CW programmers, who to this day should probably be recognized as the most important people ever to have any part of this community, putting hundreds of man-hours into an incredibly ambitious project with bleak prospects and insufferably entitled "users." I pretty much just will not tolerate anyone crumpets on the likes of urusan and Captain Vimes, and the many others who spent their time trying to grow this community into something vibrant and sustainable.

Of course, Gipface has even shown open contempt for amarriner, whose impact on the AW-playing community is second only to Intelligent Systems' by a longshot-- so maybe I'm naive in thinking I can deter this sort of ridiculous behavior. I can only hope that people like Robosturm (and others who are working on or contemplating similar projects) are not discouraged. What a shame it would be if they were to drop everything and do something silly, like, say, begging foreign companies to arbitrarily hire them out of the blue!

did you finally finish your humanities degree in order to write that lovely defense?

[Narts]

Gip is right in that the game looks awful. That doesn't take away from the impressiveness of the project as a programming effort, though. The AI in particular is something that no other AW fan game ever got to that level of completion. And I know AI is hard. Slamming the project for having badly designed menus seems incredibly petty next to that. I kind of get the impression from Gip's comments he doesn't know as much about game development as he thinks - understandable, if his only experience is having frequented some amateur game dev forum in the 90's. "I know how these things work!" - I laughed out loud at that.

Simple reason why the game has bad visual design is that the project doesn't have artists - only a couple of bedroom programmers. You can't realistically expect every programmer to be an expert artist - people who have both skills are extremely rare. You have to realise the people responsible for the charming aesthetic in Advance Wars were different from the people who programmed the game - and different from the people who designed it too (game designers are generally responsible for the gameplay, not the visuals. They deal with numbers and charts more than with graphics)

So how does Robosturm and his pal get artists for their project? Easiest way (and pretty much the only one if they don't have money) is to show it off online and hope somebody gets interested. Now, that doesn't seem to be working too well for them, but perhaps they're just not trying hard enough. I don't envy them, finding capable game artists who would work for free isn't the easiest thing in the world.

However, as it is, Commander Wars, while not a complete game, would still look good on a portfolio if you were looking for a job as a game programmer.

[JSRulz]

Also, keep in mind that AW in itself is a very "tall order". AW needs a decent AI, network play, and the ability to install maps minimum. However, thanks to the inclusion of AWDoR, the game play style of AW is no longer straightforward. It doubles the amount of work and content needed for each of these games. Combining it into one game is just a nightmare, and splitting it into 2 games makes it harder to maintain.

I also feel that the communities are very disjointed in what they believe a great AW game actually is. I went to each forum, and every different forum has their own ideas on balance, what CO's are good/bad, which AW game was the most fun to them. What I found worse is the amount of politics within the sites themselves. It has become a massive holy war for the AW grail.

I mean, it is like we are all running around like chickens with our heads cut off, waiting for the day where IS comes out with a new AW game. There is some truth given by everyone here.

Gipface is correct. The visuals behind Commander Wars can use a bit of touch-up. The first impression of the game comes directly from the graphics. The better the graphics, the more chances people will want to play your game. It is important to listen, or at least acknowledge what people are asking for. They are trying to help you improve 90% of the time.

Blame Game is correct too. These are projects done in programmer's spare time. Unlike a competition, you are not trying to just finish a simple game and move on. You are basically trying to recreate something that has already been done. I know this is a lot harder, because there is little tolerance for error in a remake. Any small glitch will automatically get people comparing your game to the old one. If the game isn't 99% close to the remake and/or doesn't improve the old game in some way; programmers will take it in the rear with complaints. No programmer wants to see their project fail. Programmers put a lot of work into getting these projects to life; They should be thanked for their efforts at least.

Narts is spot on as well. The Commander Wars game play end is very impressive. He has a fully working AW game with AI, and he is very close to breaking through with the network and a map editor. The original Custom Wars was the exact opposite of Commander Wars, where it had great AW game play with networking and map editor, but no AI. If you can look past the interfaces (Custom Wars did not have an exceptional menu system either, though it was better than Commander Wars), then you can see the amount of work that was done technically is amazing.

The future of AW, we are living it now. I sat down and wrote a web document of all the ideas people had about what makes a good AW game. As you can tell, it is one huge chunk of text. It reflects a lot on the communities of AW. We really don't know what we want from a new AW game.

If the communities don't know what they want, how are game designers supposed to know what game to build?

[Narts]

If the communities don't know what they want, how are game designers supposed to know what game to build?

How indeed... A designer is supposed to be an innovator. He comes up with an idea and figures out how to make it work. If he doesn't know what he wants, he isn't much of a designer. As the designer of your game, it's up to you to decide what you put in and what you leave out. Yeah. Tough decisions - especially when what you leave out is often much more important than what you put in. Nobody said designing games is easy. In any case the surest path to destruction is trying to satisfy everyone and cram every single Advance Wars or Advance Wars type game with its every variation in a single design. You'll just end up with an out of control monstrosity that is too big to realistically hone to the level of polish that people expect from a finished game. Scale down, and streamline. Keep the amount of features in check - you'll find it's easier to attract artists to the project as well if the amount of art assets that are needed is sensible.

If you want my word of advice - choose one version of Advance Wars, based on your preference, and focus on that. Forget all the others. Or just make your own game entirely. It's fruitless to ask "the community" what they want because there barely even is a community to begin with and they don't really know. If you make a truly worthwhile game, it will attract its own fanbase and community. There never was a community of fans for a game that didn't exist first.

Ask yourself : Why do I want to make this game? What do I want to, ideally, see in this game? What is the best game that I could possibly make? Then go and make it happen. Stop whimpering.

[Narts]

On starting a project:

While having a detailed design document is good, the most important thing at this stage you should be doing is simple marketing and recruiting. Getting people excited enough in the project that they might consider contributing - so you have someone to assemble a team from.

A design document is something you need before you start programming, but before even that you need a team. And some cryptic document full of tl;dr is not quite cutting it for getting people interested. Anyone can write a design document. Concept art and mock screenshots work far better in conveying the fun in your idea.

In this I think I was going somewhat ass backwards with Ad Hoc Commander. I'm an artist - I should have used my talents to create artwork that I could have shown people to go "wow that looks like fun" on. Then be more vague on what exactly the game mechanics would be so people could have used their imagination to substitute for details. Get someone to write the engine and someone else to do the design. etc. A real team effort, instead of trying to do everything myself - not that I was planning to do it that way, but the way I presented the project left something to want for, so it just ended up that way.

[Blame Game]

100% echoing what Narts just said. Asking passionate people for opinions on the very things they’re passionate about is an awful idea unless all you’re looking for is some random spark of inspiration or something. That’s partially because they’ll inevitably contradict each other, but even asking just one, particularly credible individual is usually going to give you some skewed, awful perspective on what’s really important.

We can take countless examples from the Chess/Chess variant communities. Chess 960 (Chess with semi-randomized back rows in order to lessen the importance of opening preparation) has been categorically rejected (not criticized but rejected) by some expert Chess players because the starting positions ‘don’t look elegant enough.’ I’m not saying that they’re stupid for thinking that or anything, it’s just that being extremely passionate about something often fosters a lack of perspective that causes you to focus on things that are ultimately of little practical importance (if those people had grown up playing nothing but Chess 960, I doubt they’d jump ship to standard Chess later in their lives, elegance be damned).

In Custom Wars, this sort of hyperfocus manifested itself in weird, imaginary niches being invented and then later filled; only someone who really, really spent a lot of time playing Advance Wars, for example, could have decided that there needed to be a CO who spawns APCs that disappear the next day. Or that we should revamp the entire property system to include “Starcraft-style buildings,” and yes that was an actual suggestion that was actually briefly considered by a couple of people. Even the most credible members involved with the project had some toxic ideas that I am only just now realizing would have been hilariously bad. Example: “nerfed wars,” which may have been a somewhat tongue-in-cheek Svenism but I remember being seriously endorsed by someone like CO Frosty, possibly shoesama. I liked it too (it was exactly what it sounds like, and was branded as a way to "emphasize player skill" or some such).

My point is that it’s not just difficult to find agreement when asking groups of passionate players to suggest ideas. It’s difficult to get any good suggestions at all, period. Better to have a focused, singular vision that identifies core issues and then pursues them to the end; I do think that it’s probably hard to do that, though, unless you find a way to shut off the part of your brain that feels fuzzy when it thinks about Advance Wars. Otherwise you end up with weird idiosyncratic stuff like two separate APC units (JUST PLAYIN NARTS YOU KNOW I LOVE YOU).

There was actually something like a three-year period where I stopped playing, discussing or thinking about Advance Wars in almost any capacity. Then an (at the time) aspiring game designer brought it up out of the blue. I came up with a couple fun ideas during the discussion, and over the next few months ended up musing about them so much that I wrote an, “um,” “design document.” I’ve since polished the concept into something I would consider a focused and worthy “AW clone,” but the point is that I attribute its clarity almost entirely to the fact that I absolutely wasn’t playing Advance Wars every day, or debating in forums or whatever. (I really think it would be fun, too, which is why I’m actually toying with the idea of getting it implemented somehow. But that’s another story, ha.)

I guess all I did was elaborate on what Narts already said, but I think the importance of being in “Design Mode” (as opposed to something like Advance Wars Mode, or Chess Mode), really can’t be stressed enough.

[Xenesis]

I still think the fundamental point of any 'game' is to make sure you actually play it. It'll kinda make you realise fairly quickly if ideas are stupid or feel natural. Or, perhaps if they're your preferred kind of stupid.

[GipFace]

By the way, I now have the trump card that will kill this project completely.

Emulator (DesMuME/NO$GBA) + ROM + Teamviewer.

With Teamviewer, you can now play Dual Strike (or any Advance Wars title) in real-time. No more typing out moves on IRC. Not only does this allow 1v1, but even 2v2 or 4v4 (2v2 tag: each player controls 1 CO, force switch each turn) is possible!

CW programmers, who to this day should probably be recognized as the most important people ever to have any part of this community, putting hundreds of man-hours into an incredibly ambitious project with bleak prospects and insufferably entitled "users."

Custom Wars was programmed before remote desktop connections were feasible. Your project basically has to improve on the above solution to see any sort of play. Programmers who spent hundreds of man-hours programming DesMuME/NO$GBA, along with the programmers who spent hundreds of man-hours programming Teamviewer, look at your project and sh!t all over it.

I just finished an 11-day game of Dual Strike in under 30 minutes. See, while you are off programming something that is inferior to the real Advance Wars, and while everyone else is arguing about whether or not your project is garbage, or doing crappy emo roleplays on warscentral.com, or getting stabbed by a stalker 86 times, I'm actually playing the game. Which you know, if people had actually done, then the community wouldn't be dead.

So how does Robosturm and his pal get artists for their project? Easiest way (and pretty much the only one if they don't have money) is to show it off online and hope somebody gets interested.

If Robosturm isn't serious enough about the project to freelance an artist from deviantart.com, then he's not serious enough to complete his project. And if he has no money for that, which would only cost a few hundred dollars unless he's hiring someone like Lin Capura, then he shouldn't bother trying to do a project in which visual and audio aesthetics are a priority. CW and AWBW have no soul because they forgot about that.

To sum up:

- Xenesis has hacked AW2 so that anyone can make custom campaigns
- Xenesis has also hacked AW3 and AW4 this way
- Realtime multiplayer AW is possible via emulator + ROM + Teamviewer
- I have a wi-fi t-shirt and you don't

Therefore, with both singleplayer and multiplayer covered, what's the point of Commander Wars? If the graphics/music/interface isn't substantially improved, nothing. Make a custom campaign in AW3 or AW4 and we'll see if you're full of it or not. Or go to Game Design school.

[kisses]

<Gippy> Honestly now that Teamviewer allows 2v2 and more "fun" games
<Gippy> Hopefully that might sway some casuals
<Xenesis> Nah
<Xenesis> AW is dead.
<Gippy> Yeah ;(
<Xenesis> Anything either of us do at this stage is for our own crumpets and giggles

[Narts]

If Robosturm isn't serious enough about the project to freelance an artist from deviantart.com, then he's not serious enough to complete his project. And if he has no money for that, which would only cost a few hundred dollars unless he's hiring someone like Lin Capura

Developing a game with the scope of something like Advance Wars takes a little more than a couple of concept sketches drawn by some random furry off DA. It takes a concerted effort from an organised team for a considerable length of time.

You either hire a team of dedicated, full-time employees (we're talking tens of thousands of dollars at the very least) or you find people who have the passion for your project and lots and lots of free time (but probably not the talent to match the official AW games if we're being real here). Nobody's going to slave away for months on end on a project they're not personally interested in just a for a couple of hundreds of dollars.

What you may have missed here that people like Robo-sturm and Urusan do this stuff for their own enjoyment, not because they're seriously trying to dethrone Advance Wars or whatever. It's much like with any fan artist or fan fiction writer out there. Those people have their own reasons for doing it, they do it for fun, not for profit, not for the sake of your insane crusade to turn Advance Wars into an olympic e-sport or something.

Nice find with the Teamviewer. Now if you could get those people from AWBW to use it too. You probably can't, because they won't even look at anything that won't run in their browser with just a few clicks. Custom Wars and Commander Wars had to contend with this too. Basically if you can't beat AWBW in convenience you won't have an audience outside the small group of players you already have on IRC.

[GipFace]

You're right in that one person can't do everything alone. Robosturm is wasting his time without a proper team. Everything he's shown hasn't been substantial at all. There probably is an artist on DeviantArt who is a fan of Advance Wars, so that isn't a problem at all.

For an idea of how a group of fans can band together to produce something awesome, look at Giana Sisters Twisted Dreams. This gem got nearly $200K from Kickstarter and now the game is currently being sold for $9 on Steam. The production value is absolutely stunning, yet it's their "pet project" and they're most likely losing money from it. But that doesn't matter because they had fun doing it. Giana Sisters was an old ripoff of Super Mario Bros., and it didn't get any love until nearly 20 years later with Giana Sisters DS, and now this. And only the composer from the original came back to work on both of the newer games.

If Robosturm could actually present a decent foundation in which to raise funding, he'd get over $100K easy to finish the rest of the game. There are more Advance Wars fans than Giana Sisters fans, I'll tell you that right now. Currently, I wouldn't even give $5 after what I've seen so far.

[Narts]

Giana Sisters may have been a pet project (I love that game btw), it was still produced by a company of seasoned professionals, not by just some random fans grouping together over the internet. Significant portion of the project had also already been done before they even went to Kickstarter with it (it was something like 85% done from what I remember) This appears to be a common thread between many of the successful KS projects out there. I wouldn't compare that to Robo-sturm's efforts here, or to anything that the online AW community could realistically produce. They had likely already poured hundreds of thousands into the project before the KS started.

They also had the blessing of the original game's author and had the license to use the actual name of the IP, which probably went a long way in gripping people's nostalgias, as well as gave them automatic publicity (all the websites going "wow lookit that GIANA SISTERS IS COMING BACK"). This seems to be another common KS thing - people throw their money at developers and IP's that they recognise far more eagerly than at randoms they never heard about (a bit ironic, perhaps?)

A better comparison would be Telepath Tactics (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/142 ... th-tactics) (What Telepath Tactics? Who? Exactly.) A Fire Emblem style game, hell, they even have the cheek to advertise on their page using the FE name. FE is a more popular game than AW, and those guys are struggling with only a $25,500 goal (and are probably going to fail). It's easy to see why, theirs isn't the most professional looking creation, but what the AW fans could produce on their own wouldn't realistically be far better than that, if even that good.

No, I wouldn't give much to Robo-sturm either, maybe a couple of bucks out of pity. Kickstarting an AW knockoff is an interesting idea but I don't believe it's as easy as you seem to think. You'd have to invest quite a bit to such an effort before you even go to KS with it. Maybe if you pick a low enough goal, just don't expect it to become another Godus or Twisted Dreams.

[DieselPheonix]

Personally waiting on Wasteland 2.

So, is there a setup guide for emulators, Teamviewer, and whatever else you need to be playing?

[Lord Spyro]

I am the other person who worked on it. I gave up because it seems he never replies anymore. I have same control as Robosturm over the project. It seems Robosturm has disappeared. He wrote most the code in German. He only wanted mainly his ideas and he only accepted mine if it suited his means or he liked it seems it was another reason I gave up. I was always fighting him and trying to reason with him that it is not the right path. Even his old friend before I came on told him that and that friend abandoned him. I thought Commander Wars was very good but now it seems Robosturm has abandoned it. He even had what you said a good deviantart artist that I knew personally that would help. But he never replied and we gave up on him. I can safely say R.I.P. Commander Wars.

[DieselPheonix]

Disappointing but not unexpected. AW has a history of bleeding nepotism, after all.

[GipFace]

DieselPhoenix - I'll put that guide up in a moment.

At least you can now play AW3 or AW4 online in realtime without a DS. AWBW is pretty much obsolete unless you want an AW2-like game with inaccuracies, or if you can't bear to learn another children's war game. lolol~

[Lord Spyro]

Disappointing but not unexpected. AW has a history of bleeding nepotism, after all.

I don't know for sure but he hasn't replied in months to my quit message and I was the one keeping it running. He needed me. He just irritated me because it was like he was rejecting my ideas another reason why I quit. I am asking for him to give me the code for commander wars. I can actually delete it, but I won't out of respect because he gave me control over it with him.

[JSRulz]

Hmmmm...

I am sorry to hear that, Lord Spyro. I spent a lot of time at the beginning of Commander Wars to get it the proper hosting and visibility it needed. I knew both Robosturm and Eagle when they just started that project. They had a lot of ideas they wanted to bring to an AW clone project. I guess now plenty of them will not get off the ground. Thanks for letting the community know the truth.

I also wish you all the best with Teamviewer, Gipface. Finally... after all this time, pure AW can be played against people around the world. I'll be checking the IRC since it seems that is where most of the statistics and players for Teamviewer are at the moment.

[Lord Spyro]

It is sad but he doomed himself because he kept it in German when i kept asking him to translate to English with some other reasons. That is one of the main problems with the code is in German not English. Unlike Robosturm I care for the community, somewhat. GipFace was right in a way. Even know he was trolling he had a point. I realized what GipFace was saying he was ruining the game indirectly and he was right in a way. One of Robosturm's ideas was to create lots of types of tanks that balance each other out or something I don't remember exactly. I didn't like that he kept pushing that idea. That idea would ruin the game. My idea was to expand the infantry into its own class like Battalion Wars did. He was against that every step of the way. I was trying to save Commander Wars from Robostrum because he was ruining it. I know how games like Advance Wars works though another game on xbox 360 called Halo Wars. I don't care if Robosturm comes back I won't support him no more.

[GipFace]

Now for a serious post. What do I really want to see in an AW PC clone?

PRIORITY
- See enemy turn in progress (Custom Wars didn't have this!)
- In-game clock (static from 1-5 minutes or based on turns/unit count)
- Spectating
- Toggle AW2/AW3/AW4 mode
- Maintain relevant quirky gameplay accuracy in the canon games (50 unit limit, AW4 defensive zone charging, terrain def. reduces luck, APC/rig supply after upkeep, etc.)
- Rejoin on disconnect options
- Two words that would be revolutionary: game replays. Game replays should have the map embedded in it so that anyone can view the replay file, plus maybe a hash tag to prevent tampering. As a bonus, players should be able to export maps from replays if they like it.

HIGH
- Spectate host. A tournament organizer could host the game and let two people play.
- Spectate camera (for fog mode - have a no-fog camera and specific player cameras)
- Unit and map animation
- Music and sound effects
- Completely remappable input
- Random player position (players don't know if they're P1 or P2 until the game starts!)
- All menu items available as buttoned commands

MEDIUM
- "Metal Gear ! warning" This was in that Strategery flash game. When advancing a unit, any enemy units that may attack it the following turn will have a ! pop up. I really liked this.
- 2-click command mode, user selectable. This would be really cool. Left-click on a unit to select, and then movement will follow the pointer. Hovering over an enemy will show projected damage, and left-clicking on it would execute a command. Moving to an empty space is an automatic wait/supply/capture command, except only when unloading or constructing is available (which requires >2 clicks). If blitz play were to be implemented, this would speed things up a lot. But perhaps some people would like the old AW3 or AW4 command mode, and that's fine too. Right-click, of course, is cancel.
- "Attach CO to this unit" command, which would be needed in 2-click command mode
- Toggle CO blind pick or 1P selects CO first

LOW
- New art for canon COs
- Map design mirror fill. Make one half of the map and tell the map editor to mirror it for perfect symmetry! No more messing up.
- Exact health mode. Shows exact health instead of /10 HP
- Exact projected counterattack damage mode. Show multiple possibilities based on luck outcome. (If projected damage is 55%, show 4HP and 5HP counterattack damage)
- Set low ammo/gas warning levels. It's set at 50% or below by default; making it customizable would be cute.
- Auto end turn if you cannot build anything or issue a command, and you cannot activate a COP
- Force animation off or minimum animation if clock is under 20 seconds
- Custom units
- Custom COs

Basically, any AW clone should at least consider this entire checklist before taking huge leaps with design.

[GipFace]

Someone on GameFAQs was promoting a new TBS game called Battle Worlds. Here were my responses. This should be food for thought for any designer:

I really wish someone could just make a good port of Advance Wars instead of making garbage like Future Wars and this. This looks more like an Age of Wonders than an Advance Wars. AW's charm is its simplicity. This game doesn't have that.

The Nintendo Wars series has been around forever. Before Advance Wars, there was Famicom Wars and Super Famicom Wars, and then Game Boy Wars. Super Famicom Wars was more complicated than Famicom Wars. Game Boy Wars 3 upped the complexity so much that it became a mess of a game that only Juigi loves. But guess what happened? Advance Wars actually brought down the complexity creep. It removed a bunch of things such as simultaneous fire, train tracks, train stations, and reducing sea costs in an attempt to make it playable. ... Therefore, when it comes to Battle Worlds, it's insulting that they even mentioned Advance Wars in their Kickstarter, because they have no clue what made AW beloved by so many.

The above ... also explains why I love AW4 and why everyone who stated that the AW4 COs/COPs are "weaker" compared to AW3 COs were dead wrong. AW4 CO and COP depth is greater than it ever was in previous games. It's just that IS magically made the game have more depth by making things seem simpler on the outside. (Another example is how the COP meter is simply 60HP in AW4; in AW3, there was a set amount of COP star charge for each specific unit: 0.4 for infantry, 1.0 for recon/tank/antiair, 1.2 for b-copter, etc. People worried about the change, but the 60HP meter is actually an excellent implementation. Could you imagine how poor Tabitha would be if 1HKOing infantry counted less towards her charge?)

And GoldenJoe24 had this excellent post:

AW's brilliance is in its simplicity. It's the strategy equivalent of Smash Bros. Smash Bros is awesome because you don't need to learn complex move sets (with even more complex combos) for each character. You attack with A, and use specials with B. It lets the developers focus on making lots of fun characters to play as. AW is the same way. You can have more than three armies since you aren't micromanaging an army with 100 different types of units.

So tip to any developer reading this: emulate AW3 and AW4 accurately first before adding a new ideas that'll crush the game under its own weight. New ideas that streamline the game further, such as 2-click command mode, are good. Adding new units because you think the game needs to be balanced is bad. Custom Wars didn't perfect AW3/AW4 emulation, and instead decided to complicate things with custom COs and units. And that's why it died.

Custom Wars Tactics: This is the project headed by JSRulz. If this ever gets finished, I think people will be looking forward to AW3 play more than AW4 play despite my belief that AW4 is more tactically sound, and that's fine. AW3 PvP didn't get off the ground too much because it was a pain to set up games, so a pain-free method to play (as long as there's a central lobby for game finding) is a good way to promote it. We can finally play more than a single Hachi vs. Sensei game. (Hachi vs. Sensei is a nightmare to play because both COs will hit the 50 unit cap in a standard map)

[Narts]

Battle Worlds seems more based on Battle Isle than Advance Wars.

An interesting project but yeah, they wouldn't have needed to take the name of Advance Wars in vain. They had my attention even without it. But hey if mentioning a popular game gave you potentially more people giving you free money, you would do it too.

Also, I'm afraid the majority of TBS fans just don't recognise or understand the power of simplicity. They've grown up infatuated with the insane and ever-increasing detail and complexity in games like Civilization and Total War and the games they've played have conditioned them into thinking rules complexity = strategy. They wouldn't even look at kiddie console crumpets like Advance Wars because they don't see how something like that could possibly challenge them intellectually. When even a flagship TBS franchise like Civilization does the sensible thing and cuts back on its own feature creep, the fans recoil in horror (without trying the game) and go back to playing the older, slower and more cumbersome versions because a whole load of meaningless choices equates to strategy I guess!

They need a good bash in the head from a Go board.



Until then, though, it makes sense for developers of games like Battle Worlds to court these people by offering them the pointless micromanagement they crave.

[Xenesis]

Also, I'm afraid the majority of TBS fans just don't recognise or understand the power of simplicity. They've grown up infatuated with the insane and ever-increasing detail and complexity in games like Civilization and Total War and the games they've played have conditioned them into thinking rules complexity = strategy. They wouldn't even look at kiddie console crumpets like Advance Wars because they don't see how something like that could possibly challenge them intellectually. When even a flagship TBS franchise like Civilization does the sensible thing and cuts back on its own feature creep, the fans recoil in horror (without trying the game) and go back to playing the older, slower and more cumbersome versions because a whole load of meaningless choices equates to strategy I guess!

I'm so glad they did that with Civ V. Civ 4 was already getting to be such a overcomplicated mess that any attempt to add more crap into it would be a nigh on complete disaster. I think people just like spreadsheet gaming for some insane reason. A game isn't any good, or has any depth if you can actually perform all the strategic evaluation in your brain.

But yeah, AW for life, etc.

[HPD]

Which is also why I loved Warlight so much. Insanely simple in its mechanics and design, but very fun and interesting to play PvP.

[Sven]

I'm so glad they did that with Civ V. Civ 4 was already getting to be such a overcomplicated mess that any attempt to add more crap into it would be a nigh on complete disaster. I think people just like spreadsheet gaming for some insane reason. A game isn't any good, or has any depth if you can actually perform all the strategic evaluation in your brain.

I feel CIV IV rewards both general strategy and spreadsheet micro, it's actually why I enjoy the game so much vs. the third installment, where I definitely feel certain features (lack of shield/hammer overflow on city builds) made spreadsheet micro far more important than all other game aspects. I can play CIV IV without ever directly managing worked tiles and feel comfortable about it. I'll end up giving up a turn here and there, but it's usually no more than that 100 turns in.

I can't say the same of CIV III, having your cities work at 75% efficiency feels awful when there's already a corruption penalty applied to what your city "should" produce. The difference between good and bad CIV III micro is something absurd like a 25% increase in city count by 1 AD.

In either case I never automate workers before I feel I've won the game, so if you want to call that silly amounts of micro go nuts I guess. I also have yet to really play CIV V, but I can't really see myself automating workers there either.

Can you maybe describe what you felt was "too complicated" about CIV IV? I feel the game is fundamentally about city management & diplomacy, and that most other aspects of the game can be ignored.

[onewaystreet]

Civ IV isn't really all that complicated when you strip it down to the bare-bones mechanics.

• Commerce for research
  Hammers for production
  Food for growth for more commerce/hammers
  More cities for more commerce/hammers
  Buildings and tile improvements improve commerce/hammers
  Military is needed so you don't die

Well I mean, it is, especially compared to a (simpler) TBS game like Advance Wars. And obviously there's a lot more going on than that, especially when you get into the individual numbers (some people micromanage down to the food tile yield to optimize everything), but you really don't need to worry about optimization to win. It's a lot to take in, but the mechanics aren't overly complicated. The numbers might be, but you never really need to concentrate on that in order to win.

[Narts]

Can you maybe describe what you felt was "too complicated" about CIV IV? I feel the game is fundamentally about city management & diplomacy, and that most other aspects of the game can be ignored.

That was kind of the point - why have all those other features if you can just ignore them and the gameplay ends up all revolving around one or two mechanics?

That's what I define as unnecessary complexity. Complexity =/= gameplay.

Advance Wars has a few mechanics as well that are largely irrelevant 99% of the time - ammo and fuel would be such variables - but compared to something like Civ it's extremely well optimised and stripped down to what matters.

Indeed, Civ can be said to be quite simple when you strip it down to the bare bones - but doing that would have been the job of the game designers.

[Xenesis]

I'd say more, but Narts has pretty much distilled it.

[Sven]

Can you maybe describe what you felt was "too complicated" about CIV IV? I feel the game is fundamentally about city management & diplomacy, and that most other aspects of the game can be ignored.

That was kind of the point - why have all those other features if you can just ignore them and the gameplay ends up all revolving around one or two mechanics?

That's what I define as unnecessary complexity. Complexity =/= gameplay.

Advance Wars has a few mechanics as well that are largely irrelevant 99% of the time - ammo and fuel would be such variables - but compared to something like Civ it's extremely well optimised and stripped down to what matters.

Indeed, Civ can be said to be quite simple when you strip it down to the bare bones - but doing that would have been the job of the game designers.

That fluff is what differentiates the game from being a poor Chess or Go. If we're just talking about creating a pure balanced game experience I agree that 75%+ of what CIV IV has to offer is just fluff. If you're just trying to win the game on a reasonable difficulty level you don't need to know how most of the mechanics actually work, you just expand a lot, work improved tiles, and win the game. But if you get your jollies just from seeing numbers go up and nothing else you should probably just spend your free time playing Conway's game of life or something.

The complexity is what allows you to play as say, the Zulu one game, and Ghandi the next, and really feel as though if you've had a different experience instead of merely receiving a 10% bonus to warfare the first time and a 10% bonus to "building things" the second. Most mechanics won't be used in each game, but you need it so that every game doesn't turn into a silly expand, kill neighbour, kill next neighbour, own continent, quit at intercontinental invasion because you've got 55% of the world already and can't possibly lose.

I definitely agree that the expansions don't really add anything to the base game though - the espionage mechanics of both CIV III's fully expanded game and CIV IV's fully expanded game have just felt like unnecessary complexity each time. Wait for the next CIV V expansion to come out, I'm sure we'll be seeing the same amount of complexity in a fully expanded game then too. .

tldr; most choices are meaningless in individual games, but having different sets of choices be relevant in each game is what gives the game its charm.