Scourge of War Boards

I think this should be a separate thread, one that can be added to as changes are made....

I wonder if the developers and testers could actually talk about what there is in the new game that is different than TCSM, other than the graphics. I am most interested in what has been done in gameplay that sets this apart from TCSM. Such areas to discuss might be:

About what percent of the game play is identical to TCSM? (If there is perhaps a 30% difference I wonder if you could discuss the factors that are in that 30%.)
How is the AI different?
How is unit movement different?
What adjustments if any are there to make the feel more historical?
How has resupply been adjusted?
Are there any combat systems that have been changed? (for example, artillery fire results, range changes, etc.)
Are victory conditions different? Are we going to using the same victory point scale for individual units? Are the Victory Point terrain objectives going to be treated differently?
Will the TC feature be different?

I am not trying to open a Pandora's box here. I do think that this topic could be a lively area of discussion and will certainly be enlightening. In addition I know that it will build anticipation for the upcoming game.

MP is the big difference.

We are just starting gameplay testing, which most of your questions fall upon. Actually calling it testing is a little loose, but that's how it starts. We now have guys playing the game for the first time, really playing it. They write up reports, then Jim & I will discuss how to react. So we can't really answer how we will end up because we don't know.

I make no attempts to hide the fact that I consider this the successor to the work I did previously. This will work and feel many ways exactly like the War3D games, that's why it's War3DII. But, where the War3D games were getting away from focusing on design, to spending most of the design time on art and maps, we are focusing on gameplay design and mp design. Not that we're not doing art and maps too, they are just not the #1 nor #2 focus of our effort. We want to get back to the origins of gameplay, awesome AI, and some seriously focused gameplay testing. We are not going to create a billion scenarios so that all of our test time is focused on making sure 40+ scenarios work. We will work on making sure a smaller set work perfectly.

I feel that this game is in every aspect better than War3D. Had I had the design support that I needed, this is the design that I would have steered towards for Shiloh. With Jim and I on the same page, and getting the help that I need to manage the game content, we are able to bring War3DII and the focus of this series back to it's roots of gameplay and AI.

When we get further along, we will allow the testers to start commenting about how the gameplay is evolving. But to comment now is just a waste of time. Even our scenarios are waiting on the gameplay. Right now I am finishing up the MP code so that we can test that too. As soon as I finish, it's over to gameplay and searching through our bug database, finding solutions for the problems found. I also have a big chunk of code to write to improve the overall gameplay. Like I said before, these past 3 years I have been working to getting back to where I left off with War3D. I feel we are where we need to be. We are not all the way back, but we don't want to get all the way back. We wanted the foundation with all the benefits, but now we are ready to separate and make it better. We've been adding a ton of new features, so there is a lot to do before we are done.