More Gaming from Shrapnel...check it out!!

[Deathstalker]

Found this 'ad' at the avault.com today, looks like Shrapnel will have another 'space game'(listed near the bottom). Will have to check this out!!
"
Shrapnel Games to Publish The War Engine
Shrapnel Games today announced that it has signed a deal to publish the latest release from Boku Strategy Games, The War Engine. The War Engine is a wargame construction kit with which Users can construct war, strategy, or conflict-based games by defining the rules and units involved. Shrapnel is including seven full titles to highlight the systems features: Armies of Armageddon, a squad-based sci-fi game; Tour of Duty '44, a squad-based combat game set during the struggle to reclaim Europe from Hitler's forces; The Northern Realm Saga, a fantasy wargame offering; Global Conflict: Total War, an operational wargame that puts players in command of military forces in W.W.II; Paintball; TRL, a wargame set in the nuclear wastelands of the former American states; and Warspace, a space combat release. The War Engine is scheduled to go gold on Aug. 30; the projected release date is Sept. 26. "

(and no I don't work for Shrapnel, I just want to support the company that gave us all SE4 from Aaron/MM...)



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"And what the hell would you know about sanity?" demanded Beatrice. "There are depressed lemmings on the edge of cliffs who've got a better grasp on reality than you have. And more common sense."--Simon R. Green 'Deathstalker Rebellion'.

"We are all...the sum of our scars"....(paraphrased) Matt. R. Stover-'Blade of Tyshalle'.

[dmm]

Cool! You can make the game whatever you want. But there's no AI or ministers of course.

[Mad_Lear]

Yeah, the new war game looks very cool. You can find a pretty good writeup of it in the "Games" section of the shrapnel website, although its still only in its beta stages right now. This is (I think) the third in a series of increasingly modible table-top minuture style wargame engines, the demo of the second one (I think it is called WDK 2000 or somesuch) is available on the website, and also on the SEIV CD. The demo consists of a really neat "invasion" senario where you have to lead a crew of shotgun totting thugs across a pair of bridges and flush a bunch of bLaster wielding aliens (at least I THINK they're aliens) out of a building complex. Its a really fun little senario, and I would recomment anyone with the CD load up the demo and try it out. Runesword II, a completely modable and very cool looking roleplaying game, is also due out in about a week. God Shrapnel rocks!

[Lerchey]

Hi all,

The War Engine is the fourth in the series. Circa 7000 was the old DOS-based original, followed by WDK (Wargames Development Kit) and then WDK 2K. In each successive Version, the programmer (Mike Cooney of Boku Strategy Games) adds more and more features.

FYI, the WDk 2K demo features shotgun totin' Grunts (genetic mutations on Earth, in the year 40,000 or so) vs. Bellevillian Marines (human offspring working to re-terraform terra!). That particular scenario is from the "base game" included in WDK 2K - Armies of Armageddon.

The big selling point of The War Engine is that with some work, you can create a game in any genre you want. I happen to be the author of the TRL mod. I wanted to play with mechanized platoons and huge cybertanks, so I used WDK and then War Engine to create what I wanted.

If you want to see more about WDK 2K, take a look at my website:
http://okapi.dws.acs.cmu.edu/lerchey/www/WDK

Oh, despite doing TRL, I'm not employed or paid by Shrapnel... I just included something that I was doing for myself anyway.

General John

[Puke]

looks very cool, but do you have to do all the terrain by hand? Is there any kind of automatic terrain generation, or is it all custom built for the scenario? any multiplayer support.

I had a bLast with (moment of silence for the original classic, please.) Wargame Construction Kit but man, you had to have a seperate tile for each river bank, every turn in the road, EVERYTHING. what a pain. can this, say, automatically figure out how roads should bend and rivers should bank (sort of like sim city)?

and is this strictly for wargaming, or can it do things like (i will be blown away if anyone remembers this one) the old shareware Adventure Creation Kit (ACK)? I remember downloading that one from a BBS in San Diego Circa 1988. there was a great bit of code. found it once on the internet, but was sorely disapointed at the lack (or non existance of) user created adventures. to my knowledge, the ones I made myself are the only ones that ever showed up in the public domain. but i digress.

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"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)

Anybody remember Battle Isle ? It was a game almost entirely tactics. If that could be updated with automatic map creation using chosen seed parameters, coupled with user moddable units, then a whole new generation of tactics only games might ensue. Another good genre is the race for time very short games such as Overlord and Full Metal Planet. Make them moddable and bring them back!

[Puke]

battle isle spawned several sequels and add-on's, the most recent to my knowlede being battle isle 2000, published as a major commercial release, bringing rave reviews from the wargame industry.

I only played the first one though.

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"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)