Well, I have made some progress.  While I still don't have a handle on the C# concept of containers, I decided to just set that aside for now and develop the unit profile.  I have been developing the basics of a combat system, and a learning/experience system.

This seems to be the correct approach, I noticed I am slowly learning the basics of C# while just building the ins and outs of the Unit Class.  Since I am working on the guts of the unit, there is nothing new to look at now, so no images in this post.

I am also working on the history of the unit size and equipment.  This can be a little tricky, and for  now I am just sticking to the Nafziger collection of pdf files.

Cheers, Mike

Ok friend.  I thought I would get serious about my long time gaming hobby, and try to actually write a game.  I was somewhat inspired to do this by the release of Unity of Command, http://unityofcommand.net/   It's an ok game, and boils things down to a very simple level.  It lacks a lot of details I want in a game however.  The turn system is I go, you go.  So there is a lot of issues when the first player gets to make multiple attacks and the defender just sits and waits.  

Years ago I played a DOS game call V for Victory (later renamed World at War) . http://www.ibiblio.org/GameBytes/issue21/greviews/crusader.html  They were great games with a we go (turns from both sides plotted and then executed simultaneously.   Another thing that i don't think has ever been done in a wargame is having multi player in a game (that is supported by the game) .  So my game will be call Corps Commander, with each player commanding a Corps.  Units will be Battalions and Regiments/Brigades, so each Division will be 4-6 units (the standard infantry division is 3 infantry reg. 1 art reg, 1 recon bn. and others assigned from the Army)  Most Corps are 2-6 Divisions, so it i can pick good battles players will have 15 to 20 units to move around.  I think that would be the limit of something that is intended to be a fast paced game.

Right now I am working on a mock up of the User Interface in C# (and trying to learn C#), writing the units code (what goes into making up a unit) looking for a good generic first battle to simulate. (it will probably be fictitious)

What I am planning to include for now are:

1. An Army Commander that can move and reassign units to Corps Commanders.
2. Corps Commanders that can control only the units assigned to them.
3. Aircraft and Artillery Assets at Army level.
4. Hospitals and Supply depots that will effect how units are supplied and replace wounded soldiers
5. Unit stats that include Experience, Supply, Leadership, Disruption.
6. Different levels of unit orders, ie all out assault, attack, all out defense, mobile defense, probe, withdrawal.

The Chief's Corner: Fusion center

The Chief's Corner: Fusion center

Here is the opening of the campaign. As Napoleon, you start at the French city of Nice in the lower left corner of the map. The first two moves take you to Cunco and Turin. Once you capture Turin the Piedmonties capitulate and become a protectorate. The supply you with two units and have no farther effect on the game.

From Musings

You will have to capture (3) Milan and (4) Parma in your next phase. All of these battles are pretty easy and the only thing that slowed me down was waiting for my depleted units to build back up in strength before I could advance again.

This is a test blog.

I am starting up a blog to try to work out some data flow ideas I have with Google services. The basic idea started with gmail, which I like and use a lot. I can read it and download from any of my my computers, my Ipod touch or from the web. So having read blogs for a while now and played around with facebook I think I want to try out some thing a little more industrial strength.

So I started looking at what other services google offers. I have been using docs for a few years, mostly when I was working with Flying Lab Software.

The next interesting thing is Picasa. Picasa is a image sharing service but Google also build a stand alone application that will resize and reformat your pictures and then upload them to the picasa web service, or to a blogger account (another Google service).

So I thought it would be fun to do a blog about something I love, which is computer gaming, and in this case Napoleon Total War.