And so 2006 is rapidly coming to a close.  As I write this blog it is raining here in Atlanta, which to any Georgian should not be much of a shock.  It always rains on Christmas and New Year’s Eve here in Georgia.  I tell ya, London and Seattle have nothing on Atlanta for rain.  Tonight, about 150,000 people will pack Underground to watch the peach drop.  Rain, traffic, and 150K people crammed in an area about the size of a shopping mall, ooh, sign me up!  Needless to say I will be spending my New Year’s Eve with a handful of friends, which is much more pleasant than a hundred thousand drunken strangers.

2006 was a good personal year (relatively speaking) and it was a good year for gaming.  2007 should be an exciting year, and for once, I am actually cautiously optimistic, two words that I rarely use in the same sentence.

I hope that everyone has had a good year and that you’ve enjoyed the games Shrapnel has put out.  Thanks for being Shrapnel customers, and hopefully we can consider you fans too, and we look forward to bringing you the best in independent niche gaming in 2007!

I’m going to wrap it up now.  While it seems like I should leave with some industry wrap-up, or thought provoking analysis, or even some sort of humor, I need to take my dogs out and then hit the (soggy) road.  Have a happy New Year and we’ll see ya for another glory ride in 2007!

Best,
Scott

PS:  Ah heck, okay, one bit of humor to leave ya with…

Two golfers, Dave and Tom, are caught behind two women on the golf course.  The two women are terrible golfers causing a backlog.  Around the sixth hole Dave, frustrated, tells Tom, “Look, I’m going to go talk to those two women ahead of us and see if they’ll let us play through, otherwise we’re going to be here all day.”

So Dave heads towards the two women.  Halfway there Tom sees Dave halt, appear surprised, and meekly head back to Tom, appearing to make sure that the two women do not notice his face.

Dave tells Tom, “You’re never going to believe this coincidence.  The woman on the left turns out to be my wife, and the one on the right my mistress!  I can’t say anything to them.  You go up there.”

Tom shrugs and agrees.  Halfway there he stops, looks surprised, and meekly heads back to Dave.

Dave says to Tom, “Well, if you thought that was a coincidence…”

First of all let me apologize for not publishing news about the development of the game in a long time. We’ve been deep involved in the development and our other jobs so lets start with the new features we’ve added to the game.

First of all you will notice that there are new screenshots of the game in our page. These pics are captures of the map editor, that is already finished. We think that a good game let the players create its own scenarios, and we have the intention to ship Galley Battles with the tools we are using to create the official battles.

We intend to avoid the problem of limited maps that avoid big maneuvers with large size scenarios, and the result is a system that manages maps with 1000×1000 tiles (1 tile=50mx50, so the full size is near 50kmx50km). As this results in a lot of tiles, we’ve created some tools to paint tiles and objects (towns, cities, trees) on a fast way.

The scenario editor. We want to create some scenarios for each battle, so scenarios are able to share a map. Each side will have a deployment area, and although you will position the formations of ships you desire in the scenario editor, when you start a scenario each player will have the possibility to change the positions and formations of the game as he desires, so each game will be different because you don’t know how the opponent will form its fleet. With this concept we try to avoid the problem of many wargames, where you have an army already deployed with no possibilities to modify the position of units.

Each battle will have different scenarios, that represent different lectures of the sources (i.e. the battle of Salamis has three or four interpretations of the History of Herodotus, its main source, with greek deployments absolutely different).

Related to the game engine, the AI of each ship has been modelled, and depending on the orders of movement and formation, and specially on the combat attitude its behavior will be different. You can check this AI in the video attached to this post, where you have two attacking galleys maneuvering to sink an avoiding enemy. First of all we order our two galleys to position on different sides of the enemy. When we give one of them the order to ram, the enemy starts flying away in convenience with its order of avoiding combats. When the other galley starts the attack too, the flying enemy modifies its path to avoid both enemies, but it is finally caught. At this moment the ship will turn to give its facing side to the enemy because it is the best possibility to avoid be sink it has. Finally, the two attacking galleys maneuver to attack the enemy from different sides and sink it.

Next weeks we will finish the scenario editor, and start with the Computer Opponent AI with complex scenarios already created to make the tests. We will try to post news about the development more often if we can

Xavi Rubio

We are wrapping up another banner year at ProSIM, and our latest’s opus, Air Assault Task Force, has finally shipped.  This seems like a perfect opportunity to update everyone on the latest goings-on at ProSIM Company.  Below, find the latest news on Air Assault Task Force, some news on what is next for us, and a few personal notes.

So, let’s jump in!

AATF Ships!

That’s right.  It was starting to feel like “The Never-Ending Story” there for a while, but Air Assault Task Force is now on its way to gamers.  This is our newest commercial release and our first new game engine in three-and-a-half years.  Air Assault Task Force explorers the history of helicopter-borne infantry operations, from Vietnam to Afghanistan.  Take LZ X-Ray, rescue an isolated Ranger company in Somalia, defeat Al Qaeda remnants in Operation Anaconda, and much more.

This newest addition to the ProSIM family is a complete rethinking of the “command realtime” tactical simulation that made us famous.  We started from the firm foundation of the Armored Task Force Engine, keeping all of the realism which has made our simulations the first choice for military contractors and the world’s armies alike for over a decade.  Then, we completely redesigned the way the player interacts with the game.  The result is a game as playable as the simplest RTS while as deep as the deepest wargame.

The game is shipping now.  To order your copy today, click here.  Barring any unforeseen publishing issues, orders placed now should arrive before Christmas (at least for domestic orders).

To whet your appetite, we have also created a playable DEMO for Air Assault Task Force.  This DEMO contains only two scenarios, set at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana.  The first is an airfield seizure.  The second is an air assault on the fabled city of Shughart-Gordon.  Both of these scenarios also ship with the release version of the game.  The Flash-based tutorial is also included with this DEMO version.

The DEMO lacks the full featured scenario builder, multiplayer (up to 10 players), and 100-page printed manual that will ship with the release version of the game.  Also, unlike the release version, it cannot be installed over our previous, ATF Engine games (which instantly upgrades them to the new game engine).

To download the DEMO, click here.

NOTE: This is a DEMO of the final release version of Air Assault Task Force.  If you downloaded and installed the BETA DEMO, please completely uninstall it (using “Add/Remove Programs” from the “Control Panel”) before installing this updated version of the DEMO.

Some other interesting morsels that we have put together since Air Assault Task Force went GOLD:

• I have written a short article, called “Air Assault 101” which covers the basics of modern military tactics for the conduct of an Air Assault for Wargamer.com.  To see it, click here.
• I have also written a “Postmortem” on the development of Air Assault Task Force, which chronicles all of the ups and downs of the game development cycle, also for Wargamer.com.  To see it, click here.

Stay tuned to our AATF website, to hear the latest news about Air Assault Task Force.

The ATF Engine

Don’t worry, though.  We are not leaving our previous titles by the wayside.  In fact, as we went through the development cycle for Air Assault Task Force, and took what was best from the ATF Engine, we identified a few things we could “police up” in the ATF Engine games. As we have completed development of Air Assault Task Force, we are now able to release all of these improvements to our earlier games, as free upgrades.

These are all cumulative upgrades, so you do not have to install previous upgrades. They are included in these new upgrades.

Below are the links for the downloads page for each title. See those pages, and the “Read Me” file for each game, for a list of the major upgrades in each title.

Armored Task Force
Version 1.08

Raging Tiger: The Second Korean War
Version 1.17

The Falklands War: 1982
Version 1.24

The Star and the Crescent
Version 1.33

What’s Next? 

Never content to rest on our laurels, we are already hard at work on our next round of games.  Here is a little of what we have in store for the next year.  We have other games in development, but these are the only ones I can talk about right now.

• Curt Pangracs (Raging Tiger, The Star and the Crescent) is hard at work on a title for the AATF Engine which chronicles the US Army’s march to Baghdad in 2003.
• Gary Bezant (The Falklands War) is also hard at work.  He is working on a World War II title set in North Africa.  This title is also targeted for the AATF Engine.
• We also have another team working on an East Front World War II game.

The core programming team here at ProSIM is in the design phase on an operational-level simulation.  It is really too early to talk about features or even design goals.  But I can say that the simulation will be focused on modern warfare and simulate high-intensity warfare, insurgency-counterinsurgency warfare, and everything in between.  That is all I can really say about this project right now.

On a Personal Note…

A point of pride for us, here at ProSIM Company is that we are made up entirely of veterans and current, military professionals from across the world.  We believe that this unique perspective allows us to deliver the most realistic simulations in the industry today.  But there is a cost.  The western world is in the midst of the “long war,” the Global War on Terror.  Occasionally, one of us gets called to serve their nation abroad.  Such is the case for me.  I will be deploying to Iraq from January 2007 to June 2007. 

I will have pretty good internet connectivity while I am there, and a lot of spare time on my hands, so feel free to contact me with any issues, or just to say “Hi” at:

pproctor@prosimco.com

After that, I will be returning to sunny Fort Leavenworth, Kansas for another year.  This seems to be a mecca for wargamers, so if you are passing through, please drop me a line and let me know; perhaps we can link-up.  And try the Baan Thai Restaurant while you are here.  The food is great and the owner is pretty good-looking, too .

Shut Up Already! 

I guess I am starting to ramble, so I will end this entry with a list of our current titles.

• BCT Commander
• Armored Task Force
• Raging Tiger
• The Falklands War
• The Star and the Crescent
• Air Assault Task Force

Let me close by thanking all of our fans for their support, input, and encouragement through the years.  Every one of us here at ProSIM knows just how fortunate we are to have the community of wargamers that we do.  To all of you, THANK YOU!