Category Archives: Development Updates

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Replicator Tuesday Issue #38: Advanced Ship Development, Part Four – New Techs

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Replicator Tuesdays is an article series appearing on InsideGMT. It features insights into the development of the 2nd expansion for the board wargame Space Empires:4x by Jim Krohn.  Here the designer, developer and play testers will share their thoughts and experiences on this upcoming expansion. Since there is much crossover between the Space Empires and Talon development teams, both Space Empires and Talon articles will be featured in this series.

Issue #36 Advanced Ship Development, Part Four – New Techs

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Talon Tuesday Issue #29: Talon 1000 – Heavy Battle Cruisers

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“Talon Tuesdays” is an article series appearing on InsideGMT periodically on Tuesdays.  It features articles from the Talon development team regarding the game’s design, development and upcoming release of the Talon 1000 expansion. Since Space Empires:4x Replicators is also releasing soon and there is crossover between the two development teams, Replicator articles will be featured as well.

Issue #29 Talon 1000 – Heavy Battle Cruisers

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Ancient Civilizations of the Inner Sea – July Development Update

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Ancient Civilizations of the Inner Sea’s development is moving ahead very rapidly.  This is a rare game that can be played either as a wargame or a non-militaristic competitive game of civilization building, or a combination of both, it’s really up to the players.

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Three Presidents For the Price of One: Inside Mr. President (Pt 3)

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In our last article, our Presidential Triumvirate walked you through our game’s 1st Activation Phase, representing about six weeks of real time. In this article, we will tackle the 2nd Activation Phase of our new administration.

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Three Presidents for the Price of One: Inside Mr. President (Pt 2)

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Welcome back to this series of peeks inside Mr. President!

When last we left our intrepid Tri-Presidents, we had finished the game setup and were ready to begin the game’s first six-month Round. If you missed that first article, check it out here before you read on. And please remember, this game is still in the testing phase, so all the images you see in the article are playtest images, not final art.

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Three Presidents for the Price of One: A Look Inside the New Version of Mr. President (Pt 1)

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As many of you have read in my most recent monthly customer updates, I’ve been back working on the new version of Mr. President weekly, and sometimes daily, over the past couple of months. The updated, streamlined design is falling into place, and we’re a little over a month away from handing the game off to Mike Bertucelli for final development and testing. In this article and those that follow, I want to give you a sense of how it feels to play the current version of Mr. President. With the able assistance of my son Luke and daughter Rachel, whose most recent plays of the game have netted two auto-losses, we’ll take you along with us as we begin a new administration. I hope you enjoy the article! – Gene

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Red Storm – Solitaire Development

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One of the aspects making the Downtown series great is its intense fog-of-war.  The combination of dummy flights, hidden AAA/SAMs, generic flights, and unconfirmed bombing results add up to a lot of uncertainty for both players in most scenarios, a situation that is both realistic and fun, since neither player knows the full picture.

As cool as the system is, the extensive fog-of-war adds a lot of rules, an issue for some players with limited time, while also making the game less appealing as a solo experience.  To address both issues, early in the development of Red Storm, Gene gave me the task of working in some solo rules.  I examined as many different solo systems I could find, while also reviewing some draft solo rules that Lee Brimmicombe-Wood and Antonio Peña worked on for Downtown but never published formally.  After that research and some tinkering with various options, I settled on a “two tier” system of solo rules for Red Storm.

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Red Storm – Scenario Mix

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In designing scenarios for Red Storm: The Air War Over Central Germany, 1987, I’m trying to provide a wide range of scenarios in terms of size, complexity, and “standard” versus “unusual” situations.  Regarding size, the variance is based on three main factors: the amount of the map in play, the number of flights on each side, and the density of ground defenses (SAMs and AAA).  Complexity varies based on who is doing what.  One side bombing?  Both sides?  Good or bad weather?  Lots of Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) and electronic jamming aircraft?  The final aspect is standard vs. unusual.  Here, “standard” would be daylight missions with one or both sides bombing targets and one or both sides trying to intercept the other.  Order of Battle tables determine the exact flights and available munitions.  An “unusual” scenario would include specific pre-designated units with special rules (like a cruise missile attack, paradrop or helicopter assault).  At this point in testing, we are working on a total of 29 scenarios.  I’m not sure if all of those will make the cut, but I figure it’s good to have too many at this point instead of too few.  Any that don’t get into Red Storm will likely be future C3i magazine scenarios or be offered through some other venue.

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B&T Warpath Chronicles #6: Vassalization, Or How I Learned To Love Online Gaming

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screen-shot-2016-11-15-at-8-49-08-am In the old days, to be a vassal meant that you would agree to submit to a king in exchange for their protection against other kings and lords.  We’ve moved past those days; today in the gaming field it means to submit your board game to someone for creating a Vassal module.  Since most of the folks who follow this field don’t have much free time (the exception being our fortunate retired chaps), creating online play kits are important to playing.  In game development though, this becomes pivotal since you can design an entire virtual game (including graphics) and do all the development work without ever creating any real playtest kits.  Once you create a Vassal module, you have unlimited playtest kits.

My introduction to the online gaming world began in 2005 when I had to play Triumph of Chaos and really wanted to do it virtually.  At the time, I had only a faint idea what that entailed.  After many months of playing around on Cyberboard, in addition to learning a wide range of graphics editing tools, I somehow managed to finish the playkit.  Fortunately, I had a good friend on hand to get me going on Photoshop and I developed a skill set for making all the pieces needed for a virtual game.  Fast forward 10ish years and 12+ playkits later, Cyberboard is no longer the king – that honor now belongs to Vassal.

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B&T Warpath Chronicles #4: Developer’s Introduction

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Greetings from just south of Baltimore, MD.  My name is Barry Setser and I am the developer for GMT’s upcoming game – Bayonets & Tomahawks.  Many of you know the name from numerous conventions and gatherings over the years, but there’s a larger contingent that have no idea who I am.  I would like to take this bi-weekly occasion to introduce myself, let you know a bit about my gaming credentials, and then top things off with a development update on B&T.