Ep 23: Campain Ribbin’ Is Live!

Ep 23: Campain Ribbin' is live!
We talk with Henry Hyde about his new book "Wargaming Campaigns" and running a wargame campaign.
https://soundcloud.com/user-989538417/e ... ign-ribbin
The Veteran Wargamer is brought to you by Kings Hobbies and Games
http://www.Kingshobbiesandgames.comhttps://www.facebook.com/Special-Artiza ... 644366746/
Join the conversation at https://theveteranwargamer.blogspot.com, email theveteranwargamer@gmail.com, Twitter @veteranwargamer
Follow Henry at http://henrys-wargaming.co.uk/Twitter @battegames
Shot, Steel and Stone Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/shotsteelandstone/Wars of the Faltenian Succession E-Book: https://payhip.com/b/7he8The Wargaming Compendium: http://thewargamingcompendium.com/Gladius Publications: http://gladiuspublications.com/

Other companies we mentioned:
Tony Bath's Hyboria Campaign: http://hillcantons.blogspot.com/2010/12 ... art-i.html
Schleich figures: https://www.schleich-s.com/en/US/eldrador.html
John Keegan - The Face of Battle: https://www.amazon.com/Face-Battle-Stud ... +of+battle
Cartographer's Guild: https://www.cartographersguild.com/content.php
GMT - 1960: The Making of a President https://www.gmtgames.com/p-574-1960-the ... ident.aspx
Katie Aidley (Katie's Game Corner) Twitter: @katiesgamecrner
GZG - "StarGrunt" Jon Tuffley: http://downloads.groundzerogames.co.uk/sgii.pdf
Martin Van Creveld - "Supplying War": https://www.amazon.com/Supplying-War-Lo ... 0521546575
Martin Van Creveld - "War Games": https://www.amazon.com/Wargames-Profess ... an+creveld
Games Workshop - Mighty Empires: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/52/mighty-empires
Bob Barnetson - aka Bob in Edmonton http://edmontonwargamer.blogspot.com/
Too Fat Lardies - Pint Sized Campaigns: http://toofatlardies.co.uk/product-cate ... f-command/
Music courtesy bensound.com. Recorded with zencastr.com. Edited with Audacity. Make your town beautiful; get a haircut.
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Assassins Creed 4 Black Flag BlackBox

Minimum System Requirements 

Processor: Intel Core2Quad Q8400 @ 2.6 GHz or AMD Athlon II X4 620 @ 2.6 GHz RAM: 2 GBVideo Card: Nvidia Geforce GTX 260 or AMD Radeon HD 4870 (512MB VRAM with shader Model 4.0 or higher)DirectX 11: DirectX June 2010 Redistributable  

Recommended System Requirements

Processor: Intel Core i5 2400S @ 2.5 GHz or AMD Phenom II x4 940 @ 3.0 GHz or better RAM: 4GB or more Video Card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 470 or AMD Radeon HD 5850 (1024MB VRAM with Shader Model 5.0) or better 

Download The Game Here

Some Recent Additions

IR 30 Prinz de Ligne

July draws to a close amid a frenzy of wargame activity. Despite being the busiest month of the year I've kept the painting up, finishing the above unit. I MIGHT, just might, get a second batallion done as well, which would be fantastic - I've just got the last 13 figures to finish so it's quite likely. Ordinarily, I'd say no problem seeing as there are still 11 days to go in this month, but this coming extended weekend will see me nipping off up to Scarboro' for a couple of Napoleonic games- looking forwards to it immensely. I think we are doing Corunna (never done that before) plus some made up 1813 bash. I can't wait.

Front Rank artillery adjutant and some random Rupert 

Apart from the prospect of 4 days gaming with some like-minded folk, I'm hoping to make a couple of purchases, as Mike is selling a few units and I've asked him to reserve a couple of favourites of mine. I'm afraid I'm going to be a total tease and not say what they are, so you'll just have to tune in next week and I'll post a few pics.

The Sash and Sabre samples were a crippling disapointment, little stumpy-sub-Foundry things...no use to me at all.

Some Front Rank Grenzers shield the Elite column

A far more interesting set of samples came from Alban miniatures, I got some of their Austrian hussars and horses. First, the horses, which are very nice. The hussars only look good on the light horses, although the heavies are lovely sculpts as well and will come in handy elsewhere. The hussars are really lovely figures with true, un-exagerated detail. A bit like Stadden's best effort. No buttons like wheel-nuts or gurning faces. They all come with a seperate sword arm which I rather like. The only problem is they are a little small (or perhaps not as big) compared to the my Elite masses. They may work ok on their own, I'm not sure yet. I think I'll have to paint up a few and do a comparison.

Free Counter

Improving The 2D Noise Page

One of my goals for 2019 is to improve my existing pages. Yesterday I decided to work on my old 2D noise page. We normally use Perlin/Simplex noise to make terrain heightmaps, but on that page I used Fourier transforms instead. Perlin/Simplex noise are a fast approximation of the things you can get from Fourier transforms.

The 3D renderer on that page always bothered me. It was one of my early experiments with WebGL. I had never been able to figure out exactly what I didn't like or how to fix it.

I decided to improve the renderer.

I read through the code to and realized it was written so long ago that let and const weren't even widely available! I started by updating the code style to match the code I write today. I read through the rendering code and decided to switch from raw WebGL to regl.js, which lets me experiment and iterate much more quickly.

I wanted to compare the old and new output easily, so I put them side by side on the page. I wanted to try two techniques with the new renderer:

1. Instead of building a new 3D quad mesh on the CPU every time the data changed, I built a single 2D triangle mesh with x,y, and then read the heightmap data from a texture on the GPU. Reading textures from vertex shaders is widely supported now. This way, I only have to update the texture on each render instead of rebuilding the mesh. Unfortunately I couldn't figure out why it wasn't interpolating pixels values; I had to put in my own interpolation.
2. Instead of calculating normals and lighting on the CPU every frame, I calculated them in the fragment shader on the GPU. But I didn't want to use a standard lighting system; I wanted to apply outlines instead. I had learned how to do this in mapgen4 and wanted to try an even simpler approach here. This worked out really well.

In this comparison you can see how the dark/light spots in the noise are renderered in the two renderers. With the old renderer (green) the color changes but the shapes are all mushy. With the new renderer (gray) the dark/light matches the noise, and the mountain peaks are easier to see.

Landscape: old (green) and new (gray) renderer

In smooth areas you can see how the outlines help show the shapes. You can also see that the old renderer flipped the elevation upside down (oops!).

Smooth area: old (green) and new (gray) renderer

With blue noise (positive exponents) the new renderer looks much better:

Blue noise: old (green) and new (gray) renderer

I'm really really happy with outlines! Compare:

Without and with outlines

The outlines are one line of code:

void main() {   float light = 0.1 + z - fwidth(z) * u_outline;   gl_FragColor = vec4(light, light, light, 1); } 

I darken the color based on fwidth(z). The GL extension OES_standard_derivatives calculates how much an expression changes from the current pixel(fragment) to adjacent pixels. When z changes a lot, that usually means it's changing from one mountain peak to another, so I darken the output color.

There are still more things I'd like to improve on this page, but the renderer was the thing that bothered me the most, and I'm now happy with it. The other changes will wait until another day.

Hussar Problem Solved

I mentioned that while I was up at the Wargames Holiday Centre I was hoping to make a few purchases. Well,I did indeed, and here are a few pics of some of them. Mike has been selling off quite a few units this year in order to "slim down" the collection (for example, having nearly 180 x 36 man French btns seemed a bit OTT), and I hoped to buy a few units I'd always really liked. High on the list were these 2 regts of Austrian Hussars, 1 of 36 men and another of 48 (Wish they were both 48's).

One of the problems I've always had with the Austrian army is the hussar uniform. Now I know they invented the things, but I've always thought the Austrian hussar uniform looked more at home in Billy Smart's Circus than on a battlefield. All that purulent bright green, stupid red trousers, and yellow plumes...Give them some long, floppy shoes rather than hussar boots and they would have looked better.
Subsequently I've never had any great desire to paint any. So from years ago when I first saw these rather more subdued paint jobs they always appealed. They are all wearing overalls and the green is (a more realistic) darker shade.  Despite this they are still suitably gaudy enough for hussars, with their red shabraques with yellow piping and either bright or dark blue dolmans.

They are (naturally) the Elite miniatures castings, painted and converted by Doug Mason. All the sabres are pins soldered into the hand and are very tough. Even after many years of service up in Scarborough I only had to replace 3 swords out of 84. Doug has done plenty of bends and twists to these figures. There are only 4 basic figures here, officer, trumpeter and 2 trooper figures, and he really has imparted an incredible sense of movement to the models which really look the part of hussars at full tilt

I just did a minimal amount of work on the bases to blend them with my standard basing. Just an oilwash and highlight then some grass clumps added. I also gave them a quick new coat of gloss. I had contemplated giving them a matt coat, but they look infinitely better in their original gloss glory. I'm developing a bit of a theory about gloss V matt: Gloss varnish isn't terribly fashionable these days which is actually a bit wierd. There is no debate about it bringing out the colour and establishing a visual contrast between the figure and its base, this is simply optical fact. Nonetheless, a lot of folk "prefer" matt these days. Anyway, my theory is, that gloss varnish makes well painted figures look even better and badly painted figures look even worse, while matt varnish just dulls everything down to a more median uniformity (no pun inteneded). So for Mr Average painter (like me, and most of you) we think our stuff looks better when we matt varnish it, because gloss just shows up all the cock-ups, while matt is more....forgiving.
Anyway, thats my theory.

These figures were painted by someone who really knew what he was doing, and it shows up even better in the flesh than through the lens of my rather inadequate camera.

These weren't the only figures I bought from Mike, there are more (I just kept peeling off the tenners until he said stop) but the rest will have to wait for another time.

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Gig At Magic Leap

This is an awesome gig at Magic Leap - Wellington (technically a JV with Weta Workshop)

https://www.magicleap.com/#/job-post/269841

They are looking for an amazing and experienced game artist to come join us on the team. Someone with great, efficient modeling skills and buckets of creativity. Unity experience very helpful.

This is a great opportunity. Put your best portfolio work forward...

Allan

Two Highlights From DETROIT: BECOME HUMAN

Right now, I am playing DETROIT: BECOME HUMAN, a new title by Quantic Dream studio. As its predecessors – Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain, and Beyond: Two Souls – the game uses cinematographic language with its mechanics based on decision trees. During most part of the narrative, you must take significant decisions that will affect the course of the game and result in different ends for the story. The trailer below shows the gaming dynamics and main plot:



Besides the immersive narrative and beautiful graphics, I want to comment on two great features of this game.

1) The ending phase screens show the complete decision tree of each chapter. This is a very cool feature from DETROIT, you can observe in details what type of consequence your acts generated inside the gaming narrative. This visual aid helps players understand how each character works in the ambient. Below, there's an example of this feature.



2) The opening screen always has an interesting content. Every time you start to play DETROIT, there's one opening screen with a very sympathetic female android named Chloe giving you a technological trivia. I was playing it in June 7th and she told me that that day was Alan Turing's (the British mathematical genius) date of death. Then, last Saturday morning she told me "this is a perfect way to start a good weekend". The android also takes interesting surveys, asking players about the interface between human and machine. It is just a "content snack", but it helps to contextualize the gaming experience in a more immersive way. Below, I'm sharing some of these moments:



Another great acquisition for my collection.

#GoGamers

WHERE TO GO FROM HERE?

When we last lest off on this rather rambling discussion, we had addressed the issues regarding manufacturing plastic miniatures, the costs involved and some of the challenges a small manufacturer faces, regarding time to market, the supply chain, the customer base and profit margins. 

You can view the other conversations here:

Part 1: Well, hello there.

Part 2: A little catching up may be in order.

Part 3: The state of DFG as a business 

This is part 4: Where to go from here.

This is the last in that series of rather frank discussions. This conversation will be about the direction DreamForge will take and how I would like to handle new releases and how to keep the train rolling as much as possible while limiting delays as much as possible.

Where have I been since my last post? Working on prints, testing a few theories about mold manufacturing with an eye to efficiency, repeatability and quality.

Where to go from here…. Well, that is a rather large question with some fairly complicated moving parts. I love doing what I am doing but at the end of the day, this is a business and all paths forward must be manageable, efficient and profitable. With the other conversations behind us I can address my path forward.

•  Production will be moved in house, for cost, quality control and to allow for ease of movement from one product to the next. Should one flop, the investment will be minimal, and the next release more easily moved into, as I will be controlling the manufacturing aspects and it facilitates a far more inventory on hand friendly option. Manufacturing just what you need when you need it keeps 'dead stock' issues to a minimum. The obvious down side is that this does impact my design time as I am elbow deep in the manufacturing process.

• I will be releasing product in waves, making enough for the anticipated first product push and not returning to that product until there is a production slot open to deal with the extra run. This may cause issues where the supply does not meet the demand, but it is a necessary evil. Every kit setting on a shelf, is money tied up, money that could and should be used for the next release.

•   New kits and re-issues of older kits will be in resin, the costs to tool and run the product are far more manageable and I went over in the previous paragraphs, it allows me far more financial freedom and the ability to tailor my production and keep a more fluid release schedule on hand. Having a 500 unit minimum and a 4-6 month lead on restocks simply does not work for a company my size.)       The plastic kits are limited to stock on hand, if you want them, you might want to pick them up   while they are available, once they are gone, they are gone. They will be replaced by the resin versions in the future. The infantry will not be discounted as the supply is very limited. Any kit in stock that has too much excess inventory will see some great sales until the stock levels reach a minimal level.

• I know some of you may not have had stellar results from resin kits, I will do my best to control quality and have been experimenting with a few techniques to minimize the gate and vent size down to 1/16" (about 1mm) to help get rid of the issues with massive cleanup and destroyed details due to overly large pour gates. This process does have some drawbacks. The resin I use cannot be fast setting, which means a mold may not see more than two casts per day. To address this issue, I have worked out a means to make many copies of the same molds, quickly and efficiently. There is simply no way to match the production speed of injected plastic but considering its tooling costs and the lead time needed, it is not an option within this niche market where the 'new shiny', it what sells.  I much prefer being able to continually release great products than hope a kit has staying power to pay for the initial investment.

Would I ever consider a plastic release? Yes, given the right kit, it is still a better means of production. Having the experience, I have gained so far, I have a good feel of what will and what will not survive a long release, the only questions is whether the community will have moved on to the next game/product in the meantime.

 So, now you know the direction… What's next?

Hover StuG!

I will be doing a bit more mold testing and refining of process and then the initial run of the StuG can begin. The initial run will be 200-300 kits 

Here you can see a pre-production test!

Shadokesh!

Ferals and troopers, really cool kits, fun as hell to model these, but without a game or other driving force to push sales and no obvious 'counts as' the sales on these may be a little soft. I will keep my initial run fairly small while keeping an eye on my customers reactions.

The Ferals are shown here with all five poses, the Shadokesh trooper is one of the five, just working on the prints for the other four.

Re-Release 

Panzerjager!

These have been OOS for some time and will be the first re-release, followed closely by other infantry lines. The re-releases will be roughly in the same format, separate arms and chests, etc, but I may join up some components that were split to ease manufacturing, assembly and part count issues.

After that? The Protectorate! Honestly not doing these in plastic is a blessing and a curse. I know they would sell with enough initial volume but the freedom of not needing to respect the 'direction of pull' of a hard too means I can start to really flex some modeling muscle and make them as cool as possible.

And after that? Buildings, terrain, other vehicles, races, etc.…..

My intent is to get far more interactive with the community regarding those future releases, asking for feedback and taking critiques to make every kit the best I can. The re-releases, StuG and Shadokesh are basically done from the modeling aspect, so, they are what they are…. But I look forward to flexing the old grey matter with all of you for the future lines. Its going to be fun, its going to be cool and I hope to see many of you helping to shape the products you want!