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Flood 'Q' |
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The Home Page of James B. Byrne |
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SECTION 1 Decision Games Kreig!1st. ed Clash of Arms Games Close Action with Designer's rebuttal End of list SECTION 2 Die HauptKampfLinie HPS Simulations GR/D Europa
Vassal - An Internet gaming app.
SECTION 3 Volley and Bayonet End of list SECTION 4 How to mount and cut End of list Updated 2005 May 25 Comments? Questions? Complaints? Take 'em up with management. My Guys....and Gals...
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Updated 2006 May 15 I originally provided this page mainly as a convenience for the many people that have inquired after the Blitzkrieg Module System. published long ago in S&T 19. Since that time I have added a few bits and pieces that I have produced for my own use and which others may also find useful. On the left you will find URL links to those files contained in this site or elsewhere. Most of these will have something to do with war gaming. It has been a long time since my previous update in May of 2005, for many things have happened to consume my time. I am presently completing my major field readings and preparing for my comprehensive exams in anticipation of begining my Ph.D. thesis research at McMaster University. I pay the bills by consulting with firms throughout Southwestern Ontario; principally maintaining their Microsoft based networks and domains but increasingly converting them to Linux based networked installations. I recently completed a six for three Linux server conversion moving the firm from RedHat 7.3 to CentOS4 (RHES4) in the process. I have given up on Rational ROSE (now owned by IBM) as too much money and effort for the the results obtained. Presently I favour Poseiden from Gentleware or BOUML from Ruby and Rails these days. I am particularly intrigued by Ruby-on-Rails as a framework generator for web based database applications. I am presently engaged in a migration of a complete customs, traffic and accounting application that I originally designed 20 years ago from its present HP3000 MPE/iX home to an Intel686 Linux environment using PostgreSQL and Ruby-on-Rails is the tool of choice. I have moved away from ADC II as well, and have recently picked up VASSAL. The interactive server component produces, for me at least, a far more satisfactory social experience. I recently completed a short scenario of PanzerBlitiz with one of my old gaming buddies from my undergraduate years though we are now separated by some 3100 km. and we are planning a game of Totaler Kreig! beginning this coming June. De Civilis I used to participate in online forums relating to wargaming but rarely do so now for a number of reasons. I thought that my discomfort with the tenor of discussions on many of these forums was due to the lack of civility which seemed dominate, but that is really not the case. My difficulty stems, I think, mainly from the evident lack of critical consideration that many active participants give to the deeper social and political issues that generally wargames, of necessity, gloss over, but which are nonetheless essential to understanding the situation being represented. In my naivety I once believed that these misapprehensions were correctable through reasoned discussion and argument, or that perhaps I would come to understand how I misconceived the situation under discussion. However, frequently this proved not the case. In fact I often observed that, for some, a published wargame's interpretation of events represented a personal vindication of their political beliefs, as unbelievable as that seemed to me at the outset. Further, I eventually realized that many proposed alterations to games in print stemmed, not from any desire to improve the game or increase the verisimilitude of the simulation but, principally from a desire to further personal agendas relating to how the proposers' conceived history as it "should have been;" ofttimes without much apparent regard for material or political limitations not modeled directly in the game. It seemed that their idea of a "corrected" game served mainly to tidy up their own frayed edges of reality. Now this is a harsh assessment, yet it is not meant to apply to the vast majority of wargamers or even a significant number of those that participate in online communities, most of whom I view as above-average in intelligence and possessing social skills, despite our reputation to the contrary, not noticeably deficient when contrasted to the general population. No, the people I am writing about are those who hector and badger and nag any online participant whose writings they take as threatening their own views of how the world "works" and who depreciate any uncomfortable reminders that the world as is just might not fit their pre-conceptions of as ought. These people are readily identifiable by the pervasive use of morality in their writings and presumptive atributions of good and evil anachronistically imposed on historical events. They frequently display a cavalier disregard for what was actually written by their victims and often insist on perverse interpretations of that which they do not actually mutilate beyond recognition. Like certain contemporary talk-show hosts, they delight in repeatedly accusing their targets of the very tactics that they employ to drown out discussions of issues by attacks on the victim's character. Governance is nonetheless difficult to employ judiciously and all such attempts, except in the most egregious of cases, brings forth howls of outrage alleging "censorship." Volunteer discussion group moderators, operating from precepts of fairness and accommodation that are far removed from what the perpetrators of this behaviour evidence towards others, frequently fail to act swiftly or at all, until at last their forum goes dark from inactivity. The moderate members revert to lurkers, unwilling to expose themselves to the vilification and emotional upset that active participation brings to those that do not toe the line taken by the dominant personalities. This situations completely defeats the ostensible purpose of online forums, audiatur et altera pars Previous Updates: Since my last update I have been busy on a number of different fronts. I have most recently (February, 2001) placed an Acrobat .pdf file containing images for a set of 3/4" APP6 style counters suitable for gaming the Saunna scenario in Command Decision III (CD3). CD3 is a set of rules for war-gaming World War II battles using miniatures originally published by GDW. Due to lack of time, money, space, and inclination; I do not use miniatures for war-gaming at all. When I do play games using miniature rules I always play them on felt cloth terrain using cardboard counters cut to the appropriate size and shape. Since plain, unadorned, cardboard lacks a certain ascetic appeal I nearly always end up producing coloured labels for the counters. If you find them useful then you are free to reproduce them for yourself and your immediate gaming buddies. In mid-January I placed an update to my WarGame Computer Program Design study on the site. I am still plugging away at this and have just (Feb-2001) extensively revised the initial design packaging based on the research conducted to date. I will try and get this up within the next couple of weeks. Towards the end of November 2000 I began toying with the idea of designing a war game program to be written in VB6+. I doubt whether I will ever get to actually code such a beast, but the process of specifying and designing it gave me an opportunity to work with the reverse engineering techniques available in some of the computer software design tools that I use daily. So here is my design to date. This particular representation is generated by Rational Rose. I will be looking at the Viso modeling tool later. It is my intent to update the documentation set as frequently as possible, but I make no guarantees. What led me to contemplate this was the discovery of a wonderful computer program called JET. JET is a labour of love by Janne Vitala , of Finland no less. JET finally makes it practical to play games from the Europa family by E-Mail. Those of you who know Europa from Games Research/Design will appreciate this very much.. Those of you who don't can take it from me, you NEED something like JET just to keep everything straight on the map, much less follow the rules. JET does both, and does it remarkably well. The program and the source are both available on-line along with the accompanying map editor. If you play Europa games at all, or if you own Europa games and have no idea how you will ever get to play them, you have to get JET. If you want to find out more about Europa itself you can visit the publisher's home page. In October of 2000 I added a counter-sheet graphic for a complete set of double-sided counters for the 2nd Manassas Scenario from the ACW scenario book published by GDW . This set provides all the units as listed in the scenario for use with Volley and Bayonet. In September 2000 I put up a set of generic American Civil War counters (double sided) suitable for use with Game Designers Workshop's (GDW) Volley and Bayonet (VnB) miniature rules. These are presented in Adobe's portable document format. As designed the counters are half scale (1" : 200yd.) and so all movement and fire ranges in VnB need to be halved when using these counters. The concept has been borrowed from GDW's earlier System 7 variant of their still earlier Fire and Steel miniature rules. As the counter images are provided in Acrobat pdf you can scale them up or down as you desire. |
The Anglo American: James C.
