We had an amazing trip. Tokyo is a wonderful city. The people, the place, the food (and drink), all top notch. I might be going back to Japan in the next few months for work and, if so, I definitely want to add a couple vacation days in.
Been getting the new computer up and running. Like everything in my world, it seems to take about 10 times as long as it should but I'm almost there. Today I was looking at fixing the last couple headaches from the recent website hack/rebuild; namely getting the Liberators banner posted again and getting some obnoxious text out of the order confirmation email. On the latter point I'm completely stumped. I use Zen Cart and the way the set up email is just confounding. There's multiple places where the error could be and if I don't fix them all, in the exact same way, the error stays. Headache inducing. If anyone knows Zen Cart I could really use a hand!
Not much new on the writing front. Honestly, I haven't done anything in the last few weeks. Disappointing but true. Mike is also waiting for instructions on the next set of sculpts. We are working on the Volume 2 figures and I'd like to have the full set of references available when the whole thing "goes live".
Chris is trying to get me down to San Diego for a playtest of a revamped version of the miniatures rules he's been working on. Maybe mid-October, we'll see. Ian and Martin have been doing some playtesting of the Battle of Boyaca, one of the scenarios in the new book. They've given me some good feedback and it's always illuminating to see how folks approach these games. Lots of good food for thought and I hope to recruit them for a couple more scenarios in the next few months.
My real life work is very busy from now through the beginning of November. I don't talk about my video editing much but if you're into astronomy, science or just cool things, do a Google search for LCROSS. It's a satellite I did a lot of support video pieces for and the mission will be coming to a rather spectacular conclusion early in the morning on Thursday, October 9 at approximately 4:30am PST (Los Angeles) by deliberately impacting the moon. After that I have another space oriented piece that's due in early November. After that things might slow down a little, which is good news for Liberators as my slow periods are when I tend to get things done.
Friday, October 02, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Book Update
I'm dutifully typing away at the new book. So far I've got most of Bolivar's campaigns covered (just finished the 1821 campaign today) and quite a few of the "minor" campaigns (Marquis del Toro, Miranda, Nariño, etc). As I write I occasionally head to other sections to put in a paragraph here and there while a thought or piece of data is fresh in my mind or at my fingertips but I haven't really shaped those sections yet. A couple of the scenarios are more or less complete while the majority are still in the rough stage. I've added the Battle of Urica, December 5, 1814 to the list as I have recently unearthed a solid OB that also happens to make for a fairly balanced scenario (most sources list ~7,000 Royalists vs. ~4,000 Patriots, this OB initially makes the same claim but counting up the numbers tallies 5,400 Royalists vs. 4,200 Patriots).
I'm not sure at this point if I'm going to do the little uniform charts for each scenario like I did in the first volume. Quite frankly, the uniform information for the north is just not as prevalent as the south. I'll keep digging but in the interest of not printing pages of uniform outlines with a big question mark in them I'll probably end up just presenting what data I do have as a general list and then provide suggestions for the remainder (hint: you can never go wrong with dark blue with red facings!).
The new version of the rules are still in a state of great confusion as I just haven't codified anything yet. I've got a vision of how I want things to play; the feel I want them to have and the tactical concepts I want to represent but I haven't achieved it in actual design. It's really a job in and of itself but I'm fairly confident that when I start feeling like it's going in the right direction it'll become much easier. Success builds upon success, as they say.
As you can see, there's a lot of ground left to cover but I'm hacking away at it and each day it gets a little closer!
I'm not sure at this point if I'm going to do the little uniform charts for each scenario like I did in the first volume. Quite frankly, the uniform information for the north is just not as prevalent as the south. I'll keep digging but in the interest of not printing pages of uniform outlines with a big question mark in them I'll probably end up just presenting what data I do have as a general list and then provide suggestions for the remainder (hint: you can never go wrong with dark blue with red facings!).
The new version of the rules are still in a state of great confusion as I just haven't codified anything yet. I've got a vision of how I want things to play; the feel I want them to have and the tactical concepts I want to represent but I haven't achieved it in actual design. It's really a job in and of itself but I'm fairly confident that when I start feeling like it's going in the right direction it'll become much easier. Success builds upon success, as they say.
As you can see, there's a lot of ground left to cover but I'm hacking away at it and each day it gets a little closer!
Friday, July 17, 2009
Billing Email Error
I was just notified that some of you received emails yesterday that may have looked like invoices. This was an error on my part. I was doing some record keeping and updating order status from "processing" to "delivered". Unfortunately, there is a box at the bottom of the record that says "notify customer". It is checked by default. I should have unchecked it. If you received an email, please disregard it. I apologize for any confusion.
John
John
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Doom Sunday and a some nice bits of news
My computer died this morning. Well, to be exact the msgina.dll failed to load. Obviously, the first thing I did was go to Microsoft support and look the problem up. Their nifty 2 part, 3 steps per part solution did not work. Of course. I did a little digging around the web and discovered that this particular dll failure is a near show stopper. Long story short, I've already begun planning on getting a USB Universal Drive Adaptor and delving into a serious data retrieval operation.
Rest assured, this isn't a "the dog ate my book" post. But it is a setback.
I've been doing a bit of a deathbed watch on this particular computer for several months now. It's an old computer and the main reason I liked it was because I'd optimized it for what I needed. It was stable and, until now, reliable. Sure, the software wasn't the latest version. Sure, the video card was beyond obsolete. Sure, there wasn't enough RAM and it would take a long time to do basic tasks, especially if I was working in my Adobe suite. But it was a tank whose very age (I originally bought this computer in 2001 with a couple of guts swap-outs over the years) enabled it to bypass many headaches, especially in regards to OS, program and driver conflicts. Back around the New Year I noticed that the hard drive was becoming really noisy. I took the panel off and gave things a giggle and a rescrew a couple of times but inevitably the wheezing and rattling would return. Things got more worrisome a few weeks back when Service Pack 3 somehow downloaded and wanted to be installed. I was shocked by this as SP3 for Windows XP is hardly new and it was a surprise when it showed up in my automatic update queue. I tried load it but it failed. Every now and then it would try to load again and would fail again. I tried to boot up this morning and this error appeared for the first time. It must have tried to load again (maybe during start up?) because from what Microsoft says on its support page, my problem comes from a failed security update.
This is where we get to the setback. Due to my worries about potential hard drive failure I bought a nice, new, 250GB external hard drive for backing up. Unfortunately, the last backup I did was in mid-May. I've been doing some good work on Volume 2 in the last couple weeks and none of this was included in the mid-May backup. In fact, in one of those synchronicity moments that I've learned I ignore at my peril, before Sharon and I headed out last night for a summer evening stroll and gelato I thought about backing my South American files up but held off. I had been doing some work yesterday and felt good about the admittedly scattershot nature of my progress (I had been alternating between listings for Royalist units in the "Armies and Leaders" section and the 1809-1812 Ecuador listing for the "History" section) and figured I'd continue on today and then let it back up overnight tonight. Oops.
So what that all means is that in the next couple of days I'll either have recovered what I lost or I'll have to go back to the last mid-May version and pick it up again. Not a killer by any stretch but a bit frustrating...just enough that I figured a blog post vent was in order.
In other (good) news on Volume 2 a coworker of mine who does animation, including terrain, is working on doing up a 3D version of the Boyaca battlefield. I'm very appreciative of the attempt and he's spent a lot of time getting detailed USGS data so I'm not saying anything as I don't want him to feel pressured. Nevertheless, I can't wait to see what he comes up with and I'd love to have 3D maps at least for Boyaca, Carabobo, Pichincha and Ayacucho in the next book...if not all the scenarios! Now, I'm not promising that these will end up in the book; it will depend on how good this test comes out, how my friend feels about doing any others and how long it takes to generate each example, but it's just one more way I'm trying to make this book better than the last.
Next, if you're in the central Texas region please support Great Hall Games in Austin. Rob Smith and I have been in contact and he told me that some of his customers have been talking about Liberators and he's looking into the range. Of course, as a business owner it really only makes sense if there's some profit in it for him. Why not put on a game at his store or drop by and say hi. I've had a lot of orders from Texas, it would be nice to develop a base where everyone can gather to enjoy our period. Rob mentioned that there's a convention in November, maybe someone could host an event...
Rest assured, this isn't a "the dog ate my book" post. But it is a setback.
I've been doing a bit of a deathbed watch on this particular computer for several months now. It's an old computer and the main reason I liked it was because I'd optimized it for what I needed. It was stable and, until now, reliable. Sure, the software wasn't the latest version. Sure, the video card was beyond obsolete. Sure, there wasn't enough RAM and it would take a long time to do basic tasks, especially if I was working in my Adobe suite. But it was a tank whose very age (I originally bought this computer in 2001 with a couple of guts swap-outs over the years) enabled it to bypass many headaches, especially in regards to OS, program and driver conflicts. Back around the New Year I noticed that the hard drive was becoming really noisy. I took the panel off and gave things a giggle and a rescrew a couple of times but inevitably the wheezing and rattling would return. Things got more worrisome a few weeks back when Service Pack 3 somehow downloaded and wanted to be installed. I was shocked by this as SP3 for Windows XP is hardly new and it was a surprise when it showed up in my automatic update queue. I tried load it but it failed. Every now and then it would try to load again and would fail again. I tried to boot up this morning and this error appeared for the first time. It must have tried to load again (maybe during start up?) because from what Microsoft says on its support page, my problem comes from a failed security update.
This is where we get to the setback. Due to my worries about potential hard drive failure I bought a nice, new, 250GB external hard drive for backing up. Unfortunately, the last backup I did was in mid-May. I've been doing some good work on Volume 2 in the last couple weeks and none of this was included in the mid-May backup. In fact, in one of those synchronicity moments that I've learned I ignore at my peril, before Sharon and I headed out last night for a summer evening stroll and gelato I thought about backing my South American files up but held off. I had been doing some work yesterday and felt good about the admittedly scattershot nature of my progress (I had been alternating between listings for Royalist units in the "Armies and Leaders" section and the 1809-1812 Ecuador listing for the "History" section) and figured I'd continue on today and then let it back up overnight tonight. Oops.
So what that all means is that in the next couple of days I'll either have recovered what I lost or I'll have to go back to the last mid-May version and pick it up again. Not a killer by any stretch but a bit frustrating...just enough that I figured a blog post vent was in order.
In other (good) news on Volume 2 a coworker of mine who does animation, including terrain, is working on doing up a 3D version of the Boyaca battlefield. I'm very appreciative of the attempt and he's spent a lot of time getting detailed USGS data so I'm not saying anything as I don't want him to feel pressured. Nevertheless, I can't wait to see what he comes up with and I'd love to have 3D maps at least for Boyaca, Carabobo, Pichincha and Ayacucho in the next book...if not all the scenarios! Now, I'm not promising that these will end up in the book; it will depend on how good this test comes out, how my friend feels about doing any others and how long it takes to generate each example, but it's just one more way I'm trying to make this book better than the last.
Next, if you're in the central Texas region please support Great Hall Games in Austin. Rob Smith and I have been in contact and he told me that some of his customers have been talking about Liberators and he's looking into the range. Of course, as a business owner it really only makes sense if there's some profit in it for him. Why not put on a game at his store or drop by and say hi. I've had a lot of orders from Texas, it would be nice to develop a base where everyone can gather to enjoy our period. Rob mentioned that there's a convention in November, maybe someone could host an event...
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Scenario Design
Kubla Con has come and gone. 2 weeks ago, in fact. I had a nice time; good to see Bob Burke again and do some recreational gaming. No Liberators but plenty of fun.
As I've mentioned, I've been working on the next book. Today I was shaping up the order of battle for the Battle of Araure in December 1813. OBs are always a nightmare for me; sources conflict and inevitably I have to make some choices that I'm not entirely comfortable with. Here's an extreme example: in the 1st Battle of Carabobo in May 1814 most sources say the Royalists had somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 men. Unfortunately, you'll never find what we call a true OB. Just 5,000 to 6,000 men. If you dig, you'll find some unit names. The sole source that I have ever found detailing the Royalist army is Mariscal de Campo Juan Manuel Cajigal's memoirs. Cajigal was the Royalist commander at this battle. His OB, which goes to the battalion level, is roughly 2,000 men (depending on how you count the detached cazadore companies, Cajigal is a little unclear on this point). Bolivar's army is usually given as 5,000 men. So what to do? Cajigal could have been understating his strength to explain his defeat, or a later author may have decided to exaggerate the Royalist forces to heighten the importance of Bolivar's victory. Maybe a little of both. All I know is the one primary source I can find, the general who commanded the army in the field, says the Royalists had 2,000 men. Now, if I'm doing "history" I'd be tempted to cite Cajigal's numbers and look at the battle through the prism of a 2-1 Patriot advantage in numbers. If I'm doing a "game" then I should probably ignore Cajigal and assign 5,000 men for an even match. If I present both I'll guarantee I'll get emails for years asking which one is correct (and it'll screw up the page layout of the book).
And so it goes.
The other difficulty, which I have mentioned before, is that specific numbers are extremely difficult to come by for the pre-1819 battles. I've gotten pretty good at culling numbers from my sources but, given the difficulties mentioned above, the cumulative effect are OBs that can be less than certain. With Araure I am lucky that I have a source that gives a very detailed order of battle. It is also one that is different from most others out there. So again, I had to make choices: do I go with the standard, less detailed OBs or do I go with this somewhat unique but very complete OB? In this case I chose the complete order of battle if for no other reason than I would later be able to point to the source and simply say "it's the most complete OB I've ever seen. If you want to use another, feel free".
I've assembled a playtest version of the Battle of Boyaca in August 1819 that I'll be sending out to a couple of people to see how it goes. One element of scenario design that I'm paying a lot more attention to in this book is placement and arrival of each side's army. In the first book I would go with whatever was shown on the map, which is almost always the start of the "main combat". With Boyaca that would've meant a situation where Bolivar had already driven back the Royalist vanguard and achieved a strong "central position" deployment with the Royalists divided in two on opposite flanks. If I did that for the scenario it would make for a very unbalanced game. Instead, I took the clock back an hour to when the two vanguards first began to skirmish and the main armies were just coming on the field. Hopefully the playtests will bear out my intent to deliver a much more balanced game: a meeting engagement where things can play out any number of ways and one side doesn't find itself hamstrung from the first die roll.
I have a couple of days with no work so I hope to knock out one or two more scenarios before the end of the week. I'll keep you posted. As always, comments are welcome!
As I've mentioned, I've been working on the next book. Today I was shaping up the order of battle for the Battle of Araure in December 1813. OBs are always a nightmare for me; sources conflict and inevitably I have to make some choices that I'm not entirely comfortable with. Here's an extreme example: in the 1st Battle of Carabobo in May 1814 most sources say the Royalists had somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 men. Unfortunately, you'll never find what we call a true OB. Just 5,000 to 6,000 men. If you dig, you'll find some unit names. The sole source that I have ever found detailing the Royalist army is Mariscal de Campo Juan Manuel Cajigal's memoirs. Cajigal was the Royalist commander at this battle. His OB, which goes to the battalion level, is roughly 2,000 men (depending on how you count the detached cazadore companies, Cajigal is a little unclear on this point). Bolivar's army is usually given as 5,000 men. So what to do? Cajigal could have been understating his strength to explain his defeat, or a later author may have decided to exaggerate the Royalist forces to heighten the importance of Bolivar's victory. Maybe a little of both. All I know is the one primary source I can find, the general who commanded the army in the field, says the Royalists had 2,000 men. Now, if I'm doing "history" I'd be tempted to cite Cajigal's numbers and look at the battle through the prism of a 2-1 Patriot advantage in numbers. If I'm doing a "game" then I should probably ignore Cajigal and assign 5,000 men for an even match. If I present both I'll guarantee I'll get emails for years asking which one is correct (and it'll screw up the page layout of the book).
And so it goes.
The other difficulty, which I have mentioned before, is that specific numbers are extremely difficult to come by for the pre-1819 battles. I've gotten pretty good at culling numbers from my sources but, given the difficulties mentioned above, the cumulative effect are OBs that can be less than certain. With Araure I am lucky that I have a source that gives a very detailed order of battle. It is also one that is different from most others out there. So again, I had to make choices: do I go with the standard, less detailed OBs or do I go with this somewhat unique but very complete OB? In this case I chose the complete order of battle if for no other reason than I would later be able to point to the source and simply say "it's the most complete OB I've ever seen. If you want to use another, feel free".
I've assembled a playtest version of the Battle of Boyaca in August 1819 that I'll be sending out to a couple of people to see how it goes. One element of scenario design that I'm paying a lot more attention to in this book is placement and arrival of each side's army. In the first book I would go with whatever was shown on the map, which is almost always the start of the "main combat". With Boyaca that would've meant a situation where Bolivar had already driven back the Royalist vanguard and achieved a strong "central position" deployment with the Royalists divided in two on opposite flanks. If I did that for the scenario it would make for a very unbalanced game. Instead, I took the clock back an hour to when the two vanguards first began to skirmish and the main armies were just coming on the field. Hopefully the playtests will bear out my intent to deliver a much more balanced game: a meeting engagement where things can play out any number of ways and one side doesn't find itself hamstrung from the first die roll.
I have a couple of days with no work so I hope to knock out one or two more scenarios before the end of the week. I'll keep you posted. As always, comments are welcome!
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Kubla Con
I'll be heading up to Kubla Con in San Francisco this weekend. I'll be there the 23rd and 24th. I'm not going to be running any Liberators games; instead I'm looking forward to a couple of days of just drifting from table to table, seeing what other folks are up to and joining in whenever something looks good. My friend Chris will be there running his Ragnarok game for his upcoming Trial By Fire games release so odds are good you'll find me hanging around there.
Things here are progressing at their usual leisurely pace. I've been working on maps for the next book. I'm currently working on the Battle of Boyaca in 1819. I received a lot of feedback regarding the maps in the last book, which I'm trying to incorporate into these maps. Key among those comments were a desire for a consistent terrain legend and clear notation of scale. I'm also trying to improve the look of the maps, given my limited graphic skills.
Just last night I was over at UCLA where I stumbled across a couple of sources for Ecuador; including a 3 part article on the 1828-1829 war between Peru and Gran Colombia that peaked with the Battle of Tarqui and a descirption of the Battle of Miñarica in 1835, which was part of an Ecuadoran civil war. Neither will appear in the upcoming book but both will be presented when I move to the immediate post-Independence wars.
There's been no progress on the rules lately. Simply put, there hasn't been time in my real life schedule. I'm hoping to get some designing done at Kubla Con, or at least some good ideas flowing over a couple of beers! It would also probably be a good time to sit down at the lap top and sort of codify/solidify the notes I have scattered across various binder notebooks and legal pads.
On the miniatures side of things Mike is about to begin work on non-uniformed infantry. I'm still struggling with what to call these guys. My first thought, "Peasant Infantry", has a nice ring but implies a certain levy quality that may or may not apply. "Non-uniformed Infantry" is descriptive but boring as hell. "Civilian Dress Infantry" is close to it but doesn't sound martial enough. Any suggestions? These figures are important for a couple of reasons: they are needed for the upcoming War in the South supplement and they are the first batch of figures for the War in the North book. While I hope to have them sculpted and delivered by end of June I'm planning on doing a coordinated release with the new written material so don't expect to see them on sale immediately. It is nice to be moving into the next phase of the Liberators! project and I'm hoping that progress in each element; books, rules and figures, spurs progress in the others.
Things here are progressing at their usual leisurely pace. I've been working on maps for the next book. I'm currently working on the Battle of Boyaca in 1819. I received a lot of feedback regarding the maps in the last book, which I'm trying to incorporate into these maps. Key among those comments were a desire for a consistent terrain legend and clear notation of scale. I'm also trying to improve the look of the maps, given my limited graphic skills.
Just last night I was over at UCLA where I stumbled across a couple of sources for Ecuador; including a 3 part article on the 1828-1829 war between Peru and Gran Colombia that peaked with the Battle of Tarqui and a descirption of the Battle of Miñarica in 1835, which was part of an Ecuadoran civil war. Neither will appear in the upcoming book but both will be presented when I move to the immediate post-Independence wars.
There's been no progress on the rules lately. Simply put, there hasn't been time in my real life schedule. I'm hoping to get some designing done at Kubla Con, or at least some good ideas flowing over a couple of beers! It would also probably be a good time to sit down at the lap top and sort of codify/solidify the notes I have scattered across various binder notebooks and legal pads.
On the miniatures side of things Mike is about to begin work on non-uniformed infantry. I'm still struggling with what to call these guys. My first thought, "Peasant Infantry", has a nice ring but implies a certain levy quality that may or may not apply. "Non-uniformed Infantry" is descriptive but boring as hell. "Civilian Dress Infantry" is close to it but doesn't sound martial enough. Any suggestions? These figures are important for a couple of reasons: they are needed for the upcoming War in the South supplement and they are the first batch of figures for the War in the North book. While I hope to have them sculpted and delivered by end of June I'm planning on doing a coordinated release with the new written material so don't expect to see them on sale immediately. It is nice to be moving into the next phase of the Liberators! project and I'm hoping that progress in each element; books, rules and figures, spurs progress in the others.
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