PC wargames – YoboWargames

April 15, 2018

Fall of France, Helping out the poor QA guy and Website Statistics

Almost 12 months ago I proudly announced I was going to publish Fall of France, designed by Peter Schutze, sometime in 2017. I was young and foolish then and thought I could write a game every 2 or 3 months.

Time and experience have taught me that is just not possible. However, I made a commitment and have finally started some background work on the game.

Below is the final map with some sample German units. Target date to publish? Late 2018…

Helping my poor QA guy

Jonathan, who tests my games to bits, has complained I don’t make it easy for him to get logs and take in-game screenshots to help him show me potential bugs. So this Saturday, while enjoying coffee and double bacon with egg breakfast roll at Starbucks with my wife, I actually got around to writing some code to do just that.

So next time you see some nerdy person at Starbucks coding away just assume they are doing the same thing!

Statistics

Traffic to my website has slowly been growing over the last 12 months. Interestingly the most read article was the one about why no one has published a computer version of Squad Leader.

I also did some comparisons against my store pages on Steam. I wonder if there is a way to draw visitors to my store pages to the other store page or my website? Any tips appreciated.

As you can see from the Steam pages stats China is becoming a very important market.

First up some stats for yobowargames.com.

Next my yet to be released game Battle for Korsun

and then finally Kursk

Finally

Has anyone got some experience of using Discord? I am wondering whether it might be a better way to engage with fans of my games?

April 9, 2018

What Inspires Me

The last three weeks have been a relentless, sometimes soul destroying, drive to polish Invaders from Dimension X and find every bug possible. I have to call out and credit Jonathan for his constant quest to find everything possible that might be wrong with the game.

Between us, I am sure we have played various parts of the game 100’s of times. I can visualize the code in my sleep.

What has come out of these past three weeks is, I believe, a highly polished game. Time will tell if others think the same but I am very happy.

However, the job is not quite done yet. I need to prepare a video, edit the manual, fix a couple more small items in the game and just generally prepare the game ready for launch.

In the meantime, I set my oldest daughter a challenge (paid challenge – shes streetwise and $$$$ wise!). Design a splash screen for my future Picketts Mill civil wargame. The header for this blog is the result. I think she did a great job.

This is what inspires me to keep doing this. The satisfaction of coding a complete game from start to finish. To see new images for a future game.

Oh, and I managed to do a little bit more work on my Model Carrier.

So whats next?

I need to get back to finishing off Battle for Korsun. I am guessing there is maybe a month or twos worth of work left.

In May my graphics artist will free up and start working on Valor and Victory custom maps for me. They will be based on the originals – I will be interested to see what the community think of them.

I also have the map for France 1940 coming. The three games – Valor and Victory, France 1940 and Picketts Mill will share a lot of the common framework that I have built as I worked on Korsun and Invaders. The differences start to appear when implementing each games individual ruleset.

What this means is I can have a basic game with a Map, Units, and movement in about a week. As an example, this weekend, as a break from Invaders, I put together the basic framework for Picketts Mill.

Finally

I see that Matrix finally released Desert War by Brian Kelly. I really admire Brian for working on one game for so long. It shows a real passion and I believe that like me this is not his day job but something he worked on in his spare time.

I am not sure that enough people realize that a lot of wargames are written by developers in their own spare time and they likely won’t make any money from it. There would be a lynching if I came home one day and told my wife “Hey Honey, I quit my job so I can focus on wargames. Everythings going to be ok….”

Did you know that Nightfighter from GMT is still being worked on by two guys? Also in their spare time with young families. I hope they get to see the game published one day.

February 7, 2018February 7, 2018

Its February already?

Where does the time go?

Well, I know where 6 hours of it went – The SuperBowl! What a great game.

As you can see from the header picture I now have the splash screen for Invaders from Dimension X.

I got the game working on my Android tablets this past weekend. I use them to check that everything is resizing correctly and that the game works well for touch screens which more and more laptops have. The desktop PC is my main focus but I have to say the game looks really good on a tablet!

My focus for the next two weeks will be on testing and to get the first drop to my chief tester and to Mark, the publisher of the original board game. Battle for Korsun work is temporarily on hold while I do this.

In the background, I have been looking for an artist to work on Battle for France that I so proudly announced 9 months ago as “coming this year” (meaning 2017 – oh how young and innocent I was back then!). I don’t want to use my main go-to guy as I want him to focus on Kampfgruppe next. If you are a graphics artist reading this blog then do feel free to reach out to me. I am always happy to give someone new to the industry a chance.

I am now averaging about 20 hours a week on game development. A little crazy when I also have a full-time day job. But I love what I am doing and this is my big year to see if I can really make a go of wargame development.

And finally

Another reason I wanted to get Invaders from Dimension X working on a tablet device….. I can test the game while in bed! Don’t say I am not committed!

January 24, 2018

Work in Progress Update

What has been happening in my small part of the world?

Battle for Korsun

I am making good progress on the Russian AI. I have a basic framework in place and now have the AI moving and attacking based on a priority-based list. It’s actually moving too quickly and I will need to slow it down so the player can see what is happening.

Now comes hours and hours of testing and refining. What I need to be sure of is how the AI handles things as the game advances and things become more open.

I am hoping that by sometime in February I can hand the game over to a couple of beta testers for a first look at the game and to test out the Russian AI while I work on the German AI.

Invaders from Dimension X!

I have received back the splash screen and some menu items. They look really good! I now have them plugged into the game.

Next up is to get one scenario working from end to end. There are still a couple of things that are not flowing right.

Again once I get the first scenario working to my liking I will get the game out to a couple of beta testers – hopefully sometime in February as well.

And in other news

This finally arrived in the post from Japan. I haven’t made a model kit in years. When I opened up the box it looks a bit daunting. If you hear no more about it you will know it turned into a disaster!

While doing some research I found that you can subscribe to Wargamers Illustrated prime. Its £1 for the first month and then £5.99 (about $8) after. That gives you access to their entire back issues online magazines and articles. I am hoping it will be good for researching.

I continue to add articles to my Flipboard Magazine. Viewing readership is growing slowly. I hope that it becomes a place for people to discover stories and websites they were not aware of.

As always do email me with questions or comments.