Scenario creation & Pedagogical Historical game discussions

[andatiep]

Potentially, there are two big things to do: what slow people about scenario creation is: lack of comprehensive doc and lack of fool proof editor...

A sub-part of a scenario editor can be an event editor. It asks for a good knowledge of the scripting commands.

Aside that I don't see much things to do. Perhaps something along the lines of manipulating the .rgn files generated by the map editor.

I don't know what is Ageod's objectives, but i hope they will continue with their "historical credo".

I mean : i don't think it is really important to spent much energy to have a full map & scenario editor interface for the players. Maybe i'm wrong but the work seems enormous to me, for the developpers as for the players. I spend lot's of time before to edit my own maps and scenario in Civ2-3 & 4. But to do it with Ageod engine seems much harder to me ...as a non-developper user and gamer.
I know it's fun for some players (i was one), but today i would say : better spent this time on making it run on Linux and MAC (!). Really.

What i really enjoy in Ageod saga (BOA,AACW,NCP,...) is the fact that this is after all historical games. It could have some variation, some "and if so", but we stick to realism.
With the "historical credo", we don't need many scenarios and map editing. This is the stories of main conflict of Humanity coming out from long terme social and political evolutions. More or less, there is not more than 2 or 3 possible scenarios and evolutions after each opus.

For example, after BOA/WIA period, we could only have these scenarios :
1. The historical one
2. Already 2 Independant american ex-colonial states (scenario like in "Alvin Maker" of Orson Scott Card : if the South prefer a british "commonwealth on the paper" than joining the USA with their unclear slavery policy).
3. A French Canada (if Lafayette would have received orders to reconquest it while helping the new borned USA)
4. A US Canada (if USA succed the 1812 war while GB was supposed to be busy with Napoleon)

Then you can have these two, as possibly starting AACW scenarios :
1. The historical one fit more or less with the scenarios 1 and 2 before. There would have been anyway a war between North & South about Slavery and expension in new western states.
2. If CSA is independant sooner, they would probably got Cuba and also part of Mexico (as they did) and if US control Canada, South would more easely ask for GB or Napoleonic intervention.

After the ACW, we could have only few situation :
1. The historical one
2. Still 2 independant american ex-colonial states (if CSA won the secession war)
3. A US Canada (if USA won and invaded it after the Foreign Intervention is activated)

Then American theater will inpact with next European theater with really few possibly scenarios for WWI :
1. The historical one
2. Still 2 independant north-american states (if CSA won the secession war) joining (or not) two different side of the 2 european coalitions.

To be continuated the same way ...for the XIX century in Europe and then for WWI (1914-18), Russian Civil War (1917-21), China's war (1930's - 40's), and WWII one day who knows ?

All this "few" scenarios and opus could be done by Ageod (i hope), with the help of the community of course, but - in the historical credo point of view - it isn't necessary to support and help aside more than the minimum a fair of 1000 scenarios from the Jurassic park era to Battle star Galactica like Civilization and other "turn by turn" games.

Personnally, what i would rather like to be developped in Ageod's games, it is the "pedagogical aspect".
I believe it can also really help developping Ageod's House, with para-public and educative funds or cooperations.
I would personnally advise any student in Historical, Journalism, Law and Political cursus who pass through my office to play a such quality game where you understand a lots of the human and institutional mechanism you study or you like to learn.
Ageod's games would fit perfectly in a new "educative, cultural and historical" type of game.

For this it needs to have much more interactive historical and political ressources in the game which follow or illustrate the university/school programms or at least what any people should keep in mind after playing/learning on this periods of human history.

To have more choice and information on the different politics you can do or you have to do as a "leader" controling a state in such situation. For example, why MacClellan have such a enormous political cost ? I did knew it because i read MacPherson's "Battle cry of Freedom" book a year before, but who does among the players ?

To say, now it is impossible to find a list of all historical event in AACW ! And if they are random, there are some i will never see ? I can't see also the events of the other side. That's a pitty because i'm very curious about it.
I see a really amazing job was done on historical research and event for the game. I just feel that it's a little "wasted" because it is missing some "pedagocical" tools, effect, concept so that the player have fun on strategy but also learn and understand more the political and economical options and events he have.

Let's say for example :
- During the game, a windows pop up "Are you invading Kentucky now ? If yes, it means this and this because of this historical reasons. If not or later, idem.
- It can be also informing months before about events (instead of wasting a game before learning it after in some remote and lost forum post) : "There is 3 months left before new election congress. You should to this or this, conquest or hold this if not you loose the election and thus the game because of this historical reasons, etc."
- At the end of a game it can be a choice among two different games/scenarios : For example, after an opus "The Republic's Campaign" (1792-1799), a windows pop up "Do you let the Consul Bonaparte transform the French Republic and it's Sister's Republics into a new Empire with new Monarchic european dependancies" Yes ? Loose 80% popular support in all "liberated" Europe and start "NCP game", No ? start a new opus on the european XIX century, etc...

Anyway, all additional "historical windows and information pop up or whatever" could also be optionally "desactivated" for the hard gamers who already know or don't care.


Well, well,
i'll now stop my long long blabla before you get all sick of me...

[Adlertag]

Very interesting post.

I think the real difficulty is the time it will take to implement all those "historical windows and information pop up or whatever" as you said.
Especially if players majority isn't very concerned by such precision level, a thing I don't want to believe but unfortunately which I have lost illusions about it...

[Doomwalker]

I like the idea, but yeah I think that would be a remote possibility. leure:

[andatiep]

Why do you think a "historic pedagogical environment" is so hard to implement ?
I'm maybe too much positivist but :
- All the historical research for the main significative events are already done.
- Comments, summary and texte about are already inside the game.
- If this AACW events are published on the existing AACWWIKI, the community can participate to build a "synopsis" of many interactive events (and by the way get to know all of the existing AACW events).
- a windows system already exist in the game (with no pop up, but...)

Well, maybe the developpers will desagree... but i claim the fact that it would be a pitty to "waste" all the already accomplished stages in that domain (!)


Again a example of interactivity between the strategic field action and the political & economical screen managment : You just have an army which hold now enough town in a state to rule it politically. You get a pop up Windows explaining you : if your main general in the state have the skill "martial law fan", your policy in the whole state is automatically Martial law, which means this and this because of this historical conditions (ex : French generals in Spain or in North Italy, or Lyon in Missouri, did what they wanted in that domain as "military governor", without referring to "you" in Paris or Washington).
Without interactive pop up windows, players don't go to the loyalty screen and event don't see if it matter (by the way, if the general "skill" "Martial Law" concern only a town were he is instead of the state were he is, it is really a useless concept because players just manage easyly to let those "creazy" generals out from strategic towns.)

I think the player should be more "guided" with interactive pop up windows into the historical events and the political & economical managment. I would better like to have a windows coming out and giving me the choice : "Do You apologize to the british and let the CSA diplomats free to go by seas to Europe ?" If yes : it means this and this, if not, it means this, etc."
- First i learn about an historical fact,
- Then i learn about what choice of decisions had the US goverment at this moment, considering the existing socio-political background.
That is the best way to learn history and to enjoy strategic game in the same time.

For now, the event windows are not interactive, thus they're often disconnected from the "new reality" of the game. That's also a reason why the player may pay less attention on the historical details because it does not fit anymore with its game ...and anyway, he can not interact with it.

I remember the game description : "put the best leaders in command (if politics allows)!" or "victory can be military or political". But i never got enough information to understand and act really in this political challenge, with for example some message saying : "The Democrat Party choose today MacClellan as their leader and next "candidate" for Presidency. His political cost grow now to XX Point".
Beginner, i spent two games before discovering that i can have sometimes more information on the events consequences when i let the mouse on the event red line !

I think that the fact to be "guided" by pop up windows time to times help also a lot to make it more easy to learn the game for the beginners.
All in one, it can help gathering more people around the game than only veteran wargamers.

Especially if players majority isn't very concerned by such precision level, a thing I don't want to believe but unfortunately which I have lost illusions about it...

I won't be so pessimistic... courage ! look at all of us, i do believe that the majority of the Ageods gamers are concerned about the historical background. I'll say : there is even no way to discover the games without that state of mind.
I think the point is mostly how to welcome non-hard-gamer fans of history or students.
"Pedagogical environment" could help a lot.
And even could help to welcome gamers who didn't like history because of the way it is teached at their highschool/university.

[berto]

There are (to some of us) more fundamental features lacking in this game, for example

--textual battle summaries, even in-battle, ongoing "color commentary"
--battle and other statistical ledgers (showing battle histories, events, trends, etc. throughout the game)

It's not always easy to translate internal numbers and database values into textual narrative and interactive dialog boxes, especially that are

--grammatically correct
--not repetitive
--interesting to read (i.e., don't sound like computer-speak)

In short, natural language processing is hard, whether input or output.

Maybe for AACW2 what you describe. Maybe.

[Gray_Lensman]

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[andatiep]

If I recall correctly, Pocus once stated that designing and implementing the various pop-up boxes to work properly with directx9 was extremely time consuming. I doubt very seriously if the current version of ACW is going to be able to have a complete redesign built around interactive pop-up boxes. It's possible it might be a feature of AACW2 whenever it is revisited, but that would be way off into the future.

AGEOD is an small company and they are extremely helpful with supporting their already released products (AACW is over a year old now). AGEOD has also stated many times that they will continue to support their older products, fixing bugs, and making minor enhancements from time to time and even occasionally back-fitting (into the older games) new features that they design into the newer games that happen to use the same game engine. They just don't have the programmer time available to do wholesale redesigns of their older products. (The most important asset of a software development company is programmer time.) The financial benefit vs the programmer time cost is just not there, especially in a game that is over a year old. Fortunately they have designed a game engine that is highly attractive to volunteers (betas) to iron out the data discrepancies in the existing games, which saves a lot of their valuable programming time.

Just to clarify to the dedicated machinists of the engine's locomotiv (programmers seems to take always an immediate defensiv position ). I'm not the one who ask for the moon and more from Ageod's team. I don't expect them to realize immediatly, or even in a middle term, all the ideas or propositions i wrote.

This is just a global conceptual discussion about the whole saga (WIA,AACW,NCP,...) and it's educative/cultural dimension and (or not) objective.

About the fact that Ageod is a small company which can hardly realize all community's wishes, i know this perfectly. And i did included also in my posts the argument that developping the "educative/cultural aspect" is also a way to developpe some fundraising, cooperations or indirect advertising for Ageod.
This ideas came to me naturally because i always liked History and because i'm working in University, meeting lot's of students all the day (dealing with all their computer's problems), and we are closelly connected (and part of) with all the student's associations, like the gamers one.
That environmment is a good place to spread this kind of games to new publics ...and it comes to my mind that it can be done especially if there is an efficient pedagogical cultural guidance in the saga's games.

I guess the Ageod team already thought about all this "pedagogical historical credo" and the different benefits it can bring to the project. I just wanted to contribute and speak about it, not crying and asking immediatly for better toys...

Sorry if the way i'm writing is confusing, i'm not using my maternal language (as you probably noticed...).

[Spharv2]

Not to mention that as soon as you start trying to interpret history and the decisions that were made in times that, quite frankly nobody now can possibly understand that well, you're going to alienate parts of your audience by throwing your own spin on things. It doesn't matter how unbiased you try to be, even describing something like the reasons behind the Emancipation Proclamation can get two people of differing political ideals at each other's throats.

When you're dealing with a subject as sensitive as war, you have to be very careful to tread the line and not overstep onto either side. I don't think your idea is a bad one honestly, I've been into the Civil War period since I was 5, and the more people know about it, the better to me, but it's better to leave things out that could alienate a portion of your audience if it's at all possible. Unless you're someone like EA games, then you can alienate half your audience by pumping out crap and not care, but I don't think AGEOD is quite there yet.

[Gray_Lensman]

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[bigus]

A Great idea for a Mod?

Bigus

[andatiep]

Not to mention that as soon as you start trying to interpret history and the decisions that were made in times that, quite frankly nobody now can possibly understand that well, you're going to alienate parts of your audience by throwing your own spin on things. It doesn't matter how unbiased you try to be, even describing something like the reasons behind the Emancipation Proclamation can get two people of differing political ideals at each other's throats.

When you're dealing with a subject as sensitive as war, you have to be very careful to tread the line and not overstep onto either side. I don't think your idea is a bad one honestly, I've been into the Civil War period since I was 5, and the more people know about it, the better to me, but it's better to leave things out that could alienate a portion of your audience if it's at all possible. Unless you're someone like EA games, then you can alienate half your audience by pumping out crap and not care, but I don't think AGEOD is quite there yet.

Nice philosophical point.
There is of course always people to jump at each other's throats for historical/political reasons, but i personally don't see this as a problem if i get to alienate this tiny part of the audience...

For me, the historic "editorial" line of Ageod's game is fair enough and i was not speaking about editing new polemical historical texts. I believe 99% of the texts already existing in the events of the game are OK. I was just speaking about interacting them in a pedagogical purpose. As far as i understood, for now it is a random IA result who decide when events arrive and what will be their consequence.

Most of the disagreements we can meet in Historical debates are about the proportion of each explainations of a fact. Let's say for example one of us argue that the main reason of the Emancipation Proclamation at this date is because the abolitionist lobby was disturbing to much the classic Republican/Democrat political game.
The other will argue for example that the main reason is the military strategic situation at the moment.
But we will probably agree that both are reasons why it was proclamed (among lot's of others of course).
Thus in case of sensitive topic, you can always have minimum neutral pedagogical historical event in the game explaining "You can now choose as policy "Emancipation Proclamation" because of this historical reasons, etc." without precising which reason was the most important...

Actually, the pedagogical pop-up windows would not delivere the message that the reasons of "Emancipation Proclamation" was good or wrong. It would historically explain the state of mind of each side and the list of possibly reasons why it happen... and let the player judge alone which reasons he believe was the main one.

[andatiep]

andatiep

I'm sorry if you misunderstood my comment. Judging from the wording of your first post, it is easy to come away with the idea that you would like the current AACW/NCP games redesigned around this new concept of yours, especially since you posted in the "How to improve AACW!" subforum. The answer was not meant to be a defensive posture, so much as a statement to remind everyone how much to expect from AGEOD in regard to support and changes to the AACW/NCP game engine which are now over a year old. Your ideas are definitely interesting and applicable to newer AGEOD products but you presented them in such a way as to suggest they be implemented within the current AACW/NCP games.

Gray, you're right. It was normal you understood it like this. I'm asking in a way modifications of the current AACW, but for me this is mostly an exchange of ideas. It doesn't matter if it is implemented right now or in AACW2 or AACW3. The most important for me was to contribute to define objective in the pedagogical historical domain, or at least to learn about what was already thought about it among Ageod and it's community.

Even if i'm not developper, i'm also always curious to learn about the technical problem which make such modifications difficult. I didn't know it was extremely time consuming to create the interactive pop-up windows. It is so common in all the RTS games in their "Campaign scenarios" that i didn't know it was big works.

Then, why i posted a more global topic in the sub-forum "Help to improve AACW" : simply because there is no forum "Help to improve the whole Ageod's "AGE-saga" (WIA,AACW,NCP,VGN, etc.)."

[andatiep]

A Great idea for a Mod?

Bigus

Hello serial modder, maybe i should reconsider my opinion about a good scenario and map editor (let's say "Mod Editor" also). It's true that with such a tool a lot of historical scenarios and maps could be achieve or worked in progress by the community by modding it, while developpers can concentrate in other stuff. And i suppose it would be also interesting to imagine a common editor for all the games (WIA,AACW,etc...) to safe efforts.

But then in my case, it would need inside it an interactive event editor.

By the way, did you mod the events ? I would like to extract the events from the game in order to list them into the wiki with their text and after all their consequences in the game.

[Gray_Lensman]

<snip>

I would like to extract the events from the game in order to list them into the wiki with their text and after all their consequences in the game.

The best way to extract and study the events in the game are to delve into the various database files that contain them.

You can download the database files for AACW from here: http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?t=5358

Regards

Gray_Lensman

[bigus]

Hello serial modder, maybe i should reconsider my opinion about a good scenario and map editor (let's say "Mod Editor" also). It's true that with such a tool a lot of historical scenarios and maps could be achieve or worked in progress by the community by modding it, while developpers can concentrate in other stuff. And i suppose it would be also interesting to imagine a common editor for all the games (WIA,AACW,etc...) to safe efforts.

But then in my case, it would need inside it an interactive event editor.

By the way, did you mod the events ? I would like to extract the events from the game in order to list them into the wiki with their text and after all their consequences in the game.

The game is highly moddable. Most Events, Scenarios etc are in database form. If you have MS office or OpenOffice (Free) then making changes to almost any part of the game is possible. It's the part about making the CSV files workable with the game thats a little daunting for newcomers. Check out the Mod forum section for more on this. Once you get the hang of converting the files it will be very easy, no editor needed I think.


Edit ....see Gray Lensmans link above for the complete database files. Everything you need.....good luck with your modding efforts.

Bigus

[Jabberwock]

No worries bigus - it will be gone within moments of either administrator logging on. IMs & PMs sent.

[andatiep]

Back with the topic of pedagogical historical gaming :

Maybe some already read it, but there is an article in Newsweek that says "...,"Making History," a strategy computer game by Muzzy Lane, is already part of the World War II curriculum in more than 150 schools." => http://www.newsweek.com/id/81158

Muzzy Lane Editor presents its website with an "Educative" dependance : https://www.making-history.com/edu/

But i find it is still poor for what i imagine to be pedagogical historical gaming.
..and i still prefer the nice work of Ageod's game than the one of Making History...

There is also an other point : US american educative system seems to be much easier for organising some workshops or using "cultural/educative" game in the curriculum at school. I don't know for GB or Spain, but in France i don't believe it to be possible, except maybe in University.

[berto]

There is also an other point : US american educative system seems to be much easier for organising some workshops or using "cultural/educative" game in the curriculum at school. I don't know for GB or Spain, but in France i don't believe it to be possible, except maybe in University.

In the U.S., our federal system of government has schools under local community direct control, running under broad guidelines set by each different state government. In the U.S., we have no national school system. There is, therefore, much greater freedom to innovate, to find out what works best, and equally important, what doesn't work.

We moved around a lot when I was a child, and I can attest to the fact that schools were run differently from state to state, from one local community to another.

[andatiep]

In the U.S., our federal system of government has schools under local community direct control, running under broad guidelines set by each different state government. In the U.S., we have no national school system. There is, therefore, much greater freedom to innovate, to find out what works best, and equally important, what doesn't work.

We moved around a lot when I was a child, and I can attest to the fact that schools were run differently from state to state, from one local community to another.

Well, that's mostly a good way to organize education. The only problem i see is when the local community is made up with remote isolated conservativ and/or extremist local community educative leaders ...then that could be the mess for childs to get proper open standard education...

But let's use the positive side of it : if you get to know about some of this school near you (or if you find online ressources), i would be curious to see their educative workshops' toolkit !