Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Friday, September 11, 2009

WANTED: T-shirt Wearing Volunteers!

So, if you're going to be in the Fresno, Calif. area over the weekend of Oct. 3-4, have we got a great job for you! We're looking for friends, family, strangers, dogs, horses, and whatever else can fit in a size large t-shirt to attend the Kearney Park Reenactment and wear Campaign of '63 t-shirts to give us some cheap, yet eye-catching advertising. These shirts will be free for our volunteers who attend (tickets to get in will NOT be free: $10 per adult, $5 per child 6-12) and the event is sure to be fun! I went last year with my sister to the reenactment near Mariposa, Calif. and we greatly enjoying the sword fighting cavalry men, and of course the great drama of the dying soldiers. :)

Here is the link for more info:
http://www.valleyhistory.org/civilwar2009.html

Email us at info@campaign63.com for info on getting ahold of a t-shirt.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

The Game, Background and Gameplay

The Game

The turn-based multiplayer team-versus-team Campaign of '63 provides a strategic simulation of the U.S. Civil War's critical Gettysburg Campaign. You assume the role and responsibilities of one of ten historic military commanders. For each 12 hour game turn, plan your actions, dispatch your orders and await the results. Maneuver your troops to victory and avoid defeat.

Background

With Lee's confidence bolstered by the victory in the Chancellorsville Campaign and to counter the mounting pressure in the West from Grant, Lee decided a second invasion of the North was crucial. His plan would give Virginia a much needed respite and allow the Confederate Army to live off the riches of northern farms while threatening Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia, and vitally aiding the growing peace movement in the North. The results of his decisions lead to the pivotal campaign in the Eastern Theater and the clash of over 150,000 soldiers with the fate of a nation in the balance.

The Play

Taking place in the summer of 1863, the Campaign of '63 begins on 22 June 1863 and runs through to 10 July 1863. With each day consisting of 2 game turns (a day turn and a night turn). With each turn players will receive staff reports on your units, combat results, and intelligence reports as well as correspondence from other commanders. Complete your orders and submit your correspondence prior to the dispatch deadline for the turn, then await the results. Players should remember however that "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy" and plan accordingly.

Players will sign on to the Campaign of '63 headquarters to select one of your current games, join a game or start a new game. For gameplay you need a standard web browser and Flash player 8.0 or higher to access the user interface. Once you have logged in and entered an active game you are now free to review your staff reports and correspondence, issue orders to your units and write correspondence all prior to the dispatch deadline for the turn.

Campaign of '63 is designed around what we call asychronus gameplay. Which is just a fancy way of saying that your "team" doesnt all need to log in at the same time to play the game. A game turn will last for set number of days, and players will be able to login at any time and plan and submit their dispatches up until the specified deadline for the game turn. Once the deadline is up the game will process all the players dispatches and process the results. Once the results are available they will be posted, and players will be notified that the previous turns results are available and a new deadline is set for the next game turn.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Build Your Own Game...

It's pretty much the dream of every gamer to make their own game. When you get any group of game enthusiasts together in a room, they can talk for hours about what they would make if they had the money, workers, and equipment. In our case, it's 3 main workers and a lot of great contractors (oh, and a lot of tasty beverages).
We'll be posting some pictures soon, which will do more to illustrate my next point than I can with just words, but the gist of it is, we've come a long way, baby. Three years ago we were just a group of friends and an IDEA. An idea that we'd never seen any game company come up with. We're still trying to figure out what to call our game style. They have RPGs: role playing games. They have MMOs: Massive Multiplayer Online games. They have MMORPGs: Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying games. We've made a Turnbased Strategy Teamplaying game. TBSTG? TSTG? TSTPG? Maybe that will be our next poll. :)
The other day, Jeff and I went through our archives of the past three years, chuckling over the truly rough "programmer art" we were stuck with until we hired our artists. Each step back was even more awe-inspiring than the last. When we got to our earliest saved folder, we were practically patting each other on the back, it looks so good now, compared to what we started out with. You will be amazed when we finally post those pictures.
And now we are literally weeks away from launching our baby, the compilation of the last three years -blood, sweat and tears- and I'm so excited and anxious I can barely stand it. I'm excited to show off what I've worked so hard on, and anxious that people will actually love it as much as I do. It's a roll of the dice. We've done our market research. We've done our planning, and our coding. We hired a fantastic bunch of people to make up for our stick figure drawing capabilities. We've got a website, a forum, and wonder of all wonders, a developers' blog. Fingers crossed we don't get snake eyes. :)