Thursday, December 2, 2010

Demo Now Available

We are very happy to announce that a Demo version of The Campaign of 1863 is now available. The Demo game lets you preview the look and feel of C63 while dropping you straight into the action. Taking place on the Day (or a.m.) game turn of June 29th you play as commander A.P. Hill. You will be able to read correspondence, view your staff reports (combat, unit, and intelligence reports) and plan orders for your units however the Demo game will not process an actual turn, meaning you will be unable to "issue" your orders or send out any correspondence.

Situation Report for commander A.P. Hill:
Previously having taken heavy losses around Fredrick City General Lee has requested you to pull back. You now find yourself under heavy Union assault in Haggerstown while the rest of your forces are scattered. General Lee has now decided to make a last stand around Gettysburg and has ordered you to join him if possible. Can you push through the Federal brigades standing in your way?

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

New Games Available Now!

Mutant Entertainment Studios is very happy to announce that we have a new set of Beta Testing games available for The Campaign of 1863. There are two "Full" 5 vs 5 games as well as several of the new "Duel" one on one games. Please feel free to jump into any available game you would like. Registration is free and gives you 1 game "slot". When your free game ends you are more than welcome to jump into another free game. Premium accounts are available to those wishing to play in more than 1 game.

Thanks
Jeff - Mutant Entertainment Studios

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

New 2 Player Game and Command Acceptance

Funny thing about team player games is that they require a team of players.

This became very apparent over the last month as we had many people sign up to play but fail to show up for the actual game. Frustrating for the players that actually try to play and frustrating for us as we try and build up enough of a player base to fill a few 5 vs 5 team games. So in the next few days we are very happy to announce a new 2 player version of C63: Lee vs Meade will be made available. This new version of the game will feature all of the strategic elements of The Campaign of 1863 while placing each player in charge of the entire Army of Northern Virgina or Army of the Potomac respectively.

A second feature we are happy to announce is the new Command Acceptance phase of a game. Now when a game is full (10 players for The Campaign of 1863 or 2 players for C63: Lee vs Meade) all players will be prompted to "accept their command". When all players have accepted the game is launched and we will send out notifications automatically that the game is ready and waiting. If other players fail to respond by the deadline (1 week after the game is full for daily games and 2 weeks after for weekly games) the MIA players are removed from the game and other players are free to take their place.

We have several other exciting new features planned, so stay tuned

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Open Beta Announcement:

Beginning Monday October 11th, gamers will be able to experience the tense, strategic, team vs team gameplay that only Campaign of 1863 can deliver.

The Campaign of 1863 features one of the most important campaigns of the U.S. Civil War. With over 150,000 troops and the fate of a nation hanging in the balance, players will assume the role and responsibilities of one of ten historic military commanders. For each game turn, players will plan their actions, dispatch their orders and await the results.

Can you maneuver your forces to victory or will you suffer an inglorious defeat?

Enlist today!

Monday, September 27, 2010

New Features and Enhancements List

As we are busy gearing up for Open Beta Testing (check back for an official announcement soon) this post is just a quick run down of the new features and improvements that will be added to Campaign of 1863 in the near future.
(In no particular order):
  • Player save system
  • Entrench markers
  • "On Holiday" command (transfer control to Leading General)
  • Abandon command (promote units to Leading General. Note this will carry a penalty)
  • Mail System enhancements (reply, send to all, map, fwd action reports, sent mail listing, sent mail read by recipient indicator)
  • Explanation of orders on roll over
  • Leading General option to surrender (Note this will carry a penalty)
  • Automatic turn due reminder
  • Automatic missed turn email
  • Attach/Detach units
  • Transfer units
  • No orders yet graphic indicator for units
Please remember that while we are in Open Beta, all game features are subject to change and or removal.

Monday, July 12, 2010

New features for Beta 2

Hi everyone,
Just wanted to give you all a quick update on the new features currently being added to C63:
  1. Save system. Allows you to temporarily save a set of orders.
  2. Friendly/Enemy unit info. You may now mouse over friendly/enemy units and receive some info about them.
  3. Staff report page. You will now receive more detailed info on your leader status. It will include a summary of wins, loses, draws for each combat type; A summary of casualties inflicted and incurred for both the last turn and the campaign; And a list of maps that you currently have intelligence on.
  4. Basic Fog of War. Maps will now appear slightly grey-ed out to indicate that you have no info on them.
  5. Enhanced Lee/Meade leader view. The Lee/Meade roles now receive intelligence on all subordinate commander units. All Friendly and 'sighted' enemy units appear on maps, unit reports, and combat reports.
  6. Mail In fixes. You will now be able to receive unlimited messages. Letter displays now open and close.
  7. Various User Interface fixes/enhancements

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Panic in Baltimore

"There are reports of panic in the streets of Baltimore as Rodes' Division of Ewell's Second Army Corps is poised before the city with no Union forces seen moving to protect the threatened citizenry. Consternation has been expressed by several Senators over the fighting continuing outside of Rockville just north of Washington where General Imboden's Cavalry has battled units from General Pleasonton's Cavalry Corps and General Reynolds' Ist Corps infantry for two days.

South of Harper's Ferry, just west of Clark's Gap where Union forces under General Hancock have faced Southern forces under General Hill in the rough terrain for over a week, it has been revealed that General Lee's headquarters was nearly over run by General Pleasonton's 2nd Division 1st Brigade Cavalry and Captain James F. Huntington's 3rd Volunteer Brigade; many of General Lee's senior staff are rumored to have been killed or gravely wounded in their escape to the hills east of Hillsborough but General Lee is said to have survived unwounded and moving to his forces in the gap to concentrate on Leesburg. North of Leesburg, heavy fighting continues between General Ewell's Southern forces and Union units under command of Generals Hancock, Pleasonton and Reynold around Adamstown and Urbana south of Fredrick City with no clear outcome. General Ewell has pressed the Union forces hard on this front with the Union Generals seeming not to coordinate their defenses of Maryland."

And so concludes our first Beta test period. We would like to heartily thank you all for participating. You generated some very useful feedback and helped us dig up some not so obvious bugs. We are going to take a short amount of time to implement some changes to the game, many of which were requested by you and some that are scheduled to go in before the second round of Beta testing. The second round will begin as soon as possible once a few key features are implemented.

Once again thank you, and we hope you will join us for the second round of Beta testing soon.

Jeff, Kate, and Clarke
Mutant Entertainment Studios

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Campaign of 1863 - Friends and Allies Closed Beta Testing Announcement:

Mutant Entertainment Studios is proud to announce our second round of closed Beta testing. This round of testing will be limited to family, friends, and allies (those already signed up on the Campaign63 website). The Beta period will run from June 1st to approximately June 8th, 2010. There will be a limited number of games, with a limited number of command positions available. To ensure a spot in this round of testing make sure to sign up by June 3rd. Those that are accepted will receive an email with instructions shortly after the Beta testing period begins.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Countdown to Beta...

Well the push is on. We are working feverishly on some bug fixes to the User Interface and a few mission critical items for the game engine. Im not going to post a date or deadline for Beta launch, since Im sure it would trigger an automatic jinx, but as long as nothing crazy happens we should launch a small round of public Beta testing very soon. In the meantime here are a few concept art sketches done by the wonderful and talented Lindsey Anderson


Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Coding while sick and random thoughts on command structures

Ugh....
I meant to post an update here last week, but I came down with some kind of bug. So since Im finding it hard to focus on the code I should be writing Ill try and be at least a little productive here. Thats the thing about working for yourself... no sick days. Anyway the Order Of Battle is almost finished. We spent the last few days trying to nail down where exactly to shift a few units that were bunched into groups of more than 4 on a hex (our rules only allow for 4 units to occupy a hex). So a few units had to be moved to adjacent hexes or when possible lumped into its parent unit. While we were doing this we noticed an interesting difference in the command structure between the North and South. Lee had very few units under his direct command, while Hooker (who was replaced by Meade just a few days after the start of our Campaign) had lots of men under his direct command. The obvious assumption is that having less men under his direct command freed Lee up to concentrate on the overall strategy of his offensive, while Hooker and/or Meade were bogged down with the day to day operation of the troops. Im no expert, so this is just conjecture on my part, but I just wonder how much an effect this might have had on the perception of Lee's superior command ability and Hooker's failings?
Jeff

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Stuff we are working on

Rather than my usual posting of vague generalities about things progressing and what not. I figure Ill lay things out a bit more for you all. We put the finishing (at least for now) touches on the User Interface a while ago. For those of you that participated in the first round of testing things will pretty much look the same however there were some deep structural changes under the hood, so to speak, thanks to your feedback. With the UI done for now I recently started working on the scheduling system. Basically the game was originally intended with a weekly turn system. After gathering some feedback it became apparent that more people would want to play with a daily turn system. The difference between the two is actually pretty minimal, but the trick here was figuring out that it was going to alter the overall data flow slightly (scheduler->serverScripts->DB->serverScripts->game->serverScripts...and so on) and exactly how I was supposed to let users (you all) choose between schedule types. So after some research we settled on jQuery (a javascript library) which has some pretty slick hide and show functions. So you can now see the results on the start a game page. It doesnt look very impressive, but that page is where the data flow for a game originates and there is some mildly complicated stuff in there.
So now that the schedule system is done Im off and running on what we call "the backend" (or the actual game engine). The backend has been in production since our inception with Clarke doing the heavy lifting, but since we are in the sprint to the finish now its all hands on deck (except for Kate who is launching into our post-game evaluation and points distribution system).
Anyway thats the current state of things, thanks for checking in.
Jeff

Thursday, January 14, 2010

We need your feedback

Hi everyone,
Things are moving right along. We ran into a few small snags with the order of battle. Mainly the game mechanics versus actual troop locations and strengths. So while we make some decisions on that I was hoping to get some feedback from you all for the schedule scripts I am currently designing. I posted a poll here at the DevBlog asking how often you would like to play. If there is a scenario that you want to see that I failed to include just post it to the comments here. Thanks for your input