American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

Anyone ever notice that the nine 2nd Bull Run Weather scenarios from Campaign Antietam are stuck in a single weather pattern?

It's because in the Antietam_weather.pdt there is no weather data set for August 29-30th when these scenarios play... the last weather event is from August 28th (clearing/light smoke)and wont change until September 1st (medium rain)!

I doubt this is working as designed...

_________________
Brigadier General Richard Simonitch
SIXTH BRIGADE (Artillery)
1st. Div. / V Corps
Army of the Potomac

I am just trying to figure out what "borked" means!

Hi Blake,
it's a techie term meaning broken -> broked -> borked. Funner to say than broke I guess.

Anyway This should probably be directed at HPS but I was just curious whether or not this has been noticed before by you gents in the club. I enjoy the weather scenarios but this kind of carelessness may give it a bad feel for some players who see weird results and may not understand what is broken under the hood. And, it could have been included in the patches by HPS several times but wasn't.

So it's an easy fix but then there is no way of telling whether both players in a pbem will have the corrected pdt unless they check with each other first. That's why when i do the 'weather mods' I create all new scenarios and pdt files that don't overwrite the stock ones, ensuring that both players have the modded scenario if they both download the mod.

I'm working on the historical weather variants for Antietam right now for Old Banshee so those of you who like the weather effects can enjoy a more realistic and historical weather pattern:

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Brigadier General Richard Simonitch
SIXTH BRIGADE (Artillery)
1st. Div. / V Corps
Army of the Potomac

Careless? Try putting together a multi-hundred scenario title with 6 campaigns...and we'll see how many details you miss...

Why not send things you find to the Support account so they can be included in updates? Only way its going to happen...

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LGen. Hamilton
II Corps
ANV, CSA

Rich, i didn't mean to sound snotty. The weather feature was the salient point for me making the move from a BG customer to an HPS customer and I get disappointed when I see errors like this. I sent my email notification of this particular issue to HPS as you rightfully suggest.

Also, I wanted to generate some discussion on the weather feature; to see where the thread would go.

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Brigadier General Richard Simonitch
SIXTH BRIGADE (Artillery)
1st. Div. / V Corps
Army of the Potomac

As I understand it the game engine checks the weather line each turn, if there is no line for that turn it keeps the last weather condition. In this particular case since there is no weather line for 8/29 or 8/30 any scenario starting after the 18 20 turn on the 28th will have clear weather with maximum visibility, don't recall if that is 70 hexes in HPS Antietam or not but that will be the sole affect. Reading the 8/28 line

1 1862 8 28 18 20 49 25 100 100 0 0 Clearing/ Light Smoke

49% chance of this condition, otherwise keep last condition
25 hex maximum visibility
100 = normal movement cost
100 = normal artillery fire
0 - no combat modifier

The only modification this line makes to default Clear weather is limiting visibility to 25 hexes so the lack of a weather line for 8/28 and 8 29 will have no affect on movement or combat. Don't know for sure but it's possible the scenario designer saw no reason to add a weather line for those days because of the historical conditions.

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Gen. Ken Miller



The McKeesport Union Guard

3/1/II
Chief of Staff
AotP

If that was the case then it wouldn't be so bad and could perhaps be working as designed. But the game engine apparently scrolls through the weather lines and sets the weather for the date at or before the start date of the scenario regardless of how far back the last entry was.

So for every turn of all the 2nd Bull Run weather scenarios, the weather stays as clearing/light smoke:

_________________
Brigadier General Richard Simonitch
SIXTH BRIGADE (Artillery)
1st. Div. / V Corps
Army of the Potomac