This is an informative message as to the present situation of the Napoleonic Campaign series of games for John Tiller. You may not want to consider it authoritative in that John Tiller nor Rich Hamilton are making the post but its something you can consider for the future release of games and why our series is sometimes slower than the rest.
First, as you know we don't give out advance information on our products. You should not expect this post to do that. Its merely to give you a better understanding why we take a bit longer than other series to release a game.
Second, don't ever expect us to keep pace with the other series. Its just not going to happen.
In considering why our series takes longer you must understand a few things:
1. We are a smaller team.
2. We have had a few guys walk away from the work (but this has also happened on the other projects too) which has impacted projects in progress.
3. Compared to a Squad Battles title (for instance) we have ALOT more material to produce to adequately give you a good game.
4. The artwork for the game is extensive. It takes months for Mark and Joe to finish it all up.
Lets cover #1 & #2. Napoleonics will not capture the fancy of as many people when it comes to putting a game together. There are just a handful of us that will start up a project and finish it. Take the ACW series for instance: alot more guys are up on the ACW and will work it through to completion. Thus they have about five teams that work on the games. Panzer Campaigns: similar situation. Squad Battles is back up and running and Mike Cox and Ozgur have worked on titles as of late. While several have gone to John and started work on titles it has fallen to Rich on several occasions to finish up the work or sublet it to someone else. This explains why some of our projects have not come out.
That covers #1 and #2. Moving on to #3.
When you put together a Panzer Campaigns or Squad Battles game you have alot of research to do. Weapons data, strengths, what comprised a formation, where it was on any given date, all this factors in.
Items to be made: Maps. Usually a big one and several small sub-maps from this. One guy does this for them (Blackie and perhaps there were others I missed). Most of us on the Nap team make up our own maps on our own time (but I have sublet work off to others in the last couple of years to save myself time and health). OBs - usually the Scenario Designer does this. This is the heart of the game really as if the map is off usually it wont get as much attention as the OB so careful work must be done to get it right. Then there is the PDT file. Here are the parameters for the movement and so on that the scenario files will use. And there are other files such as Notes and so on.
In the end they will usually have anywhere from 40-100 scenarios (with some rarely over this number). They will all be solo tested mainly with HTH testing done as well. Solo mainly because over 70 percent of our customers play solo exclusively.
A Napoleonic Camaign series game will have the same materials to produce but also will include several campaigns as well.
In a campaign we will usually write enough text to fill a book! (this comment from Rich H.) Add in that the SD will usually have to come up with the picture-maps you see to tell you about the sitution and then there are maps to show you the various choices to be made.
Then there are the scenarios. After having produced as many scenarios as possible for the game to represent all of the battles that were fought (well, we leave some out that are totally lopsided or for sake of time sometimes) we now have to make up scenarios for the campaign. Figure that in Jena there were over 200 campaign scenarios created and you get some idea of the sheer volume of work that had to go into that design. Add in that Rich and Charlie created some six campaigns for Waterloo as well for instance. And Charlie's massive campaign for NRC still remains I think the best one we have done although Waterloo is right up there.
Thus along with the 40-80 scenarios (add in another 40 alternate situations) you must add in another 100-200 scenarios for the campaigns. While some may say that the campaign scenarios are much more free flow (and they are) they still must render the topic properly and not take on oddities that would give the impression that we just tossed out units with no regard for history. Therein lies the dilemma of course: getting the campaign situations to look and feel historical.
This more or less explains why the Napoleonic (and ACW and EAW series) games do not release as quickly as the other modern series as we have alot more materials to produce.
Artwork: The ACW team has gone to use Matthew Brady photos for their games. This was a cost saving method which frankly is nice but I do miss the color pictures. We have no such luxury. While we could use Knottel pics our team produces original artwork. Try getting Keith Rocco to do our artwork at a price that you could afford in a game. It would cost you probably 20 bucks more a game if someone like that produced our materials. Enter in Joe Amoral who every year gets much better. I just worked over the artwork with him and Mark Adams on one of my titles and from his originals (the larger version of his work) I produced a nice PDF file showing all of the pictures and a short writeup on each. The file took me months to finish. Joe's work looks incredible in its original format. Its a shame it has to be reduced to fit the Info window.
Thus a Napoleonic series game includes a tremendous amount of work. Order of battle info is sometimes nonexistent for our battles. Officer names are missing. Unit IDs are missing. Much the same for the other series as well but perhaps we have to sift through more information to get the finished product right.
HPS produces a fine line of games. All of the series games take quite awhile to produce and all of them are a fine addition to any gamer's collection.
But in the end the campaign series games (including the new Musket and Pike series) take longer than the modern series because of the extra text, artwork and scenarios needed for the campaigns.
So you better understand why our series is a bit slower than the rest. We do not have as many staff members as the ACW series and we have alot more work to do to finish up a title.
In short guys, Rich H. is doing a fine job of juggling his time between his family, his own job, his church work and keeping the Nap series going. We continue to discuss the series from the perspective of finishing up ALL of the Nap. campaigns and while the future is not looking great economically we are hard at work on many titles and you can expect to see a title or two out in the very near future.
But quality comes first and we wont give you a lemon ...[;)]
(added by edit)
1. Blackie is now helping out on Napoleonic campaigns. This is nice because he does high quality work and when he starts something he finishes it.
2. The Squad Battles games have a campaign file. Just wanted to mention this to not take anything away from them. In the end though they usually will not be as extensive as the ones for our games and that is not to say that they of a lesser quality.
There are other things that the guys from the other series do in their games like writeups and so on. The main thing to note is that the campaign files for the Nap (and other campaign series games) are much more extensive than the other games. Again, all of our guys do a fine job and we all LOVE the period we are simulating for you.
The main intent here is to note WHY this series takes longer to produce - not to say that its superior in any way to the others. Mainly because folks are asking why we are slower than the rest was this post written.
Colonel Bill Peters
Armee du Rhin - V Corps, Cavalerie du V Corps, 20ème légère Brigade de Cavalerie, 13ème Hussar Regiment
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt and ... more to come)
NWC
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