As this thread has wargamers on it, maybe someone can help me remember a particular book?
In around 1985 (which is why I cannot remember it well enough) I borrowed a book from a local UK library specifically on writing (not playing) computer wargames.
A few such books exist/existed but I remember this one specifically. It was paperback, about half an inch think, and it went into great detail on how to pack army and map information into bytes (2 bits for one thing, 1 for another etc). It had the usual algorithms for movement, terrain, distance-based (not line of sight) fog of war etc., but the thing that stuck out as being different enough that it might be memorable was the bit-level compression of data. It may have been using Pascal, though I'm even more hazy on that as it was 40 years ago. It was definitely slightly more academical than introductory.
I've looked through a lot of the usual books from back then (not just the mainstream Donald Featherstone stuff), tried the library (but they are now a motorbike dealership), and even contacted a few publishers directly (they were nice enough to respond but with a 'not us').
Anyway, I appreciate this is vague but if anyone remembers it I'd be grateful.
The section on piracy is insightful:
> The effect is not black and white. One pirate will not bring the industry crashing down. Even widespread piracy will not kill the industry. Widespread piracy will have four effects: First, software will be more expensive because software sellers will try to recover their costs on fewer sales with higher prices. Second, software will be more expensive because software sellers will burden it with a variety of anti-piracy devices. You the consumer will pay for these protection schemes. Third, software will be less usable and enjoyable because the protection schemes used will probably interfere with the operation and use of the game. Fourth, fewer games will be available because fewer authors will be motivated to write programs when they cannot earn a good return for their efforts.
In general, I am just amazed at how much commonality in discourse and medium we're seeing from a 1981 computer magazine. The Wolfenstein ad made me briefly reconsider when 3D games became a thing, until I realised that Wolfenstein had a 2D era.
Magazines are priceless historical artifacts. Everything from the ads to the language points to something that has passed (and that still is).
> Fourth, fewer games will be available because fewer authors will be motivated to write programs when they cannot earn a good return for their efforts.
Most of the points are spot on in terms of the AAA response to piracy, but this one has been proven to be hilariously off-base. The open availability of professional-grade game development tools has lead to an explosion in games being developed (even if _far_ more are developed than are commercially viable).
I wonder if this observation can be extrapolated to hand-wringing over copyright in other industries...
I think if we see it in terms of "if something is data, it can be pirated and it should be pirated", we get a lot of comparisons between not-equally monetisable industries.
Like journalism is innately piratable - the sourcing of facts can cost money, but once out, it's copied and replicated for free. But journalism, unlike videogames, is not inherantly monetisable, and only a handful of subscription-based outlets survive - and even those are beaten on this site by archive links.
Hyperlocal journalism and investigative journalism are both seemingly dying in absence of money. The free open-sharing market is not the most altruistic in how it shares resources.
A few months ago I started reading the CGW issues from the first one in 1981. I got to somewhere around 1986-87 I think before I got distracted by something, but I have to remember to get back to it some day because it was a lot of fun, and for someone too young to remember much of gaming there is a lot there that is new to me.
Interesting as a European to see an American perspective on games from an era when there was a surprisingly large difference between continents. In many issues of CGW there is even a column dedicated to reporting on news from Europe.
For those that did not know, after the magazine shut down in the early 00's some people got permission to scan all the issues and put them online (I assume that is where the scans on archive.org are from?): https://www.cgwmuseum.org/
I love that there's an ad for Castle Wolfenstein in the middle of Crawford's "The Future of Computer Wargaming" article. If only any of us knew what was coming in a decade w/ Wolfenstein 3D and beyond.
Just curious: does anyone know any good, somewhat realistic computer wargames that one could play? I've always been interested in military theory, history, and strategy, so would love to play a wargame where you play as a commander and have to deal with limited intelligence while moving forces around, engaging with an enemy, and (most importantly) dealing with logistics. Paradox games scratch this itch a bit, but I find that they emphasize the "grand" strategy a bit too heavily.
If this doesn't exist: why not? It seems like the Army should spend millions of dollars to give their officers a fun way to get tactical and logistical experience without having to run in-person wargames.
"I can say with sad certainty that the average programmer is not sharp enough to write good wargame programs."
You cut it off too early:
> Most programmers work in BASIC, a language for beginners. Even among programmers producing commercial software for personal computers, fluency in assembly language (the most powerful language) is rare. It is impossible to fully realize the power of a personal computer without using assembly language.
> It is impossible to fully realize the power of a personal computer without using assembly language.
Steve Gibson would agree with that statement.
But most wouldn't. Also, you don't need the full power of a personal computer to run a wargame. Not anymore, at least.
The article predates even the commodore 64. I'd say it was a fair observation in 1981.
Of course. And the first computer wargames were extremely simple as a result. Stuff like Empire (from 1977), for example. So how vital it is to use the full capacity of the computer depends on the computer and on the game you want to run on it. But even Empire spends most of its time waiting for user input.
Most wouldn't, when? When the comment was made these were true statements, 40 years later things do change.
There's a review of a game by Automated Simulations (Later known as Epyx). They were one of the great successes of the 8-bit era, but failed to transition to newer hardware.
Used to be PC wargamer myself - the traditional hexes and text feedback afer an engagement but the field it was changed when SSI released Panzer General - it was pretty and playable by non wargaming folk that did not know how to read a rulebook.
Then we got Harpoon and it declined after that - the hardcore moved to smaller niche companies.
Harpoon predated Panzer General by 5 years. I bought the latest version of Harpoon (that is over 10 years old) on a sale from Matrix Games a while ago and it included a collection of old versions of the game, going back to some pre-release versions. That is a pretty fun collection, even if I never was a huge fan of the game and barely played any. I wish more games could be sold with a historic collection of old versions like that, but I never saw any else that did? They even included a menu configured with Dosbox to easily launch the old versions, and a short text describing each version.
But Panzer General was fantastic, yes. I still play it every now and then. It runs quite well even on my phone in Dosbox. It was just at the end of the era when wargames was one of the big computer game genres, and probably outsold all the other wargames, but then as you say the genre declined.
Also games like Dune and it's successors of the real time strategy genre changed up - it was faster to play and pretty looking and being mission based there was plot/story and battles were resolved in 20 minutes.
> Second, the computer will allow us to have (at long last) true limited intelligence wargames. Many boardgamers have difficulty appreciating the importance of this capability. Indeed, the full intelligence required by boardgames is so taken for granted that many boardgamers resent the limited intelligence features of computer wargamers, feeling that they are being cheated out of their birthright.
Good to see things never change, gamers argued against change back then as well! Today fog of war and not knowing exactly what the enemy is doing is taken for granted, and full intelligence games are the exception, so he really nailed that prediction!
Fog of war type elements were possible back then, they just required a third party to act as umpire and determine what each party can see/know, and probably duplicate (or triplicate) copies of the game.
Diplomacy was created in 1954, and there the limitations are not really fog of war (you can see all players tokens) but the moves are written down and executed "simultaneous" and in verbatim (so moving an army from Constantinople to Smyrna will fail if all you have in Constantinople is a fleet). Since it is hard or impossible to complete your goals without help from others, you negotiate their moves as well as yours and try to maneuver your troops into more favorable positions.
And if all fails, the only thing you can do is sit idly by and watch how all your moves turns to dust as your former allies turn against you.
There are also simpler implementations like Stratego (1946), where both players know where all the pieces are but not which pieces are which.
The classic fog of war game is surely Battleship[0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship_(game)
Even big, serious war games like Advanced Squad Leader had some limited fog of war mechanics. Concealed units could get a '?' counter on top of them, and if you start with concealed units, you often got a whole pile of '?' counters to spread around, and your opponent would have no idea which had real counters underneath and which had just more '?' counters underneath.
It's much more limited than what computers make possible of course, but it worked well enough.
There were also games that didn't need a referee but allowed fog of war by having the value of the pieces hidden to the opponent. The classic example is the children's game Stratego, but more complicated wargames even added dummy counters that represented no units but just false sightings and the like.