Pointy hex grid

Our initial approach when we started developing The Panzer Division was to use the Panzer General I look. That meant that units were 2D icons, facing either left or right.

The original Panzer General look

Panzer General II came with a better approach, displaying the battlefield from an oblique angle, and the units had a 3D look. Of course, the game was not really 3D, but it looked better anyway.

The second Panzer General game looked better with pseudo-3D units and terrain

The units could rotate to twelve different directions, six of them facing the hex sides and the other six pointing toward the hex corners.

Back when we started developing our game, we used the original Panzer General artwork . This has helped us a lot, not having to bother with a map editor and such. But after we implemented a great deal of the game mechanics, we said it's time to create our own artwork.

I started designing the units graphics, and I used a great tool for this: Blender. It's a free 3D modeler and in the past few years it has improved a lot, especially in the user interface area.

I began modeling some panzers and rendered them into 2D images from the sides. I managed to get them to look like the original PG units. But as long as we have the units modeled in 3D, it is a breeze to render them from an oblique angle and facing different directions, as they are in PG2. So we decided to take that route, and use a pseudo-3D look for our game.

The Panzer General games use a hex grid, which is obvious by looking at the screenshots above. But the hexes are aligned in vertical columns, the hexagons lying on their side. That means that the directions facing the hex sides include pointing up and down, but in our opinion, a unit facing north or south doesn't look so good.

Units facing north or south (up/down) do not look so good

So, we changed the way the hex grid is oriented and make it have the corners pointing up and down, as you can see in the image below.

With a 'pointy' hex grid, units are never facing up or down

This way, the units would never be displayed from front or back, making it easier to recognize the differences between various units of the same type.

Panzerlied

Who knew there was a song for the Panzers?
The song starts at 1:30, but the rest of the movie provides a nice context. I was curios what is says, so here are the lyrics in case you are curios too:

In blizzard or storm,
Or in sun warm and bright,
The day hot as hell
Or bone-chilling be the night,
Our faces may with dust be laid,
But spirits never fade,
No, never fade;
Relentless, our tank
Thunders out on a raid.

With engines a-howling,
Fast as is the wind,
We head for the foe,
Safe, as we're in armor skinned.
Our comrades still behind us roam;
We fight the foe alone,
Yes, fight alone.
We stab through the line
To break the foes backbone.

Whenever the foe
May appear in our sight,
We'll ram throttle full,
Then we'll humble all his might!
Of what use is our life if we
Our country serve freely?
Yes, serve freely!
To die for our country,
Our honour shall be.

With tank traps and mines,
Our foe tries to impede.
We laugh at his ruses;
We know he'll not suceed.
And when, in threat, his cannons stand,
Half hidden in the sand,
Yes, in the sand,
We can find our way
Over much safer land.

And should at long last,
Fickle Lady Luck leave,
And we remain here,
Leaving family to grieve,
A bullet with our name on it,
Find us and seal our fate,
Yes, seal our fate,
Our tank will our grave be
On that final date.

The beginning

I remember that more than an year ago, I was talking with Rares about the games he has played on his iPad. He told me that he was looking for a strategy game similar to Panzer General, be he hadn't found any on AppStore. It seemed that one couldn't find any WW2 strategy game published for iPad at that time.

I suggested to him that we should try to make such a game. We are both software developers and creating games is certainly a interesting challenge for people like us. But besides being interesting, making games is also hard, especially bringing them to completion. Anyway, developing a turn-based strategy game was something we thought we could accomplish, so we started working.

The main idea was to create a Panzer General remake that could run on iPad. We decided that a 2D look, similar to the first Panzer General game, was more likely for us to get done. From this first PG game we would also use the strategic feeling of its campaigns, something that the second Panzer game kind of missed. But anyway, the PG2 was better from other perspectives, such as control and leader abilities, so this meant that our remake would be a mix of the best elements of the two Panzer General games.

More than a gadget

A couple of years ago, Apple launched a new device which looked like an oversized iPhone. This new tablet computer proved very successful, more than 50 millions iPads being sold in the first two years. Other manufacturers started producing tablet PCs, using Google's Android operating system. Also, the incoming Microsoft's Windows 8 OS has been designed to run of both PC computers as well as on tablet devices. The conclusion is obvious, this kind of device will be the future of consumer computing.

The iPad owns a lot of its success to the multitude of applications that were developed to run on it. A great deal of those application are games. But many of those games are the ones designed for smartphones, where the general use case is to play for short periods of time. The iPad, however, seems to be suitable for other kind of games, as well. This is mainly due to its big screen size compared to a smartphone.

A lot of people are passionate about strategy games, but there are few titles available that cover this genre on iPad. I am not aware of any that focuses on the same gameplay and WWII setting as the Panzer General series and I think many strategy gamers would like to play such a game on their tablets.

If one thinks about it, turn based strategy games are quite a good fit to be played on a tablet device. There's no need for real-time 3D flashy graphics and the touch interface can easily provide the required level of control. The game can be played for a while, suspended and then later the player can continue from where he left off.

Multiplayer is also a viable option, in some derivative form of the old play by e-mail (PBEM) system. Such an option would be an online server which could provide both a game lobby to find opponents and storage for the between-turn saved games.

So, it seems that the stage is set. It's time for The Panzer Division to show up.

Is there a site that list all the computer wargames ever?

©Will Merydith(Creative Commons)

Guess what! There are at least two sites that list all the computer wargames ever.
Now, don't panic when you see them, they are old, as wargaming itself.

Web-Grognards
Connoisseurs say that if a wargame is not on Grognard, chances are no one considers it a wargame as well. They define themselves like this:

'Grognard' is slang for someone who likes playing wargames. 'Web-Grognards' therefore has a unique collection of various conflict simulation game (i.e. wargame) information, including (but not limited to) rules errata and variants, game reviews and links to relevant web sites. The emphasis is on board wargames, but miniatures, computer and card-based wargames are also covered. Many hundreds of games are covered here.

M. EVAN BROOKS HOME PAGE
Mr. Brooks stopped in 2002 but who can beat the quote on his site:

"It is well that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it." -- GEN Robert E. Lee to LTG James Longstreet at the Battle of Fredericksburg (1862); obviously Lee never played PANZER GENERAL.

In case you still have doubts Mr. Brooks is a Panzer General fan, this is what he writes about it:

Initially marketed as a non-wargame, this has become one of the classics of wargaming, and spun off an entire series (ALLIED GENERAL, PACIFIC GENERAL, etc.). Start in 1939 and trying to win enough operational battles in order to successfully win the assault on Washington, D.C. (Ty Bomba would be proud!) But a plethora of scenarios, entertaining graphics and a user-friendly interface combine to form a winning combination. While I both admire and enjoy it, the military lessons of combined arms are not taught overly well, and often gaming logic supersedes military logic (for example, in order to win a decisive victory at Moscow, one must air assault north of the city; then, in following turns, one can recruit armored units in this isolated area and pincer Moscow from two sides until it falls).

A little bit of history..

In 1994, Panzer General, a PC turn-based strategy game was launched. Set in World War II, the player had the chance of taking the role of a German general leading his elite fighting units to victory. The longest campaign started in ’39 with the invasion of Poland and ended in ’45. The player’s performance as a strategist determined whether the last battle in 1945 was defending Berlin against allied onslaught or storming Washington for the ultimate victory.

Probably Panzer General wasn’t the first computer strategy game with a WW2 background, but for me and many others it was *the* game. I played it many times, in order to try its various scenarios (yeah, it was fun to purposely lose some key battles in order to go with your super-army into the defense, an easy one at that).

Then, a few years later, Panzer General II, came out. Like its predecessor, it was a turn-based strategy game. It had improved graphics (isometric perspective), some new concepts appeared (like the use of leaders that would add benefits to the unit they commanded) but it lost the grand-strategy feeling. The battles were confined to small tactical situation in a greater campaign context. Nevertheless, PG2 was a very nice game, indeed and I guess even more people played and liked it (that is, has a greater fan base than PG1)

PG2 had also an scenario editor (it was becoming the norm for real-time and turn-based strategy games to ship with an editor). I used it to start working on a campaign for the Romanian army, but I think I was the only one playing it ;-)

Panzer General 3 jumped in the 3D madness bandwagon. It also brought in some interesting features, like relying more on the unit commander concept. I didn’t play PG3 too much, and I could say this was true for other PG fans I know. It was the last game in the Panzer General series.

Before Panzer General

"I can honestly say that if we hadn't played Daisen Raiku (sic), Panzer General would never have happened, period."
Kroegel says in Retro Gamer magazine, Load 43

Who is Chuck Kroegel? Is the scenario designer of Panzer General.

Here is a video in which Kroegel talks among other things about Panzer General:

What is "Daisen Raiku"? According to MobyGames, SystemSoft had a long-running war strategy series, starting with Gendai Daisenryaku in 1985. Sega started their own derivated series Advanced Daisenryaku in 1991, using a World War II scenario instead of the fictional battles involving modern weaponry that SystemSoft's games usually simulate. (Seams that Daisenryaku means Grand Strategy)

Hmm, according to Wikipedia and others, Panzer General was designed by SSI Special Projects Group. I wonder who was part of that group.

1994, SSI Presents

...succeeded in bringing wargames to the masses (including yours truly, who can proudly claim to *never* having finished any wargame until PG came along ;))
Home of the Underdogs

The irony is that it brought almost nothing really new to the world of round played strategies, but it was so well made and became so famous, that if someone mentions the genre, most people will answer ...
Abandonia

The first game of long "General" series developed by SSI put the player in shoes of German commander during WWII and offered 38 different missions, including fictional full scale invasion of Great Britain and attack on Washington, D.C.
Giant Bomb

In addition to reasonably accurate WWII units and missions, one of the best things about ... is the ingenious use of RPG elements - the first historical wargame in history to do so. Similar to RPG games, units under your command gain experience points over time, the more battles they survive. Veteran units have better stats than raw recruits. Therefore, one of the keys to winning the game is to keep enough veteran units alive until the last few battles.
Old-Games

... is an addicting game and many of the smaller, individual battles, seem almost a complete game in their own, taking several hours to complete. With the AI turned all the way up, it is a difficult game indeed.
allgame

What could it be?