BletchleyGeek

Man, that's the business of making games. I don't know what is Battlefront threshold sales to break even - 2,000 copies, 5,000 copies? Those volumes, in the context of actual war games are "best sellers". Hence why so much (board) war games now run campaigns on a variety of crowdfunding platforms, have "pre-order" targets (like GMT Games does), and so on. You make an elevator pitch, people put their credit cards on escrow, and then you get a sense how many more sales than the ones you already have in prep orders are statistically likely given historical sales data.

In the last year there have a been a couple of stunning developments (Steam distribution, Combat Mission in the Fulda Gap...). Next thing we know you guys turn up with a game on the war of Vietnamese Independence or the War of Jenkins' Ear...

Sorry @stikkypixiethat was indeed for you. I confused your avatar with that of someone else's.

Hi @Probus, I get issues like this whenever the CM application loses focus while saving the file (as in when you alt-tab out of it). Sometimes this happens if you have Windows notifications popping up. Whitelisting the saved game folders for the Windows anti-malware service is a good idea, this issue also happened to me with the anti-malware service kicking in and slowing down disk operations to a crawl.

That would be nice.

Great to hear that - obviously you guys had "war gamed" some contingencies... others will turn up when the service goes live

Not much. As I wrote on my original message, Slitherine system automates the logistics of exchanging game files, making it almost transparent to the players (you don't get to handle the files themselves). And as I wrote on the previous message, the difference versus regular PBEM is failure handling. If your Internet connection goes pop while uploading your file to Dropbox, there's no drama, as you're in full control of the process. When the game (the PBEM++ client) is the one in charge, there may be issues like for instance, the files not being easily accessible (game data being written t

My biggest problem with the system - as usually implemented by developers published by Slitherine - is that if there is trouble getting across a handshake with the server, the game (client) gets stuck in a inconsistent state, or you find yourself dismissing a pop-up with a obtuse error message over and over again. Some developers have the resources to work out the possible failure modes in a graceful fashion, others do not. If I have to be negative/pessimistic about this, the major potential issue I see with adopting Slitherine PBEM++ system, in the hypothetic case that this is indeed the

The facts of Slitherine PBEM++ system is that you don't need Dropbox. The files are exchanged over the cloud, through Slitherine's servers. There is a matchmaking service too, where you post "challenges" which can be open to the public, or protected with a password (so your buddies can get into it but no randos). Whenever a new turn file is available, you get an e-mail letting you know about it. This system, in coordination with a third-party app like Discord (or even Steam internal chat system) I think is a pretty positive and a significant step forward.

Play by cloud over the Slitherine PBEM infrastructure?

That may be a factor, but clearly CMBS which is also on Steam, is comparatively speaking as "popular" as RT.

Here's the discord link https://discord.gg/y58NUvZg

They just need to join the CM Discord and check the title ownership poll there... The ratio of CMSF2 owners over RT owners is 3:1, the ratio of CMBN owners over RT owners is about 2:1, with near parity with every other title (but Afghanistan, the hipster title). I was surprised that CMFB wasn't as popular as CMBN.

Very interesting Steve. Is that time accounting for playtesting, map making, research etc? Also for developing simulation models for new vehicles and equipment? Thanks again for sharing these insights into the development process. And all the best with the upcoming releases!