That’s the size of the new high-resolution imagery that we’re processing for the ‘Satellite Imagery’ of the SR2020 World Map.  As we’ve said in our press blurbs, we’re using updated satellite files provided by NASA to increase the quality and definition of the Supreme Ruler 2020 map.

This creates a large number of technical challenges.  Some of them can be overcome due to the fact that modern computers have more memory and hard drive space, but just like with SR2010 we don’t want to force our players to have high end machines.  So we’re working on other solutions that include variable resolutions for different systems and different zoom levels, and ‘paging’ map data in and out as the map is scrolled.  It will be essential to make this as smooth and seamless as possible, so that the higher resolution does not diminish the gameplay in other ways.

Already as I write this we have the game engine running at 4x the resolution of the World Map of the previous version, but that’s not nearly enough.  The ‘Terrain Painting’ team has already reported that they need to see the full resolution (which will be many, many times higher still) so that matching terrain features to the imagery can be as accurate as possible.

So I’ll be continuing to work on the Imagery ‘Supercharger’ and, when it’s done, it will be one more of the ‘Next Generation’ pieces that I’m sure will catch the eye of both Supreme Ruler pros and new players alike.

Though one final problem to overcome will be that of game size - I’m not sure the world is ready to see a Strategy/Wargame in a ‘DVD-only’ package, or as 3GB Digital Download file.  So I’ll also be looking at solutions that will help compress and otherwise keep things in managable packages.  Good thing most of the world is covered in water!

– George.

Work continues on the equipment file and more new units have been added.  The Submarines were my focus for the last few days and they are now all set with some good variety at different tech levels.  Submarines will be available to much higher tech levels then before and have also been rebalanced somewhat.  For subs one of the major changes relates to unit spotting.

Our previous system assigned a spotting strength and a spotting range.  The game mechanics are set that strength of spotting deteriorates over distance so a unit with a very high range but poor strength will see large boats (low stealth) at a distance but may miss leg infantry (high stealth) in the next hex.  In the reverse, a unit with a high strength and low range would not see very far but could see submarines or stealth aircraft.  Our recent changes to the equipment file have been to replace these values with two different “spotting type” values.  We have a separate chart that tracks range and strength for given radar, sonar or other spotting electronics.  This means that if one boat uses one radar type we can assure that all other boats with the same radar will have the same statistics.  It also allows for a boat to have a long range radar and a short range sonar, something very common in the real world.

As part of the conversion we also researched the ranges for various radars.  Radar spotting ranges are difficult to represent in a game environment due to the many factors such as bandwidth and size of target object so it’s difficult to get an accurate range value.  We did finally find some helpful data that allowed us to set a benchmark that should work well for gameplay.  It is however setting a shorter range for many spotting types than we had previously assigned, in particular for sonar and other submarine detection.

The end result seems to be creating much tighter combat areas for submarine and anti-submarine warfare.  With the current values most subs will need be in adjacent hexes to see each other.  Submarines should become a very effective way of discreetly probing enemy lines.

Chris Latour
BattleGoat Studios
chris@battlegoat.com

The title of this Blog entry is what I’ve always heard to be the etiquette to follow when in social situations – “don’t talk about religion or politics”. In fact, out of curiosity I did a Google search and found many articles on the subject. One result talked about not mixing religion with politics while another result pointed to another Blog discussing, “Things You Don’t Talk About in Polite Company – A blog about thoughts on religion, politics, the occasional intersection of both, and other stuff”.

So, what am I discussing today?

In Supreme Ruler 2020 we’ll be including religion into our existing political model. For each of the approximately 250 regions we’ll be modeling the world’s primary religions. We have broken it down into 12 categories, including Christians (with 3 divisions), Muslims (with 2 divisions), Jews, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhists, No Religion, Indigenous and Other Religions.

What will this add towards gameplay?

When deciding which country to attack, or when determining which country may be a threat you’ll now see religion influence things as it tends to do in today’s world. Through religion in the game we hope to add a new dynamic effect used in diplomacy. One effect may be seen in the use of Casus Belli. Casus Belli is a factor used to determine if you have the right to declare war on another region. Other factors such as your civilian approval of the other region (and other actions performed while running your country) come into play and retaliation is generally seen if you don’t have much cause to attack in the first place. If we were to only take “belli” into account other regions gain or lose belli at the same rate based on any action, such as war declaration, that you make with your region. If we add religion to the other factors you’ll now see different effects. If my country is primarily Muslim and I attack another Muslim country third party Muslim countries may take offense, while Christian based countries may only see a slight increase in their justification to attack you. On the other hand, if you attack a region whose religion is dynamically different than your own, you may see countries that share the defenders religion take greater offense to your actions.

Can I control religion?

Most likely it is something that we’ll leave as uncontrollable. But as we are still in development I’m sure this will be up for discussion on our forums – www.bgforums.com. If we do add any form of religious control I believe it will be simple and not be something adding to the complexity of the game.

What next?

After assigning a religious mixture to each country, we’ll have to determine how religion will actually affect things in the game. How strong will the responses be from AI controlled regions? How much will religion affect casus belli? How hard will it be to get an alliance between Israel and Iran? How much of an effect will religion have in the game? Will it add flavour or become a large influencing factor in the game? How will different religions affect each other and how will religions change over time? What will happen as my country takes over another country? Will my religion start to change? These are many of the things we’ll have to discuss and decide. Now I must get back to work.

Daxon Flynn
daxon@battlegoat.com
Game Designer
BattleGoat Studios

While the announcement for Supreme Ruler 2020 is still quite recent, work has been ongoing for a while now. We’ve each been working on our assigned areas to move the project forward and achieve the milestones we’ve set. For me the transition between the two projects has been a little blurred since my current assignment is the equipment file with which I’ve become so familiar.

Like in SR2010, the new game will contain a wide variety of military equipment based on historically accurate designs and all of the important pieces for all the major nations. The work we did on the first equipment file certainly puts us on a good footing for the next title since it contains practically every equipment type in service today. However, with an adjusted timeline some changes needed to be made. Country inventories, often referred to as Orbats or Orders of Battle, need to reflect the expected changes for a 2020 timeline, or at least as much of it as they would have achieved prior to some plague or disaster David unleashed on their nation as part of the storyline. Also, the future units still needed more variety. We have been adding units to tie in both the untapped technologies of the previous game and the new ones we have thought up. To date more than 300 new units have already been created, most of them for the future timelines.

Lots of work has also been done on the 2000+ existing units we have kept. The entire format of the data has been and is still being reviewed. Some data we tracked is no longer used while other data has been added. Also, new formulas have been applied to some areas. One example of this is the changes in our standard for assigning total ammo load and fuel load for naval units. We went back and did more research in this area and found that we did not model this as well as we could have. Some small ships weighing 100-200 tons were loading up 100 tons of ammunition before setting sail. This of course allowed them to fire a very long time but the initial economic drain of fielding these ships was unrealistic and building them could unbalance poor economies.

Well, back to work for now, I’ll discuss more of the changes in my next post.

Chris Latour
BattleGoat Studios
chris@battlegoat.com

Well, mostly still basking in the glory of our CAEAA win (Canadian Awards for Entertainment and Animated Arts) for best PC Game   see www.caeaa.com

But seriously…  Over the next little while, the whole development team will be making posts on exactly what each of us are currently working on for Supreme Ruler 2020 and I thought I’d start the ball rolling…

One of my responsibilities in development are the storylines, not just for the game’s background, but also for the individual campaigns that can be experienced.  Although SR2020 will be a very similar game to SR2010 and we refer to it as a sequel, there will be an entirely new storyline that will begin in the year 2010 with an entirely new sequence of problems and disasters.  Some of our favourite story elements we’re going to keep (like OPEC changing their currency standard to Euros from US Dollars - that would have a huge effect on a lot of economies!), but most will be new.  So right now I’m going through the world, destroying alliances, spreading diseases, trashing economies, and generally having a good ‘ol time

Supreme Ruler is very different from other games, the story is not just for flavour, it actually determines what victory conditions are necessary to gameplay.  So we need to have all the storylines worked out early in the development cycle so that we can make sure the game engine supports whatever conditions my mind can throw at it for scenario and campaign victories.

So, what other events can we look forward to before 2020…  (here’s some of the ideas we’re discussing):

- a global flu pandemic
- major US recession
- Japan trashing their pacifist constitution in response to North Korea’s beligerance
- South Korea also developing a nuclear weapons program
- the ever popular resurgence of Communism in Russia
- a nuclear weapon “accident”
- Argentina deciding that the UK is too busy with other things to worry about the Falklands
- Rural Rebellion in China against huge pollution levels
- China and Taiwan issue coming to a head
- Venezuela playing power games in South America
- Cuba getting ambitious in the Caribbean
- German re-militarization (definitely makes Poland nervous)
- Major new crude oil discoveries off the west coast of Africa (East African nations want a share!)

and many more elements that will make 2020 a pretty intense time…

Going forward we’ll start posting more details of the storylines on our forum (www.bgforums.com) for feedback and additional ideas.

Well that’s what I’m currently working on…  can’t wait to hear what it is the other guys are doing

- David

In our last Blog, David mentioned our nominations from the Canadian Awards for the Electronic and Animated Arts.

From our press release:

PC Game Developer BattleGoat Studios is delighted to announce that their computer game “Supreme Ruler 2010″ has won a Canadian Award for the Electronic and Animated Arts in the category of Best PC Game!

In accepting the award at the Vancouver ceremonies, Lead Designer David Thompson was particularly grateful to the beta testers who helped BattleGoat through many of their design decisions with this ambitious title. Afterwards Thompson said, “We worked very hard on this project to create a unique game and we will continue to develop in this direction - creating games that challenge the minds of our players.”

While in Vancouver to attend the awards, The Goat, took advantage of a few connections and ended up visiting the sets of Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis. The Goat had fun posing with actors and the Stargate and enjoyed hearing that some of the actors have even played Supreme Ruler 2010.

Now back from his trip, The Goat can be found hard at work planning the next game, with the rest of the team at BattleGoat Studios. The announcement is just around the corner and eagerly anticipated by many SR2010 fans.

Daxon Flynn
Game Designer
BattleGoat Studios