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On The History Channel's Decisive Battles, Gamed
Thanks to GameSpot for its interview with the creators of the 'Decisive Battles' TV show, as they discuss the "new History Channel series [that] re-creates some of the most pivotal battles of the ancient world, including Cannae, Thermopylae, and Marathon.. [using the engine from] upcoming real-time strategy game Rome: Total War." We've previously discussed this endeavor, but the interview explains specifics ("We'd... build the battles in the same way as we do for all the 'historical battles' in the game - but then use a few cheat codes when we play them out in order to be able to choreograph the exact movements of the troops for that particular battle"), as well as plans ("Future episodes will include the battles of Thermopylae, Adrianople, Chalon, Carrhae, Pharsalus, Spartacus and the Slave Revolt of 73 BC, Cynoscephalae, Kadesh, Teutoberg Forest, and Watling Street.")
Wasn't Bungie's reenactment good enough? (Well, someone had to say it...)
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Your armies have been defeated! Play again?
I suppose next we'll start seeing Columbine or Waco re-enacted with the Doom3 engine.
Looking forward to seeing a game engine used for something other than a game. Hey, some day soon I bet Hollywood will be using game engines for their special effects, as it'll all be rendered in real time, which will save time.
I think it would be cool if you could download (or even watch live NFL games over the internet) that are rendered using Madden...I know on the pre-game shows they have used game footage, but imagine a live stream for when your game is blacked out (DAMN NFL), or you are out-of-town.
Technically the games would not be being "rebroadcast" since the data used would be silly be facts describing the action as compiled by a person/computer on the scene. The video and audio track would be created on the fly. . . It would be neat to pause replay and view from multiple angles. Obviously though it would not be totally accurate, but it with some work could be close enough to be entertaining. It would beat the little game boxes on most websites thats for sure.
In time it could augment "real" radio play-by-play nicely. What I am thinking hear is the "audio" track comes from the live broadcasters, and the data stream broadcast digitally, this would probably only be available with the satellite radio broadcasts.
There could be a "fantasy" mode (in addition to the normal "broadcast") where you could watch your fantasy team play against your weekly opponent (or at least highlights of all your fantasy players) on demand. The system could also be used to compile and view player stats and possibly give you "predicted" hilights, based on existing stats.
Anyway, it seems like the real-time rendering for games has yet to tap it full potential of uses outside the traditional games world.
And they kind of sucked. The animation itself wasn't that great, and the battlefield overview didn't really give a good idea of why one side won or lost.
I think what a lot of military historians don't want to admitt is that no one really knows why one side or the other won or lost. Generals didn't know what was happening when they gave the orders to move here or there, and the soldiers receiving the orders didn't know where here and there were and received the orders hours later. Most of the "brilliant flanking movements" and shit like that is just someone getting lost and then stumbling into the enemy, and they spin it afterwards for the political advance of the winning side.
Heck, in most modern wars it's not til long after the fact that they even manage to pick out the beggining and end of a descernable battle (modern being Civil War and afterwards). They often don't know who "won" the battle until much later either. All these strategy stuff is mostly written back into the story with the benefit of hindsite.
There are exceptions, of course; I think you can find some in N. Africa and in Naval engagements. But these games should be more realistic -- the general should make up a plan, no one should follow it, and while the general was still refining some alignment of troops somewhere a trooper comes over and either arrests him or informs him he won, depending.
People playing Combat Mission have been doing this for years, probably more accurately than the Total War engine could ever hope to achive.
If you watch "The longest day" you might get the idea that Omaha was the only defended beach and that all the others were a cakewalk. You see some brits fall down but no actual fighting. No germans to be seen. DESPITE the fact that the opening bit of the movie (with the fat german and the angry frenchman) seems to take place there and you can see german bunkers in the background. Reason I believe that scene is at the british sector because the frenchmen laters shows up with a bottle of wine. So either the movie is badly directed or there were german defences at the other beaches.
So what is the truth?
In a documentury about Hobarts funnies you see actual war footage that shows the brits did encounter serious resistance but that those funny inventions did amazing good work. At the end it is said that the americans did not use these special devices and tanks.
Is this the truth? That the british had heavy support where the americans only had soldiers?
But wait. In the movie "The longest day" you see the french assault on casino. At the end of the battle a tank comes to the rescue and it is a strange tank indeed. It got somekind of rubber ring around it. What is this? Well it was a flotation device. Pulled up it would reach above the tank and allow it to float like a boat. The high waterline helping to conceal the tank. One of hobarts funnies.
Another documentary investigates these floating tanks and it shows that america did use a couple of these. However where the british apparently used sailors as part of the crew the americans only had soldiers on them. The tanks were immensily powerfull and clever but had one fatal weakness. The side of the floatation ring was incredibly weak. Even a very small wave could break it. So the tanks had to go with the surf and could not allow themselves to go sideways with the waves crashing into the sides.
Sadly the tank crews did not now this not being sailors and instead tried to navigate to a point on the beach hoping to land in the right area. Ended up with the waves coming in to their side, the waves going over and the tanks sinking. Every last one of them.
If the tanks had arrived safely then the germans would have seen only a rowboat like construction until the tank was on the beach and dropped its skirt to reveal 1 cannon and 3 machine guns at point blank range to their bunkers. Me thinks that would have made a big difference. Can't machine gun a tank and mortars are not the most efficient weapon against them. They would certainly have drawn a lot of fire from the other landing boats and their human cargo.
So is this the final truth? That omaha was the slaughter it was because the troops were supposed to land with tank support and they didn't? That the other beaches where won by using technology and the americans in fact mounted a WW1 style human wave assault against entrenched machine guns?
Perhaps. Except one thing. Exactly how many canons and anti-tank weapons were there there at the beaches? None of the documenturies really seem to go into detail as to how many british tanks were destroyed. The re-encacted war footage and real war footage doesn't show a lot of cannons at omaha. Or at all. It would be terrible to think that the germans would have had no way to counter an assault by half a dozen tanks and that these tanks would have had easy pickings of the bunkers.
Thousands died only because the american command was uncapable of regonizing modern technology and using it properly.
Of course this is just my interpretation of it. But I think I have proven that 3 different interpretations excist supported by historians. None of them tell the whole story. Most of them even lie or let facts out. The longest day doesn't show those tanks as part of the american assault and the documentur
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I saw the original series some time ago, and it was interesting for a while but each program basically degenerated into people accusing each other of not listening to what they were told to do. It was a nice demonstration of a game engine, but not very entertaining TV. I liked the original Total War a lot: I'd love to get those campaigns on the Rome engine, if that's possible.
For those who haven't heard about the movement that is Machinima, here's a rip from the ol' FAQ.
So, what is Machinima?
I wonder what other battles they have planned? I think that an episode of Masada, where the Roman Legions attempted to lay seige to a Jewish fortress on a mountian top with very very few men would make for an interesting show.
I think this is the same series in its US franchise form.
Anyone interested, the link is here. A slightly critical review of the series here.
It wasn't a bad programme, but you were rather at the mercy of the TV studio contestants, some of whom clearly had no idea about about basic tactics (ie. it was clear they had never played anything like it before) or the time period in question (some very questionable uses of shield walls in the face of cavalry kept cropping up IIRC).
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Yes but... and I know this may come to a shock to you... there *IS* history prior to World War II. A big shock, I'm sure. But yes, there IS history outside of World War II.
Doing something like this with a WWII-based game would be pointless because it's easy to envision and demonstrate what happened in those battles. The beauty of Decisive Battles is that you finally get to see, to scale, what happened in ancient battles that noone's ever really been able to demonstrate before.
Nobody's ever done an accurate Thermpopylae, Marathon, or Cannae demonstration yet prior to this. I'm absolutely ecstatic about seeing Chalons and how they'll manage it, because that battle was ENORMOUS regardless of whether you use the hig-end estimates or the low-end ones.
This is a fantastic opportunity to breathe life into some of the most-famnous battles in history, and give you a look nobody's ever gotten before. It's a great show, and I can imagine a show like this being VERY useful in the History classroom to really show students what happened.
-- Primis.
Does anyone know of a good city/empire building resource management game? More like the old Ceasar Ancient Rome and the Pharoh Ancient Egypt Sierra games from the late 90's.
I have this urge to play something more city detailed than Civ II (or the brain-dead Civ III) but don't know what's good anymore. And I don't want to dig out my old floppies of Pharoh with it's annoying bugs and glitches (pyramids getting corrupted, random crashes)....
Any advice?
Posting as AC cause this is off topic but I really would like to know what's good.