Scourge Of War - Remastered

[Asid]

Scourge Of War - Remastered
Norb Software Development LLC

Welcome to Scourge of War, a real-time 3D computer game/simulation developed by NorbSoftDev, the company headed by renowned game designer Norb Timpko, designer of Mad Minute Games' acclaimed Take Command series. Scourge of War is the epitome of historical command simulations.


Steam: Click Here

Theatre: Napoleonic/American Cival War/and.....
Unit Scale: Division, Regiment, Corps
Single player: Yes
Multiplayer: Yes
AI: Yes
PBEM: No


ABOUT THIS GAME

Welcome to Scourge of War. We hope you are ready for a fight. This game places you in command of the units of armies and allows you to refight the many historical bloody clashes during the age of regimental base warfare. This is a type of wargame that we call real time command simulation. Real time command simulation combat begins with Sid—as in Sid Meier, who released the now legendary wargame Sid Meier’s Gettysburg (SMG) in 1997. This game established a new genre, freeing players from the confines of the earlier wargame conventions of the hex grid and dice roll. It placed the units on a 3D battlefield and lets the player/commander move units around. There were no turns—combat happened in real time and could be interrupted only by putting the entire game on pause. It also included a multi-player (MP) feature that is still in use today. Then came Sid Meier’s Antietam in 1998, an evolutionary release that introduced players to the deceptively rolling terrain outside of Sharpsburg and included other battles in the Antietam Campaign at South Mountain and Crampton’s Gap. The next step in the evolution of the genre was Breakaway Games’ transfer of the game engine to the Napoleonic Wars with the release of Waterloo: Napoleon’s Last Battle, in 2001. The final chapter for the Sid Meier engine was Austerlitz: Napoleon’s Greatest Victory, released in 2002. A new chapter in black powder era combat simulation opened in 2005 with the release of Civil War: Bull Run by Mad Minute Games. This game is built on the traditions of the Sid Meier games but was an entirely new generation. It was noted for its highly capable Artificial Intelligence (AI) opponent and careful attention to historical detail. The second and final game from this very small company was Take Command: 2nd Manassas, appearing in 2006. This release also included the battles of Cedar Mountain and Chantilly, the bookends of the campaign. Both games received multiple awards reflecting the historical accuracy and intensity of the real time command experience.

Then came the start of the Scourge of War series. Recreating Gettysburg and Waterloo in the same fashion. It's been many years since those initial releases and old men need something to do in their twilight years. So, we figured we'd take our time and fix some issues, rebrand the game, get on Steam, upgrade the art, and see what we can do to improve performance. There are improvements to the graphics engine and a large number of next generation art assets. The AI has improvements that build on the experience from previous games. The AI is smarter, meaner, and more likely to run you off the battlefield unless you are a skilled wargamer. This game now uses the Steam multi-Player features to allow you to match your skills against human opponents anywhere in the world the AI or both at once. So, make sure your guns are clean, your powder is dry, and get ready for battle on the legendary battlegrounds of history!


Features (work in progress)
- Huge armies marching and fighting across enormous historical maps.
- A great amount of content.
- A Sandbox campaign mode adding a strategic layer to your tactical battles
- Units can now take cover in buildings!
- New and improved interface for easier command and control
- Highly accurate historical battlefield maps and general purpose battle maps.
- Realistic weather.
- Courier system for dispatches.
- Extensively researched historical orders of battle.
- Real time combat command of a brigade, division or corps
- Random play mode to generate battles.
- Multiplayer play.
- Multiplayer online combat in several modes, including: Standard opposite sides, cooperative play versus the AI ,play embedded- within historical battle scenarios.
- Random play mode to generate battles of brigade, division, or corps size on any of the included maps.
- Extensive option set to tailor the game experience to the players preference and to allow good game performance on a wide range of systems.
- Full modding support including a moddable AI.Sounds and Smoke effects to bring the battles to life.

"The idea is to have just one program serve all the content. That is our 'hope'. WL will be first, but we are working on the GB content as well."

[Asid]

Early Access Game

Get instant access and start playing; get involved with this game as it develops.
Note: This Early Access game is not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you should wait to see if the game progresses further in development.


WHAT THE DEVELOPERS HAVE TO SAY:

Why Early Access?
“Scourge of War has been a long labor of love. It's a garage game where everyone that contributes works other full time jobs. We run very tight with our community and frankly there is still a lot to do before we are ready to anoint this version. We have recreated our MP experience using the Steam Libraries, but there are still a lot of features to support. Leaderboards, Lobby, Steamworks for Mods, all this and more are why we decided on Early Access. Due to the size of our team, we really want to engage the community before we decide on the final version of the game.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
“Probably a year, but that's a very rough guess. We do plan on having frequent new builds.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?
“Mostly we are looking at full Steam Support before we are done. Every item that makes sense to support will be supported. Our mod community is strong, so we want to engage Steamworks in order to host and support the mods. We plan on the Lobby, the Leaderboards, and making sure that our community is behind our final product. We are also looking for a single version to support all of our content. No more WL, GB, QB, just Scourge of War and DLCs.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?
“Quite playable, MP still has issues on our conversion to SteamMP, the lobby is not fully functional and it's not been tested fully for our optimizations. All of our scenarios are playable. Refer to the About This section for details and follow our announcements as each version will contain new updates.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?
“Absolutely, we will give a better price before release.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?
“We are going to fully engage with the community. We are not fast, but we are thorough. We have our own forums on our site, but our plans are to support the community forums on Steam. There we will engage the community and find the most desired features and give solid answers on when we can support what they want. We'll depend on them to help track down the bugs that prevent people from fully enjoying the experience. Each feature request will be considered. Our team are players as well, so we want what you want.”

[Asid]

Early access release intended for end June 2024

[Asid]

[Asid]

Dev Log 20240128
Sun, January 28, 2024



Dev Log: MP Update

Working towards being more active in keeping everyone up to date of where we are currently. We started last year with the goal of converting Scourge of War Waterloo into a full Steam release. To us that meant replacing all the libraries that we use with Steam API where provided. This was mostly seen in our MP library. We started with a great lib called Raknet and I cannot thank them enough. Now it's time to move on and we're ripping out the guts and shoving Steam Networking inside. This is taking longer than we thought as we still work part time, although we've been doing it so long that a few are retired.

The Waterloo idea has moved on to Scourge of War Remastered. A common SOW 64 bit game to run all of our content as we upgrade it. That includes all of our battles eventually released as separate DLC to the main game. We also have a lot of new content and my hope someday that a fantasy or scifi mod is created for everyone to try

We also plan on using the Steam Workshop for mods, removing our old copy protection, using Steam leaderboards, etc. All in on Steam and very happy they provide so many tools. I still remember decades ago when I was upset that I had to download Steam and have it running to play Half Life 2. Now it's just time to grow up

We hoped to get it out earlier, but we moved the date back. We plan to do early access as soon as we figure out how to do that. We want to put it out there so people can play. We understand that there is no way to buy the game currently, and we want that fixed.

Progress?? Today we got the client and server connected and into a game. It's taken a while to get there, but we are there. Trying not to mess up what works while still using the new guts. We took a break, have not worked on the code for a few years, but we're getting back in there. A bunch of grumpy old men trying to use the green reanimator liquid on a classic.

We had two choices, keep the game with our publisher until the sales slipped into the nether or reset the base and give it a new more workable base. We hope you agree and support our choice.

[Asid]

[Asid]

DevLog April 1st
Mon, April 1, 2024



Life is absolutely crazy! You just never know what is going to happen or where things will end up. I find myself with extra time as I have 3 months to find a new job. So I am interviewing and trying to fix SOW bugs. The main issue is around switching the guts of MP still. It's been a headbanger, but I finally found the culprit today and it's a huge relief. There is still cleanup, but this is the last bug that would prevent a wimpy early access release.

It's hard to not just rewrite everything, you really want to when you are looking at code you wrote many years ago. It's just not practical though. The first release will have just a few enhancements as we are really doing a port and removing a bunch of garbage no longer needed. We hope to have many release as we move forward and full Steam support in every way that makes sense.

We hope for a June release, so keep your fingers crossed!

[Asid]

[Asid]

Dev Diary May 18, 2024
Sat, May 18, 2024



Sorry for the completely unrelated image, but I was feeling nostalgic. This is the very first time I ever put my game code out for the world. The people on that team have done some pretty cool things.

So I was trying to debug why our uploaded version was crashing. The logs said that it was missing sprites, so I put in the sprites, but it still kept crashing. I have a staging folder and I was trying to launch from there and it crashed every time, as if I was doing nothing. Thing is that it was Steam enabled, so as soon as I launched the game from the staging folder, Steam shut it down and launched the version in the Steam folder. Talk about frustration! But I finally figured out why I was a dope today.

In real life I got fired. That was a shocker. It was over the fact that I said from day 1 I would not commute more than 15 minutes. They changed the HR policy and decided they did not care about the terms of my employment. It happens to the best of us, but it really is a shock because it just destroys everything you thought you could depend upon. You fight for your family and do what it takes to get the income coming in again. So if you see any odd pictures of me...

But SOW is the subject here. Between all the craziness that real life throws at you, we've been working to try and get something out that is a little different, runs a little better, and looks much nicer. It's a work in progress, so it's early access. We are just trying to get everything together and we'll have it up for sale. We've had some changes on the team, but my right hand is back in charge. Jim has taken the reigns again so you can be sure that everything will get done. We'll get all the team listed for the credits as we've got some new faces and the old guard together. We're not fast, but we do finish and if we're lucky we'll give you something you like and improve it enough or make enough promises for you to be happy. We still have major work to get done, it's not close to where we want it to be, but we are a small team and would love the input of our supporters.

We are still thinking that June will be our release, so stay tuned sportsfans.