LOGISTICS COMPLEXITY

In games outside of the computer, the work load associated with many aspects of simulation is such that there is very little appeal to actually include such elements. Something that adds an interesting dimension to a game but is cumbersome to implement is something that we will rarely see include. But we have seen from computer games that many elements can be added, with the computer doing almost all the work, so it might seem possible to apply those lessons to the traditional face-to-face miniatures game, board game, role playing game environment.

Complexity in game simulations includes the many elements, dimensions, details important to the final outcome. The more book-keeping requirements, that can be automatically tracked by clever mechanisms, the more ingredients of complexity it becomes practical to include in a game.

Discussion about what might be doable, with computer assistance to traditional game playing, then how exactly would that be implemented, is akin to a think tank bridge. Ultimately it might not be done on the computer, rather the exploration might lead to new tools for the umpire that adds to the level of interesting game doable.

SUPPLIES AND SUPPLY LINES

My vision is that this is a topic tailor-made for a computer to handle ome book keeping that adds a major dimension to some face-to-face and/or campaign games, a dimension that has been lacking but for which many gamers hunger for, if only there was some way to make the book keeping manageable.

Can the computer handle the inter-relationship between terrain and supply? Start with a map in which the river is not cross-able except at designated bridges and fords. What investment of player effort is needed to add a bridge, or destroy a crossing so it is no longer useable? How close does a force need to get to such a crossing before they find out their maps were wrong? You end up with a game that is limited by the programming vision. You want to build a port, but no provision was made for the computer to recognize that and it is refusing to let you move troops into some area, because it does not recognize the port.

INTELLIGENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS

WW I Naval and earlier periods before ships habitually carried radio, let alone knew much about other shipping and coastal observers in their area. We want to communicate with other ships, in rough seas and simulate the state of the art.

I had a message blank to the moderator with what I'm sending to a particular group of ships on my flank. There's a box showing # times I want the message resent and total # characters in the text x # sendings = translate how long the transmission will take in game turns --- more sendings better chance of them getting most of it, but for some messages by the time they get the whole thing deciphered it will be too late.

My original message: TORPEDOES-COMING-TOWARDS-YOUR-STARBOARD-FROM-ENEMY-DESTROYERS-DEAD-AHEAD-OF- US---TAKE EVASIVE-ACTION.

Moderator gets out dice to determine what my buddy really sees on the message blank transcribed for delivery. TOR-S-COM-G-TO-ARDS-YOU-STAR-ARD-FR-EN-MY-DEST-ERS-DEAD-HEAD--US-TAK-EAV-VE-ACT-

Moderator also does dice to determine how much of this is also seen by the enemy. Since their view is from a different angle and distance, the odds vary. --MING-TOW-BOARD-FROM-DESTROY-DEAD-HEAD-EVASIVE-

We do not have to lose many letters to make the whole message impossible to figure out. Is that realistic? Does it add entertainment value sufficient to justify the effort? I know it entertains the moderator, who is an important ingredient to the game success.

In a Pearl Harbor simulation at a games convention in Columbus Ohio, long before Origins settled there, the Americans secretly scheduled movement of Aircraft Carriers and other big stuff moving around, most of which had to stay in certain designated ports most of the time. Japanese secretly plottedtiming of attack forces, in which they too were limited in choice of targets - Panama off limits until American forward bases had fallen. Umpire moves both sets of forces on an area map, then when elements both sides in same area, dice to determine if scouts see each other, to determine if any confrontation before Pearl attacked and the disposition of all forces at that time.

Game was played in a building with sliding doors separating rooms. Initially gamers with different US groups --- Midway, Pearl, Air Force, Army, Navy, were walking freely in and out of each other's rooms, then umpires came around and closed them in ... all communications now via note via umpires because phone lines have been cut by bombing ... message blank includes check off "in code?" meaning lower interception capability but umpire delay delivery of radio message to intended recipient to simulate time spent coding and decoding, with even greater impact on enemy attempts to figure out what they heard.

Meanwhile Jap air over Pearl had their map adjusted - ships removed and replaced with markets signifying dense smoke obscuring vision. Lesson = know which way wind is blowing and do not bomb fuel tanks whose smoke is going to obscure your other targets.

In a battle that was a historical disaster for one side, is there any interest in playing it? Well, if victory conditions are to do a better job than your side did in the real history, perhaps there can be.

EVOLVING TECHNOLOGY

Pricing of some computer peripherals are becoming affordable to a much larger spectrum of users. Can some of this add to what is doable for campaign games, or other interests such as dimensions of game convention enjoyment? Much of what I talk about has a software component, wise selection of programming language, what works on any given end user PC, but here I am focusing on a bridge vision of what might be practical, rather than specifics of implementation. Do other game design enthusiasts like the visions I am painting? If not, there is no point delving into the detail of how we might accomplish such dreams.

SCANNERS are now very affordable provided we stick to standard letter sized paper. They can input handwriting but software to translate that handwriting to something that can be manipulated is another question. If all you are using this for is a glorified photocopy machine, then get a photo-copy machine, but how does that pricing compare to scanner plus PC printer?

Think input of move sheets for campaign game provided calligraphy is standard machine readable. Think PBM company at a major convention running their stuff with fast turn-around on moves, because scanner inputs player moves and right then and there player is told whether their chicken scratching meets the scanner standards or needs to be recopied and retried and how soon the move deadline is.

Think the scenario which I described using ships before radio available and reliable --- how much of the signaling gets through. That mis-translation could be programmed. The computer does not need to know what those symbols mean, it just dices which of them are copied correctly, where blank spaces are left and where some non-sense character is inserted.

DIGITAL CAMERA

Pricing is also coming way down - what could we use that for that was out of reach a few years ago? I think their images might be combined with slow scan software. Slow Scan was first developed by Ham Radio enthusiasts in the days of telephone lines being a much bigger bottleneck than they are today, when it came to transmitting changing pictures, and in an era of constraints on what non-verbal communications the radio enthusiasts were permitted to transmit by radio.

A ship is navigating a river. The first pixels transmitted are necessary for a "base picture", then what gets sent is only the part of the picture that changed - where the ship is, and the wake and any traffic at sides of river. The total information content down the communication line is a small fraction of the total picture. At the far end, the picture refreshes itself periodically like a rotating radar image. We get the picture, over a communication line that is too slow to transmit everything real time. Same technology used in security work. Huge parking lot. Cameras only transmit what changed since picture of a few moments ago, but recipient computer enhances what changed, essentially focusing identification of someone breaking into a car, almost immediately after it starts, and dispatching security guard patrols to the relevant map sections.

Think multi-player Kriegspiel. 2 rooms = Miniatures tables set up the same way. Digital Camera overhead in same position in both rooms, perhaps on some contraption from ceiling that permits it to move in an arc for multiple views. Computer compares both roomsand identifies any portions of the two pictures that are not sufficiently identical and from this derives the original terrain "3-D picture." Now each side sets up their units in their room.

Everyone ready? Step back from table. Data fed to computer which does 3-D analysis of both viewpoints.

OK. Side-A forces on map section X3 can see map section W5 which contains Side-B order of battle, not all of which is actually viewable from X3 ... here is a color picture of what the forces at map section X3 can see. The unit commanders for section X3, and everyone else who can "see" something, are called away from their table for a private look at their printout (and/or glimpse at PC images of vehicles passing through a break in the hills) and 10 minutes to write their orders: move/fire whatever ... including message(s) to adjacent unit commanders and higher command. Messages scanned into computer for addressees to receive with their next turn respective information packages.

Then everyone takes turns, depending on initiative dice rolls, back in their side's room, to execute their moves, place indicators where their fire should land. Next round umpires substitute disabled markets and wires with colored streamers showing direction of incoming fire if survivors were in a position to see it.

Would this appeal to gamers? Only if the whole thing moves as quickly, if not more quickly than equivalent games today. There will be a shift in the audience and participants, since some elements will alienate people who love how it is done today, while the type of game play will suck in new blood due to some people liking how some elements, lacking today, become a reality.

What other emerging technology can be an inspiration to game designers?

In a recent Computer Games Strategy Plus Command Post Column, it was asked might like to see in future computer games. It seems to me it was 20 30 years ago that I learned about holography, the science of the illusions created at the intersection of 2 laser beams, and the assertion of the time that manipulating the data for those illusions was vastly beyond the computers of the era. I figure that computer technology is marching forward so fast that there will come a day that games using miniature illusions of floating space ships projected into a darkened room, for real 3-D miniatures games, will become practical and open up a new genre' of gaming experiences. But you were asking about what we think is doable with today technology.

Future

I hope that some day the computer games industry will help me revisit the flavor of games which existed in the board games community that I was active in the 1960's and 1970's and I always thought might be more doable virtually than manually.

We had detailed space strategy games set in our own solar system; enemies whose "rules" were unknown to us until we defeated them and deciphered evidence, conceptually like X-Com except that the enemies were real players who did not know our "rules" because we encountered each other in space, utilizing a myriad of different propulsion system logic and probe scans that could be misinterpreted as weapons fire.

There was an asteroid mining game in which centrifugal force was greater than the local gravity. Before computers, it used rotating cardboard cut-outs with map pins stuck through graph paper. We also had Star Trek Star Wars style conflicts for planets in which the native population was a bigger threat than the obvious enemies. This was played mainly miniatures style.

We had mixtures of military economics politics ... I remember a racial color wheel in which it was easier to do business with folks diametrically opposite to each other than a few shades different.