Category Archives: Army Design Module

A Friend In Need Is a Friend Indeed

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There’s a joke in the movie, What’s Up Doc? that goes something like this; “So you’re a doctor of music are you? Can you fix a broken record player?” “No.” “Well, sit down then!” Yes, I really do have a doctorate in computer science but that hardly means I know everything about computers (just watch me trying to fix my wife’s old machine running Windows XP). The higher up you go on the academic ladder in computer science the more you deal with algorithms, optimization and ‘big ideas’ and the less you do with learning the latest Microsoft programming environment.

When I began programming General Staff two years ago I decided to write it in Microsoft WPF (Windows Programming Foundation). This ensures that the program will run as a ‘standard’ Windows program and there shouldn’t be any compatibility issues. Unfortunately, I had absolutely no experience with WPF but, as I’ve done all my life, I gamely plunged in and started learning as I went.

For the most part things went pretty well and when I ran into trouble there was the Microsoft Developer’s Forum to ask for help. However, about a month ago, I had really coded myself into a corner and when I asked for advice about how to straighten out the visual representation of an Order of Battle Table a very nice gentleman by the name of Andy O’Neill kindly stepped in, took a look at my code and explained that I was doing it all wrong.

Andy is a superstar of the Microsoft Developer’s Forum. He is ranked in the top 0.1%, has 10 gold awards, 14 silver awards and 19 bronze awards. He was awarded the gold medal for the Microsoft Technical Guru in April 2015.

But, most importantly, Andy is a wargamer and knows what an Order of Battle Table is! 

Andy lives in Liverpool, England just up the hill from Strawberry Fields and John Lennon’s house. While, professionally Andy is known for his work with business application development, data visualization (and, really, isn’t this what a wargame is?), point of sale chip and pin credit card integration and end consumer applications (especially GUI, or Graphical User Interface), it’s his interest in table top wargaming that makes him invaluable to the General Staff project.

Andy has been involved in table top wargaming since the ’70s and his main area of interest is 1/72 WW2 skirmishes but he’s also interested in Fantasy, Ancients, the Seven Years War, Ultra Modern, Monster Rampage, Darkest Africa and the Boer War. He also works on modifying rule sets.

Below are some of Andy’s incredibly detailed miniatures:

With Andy’s expertise we have made a number of important changes to the underlying data files used in General Staff. This will result in a much more robust Windows program. Furthermore, Andy has made some substantial contributions to the user interface making the entire process of creating armies and scenarios much more intuitive and user friendly.

I can’t thank Andy O’Neill enough for all his help.

 

 

Army Design Module Is Out of Beta Test!

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We are extremely pleased to report that the General Staff Army Design Module has now completed Beta Test and we are moving on to sending out the Map Design Module to our valiant Beta Testers!

Screen capture of the Army Design Module showing the built-in Help documentation. Click to enlarge.

The Army Design Module allows users to easily create new army Order of Battle Tables that, when combined with a map and another army, become battle scenarios that can be played in the General Staff Wargaming System.

The Army Design Module is Ready for Beta Testing!

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The Army Design Module is Ready for Beta Testing and we’re adding the in-app help files now! This is pretty exciting and we hope to be rolling out the next modules (Map Design and Scenario Editor) very quickly as they are almost completed, too. After over a year of hard work General Staff is becoming a reality!

A screen capture of the Army Design Module with the in-application Help files. Click to enlarge.

Order of Battle Table Screen Captures.

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Even though it was fun to create, the YouTube video of the Order of Battle Table / Create Army Module for General Staff doesn’t have high enough resolution tho show the clear, sharp screen images that do it justice. Below are a couple of screen captures from the section of General Staff that allows users to create their own armies. We will next work on the Create Maps Module that allow users to design their own battlefields.

Screen capture from the Create Army Module of General Staff. This shows a section of the Order of Battle Table for the British-Portuguese army at the battle of Albuera (16 May 1811). Click to enlarge.

A screen capture from the Create Army Module. This shows the ease of editing unit information. These are the variables, and unit types, that were selected by over 150 wargamers in our previous survey. Click to enlarge.