Designs and rebuilds underway

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Merry Christmas 2024!

If anyone were to follow me on Github, they might be aware that I have a design and a few game rebuilds underway. At the moment, Swedish Game Production Linebacker 2 is getting the most attention. Other games, such as Vigard's Nguyen Hue are mothballed at the moment.

There are several reasons why bringing these to completion has been challenging. But the main reason by far is

work priorities consistently trump game momentum.

To repeat: If there is any consistency, it is this: game projects get interrupted by work projects.

By the time I recover enough attention to work on games, momentum has already been lost, and it's often unclear what a go-forward priority might be. Other reasons compounding the difficulty:

  • Lack of Project Management: Game projects, for the most part, are not subject to any project management control. This includes designs and rebuilds. I have been resistant to this as I'm already using Jira for both work and personal householding projects and tasks, and I do not want to add to an already too large backlog of tickets.

  • No Definition of Done: similarly, for any particular project, the amount of potential work grows with the amount of work done. For example, when rebuilding a counter sheet, there is a significant delta in my mind between a sheet which is merely playable, and a sheet which is playable and elegantly designed. Getting to playable is not an insignificant hurdle. Elegance is a very, very deep rabbit hole.

  • Lack of Prioritization: I have multiple projects in flight, most of which are some distance from any sort of done, but I don't have any notion of which projects could or should be finished next. And the remaining in what order? Unclear. It doesn't help that I am not sure exactly how many projects I do have in flight. I'm going to list what I know of right now, below.

Fortunately, all of these issues are easily remedied. The most important of which is priority. Definition of Done is, essentially, can it be printed and played, distinguishing between necessary elements and nice to have elements. Project Management is the easiest, I have and have a lot of experience with a number of such tools.

Ho Chi Minh Trail (HCMT)

This is my only design-from-scratch entry on this list. The game is playable in the sense that I have programmed the game play to run monte carlo simulations of the rules. In this first incarnation, it's more or less rock, paper, scissors if played two player. Solitaire play depends on sampling a random response, with replacement.

Here is the result of 1000 play simulations.

The next step is writing a publishable version of the rules, printing them out, and getting some opposed play tests.

Over time, I intend on versioning the rules as the game evolves, where each version is a completely playable game. It would be cool if each version supersetted the previous version, but that might be too constraining. We'll see how it works out.

Fall of South Vietnam

The goal here is creating a much better version of the map. The map which ships with the game is more or less functional, but it could be a lot more attractive, and more convenient. I might update the rules and counters as well, but the initial focus is the map.

I put this on hold due to my inexperience tracing in Inkscape. I can start it again at some point. I may redo the counters as well.

The Company War

The idea is to rebuild the map, everything else is fine. The main issue with the map is that the various jump lines are difficult to distinguish from each other, the the type of jump line matters a lot for game play.

Vigard Simulations Nguyen Hue

I have what I think is the complete game in PDF format, including the map. The OCR is really rough. I have brought most of the rules over from the PDF. Each page requires a fair bit of manual effort to ensure the OCR copy retains fidelity with the original rules.

Actually, now that I think about it, I do not have the counters for the game, which is probably why I put it aside.

Swedish Game Production Linebacker 2

At the time of writing, this game is receiving the most attention. It will almost surely be the second playable rebuild, after the relatively complete Viet Nam below.

Since the game files on the forum are only partically useful, I reached out to a few of the 7 people listed as owning the game and received a very nice PDF scan of the entire game. Nice enough that the next step is printing out this PDF and playing the game.

I have a TODO list of what needs to be done to complete the rebuild. It's not that long, but it is the "remaining 90%" of the work.

Game Science Viet Nam

I have recreated almost everything save the map, which can be found in the forum files. It is definitely in a playable state, as proven by a third party for whom I sent the game materials.

It doesn't warrant further attention as of the time writing. Future work will focus on streamlining it to speed up the play.

CLF Enterprises Dien Bien Phu: The French in Indochina

Designers Leonard Kanterman and Douglas Bonforte.

I believe the PDF I have has the complete game. As of this writing, I haven't printed or read the rules in detail. It's going to be a real project to rebuild it. For example, the counters are all black lines on white, but the rules state the French are blue and Viet Minh are red. A project for a later date.

IFW Street Without Joy

The designers do not appear to be listed in the rules which I have.

I have a PDF file which I believe has the entire game, but I have not yet as of writing read through the rules or printed anything. This would be another pretty big project, and again, something for a later date.

WW Dien Bien Phu

Designed by Claes Henrikson and Fredrik Malmberg.

I have a PDF file which appears to be complete. Another big project for later. I may just print the entire PDF file for convenience.

Conclusing remarks

I anticipate updating this article over the course of 2025 as various projects advance. It's currently not so much unfinished as incomplete, in this context there is a difference.

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What to play next?

Deciding what to play next is always a tough call when faced with a closet full of games, all of which were purchased with intent to play. Here's one I'm dealing with the decision.

  • Something New: this means both something new to me and a game which has been published recently, within the last two or three years.
  • Something Classic: I've acquired a number of games properly considered "classic" which haven't yet been played. The current example would be PanzerGruppe Guderian.
  • Something Again: mastery requires constant practice, which means playing games many, many times to allow nuance to appear.
  • Something Vietnam: as I'm on a Vietnam binge. I don't have all the Vietnam games ever published, but I can say that I have a lot of them, and probably more than most people.
  • Something Obscure: as it's fun to poke around in the dustier corners of game design.
  • Something Different: break away from the same old publishers and try a game from one of the new kids on the block. Or, conversely, dip into legacy with a classic tried and true.
  • Something Light: once in a while it's nice to actually finish a game all the way through in one sitting, in an hour or two.
  • Something Heavy: if possible, it's nice to set up something big and complicated which can be left out for days or weeks or even months, for a leisurely stroll through a very large or long game.

There are surely many more ways to choose, but the above method keeps me busy enough, helps me get both breadth and depth into my play, and provides me with a sense of progress.

The odd man out

When there is an odd man out:

  • Have a solo game ready to play.
  • Keep score or advise on a game in progress.
  • Referee a game in progress.