A little something in this discussion section that allows no edits, cause I’m the worst typist/speller ever.
:-D
One quick annecdote for encouragement. So back in 2004 when tripleA was young and Sean, Logan, Nekro and all those guys were still trying to get Revised to play on a computer, we had a group of players that decided to make a mod. It was the first mod for an official game in TripleA, based on the idea of adding Italy to Revised as a player nation. It took endless nagging and persuasion, but eventually we got the original designers of tripleA to add the necessary code to the engine to allow nations other than big 5 into the game (which until that point were all hard coded.) The name of the mod was Pact of Steel, because of course that sounded catchy right? And the whole point was to get some silly Italians into the fray.
Little did I realize the obvious alternative meaning for PoS! Haha
And although of course that mod was a PoS, by the current standards of the engine, at the time it still moved the ball forward. AA50 followed hot on its heels, and tripleA was able to quickly adapt for that, in part because the prior groundwork had already been laid with that mod.
Shortly thereafter we got that cursed takedown notice, when TripleA went dark for almost half a year, and just at the point when it was truly peaking. Damn. The original designers went off to do other things, and we had to regroup.
But it came back! As of course it would, because core A&A fans need a digital game. Other people cropped up, dusted things off and passed the torch GPL style, so that the project could continue to grow and play a role in digital arena for A&A.
Now you got a mod called “BM.” And people tacking BM onto the saved games, in much the same way, that back in the day, people would tack PoS onto a save game! I fucking love it.
It hilarious and apt, and seems a sure sign of victory and true destiny for the mod. I think this mod will be the one that wins for the global game rehash. BM! or G40b if you go that route, but you’ll still have that winning original acronym in spirit.
And I’ll tell you this much, the crew right now with Veq and Redrum and all the rest, have done more for the engine in the last few years than I’d ever have imagined possible a decade ago. Despite the limitations of the gameplay format, the engine just gets more and more adaptive and expansive all the time. And the sort of things players can do now just with xml editing, and edit mode options on the fly is so glorious, when you back on how things started.
All this is just to say aim high! Don’t let people get under your skin or steamroll it, stick to what you dig and make it for the players who want to actually play. Through sheer force of will, sometimes even the designers of the official games end up listening, or at least examing things for proof of concept, and trying out ideas first proven in a mod. If it can happen with Italy going from Revised to AA50, maybe it can happen for Vichy France etc in Global.
I’m really impressed with the work that’s been done here already and aplaud the effort actually get something up and running. I hope it keeps people playing for a long time to come. Again, great work.
Best
Triplelk
