Scenarios

Scenarios


Where To Find The Scenarios:

If you want to play some of the scenarios that came with the Joy Of Hex you only have to look in the scenarios folder in the Joy Of Hex application folder.


Naming Conventions:

A typical example of how I name scenarios is "Europe1_001.map". Instead of making names like "Great Big Battle", I chose to make the scenario names to be more informative than this. The first part of the scenario name, in this example, is "Europe1" which is simply the climate type around which the scenario is based. Following this is an underscore and a 3 digit number - these numbers are a simple representation of the size of the scenario, with smaller numbers corresponding to smaller numbers and larger number corresponding to larger scenarios. The final part of the scenario name is always ".map" which I use so that people might know that the file is a scenario and not a game that is saved in progress.


Russia1 Warning:

Most scenarios that I make range from about 10 by 10 hexes up to about 50 by 50 hexes. For the smallest maps the amount of work that the game must do to to figure out how to work the scenario is almost instant, but as the scenarios get larger this thinking time starts increasing noticibly. Up to about 50 by 50 hexes this time for thinking should hopefully be rather reasonable - whereas for scenarios larger than this the amount of time could be rather annoying.

So that people don't accidently start a huge scenario and find themselves staring at a wrist-watch for a long time, I have made my scenarios with the following common thread: all climates except Russia1 will never have a hex map that is greater than 50 by 50 hexes; Russia1 climate based scenarios, on the other hand, are monsters in that I would only recommend that people with very fast Macs and a lot of patience.

Thus if you want a small scenario then play a non-Russia1 based scenario. But if you're a scenario level maker keep in mind that this is merely a convention that I hold for the levels that I distribute with the Joy Of Hex project - if you want to use non-Russia1 climates to make large scenarios then feel free, also if you want to use the Russia1 climate to make small scenarios then again feel free to do so.

The only exception that I make to this rule of Russia1 climates being large is the Deatch Match levels that are based on the Russia1 climate. For me Death Match levels should always be small, hence the exception to the rule.


Death Match:

Some levels that I've included have the phrase "DeathMatch" in their title. These aren't levels that have any sort of connection with reality, these are an experiment that have been inspired by the recent interest in 3D first person shooters. These scenarios are meant for quick and vigorous game play between humans, either as local opponents or as games by email.


Attacking And Defending:

Other scenario designers shouldn't necessarily follow the approach that I take when it comes to designing scenarios, instead deciding for themselves the conventions that they shall use. This approach of mine is to make the forces on side 1 to be the attacking force while the forces on side 2 are the defending forces. What this means is that - except for my Death Match levels - if you want to play out a scenario where you are attacking then chose to play for the first side, whereas if you want to play a more defensive role then play for the second side.


Australia vs. Orangeland:

Even if you have played only a few of the provided scenarios you will have quickly noticed that most the scenarios are battles between Australia and some place called Orangeland. So what's the deal?

The reason why I have one side as Australia is that I'm Australian and it is great to command Armies of your own country. (Okay, so it means that I'm sick and demented, but I can live with that - after all, I'm also a computer programmer and that's even weirder.)

If you look in an atlas you won't find any country by the name of "Orangeland", because "Orangeland" is a fictional country invented by the Australian Armed Forces (AAF) so that they might have a named enemy whenever they have war games. Since no real country is named "Orangeland", then hopefully no country will percieve the AAF to be taking an aggressive posture towards them.

So instead of Australia and Orangeland, why didn't I chose to create sceranios that were more closely based on real historical battles? The answer to this is a simply one of time - since I'm the only one doing the entire Joy Of Hex project, after doing things like designing the game, creating the game graphics, designing and programming the various application sources and doing the manual writing, doing a huge slab of the application testing and a million other little things, it didn't leave me much time to do the research that is needed to create such history-based scenarios.


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