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BATTLEFIELD ACADEMY

Bootie

FGM OWNER
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Slitherine has announced its latest game will be a joint venture between themselves and the BBC. Battlefield Academy is inspired by the BBC's flash-based game used in the 2004 program, Battlefield Britain. Slitherine has taken that simple game concept and extensively revised it to create a full-blown new turn-based strategy game.

It will offer more than 30 battles and will be crafted to offer an intiutive user interface. Professor John Buckley, Military Historian at the University of Wolverhampton and a keen wargamer himself, was added to the design staff to bring historical accuracy to the game's strategy, tactics, scenarios available firepower, and AI.

Scenarios included with the game will range from the deserts of North Africa to Normandy to the snowy Ardennes.

In addition the game engine is completely script-driven, allowing players to create their own missions and scenario in a simple and effective way.

Slitherine will be using its revolutionary server-based Play by E-Mail system to give gamers a robust PBEM gaming experience.

The game is now available for pre-order at http://www.slitherine.com/



Features

Control of British, US, Polish, Canadian, Italian & German forces in three epic campaigns covering more than 30 varied battles.
Select from a vast array of equipment including 100 units from 6 nations - Shermans, Fireflys, Panthers, Tigers, Stukas, Hurricanes, P47s and much more!
Gameplay features include ambushes, line of sight, artillery barrages, airstrikes, scouts, morale, APCs, flame throwers, heavy bombers, snipers and suppression.
Your units gain experience as they fight. Get promoted to Veteran and Elite status and gain new skills.
Addictive multiplayer modes using Slitherine’s revolutionary multiplayer server that’s linked into an online ranking system.
Huge modding opportunities. The game has been designed so that it’s easily moddable and accessible scripts control all aspects of combat, user interface and the game's appearance.

http://www.wargamer.com/article/2908/slitherine-announces-battlefield-academy
 
Looks like this might be a fun game.

I'll ask them for a review copy, the game market could do with more low-complexity fun games like this because at the moment it's badly overloaded with huge over-complex monstrosities
 
It does look quite interesting, but the art style... takes a lot getting used to.
 
Okay It's just been released today and I've put in for a review copy, stand by..

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It's marketed by both Slitherine and Matrix-

http://www.slitherine.com/

http://www.matrixgames.com/news/701/Battlefield.Academy.releases.!
 
Yes, graphics are somewhat primitive. Let's wait for the review, maybe it is a better game than it looks at first.
 
Okay I just downloaded the review copy it and it runs smooth as silk..:)

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Sys reqs-
Windows XP/Vista/7
Intel P4/AMD Athlon XP or better
512Mb of RAM (1GB for Vista or above)
128Mb DirectX 9 Compatible Graphics Card
DirectX Compatible Sound Card
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Here are some screenshots I made in the North African scenario-
The Briefing map is simplicity itself-
BAf.gif






I captured the fort (at the 4th attempt) but lost the game because I didn't do it in the 12 turns allowed (sniffle).
My first impression is that BA plays very much like Steel Panthers and is about the same mediumish complexity, fast and fun, you move your units one by one and are subject to ambush fire etc.
There's a topdown or 3D map toggle, the topdown fully zoomed-out map (below) has a SteelP look but is played on square tiles instead of SP's hexes-

BAa.gif
 
Fully zoomed-in topdown view-

BAb.gif








BA has a kool 3D map option whereas SteelP doesn't; this is full 3D zoomout-

BAc.gif
 
And this is full 3D zoom-in-

BAd.gif








This is my favourite view, 3D medium zoom-

BAe.gif



More to follow...
 
Normandy Briefing map-

BAg.gif






Normandy 3D full zoomout.
It's a big map and even at full zoomout we can't see it all, so we have to scroll and rotate it which is a bit annoying.
Also annoying is the fact that the 3D view is rigidly fixed at 45 degrees downwards which means we can't look upwards a bit more towards the horizon-

BAh.gif






Normandy 3D full zoom-in-

BAi.gif
 
Ardennes Briefing map-

BAj.gif







Ardennes full 3D zoomout, the map is too big to see it all, so you have the hassle of scrolling and rotating the map-

BAk.gif







Ardennes full 3D zoom-in-

BAL.gif

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Here's a link to the BA forum- http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=87
I see one guy is calling the game 'Steel Panthers Lite' because its play system is so like SP.
That's not a bad thing of course because SP has been a popular game for a long time, but BA goes a step further in having a 3D display option.
Also, there's a unit facing order in BA which allows you to keep your AFV front armour towards the enemy, whereas I don't think you can do that in SP.
 
There's a full scen creator/editor in BA where you can create a map-

BA-map.gif








And add units to it.
(No Russkis though, the available units are German/Italian/American/Brit)

BA-uns.gif

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Incidentally something that annoys me about the gameplay is the fact that during the enemies turn, the camera automatically fast scrolls from one piece of action to the next. For example it might show a tank firing at another tank, but before you can properly analyse the result, the camera hops away to another action elsewhere, say an infantry attack, then a second later it hops to something else, then something else etc and you lose track of what's happening where, and there's no pause or playback options as far as I can see.
It'd help if there were 3 game speed options, slow, medium, fast, to customise the camera hopping speed, plus a 4th to completely stop the cam hopping until you press a key to free it to hop to the next action.
Historically, I've come across 2 goofs in the game so far, the Matilda II fires HE and AP shells, (in reality it only fired AP), and the Italian troops shout German phrases during combat..
 
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