Coinage of Memnon of Rhodes, Mysia. Mid 4th century BC

Alexander’s Psychological Warfare

Created by billk on April 25, 2024 1:32 pm

Soon after Alexander the Great crossed the Hellespont into Asia Minor, and began conquering towns as part of his Persian Campaign. He ordered his restless men not to loot surrounding farms and villages since the land would soon be theirs and to avoid breeding excessive hostility against them. But he told them to pay special […]

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99 Red Balloons

Wargaming’s Greatest Hits: A List of War and Anti-War Songs

Created by billk on April 18, 2024 4:07 pm

A couple of days ago, Ardwulf’s Lair had a stream where the topic was music for wargaming. A great topic, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it so I’ve put together my list of favorites just to get them in one place. Unsurprisingly they’re mostly Cold War and some anti-war protest tunes. […]

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Generative AI in Wargames

Created by billk on January 9, 2024 5:42 pm

Oh boy. This topic’s been brewing for the past year and it’s really started to heat up in the board game world and now, as expected, in wargaming. It’s the issue of the ethics of wargame publishers using generative AI in their games. George Pearson, who’s been wargaming since 1968, recently posted in The Board […]

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Computer playing itself on the Battle of Issus scenario

Design Diary – December 2023

Created by billk on December 11, 2023 12:41 pm

Hello and happy holiday season, everyone! I figured I could sneak one blog post in 2023 and pretend I’ve been keeping up with it all along. It’s been my one area of neglect on this digital board game journey, but I’ve been busily working on Arete: The Battles of Alexander the Great since the last […]

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AI Behavior

Created by billk on November 3, 2022 7:44 pm

New Video! It’s been a while, but I think this is a fun one. I go over some of the tricks I used to make the enemy AI behave in a bunch of ways that reflect history but also allow for reacting to the human player.

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Scenario Switching

Created by billk on September 10, 2022 6:35 pm

I’ve added the ability to switch scenarios. This also begins the UI work outside of the main game area. Here I’m going from Chaeronea to Granicus (still under construction) and back.

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Loaded Game Screen

Design Diary – August 2022

Created by billk on August 5, 2022 12:42 pm

Hi there! It’s been an interesting time since my last update in coding my hex-and-counter game, Arete: The Battles of Alexander the Great. I visited Gettysburg for the first time and, apart from being impressive and impactful for its history as you’d expect, it’s a fantastic town to hang out and spend some time in. […]

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Loaded Game Screen

Saving and Loading the Game

Created by billk on April 28, 2022 9:06 am

Well all my Find/Replace work paid off and this is exciting. Save and Load work and allow for the all-important “Resume Game” option. Here’s a vid going from a new game to a saved one.Note this also shows a sneak peek at the set-up for The Battle of Chaeronea.

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Chaeronea temples

Design Diary – March 2022

Created by billk on March 27, 2022 3:55 pm

Well, it looks like the weather’s finally warming up for us in the Northeast US. You know what that means. That’s right, more sitting behind a monitor designing and coding, yeah! Thought this would be a good time to document some recent progress as I’m in the weeds now and the changes aren’t as big […]

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Hex-and-Counter on iPad

First Test Running the Game on iPad

Created by billk on February 6, 2022 2:37 pm

This is the first attempt running the game on an iPad Pro as a native app. Not purely native as the game itself isn’t coded with Swift, but in a Swift container and building a real app. This was a tough way to discover that Safari on iOS doesn’t support CSS filters on SVG elements […]

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Game Progress January 2022

Hex-and-Counter Game Progress, January 2022

Created by billk on January 23, 2022 9:11 am

Walkthrough of the game after around 8-9 months of designing and programming. Still under construction with a long way to go, but it’s a full game and – dare I say – fun to play.

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Possible destination hexes

Counter Movement

Created by billk on January 6, 2022 2:44 pm

Long time since my last post, but it’s because I’ve been going full throttle with the development. Fixin’ bugs and takin’ names! Last time I discussed how I went about building a dynamic wargame hex grid with counters. To get this feeling like a game, the next thing we need to do is make those […]

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Hex grid with varying terrain

Building a Wargame Hex Grid

Created by billk on April 28, 2021 6:37 pm

This is going to document some of the first steps I took in planning and creating my digital hex-and-counter wargame. I’ll share some decisions I made and why I made them, touching on technology and design choices. If you haven’t read them already, check out my posts about the use of hexes in Part 1 […]

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Hex grid

Hexes Part 2: In Practice

Created by billk on April 22, 2021 8:37 pm

In part 1 of this two-part post, I gave a brief overview of the history of hexes in tabletop wargames. Now I want to share my initial findings in planning my own digital hex board game and some unique hex geometric characteristics. I think you’ll also see why, to a developer, hexes require a bit […]

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Hexes Part 1: A Brief History

Created by billk on April 17, 2021 10:02 pm

Let’s go over a brief history of hexes in wargames and then I’ll delve into practical application and how I’ll apply it in my design in a follow-up post. Much of this is common knowledge among wargamers, and this is by no means meant to be an extensive history. Instead this is meant to serve […]

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An Idea

Created by billk on April 11, 2021 10:55 pm

During the pandemic, I went deeper down the rabbit-hole of board games. I’ve always been into the hobby and had really started playing wargames in the past few years. It was something I tried to do as a kid but never got into (read: couldn’t find anyone to play with). So I started playing even […]

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