Lurchbrick Battle Masters PC game

[LurchBrick]

I've uploaded a bug fix as well as created a small campaign to test out the campaign system.

http://members.westnet.com.au/brick27/compgame.html

Simply place the scenario files in the Scenario folder.

[HeroQuestFrance]

Thank you !

[backwoods archer]

HUGE thank you for making this game and your hq games......i have spent many hours playing these!!!!!!!

Don't mean to bring up an old thread....but i feel it's justified!!

[firefly101]

Hello Would anyone be interested in Replacing models with the game board pieces? If so I would change them but I need images or pictures of every unit on their plates, I would need the angles of the images to match the gameboard angle in the pc game. There is will be animations but I can make something so attacks and noted in the game. I don't own this game so I don't have the units to take photo's of. I could also probably cartoon them to match the game look.

[HispaZargon]

Most of the old links of this thread which give access to awesome LurchBrick's files have been unfortunately lost in time...

However, fortunatelly last published versions of those files can be found in the following url, thanks to WayBack Machine in Archive.org, for anyone interested:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230710010 ... pgame.html

[Kurgan]

Is Lurchbrick still around? I would love to see an update on this, even if it's just reposted for all to enjoy!

[HispaZargon]

I have recently been revising Battle Masters game mechanics thanks to LurchBrick's creation, and I experienced so good memmories from last time I played the board game.

I also got the personal challenge of creating the five scenarios of the official campaign described in the board game, which files were not included in LurchBrick's computer game, so here you have them if you want to play it:

LurchBrick_BM_Official_Scenarios_by_HispaZargon.zip

Additionally, here are some personal comments I have to the computer simulator of the game:

The obvious aesthetical deviations that the computer game has compared with the original board game are not a big problem to play it, but it is true that first time you play it, you don't know which unit in the PC corresponds which each unit in the board game, which is confusing but after a few turns you get familiarized with their 'new' aspect. Probably the less obvious ones are the mounted knights, since they appear to be foot knights in the computer, and it adds some drama to the game when you see that they are not able to enter in the Tower, of course because they are actually riding horses.

The AI of the opponents I think is rather well implemented. You really have the feeling of playing against a human player, so it is great.

About the computer game rules, I would say they are 95% like the board game ones. I can confirm that even the Tower is destroyed after 3 direct impacts of the Mighty Cannon, however I have observed that the Ogre rules are not correctly implemented and they give a bit of artificial advantage to the Chaos player. Ogre movement and attack rules are not like the board game because the computer game always allows an intact Ogre to move 3 squares and attack 3 times in his turn, following whatever order the Chaos player wants. According to the board game, the order is instead randomly determined by drawing Ogre action cards from a special deck. The number of cards in such deck is reduced by one per each wound suffered by the Ogre in battle. It is true that if the Ogre suffers in the computer game i.e. just 1 wound, his movement maximum range is always reduced to 2 squares instead of reducing the number of attacks per turn, which is another bias on its rules.

About the scenario editor included, I think it is so useful, however, I detected that it has some limitations. First of all, it does not allow defining unit deployment in Ford tiles (not Fords in the mat board), nor in cut hexagons at board edges, however the board game rules allows all of it. Secondly, the scenario editor does not allow deploying the two new units included in the European expansions of the board game, which are the Chaos Lord and the Imperial Lord, units which has 1 life point only. And third, the scenario editor does not include an army builder which may automatically calculate the total points value of the army according to the points values defined in the European expansions of the board game; this would allow creating custom scenarios with balanced armies in an easy way by comparing the total points of each army. Another interesting feature that the editor does not include is it does not allow creating a scenario where deployment is based in which Battle card is drawn like in one of the official sceneries.

And campaign mode I think works Ok, however no Elite tokens are given to surviving units like in the board game, so it is not possible to play in the game with Elite units in the subsequent scenario. Additionally, the computer game does not automatically account the Campaign points scored by each army, so calculating the total to determine the Campaign winner must be done by the players externally by their own. Finally, unfortunatelly I detected a bug when playing a campaign in Solo mode. For some reason, if a scenario automatically starts after finishing another scenario in Solo mode, the game sometimes asks me to deploy some or all of my opponent's units, instead of asking me to just deploy the units of my army, since I am playing Solo. I by-passed it by exiting the current game and playing he next scenario by manually selecting the corresponding file in the "Play a Scenario" menu.

Well, if LurchBrick reads all this, I think it would be great if an updated version of the game could see the light sometime in the future, including all these improvements, and original miniatures models, if possible (maybe the amount of free 3D models uploaded in Thingiverse of the original BM miniatures could help in such task, even if they are not shown animated in the computer, just like static miniatures... well, a tastes matter). Dreaming is free...

[LurchBrick]

Hey all,

I've updated the link in the 1st post.

Appreciate the time you took to review this. Whilst I haven't touched this in quite a number of years, I'll take a look at the code and see if I can remember how to at least fix the bugs you mentioned.

[HispaZargon]

Wow, that would be great! Thanks for doing it.

Well, no idea how is the game coded, but from my knowledge, I guess solving the detected bug, fixing Ogre rules and allowing deployment of units in Ford tiles are the easiest topics of such list to be solved.

In a second phase, maybe adding the Lord new units by using the same unit graphics available but giving them just 1 life point, and adding the army builder unit point values counter in the Editor do not look difficult, hopefully, and they would be good addons.

Improving the campaign mode adding Elite units and the automatic account of Campaign points of course look more challenging to be done in a short time, but as said, just guessing about the code architecture from my side. If these improvements are also added, I think the game will definetively be so complete.

And of course, allowing deployment of units in cut hexagons, and introducing aesthetical improvements to make the game close to the original would take much more dedication, and not sure if worth for everyone.

Well, long wishlist... can't wait to see how many if those wishes are actually afordable!

[Kurgan]

Super cool Lurchbrick! I like how you can swap out the graphics (as good as they are) for your own custom sprite/frames and swap the sounds out for your own in these games.

Thank you for your hard work and dedication!