“Time’s up, Mr. Stone.” After glancing at his PMN pocket watch and calling a halt, the geezer in the crumpled corduroy suit removes his spectacles, and starts packing up his stuff. Into the satchel goes the half-finished Battle of Kohima tapestry, the dented tartan thermos flask, and the copy of The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills. I could beg for an extension – explain that I only need a few more months of peace and quiet to finish Tally-Ho, my unripe aerial-wargame-with-a-twist – but I know there’s no point. Under that corrugated breast pocket beats a heart as hard as a Jagdtiger glacis plate.
Blimey, where did the time go? My six-month game-making sabbatical has positively flown past, and although I have one and a half releases to show for it, the historical title I’d hoped to get done is, I’m afraid to say, still some way from completion.
On the plus side, I return to the pleasant grindstone that is Tally-Ho Corner with a promising pre-alpha on my workbench, finely honed GameMaker skills, and a clear understanding of the pros and cons of AI-aided game development. Having abandoned more than one work-in-progress since the start of the year, I’m now under no illusion about my creative shot traps. Crucially, unlike its shelved forerunners, Tally-Ho started producing pleasure and surprises early in the dev process, and wasn’t an intimidating tangle of code by the end of month #1.
What can you expect from the next six moons of THC? While the foxers may not return immediately (Roman has agreed to provide weekly Romanesques) in all other respects it will, I hope, be business as usual until Christmas at least. Anticipate an unpredictable mix of news and reviews, extended coverage of the obscure but deserving, and occasional competitions and digressions. Airlifters (the generous Cornerites whose regular payments keep THC lively and largely ad-free), I’ll be unpausing your subscriptions at the end of next week.
As Napoleon almost certainly didn’t say:
In war[-game design], as in prostitution, amateurs are often better than professionals.
(And there was me fearing I’d never find an opportunity to crowbar in that “quote”).
Welcome back! It would be interesting to know what happened to website traffic over the past 6 months, providing that’s information you’d be willing to share, of course. As someone who has a job that involves online eyeballs, it would be useful, even if it was just a narrative account of coarse trends, e.g. “hits slowly tailed off to around 10%” or something similar.
Judging by wordpress.com stats, traffic fell by approximately 50% during the sabbatical. For example, the ‘A2Z’ fragments I’ve been posting every Monday recently, receive about half the hits of a full-length 2025 A2Z article.
Thanks!
Sounds like the sabbatical was at least partially successful then.
Looking forward to your writing accompanying my morning coffee once again. I’ll get my camera equipment dusted off in anticipation of the occasional informative tour (if you decide to still do those).
Welcome back!
Glad to have you back, and eager to support.
Hurrah!
Welcome back, Tim! Glad you had a blast with your experiment. Romanesque is a great game by the way, I bought it on Itch.io.
Can’t wait to discover what you have for us!
Welcome back, and a promising work in progress would itself be a great outcome from a six month sabbatical.
That you also happened to devise, create, publish and sell a game too? Tremendous success.
Nice for us that you’re back in the cockpit but hope progress will continue on the side hustle.
So, last picture we can see in this article is the game pre-alpha, am I right ? Did I miss something, or can we just (for now) guess it’s a D-Day related game? (the photo seems to show troops preparation or entranchments making). If there is an article about it I missed, please tell me!
Providing a rapid rather than authoritative answer:
– the unfinished wargame {Tally-Ho} is described in the first paragraph as an “unripe aerial-wargame-with-a-twist” and so implies flight or, given Tim, radio/television antennae*
– the last image took my mind to Pointe du Hoc, though it undersells the stonkingness of the cliffs; and that is indeed what it is
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4567090/Virtual_DDay_Pointe_du_Hoc/
*I’m looking forward to pirate radio being the topic for the next THC game jam
Wow, Thx for this rapid and satisfying (even if non-authoritative 😃) answer !!!
I know you did an article about using AI to help you code, but I at least would be interested in some specifc examples of how it helped or hindered your development.
What were you writing the game in, what feature did it allow you to implement, and what just couldn’t you get it to help solve?
Also, what ultimately stopped your development?
I can’t wait to get back to my F1 management game i started in…oooh… 1999, but a career in making games has gotten in the way and when i retire, i hope to speed it into existence with AI…
I’ve used GameMaker for all my projects. AI has been really useful, but occasionally I’ve encountered weird blindspots. For example, in one of the games I ended up shelving I needed to manipulate a map image drawn behind a static player vehicle object. When the player pressed W the image was meant to scroll downwards. S scrolled it upwards, and A and D caused it to rotate right and left respectively. I was struggling to get the map to move up and down properly after rotation and requested help.
Despite lots of careful/detailed prompting and hours of testing, the likes of Grok and Copilot all failed to find a solution. Eventually Gemini provided what I needed along with this lovely bit of explanation:
“I’m glad I could help you untangle that! Matrix transformations are essentially like standing on a spinning merry-go-round: if someone on the ground yells “Walk North!”, you have to do some quick mental math to figure out which way “North” is relative to the direction you’re currently spinning.
The lengthdir functions are the “mental math” that keeps your vehicle moving across the room’s grid instead of the map’s grid.
By calculating the movement vector before the matrix is applied (or counter-rotating the input), you decouple the gameplay logic (moving down the room) from the visual logic (the map’s orientation). This keeps your physics predictable while allowing for complex visual effects like that “pinned” rotation.”
Code complexity caused me to step away from the above project. I was beginning to feel overwhelmed.
Welcome back, sir!
Thank you for Romanesque I had a great time, but also looking forward to this old engine gathering steam again. I also started a mini sabbatical. But due to my creativity department being an empty office, I have dedicated my time to busywork:
I am translating (subtitles) a German Thirty Years War historical drama based on the Wallenstein biography by Golo Mann. Maybe interesting for some fellow Cornerites? Only time will tell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_XPvJBF06s&t=7s
Great to have you back, and excited for what little you’ve already said about Tally-Ho! Also, I assume that final screenshot is from one of the scrapped projects, but it sure does look interesting…
You need to send an email update to people that you are about to start charging them money again. Also some demos of the half finished game!
My dear fellow! One of my favourite things in the world is reading your masterful prose with Earl Grey and toast accompaniment! Which reminds me how apt the name ‘MicroProse’ was, wasn’t it? When one considers half the box contents contained the simulation and the other half a hefty manual with the history, tactics and units recognition. I spent many hours (if not more than actually playing the games) reading those wonderful things on trains (sans computer).
I remember asking Polovski (perhaps ten years ago) if he would consider making ‘Wings Over Mig Alley’ or ‘Wings Over the Pacific’. Got any news? A Korean War sim from the ‘Full Canvas Jacket’ gentlemen would be perfect timing ’round about now, wouldn’t it? As much as I would like getting IL-2 Korea I’m not sure my wallet moths will allow the bank heist.
Speaking of WOFF, I was re-reading Ernst Udet’s memoirs (Ace of the Black Cross) and I’m sure you’ve already seen this (but in case not), this series is absolutely brilliant: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOWnCqHDRIVJbYYRuYuJQ4VQ0grtSb66E
Getting in the mood to play WOFF I re-watched ‘The Great Waldo Pepper’ and was reminded how Ernst Kessler’s character is based on Ernst Udet. Ah, what a great man. I can’t recommend his book highly enough (of which there are several versions and editions). Please keep writing more Tim, your words and insights are an absolute inspiration!