Welcome

Welcome to the GeoComb blog.

This is my first dipping of the toe into the water of the blogosphere (as a practitioner, that is).

Let me cut to the chase - this blog will be about the building of a place for online strategic gaming - especially historical gaming. I may stray from that focus from time to time, as the fit takes me. This will involve building elements for:

• map editing
• scenario design
• order of battle management
• troop deployment
• one or more game rule sets
• game play engine(s)

As of March 2010, the first is largely complete, and the next several well on the way, though no doubt not nearly as well as I would like to imagine.

This project brings together a few of my interests.

I have been playing strategic games since I was a child (first chess, then later more historical games, of the sort published back then by Avalon Hill, Game Designers Workshop, and the like), as well as table-top battlegaming, mostly in the Ancient period, but also Napoleonic and Early Modern. For most of that time I have played around with game and rule design. I never really intended to publish anything - it was for my private satisfaction and edification, and for that of my friends.

I have a fascination with maps likewise dating from childhood. I never studied geography at school (although I did study history through to post-graduate level), which is a pity. Despite my early lack of interest and education I have come to realise (this will come as a surprise to nobody) that geography underlies a great deal of what we humans do. You can't have more than a very shallow understanding of our current society unless you understand the events that have led to it, and you can't understand those until you can visualise the stage on which they are played out. This is obvious when you consider military history (which will admittedly end up being the focus of this project) but applies equally to the siting of cities, the extent of tribal or national territories, the skills and economies that develop in certain regions, and how different regions interact with their neighbours. The more abstruse areas of human experience - philosophy, mathematics, theology and so on. - may appear at first glance to be exempted, but this is not so. They are practised, at all times and in all places, by people embedded in a particular society, which in turn developed in the context of a particular geography.

Are you still with me?

Quite separately (almost accidentally, and somewhat against my will), I got into the world of computing about twenty years ago, and have been making my living that way ever since. I have never really thought of myself as a programmer, but as a provider of solutions that happen to be delivered via a computer program. I care about economy, elegance, and beauty of design. I don't promise that all of these will be evident in what you see here, but I will try not to disappoint. As part of that journey, I have fooled about over the years with using game design as a vehicle for learning whatever technology I happened to be involved with at the time. None of these efforts was more than an exercise, and none resulted in a finished product, but this one may be different - who knows?

Stick around, and you will see how I have come as far as I have to date, and follow me as I take it further. If any readers (assuming there are any readers) care to offer suggestions or ideas, I am more than happy to have them. I have found nothing so far on line dealing with exactly such things, but I trust I am not the only person in the world who will take an interest.