Work on Steel & Steam progresses at an increased pace. I’ve been going over all of my code and updating it to support two different sorts of games: the US map and the NE map.
As a refresher, the US map covers the US and Canada and is a macro-level sort of game, and the game will go back to its V1 roots. The NE map, generated to support the V2 game, is being modified to work like the V1 game, but with a different scale. For the US map, properties and payoffs are in $500 increments. For the NE map, amounts are in $100 increments. It’s a smaller game scale-wise, but will still be a rich experience and take some time to play. There will be some rules differences for the smaller game, but the flavor will be similar overall.
The biggest challenge at this point is refactoring existing code. V2 was a different game than V1, though there were similarities. I cannot simply drop the V2 scripts into the V3 workspace. Additionally, I cannot drop the V1 scripts into place, because some improvements were made in the V2 versions, even without taking game similarities into account. That said, some code was transferable, but not all.
I got the city distribution analysis code finished and was able to tune the variables for the NE kit. That took a bit of work as it was part of the NE backport to a V1 style of game. But, I’m happy with the results. The next major bit will be property valuation, which had several differences between the V1 & V2 games.
Once all of the data is in, map and card generation will follow and play test kits will be ready. I can’t wait to see this hit the table again.