After many false starts over the years, I’ve (Dave Mackey) managed to release Civil War Strategy 2.0. I already see a few minor items I need to correct – but nothing that inhibits gameplay, in fact I’ve played several games with my wife without issue!
The new version’s greatest improvement is that it now runs on Windows natively – there is no need to run it via a DOS emulator like DOSBox as has been necessary up until this time. There have been a number of other small changes but nothing too exciting. The goal for 2.0 was simply to get the game up and running on Windows. The source code has had numerous lines changed in the process to make it compatible with a Windows compiler (QB64).
If you find any bugs, please let me know. A helpful README.txt file is included with the game, please take a minute to read it over. It includes information on the third party libraries that were utilized in the creation of the game as well as a more detailed note on the changes between versions.
I wanted to get this game out as soon as possible because it has brought me so much enjoyment over many years and I know that it has done similarly for others. I wanted to see it experienced by new generations and moving it to Windows is a first step.
In the future I have a number of enhancements in mind, but I intend to keep the game quite true to Hutsell’s vision. Enhancements currently under consideration include:
- Fixing a few areas that have been broken since the old versions from what Mr. Hutsell’s intent as indicated in the game manual was.
- Making it so that armies that cannot be drilled do not appear in the list of armies to drill.
- Fixing the random events so that they display again.
- Improving the display for modern monitors.
It is my humble opinion that this game is still extremely playable after so many years…I hope that it will perhaps attract those who have enjoyed pixel based games in more recent years, as well as the immensely popular Minecraft.
Yes!!! Yes!!! Yes!!! No matter how many different games I play, this one does not EVER get old. Thank you so much for making this compatible with modern OS’s
Hello. I have found one bug – if you do something with your ships, then save the game (Files > Save), then go back to the main menu, you can move the ships a second time.
A couple of minor requests, if you do develop a new version: 1) for old fogeys like me, it would be nice to be able to resize the game (make the display larger); no need to change anything in the display except make everything larger; and 2) it would be nice not to have to hit the “any key” so many times during the game; messages should time out after a few seconds if the user doesn’t do anything.
Hi Russell! Thanks for the feedback. You can make the screen larger by pressing Alt+Enter when you have the game option. Alt + Enter again should cause it to resize again.
Also have noted your bug report regarding ships for future patching.
I’ll keep your suggestion about the any key occurring less frequently as I have opportunity to make updates. 🙂
Love the game, been playing since it first came out. Any way to download/play on a ipad.
Hi John,
Glad you are enjoying the games! The games, except Civil War Strategy 2.0 were created for DOS. DOSBox is a popular option for running DOS games on more modern operating systems. It does look like there are some DOSBox implementations available for the iPad. You could download one of those and see if you can get it to work…I don’t have an iPad to try with. If you do, I’d love to hear about it!
Dave
Hi, thanks for the quick response. I currently play on my PC/Win and that works fine. I’ll ask my tech savy son to take a look at the ipad option. Thanks again!
Hello, firstly let me thank you for keeping these great games alive, they are still very entertaining and replayable after all these years. I was wondering if you have any plans to port them to android? Im sure its a tremendous task but i think they would do well on smartphones, id even be willing to pay a dollar or two to purchase them