StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Just when 2013 couldnt get more 'exciting' GW announce a Space Hulk game for next year.

GW blog

Storm bolters, power fists, bulky suits of Terminator armour and a claustrophobic corridor full of Genestealers. Space Hulk is one of our classic games that's attracted a cult following over the years and many an evening has been spent by hobbyists pounding up and down cramped passageways blasting Genestealers into bloody chunks. Well there's good news on the horizon because computer games developer Full Control have started work on a new Space Hulk computer game.

You take command of a strike force of Blood Angels Terminators as they make their way through the close confines of the Space Hulk - Sin of Damnation. It's a turn-based game that emulates the look and feel of the board game, but with full 3D animation. Genestealers lurk menacingly while the Terminators use their action points, bolter rounds tear down corridors in overwatch cut-scenes and whole sections of corridor are set alight as the heavy flamer hoses them down. There's a lot of exciting features to this game, which will be coming out next year on PC, Mac and iOS. I'll be sure to post teaser pictures on White Dwarf Daily when I get them.

Who knows, it might actually be half decent!

I'm fairly sure they did this about 20 years ago.

I remember having a copy, for the time the sound and graphics were fairly good. It was real time rather then turn based which made it quite a headache as you were still running a squad so you had to jump from character to character to get them to do things although I think you could pre-program orders into them.

Bedlam wrote:I'm fairly sure they did this about 20 years ago.

Yeah; Space Hulk and Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels. A lot of fun at the time.

It was real time rather then turn based which made it quite a headache as you were still running a squad so you had to jump from character to character to get them to do things although I think you could pre-program orders into them.

Yes; "go there", "stand and face this way", etc. It still was a tough game as I recall.

Wee. Sending in your most bulkily armored troopers into the most cramped spaces imaginable against an enemy than slices through the said bulky armor like a hot knife through butter.

Will we see a return of the 3x3 suicide flamers? Lets hope so!

It's not nearly grimdark enough. Send in the Imperial Guard. But forget to give them ammo!

Make me a videogame of Project Pandora and/or Dwarf King's Hold and I might start caring.

Space Hulk's niche is actually quite well filled by Mantic these days.

Its arguably filled by better mobile games, too. :V

True. But then mobile games can just replicate a board game in toto and no-one cares because ipad expecatations are low

I mean it's not like half of the fun of board and miniatures games is playing with the toy soldiers as physical objects or anything. I mean I played a game at the weekend that I totally can't talk about because it's not real yet, but we were playing it with pretty nice toy soldiers (actually, the figures from the gizzawar boardgame, which are totally choice minis), which were highly appropriate and also nice as Things. And that made it cool, even if we were halfway making the rules up as we went along because that's part of the process of creating a new boardgame.

Although, boardgames these days also appear to be designed by taking a successful game from last year and bolting loads of unnecessary shit on to it. I played Goblins Inc. at the weekend and it is apparently Galaxy Truckers but ruined by tons of extra crap no-one wanted or needed. Hooray. It was 90 minutes for a round and completely unrewarding, I wandered off and watched other people playing Dreadball.

Its sad that board game rips are so much better than poorly-designed actual computer games. It's probably because boardgames are just often more interesting.

And I'd buy the Gizza game just for the minis. Then use them to fight Gundams.

Connor MacLeod wrote:It's not nearly grimdark enough. Send in the Imperial Guard. But forget to give them ammo!

I'm actually thinking of making a Space Hulk mod that I dub Guard Hulk. Since it makes more sense to send the Guard because Termie armor doesn't protect against Stealers anyway .

Just swap out the stealers for termagaunts and keep the same ruleset.

Vendetta wrote:Make me a videogame of Project Pandora and/or Dwarf King's Hold and I might start caring.

Space Hulk's niche is actually quite well filled by Mantic these days.

There is no such thing as market saturation when it comes to Space Marines. And even if there is, their MIGHTY PAULDRONS will be used to shove them out of the way and make room for even more Space Marines.

madd0ct0r wrote:Just swap out the stealers for termagaunts and keep the same ruleset.

Well, part of the reason I went for Guard vs Stealers is because I have a stripped-down Space Hulk set with only the stealers and the cardboard bits, and a Guard army.

Zinegata wrote:

madd0ct0r wrote:Just swap out the stealers for termagaunts and keep the same ruleset.

Well, part of the reason I went for Guard vs Stealers is because I have a stripped-down Space Hulk set with only the stealers and the cardboard bits, and a Guard army.

There are old rules from the Citadel Journal for guard in space hulk. I cant remember which issue, but I've got it on the shelves somewhere.

Stark wrote:Its sad that board game rips are so much better than poorly-designed actual computer games. It's probably because boardgames are just often more interesting.

Hrm that's a very valid observation.

Just to make some sense of it, I hypothesize that the production budget to design and publish a board game these days is far lower than that of a modern computer game, so we see all sorts of ideas coming to fruition and actually being released in tabletop form.
Then from the deluge of good and bad, reviewed and tested by the consumer market (and sometimes refined in iterations by the developers, a process that is once again cheaper than video games), one can just pick the best of the lot and turn their proven ideas into a video game.

Zinegata wrote:Wee. Sending in your most bulkily armored troopers into the most cramped spaces imaginable against an enemy than slices through the said bulky armor like a hot knife through butter.

Heh, there's actually an out-of-universe history to the idea.
IIRC, Terminator armour actually first appeared in Space Hulk, where the Space Marines were supposed to have to fight desperately to ward off the genestealers infesting the hulk. Only later when Terminator armour was introduced to the main fluff did it become the massively powerful one-(superhu)man tank suit we know of now, and only in later editions did Astartes become genetically enhanced supersoldiers.
In modern fluff (and to a lesser extent, even the watered-down 40k tabletop rules, Rending nerf heh), Terminators would easily shoot and punch their way through genestealers with much greater efficiency.
Interestingly, the Tyranid race didn't exist in fiction back then. Only later, when Tyranids were introduced, was it retconned that genestealers were the advance infiltration organisms of that race's massive world-eating Hive Fleets.

Cykeisme wrote:Interestingly, the Tyranid race didn't exist in fiction back then. Only later, when Tyranids were introduced, was it retconned that genestealers were the advance infiltration organisms of that race's massive world-eating Hive Fleets.

Actually Tyranids did exist as far back as the original Rogue Traider book, they were a little different from the current version no specific hive mind was mentioned and there were several fleets active in the galaxy and I don't think they were extra galactic. Genestealers are also in the same book not linked to the Tyranids although back then they had lamphry like faces.

Bedlam wrote:

Cykeisme wrote:Interestingly, the Tyranid race didn't exist in fiction back then. Only later, when Tyranids were introduced, was it retconned that genestealers were the advance infiltration organisms of that race's massive world-eating Hive Fleets.

Actually Tyranids did exist as far back as the original Rogue Traider book, they were a little different from the current version no specific hive mind was mentioned and there were several fleets active in the galaxy and I don't think they were extra galactic. Genestealers are also in the same book not linked to the Tyranids although back then they had lamphry like faces.

Sorry, you are right
They were both around, but the link between the two was not established till much later, then?

The Ymgarl Genestealers (that are now their own type of unit in the latest 'nid codex!) look like they might be a nod toward this out-of-universe history, which is cool if they are.

Cykeisme wrote:Just to make some sense of it, I hypothesize that the production budget to design and publish a board game these days is far lower than that of a modern computer game, so we see all sorts of ideas coming to fruition and actually being released in tabletop form.
Then from the deluge of good and bad, reviewed and tested by the consumer market (and sometimes refined in iterations by the developers, a process that is once again cheaper than video games), one can just pick the best of the lot and turn their proven ideas into a video game.

It isn't just cost, its time; I can talk to Vendetta, have an interesting idea, we can steal shit from existing games, and we can be playing a prototype over dinner using bits from other games. Sure, it might be bad, but there isn't the huge gap between 'interesting idea' and 'playable example' that there can be with a computer game.

And, frankly, that board games can have more advanced or sophisticated mechanics is just fucking funny. Infinite calculator and bookkeeping and impartial umpire should result in Super Boardgames of incredible complexity played in ways conceptually impossible with bits of cardboard and plastic robits, but instead we get Dune II with extra Nose Hair Rendering or even worse, clumsy and simplistic miniatures simulators like XCOM.

Keevan_Colton wrote:

Zinegata wrote:

madd0ct0r wrote:Just swap out the stealers for termagaunts and keep the same ruleset.

Well, part of the reason I went for Guard vs Stealers is because I have a stripped-down Space Hulk set with only the stealers and the cardboard bits, and a Guard army.

There are old rules from the Citadel Journal for guard in space hulk. I cant remember which issue, but I've got it on the shelves somewhere.

CJ 25 I think

also see here: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/expandingthehulk/

I need to get me project pandora or deathball. must choose 1

Gaunts on hulks.. that's thematically fine, but fluff-wise don't the small 'nid gribblies need synapse creatures in close proximity plus with a hive ship nearby (in the same star system at least), without which they just behave like animals? Genestealers are written in the fluff to be uniquely independent, hence they're the only Tyranid type that makes sense on space hulks.
Yes, I realize this is nitpicking

Stark wrote:And, frankly, that board games can have more advanced or sophisticated mechanics is just fucking funny. Infinite calculator and bookkeeping and impartial umpire should result in Super Boardgames of incredible complexity played in ways conceptually impossible with bits of cardboard and plastic robits, but instead we get Dune II with extra Nose Hair Rendering or even worse, clumsy and simplistic miniatures simulators like XCOM.

Indeed, it's ridiculous that (despite having the computational advantage) video games with board game-like gameplay actually tend to end up having simpler mechanics than actual board games.. so simple, in fact, that if they were actual board games they'd fail in the board game market.

Even worse is when they obfuscate the actual mechanics despite their simplicity, thus making it more difficult for players to make informed decisions both on a strategic and tactical level for no good reason.

Zinegata wrote:Wee. Sending in your most bulkily armored troopers into the most cramped spaces imaginable against an enemy than slices through the said bulky armor like a hot knife through butter.

Well in theory that's what all the heavy armor is and Terminators are specifically trained for "Void War" i.e. boarding actions where there are cramped corridors and negligible cover, so all the armor comes in handy, as do the strength and heavy weapons Terminators carry. The training is because even a single, intact 40K ship is a rat's nest of corridors, pipes, ducts and crawl-ways that's incredibly easy to get lost in, especially in the heat of battle.

Cykeisme wrote:Indeed, it's ridiculous that (despite having the computational advantage) video games with board game-like gameplay actually tend to end up having simpler mechanics than actual board games.. so simple, in fact, that if they were actual board games they'd fail in the board game market.

It's not the fact that the mechanics are simple, "simple" mechanics can be a good thing if the rest of the design is focused on presenting the player with interesting choices. For example, Dreadball has deliberately simple and consistent mechanics. Take stat lines, for instance. The stat line for every human player is the same, every Forge Father is the same, every Veer-myn is the same. Likewise, the roles are always the same. Likewise, the equipment and dice pools are always the same. Every guard has the same armour, every guard rolls the same number of dice on the same tests. Those two sets of stats overlap to create the differences between the various teams, so a Veer-myn guard is rolling the same number of dice for any given thing as a Forge Father one, but the target for success is different because of their different stats, but you don't need to remember invidivual stats for every position on every team.

That means the stats and what dice to roll are very easily memorable, you don't have to stop and reference them, and since every dice test is the same (number of dice against required number of successes) you never have to look up what you're doing. The mechanics are simple, but they exist in a context where you are forced to make choices (the first symptom of that is that you don't have enough actions to move all your people every turn, unless you've had a few knocked out, and positional play is really important, since threat zones are a significant bonus, and play doesn't reset on scoring so if you move everyone up you leave your half undefended, you need to move around all the time, but you can never move everyone).

The biggest problem with boardgames on computers, especially X-Com, is that there just aren't any interesting choices to make. There are never any tradeoffs, there's a really obvious best approach which you can do really mechanically, so the only thing that matters is how accurate your guns are because literally the only thing standing between you and victory is the dice rolls.

Its sad that super maths on a computer generally reduces randomness to die rolls (or percentage to hit or whatever) instead of a range of outcomes, which means you either win or are instantly punished.