SpawnPoint - Where Game Begins

Battle Command

Features

• CIVILIAN VERSION FREE TO DOWNLOAD AND PLAY.
• Powerful and easy to use 3D and 2D map based user interface.
• Units are individual, section, or platoon/battery sized units.
• Move your units by issuing waypoints by clicking on the map.
• Multiple players over LAN and Internet, each controlling specific forces.
• Real time with 30 second time steps, time compression adjustable up to 10X.
• Detailed combat results, movement, and visibility/LOS models.
• Positional sound effects (movement, weapons, etc.) and TTS speech reports.
• IR sights (2G FLIR, NVD, etc.), radar (surface search, air search, JSTARS), smoke, and illumination modeling.
• Aviation assets return to off-map "replenish" and "hold" areas between missions over map.
• 3D terrain height maps with 100m grid squares.  Maps are from NASA SRTM90 data.
• Automated single and grouped unit pathfinding.
• Explicit ammunition and fuel resupply capabilities, however this is rarely used given the time and scale of most scenarios.

Battle Command was designed from the ground up for head-to-head multi-player play over a LAN or the Internet. You can also play solitaire.

Scenario creation involves creating a map from digital terrain information, setting grid-square terrain information, creating map graphics to overlay on the terrain in the display, creating templates for units that will be used in the scenario, and finally, creating a unit order of battle and other scenario related information. Several program utilities are available to assist in scenario creation:

1. Map Creator - Allows you to specify the map dimensions and overlay graphics bitmaps, along with map terrain default values. The program then creates an empty map database file with the dimensions in the proper format.

2. Map Elevation Utility - Allows the importation of downloaded digital terrain information (height elevations)into the map database.

3. Terrain Editor - Allows the modification of map terrain grid-squares using a graphic interface. For example, a satellite map can be superimposed over the map grid-squares and the user can select what type of terrain to set for each grid-square based on the corresponding satellite image area.

4. Map Overlay Creator - This program uses the map grid-square terrain data and creates a stylized 2D map of the area. It will use tile and other images selected by the user, and full map creation image and other settings can be saved as a file. The process is as follows:

a)  The user selects various images to represent grass, dirt, water, roads, crops, trees, buildings, and other types of terrain and vertical terrain.
b)  The user selects and loads a map database file.
c)  The map overlay program goes through the map terrain database in multiple passes, each time adding new terrain or vertical type images to an overall map image bitmap file covering the entire map.
d)  The first pass is for the bottom level terrain,swatches, with each swatch covering the bottom of a 100m grid-square.
e)  The second pass is for terrain that follows a linear nature, such as streams and gullies. These images are aligned to neighboring grid-squares and superimposed over the underlying terrain image.
f)   Road images are then aligned and superimposed over the terrain images. Roads will automatically line up on straight and diagonal grid-squares.
g)  Vertical terrain such as trees and forests are then added. Based on the vertical terrain density value, few or many tree images may be randomly positioned and added in the grid-square.
h)  Building images are then added. Buildings can be block-aligned or randomly positioned.
i)  The map grid is then created if desired. The map grid delineates 100m grid-squares.

5. Unit Creator - The unit creator allows creating and opening blank unit database files so those files can be edited and subsequently saved as templates. These templates can then be used in order of battle creation as copies of these unit templates.

6. Scenario Editor - The scenario editor allows the selection of a map file to be used with the scenario, inputting the scenario fuel and ammunition cargo databases, scenario start and end times, and other scenario specific values. Additionally, an order of battle for each side specifying each unit in the scenario, and a username list, is created. The scenario files are finally saved and the complete scenario directory must be copied to both server and client computers to be used. Server and client computers can then load the respective scenario files simultaneously, connect, and begin game play.