The Wargamer

Talacosi

TA.LA.CO.SI. is an acronym for tactical land combat simulator. This game is a real-time online multiplayer tactical combat simulation developed by Historical Software Corporation. Recall those halcyon weekend afternoons of yesteryear playing Avalon Hill's old Panzer Leader board game and wistfully imagining that it could be more realistic, right down to detailed terrain maps with accurate line-of-sight checks and real fog-of-war effects and individual combat resolutions and everything else? But keep those same basic scenarios and unit counters, and then put it all on a computer with high resolution graphics and pan-tilt-zoom views and be able to play a scenario with your buddies over a network just like a professional military combat simulation exercise? What may have been fantasy daydreaming long ago has been reality for several years, and now a commercial game product is available for casual gamers. Talacosi puts gamers right smack down onto the virtual game board alongside their units so close that they can just about reach out and touch cardboard again.

Description

Talacosi is a real-time WWII platoon level tactical simulation game for Windows that has true 3D graphics and positional 3D sounds of units. Units are represented on a digital terrain map that uses real-world terrain elevation data mapped into 100 meter grid-squares. The unit counters have images and text representing the unit type and state and can move to any location in a grid-square. The main map interface is a true height-mapped 3D map with the unit counters superimposed on the map. Lines-of-sight to enemy units are calculated based on visibility and the terrain modeling. Players can be exposed to fog-of-war conditions in observing opposing side units. Fuel and ammunition logistics are accounted for with unit fuel and ammunition consumption and resupply. The emphasis is on WWII platoon level modeling; however, individual units can represent individual troops or vehicles, up to battalion sized units, including modern units for contemporary simulations.

Multiplayer play is integrally accomplished via LAN or Internet connections by Client game programs to the central standalone Server program. The game has an internal time step of 30 seconds for conducting movements and fires; however, various time-compression settings of 0.1 to 10 times game time are also available. The simulation internals are calculated at the internal time-step in the Server executable program. The Server then communicates game updates, via TCP connections over LAN or Internet, to any number of connected game Clients. The respective Clients make heavy use of 3D graphics to display the game updates and unit locations and status once the game updates have been received; the Server itself does not require a 3D graphics card. The 32-bit programs run on Windows 2000, XP, and the 64-bit versions on Windows.

Technical Issues

Technical issues is probably an understatement. Someplace in the documentation was a note that there is a steep learning curve for this game. As with many things, there does not appear to be any one aspect of Talacosi that is too difficult to grasp but taken together comprehensively there is a very large volume of technical information which users need to review to set up and play this game. I did not receive a copy of the game itself to review but rather a demo DVD which contained several tutorial videos and other documentation such as a Player Guide and Technical Reference. All of these are available for download from Historical Software's website. Needless to say, I cannot speak firsthand about installation issues and actually playing the game, but I will convey my impressions from the 2-hour tutorial and review of the other material over the past few weeks.

First things first, Talacosi is not your typical computer game with simple interfaces for exchanging game turns via PBEM or TCP/IP nor does it have an AI for solitaire play. It is designed specifically for real-time multiplayer games over a Client-Server network. Therefore, someone knowledgeable about such things needs to host a game to ensure connections to the Server are made and maintained. Also, players need to have all the hardware and network connectivity to make it all happen. This is not really such a challenge these days and the game's tutorials and manuals provide helpful guidance for setting up and running a game. Players simply need to be aware of these non-trivial issues and understand that Talacosi is not exactly something for the casual gamer. And yet, it is interesting to see what is currently available and perhaps some who read this may be willing try wargaming at a higher level such as this.