Full size battle simulations?

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PsykoOps

Master Knight
I'm watching a bbc or H channel documentary series decisive battles and came to think how close with computers of 2009 you could get to actual 1:1 scale simulations? This program was done in 2004 and uses rome total war for the 'simulation' which is more like a demo. If you could have modern computers and maybe even networked modern computers complete with water cooling etc. couldn't you actually have a battle with 70.000 soldiers on the field? This kind of game technology doesn't simulate everything perfectly but just the visual 1:1 simulation would be pretty impressive and I would think that historians might like the idea.
 
It really depends on how detailed each of those 70,000 troops are. If you want them all to look like, say, Empire Total War, you'd need a mightily powerful computer. But if you just made the troops represented by 2D sprites, it wouldn't be that resource intensive.

Oh, and it also depends how the physics engine is. If it's built as an ultra-realistic physics engine, it'll be a lot more resource intensive than simpler ones.
 
For reference I used this show and it uses RTW engine. It's not very detailed and not that heavy with physics either. Of course you could go for less detail also.

[Edit to add] For the thread let's keep it about engines that already exist such as RTW.
 
If they used the Medieval Total War or Shogun Total War engines it would be a walk in the park, seeing as I could get several thousand troops on screen easily with my own regular computer. And the year was 2000 or so, mind you! :razz:
 
Depends on what you need this simulation for. Realtime? Needs to be very simplified and like a game, you definitely need AI on the group level, not individual units.
If you just want a simulation which you can compute and prerender, then I have one word - Massive.

It's a software package for movie makers, but I haven't found any other crowd simulation frameworks with better battle simulation options.
 
Since its just a simulation of how things went, so independent characters don't need to be that detailed. Of course if you think that they should redo the show feel free to call the makers of the series. 
 
I'm not thinking about redoing the show. I was more like thinking how did things really look like in crecy and agincourt for example. The game engines we have now would of course need to be tuned to some extent to really 'see' it. Things such as quiver size, shooting speed, how long it takes to get more arrows from the baggage boys etc. and of course the effect of terrain and once that is littered with corpses how that would effect the fight. One way to do it would be to script the action and then render it in 1/10th speed or even 1/100th speed and record it. On the other hand if you'd keep the game mechanics and AI intact you could try out different scenarious such as how romans could've defeated hannibal in cannae. There was actually a show that I remember that was very similar, it had a team of players such as a family and they took on historic battles in RTW.
 
There's a game coming out in Q1 2010, called Scourge of War: Gettysburg, which will have its sprites represent 3 men, meaning that armies will be ****ing huge.  I think that's a close as you're gonna get, though of course like above said the graphics may not be Empire: Total War level.  But each man to his own.
PsykoOps said:
I There was actually a show that I remember that was very similar, it had a team of players such as a family and they took on historic battles in RTW.

Haha, Time Commanders!  Best show on the telly.
 
Hmm... I'm gonna have a look around around for RTW if I can find unit size changers from some place. Just to test how much my computer can run. I'll let you guys know if I can find that mod from some place and maybe even make a vid of some kind :smile:
 
I tried google and searched mod forums but couldn't find anything except one program that I can't seem to get to work. If anyone has any tips please post.
 
Well asking for a 70.000 person battle and to render it in a decent manner would take a very good computer. If you wanted to have the soldiers behavior be realistic then you would need one hell of a computer, but if it was just a simple stab, block & repeat then it would be much easier. Since in RTW has somwhat realistic soldiers then I think that if you got a few Gb of ram then it will probably work.

GL  :cool:
 
So now I just have to save money enough to buy a multicored super platform that I can dumb 16gb of ram and ****loads of more for the graphics processor and add water cooling etc. Sounds like a fun idea but I don't think I'll have that kind of money. Also you would need someone to hack the RTW engine too for it to work :sad:
 
No you wouldn't need to hack the engine, a few mods already remove the unit limit within the game, and besides, those computer already exist in universities, and failing access to them, you could always combine the processing power two or more computers to get it to work.
 
Darthmod Ultimate Commander Edition - standard infantry unit size becomes 300 so you can easily get battle of 10,000 men going on a regular basis.
 
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