2025 Quarter Three Update

Hi all,

The end of the year is in sight, and we would like to share our third quarterly update for 2025.

There has been no shortage of news and updates over the previous three months.

Before we dive into all that happened, we would like to thank all of you for the continuing support. We continue to see first time customers, as well as the return of many to buy additional titles. Without these sales, we would be struggling to deliver all that we have planned.

Moving onto the news, if you haven’t read our first two 2025 Quarterly Updates you can find them on the following links: Quarter One and Quarter Two.

A new title for the Sword & Siege series, Age of Longbow Volume I: Hundred Years War was released in August. This title follows on from the series initial release, Crusades: Book I. The response to both titles as well as the recently released Sword & Siege Demo fills us with confidence for the titles to follow.

Our ‘Game of the Week’ promotion has gone from strength to strength. We have seen very solid interest and traffic when each title is highlighted on Monday, with people calling out the book recommendations as especially useful.

To make certain that all can check all the linked information, here are the Quarter Three, Game of the Week blog posts and titles chronologically.

We have continued with the update cycle across multiple series.

With the release of Panzer Campaigns: Poland ’39, we continued the task of updating the related remaining titles and series that had begun in quarter two. Moving all titles onto version 4.05.3, saw the 1943 Eastern Front series, Western Front 1944, Western Front Blitzkrieg & Italian and Poland ’39 titles updated. This completed the Panzer Campaign titles and was followed by the Modern Campaigns and First World War Campaigns series. We subsequently moved all titles to version 4.05.3h2, completed in one (very big) release.

Civil War Battles moved to version 4.05.5. There were three rounds of updates moving all titles to the same level. You can read about each of the updates in the following links: Part I, Part II, and Part III.

The first Napoleonic Battles titles were updated to version 4.09.3 in late September. Subsequent titles will be updated in quarter four.

Beyond game of the week posts and game updates we included a number of after-action reports.

Player Paweł Pietroń shared his play by email experience in the same blog post covering the Poland ’39 update.

Alexey provided a Ligny and Quatre Bras after action report. He was kind enough to both publish a blog post and provide a podcast-style audio version available here. Alexey co-authored with Rich, the Introduction to the WDS Napoleonic Battles Series that was released previously in five parts. If you have any interest in the Napoleonic titles, this is a must read series of posts: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part V.

We provided another expansion packs for recent titles. We are not fans of the ‘paid DLC’ approach and would prefer to provide any additional content as part of future updates.

Dani Asensio provided twenty-five new scenarios for his Panzer Campaigns: Orel ‘43 title, adding the September 1943, Bryansk offensive. All the details were included in our quarter two update. You can read more about the expansion pack and what was included here.

Looking Forward

There is a lot happening, and we continue to have very full schedules. We wanted to share a range of new items that will both increase game accessibility, and shape future titles.

The first news item is that our new Menu Program, version 5.00, is being released today.

The menu program has been completely rewritten. There are several differences between this version of the Menu Program and the previous one. The most visually obvious one is that the list of games is now grouped by game series. You will also, hopefully, notice a considerable difference in the start-up speed of the new version.  The list of games is wider than before to cater for longer folder names. In addition, there are extra buttons available whose functionality is discussed below.

The screenshot above shows the functions of the new buttons as well as how to access further functionality by right-clicking on parts of the user interface. As in the previous version, double-clicking on a Game File will open the selected file and the Open button offers the same functionality. In the screenshot above, the Campaign Antietam game would be run. In addition, double-clicking on a Game Folder will open the Games’ install folder.

There are a range of functionalities included via context menus when you right-click on various entries.

Also, for the first time, a Version Report is included.

The Version Information is color-coded. Red indicates that your version can be updated either via a full installation or via an update exe. Orange indicates that the install is up to date, but an update exe was used rather than doing a full install (Guadalcanal Naval Battles in the above screenshot in contrast with Jutland).

Note: The Menu Program needs to access the Internet in order to properly run the Version Report. Internet access is only required for this one function however. Everything else is handled locally.

There is a range of additional functionality, you can download the readme file here, and the installer for the new Menu here. We hope you find the new menu program and improvement over the old, and this is really an easier way to manage and access your WDS library.

Our next item of news is that we have partnered with Greentree games, the publisher of the recently released Burden of Command. We have purchased their 3D terrain graphics as a basis for us to start upgrading and standardizing our graphics across series. Many of their assets are in the same format as the Tiller graphics, as many have a structural lineage back to Talonsoft days. We will be adjusting their work to suit our titles and this resource will allow us deliver improved 3D environments much more quickly than if we were creating the assets from scratch. Later in this post we will share some initial implementations of the Burden of Command graphics in WDS titles.

In tandem with the purchase of the Burden of Command graphics, we have also purchased 1,100 3D models from Wargame3D. These 3D models cover vehicles, aircraft and even entrenchments. Here some example shots of some of the models:

The models are all digital, and at a level where we can add details to them, or just simply paint them to the desired result. It is then easy to rotate and position them for in-game use.

To help illustrate some of our initial testing of these new assets in game, we will share some examples.

The following screenshots are taken in American Revolutionary War, the upcoming new title in the Musket & Pike series. You can see the use of ground, trees, and detailed graphics like fences. Please note, this is an early implementation, we would expect these would evolve before release. There are seasonal differences as seen with the fall trees in the second shot, following.

A full preview of ARW is slated to come out sometime in December, which will included a rough release target date.

The purchase of the Burden of Command and Wargame3D assets, marks a move to make the 3D graphics in WDS series more playable. We believe an improved 3D experience will make our titles more attractive to a broader demographic of players. We are looking at all series to see how to improve, or in some cases add 3D. The main aim though is to build our graphics out consistently, so they can be shared across games.

This increased focus on 3D graphics started with our hiring of additional art resources earlier this year. To test out what was possible, we selected a title to be our proof of concept as we tried out new resources and processes. Squad Battles: Falklands was chosen as it had very few vehicles, simple terrain requirements and limited nationalities.

Following is a description of some of the tests and changes made within Falklands, all designed to be used in future updates and new titles.

The first addition was the enabling of a third 3D zoom level. We added a 300-pixel hex size to the existing 100 and 200-pixel hexes. These three shots show a comparison of the three, 3D zoom levels. The largest 3D zoom level is for either 4K or ultra-wide screens. All shots that follow were taken on a 3440 x 1440 screen.

These additional shots show the equivalent, three 2D shots. We are recreating most of these graphics at a higher resolution, but at least you can see that we are trying to tie together the different zoom levels with equivalent colors and graphics. When finished, all the elements will be harmonized between 2D and 3D.

From the shots above you can see some examples of the Burden of Command terrain adjusted for the Falklands. We used some of their base hexes, but then added additional color and details, such as grass, to localize the look. We expect we can improve the look even further in the future as we have limitations in our current engine with transparency, something we plan to fix.

Here are a few other terrain shots in 3D from the Falklands.

Beyond terrain, we have looked at our vehicle and soldier models. For the vehicles, we have used either Wargame3D models where available or custom created vehicles. Following are some sample vehicles created for Falklands:

The beauty of these models is that they can both be used for our 2D unit boxes and in game as 3D models. Here are a few examples of vehicles in game:

Vehicles are some of the most time intensive resources needed and one of the reasons we have focused on a title with a lesser number. This will be a factor for all titles going forward as there will be a reasonably large number of vehicles required. No matter what, we expect that as we build out our inventory of models, we will be able to reuse or repaint as required.

The other area where we have been creating some foundational work is infantry models. Following are images of both British paras and Argentine infantry before placement in game. These were all hand illustrated, and created from scratch. The intention is that the models are universal, i.e. we can use them for a range of nationalities with a change of uniform, helmets, and other kit as a differentiator. A lot of work has gone into getting sufficient poses to allow a range of roles to be shown. You can see examples of different roles and the ability to mix or match figures. Not all of the British figures have had camouflage added yet, but you can expect that as a further addition.

Figures are then reduced for in-game use and below you can see the different 3D zoom levels. Both infantry and vehicles are deliberately left oversized compared to the terrain to allow their role and details to be evident:

Like vehicles, we can use the 3D images for our unit figures in 2D, both in the unit box and on counters. Please note all these images are work-in-progress to show what is possible.

The other assets that we acquired from Burden of Command were several special effects like explosions, smoke, and other pyrotechnics. Following is a short video of some of these new 3D assets in game, as their effect is not so obvious in static screenshots.

You may have also noticed in the video the inclusion of night shading as included in the recent Panzer Campaigns patch cycle. This will be important in the Falklands title as many of the British assaults were at night, with some of their soldiers using night vision assets. Including night shading, has an obvious visceral impact but also highlights the value of flares and other armaments.

Here are a few final shots from Squad Battles: Falklands:

We decided to share what has been completed to date to highlight our focus on improving the game experience and 3D play. We believe the inclusion of another zoom level, improved vehicle and infantry models as well as more compelling pyrotechnics will increase the overall attractiveness of this title.

The inevitable question is when will Falklands be available? When it’s done. We are making good progress, but there is still quite a bit of work to do. There weren’t any 3D graphics in the originally released title and there is a lot of work to get that completed.

For both existing and yet to be upgraded Squad Battles titles, the major missing assets are the vehicles. There are a lot of vehicles in many titles and to create them at the level shown will be a big job. That will probably be the biggest constraint on a timely roll out the new features being shown here.

We hope you all can see the potential of what we are doing.

There is a heap of other things underway, across multiple series, but it is a bit premature to share any more currently. We were almost at the point of announcing another title, but you will all have to wait just a little longer…!