The Wargamer

We're here with the three designers of the latest Panzer Campaigns title, Budapest '45 - Joe Wilkerson, Glenn Saunders, and Dave "Blackie" Blackie.

The Interview

Jim Zabek: The Panzer Campaigns series is very well known to HPS fans. Each game sees new tweaks and additions to gameplay. What is new in Budapest '45?

Glenn Saunders: Great question Jim, and yes, as the game engine evolved, John Tiller has been willing to add in new features to the engine that we feel we need to help customize the game to fit the new title. There were a couple new features added to B'45, as can be seen in the changes.txt file that came on the CD, these new features were, in fact, added for other games that were, and still are, in the works for later production.

Budapest is mainly a winter game and we've just come from Stalingrad '42, and Moscow '41, where we added just about all the bells and whistles we figured we needed for winter. Apart from some new units, there was nothing we really figured we required to add this time. The engine seemed to have pretty much everything necessary.

JZ: What attracted you to creating a game about this particular battle?

GS: Up until Budapest, every game of the series has normally been developed over a long period of time. Sometimes a title gets intense work and this is followed by periods where we put it away for a while and work on something else. Budapest is game #17 and, while this was a battle mentioned as interesting on a number of forums I frequent, this title was not even on the horizon when PzC #16 – Minsk ’44 mastered.

Blackie and I were working on another title, something that has been in the works for years. We had a number of guys testing it, and have a lot done too, but that was when Joe Wilkerson came along and approached HPS about Budapest as a title.

They put him on to us and we got talking about what we needed to make a game from this idea. I knew from the forums that there was a market for this title, but in fairness I had none of the sources of info required to make a game. Joe on the other hand had studied the battle extensively for years, and had a number of sources of information we needed, including access to period maps of a suitable scale that Blackie needed to create our game map.

So like any project, we started assembling what we needed. The more we worked on it, the more we liked what we saw, and we got so excited about it ourselves we made this the #1 project and it jumped the queue.

…now I have to give Joe a chance to tell you about his interest in this battle.

Joe Wilkerson: From my perspective, I think this question is pretty well answered in my section of the designers notes. Basically, I read several books by persons who had published these books as "book versions" of their Ph.D. theses. Niehorster, Perik and Ugvary. They portrayed a "Hungarian Tragedy" in the sense of a (relatively) innocent country being crushed by two "superpowers" with a background of the Hungarian Jewish community being destroyed by Eichmann and his minions, with the unknowing collusion of the Jewish community leaders themselves. And also, from a gaming perspective, the Russians were not prioritizing this part of the front as much as Poland and so the German build up and counter-offensive (KONRAD) did have some possibility of chance of success. So we see a period of time on this front where both sides have some offensive potential, fairly unusual for this time in the war. And lastly, this was a "less well known" time and area of WWII and I am attracted to such.

Dave "Blackie" Blackie: I guess this shows that while the Panzer Campaigns part of this battle came together in a relatively faster period of time than any other title, it could only be done based on the sound knowledge and understanding of the battle that Joe had when we started. So in that respect it really wasn't any faster than any other title.