PANZER GENERAL (DOS) PBEM RESEARCH CENTRE
ARTICLE 008

IT IS SUPPORT AND NOT CONFUSION THAT SERIOUS PBEM HOBBYISTS ARE SEEKING

When I started out with PBEM Panzer General (PG), I kind of knew that PBEM players are a small subset of PG (DOS) players, with the lion's share "out there" being content with the computer AI in the role of "programmed opponent". What came as a BIG surprise to me was the minuscule percentage of PBEM players that consider the game a CLASSIC and shoot for game MASTERY....!! One of the reasons for this unfortunate situation is that, despite all kinds of superficial assertions to the contrary, the game title is NOT "supported".........

What is game title "support" ? Simply, it is any group of activities that can be pursued by a game title venue or group of hobbyists as a whole, with some degree of regularity and predictability, which aims at improving overall play quality. Conversely, any activity that has no plausible beneficial impact on play quality is NOT a "support" activity. This is a VERY useful little acid test....... "Support" activities, by their very nature, presuppose well thought out contexts and frameworks. For instance, the very purpose of a developmental project is to ensure the subsequent success of the "support" activity that such a project is attempting to operationalise.

Serious PBEM Panzer General (DOS) hobbyists, I should think, are sophisticated enough not to fall victim to game title software publisher propaganda and subliminally identify with it. SSI is in the business of making money, plain and simple. They are the producers. Some of us, on the other hand, are not ordinary consumers of their products. We are discriminating "prosumers". In other words, we will utilise an SSI product only to the extent that it can be useful to us for some well thought out mode of play. Nothing more, nothing less.

One of the principal requirements of quality-oriented PBEM is, of course, that whatever computer programmes one uses be stable and reliable ! For some time now, an INEXCUSABLE IMPRECISION on the part of a community that should know better has been bedeviling us all, generating heaps of...frustration ! First, there are at least 4 platform-specific families of Panzer General (PG) programmes. One for DOS, one for Windows '95, one for the Mac and one for the Sony Playstation ! The "save game" file structures of the Windows '95 and Mac families are reputed to be identical. Unfortunately, this file structure is incompatible with the one generated by the DOS family ! To boot, most of the Windows '95 family is subject to the much dreaded "backwards looping rollover prestige dump" PBEM bug (not the on-line version though). Within the PG (DOS) family, it is ONLY VERSION 1.2 that enjoys all around stability. Moreover, it makes a LOT of a difference to PBEM play as well as programme stability whether two players use Version 1.0, 1.1 or 1.2 or some version mismatch ! Finally, it is ONLY the FLOPPY DISK version of PG (DOS) that allows one to flexibly customise things, including playing custom scenaria........

The author, Panos Stoucas, is a long time Panzer General (DOS) PBEM enthusiast and is currently the "Facilitator" of the PG (DOS) PBEM RESEARCH CENTRE. He can be reached at pstoucas@istar.ca