Please note: there's a lot of (very!) obsolete information in these old newsletters. ArmourSoft Inc. officially shut down as a business in February 1998, although I continue to use the ArmourSoft (no Inc.) name on some of my game design projects. A lot of the projects mentioned in these newsletters were cancelled or postponed indefinitely. These newsletters are reposted here, despite being way out of date in most details, simply because I thought they still hold some interest and/or amusement value.
Reading back over these files, I'm bemused by the fact that of all the "coming soon" projects and products discussed in the newsletters, the only two we actually managed to produce are Slargeball and Napoleon at Chattanooga, and both those were only DTP (DeskTop Publishing) do-it-yourself game kits. Looking back now, I'm amazed we managed to pull even that off. Fortunately I was much better in my "real" job as a computer professional than I was at running a game company.
These pages are, for the most part, the original rough-n-dirty HTML versions I posted on the ArmourSoft web site in 1997. I've fixed most of the more obvious spelling errors and deleted a few details like the old ArmourSoft mailing address and phone number and some of the personal stuff.
At some point in the near future I plan on redoing all eight issues of the newsletter as PDF files and reposting them, assuming I can find the original Ami Pro files and can successfully convert them. The raw HTML format as presented here doesn't do the originals justice. At the moment I can't get either my 17-year-old copy of Ami Pro or my 13-year-old copy of Adobe PDF Distiller to work, so I can't guess when the PDF versions of the newsletter will be available.
Here's every issue of DHO (all eight of them) ever printed, including the original illustrations:
- Issue 1, August 1993
- Finally available: Shipbase III
- ArmouSoft kicks off newsletter
- A brief history of ArmourSoft
- Project update: Tankbase
- The DIPCo Section
- Issue 2, October 1993
- Changes in Shipbase III version 1.1
- SB3 q&a
- Dogger Bank scenario for SB3
- Tankbase update
- Slargeball
- The DIPCo Section
- Issue 3, December 1993
- Project Report: Generic Legions
- Chart Wars
- Playing Slargeball with miniatures
- Who writes this stuff?
- Tankbase project update
- Convention Information
- The DIPCo Section
- Issue 4, April 1994
- Convention Report
- This Newsletter is Late
- The Big Questions
- The DIPCo Section
- Issue 5, August 1994
- Brushfire '94 (convention report)
- Historicon After-Action Report
- Newsletter is late again
- ArmourSoft goes on-line
- Project Updates: Tankbase and SB3 Advanced Database
- The DIPCo Section: Wuthering Corsets
- Issue 6, May 1995
- Tankbase beta goes out to playtesters
- Big changes going on at ArmourSoft
- New: the Naval Wargaming Review
- Shipbase III upgrade
- Generic Legions
- Convention Report
- The DIPCo Section
- Issue 7, August 1995
- More Tankbase design philosophy than we care to think about
- Hah! This issue is on time! So there!
- Who's Behind ArmourSoft
- The DIPCo Section: Logos We Have Known and Loved
- Issue 8, October 1995
- ArmourSoft games for Windows?
- ArmourSoft gets more equipment
- Naval miniatures in 1:6000th scale
- The DIPCo Section: a Word from the Iguana
Irvania.com webmaster: David Ferris
Last updated: April 18, 2008