Historical Online Learning Foundation

The Historical Online Learning Foundation Studies Group welcomes you to the "Skunk Works", the R&D Center for HOLF.  There are multiple sites utilized to coordinate research and user testing for the Foundation. This site serves as the central R&D coordination hub.  Current efforts are centered around initial development of Stephen Schmidt's Rolling of the Drums (ROTD) an adaptation of his Napoleonic Wars On-Line (NWOL) game engine as a replacement game engine for Civil War OnLine (CWOL) and the continued users testing for War Between the States (WBTS), an alternative approach for a game engine for CWOL being developed by MALCOM Games of Australia.

Once development of these game engines is complete, the Foundation's Distance-Simulations Group will begin a regular schedule of annual events based on these games and other variants being explored.

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Stephen Schmidt's began work on  Napoleonic Wars On-Line (NWOL) game engine in March 2003. Envisioned as a multi-faceted game engine in the traditional of the five module CWOL model, Stephen quickly developed the first reliable web-based coded game engine offered by the Foundation. As Stephen accomplished his milestones, it quickly became apparent that NWOL was a new game design that incorporated little from the old CWOL design and offers the members of the Player's Guild a unique approach to a group-based interactive game of the Napoleonic era. Since 2003, Stephen has finished the initial, Alpha stage, development of all modules for NWOL. He completed Beta & large group user tests in the Fall of 2007. Currently, the NWOL software suite drives the primier game event offered by the Foundation, Naploeonic Wars OnLine (NWOL).

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Work on the War Between the States (WBTS)  game engine for Civil War OnLine  began in December 2004.  This development is currently involves the validation of the stability of the naval and economic modules as well as the basic game engine. War Between the States (WBTS), is authored by MALCOM Games of Australia . This development completed its Alpha stage of testing in 2006 followed by the start of Beta testing in the Fall 2007.