Steve's recent CMx2 Bones

[aka_tom_w]

HI!

If you are NEW to this thread the MOST recent bones are at the bottom of this thread or those posts on the last or next to last page...

OK? smile.gif


The other thread is about to go Super Nova (over 300 posts)
So I will try to posts Steve's recent hints and comments here in order of appearance in the other thread:


OLD bone update from Jan 2005

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posted January 31, 2005 04:05 PM

(from HUGE old 1:1 Representation thread)

I have to close up this thread due to its size. Feel free to start up another one. However, keep in mind that we (Battlefront) need to design something that is pleasing to both the eye and the grog. We'll be torn to pieces if the 1:1 representation looks silly or woefully incomplete, even if eveything is neato mosquito under the hood. Likewise, grogs will tear us a new one if the important 1:1 simulation aspects aren't done well enough.

In other words... there is no one right answer to this debate you guys are having. We need to have a balance between the two, and that balance is in part determined by how easy/hard it is to program and/or how well it functions from a performance standpoint (eye candy and underlying sim stuff BOTH!). Not even we have the answers to all these questions at this point, so I might suggest that both sides of this debate keep that in mind. NOTHING is decided except for the fact that we are seeking a balance, which inherently means some grog stuff and some eye candy wish list items won't be happening.

Steve

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posted January 30, 2005 08:48 PM

The 3D environment of CM does offer us some challenges in terms of where to draw the line between a simulation of the individual soldier and larger groups of soldiers (i.e. units). It's something we've all be struggling with since the early days of CMBO's design.

Back in the old days of wargaming you'd have a cardboard chit with some numbers and a shape on it. Nobody called for more than that simply because the system was so abstract probably nobody thought of it (at least not thinking it possibly practical).

The first couple of generations of computerized wargames fell into the same category. As time went on and technology improved wargamers wanted better looking maps, more attractive looking units, and of course more under the hood. But again, for anything but the smallest scale wargames nobody thought about simulating the individual soldier to any significant degree. Until, that is, Close Combat came out.

CC was the first commercial wargame to model the individual soldier in detail and in substantial numbers. And for all its flaws, the game worked very well and people saw the value in having the 1:1 soldier simulation. Then CMBO came around...

Our problem, from the beginning, is our chosen scale. MUCH larger than CC's, yet not so much that individuals ceased to matter. But due to technical limiations we never once thought about doing 1:1 because it simply wasn't possible. However, the desire has always been there, at least to some extent. Now comes CMx2...

What we are doing now is giving the individual soldier a place on a larger scale battlefield (larger than FPS, CC, etc). That is the right thing to do. However, there are limits. We must make sure to not lose sight of the fact that this is a larger scale wargame and not a FPS of even Close Combat scale game. Therefore, when push comes to shove, decisions are made which favor the larger scale wargaming environment. Clutter, unnecessary development distractions, big hits to the CPU for little simulation gain, etc. are all bad things for CMx2.

In short... we know what CMx2 is supposed to be and what it isn't. We have this vision very clearly laid out and will not waiver from it. There will be no mission creep.

Steve

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posted May 19, 2005 12:07 PM
Ok, perhaps it is time for me to put in an updated 2 cents on this classic topic

It is fairly accurate to say that a European conflict in the 1960s or 1970s (mid at least) would be more-or-less similar to WWII combat. The technology, though improved, was not a quantum leap from what was going on at the end of WWII. Night vision and thermal imaging, though crude, were around. Missiles were also around, but limited to guided LOS types. Airpower was vastly more dangerous to ground targets than in WWII, yet far away from the kind of lethality seen today. NBC... who cares :) The "N" is a non-starter for a tactical game, "B" and "N" are fairly similar in terms of how they would be simulated. In all cases the simulated counter measures are pretty much the same.

Technically, Cold War wouldn't be terribly difficult to do with the CMx1 engine, though it would still be a royal pain in the butt. It is one of the reasons we dropped CMx1 and moved onto CMx2. Not because of a desire to do Cold War, but a realization that even the most similar non-WWII setting (Korea) was pretty tough but the next most similar (1960s/1970s) Cold war was even tougher. So why stick with something that is that inflexible?

CMx2 can handle Space Lobsters of Doom™ as easily as it could handle Cold War, while CMx1 could maybe handle Cold War but no way handle Space Lobsters of Doom™. What that means is that "closeness" to CMBO/BB/AK is no longer any concern of ours. We can do whatever we want based on whatever we want

And what do we want to do? Well, we do want to make a whole range of cool games other than WWII. Unfortunately for Cold War aficionados, Cold War isn't on our Top 5 list. And since we don't have a list beyond the Top 5, Cold War is effectively not even on our radar screens. And even if it were #5, at roughly 8-12 months of development time per title... CW would be a long, long ways away even if we promised right here and now that it would be the 5th game of the series (which I am most certainly not promising ).

Sorry to rain on the CW parade yet again (at least I'm consistent!), but I just don't see it happening.

Steve

[ September 07, 2005, 12:13 PM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[aka_tom_w]

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posted May 19, 2005 01:20 PM
CMx2 allows us to, in theory, do all of the following game settings, each of which could constitute many stand alone games (i.e. setting is too big for one game):

WWII ETO
WWII PTO
1950s Korea
2000s Korea
WWI
Napoleonics
US Civil War
100 Years War
Medival
Ancient (European)
Ancient (Asian)
Contemporary
Cold War
Near Future
Far Future
Fantasy (D&D style)
Alien Invasion
Post Apocalyptic

And probably a whole bunch of things I just didn't think of in 1 minute

The point is that as long as the combat is predominantly ground based, CMx2 can do pretty much anything. Certainly it could do all of the above, though with differing amounts of effort of course. So when I say we have a Top 5 List (which in a formal sense we don't), there is a lot of theoretical possibillities out there for us to pursue. Inluding all 5 being WWII ETO to all 5 being Fantasy, even though we would never enslave ourselves to just one genre for the next 5 years.

Steve

[aka_tom_w]

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posted May 19, 2005 07:45 PM
We're not interested in making a "toolbox" type engine. Way too much work for that. No commercial incentive for us either, so that + the work = nogo

While I did not really intend on throwing any bones into this thread... might as well toss one bigish one.... never again will we make the kind of games we did for CMx1 in terms of their scope. Why not? CMAK is the best way to explain this. It took us nearly a year, with a full time team of 6 people and a part time team of probably a dozen, to make what is basically a HUGE mod of the existing engine. Relatively little programming time went into new features for that game, and yet it still took that long. We though we learned our lesson with CMBB, but I guess we had to suffer through yet another massive development effort to really learn it. And that is...

For $45 or $35 a copy it just isn't worth putting in that quantity of stuff. Yeah, I know some of you (like me!) really enjoyed playing Conscript Romanians, complete with Romanian voices... but really... how many (% of total customers) would have misssed it if that was missing? Yet we probably spent 1 year's worth of full staff development on those features. Really not smart from our standpoing, nor yours. You guys had to wait 1 year extra for BB and AK because we felt like we had to simulate every darned stinking thing for the entire Eastern Front. Yet I am sure that 95% or more of you would have rather had a smaller scoped version of the Eastern Front a year earlier and then had AK follow right up and then had something else right after (or CMx2 released a few months ago).

So... from now on you will see from us:

1. More variety from title to title
2. Less time in between releases
3. Deeper game play within a title (vs. breadth)
4. More game engine improvements with each release

I'm sure some will grumble and invent all sorts of negative things to say about all this, but that's par for the course with Gorgs After you get ahold of the first CMx2 title's demo, and you see what our new strategy REALLY means, only the hardcore whiners will still be bitching. And since these guys probably bitched about CMBO, CMBB, and CMAK not being up to their standards... well... you can guess how much we'll care

Mikey... I figured someone would note the TM I hope nobody here works for the g'vmnt 'cuz we're not exactly allowed to use that mark without having actually filed and paid for a trademark

Steve

[aka_tom_w]

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posted May 22, 2005 12:17 PM
Obviously CMx2 is no CMx1 with a more narrow focus, so I'm not even going to bother getting into Rollstoy's question. However, if someone wants to toss him a bunch of links to bones I've tossed out, I am sure he'll be happier

The concept of narrower, deeper focus is to make each game more intense and well rounded. However, you have to remember that we aren't going to take the 1 year we had spent on simulating a whole front and reinvest it into a narrow slice of the front. Instead we are going to take SOME of that time and flesh out a more focused setting and spend the rest of that saved time on doing something else entirely. Example:

Our first WWII ETO game might be just Normandy between Americans and Germans from this date to that date. You get it into your hands after only 12 months of development instead of 24. You have a blast with it... then 6 months later maybe there is a "module" that is released that offers something different... like Commonwealth in Normandy from this date to that date. Price is lower than the full game, but the full game is required. The "module" can be done by an auxillarly development team which allows us to keep going forward on the next title. So 6 months later you might have CM- Pigs In Space; The Baccon 6 Conundrum.

What this means is that in the same time it would take to make a single "broad front" WWII NW European Theater of Ops you get two "narrow front", though deeper, ETO games as well as an entirely different game.

If you extend this out a bit further using past history as a guide, the 2nd full game (Pigs in Space) would take 24 months to develop. This means in 12 months you are getting what would (in the past) have taken us 48 months to make. Under the new development philosophy in that 48 months you'd have 4 "primary" games and perhaps 8 "modules". HUGE difference.

Now, to the jaded reader this might sound like a money grubbing ploy on our part. Far from it!! The reality is we make games because we LOVE making games. It is very frustrating for us that we have to spend so much time doing one thing when there are dozens of things that we also want to do. Think about it... for the last 9 years we have done nothing more than WWII ETO! While we are by no means sick of ETO combat (still our favorite), we will be if we have to spend the next 9 years on just ETO

To put this in a way that I think you guys can all relate to... think of all the wargame ideas you've had over your life. Now think about how disapointint and frustrating it is to not be able to play those ideas in actual games of your own design. Now imagine that you make games for a living and have the expertise and ability to theoretically make all of them come to life. BUT... you are tied to a philosophy that allows you to do only one every 9 years. Dontcha think ya might be a little bit jazz'd about changing things a wee bit in order to scratch all those itches instead of gouging one so deep that it leaves a scar? Dontcha?

I'm not saying that you guys don't understand this... but the record of "narrow front" and "module" type games is not all that good. Usually the games aren't really that deep, the modules that exciting, and/or the prices pegged correctly. Guess I felt I had to reassure you that we know this VERY well and will absolutely not be going that route. We like money, but we like making the best games out there far more

Steve

[aka_tom_w]

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posted May 22, 2005 03:42 PM
quote:
With the right chemicals, you can make nearly anything burn nearly anywhere. Trust me.
Well, with a name like "flamingknives" who is going to doubt you?

Back on topic...

I can assure each and every one of you that Space Lobsters of Doom is as much on our radar as it always has been. I am someone who lives in an area where Lobsters are kinda like the sacred cows of India, except boiled with lots of butter so as to draw in those tourism Dollars. Have no fears about our seriousness in this matter of Lobsters!

Now, completely off topic...

When will you guys know what we're going to do next (and right after that)? I don't know. I'm thinking mid Summer. We really don't want to announce anything until we have the game a little further along visually. Pictures and small QT movies are worth thousands of words, so it would be more efficient for us to have a larger discussion with those sorts of materials available to you guys.

Steve

[aka_tom_w]

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posted May 27, 2005 03:39 AM
flamingknives wrote:

quote:
There are lots of FPS games out there - they need such total conversions to give them an edge.
That's our opinion too. Mods are necessary for those games to have any sort of staying power. For CMx1 Mods were a wonderful way to enhance an experience that was already good enough to stand on its own for a long time. If CMx1 were not modable at all people would still have bought it for sure. I think the same can be said for the leading FPS games out there too, but as soon as the next FPS came along they would jump to it.

BTW, we're now 8 years out from starting CMx1, and there is still nothing that compares to it. The latest crop of WWII non-FPS games on deck show no signs of changing this at all. The likely best of the bunch is certainly RPS geared compared to CMx1.

Now, as for "completeness"... I know how you guys feel. I *love* playing as the Romanians or Hungarians... but I also know I am very much in the minority. Will we ever ship a module type program that supports these minor countries? I hope so, but I really can't say for sure. We'll just have to see how things go.

Steve

[aka_tom_w]

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posted May 29, 2005 05:16 PM
We do have to be quite careful in the subject matter and scope we choose for each title. We want to make sure that you guys get something that is still fun to play by the time the next module or full title comes out. If we start out with an idea for the subject and scope that later on in development seems to be too narrow... then we'll widen it out a bit. But the days are gone when we'll release a game that people can play for 2-3 years without getting bored of it. Fortunately, with quicker release schedules the need for a game that has 36 months of playtime in it is made unnecessary.

As for the modules working with each other... yup, that is the thoght. Let's say you get a WWII ETO game that is limited to Battle of the Bulge, US vs. Germans (specific unit types). 6 months later we release a Normandy modlule that allows you to play US vs. Germans (specific unit types). The latter will simply add options to the game you already own, kinda like CMBO. Another module comes out that supports Commonwealth for both Normandy and Battle of the Bulge. Now it really is like CMBO. Yes, it took three releases to get it to that stage, but in the mean time other games have been released and others started.

Every development strategy has its tradeoffs. The CMx1 strategy was to make a "mother of all fronts" game and then move onto another front. Downsides to this were:

1. Looooooong waits inbetween titles
2. Modest improvements to the game engine (game stuff and graphics stuff)
3. No other CM type products for any other theater, time period, or what have you
4. Players not interested in a particular front had even longer wait times for a new game of interest

The new strategy fixes all three of four problems, but of course has its own tradeoffs:

1. More narrowly focused content per release
2. Less chance of a full "mother of all fronts" type game, even with modules
3. Need to reinvest in the game every 6 months or so when a new module comes out (if interested, otherwise it can be skipped).

These all seem to be reasonable tradeoffs for the new flexibility, game engine improvements, and general boradening of the CM community (i.e. not JUST WWII nuts ) that will be gained from it. Obviously we'll all have to see if the new strategy works the way we think it will. Great thing about being independent is that we can make adjustments without having to win a Publisher's OK:)

Steve

[aka_tom_w]

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posted June 01, 2005 12:59 AM
Scenarios should wind up being far more editable in CMx2 than in CMx1. What I mean by that is in CMx1 the designer had only a limited back of tricks to draw from in order to get the scenario to feel correct. Things like objectives, AI behavior, force Order of Battle, chains of command, etc. were sometimes very difficult to simulate for a particular battle. In CMx2 such stuff should be much more controllable.

As for the salami...

Part of the problem is that with each CMx1 game we charged you guys for a couple of slices of salami, but we in fact gave you the whole salami log. Great for you in some ways, bad in others. Specifically, you got to eat for months on end without having to buy any more salami, but the downside is that all you had to eat was salami when you might have liked some ham or turkey too. And that is where I'll end the deli metaphor

The fact is we spent too much time giving to too much stuff that lasted you far too long in terms of replayability for far too low a price. We spoiled you rotton, in other words. Now, we were happy to do that in some ways and in many ways aren't sorry that we did it. However, as we got deep into CMBB we started to see that spoiling you guys didn't come without us making some serious sacrifices. But we were too far along to turn back so we took the extra, unplanned, year and finished CMBB.

With CMAK we were faced with similar problems and decided we could not afford (in all senses of the word) to deliver ANOTHER game like CMBO or CMBB that took 2 years to develop. But we had set certain expectations and therefore were in a pickle of our own making. So we decided to keep changes to the engine minimal instead of limiting the subject parameters (i.e. doing the whole Med Theater instead of something like just Italy or just the Western Desert). This compromise worked out pretty well in that you got a new game in a year instead of two, we finished the game in a year instaed of two , and we were able to start the process of making the CMx2 engine as well.

But CMAK is the last "mother of all front" games we will ever do. It is simply a strategy that doesn't work. Not for us, and not for you. Remember that some CMBO diehards had no interest in the Eastern Front and had to wait THREE YEARS to get CMAK. None of you should have to wait three years to get new product from us.

So, what we are going to do is the sensible thing. Instead of giving you a game that is replayable for 2-3 years while you wait for the next title to come out, we'll give you something that is playable for probably 6 - 18 months, depending on interest level, not inherent replayability. Not everybody wants to play the same theater for 2 years you know For those that do we'll have Modules to extend and enhance replayability while at the same time releasing completely different games. Which, for all you know, you'll want to play more than the one you bought 6 months earlier.

OK, I'm rambling now So to sum up...

1. You're all spoiled rotten
2. Long development times are BAD for everybody in the long run.
3. We can not (or more accurately, will not) retain a business model of "mother of all front" games released every couple of years.
4. You're going to see less replaybility with each title, but what you get will almost certainly be better than any other one time purchase game out there (of any genre)

In short... there will be whining and griping... but in the end it is good for everybody. We're more certain of this than anything else we've ever been sure of. And we've been sure (and correct) about a whole lot of stuff before

Steve

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posted June 01, 2005 01:05 AM
Oh, and I forgot to add...

We fully expect the game play value of CMx2, on a battle by battle basis, to far exceed CMx1. To oversimplify things... if a CMx1 game that shipped with 50 scenarios and 100 possible units, and a CMx2 game shipped with 25 scenarios and 50 possible units... you'd most certainly pick the CMx2 game as your favorite simply because it was an overall more deep, enjoyable experience.

Obviously this is a pretzles to french fries comparision, but I think you can figure out what I mean by this. And if not... "less is not necessarily less than more" Yeah, that ought to clear things up...

Steve
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posted June 01, 2005 10:26 PM
More stuff...

Maps will be MORE editable than they were in CMx1 for the simple fact that the map system itself is far more powerful and flexible. Also a much finer level of resolution. Will you be able to place a single rock in one spot and a particular shrub of your choosing 0.05m away from it, with the bigger branch facing north? No, but it will be a ton more close to that than the way CMx1's 20x20m tiles could allow for.

The limiting of 100 vehicles down to 50 was just an example. We might limit it down to 10 It all depends on what the setting is we're shooting for. If we did only the battle for St. Lo, for example, there would be an extremely small set of units to choose from. Probably too few, even considering the depth of the game itself. But then again... maybe not. All depends on how one wishes to look at it. If the goal of the player is.

If the player wishes to experience an intense, inter connected, deep, and detailed depiction of WWII warfare... then having 200 vehicles and 400 infantry formations to choose from is actually a BAD thing. And believe me... many people do feel this way about the CMx1 game system (i.e. too many choices, not enough focus). However, if the player wants to experience a little bit of everything... well, nothing short of the Full Frontal Monty will do. In fact, even that won't do for some people

My point here is to not get caught up with numbers of this and that. Instead, remember that variety and gameplay are inherently different things. Just as game play and replayability are as well. Meaning you can have a fantastic game with a very limited set of x, y, and z, or you can have a crappy game with everything and the kitchen sink at your fingertips. Likewise you can have a narrowly focused game that gives a lot of replaybility options, or a wide ranging game that only offers a few weeks of entertainment. The deciding factors are the quality of the game experience and what the player is looking to get from it. Numbers of units, flexibility of map editor functions, etc. are all side issues (as important as they may be for some people).

The way it will work for us is like this...

The chosen setting dictates the units, terrain, and other factors we have to choose from (be it a historical game or whatnot). Scope is then set to focus in on an interesting subset of the total possible options. And that is what you'll get. An interesting slice of a much bigger pie. Modules can be released after to give different slices of the same pie, and thus different experiences for the player.

Simple as that

Steve

[ June 03, 2005, 08:50 PM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[aka_tom_w]

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posted June 02, 2005 01:47 AM
We're not going to do a subscription service. It's an entirely different business model and it isn't something we're interested in.

A way to note which scenarios have been played before... interesting concept. Useful too. Won't be in the first release of CMx2 most likely, but something to consider for the next one.

WW2 RTS does look rather neat. But the name says it all Infantry fans will likely be less than thrilled with it based on what I've read. Looks vehice centric.

Steve

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posted June 02, 2005 12:18 PM
We do plan on having a random battle generator. If for some reason we can't do it for the first release of CMx2 (not saying we can't, just presuming the worst for the sake of discussion) it will be available for the second release.

The scenario tracking feature could be a real development distraction for us, which is why I don't see much of anything (if anything) happening for the first release. This is what we call a "Bell and Whistle". Good feature, but unnecessary compared to things like ballistics modeling, Realtive Spotting, etc.

Steve

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posted June 02, 2005 07:51 PM
As was said by me, and others in this thread, you guys were spoiled beyond belief with what we did before. And it cost everybody, including you guys, a lot more than you think. OK, perhaps not in money shelled out for games, but VERY long wait times, less innovation than we could have otherwise done, and no other type of game other than WWII. Frankly, we'd rather shut down Battlefront and start making FileMaker Pro addons than go through another 9 years of what we've already gone through. So...

We ain't doing any more "mother of all front" games ever again. Accept it or don't, but whining won't change it. The previous development strategy was unsustainable for us (I'm talking more about interest level) and we aren't idiots enough to repeat it.

Even if you paid $100 per title you STILL got far more than you ever would have from any other 3 wargames ever released. So even start down that road because I'll just mark you down in the "ungreatful, spoiled rotten, selfish customer" list and remind myself to not listen to you any more.

Now, I do understand the desire to have lots and lots of gameplay options open to you at the tips of your fingers. I love it too... which is why I slaved away for 9 years to make games that did it. But, as stated above, this is definately one of those "be careful for what you wish for" things because it took a serious toll on all of us. Sure, the games we produced are classics and set the bar really high... but in terms of volume of content... we most certainly set it too high. We don't have the energy nor the interest to try and reach that again.

Instead what we are doing is taking the energy, time, and money we spent making a couple hundred vehicles (most of which nobody uses), hundreds of voice samples, and other stuff and investing this in NEW directions. Better game, better environments, and more variety of subject matter. All with shorter release times. It is a sustainable strategy and we expect even most of the whiners here to shut up after a while because they'll recognize it is a better thing overall. Not without sacrifices, of course, but when has innovation ever happened without somethings being left behind? Like hexes, phases, and all the other crap we abandoned years ago.

Again, some of you seem to forget that we've always have to fight against the "I don't want any change, give me what I've already got AGAIN" mentality. We don't listen to it because it is reactionary and harmful to everybody, including themselves. Same thing this time around.

What I can't stress enough is that you guys are picturing CMx1 with less units and smaller scope. Bad, bad, bad, bad! CMx2 is an entirely different experience. Quite a bit of the enjoyment of CMx1 came from the variety of units, but in CMx2 it will come from the variety of gameplay. Tons of units are not necessary, even if they were possible.

As for the Chicken Little comments I see here based on the scant information I've put out so far... grow up. Or at least pretend to grow up. Either one is fine with me so long as the "it's all over for me... this is going to suck" comments get shoved where they belong (hint... it is a dark and smelly place... and I ain't talking about the Peng thread ).

yeah... yeah... I know... some of you are going to get your panties in a twist over such hard language. But like any spoiled child left in a room with me for more than 5 minutes would know, you're just going to have to deal with it. You don't have to like what I say, you don't even have to hide concerns about diection... but the whiney "I want the whole box of cooooookiesssssss!!!" crap is just a wasted bunch of keystrokes.

If you can't get with the program, then log off and wait for the demo. It's as simple as that. Better for everybody since it leaves the bandwidth open for more rational discussions.

End of rant

Steve

[aka_tom_w]

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posted June 02, 2005 08:22 PM
Now, back to practical stuff...

A random battle generator is something that we should be able to do. I'm just saying that if push comes to shove, I'd rather have a better scenario editor or a number of other features. We're not going to rush CMx2 out the door without major features, however we will not get ourselves into any more "1 year" development cycles that take 2 years to complete. It just can't happen that way any more. Get paid once every 2 years and work even harder in the 2nd year and you'll see that it isn't something you'd want to repeat more than a couple of times in one lifetime

As for speculation about customer retention and all of that. Kellysheroes missed one critical thing, and I'll explain it in abstract terms...

CMBO came out and was so mind blowing that 1000 people bought it (I'm just using Ken's number ). CMBB came out and 500 people said "well, it isn't all that different" or "I want to play as the Americans" or "I've had a life change that put gaming on hold" or any number of other reasons to not buy the sequel. That puts sales at around 500, but some new people find the game and buy it. Let's say that yields a total of 750 people for CMBB. So for two years of development we actually have fewer customers.

A year later CMAK comes out. Out of the 750, 300 or so opt out for one reason or another (similar to CMBB), which leaves 450. Some new people come in and guys who did not buy CMBB come back to buy CMAK. Let's say 150. That brings the total to 600.

This means that for 3 years of solid development has netted us about the same number of people that bought the first game, which also took 3 years. However, revenue wise the total is far less because CMAK was sold at a lower starting price. That's not a sustainable business model over time, especially if the haul of money was fairly modest (i.e. if we made $1 Billion off of CMBO, why should we care? But we didn't, so we do).

Why the reduced number of customers each time? Primary reason is lack of reinvestment in the core engine. While the hardcore are generally happy to play (basically) the same game for 4 years, hardly anybody else is. Especially since the game was written for 7 year old technology.

In other words, the hardcore get jazzed about PzIV variants and being able to play out some obscure battle against a bunch of hardly ever dicussed enemy troops... everybody else gets jazzed about the game system. And I am NOT just talking about graphics here.

CMBO was wildly popular because the game system broke new ground. CMBB and CMAK did not break much new ground, nor subject matter (i.e. WWII ETO for all three), and therefore weren't all that interesting to a pretty big chunk of people who bought CMBO and loved it. And there are other groups that also opted out of CMBB/CMAK for other reasons (mentioned above).

So here is the irony. Some of you guys are criticizing us for trying to milk more money from the same cow. Yet the strategy you guys are proposing we stick with does exactly that, just in a different way. We're not about milking something... we want to keep doing new things and expressing new ideas. We don't want to keep redoing the ETO every 9 years with some new technology thrown in. BORING!

Egads... that sounds like another rant! Sorry about that! So I'll throw you another bit of info to chew on...

We are not planning on 20 modules at $45 each. No way. We'll probably release 2-3 Modules per title with a price that seems fair for the content being provided. They will work seamlessly with the previous purchases, or at least as seamlessly within a particular front (I am not promising that you can play Americans vs. Russians just because we released Western and Eastern modules of some sort. Though we might!). You might never get as much content as you did for the past CMx1 games, but you'll have lots of other Battlefront CM type games to choose from instead. In short, you'll not be wanting for things to play even if we ONLY give you the Battle for St. Lo. (which I am not saying is the plan).

Our philosophy is to give you something that won't put down for weeks on end, and keep coming back to for months later EVEN with new titles available to you. If you see us market a St. Lo only game... it is because we feel the gameplay value fits this mold. If we don't, then we'd obviously be releasing something different. It would be suicide for us to ignore gameplay value, so obviously we won't.

Steve

Battlefront.com
Administrator
Member # 42

posted June 02, 2005 10:37 PM
We have some retail distribution in the Great White North already. We didn't for the release of CMBO or CMBB, but shortly thereafter. Modules, however, won't be in retail as stand alone products. In order to do that we would HAVE to make the price pretty high because otherwise there wouldn't be anything left for us Electronic distribution will likely be the only way the modules are released anyway.

No, you won't have to buy all the modules. However, each successive module will not be inclusive. So if we have a game that is Normandy, a module that is Bulge, and another which is Commonwealth... you wouldn't get the Bulge stuff if you just bought the Commonwealth module. You do, however, have to purchase the initial release because all modules will do is add functionality, not act as stand alone games. If that were the case we'd have to charge for them as stand alone games, which is not what we're talking about here.

Of course if you wait long enough we'll bundle things together. It's one of the primary ways to extend the "shelf life" of a product. So let's say you don't buy the game or any of the modules... perhaps a year or a year and a half later you'll probably be able to purchase them all together as a single product for less money than if you bought them separately 6-18 months earlier. But anybody that is willing to wait 18 months to save $20 or so is a bit silly in the head if they really like the game.

Steve

Battlefront.com
Administrator
Member # 42

posted June 03, 2005 02:14 PM
Regarding sales of each title... we probably did better than most. Standard rule of thumb in the game business is each sequel (same engine) sells half as much as the one before it. 1000 goes to 500, 500 goes to 250, 250 goes to 175, etc. Sequels with new engines are entirely different beasts.

Dale, I think I missed your earlier post but our stratey is not like Avalon Hill's SL/ASL strategy in some respects. You need a base game and can purchase modules that are of interest to you. That is similar to SL/ASL. The difference is that the modules will be priced according to how much gameplay is offered and what expenses we had to go through to make it happen. For example, if we released an Italian Module for the Eastern Front, there would not be that much too it and therefore it would be priced pretty low. Of course, such a module would likely be a poor seller so we wouldn't do it in the first place, but it does illustrate how we think about this.

As far as I am concerned Random Battle Generator is just another name for Quick Battles.

Steve

[aka_tom_w]

Battlefront.com
Administrator
Member # 42

posted June 03, 2005 02:20 PM
quote:
Just please... let me fight another war
We feel the same way. 9 years of doing nothing but WWII was OK, but 9 more is out of the question. The new engine allows us to do both WWII and other stuff, so everybody should be happy. Especially us

Steve

Battlefront.com
Administrator
Member # 42

posted June 03, 2005 03:57 PM
I can state that we have an unofficial list of our Top 5 subject matter for CMx2. As I've stated pretty clearly, not all are WWII I'll at least go so far as to say that contemporary (i.e. current/near future) combat is on there as well as Space Lobsters. And no... I am NOT kidding about the latter Sure, it might be called something different, and there might not be any lobsters in it, but it will be good none-the-less I've trotted out lists of other possible game settings in recent days, so there is even more food for though there (things like D&D, US Civil War, Ancient, etc.). The cool thing about the new engine is we don't have to worry about what we can't do.

Having said all that... I do agree with Dorosh that as long as there is significant innovation, there is always room for more WWII games. As good as CMx1 is, and as supierior as it is compared to the others before it, we can do better. And will We're just not going to dedicate 9 more years of our lives to doing it to the exclusion of all other things.

Kip, it isn't so much about the money as it is the creative burnout and frustration levels. If someone offered us a boatload of money to spend the next 9 years doing nothing by WWII we wouldn't likely sign on the dotted line (OK, if it was a billion Dollars... maybe ). We'd rather make less money and have more creative outlets. Fortunately we feel that our strategy will not only give us mental and creative relief from WWII, but it will also net us more money (or at least not less). And we'll STILL do some WWII stuff in the mix, while at the same time releasing games much faster. It really is a win-win situation for everybody.

Dale, the way I picture it when you get a Module you'll never know you even have it. What I mean is when you boot up the game instead of seeing only the Americans to choose form you might now see Canadians and Brits. A look at the scenario list shows more "stock" choices than what came with the original game. In other words, it will feel just like CMBO does now.

And yes, bigger than St. Lo, smaller than all of Normandy 1944 is probably right. You might be able to play all of Normandy 1944 from one perspective, just not from all. We'll just have to see since we haven't made any firm plans about this yet.

Again, the deciding factor will be overall gameplay. And to judge that we need the game pretty much done. That's when we'll know how important qunaity (edit by tom w: that word should be quantity?) is.

Remember that some of the best games out there, the ones we've played and loved the longest, lack significant features and yet are still fondly thought of. My personal top wargame of all time is Grigsby's War in Russia, as played on my Atari 800. The game was a 64 bit game with no sound, no graphics worth mentioning, no editor, only 3 or 4 scenarios, no TCP or LAN play, and certainly no "random" battle generator. Yet even though I paid $80 for it (yes kids, that is how much your elders used to pay for computer games!) I got 10 times my money's worth out of it.

My point is that gameplay is the deciding factor as to what the value of a game is. Sometimes the gameplay comes from breadth, sometimes depth, and rarely both. I say rarely because few games are both broad and deep to start with, even fewer of them are any good. So when I hear comments about how the game will suck if it doesn't have x, y, or z I can't help but conclude that such comments aren't meaningful to us. Not yet, anyway. AFTER we release a game if we get that sort of feedback then we'll know we screwed up

Steve

[ June 03, 2005, 08:56 PM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[Wartgamer]

Will Space Lobsters be modeled 1:1?

[Bigduke6]

Thanks to aka_tom_w for summing up the posts.

I will now offer my "cool armored vehicles theory" as a predictive model for how BFI will produce games in the future.

The first CMX2 game will be WWII, and it will contain Germans from at least 1942. Why? Simple grasshopper, that's when Tiger I came out, and Tiger I is the coolest single armored vehicle ever produced, and that equals public interest and sales. Most likely after mid-1943, as that's when the second coolest armored vehicle, Panther, came out.

Most likely it will be roughly Normandy in time frame, and more likely than not the oppposition will be Americans, in part because of the size of the American buying market, but also because if you leave out Commonweatlh, then the Allied players fighting against those Tigers in the first installment of the CMX2 engine will be willing to sell the house and grandma with it to get the Commonwealth module, which will include Fireflies, so they can kill those Tigers and Panthers.

If there is one thing CM1 and this forum has taught us, it is that armored combat vehicle envy is a real psychological illness, and thousands of potential BFI customers suffer from it.

The WW2 East Front can be broken up neatly into sections based on Soviet armored vehicle development. Pre and post T-34/85. Again for Stalin. The point is that if you don't give the public all their toys at once, then they will be ready and willing to plunk down some more green on the barrel to get the next window in time with the next generation of vehicles.

Even better, you could probably build an entire module/game based on the single concept "This is the one where you get Tiger II".

This doesn't really help BFI much in terms of creativity, of course, WW2 tanks is very well-traveled ground from a research point of view. Thus I would guess the non-WWII focus Steve keeps hinting at would look somewhere else for "cool" FVs where each game leaves the player starving for what came next.

I therefore kinda lean towards the Middle East. That has lots of tanks which in and of themselves are not super-cool in the wargamer mind, I mean T-62 or Centurian just don't have the panache of Tiger I, but OHH there are helicopters and anti-tank missiles and a whole different kind of terrain. That would be pretty cool for BFI developers I should think, and that framework has almost unlimited development potential: Lebanon campaign, Iran-Iraq, India-Pakistan, you-pick-it-Africa, and right up through Desert Storm. And each time technology bumps change the fighting relationships - Sagger, then TOW, then AT helicopters, then Redeye and SA-7, the list is endless.

An alternative would of course be Vietnam, which didn't have armored vehicles but had choppers out the yin yang. After Tiger I perhaps the "coolest" piece of military equipment out there is Huey as applied by 1st Cav and Coppola. Also getting voices for that would be easier all told than for Middle East. Would I, one of the worst Soviet grogs I know, buy something like that? Look at my handle...

Napoleonics might be another direction, if the engine is as flexible as Steve says it will be maybe it will be possible to take all those individuals and "represent" a battle with 100,000 on a side. I don't think we'd see 100,000 sprites, but who's to say in the CMX2 of some angle of WW2 each sprite is an individual soldier, but in the Napoleonics version it's a representation of 10 or even 100 soldiers? And if the graphics engine is everything it is cracked up to be, then on viewing level one can you imagine the Cool Factor for looking at close-ups of the 95th Rifles, Blucher's Deathshead Hussars, or that absolute Tiger I Cool Factor 10+ of the Napoleonic era: The Imperial Guard Grenadiers complete with moustaches and gold earrings?

Me, I would jump at a Napoleonic CMX2 way before even WW2 West front, as I am one of those people who is not having fun without T-34.

But I think when they get right down to it, BFI is going to go with the rational choice, the real crowd-pleaser, the one that gets the people into the movie theater: Tiger I.

BFI admin guys, obviously no need to respond to this. This is just by way to get some forum speculation going, and maybe to give you designer guys a giggle or two.

[Kellysheroes]

I think what Steve seems to miss and their critical mistake, is while he boasts of a new game for us in 6-8 months, he forgets that many of us may be waiting still two years for a game module we are "interested" in. I certainly am not interested in currest or near future warfare or Doom Lobsters as he speaks is part of the initial 5 modules.

The wait for the average BFC customer for CMx2 titles they are "interested" in could be no less than the wait on the CMx1 titles. At least we knew what we were getting and they were theaters of WWII.

I think it's going to just split the customer base into slices of pie. Instead of getting the full pie only slices will be bought at each interval of a new module. The customer base drop could be even more significant than over the period of 3 years for the CMx1 titles. I bought them all mainly because they were WWII titles and came with a quick battle system.

Personally for me if it's not historical and pre 1950, I just have no interest in it. I'm sure I'm not alone.

[patboy]

You are right, I think the same thing as you !

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Kellysheroes:
I think what Steve seems to miss and their critical mistake, is while he boasts of a new game for us in 6-8 months, he forgets that many of us may be waiting still two years for a game module we are "interested" in. I certainly am not interested in currest or near future warfare or Doom Lobsters as he speaks is part of the initial 5 modules.

The wait for the average BFC customer for CMx2 titles they are "interested" in could be no less than the wait on the CMx1 titles. At least we knew what we were getting and they were theaters of WWII.

I think it's going to just split the customer base into slices of pie. Instead of getting the full pie only slices will be bought at each interval of a new module. The customer base drop could be even more significant than over the period of 3 years for the CMx1 titles. I bought them all mainly because they were WWII titles and came with a quick battle system.

Personally for me if it's not historical and pre 1950, I just have no interest in it. I'm sure I'm not alone. So what do you want, an apology?

[Michael Dorosh]

As usual, I think Seanachai has the best take on this situation. As long as CMX2 still produces classic scenarios like this, I suspect all will be well.
Speaking of 'descent', 'ignorance' and 'bloody minded bastards', it's probably time for me to post some 'feedback' about the Rune scenario that I'm currently playing with Lars.

I'm sure that Rune expected more feedback by now. If so, he probably shouldn't have made the map encompass 120,000 square acres of wheat and flame covered wilderness. After 20 some turns of steady advance, my troops have definitively established that Lars' troops aren't currently huddled in a corner of the map, but must, in fact, be somewhere more in the middle.

I've lost all contact with one company after they took wives from the local population and settled down to grow barley and raise pigs. Another company has recently checked in to inform me that they think they've found a private hunting preserve originally owned by the Shah of Iran, and a platoon of Sherman tanks is currently trying to work out a common language with a lost stone age tribe who's currently building stone megalith depictions of their bogged AFVs.

There's a very good chance that I will never have to actually fight Lars's troops, because by the time I reach them they will have succumbed to depression, alcoholism and disease.

Occasionally I've been informed that I have 'reinforcements', but a thorough search of the map has only turned up about half of them. Where the others came in, I have no clue. Hopefully they are achieving rich lives of meditation and artistic pursuits.

Since the sodding scenario is 70+ turns, I imagine that all of them will eventually be reintegrated into the war, but it's hard to say. Possibly the final fire-fight will be carried out by their sons.

[aka_tom_w]

I think there are still questions pending from the previous thread...

AND yes of course I have one:

(But there were other questions there as well)

Steve? Is this what you are trying to tell us:

There's The NEW CMx2 Engine - (multi-functional, pan-dimensional living breathing, masterpiece of game code, pinnacle of game development achievement of ALL TIME!) or, the underpinings of everything

There's The Game - Era specific... WW2, Cold War (NOT likely or so we are told), Space Lobsters, whateever ( Korean "conflict" MAYBE Arab-Israeli wars? )

There's The Module - Narrow focus addons to The Game. Normandy, Battle of the Bulge, Austerlitz, whatever.

(no more than 2-3 modules PER Game/Era ( with a new one maybe every 6-8 months?)

BUT if the Game/era is WWII how could we (the CMxx Hardcore which are extremely well represented in this thread ) possibly be happy with only 2-3 modules FOR ALL of WWII unless I am missing something here OR the Modules you speak of are somehow quite broad and generous?? (larger than the narrow scope of one battle that I am lead to believe?)

Maybe I just can't see the "BIG" picture yet?

BUT I am trying



-tom w

P.S. and I am guessing from the tang, taste and texture of the recent bones (gristle and ALL!) the first game MAY not be WWII but some other interesting historically significant armed conflict between WWII about 15 years ago maybe??


quote:
Originally posted by Berlichtingen:
quote:
Originally posted by Kellysheroes:
In essence we'll still be getting the same "value" for our $$ in cost, but, we probably won't get the "longevity" of each game like we did CMBO/CMBB/CMAK that's the kicker and that is what will turn some consumers off to the new idea of module based games vs full theater of operations and all those vehicles, infantry, etc. etc. all in one package.
Actually, if I understood the module concept, they add on to the existing game. So, new module comes out, I don't though the old one in the drawer, I keep playing with additonal capabilities.

Just in case I misunderstood Steve, here's my take on what he's said...

There's The Engine - the underpinings of everything
There's The Game - Era specific... WW2, Cold War, Space Lobsters, whaterever
There's The Module - Narrow focus addons to The Game. Normandy, Battle of the Bulge, Austerlitz, whatever.

So, we get a game with vastly more play options followed by modules that extend the unit possibilities.

I really don't see what all the whining's aboot

[Snarker]

After reading through Steve's bones, I've come to some conclusions:

1) I'll like CMx2
2) Given the sheer volume in his posts, Steve and Seanachai are one in the same. It was brilliance to ban his 'other self' to keep us guessing. smile.gif

[aka_tom_w]

hmmm

Did I miss something?

Did Seanachai get banned?


Oh I guess if he did get banned I am really not actually missing anything after all am I ? :D

he he

-tom w

[ June 04, 2005, 09:04 AM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[GJK]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:
hmmm

Did I miss something?

Did Seanachai get banned?
Yes, some time ago. The thread that he got banned in wasn't about CMx2, so yeah, you probably missed it. tongue.gif

[junk2drive]

Ok GJK you made me go into a peng thread to see.
I feel so dirty now.

[Kanonier Reichmann]

O.K., now that I can see some information about the new game from BFC in its own thread I'm more than happy to apologise if I upset anyone with my concerns that CMX2 may be vapourware. Clearly this is not the case from what I have now read and I'm very glad that I've been proven wrong. Good to be able to find out about the game progress and the concepts behind it without having to scan every single post made in obscure threads which, on initial inspection, were of little to no interest to me.

Regards

Jim R.

[Yeknodathon]

I'm particularly looking forward to the $10 Grog Modules. Bren Tripod Platinum Edition is of particular interest.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:
An alternative would of course be Vietnam, which didn't have armored vehicles...WRONG! The US had a whole fistful of various kinds of AFVs, including armored cars, the Marines ONTOS, but most importantly M113s—including some heavily armed for the cavalry role—and M48s. The NVA had T54/55s and later on (I think) T62s as well. I think at the beginning they may have had T34/85s as well.

Armor in Viet Nam rarely lost a battle. I've heard it claimed that it was NVA armor that carried them to final victory in 1975.

What there wasn't was tank vs. tank fighting. Almost exclusively, the armor was employed in an infantry support role. There was as least one interesting incident however, when a platoon of American M48s shot up and sank a number of NVN gun-running boats on the coast at night. smile.gif

Michael

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Bigduke6:
An alternative would of course be Vietnam, which didn't have armored vehicles...WRONG! The US had a whole fistful of various kinds of AFVs, including armored cars, the Marines ONTOS, but most importantly M113s—including some heavily armed for the cavalry role—and M48s. The NVA had T54/55s and later on (I think) T62s as well. I think at the beginning they may have had T34/85s as well.

Armor in Viet Nam rarely lost a battle. I've heard it claimed that it was NVA armor that carried them to final victory in 1975.

What there wasn't was tank vs. tank fighting. Almost exclusively, the armor was employed in an infantry support role. There was as least one interesting incident however, when a platoon of American M48s shot up and sank a number of NVN gun-running boats on the coast at night. smile.gif

Michael </font>[/QUOTE]Yeah, tell the garrison at Lang Vei that the Commies had no tanks...

[junk2drive]

Adding to M.E.'s post, pre-USA IndoChina the French used basically the same kit we have now in CM.
Add to late period list, PT-76s, various Soviet AA AFVs, M551s, etc. plus aircraft and choppers.

Anybody try my CMAK Lang Vei battle?

[Kingfish]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:
The NVA had T54/55s and later on (I think) T62s as well. I think at the beginning they may have had T34/85s as well.Add to that the PT/76, which as MD pointed out helped overrun Lang Vei.

What there wasn't was tank vs. tank fighting.There were a few, but almost all were ARVN vs NVA. The incursion into Laos featured a few battalion-sized battles with armor. Then of course there were numerous engagaments during the NVA's Easter offensive.

I do know of one encounter between an American and NVA tank. A M48 took out a NVA tank which had been parked next to a river and the crew was washing it :D . Granted, not your typical CM armor duel, but hey, at least our side won.

[Panzer76]

Originally posted by Kingfish:
Granted, not your typical CM armor duel, but hey, at least our side won. No, our side did not win ;) Incidentally, you know what the Vietnamese call the war? The America War, go figure...

[Panzer76]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Bigduke6:
An alternative would of course be Vietnam, which didn't have armored vehicles...WRONG! </font>[/QUOTE]Ooo.. with capital letters and all, you just love that feeling, dontcha? ;)

[Kingfish]

Originally posted by Panzer76:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Kingfish:
Granted, not your typical CM armor duel, but hey, at least our side won. No, our side did not win ;) Incidentally, you know what the Vietnamese call the war? The America War, go figure... </font>[/QUOTE]I meant in the context of that single engagment, not the entire war.

[Panzer76]

Originally posted by GJK:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by aka_tom_w:
hmmm

Did I miss something?

Did Seanachai get banned?
Yes, some time ago. The thread that he got banned in wasn't about CMx2, so yeah, you probably missed it. tongue.gif </font>[/QUOTE]Huh? I tried searching, but didn't find anything?

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Panzer76:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by GJK:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by aka_tom_w:
hmmm

Did I miss something?

Did Seanachai get banned?
Yes, some time ago. The thread that he got banned in wasn't about CMx2, so yeah, you probably missed it. tongue.gif </font>[/QUOTE]Huh? I tried searching, but didn't find anything? </font>[/QUOTE]

What we want you to do is to take this sack and go stand in the middle of that swamp over there and we'll drive the birds towards you. When you hear them coming, open the sack and hold it up and they'll fly right in. Neat, huh?



Michael

[GJK]

Originally posted by Panzer76:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by GJK:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by aka_tom_w:
hmmm

Did I miss something?

Did Seanachai get banned?
Yes, some time ago. The thread that he got banned in wasn't about CMx2, so yeah, you probably missed it. tongue.gif </font>[/QUOTE]Huh? I tried searching, but didn't find anything? </font>[/QUOTE]It was some time ago - heck, it might of been before the big purge even. IIRC, it was something said in the GDF, not here.

[Battlefront.com]

Thanks Tom for the summary!

Kellysheroes ,

I think what Steve seems to miss and their critical mistake, is while he boasts of a new game for us in 6-8 months, he forgets that many of us may be waiting still two years for a game module we are "interested" in. You're making some pretty big assumption. The first is that you are representative of the bulk of the CM fanbase, and two that you'll be worse off with the new system vs. the old system. Bad assumptions to make on both counts.

If you don't like what we release then of course you're going to have to wait or move on. What do you think a bunch of people did inbetween CMBO and CMAK? They waited 3 years for their next CM fix because they didn't want to play the Eastern Front. Our new strategy would probably have reduced that wait time to months, not years. And if they are like most of our customers, they might be interested in the 2-3 completely different games we'll release in that 2 year timeframe.


The wait for the average BFC customer for CMx2 titles they are "interested" in could be no less than the wait on the CMx1 titles.Sure, but on average it is likely to be far LESS. Very few of our total customers (which this Forum represents a small and distorted slice) are ONLY interested in WWII. While they might not all be interested in the same non-WWII stuff, that's OK too. Let me break into a new concept for some of y'all...

We currently service probably 1/100ths of a % of the entire gaming market. If we grabbed the attention of another 1/100ths of a % of the gaming market out there we'll have doubled our customer base. Personally, we think we can do even better than that.

I bought them all mainly because they were WWII titles and came with a quick battle system.Far more probably DIDN'T buy them because they were WWII titles (or some other thing). While we certainly don't care to abandon our roots, there is SOOOOO much more out there to tap into than doing the same thing we just did.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Posted in the Cold War Rant thread (now locked) and added here because, well, it's relevant darn it!

You guys basically have it right. The Engine supports Games, each Game supports its own set of Modules. The purpose of the Module is to expand the scope of the Game.

As stated, the starting scope of each Game will be much more focused than with CMx1 releases. Therefore we would never release a "World War Two" game. We would, instead, release a Western Front Game + Modules and an Eastern Front + Modules. While they are both WWII, and share a little in common, basically they are two entirely different games. That was true for CMx1 and it is certainly true for CMx2.

New part of the post...

Some guys had asked about being able to do very specific, detailed, and non-conforming battles in Modules. Yes, in theory we could release a Module for something that required unique stuff. Easiest example:

Let's say that the Game is Normandy *after* the initial and follow up landings. We could release a Module to do the beach landings at D-Day, complete with Funnies, "special forces", landing craft, naval bombardments, and of course terrain. In order to do such a Module we would need to do the following things specific to this Module (i.e. not included with the Game):

1. TO&E
2. OBs
3. Vehicle models/textures
4. Code support for any special feature (like flail tanks)
5. Terrain modeling (which probably includes models)
6. Lots and lots of textures for all sorts of things

This is no small undertaking, even if it was limited to just US or just Commonwealth. However, there are a lot of scenario options waiting to be had! And there would have to be otherwise it doesn't make sense to put the time and energy into the Module in the first place.

However, since each Module adds to the "pool" of stuff we have to draw from, the more Modules we do the easier it is to support "broader" topics. For example, let us say we release a post landing Normandy campaign without Commonwealth forces. Then we release a Module with the Commonwealth stuff. Now a Normandy landing Module for BOTH US and Commonwealth might be feasible, whereas if we did the landing Module 2nd it would not be.

Again, the scope of a Module (and the Game too, for that matter) will be a balance of effort and playability. With CMx1 we did huge effort for enormous playability... which means things were not in balance. Now we are shooting to do big effort for big playability for the Game and medium effort for medium (or better) playability for Modules. As our effort load goes down we're more willing to give more playability because, basically, it doesn't "cost" us anything to do that. Or to put some numbers on it...

Let us say the Normandy landing Module looks like it will take us 5 months of solid work just from the US side. But since most of the work is for things which are common to Commonwealth, and/or present in the previous Module, then perhaps adding support for Commonwealth landings might only add another 2 months to our schedule. 5 months isn't a huge load of time so adding another 2 months might not be such a big deal to our Big Picture plans. But if the original load were 12 months and the extra work 6... totally different story because now we're talking about a large chunk of time.

Hopefully you guys can follow this logic :D

Steve

[Bigduke6]

Oh Michael, for Heaven's sake, don't be that way. I was generalizing. You want me nit-picking every little thing you write?

Of course there were armored vehicles in NAM, and a few of them even got into combat. The first time TOW did its thing from a helicopter in combat, for instance, was when some Air Cav Hueys did in a pair of PT-76s, in 1972 I think. Same campaign, Air Cav infantry found out LAWs by the bundle WILL take out a T-54/55; penetration ratings be damned. Beat that trivia.

I am even pretty sure there was a tank-to-tank fight or two in the war, although I'll leave it to one of the real NAM grogs to sort you on that one.

The Vietnamese (the Communist kind) even had a medal: "Heroic Destroyer of the M-113." Andrew could go to town putting those in on uniforms.

My point was that presence or absence of armor a cool NAM game will not make. But 3D choppers disgorging troopies and doing gun runs and MEDEVACS getting smashed by hidden PPSh MGs to clog LZ XRAY - with gobs of smoke and explosions - that would be tres cool, and I am maintaining tres cool computer depiction of the coolest war machines in a high-fidelity tactical environment, is what sells BFI games. Maybe I'm wrong but that's my opinon.

For instance, if CM gave us a way to do river gunboats - that game would go like hotcakes. ONTOS is cool in and of itself but it just doesn't thave the Tiger I rep. No NAM mech equipment does. Of course armored vehicles should be in there, but it's the rotor-wing stuff that will make or break a game like that.

But if it makes you feel better I stand corrected, my text should have read along the lines of "An alternative would of course be Vietnam, which in mainstream combat didn't have armored vehicles per se..."


Originally posted by Michael Emrys:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Bigduke6:
An alternative would of course be Vietnam, which didn't have armored vehicles...WRONG! The US had a whole fistful of various kinds of AFVs, including armored cars, the Marines ONTOS, but most importantly M113s—including some heavily armed for the cavalry role—and M48s. The NVA had T54/55s and later on (I think) T62s as well. I think at the beginning they may have had T34/85s as well.

Armor in Viet Nam rarely lost a battle. I've heard it claimed that it was NVA armor that carried them to final victory in 1975.

What there wasn't was tank vs. tank fighting. Almost exclusively, the armor was employed in an infantry support role. There was as least one interesting incident however, when a platoon of American M48s shot up and sank a number of NVN gun-running boats on the coast at night. smile.gif

Michael </font>[/QUOTE]

[Bigduke6]

Heh. El silencio is deafening. My brilliant speculation clearly is dead on. I hereby patent my "Kool War Vehicle" theory, any one using it from here on in will have to pay me or my heirs an outrageous royalty.

Steve, your logic is crystal clear to me anyway. Keep talking.

BTW I really appreciate your taking the time to participate in this discussion. No other computer game company on the planet, really.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:
My point was that presence or absence of armor a cool NAM game will not make. But 3D choppers disgorging troopies and doing gun runs and MEDEVACS getting smashed by hidden PPSh MGs to clog LZ XRAY - with gobs of smoke and explosions - that would be tres cool, and I am maintaining tres cool computer depiction of the coolest war machines in a high-fidelity tactical environment, is what sells BFI games. Maybe I'm wrong but that's my opinon.

For instance, if CM gave us a way to do river gunboats - that game would go like hotcakes. ONTOS is cool in and of itself but it just doesn't thave the Tiger I rep. No NAM mech equipment does. Of course armored vehicles should be in there, but it's the rotor-wing stuff that will make or break a game like that.You would actually buy a game based on what equipment is in it rather than based on what the gameplay is like?

Honestly, in a CM level sim, what possible use would you have for helicopters? They fly in, land the troops, fly out again....

Maybe you're looking for a flight sim?

[Mace]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:
Hopefully you guys can follow this logicNo worries there.

So my take on this is that the main executable contains script to model the factors common to all warfare, eg ballistics, environmental factors, and so on. This forms the spine of CMx2.

The 'module' will contain the information applicable to a battle (eg TOE, equipment details, terrain set, graphic skins, etc), or a series of related battles (eg battles of the 1 British AD, Desert Storm), which the main executable will draw on.

One question I have is whether tools will be made available for the player to develop a module (which could just be one battle, or a series of battles), because I have a feeling a little bit more work may be required to generate these than currently is required?

Regardless, from what I've read so far and what appears to be a more flexible system, I'm very much looking forward to CMx2. smile.gif

[A.E.B]

My understanding.

There is a core engine that is not a stand alone game - lets call it the Real Physics Combat System (RPCS).

The idea is to code games based on the RPCS engine, but with extra coding to customise it to a specific theatre/battle/operation.

This game based on the RPCS engine is then in turn expanded by the addition of modules that add onto the original game.

So the RPCS engine could handle any combat using gunpowder weapons and beyond (for example - just guessing).

The games could cover any territory allowed by the RPCS engine: WWI, WWII, Korea, Nam, Arab v Isreali, Cold War goes hot, whatever.

This game + module system is probably one of the oldest and most successful models in the gaming industry - both commerically and for a player base - with the exception of subscription online gaming.

It provides a continuous stream of fresh material for the gamer and a stream of cash to pay for the game designers drug additions. ;)

To take the example Steve mentioned, CMX may be limited to Americans vs Germans in Normandy.

The advantages of this are the ability to provide a far more realistic game: correct OOBs, better graphics for vehicles and infantry, terrain specifically of the type found in Normandy (ie hedgerows), correct architecture, etc.

This escapes the generic terrain and buildings of the previous CM games, and provides scope to create much better maps.

But every silver cloud has a black lining.

BFC has to get the balance right. For the module system to work people must keep playing the game.

Get it right and your sales of the original game plus the modules can continue for years, as new gamers will tend to buy the game plus some modules.

Get it wrong and the market dies before you can get those modules onto the market.

If the first CMX WWII game was justed limited to a couple of months of American vs German in Normandy, the question arises as to how long gamers will keep playing a limited set of battles. Or will it devolve into "same tanks, same terrain" boredom?

The beauty of CMBO, CMBB, and CMAK was the ability to play a huge range of battles and operations with a large range of equipment. This kept many people playing for years, and fueled an active modder community.

But BFC must have been cursing everytime the Bolli ran out that we gamers were getting such a longterm gaming experience without extra cash following into the BFC Swiss bank accounts. tongue.gif

BFC can safely assume that those of us who liked CM will buy CMX whenever it arrives. And as I am sure BFC knows - those of us here on this forum make up only a few % of the total sales of CM in the past.

The trick for BFC is to get people to buy the modules after they buy the first game. I have faith in their ability to get it right, but then the computer gaming industry has this knack of turning gold to lead.

So CMX will live and die on boths its game play and its replayability - this is what will keep gamers coming back - and this is what will allow the BFC crew to keep living their accustomed lifestyle of the 17th Century European Monarch. :D

A.E.B

[Panzer76]

Steve,

When you guys relase a GAME, will you also announce how many, and which modules that will follow?

Will there ever be a chance to play on the scope of CMBB with your new system? With this I mean, you make the East Front GAME and X amounts of MODULES, that in sum will be as comprehensive as CMBB.

[c3k]

Steve,

How long until the "German Rare Vehicles" module will be released? I'd like to be able to surprise my opponent with vehicles he's never seen...

smile.gif

Ken

[Kellysheroes]

[Very few of our total customers (which this Forum represents a small and distorted slice)]

Wow, to think, I'm just a small and distorted slice. ;(

[We currently service probably 1/100ths of a % of the entire gaming market. If we grabbed the attention of another 1/100ths of a % of the gaming market out there we'll have doubled our customer base.]

Creative Assembly did this with Rome Total War and alienated most of their previous customer base who many have now moved to Slitherine's upcoming "Legion II".

Since I am such a "small and distorted" figure, I guess it doesn't matter much to the capitalists. Losing 50 and gaining 100 doesn't matter to them much, losing 50 that helped keep them in business in the first place, buying their initial products, becoming loyal and buying the others when released is just plain ole insignificant when it comes to the bottom line isn't it Steve? ;)

[Ron]

Originally posted by Kellysheroes:

Creative Assembly did this with Rome Total War and alienated most of their previous customer base who many have now moved to Slitherine's upcoming "Legion II".

Since I am such a "small and distorted" figure, I guess it doesn't matter much to the capitalists. Losing 50 and gaining 100 doesn't matter to them much, losing 50 that helped keep them in business in the first place, buying their initial products, becoming loyal and buying the others when released is just plain ole insignificant when it comes to the bottom line isn't it Steve? ;) Or in this case losing '1' since your 'lonely cry in the woods' hasn't been reflected by the continued and continuing support of the 'loyal and dedicated' fan base as shown in this and the other thread. However don't let that stop you, 'someone' has to be on the 'other side'. smile.gif


Ron

[Scipio]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:
Thanks Tom for the summary!

Kellysheroes ,

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />I think what Steve seems to miss and their critical mistake, is while he boasts of a new game for us in 6-8 months, he forgets that many of us may be waiting still two years for a game module we are "interested" in. You're making some pretty big assumption. The first is that you are representative of the bulk of the CM fanbase, and two that you'll be worse off with the new system vs. the old system. Bad assumptions to make on both counts.

If you don't like what we release then of course you're going to have to wait or move on. What do you think a bunch of people did inbetween CMBO and CMAK? They waited 3 years for their next CM fix because they didn't want to play the Eastern Front. Our new strategy would probably have reduced that wait time to months, not years. And if they are like most of our customers, they might be interested in the 2-3 completely different games we'll release in that 2 year timeframe.


The wait for the average BFC customer for CMx2 titles they are "interested" in could be no less than the wait on the CMx1 titles.Steve </font>[/QUOTE]Steve said somewhere above '6 people were working fulltime and another 12 part time on a title like CMBB for about two years' - please don't nail me down on the numbers ;) . Just a question I have to ask here. Who said that the full team have to work on only a single title/module? Of course I do not know anything of the BFC personal resources and politics, but I guess it could be possible to work parallel on (different) main titles and/or modules. What is a module? Basically maps, scenarios, new units. For example, you won't need Charles for that (I think). I think BFC will be able to produce a lot of stuff with very different settings.

Another point is of course, they can just 'test' the market. You people should also see the high financial risk - even BFC MUST get money out of the games, just to keep alive and independent.
Just imagine they develope a game that can not be selled? It's one thing to waste two or three years to cover the whole WW1, and another thing to waste 6 month on the Verdun Battle. (Just as an example, I do like WW1 very much).

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:
...if it makes you feel better I stand corrected, my text should have read along the lines of "An alternative would of course be Vietnam, which in mainstream combat didn't have armored vehicles per se..."Much better. smile.gif

You see, one never knows who reads these threads or what they bring to them in terms of understanding, but you can bet your bottom dollar that if there is some way to take it wrong, some moron will. What's more, he'll go share this "information" with his friends who aren't any better informed than he is. Pretty soon, there is a flood of ignoramuses showing up who will defend to the death the notion that there wasn't any armor in Viet Nam, or if there was it was unimportant. Whereas in fact it decided many fights, some of them important indeed. And don't say I exaggerate, cos I've seen that kind of thing happen more times than I could count. smile.gif

Soooo...I may not be a nitpicker nor a nitpicker's son, but I'll pick nits 'til the nitpicker comes.

:D

Michael

[aka_tom_w]

I think that is a GREAT marketing strategy but it almost seems TOO obvious and too cra$$ly and blatently commercial for the good folks at BFC. (But you never know smile.gif )

That said I think it would be a VERY profitable marketing strategy...

so I guess we'll see

smile.gif

-tom w

Originally posted by Bigduke6:
Thanks to aka_tom_w for summing up the posts.

I will now offer my "cool armored vehicles theory" as a predictive model for how BFI will produce games in the future.

The first CMX2 game will be WWII, and it will contain Germans from at least 1942. Why? Simple grasshopper, that's when Tiger I came out, and Tiger I is the coolest single armored vehicle ever produced, and that equals public interest and sales. Most likely after mid-1943, as that's when the second coolest armored vehicle, Panther, came out.

Most likely it will be roughly Normandy in time frame, and more likely than not the oppposition will be Americans, in part because of the size of the American buying market, but also because if you leave out Commonweatlh, then the Allied players fighting against those Tigers in the first installment of the CMX2 engine will be willing to sell the house and grandma with it to get the Commonwealth module, which will include Fireflies, so they can kill those Tigers and Panthers.

If there is one thing CM1 and this forum has taught us, it is that armored combat vehicle envy is a real psychological illness, and thousands of potential BFI customers suffer from it.

The WW2 East Front can be broken up neatly into sections based on Soviet armored vehicle development. Pre and post T-34/85. Again for Stalin. The point is that if you don't give the public all their toys at once, then they will be ready and willing to plunk down some more green on the barrel to get the next window in time with the next generation of vehicles.

Even better, you could probably build an entire module/game based on the single concept "This is the one where you get Tiger II".

This doesn't really help BFI much in terms of creativity, of course, WW2 tanks is very well-traveled ground from a research point of view. Thus I would guess the non-WWII focus Steve keeps hinting at would look somewhere else for "cool" FVs where each game leaves the player starving for what came next.

I therefore kinda lean towards the Middle East. That has lots of tanks which in and of themselves are not super-cool in the wargamer mind, I mean T-62 or Centurian just don't have the panache of Tiger I, but OHH there are helicopters and anti-tank missiles and a whole different kind of terrain. That would be pretty cool for BFI developers I should think, and that framework has almost unlimited development potential: Lebanon campaign, Iran-Iraq, India-Pakistan, you-pick-it-Africa, and right up through Desert Storm. And each time technology bumps change the fighting relationships - Sagger, then TOW, then AT helicopters, then Redeye and SA-7, the list is endless.

An alternative would of course be Vietnam, which didn't have armored vehicles but had choppers out the yin yang. After Tiger I perhaps the "coolest" piece of military equipment out there is Huey as applied by 1st Cav and Coppola. Also getting voices for that would be easier all told than for Middle East. Would I, one of the worst Soviet grogs I know, buy something like that? Look at my handle...

Napoleonics might be another direction, if the engine is as flexible as Steve says it will be maybe it will be possible to take all those individuals and "represent" a battle with 100,000 on a side. I don't think we'd see 100,000 sprites, but who's to say in the CMX2 of some angle of WW2 each sprite is an individual soldier, but in the Napoleonics version it's a representation of 10 or even 100 soldiers? And if the graphics engine is everything it is cracked up to be, then on viewing level one can you imagine the Cool Factor for looking at close-ups of the 95th Rifles, Blucher's Deathshead Hussars, or that absolute Tiger I Cool Factor 10+ of the Napoleonic era: The Imperial Guard Grenadiers complete with moustaches and gold earrings?

Me, I would jump at a Napoleonic CMX2 way before even WW2 West front, as I am one of those people who is not having fun without T-34.

But I think when they get right down to it, BFI is going to go with the rational choice, the real crowd-pleaser, the one that gets the people into the movie theater: Tiger I.

BFI admin guys, obviously no need to respond to this. This is just by way to get some forum speculation going, and maybe to give you designer guys a giggle or two.

[ June 05, 2005, 08:50 AM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[Scipio]

Let me sum up what we know for sure about CM2x:

a) It will be a wargame
b) It will be turn based, not RTS
c) It will use 3D graphics
d) It will use the 'we go' system
e) We have to pay money for it

Sounds all fine to me, I can't wait for the demo.

For the long term game fun, I would prefer a random (quick) battle generator as we have it in CM1x. How often can you play the same (2,3) dozen of scenarios until they get boring? That's also a marketing strategy/question to keep a game alive.

The only negative thing I see is this: since I prefer to play PBEM, I guess it will be a pain in the arse to list up if my opponent uses all the games/modules we need (including all updates) to start a match.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Scipio:
Steve said somewhere above '6 people were working fulltime and another 12 part time on a title like CMBB for about two years' - please don't nail me down on the numbers ;) . Just a question I have to ask here. Who said that the full team have to work on only a single title/module? Of course I do not know anything of the BFC personal resources and politics, but I guess it could be possible to work parallel on (different) main titles and/or modules. What is a module? Basically maps, scenarios, new units. For example, you won't need Charles for that (I think). I think BFC will be able to produce a lot of stuff with very different settings.

Another point is of course, they can just 'test' the market. You people should also see the high financial risk - even BFC MUST get money out of the games, just to keep alive and independent.
Just imagine they develope a game that can not be selled? It's one thing to waste two or three years to cover the whole WW1, and another thing to waste 6 month on the Verdun Battle. (Just as an example, I do like WW1 very much). Well, I hope they will be getting even more input from "the community" when it comes to the smaller modules. Perhaps the way scenario designers are doing battles and ops now, they can be bringing their talents to modules? Like if Kingfish reads up on TOTALIZE and then provides the OOB, maps, etc. for a TOTALIZE module - which would include historical OOB, what ifs, historical maps, perhaps a CD-ROM section with historical photos and after action reports, etc.?

I'd love to work on something like that for SCHELDT FORTRESS NORTH basically 2nd Canadian Infantry Div vs. KG Chill and a couple German Inf Divs. Get one or two designers doing the maps from original wartime maps (I've been researching the South Beveland area and our regimental museum has maps for the entire are 2 Cdn Div fought over from 1 October 1944 to 1 November 1944), work out historical OOB, air and naval assets, etc. Release it as a "module" - interested designers could do a lot with a simple map and force editor - though again, you'd have to guage what the market will bear.

You're suggesting, Steve, the core game would enable module developers to do this kind of thing, yes? Just plug in actual terrain maps, variables for campaign type data (reinforcements, support, weather), and of course unit specific data (including 3D models and etc. which would be hard coded) and away you go?

[Michael Emrys]

My sense of what Steve has posted is that because some of the Modules will have to be hard coded, they will only be produced in-house or by licensed developers, not players. But once a Game and subsequent Modules are out, there should still be plenty of work for scenario designers and modders, just as there is now.

Or I could be completely wrong.

;)

Michael

[Scipio]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:
Well, I hope they will be getting even more input from "the community" when it comes to the smaller modules. Perhaps the way scenario designers are doing battles and ops now, they can be bringing their talents to modules? Like if Kingfish reads up on TOTALIZE and then provides the OOB, maps, etc. for a TOTALIZE module - which would include historical OOB, what ifs, historical maps, perhaps a CD-ROM section with historical photos and after action reports, etc.?

I'd love to work on something like that for SCHELDT FORTRESS NORTH basically 2nd Canadian Infantry Div vs. KG Chill and a couple German Inf Divs. Get one or two designers doing the maps from original wartime maps (I've been researching the South Beveland area and our regimental museum has maps for the entire are 2 Cdn Div fought over from 1 October 1944 to 1 November 1944), work out historical OOB, air and naval assets, etc. Release it as a "module" - interested designers could do a lot with a simple map and force editor - though again, you'd have to guage what the market will bear.

You're suggesting, Steve, the core game would enable module developers to do this kind of thing, yes? Just plug in actual terrain maps, variables for campaign type data (reinforcements, support, weather), and of course unit specific data (including 3D models and etc. which would be hard coded) and away you go? That's another point for "the new style". There's so much input from the community. I have seen a lot of good ideas during all the years.
I guess much more of it could be realized when the game is in some kind of ongoing development.

I hope at some point we need to redefine the word 'mod' as we use now in CM1x...

[aka_tom_w]

Hey that sounds good.

BUT in your (Michael Dorosh's post in bold below).... understanding of this idea how will BFC sell or market these new player designed modules???

I have read your post and it looks like a GREAT idea but some how BFC has to make a profit selling the module in the first place.

This post by Micheal Emrys also makes sense to me:

"Michael Emrys
Member
Member # 361

posted June 05, 2005 12:14 PM
My sense of what Steve has posted is that because some of the Modules will have to be hard coded, they will only be produced in-house or by licensed developers, not players. But once a Game and subsequent Modules are out, there should still be plenty of work for scenario designers and modders, just as there is now."

smile.gif

-tom w


Dorosh:
I'd love to work on something like that for SCHELDT FORTRESS NORTH basically 2nd Canadian Infantry Div vs. KG Chill and a couple German Inf Divs. Get one or two designers doing the maps from original wartime maps (I've been researching the South Beveland area and our regimental museum has maps for the entire are 2 Cdn Div fought over from 1 October 1944 to 1 November 1944), work out historical OOB, air and naval assets, etc. Release it as a "module" - interested designers could do a lot with a simple map and force editor - though again, you'd have to guage what the market will bear.

You're suggesting, Steve, the core game would enable module developers to do this kind of thing, yes? Just plug in actual terrain maps, variables for campaign type data (reinforcements, support, weather), and of course unit specific data (including 3D models and etc. which would be hard coded) and away you go?

[Abbott]

Personally I have faith in BFC’s quality of production. I like their products and their style. I enjoyed CMBO and CMBB, while I am not much of a North Africa fan I purchased CMAK because BFC produced it and I knew it would be worth the purchase price. I look forward to CMX 2 and plan to purchase future titles based on fun and playability rather then period or “slice” of period covered. I am convinced BFC will produce something I can find entertaining in any time frame covered and worth the price I paid for it.

[Battlefront.com]

Mace, the core engine isn't all things to all types of warfare in any real sense. The core engine doesn't know any more than what is going to be used for the first installment. The difference between the new core and the old core is that the new core was built in such a way that it can be "easily" modified to simulate other forms of warfare. This still involves coding and all the support stuff (graphics, sounds, etc), so the games and modules built on top of it don't come for free. They just come with a far smaller pricetag (time and money) than doing a ground up game.

Kellysheros, you have to remember that we have a pretty sizeable fan base. Only a small percentage of them come to the Forum on any regular basis. The ones that do tend to be the most hardcore. All are responsible for our success, not just the ones that post.

When we do strategic thinking we need to keep in mind that the Forum is a sounding board for a minority of our customers. Important as they might be, if we alienate the REST we die for sure since the core isn't big enough to keep us going. If we alienate the core... we'd probably survive, though not without taking lumps. Obviously we want to find a balance, but if we are going to err it will be on the side of the majority of our customers not the minority. Thankfully we're very good at balancing stuff :D

I'm also quite pleased by the response from the core guys so far. The bulk have instantly recognized the benefits of the new system, even if it means a fundamental change to the scope of the game (it is unavoidable). We're sure the new strategy will work out best for everybody, therefore we aren't concerned about a few negative comments. If we have a strategy that pleases the bulk of our core audience AND the majority audience... losing a couple of people here and there won't matter at all.

No, modules can not be made completely out of house. At least we don't anticipate that being possible. Code changes are likely, even if minor. But yes, we are anticipating that a good number of the Modules that come out will not be made by Battlefront employees (for the most part anyway). Of course we'll still be there to approve the design and assure quality, but once the game itself is done the modules don't require the same sort of attention. Kinda like how most of the scenarios that shipped with CMx1 games were made by volunteers. Not exactly the same thing with Modules, but it does demonstrate that outside parties, with fairly light direction from us, can produce some whopping great stuff!

We will likley not outline what all future Modules will be. We want to keep that flexible (i.e. take user input AFTER they play the game). The great thing is that nobody, including us, needs to have this sort of thing nailed down ahead of time.

No, I do not anticpate us ever fleshing out a Game to the extent of CMBB. That was just too massive. Hell, what do I know though... we MIGHT, it's just that I shudder to think about it (again) smile.gif

As for when the "Rare German Vehicle" Module will come out... defeine "rare" smile.gif We've got so many rare, redundant, and even useless German stuff in the three CMx1 games already. If you mean the dozen or so we didn't put in (including those never produced), well... who knows :D

Steve

[c3k]

Steve,

Hey, I don't care WHAT those whingers say, I like the deeper, more frequent, game module idea. (Of course, as a forum member I have to add my two cents and hope that ALL modules can be linked together. Forever.)

Glad to see that you seem to be keeping a good sense of humor about the responses. Thanks for keeping the dialogue going.

Regards,
Ken

[Wartgamer]

Will there be demos for each module or just for each 'game'?

[dalem]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:
No, I do not anticpate us ever fleshing out a Game to the extent of CMBB. That was just too massive. Hell, what do I know though... we MIGHT, it's just that I shudder to think about it (again) smile.gif
Well, isn't the breadth of a CM:BB potentially there anyway simply because of the concept of multiple modules? Just like us NWE fans play CM:AK now and call it NWE in our scenarios and heads even though technically we're locked in the Med?

If y'all spent the next 3 months somehow adding a "Module" to CM:AK that consisted of a handful of early war French and German units then we'd start making scenarios about the Blitzkrieg years, no problem. Likewise, the potential game of "CMx2:Christmas in Moscow 1941?" might initially disappoint Winter War fans, but only really until someone was able to "make" a "Toothpicks, Sisu, and You!" module. And that module would only need new units - terrain seems like it's going to be much less theater-specific because granularity is finer.

Now I have no ide what the business and/or reality model would be for even a "simple" module as I described. But I still see the breadth as potentially there. Maybe I'm missing something.

-dale

[Battlefront.com]

c3k, Modules for a related game will all be happy with each other, but we're still unsure if advances to the game engine can be backwards compatible with previous game releases. The hope is that they can be, but it might be too difficult to do.

Wartgamer, no...demos will be for the Game and not the Module. Once you've played the demo (or bought the Game), imagining what the Module will yield is really not very difficult to do.

Dalem, in theory we can make a CMBB again but have it not kill us. The thing is that we will still have to be involved and we won't want to bother getting a Module made that we don't think is marketable. It's going to be an interesting thing to see how this develops, but at this time I don't want to oversell the Module concept. Especially since some people already thought the whole of WWII would be possible using Modules :D

Steve

[dalem]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:
Dalem, in theory we can make a CMBB again but have it not kill us. The thing is that we will still have to be involved and we won't want to bother getting a Module made that we don't think is marketable. It's going to be an interesting thing to see how this develops, but at this time I don't want to oversell the Module concept. Especially since some people already thought the whole of WWII would be possible using Modules :D

Steve Gotcha.

-dale

[throwdjohn]

I'm sure CMx2 will be great....and we had a choice about buying BB and AK? ****, I thought it was mandatory. I think the basic premise of this post, and the mindset of all the developers to SHUT THE HELL UP if you don't like the ideas. Like they are going to change their minds because three people bitch and moan? this is their jobs people, theyre not in the business of losing money (although as i'll tell you, that's a growth industry right there). So to sum it up, if you don't like CMx2, don't buy it, and we'll all see you in hell. I hope this doesn't get edited or summthing.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Well well. What a nice attitude we have here towards those not lining the roads waving the appropriate flags.
I don't mind it from Steve. In fact I damn near welcome it, because with three amazing games under his belt he earned it. As long as he doesn't charge me $0.01 for every hour I enjoyed with CM he can call every name under the sun, because I do not have $1.000 right now. :D And if he says CMx2 will be the best thing since sliced bread, then, even if it hasn't got all the features I care for, I will trust him on that. I voiced my concerns, I trust Steve and the rest of BFC have considered it and I trust their judgment even if I might not always like it.

*edited because trading insults isn't the thing to do*

[ June 05, 2005, 05:09 PM: Message edited by: Elmar Bijlsma ]

[aka_tom_w]

WOW

Lets stay focused on the bones and Steve's VERY informative questions and prompt answers and direct replies.

So far we have had plenty of straight honest and complete answers to our questions in this thread! smile.gif

Lets focus on the positive shall we?

(please)

-tom w

[V]

I am excited for all the new CM game swhich will be coming out in the future. It's good to be alive!

But I cannot wait for US Civil War games, or Medieval games.

I can't stress enough how exciting it is to me to hear of this possibility.

[A.E.B]

Guys

It isn't as though BFC will be visiting each and every one of us and holding a gun to our heads while we type in our orders for CMX (unless you live near Matt, Steve or KwazyDog, in which case expect a visit).

Wait for the demo and word of mouth - if CMX is bad you'll soon know.

It's BFC's dime and its BFC's future, so it is in their interest to get it right.

A.E.B

[Wartgamer]

I would much rather see a eastern front game that allows 2 vehicle tank sections, 3-5 tank 'platoons' and even 10 tank companys. Infantry units would mostly be company sized with some platoons. Focus on artillery realism an combined arms and command/control.

[Ardem]

I can see the scenario developers subtext of CMx2 now.

Montys Revenge

Monty successfully takes Arnhem bridge heads straight for the head of Germany, unfortunately so are the ruskies.

You will need CMx2:Normandy Invasion with modules CMx2:Battle of Bulge, CMx2:German Rare and Finest, CMx2:Commonwealth 1944-45, CMx2:Soviets on the Rampage and finally CMx2:The Reich Experiment Lobsters Reborned to play this scenario.

If you don't have all modules I am sorry please choose another scenario or buy the missing modules. Its a good laugh and well worth downloading.

[A.E.B]

My guess is that - like CMBO, CMBB and CMAK - vehicles and other equipment will be hardcoded by BFC or whoever BFC extrusts.

This makes sense for two reasons:

1. If there is to be a multiplayer element, it is necessary to have everyone using the same data sets, rather than one player having a BFC T34A and other the JasonC T34A with remodeled curved armour.

2. It is the research into the individual pieces of equipment and their performance on the battlefield that is the key piece of intellectual property BFC possesses: no one can make a CM clone without researching that same data.

That said I hope that the system is flexible enough to take a Tank from the US Normandy module and use in in other modules.

Time will tell.

A.E.B

[Wisbech_lad]

Cool.

I look foward to the "Indo-Pakistan" war module (a supplement to the various Arab-Israeli modules)

Pattons vs Centurians, Shermans vs Shermans and some AMX13's mixed in.

[Runyan99]

BFC

If you could do it all over again..

How would you have liked to do CMBB under the Game and Modules model?

What might be the original East Front game be, and what might the modules have added on to it?

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Scipio:
Steve said somewhere above '6 people were working fulltime and another 12 part time on a title like CMBB for about two years' - please don't nail me down on the numbers ;) . Just a question I have to ask here. Who said that the full team have to work on only a single title/module? Of course I do not know anything of the BFC personal resources and politics, but I guess it could be possible to work parallel on (different) main titles and/or modules. What is a module? Basically maps, scenarios, new units. For example, you won't need Charles for that (I think). I think BFC will be able to produce a lot of stuff with very different settings. I think that is a very good point. With a modular approach BFC will be able to increase the utilisation rate of their staff on internal projects, and will be able to use beta-tester resrources where these beta testers know most (e.g. were I given the opportunity, I would feel far more comfortable working on a British Normandy module than on a US Tunisia module), again allowing work in parallel.

It all makes sense to me.

[76mm]

Wow! tom_w, thanks for the thread.

The game/module idea sounds like it will work great to me, unless the game and subsequent modules are just too narrow...For instance:

--I think I understand that a game might focus on a theater such as Normandy (fine) rather than a battle such as St. Lo (too narrow)?

--In a Normandy game, would we have access to Winter weather / ground conditions, or would that have to wait for the "Bulge" module? I would hate to wait several months/years before being able to gin up some DYI winter scenarios...

--I haven't seen any discussion of my favorite topic--data import/export capability (to allow for better player-designed campaign tools) or being able to modify TOE, etc. via XML or text files--any news on this?

76mm

[Dook]

I am reluctant to open this can of worms, but the preceding discussion highlights some of the reasons why including a PBEM and random battle generation capability in CMx2 might be problematic.

I assume (with all the usual caveats that accompany assumptions) that players in an e-mail game would both need to have the same modules in order to play each other. Similarly, a random battle generator would have to be able to include the new information from each module into the pool of information it uses to generate battles. I have absolutely no idea whether these tasks are easy or difficult to program, but they sound like they will add complexity at the very least.

One other issue that nobody has mentioned is the effect of this new business strategy on the CM community. It may fragment the community somewhat, as different people will play different games or modules. Imagine forums for every new game or even every module?

[Scipio]

Originally posted by 76mm:
--I haven't seen any discussion of my favorite topic--data import/export capability (to allow for better player-designed campaign tools) or being able to modify TOE, etc. via XML or text files--any news on this?

76mm A good point. If, for example, a map-file would use some simple text based coding, a Non-BFC programmer should be able to write a random map generator. Same for OOB etc.
I have never understood why the scenario files are encrypted.

[Battlefront.com]

76mm,

Personally, I'm not too worried about the scope issue. We are aware of it and therefore won't drop the ball. Obviously anybody that is expecting CMBB all over again will be disapointed, but we will constantly restate that we are NOT going to do a game like that so any expectations for one are misplaced.

You're right about the scope thing. Something between Normandy and St. Lo, leaning more towards Normandy.

No winter graphics/effects if we did a Normandy setting. The whole point of doing a theater is to STICK to what is relevant to that theater. Adding winter terrain is just as out of scope as adding Space Lobsters :D

There will be more flexibility to edit the OOBs and, to a limited extent (I think) TO&E. However, TO&E will be inherently more flexible than CMx1 to begin with so the need to tweak it will be far less.

Import/Export is still something we're looking at.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

BTW, Andreas hit upon something I meant to mention earlier. And that is the Module concept INCREASES the possibility of getting oddball things. In other words, the effort for a Module is a lot less than a full game, therefore the risk factor is also greatly reduced for us. And since we can do many and not release one every 2 years... again, less risk of disaster if we released something only a minority wants. I'm not saying that we'd release something so off the wall that only a couple hundred people might buy it (it's just not worth it to us), but we might not have to choose between one that will sell x and another that will sell 50% of x. We could sell both instead of the more popular one.

Just more food for thought ;)

Steve

[Michael Dorosh]

So, Steve, this will be like SWOTL and the expansion packs? Ie you will have one game, and the modules will simply add to the list of available equipment/scenarios/terrain etc.?

In other words, Close Combat was a series of seperate games; but let's say you have a CMX2 Game called Western Front.

So Western Front ships with the "Americans in Brittany" module as standard, and you get the US and German OOB for June-Aug 1944.

the first "optional" module is "Caen to Falaise". So you install CtoF and now you have one game, but with the German and American OOB for June-Aug 1944 as well as the British, Polish and Canadian OOB for June-Aug 1944. You can conceivably then have scenarios including troops from all these OOBs?

Which would make it easy at this point to release a "Normandy Landings" module - which would include the Canadian and British OOB for June (only) 1944 along with US and British special units - landing craft, naval artillery, parachute and glider units (and the ability to paradrop/glide), German fortress units etc. This would focus on 6 June 1944. Only prerequisite would be the original Game.

So from these two optional modules, you can pick and choose which units/capabilities appeal to you, while having both - plus the original Game - would give you the entire Normandy theatre, and the ability to utilize stuff from all three modules simulteously in QBs or DYO?

[ June 06, 2005, 09:34 AM: Message edited by: Michael Dorosh ]

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Andreas:
I would feel far more comfortable working on a British Normandy module Originally posted by Battlefront.com:
BTW, Andreas hit upon something I meant to mention earlier. And that is the Module concept INCREASES the possibility of getting oddball things. Arrrggghhh!!!!!!!!! Steve called the British in Normandy 'Oddball'. What other proof is required of the heinous US-centric anglophobe conspiracy that is BFC?!? We will never see Commonwealth forces again. Never, ever, mark me words guv'nor. We are doomed, doomed I say to play to the end of days with Yank accents and no happy diggers.

I want an irate discussion with name-calling of no less than 457 posts on this very matter that I just presciently inferred from a throwaway comment by Steve, and I want it now.

So Steve, how is day 1,984 of wargamer gurudom? ;)

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:
However, TO&E will be inherently more flexible than CMx1 to begin with...I'd be interested to hear more about this when you feel ready to divulge, Steve.

smile.gif

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:
..."Americans in Brittany"...Rewriting history, are we?

:confused:

Michael

[Doodlebug]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Kellysheros, you have to remember that we have a pretty sizeable fan base. Only a small percentage of them come to the Forum on any regular basis. The ones that do tend to be the most hardcore. All are responsible for our success, not just the ones that post.

When we do strategic thinking we need to keep in mind that the Forum is a sounding board for a minority of our customers. Important as they might be, if we alienate the REST we die for sure since the core isn't big enough to keep us going. If we alienate the core... we'd probably survive, though not without taking lumps. Obviously we want to find a balance, but if we are going to err it will be on the side of the majority of our customers not the minority. Thankfully we're very good at balancing stuff :D


Steve Now this is something I have trouble getting my head round unless I've missed something of course. If only a minority express their opinions/viewpoint and post publicly for discussion how do you know what the silent majority think or want?

By stating that the vocal minority can be alienated, and for that I presume you mean "will not buy the next product", what the Devil happens if it transpires that the silent majority want exactly what the vocal minority said but hadn't bothered to say it? Haven't you just alienated every last customer at a stroke?

Don't misunderstand me. I will look at your offerings and take them if they're up to your usual quality, modular or full spectrum, almost regardless of period. I am more than prepared to take my experience of CMBO, CMBB and CMAK and move on and explore new interesting possibilities.

I post here ocasionally but I know of at least two sets of sales to players made because I trumpetted the quality of your games and the brilliance of your vision. Neither post here. Ever. I therefore, if vocal minority I be, can be counted threefold not once.

How can anyone know the mind of a silent un-commenting majority unless of course they are either in secret dialogue, psychic or planning a release dumbed down to the lowest common denominator.

[76mm]

Dear Steve;

Thanks for the response. From my perspective, what you guys are doing makes a lot sense--I still play CMBB extensively but virtually never play the Rumanians, Hungarians, or some of the less common German/Soviet types (even if knowing that I COULD play them if I wanted to is very cool), and as a non-grog I don't really care much for the difference between the four types of BT-7, etc. That said, I have three suggestions:

1) You make it as easy as possible for non-Battlefront parties to coordinate with you to release new modules, with these other parties bearing the risk. It sounds like given the vast number of periods/theaters that the new engine will open up, Battlefront alone will never have the time or interest to bring out the "Rumanian" module or the "Sedan 1940" and hundreds of similar modules that would make the game a real gem for a multitude of small audiences. My concern is that even vetting/tweaking/releasing these types of modules would take up too much time for you to consider it worth your while. I have no problem paying for modules, but I am concerned that the selection will ultimately be rather limited.

2) In a related point, for many modules, it seems like much less additional programming, etc. would be necessary. For example, if an "East Front" module consisted of a Stalingrad period To&E, etc. it seems like you wouldn't need to do much to release a "Barbarossa" module covering 1941-1942--just add the new vehicles, etc. It seems like this would be much less work than, say, a D-Day "On the Beaches" module, with amphibious vehicles, funnies, etc. Hopefully these "easier" modules would be released even quicker than the more complicated ones.

3) Consider including data import/export in a "Developer's Module" or something--just as long as I can get it, I don't care how!

76mm

[hellfish]

Though I'm hardly a voice around here, I want to express my joy with the whole concept of games and modules. My current wet dream is that one of the upcoming CMx2 titles will be something like:

CM2: Korea 2006 That will include core ROK, local US 2nd ID (Armor/Mech and Light Infantry) and NKPA forces.

Modules could then look like:

Korea: Stryker Brigade! which will add all the various Stryker models from the US-based 3rd Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division, which would likely reinforce the Peninsula in war. Adds a whole bunch of missions to the game and maybe some of the older NKPA stuff (KOKSAM 170mm howitzer support, T-34/85s, BTR-152), older ROK stuff (M-48A3/A5s) and maybe a Seoul Terrain Tile Set.

Korea: Semper Fi! which will add a complete OOB of the USMC (1st and 3rd Marine Divisions) so we'll have AAVs, AAAVs, various LAVs, marine infantry, naval gunfire support, Harrier and Cobra air support, etc. Maybe an ]operation about a modern amphibious landing at Inchon or Hamhung (first battle is coordinating a MEU amphib assault - two companies in AAVs and a heliborne company against a NKPA costal defense force with some tank support, second battle is holding against counterattack, etc.).

and finally

Korea: Red Tide! which will add the Chinese People's Liberation Army - Type 98 MBTs, Type 63A amphibious tanks, etc.

Figuring $45 or so for the core game and $20-30 for each module, Battlefront could potentially be swimming in money, especially if they snag defense contracts. I could totally see West Point or the Marine Corps Warfighting Labs using something like this.

I look forward to my gaming future now. smile.gif

[ June 06, 2005, 10:00 AM: Message edited by: fytinghellfish ]

[MikeyD]

"Americans in Brittany." isn't that a reality show currently on TV?

BFC ought to send letters of thanks to all the TV networks thanking them for NOT producing shows that might distract us from playing CM.

By 'oddball' I hope they mean Canadians in Normandy being supported by Brit Churchills (I like Churchills). One problem with Normandy battles is how it'd only be the Allies that would go outside-of-mainstream. For the German side you've got generic Heer, SS, and paratroops. Unless you want to go very creepy - like Hitler youth or French SS volunteers! :eek:

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:
..."Americans in Brittany"...Rewriting history, are we?

:confused:

Michael </font>[/QUOTE]http://www.sonic.net/~bstone/archives/020804.shtml

What part is confusing you?

[aka_tom_w]

Well Put Doodlebug! smile.gif GREAT post!

I was thinking of something exactly like the comments in your post below, but I did not craft them into such a nice post and share them here. But I am thinking the exact same as you.

From the point of view of MOST politicians if they receive a comment or a complaint from ONE person they can EASILY guess or project that at least 10 other people feel EXACTLY the same way. But maybe that is JUST politicians lieing to us again so who really knows???

-tom w


Originally posted by Doodlebug:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Kellysheros, you have to remember that we have a pretty sizeable fan base. Only a small percentage of them come to the Forum on any regular basis. The ones that do tend to be the most hardcore. All are responsible for our success, not just the ones that post.

When we do strategic thinking we need to keep in mind that the Forum is a sounding board for a minority of our customers. Important as they might be, if we alienate the REST we die for sure since the core isn't big enough to keep us going. If we alienate the core... we'd probably survive, though not without taking lumps. Obviously we want to find a balance, but if we are going to err it will be on the side of the majority of our customers not the minority. Thankfully we're very good at balancing stuff :D


Steve Now this is something I have trouble getting my head round unless I've missed something of course. If only a minority express their opinions/viewpoint and post publicly for discussion how do you know what the silent majority think or want?

By stating that the vocal minority can be alienated, and for that I presume you mean "will not buy the next product", what the Devil happens if it transpires that the silent majority want exactly what the vocal minority said but hadn't bothered to say it? Haven't you just alienated every last customer at a stroke?

Don't misunderstand me. I will look at your offerings and take them if they're up to your usual quality, modular or full spectrum, almost regardless of period. I am more than prepared to take my experience of CMBO, CMBB and CMAK and move on and explore new interesting possibilities.

I post here ocasionally but I know of at least two sets of sales to players made because I trumpetted the quality of your games and the brilliance of your vision. Neither post here. Ever. I therefore, if vocal minority I be, can be counted threefold not once.

How can anyone know the mind of a silent un-commenting majority unless of course they are either in secret dialogue, psychic or planning a release dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. </font>[/QUOTE]

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Doodlebug:
How can anyone know the mind of a silent un-commenting majority unless of course they are either in secret dialogue, psychic or planning a release dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. I am not sure if Steve has really said he 'knows' what the silent majority wants. But in any case, I would credit BFC with a good amount of gut feeling, based on their general approach and their record, and balanced by their enlightened self-interest.

Probably comes with years in the industry.

Regarding quality control of modules - that clearly could become a tricky issue, and will take BFC into somewhat unchartered waters in terms of team management, I guess, since even for not-so-obscure subjects such as e.g. Commonwealth TO&E, they may not have the inhouse expertise (at the moment) that could compete with JonS, John D. Salt, Dorosh, and Dandelion, to name but four (to be honest, I think anyone organisation would be challenged taking it up with them in a no-holds-barred grog competition). I'd be interested to see how they deal with that.

[flamingknives]

Part of it may well be that the 'silent majority' isn't literally silent. They're not as obvious as they tend not to throw their dummy out of the pram when they percieve some kind of injustice, which is surely directed solely at them. The number of times you see a thread of "what would be good for CMX2" and within the first few pages you have any number of negativists posting stuff like:

"WWII is the only one any person could possibly be interested in. If it isn't WWII (Usually in NWE) I'm not buying it, neither will anyone else and BFC will be consigned to the firey pits of Hades for all eternity"

Presumably where they'll be subject to the witless prattle of those who are expert at making computer games without having to go the route of ever making one.

Perhaps BFC listen to the ones who aren't holding forth on how their view of the world is right and anything else is unacceptable.

Which unfortunatly means they're not going to listen to me.

Like that's going to stop me from finishing with my 3.64 cents (2 British pence):
To all those people threatening to not buy the game unless it is exactly to their specifications I, in the place of BFC, would say;
"Don't let the door hit you on the arse on the way out."
A well argued case is far more convicing than having a strop and making lame threats. We're all going to buy one or more CMX2 game, and you know it.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by flamingknives:

A well argued case is far more convicing than having a strop and making lame threats. We're all going to buy one or more CMX2 game, and you know it. At the very least, we will wait til it is produced (maybe even try a demo) before whining about it. Hell, I even paid full price for EYSA, and ended up giving it away a month later.

[Wartgamer]

So a patch will be a 'game' patch or a 'module' patch? Or both? Will 'modules' be packaged together at some point so that a 'series' may be purchased?

[ June 06, 2005, 11:10 AM: Message edited by: Wartgamer ]

[Doodlebug]

Originally posted by Andreas:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Doodlebug:
How can anyone know the mind of a silent un-commenting majority unless of course they are either in secret dialogue, psychic or planning a release dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. I am not sure if Steve has really said he 'knows' what the silent majority wants. But in any case, I would credit BFC with a good amount of gut feeling, based on their general approach and their record, and balanced by their enlightened self-interest.

Probably comes with years in the industry.

Regarding quality control of modules - that clearly could become a tricky issue, and will take BFC into somewhat unchartered waters in terms of team management, I guess, since even for not-so-obscure subjects such as e.g. Commonwealth TO&E, they may not have the inhouse expertise (at the moment) that could compete with JonS, John D. Salt, Dorosh, and Dandelion, to name but four (to be honest, I think anyone organisation would be challenged taking it up with them in a no-holds-barred grog competition). I'd be interested to see how they deal with that. </font>[/QUOTE]I agree entirely with you but for the fact that the most vocal commentators here might just be as much in tune (or more) with public sentiment on this particular period and type of game than Steve comprehends. No-one can possibly know till the silent ranks speak and they will do that by putting their hand in their pocket and parting with their hard earned money when the time comes.

Quality control will only be a problem if the sources and experts are demonstrably wrong. I do not doubt for one moment though that the commitment to historical accuracy we have seen in all the games will continue.

As for grogs it all depends on the setting and time frame of the next game. In a year from now we may well all be witness to a whole new grog fest in which learned professors discuss "invertebrate sensory deprivation in zero-G environments" if "Space Lobsters of Doom" becomes a reality. What use your CW TO&E knowledge then?

"The Grog is dead. Long live the Grog."

And so Life's circle of renewal goes on.......

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Doodlebug:
In a year from now we may well all be witness to a whole new grog fest in which learned professors discuss "invertebrate sensory deprivation in zero-G environments" if "Space Lobsters of Doom" becomes a reality. What use your CW TO&E knowledge then?

Wait for some other company to come up with a copycat game? **shrugs**

Still waiting for the copycat of CMBO of course. I think the other companies are too busy trying to outdo CM - Wartime Command or whatever it was called, etc. They're doing a bad job.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Doodlebug:
I agree entirely with you but for the fact that the most vocal commentators here might just be as much in tune (or more) with public sentiment on this particular period and type of game than Steve comprehends. No-one can possibly know till the silent ranks speak and they will do that by putting their hand in their pocket and parting with their hard earned money when the time comes. You must have missed the bit about accurate gut-feeling (there is such a thing) coming from years of experience in the industry. ;) IOW - few to none of the people posting here have it for the games industry, so I doubt they are as much in tune with things as Steve and Charles. Regarding 'knowing' if people will open their wallets. 'Know' is such a harsh word. I guess that 'seriously expect' does quite well in most cases.

Originally posted by Doodlebug:
Quality control will only be a problem if the sources and experts are demonstrably wrong. I do not doubt for one moment though that the commitment to historical accuracy we have seen in all the games will continue.I do not doubt that the commitment will be the same. The means to implement it will be radically different though, with much shorter lead times. I don't think it will lead to lower quality, and I never said I do, either. I do think it is a management challenge for BFC though, and I look forward to seeing what they do come up with to address it.

Originally posted by Doodlebug:
As for grogs it all depends on the setting and time frame of the next game. In a year from now we may well all be witness to a whole new grog fest in which learned professors discuss "invertebrate sensory deprivation in zero-G environments" if "Space Lobsters of Doom" becomes a reality. What use your CW TO&E knowledge then?

"The Grog is dead. Long live the Grog."

And so Life's circle of renewal goes on....... Well, let me put it this way - I doubt that this is anymore likely than heaven falling on my head.

[Doodlebug]

Originally posted by Andreas:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Doodlebug:
Well, let me put it this way - I doubt that this is anymore likely than heaven falling on my head. </font>[/QUOTE]Oh. Pity. I quite fancied that as subject material. Realistically I post my comments on this subject only because I want them to succeed. I have wasted thousands :eek: (multiply somewhat to convert to dollars) on computer strategy games. Since CMBO arrived on the scene I have played nothing but the CM range. Now that's quality. For all the little frustrations that I'm sure we've all experienced from time to time these games are as close to wargaming perfection as I have seen so far. I want them to succeed. I want them to keep going for a long time. I want them to be able to take me places I have only imagined and dreamed of. I hope future games wherever and whenever they are set are as innovative as their illustrious predecessors. It's just the waiting. The unbearable waiting.

[KG_SSpoom]

Although I will miss the scope and scale of CM1
the potential to open up other conflicts is Imho
going to be worth it. Im not at all worried about
quality issues with this line they havent let me down yet, Improving on each game in series.
Keep up the good work.

Would love to see Napoleanic or American Civil
War done in cm2 (earlier the better)
Steve

[Dirtweasle]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:
...So I will try to posts Steve's recent hints and comments here in order of appearance in the other thread... Tom, thanks a million for putting this together.

[aka_tom_w]

You are more than welcome

I did for my own sanity so I could stay current with all the recent bones that came out in a kind of "flury" lately and did not want them to be lost in a locked and buried thread as it was over 300 posts at the time I gathered them and posted them.

smile.gif

"it takes a village"

(If you don't know what that means it might be because you are not a parent)

-tom w

[Kellysheroes]

I see many of you are not aquaited with the REAL business world out there and that "silent majority" of customers that can make or break any business. I worked in retail management long enough to know if you don't appease the outspoken ones, the silent majority will soon follow. I've watched many a business come and go with the attitude that the customer isn't always right.

It is very true the outspoken are a minority in just about all cases, but, the hidden factor behind that, the outspoken minority have many friends in the "silent majority" as well. And it will be the outspoken that tell the tale of a game or any product for that matter if it is good or bad or doesn't offer what it should have offered. The outspoken are what bring many a silent majority into a business or to buy something. Silent ones listen, they read and they believe in their "friends" over any business individual. ;)

One can just look back at past game developers and businesses no longer in business or having to have moved on to another company. They got to smart and loud for their breeches and ended up in the unemployment line or producing "someone elses game".

So I wouldn't just go discounting us "minority" forum members so easily. smile.gif Word of mouth is the best advertisement or a companies worst nightmare. ;)

[Salkin]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:
BTW, Andreas hit upon something I meant to mention earlier. And that is the Module concept INCREASES the possibility of getting oddball things. In other words, the effort for a Module is a lot less than a full game, therefore the risk factor is also greatly reduced for us. And since we can do many and not release one every 2 years... again, less risk of disaster if we released something only a minority wants. I'm not saying that we'd release something so off the wall that only a couple hundred people might buy it (it's just not worth it to us), but we might not have to choose between one that will sell x and another that will sell 50% of x. We could sell both instead of the more popular one.

Just more food for thought ;)

Steve Steve, I'm not sure if this have been asked , but do you need a guy to fetch coffe for you and do the odd pizza delivery ?
I'm ready and willing to quit my day job to get a look at CMx2 .

Just asking....

//Salkin
Swede starting to get the shakes

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Kellysheroes:
I see many of you are not aquaited with the REAL business world out there and that "silent majority" of customers that can make or break any business. Except for BFC of course, unless their experience is somehow not REAL. But hey, they have only made money out of this and grown their enterprise from two guys to six over the last six or seven years or so, in the time producing the best wargames bar none for the computer, so what do they know?

This is probably the point where an economics professor I once met would ask: "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?" Or in our context - why are you not running the most successful grog-core wargames franchise for 20th century warfare out there?

Originally posted by Kellysheroes:
I worked in retail management long enough to know if you don't appease the outspoken ones, the silent majority will soon follow. I've watched many a business come and go with the attitude that the customer isn't always right.Two things:

1) It ain't retail, there is no Wal-Mart or shopping mall down the road that they have to compete with. Where exactly are you going to take your hard-earned money if you get pissed off at BFC and want to buy another wargame that delivers this amount of realism?

2) Steve has had his attitude for as long as I can recall. I can remember Steve participating in flame-wars about running HMGs, and I believe people told him then that he should not behave like that to his customers. So according to your REAL experience, BFC should no longer be around.

Seems to me it is time for you to adjust your pre-conceptions to reality.

[flamingknives]

I like how there is this assumption that the outspoken ones are somehow important.

You're no more important than the rest of us, fella. And, to voice my opinion, retail management drops you down a notch or two. But as an engineer, I would say that.

My own, albeit limited, experience tells me that with a technical product, sometimes you've got to tell the customer that they're wrong. If you don't, that'll bite you on the arse as surely as falling brick will hurt if it hits you.

[Edit: Oh, and I get nr. 100.]

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:
http://www.sonic.net/~bstone/archives/020804.shtml That's cheating, you know. Not sportsmanlike at all. The Queen wouldn't approve.

Michael

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:
http://www.sonic.net/~bstone/archives/020804.shtml That's cheating, you know. Not sportsmanlike at all. The Queen wouldn't approve.

Michael </font>[/QUOTE]Heh....did you think I meant "Britney" perhaps? Who else but an American would want to get inside THAT?

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael Emrys:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:
http://www.sonic.net/~bstone/archives/020804.shtml That's cheating, you know. Not sportsmanlike at all. The Queen wouldn't approve.

Michael </font>[/QUOTE]Heh....did you think I meant "Britney" perhaps? Who else but an American would want to get inside THAT? </font>[/QUOTE]Imagine yourself at a party (hard, I know, but try). Britney walks up to you. Looks deeply, searchingly, into your eyes. And says, "I desperately want to **** your ****." Now, are you going to break the poor girl's heart and say no? Or are you going to be a gentleman and offer her your arm and lead her off in search of the nearest unoccupied bedroom?

Or did you mean by 'American' any inhabitant of the continent of North America?

Michael

[throwdjohn]

personally i find britney not very attractive, but her vapid and, for lack of a better word, cuntish (is that even a word?) behavior makes her less attractive than cher. and im talkin 2005 shemale cher too, not the semi attractive one.

[junk2drive]

Can we trade you for sticking us with Celine?

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael Emrys:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:
http://www.sonic.net/~bstone/archives/020804.shtml That's cheating, you know. Not sportsmanlike at all. The Queen wouldn't approve.

Michael </font>[/QUOTE]Heh....did you think I meant "Britney" perhaps? Who else but an American would want to get inside THAT? </font>[/QUOTE]Imagine yourself at a party (hard, I know, but try). Britney walks up to you. Looks deeply, searchingly, into your eyes. And says, "I desperately want to **** your ****." Now, are you going to break the poor girl's heart and say no? Or are you going to be a gentleman and offer her your arm and lead her off in search of the nearest unoccupied bedroom?

Or did you mean by 'American' any inhabitant of the continent of North America?

Michael </font>[/QUOTE]Would a girl that crude really be capable of having a broken heart? If she's that fragile about getting a brush off at a party, she's scarcely worth my time. And indeed, I would say no to that.

[A.E.B]

Originally posted by flamingknives:
I like how there is this assumption that the outspoken ones are somehow important.

You're no more important than the rest of us, fella. And, to voice my opinion, retail management drops you down a notch or two. But as an engineer, I would say that.

My own, albeit limited, experience tells me that with a technical product, sometimes you've got to tell the customer that they're wrong. If you don't, that'll bite you on the arse as surely as falling brick will hurt if it hits you.

[Edit: Oh, and I get nr. 100.] Dodging the onset of "Britneyitis".

This is a good point. Exactly how much weight does the hardcore carry in the real world of computer game sales?

To move away from BFC and CMX, it was interesting to see similar claims made over another long running computer game series - the Total War franchise.

Basically, like CMBO, Shogun:TW came out of left field. While by no means a perfect game, it rapidly built up a following based on word of mouth and industry reviews.

When Creative Assemble announced the development of Medieval:TW, there were distinct rumblings about how "messing" with certain elements would doom the TW franchise.

When the demo hit there was a muted uproar - muted due to the far smaller internet community back then - and a small self-appointed group of the hardcore declared that MTW would be a commerical disaster and that CA would be justly driven out of business by the failure to listen to them.

This didn't happen.

Move forward to CA announcing Rome:TW. This time the internet community and the fanbase was much larger, so the rumblings were much louder. Again people predicted that straying from the MTW path would ruin the game.

When the demo hit there was an explosion of outrage over the changes that - yet again - a small self-appointed group of the hardcore - didn't like. Again it was predicted that the game would be a failure and that CA would justly die for this.

Again this did not happen.

All three games - Shogun, Medieval and Rome - have their flaws and none are beyond improvement. But each new addition to the TW franchise has been a success.

I am sure that there were people who bought earlier TW games who didn't buy later TW games, but they were massively outweighed by both return customers and new customers.

Simply put - how many of the tens of thousands of potential customers of a computer game get to see or even be influenced by the opinions of the fanbase?

My guess is that potential buyers are far more influenced by past game history, reviews, word-of-mouth by other gamers, and even the attractiveness of the packaging.

Another game I can think of demonstrates where the reverse happened - the hardcore broadly approved of the changes - is the Stronghold Series. Stronghold 1 was a flawed but still highly enjoyable game. Firefly listened to feed back and the proposed Stronghold 2 seemed to be what every Stronghold 1 fanboy could want.

One small problem, Stronghold 2 stinks. Word of mouth and negative reviews consigned this game to the discount bin within a month of its release.

So in the end CMX will be judged on its individual merits.

A.E.B

[Kip Watson]

I'm like most people - you tell me something is going to change and my first reaction is 'Oh no, it's going to change!' and then 2 days later I can't wait for the change to actually happen...

So it's more than 2 days later now, and the thought of modules sounds really cool. I like the idea of a series of snapshots of interesting periods in the war done with nice attention to detail and with scope for very accurate, detailed and specific scenarios (I have a mental image of Scots troops wearing kilts when I say that, please tell me it's not sexual!)

And I tell you what else, the idea of a 'near future' game is just so cool. For one thing I think it's safe to assume we can rely on BFC to produce something that's more likely to be based on realistic speculation than way out sci fi, and if so just imagine:- aerial drones, robot drones, metal storm, rail guns, head up night vision displays, computersied HQ command vehicles, GPS jammers, those large-calibre-shell firing guns off Showtime, and the personal Rail guns from that cool Schwartzenegger flick - and that's not even including tanks and helicopters...

I think that would absolutely rock!

[Mace]

Canon - a rule or especially body of rules or principles generally established as valid and fundamental in a fieldI think some form of equipment 'canon' or guidelines may be needed to ensure equipment attributes/settings are consistant across modules.

For example, you would hope that the PzKpfwIV Ausf G has the same attribute settings in all modules in which it appears.

This at least is required to prevent grognards rioting more often than they do now. :D

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Mace:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Canon - a rule or especially body of rules or principles generally established as valid and fundamental in a fieldI think some form of equipment 'canon' or guidelines may be needed to ensure equipment attributes/settings are consistant across modules.

For example, you would hope that the PzKpfwIV Ausf G has the same attribute settings in all modules in which it appears.

This at least is required to prevent grognards rioting more often than they do now. :D </font>[/QUOTE]Not necessarily, if a module has the ability to update/patch the previous version of the game to the new level. You would probably end up with compatibility issues between people who do not have all the same modules though. A version switch may solve that?

[Dschugaschwili]

Originally posted by Kellysheroes:

It is very true the outspoken are a minority in just about all cases, but, the hidden factor behind that, the outspoken minority have many friends in the "silent majority" as well.
This still doesn't make the outspoken minority representative of the silent ones.

Many silent ones (including me) do not have a shelf full of WWII books at home. They don't scream "my life is ruined" if the Panther's front upper hull armor slope is off by 0.5°. They wonder why there are dozens of infantry formations that are essentially equal except for the name. They only get confused by a dozen PzIV versions when four of them would be quite enough from a gameplay perspective. They bought CM because of the depth of the gameplay, not because there are 900 unit types in the game or because the cross-country speed of American half-tracks is modeled accurately. Many of them don't even care about the game setting as long as the game seems balanced and is fun to play.

It's no wonder that the silent ones are silent most of the time. They don't have the knowledge necessary to participate in a discussion about armor failure of high hardness plates against large caliber shells. And they don't care anyway. They will complain about invincible über-tanks in certain time periods because the game doesn't appear balanced then, not because some gun/armor is under-/overmodeled.

And they will take a look at the CMX2 demo, be impressed with what Battlefront has accomplished, and then buy the game. All because the game will be fun to play, not because they will have tested the penetration capability of the Sherman 75mm gun against the PzIV front plate to see if it matches their books.

As a member of the generally silent ones, I can only say:
Steve, please give us space lobsters anytime.

Dschugaschwili

[Nicdain]

I agree with Steve when he says that the new concept for CMX2 - games expanded with modules - will be better both for them and for us. Anyway I would like to add my 2cents on the subject. CMX1 gave us the possibility to re-create virtually any battle among almost all the nations involved in WWII on three main theatres. This is, imho, a very attractive feature. It is true that 90% of the time battles will be between US and Germans or Russians and Germans, but for some WWII buff it could be of interest to recreate a battle between say Belgians and Germans in 1940. So, my opinion about modules concerning WWII is that, one after the other, they should cover all the armies involved in the conflict, not a limited number. So if the first main game is about Americans vs Germans in 1944, it could be interesting to have a certain number of modules, coming out every x months which, together with the main game cover all WWII in terms of armies and theatres.
Or I am asking too much? :confused:

Anyway, I can't wait to see what CMX2 will be like. I believe Battlefront will astonish us like they did with CMX1

[Barrold]

First I would like to thank Tom for the compilation and of course commend Steve for entering the pit and making clarifications and rebuttals.

I have to think that the distribution model BFC has used would tend to give them some valuable marketing information that is driving part of their current strategy. They alone know how many units were sold and they alone know what percentage of sales are from active forum members. Added to this is the numbers coming from their retail distribution agreements with CDV.

Even so while the input of the members here has repeatedly been highlighted as an important sounding board and the fact that the new members of the development team have been recruited from our midst, it is solely the leadership province of BFC to use their information in the way that best makes sense for their continued success.

AEB makes an excellent point about the TW franchise above. Since the most vociferously negative voices could simply be cranks living in their parent's basement, it is plain silly to affect changes or adopt a plan that does not make business sense. These very same voices are likely never to be happy anyway and would complain if they were hung with a brand new rope.

If their product meets their vision, they will be leaders once again bringing along an increasing group of followers to their products. BFC has a good track record thus far and I look forward to hearing more about the development process and the upcoming product.

What I would like to experience is a line of games that allow each succeeding module to infuse previous modules with a refreshed sense of that initial thrill of the first games. From what I gather of the intent of the new product, I can certainly see where this effect would be possible. I think it's a good business model that should bring in an ample revenue stream into the future provided that the game is solid, relatively bug-free, accessible, and engaging.

BDH

[Speedy]

Just set the game in 1812-1814 then you should be able to do the entire eastern front again.

[flamingknives]

Originally posted by Kip Watson:
And I tell you what else, the idea of a 'near future' game is just so cool. For one thing I think it's safe to assume we can rely on BFC to produce something that's more likely to be based on realistic speculation than way out sci fi, and if so just imagine:- aerial drones, robot drones, metal storm, rail guns, head up night vision displays, computersied HQ command vehicles, GPS jammers, those large-calibre-shell firing guns off Showtime, and the personal Rail guns from that cool Schwartzenegger flick - and that's not even including tanks and helicopters...

I think that would absolutely rock! Realistic speculation, and you have Eraser railguns in it? That much kinetic energy (close to the speed of light? please.) would forcibly remove your arm from your shoulder should you try to fire it.

[BigDog944]

Great thread. Thanks everyone, and especially tom_w and Steve!

First off, I agree with Steve that we have been exceptionally spoiled by the Combat Mission games. The depth and breadth achieved may be a long time coming before it is equalled in another game. BFC has earned my loyalty and money because of their hard work and excellence.

The problem I have with the module system as Steve has described it though, is that it almost assures that any future CMx2 game released by BFC will never again cover the breadth of CMBB or CMAK. Have they not lost something here? I understand that they are saying it is not economically viable to produce the same breadth in future games, nor even possible without Steve and/or Charles going insane! By these facts alone, BFC is admitting that they will never match CMx1 in breadth, and so they are betting everything on having superior depth to CMx2, and thus when taking depth and breadth together CMx2 will be the superior game.

My point:

Is it possible for BFC to open the door to additions in the breadth department to 3rd party modders and developers? The model I'm thinking of is how 1C:Maddox games handle additions to the IL-2 Sturmovik line. What started as a study sim of Eastern Front air combat has over the years turned into a very, very broad WW2 flight sim. The wonderful thing is that a number of the additional planes and variations added over the years have come from third party modellers. They create the 3D models of the planes, and the ones that match 1C:Maddox's quality standards are compiled into the closed game engine for release in a patch. The strength of doing it this way as opposed to allowing models to be directly imported into the game by the users is that by going through 1C:Maddox and only released as a patch is that the quality and accuracy is always high, and every player of the game has exactly the same plane data, thus eliminating "cheating."

Could something like this be done by BFC for CMx2? One of the issues with the way 1C:Maddox does it is they tend to release their add-ons as free patches, which isn't great on a financial level for the game developer (it rocks for me!). They do have major releases sold in boxes (AEP, Pacific Fighters), but a large portion of the game content has been added for free. Is there not a way for BFC to take the best of both business methods and combine them? For example, the CM community has a number of very talented artists and many knowledgable WW2 grogs. If they were informed about what was required to add a new vehicle or other unit to the CMx2 engine, they could do the modelling, create the skin art, collect all the required data and then submit this to BFC.

When BFC has enough new content, they could produce a new module that they could either sell, or give away for free (or at nominal cost) as a gift of appreciation to the community. Of course BFC would need to "direct" this creative effort somewhat, in terms of saying "Modders, don't waste your time on Normandy Commonwealth kit, that's our territory." or "Norway 1939 is fair game!"

I hope I've been clear enough to get my idea across. I think if BFC followed a path like this over the next number of years, we'd eventually be gifted with a game that exceeds the CMx1 series in both breadth and depth. We'd all be in gaming heaven!

[MikeyD]

I wonder if the 'modules' willl be sequential. By that I mean if we don't pick up module 2 (Hungarian armor, let's say), will that interrupt the chain and make a future module 3 unusable, because the 3rd batch of scenarios would be using module 2 artwork?

I believe they've already announced a future T72 module with extra scenarios and a new tank type. We'll have to see how modules are handled by that game for a hint on how CMx2 might handle them.

[MikeyD]

Here's something interesting. A new screenshot from the Russian makers of that T72 game. Looks to be a Golan/Lebanon game.

According to BFC it probably won't see the light of day for well over a year, and might or might not be distributed by BFC when it does (they'd much prefer something more WWII-ish). But the screenshot brings hope to those of use praying for a decent modern warfare game someday.
http://news.crazyhouse.ru/images/articles/t2_03.jpg

[Mike]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:
Battlefront.com
Administrator
Member # 42

posted May 19, 2005 01:20 PM
CMx2 allows us to, in theory, do all of the following game settings, each of which could constitute many stand alone games (i.e. setting is too big for one game):

100 Years War
Medival
Ancient (European)
Ancient (Asian)
that's more than enough - get on with it will ya! smile.gif

[86smopuim]

did anyone see mention of "we-go"?

For me it's we-go or no-go.

well, ok that's an exageration.

[hoolaman]

Yes CMX2 is WEGO; that's CM's "thing"... the thing it ...erm... is.

[86smopuim]

Originally posted by Hoolaman:
Yes CMX2 is WEGO; that's CM's "thing"... the thing it ...erm... is. sweet! smile.gif
that's is the one and only smiley you maggots will ever get from me.

now to put on my TNT face
:mad:

[Battlefront.com]

Kellysheroes ,

I see many of you are not aquaited with the REAL business world out there and that "silent majority" of customers that can make or break any business.If I am not in the REAL business world, then you aren't a REAL customer and so what does your opinion count for? :D Even if making games, marketing them, and selling them in retail and over the Internet is for somehow less real than making a box of hangers, marketing them, and selling them in retail and over the Internet... what makes you so sure I don't have some sort of background in hangers? I haven't always made games for a living ya'know!

But seriously...

So I wouldn't just go discounting us "minority" forum members so easily. Oh, I don't. I just discount the relentless repetition of ill informed negativity by a minority of a minority of our customers easily :D Note that this thread is populated by "minority" customers, yet hardly a one of them agrees with your position. So, a quick lesson for you...

When I see a groundswell of opposition on this Forum I take note. I first figure out if they are just misunderstanding something or if they really are worked up about something real. If they are, then is it something that they really and truly feel is important, or are they just being narrow visioned and, when pressed about larger issues, either retract or amend their opposition. When all of that is done I use years of experience to determine how valuable the feedback is in the Big Picture, which includes a host of issues including marketability.

Instead, when I see a couple of people offering resistance to ideas, when the rest of the otherwise hyper-sensitive minority are fine with (with or without lengthy discussion), I make a special mental note. And that is "make sure we DO NOT do whatever that guy is demanding we do". In other words, some vocal opposition (like you in this thread) help reinforce our decisions instead of cause us to doubt them. Funny how that works, eh? ;)

Word of mouth is the best advertisement or a companies worst nightmare. Kinda like customers who think they represent more than themselves are their own worst nightmare. The difference is, we know all about word of mouth advertising.

Steve

[ June 07, 2005, 11:47 PM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[Battlefront.com]

Dorosh described a possible "practical" application of the Modlue concept back on Page 3. I'm too lazy to repost it on this page smile.gif

Will any CMx2 game come close to the breadth of CMx1? I don't know, but I really don't think it is necessary that we do. The greater depth and wider variety of offerings (on the whole) will likely keep people happy and busy. Not that they won't grumble, but they will still largely be satisfied. Kinda similar to those who go on and on and on and on and on and on about some sort of big campaign system... we haven't made one, yet years later these same people are still here and obviously playing the non-meta campaign games we made :D Stand up guys and take a bow... you know we love ya!

Quality isn't something that I am worried about, though of course it is a concern and a potential management headache. We don't have a plan for Modules yet, in that sort of way, but we've had a lot of experience working with non-Battlefront guys on critical pieces of CMx1, so it's not like we are new to it. And I must say things went along pretty darn'd well. Just look at how much quality is in CMx1 games and then look at the credit list if you don't believe me :D

Our thinking is that we would set up a Module team specifically for a particular game release. That way when we release another game nobody is negatively afected by it. (i.e. the 1st game gets its Modules without slowing up the 2nd game, yet the 2nd game's Modules are not held up by the 1st's).

Patches for the game are for the Game, not for a Module. If there is some sort of change that is applicable to non-code stuff then we'll release it as its own patch if there is reason too (i.e. download size). Code changes for the Game itself need to go to everybody no matter what. If something like a bug fix is not applicable to one Module, no harm done since it will be ignored. This is to keep the version number the same for everybody, which would be a nightmare for everybody if it wasn't.

The file format is encrypted because we don't want people hacking the file in the middle of a PBEM game. In theory you could some trees to get a better shot, then after the turn is generated put the tress back in. The other player would just assume it was a lucky shot.

We've said it before... locking up and encrypting the game data was done for the good of the game's integrity and the community's enjoyment of playing. Marketing reasons never, ever entered into the decision to keep the code locked up. The same reasoning is valid for CMx2 and therefore will remain (basically) unchanged. When we want you to be able to "hack" something we'll provide direct support for it. Like TO&E/OB changes...

No, you will not get a bunch of open TXT files to play around with. Instead you will have the ability to change things arond in the Editor and/or Setup Phase in some ways, under some conditions, within certain parameters. You won't be able to make a 20 man Hampstertruppen Squad all armed with MG42s for example.

Steve

[WineCape]

Originally posted by Dschugaschwili:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Kellysheroes:

It is very true the outspoken are a minority in just about all cases, but, the hidden factor behind that, the outspoken minority have many friends in the "silent majority" as well.
This still doesn't make the outspoken minority representative of the silent ones.

Many silent ones (including me) do not have a shelf full of WWII books at home. They don't scream "my life is ruined" if the Panther's front upper hull armor slope is off by 0.5°. They wonder why there are dozens of infantry formations that are essentially equal except for the name. They only get confused by a dozen PzIV versions when four of them would be quite enough from a gameplay perspective. They bought CM because of the depth of the gameplay, not because there are 900 unit types in the game or because the cross-country speed of American half-tracks is modeled accurately. Many of them don't even care about the game setting as long as the game seems balanced and is fun to play.

It's no wonder that the silent ones are silent most of the time. They don't have the knowledge necessary to participate in a discussion about armor failure of high hardness plates against large caliber shells. And they don't care anyway. They will complain about invincible über-tanks in certain time periods because the game doesn't appear balanced then, not because some gun/armor is under-/overmodeled.

And they will take a look at the CMX2 demo, be impressed with what Battlefront has accomplished, and then buy the game. All because the game will be fun to play, not because they will have tested the penetration capability of the Sherman 75mm gun against the PzIV front plate to see if it matches their books....

Dschugaschwili</font>[/QUOTE]My sentiments too.

Fun ultimately first. Accuracy second. The closer the latter to the former, the bigger the base of potential customers => income revenue => continued existence of BFC.

Sincerely,
Charl Theron
http://wine.capetourism.org/wine/images/logo.gif

-----------------------------------------------------
Co-creator & Sponsor of the following CM tournaments:
</font> Rumblings of War (RoW I, II, III, IV, V) (http://bootsandtracks.com/ROW.php)</font> The infamous CMBO Invitational (http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=16;t=019427)</font> WineCape Tourney I (http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=16;t=019311) and II (http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=16;t=019362)</font>

[ June 08, 2005, 02:07 AM: Message edited by: WineCape ]

[Derfel]

Thanks Tom for compiling and thanks Steve for taking time to give us a few answers.

A few points in favour of the ”Module” concept that has occurred to me;

1. A shorter interval between module/games is good marketing, there will allways be something new in the pipeline. Battlefront will be reviewed and commented on more often and (providing the product lives up to previous standards) this is a good thing from all kinds of perspectives.

2. Anticipation. There will be more modules to anticipate, buy, discuss and perhaps mod. I know Battlefront isn’t fond of comparisons to Squad Leader and ASL but this modular approach worked exceedingly well för Avalon Hill. I am (eeek!) old enough to remember the intense anticipation and discussions prior (and after) to a release of a new ASL module.

3. Room to maneuvre. It will be easier for Battlefront to do unexpected things or change direction if some concept or function in the game isn’t working out as expected when the next installment is months rather than years away.

4. Creativity. In my experience it is easier to put creative effort into several comperatively short and limited projects (i.e modules) than one humungus project (such as CMBB).

Finally on the topic of listening to the fanbase; laudable as this is, if taken to far it can kill a project. My example would be Harpoon 2 where the developers (imho) listened too much to fans that wanted every single thing under the sun and moon and wound up with a game that was well nigh unplayable and sales reflected this.

So this fan/customer is solidly behind you Steve (which is undoubtedly a great comfort to you). Good luck!

P.S Of course, once the game/modules are out I’ll be there to carp and criticise with the rest of the howling mob. D.S

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Derfel:
I am (eeek!) old enough to remember the intense anticipation and discussions prior (and after) to a release of a new ASL module. Ummm...you realize the ASL community still exists, and that new modules are still eagerly anticipated - namely, the Axis Minors module that is on the verge of publication as we speak? So I guess your age could be anywhere from 6 years old on up.... ;)

[Derfel]

Gah... So I'm not only old enough to remember the old modules but old enough to NOT know about the new ones.... now I'm REALLY depressed...

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Derfel:
Gah... So I'm not only old enough to remember the old modules but old enough to NOT know about the new ones.... now I'm REALLY depressed... :D sorry bout that... www.advancedsquadleader.com (http://www.advancedsquadleader.com) - this new interweb thingie is the best thing since sliced bread.

You remember unsliced bread, right? redface.gif

[Derfel]

Now I know why you have the death sentence in 12 Peng threads...

P.S Good link, nice to see a new generation of Geekoids D.S

[Dook]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:
When we want you to be able to "hack" something we'll provide direct support for it. Like TO&E/OB changes...

No, you will not get a bunch of open TXT files to play around with. Instead you will have the ability to change things arond in the Editor and/or Setup Phase in some ways, under some conditions, within certain parameters. You won't be able to make a 20 man Hampstertruppen Squad all armed with MG42s for example.

Steve Am I the only one who noticed this? This is a big change and an answer to many players' prayers. Any more details available?

[Battlefront.com]

Thanks again guys for the support. It is very reassuring to have so many "old hands", with a full array of Grog qualifications, seeing the upsides to this strategy rather than inventing downsides, or at best disorting the importance of the things we must change to allow for the Module system.

Dook, sorry... no more details at this time. For the initial release I am not sure how much will get into the system. For the second release, likely more. At the very least you will be able to reorganize units into customized OOBs, like real world "task forces" are structured. This is important in CMx2 because C&C has a greater role than it did in CMx1.

Steve

[Scipio]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:
The file format is encrypted because we don't want people hacking the file in the middle of a PBEM game. In theory you could some trees to get a better shot, then after the turn is generated put the tress back in. The other player would just assume it was a lucky shot.

We've said it before... locking up and encrypting the game data was done for the good of the game's integrity and the community's enjoyment of playing. Marketing reasons never, ever entered into the decision to keep the code locked up. The same reasoning is valid for CMx2 and therefore will remain (basically) unchanged. When we want you to be able to "hack" something we'll provide direct support for it. Like TO&E/OB changes...

No, you will not get a bunch of open TXT files to play around with. Instead you will have the ability to change things arond in the Editor and/or Setup Phase in some ways, under some conditions, within certain parameters. You won't be able to make a 20 man Hampstertruppen Squad all armed with MG42s for example.

Steve Yep, hacking would be a problem, but I guess you misunderstood me - I didn't meant to use a plain txt files format for PBEM files, but for scenarios files like maps. Once a game has started, there shouldn't be a problem to include all scenario information in the PBEM file and encrypt them as usual = the way it's been done now.

20 MG42 Hamstertruppen or any other squad will be of course still hardcoded. But maybe, a third party editor (for example) would do better, or at least better for some people? My idea is just, must BFC claim to program the best or only possible editor? ;)

[Battlefront.com]

Scipio,

Ah, I understand you now. Well... we absolutely don't want 3rd party editors to do things to the game data that we don't want done. We don't want 20 MG42 Hampstertruppen in our games... so we would never allow a 3rd party editor to manipulate such data anyway.

The problem with 3rd party editors, and even file hacking, is that whenever anything goes wrong or seems unrealistic... we get blamed for it as if it is our fault. I've seen that time and time again with other products so I don't think we are immune. So if we are going to get blamed for something we want to make sure it really is our fault :D

I'm also pretty sure that if there is an open TXT format file hackers can use this information to reverse engineer the encryption. Not 100% sure of this, but I do know that in theory this is true. And since we don't want files hacked..

Steve

[Scipio]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:
I'm also pretty sure that if there is an open TXT format file hackers can use this information to reverse engineer the encryption. Not 100% sure of this, but I do know that in theory this is true. And since we don't want files hacked..

Steve Point taken, I havn't seen it that way yet. Well, it was just an idea, and not an important one. You are allowed to continue with the current system ;) .

Much more important for me is my "CM2 Battle of Verdun" game! :D

[MikeyD]

"...make sure we DO NOT do whatever that guy is demanding we do"

Gosh, it felt like he was staring straight a ME when he said that! I guess that means little hope for thir including my idea of working wristwatches on each individual soldier. :( ;)

[Ace Pilot]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:
And that is "make sure we DO NOT do whatever that guy is demanding we do".I DEMAND that you do NOT make me a beta tester for CMx2.

[Battlefront.com]

Mikey... get a life! And while you are at it, get another one for Ace Pilot. That last post of his clearly indicates he needs some help ;) :D

Steve

[kipanderson]

Hi,

Steve posted..

“Kinda similar to those who go on and on and on and on and on and on about some sort of big campaign system... we haven't made one, yet years later these same people are still here and obviously playing the non-meta campaign games we made Stand up guys and take a bow... you know we love ya!”

Oh noooo… first all hope of a Cold War game is brutally wrenched from me, now no hope of a full feature operational game welded to CM…. I need trauma counseling ;)

In fact… as it happens I am still one of the hard core CM fans who could not be happier about all the bones thrown by Steve. Explained why in the “ranting Cold War” thread so will not repeat all the reasons here. (Even the possible settings for CMX2 sound perfect, likely to be NWE, Eastern Front and contemporary… with modules thrown in will happily keep me occupied for 5 years plus… no problem.)

All good fun,
All the best,
Kip.
PS. Based on the principle that I never give up…still optimistic of a file format allowing Saved games to be edited… would make meta-campaigns doable in a way they are not really practical now. The workload needed for real meta-campaigns is just too much without the above feature.

[76mm]

PS. Based on the principle that I never give up…still optimistic of a file format allowing Saved games to be edited… would make meta-campaigns doable in a way they are not really practical now. The workload needed for real meta-campaigns is just too much without the above feature. I am in violent agreement with kipanderson--not to beat a dead horse here, but there is, ahem, a very vocal minority which is very interested in being able to edit saved games either via data import/export or another editing the saved files directly.

Steve cited the need to avoid cheating in PBEM games as a reason to encrypt scenario files, but (not to open this can of worms again) how many people play PBEM? What about selling a PBEM module to enable PBEM and otherwise leave scenario files unencrypted? I don't care about creating hordes of Hamstertruppen, but I would very much like to be able to save and manipulate basic OOBs from completed scenarios.

I realize that this is all probably much more complicated than I imagine, and that decisions on these matters have almost certainly already been taken, but I wanted to at least raise the issues...

76mm

[Pzman]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:
Mikey... get a life! And while you are at it, get another one for Ace Pilot. That last post of his clearly indicates he needs some help ;) :D

Steve We didn't need his last post to figure that out. ;)

[Wartgamer]

Maybe a few calrifications about modules?

If I bu a module, will it be month/year/season/weather limited in some way? Will I still have quick battles that could represent actions other than the module 'theme'?

[Ardem]

I got a feeling I will have to change my name for the new version on CMx2 to IwilzOWnzYoos

Cause the more it shaping up that is the type of people in the 'Silent majority' it going appeal to. No I am not being negative and still got the wait and see approach but so far looking in the post above, people that are asking for rail guns and fast action are people that just stopped off the CS bus.

As for the 'silent majority' they don't care about CM or the series, they take every game on a game by game basis and reviews online, how glossy the box is in the shelves and friends that are into that style of game.

I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for some more original CM members saying I got this great game have a look at it.

Difference with the Total War series and CM is over the years the little fights have been about features added, the total war series has only ever increased the scope not decreased. Just look at the campaign stuff for Rome Total War compared to Shogun, leaps and bounds more enhancements.

CS has got its kids to entertain, Total War has it kids to entertain, with the CM product it always a totally different age group on average (maybe not on the forums) if you aim more for the kids and try and make it glossy with enough scope for kids that who will purchase it, you aim it for adults with depth and medium scope they will get it.

In the end we are already the winners if we don't like the scope we still have CMx1 and probably still be playing it for another 5 years until someone does it.

CMx2 will probably be treated like all the other games out there by other makers that haven't swayed the CMx1 community from going there, perhaps CMx1 is the perfect mix that not even BFC can even match in a new style of game.

BFC is taking the gamble that it will sway its own loyal fans and the silent majority to a totally new expereince good luck to them cause I think its not going to be easy.

Talking with the gaming group of guys that play CMBB and CMAK who don't post on BFC have exactly the same concerns that is being posted above, with a mixture of apprehesion and cross ones fingers. The Silent Majority steve talks about is all the people that haven't got CMx1 cause he just has to go to the different CM forums and he would notice several links to this exact thread, this is his customer base.

[ June 08, 2005, 05:11 PM: Message edited by: Ardem ]

[76mm]

Wartgamer,

I asked the question about weather/seasons and Steve replied that the modules will only include the weather/seasons necessary for that module (ie, a Normandy game would only have summer weather.

76mm

[Battlefront.com]

Ardem, don't be so sure that the silent majority is so different than most of the people on this Forum. At least when it comes to the basic reasons for buying, or not buying, a CM product. A strong interest in the subject matter, strategic/tactical thinking, ease of use, great gameplay value, etc. That can describe just about anybody who would be likely to purchase a CM product, does it not? That's the kind of stuff we've always been focused on and will continue to cocentrate on.

What we must not do is cater our entire game development and business strategy on things which whicih are "costly" yet the majority really don't require. What I mean by "costly" is time consuming and of limited appeal. Or worse, features that will kill interest in the game for the majority.

You old hands here will remember that I love to recount the Simpson's episode (with Danny DiVitto guest star) where Homer is put in charge of designing the ultimate "man's" car. It had all the kinds of features that people want, but when combined together the end product sucked. Others have pointed out game developers that have gone this route and been creamed (MOO IV wasn't mentioned smile.gif ) and others which are like us in that they listen carefully, but implement features selectively.

Keep in mind that it is our direct sales model that saved us from McDonalds hamburger flipping so many years ago. It still does. In order to sell in this way we must have the right game to sell. We have no glitzy boxes or Aunt Ednas going around the Mall looking for something to buy little Billy. Nope, we got to get customers the old way... we must EARN them. So if you think that means abandoning our core audience, think again :D

Steve

[Bigduke6]

Steve,

Apropos your remarks about useless features and trying too hard to meet every marginal want, I am reminded of an old Soviet saying:

"If you ask a committee to design a horse, you will get a camel." ;)

[Andreas]

In German it would be the "eierlegende Wollmilchsau".

[Ryan Crierie]

I'm very skeptical of this entire "module"
experience; I want a very comprehensive game
right from the start; that's what I love about
CMBO, CMBB, and CMAK, you could simulate a very
very very large cross section of warfare without
having to buy module after module.

I would buy these modules if they were fairly
comprehensive and theater wide; IE, Northwest
Europe from 1944-45, North Africa 1939 to 1943,
Italy from 1943 to 1945; The Ostfront from 1941
to 1943; the OstFront from 1943 to 1945; you get
the idea.

About the only time I'd buy a module other than
a comprehensive one would be if the subject matter
was so specialized that there was little to no
interest in it, such as France 1940, Poland 1939;
or WWII:1946, in which you get all kinds of
experimental vehicles like the Panther II,
Panther F, Panther G Uhu, T29 Tank Destroyer, etc.

[ June 09, 2005, 02:05 AM: Message edited by: Ryan Crierie ]

[Dschugaschwili]

All those I-want-it-all-in-one-game module haters should relax and think about the CM development for a while.

Suppose CMBO had come out with only German and American troops and without winter terrain/units. Would you still have bought the game? Remember that lots of people played the two (later three) scenario beta demo without an editor for many months before CMBO was actually released. Ok, they didn't pay for it, but it was much much much more limited than anything Battlefront is going to release.
Now imagine that Battlefront had said: You can have the game 6 months earlier, but with only Americans and Germans. I'm quite sure that the entire forum would have shouted: Do anything you want, but give me the game ASAP! Also, few people complained that the TCP/IP multiplayer mode was missing at first.

In short: as long as the modules are reasonably priced, I don't see anything wrong with this concept.

Dschugaschwili

[aka_tom_w]

"Ryan Crierie
Member
Member # 6505

posted June 09, 2005 04:43 AM
I'm very skeptical of this entire "module"
experience; I want a very comprehensive game
right from the start; that's what I love about
CMBO, CMBB, and CMAK"

OK.....

To be honest I felt exactly the same way at first when the whole "module" system/concept news was released.

Then Steve said:

"You have ALL been SPOILED rotten!"
AND
"That old CMBO/CMBB/CMAK business model is not sustainable."

So that means modules are the new game delivery medium, like it or NOT it looks for sure like that is NOT going to change.

At this time we have no idea what is going to be in those games or modules or exactly when they will be released but we can count on a game coming out first with 2-3 modules for it to follow (maybe one every 6 months if we are lucky)

If this new module business model is sustainable and BFC really profits from it then, we should be lucky they plan to stay in business AND NOT sell out to the likes of Micro$lut or Electronic Arts and that they will continue to offer games we really want because we must all admit we are a VERY small niche market and so far as I can tell ONLY BFC likes to develop, design, sell AND play, the EXACT kind of games we REALLY want to buy and enjoy! smile.gif

Far enough?

-tom w

[ June 09, 2005, 04:54 AM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[Kip Watson]

Seriously, I think modules will rule. I love CM1 for the comprehensive OOBs, but what you gain in breadth you lose in depth. In CMAK Allies for example, for a particular nationality at a particular moment of the war, infantry types are often kind of limited.

I'm guessing, 1:1 representation will make the new game comprehensive in a whole diferent way. Scenario designers will be able to get into the nitty gritty of platoon and squad composition in a way that doesn't exist now.

And with the popularity of Western Europe WWII, I predict sheer demand will result in 10+ modules, each far richer in detail than an equivalent slice of CMAK/BO.

...that doesn't sound like it will suck...

[dalem]

Plus it seems to me that the turnaround time will be an important factor. So CMx2 Module 4 is "CM: War of Spanish Succession, a Tuesday" and that bores me to tears. I wait 6 months (or whatever) for the next title and buy that one instead. Heck, I played CM:BB for 6 months and I didn't even like it.

I don't know that the new business model will be perfect, but I don't think it would be horrible either.

-dale

[Battlefront.com]

The short delivery time, and greater varity of games, should not be brushed aside by the anti-Module guys so dismissively. Think back to CMBO's release...

We asked you guys if you wanted CMBO without TCP/IP play now or in 4-6 months when TCP/IP was complete. The resounding cry was NOW! And so we did and nobody complained. Yes, the usual paranoid folks did go on a bit about us failing to deliver... but as always they were proven wrong.

If we could have offered you guys CMBB a year earlier but with only the Germans on the Axis side, how many of you would have said "that's fine with me!!"? Even if we didn't add the other Axis countries later on I think people would have been fine with it, especially the ones that didn't care about CMBB and were waiting for CMAK (i.e. they would have got CMAK a year earlier).

The "I want it all" folks are simply being short sighted and selective in seeing what this new strategy has to offer. It isn't like we're saying that we're going to repeat CMx1 all over again but force you to pay 3 times as much for the same content. Instead we're saying you'll be getting a more involved game experience, within a shorter period of time, with more choices available, in a shorter period of time. It really is a win-win strategy. At least for 98% of our customer base. Can't please everybody smile.gif

I like that old Russian proverb! I might even make it my first sigline ever.

BTW, I look at some of the people on this Forum as being equivalent to Captain "Wrong Way" Peachfuzz from the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. To know which is the right direction all you need to do is listen to whatever he says and do the exact opposite. Not tht we have any need of asking for directions :D

Steve

[Dirtweasle]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:
...It had all the kinds of features that people want, but when combined together the end product sucked. Others have pointed out game developers that have gone this route and been creamed (MOO IV wasn't mentioned )Because it's still too painful by half.

[Steiner14]

It is very bad news to hear, that still no TXT-export option is planned.
First, the argument, that it would allow reverse engineering to hack the encryption is not valid at all, if the exported TXT-format has nothing in common with the encrypted one.
Secondly, it is already very easily possible to cheat, Steve and it has nothing to do with encryption of the files: ammunition load and type, armor angle and thickness, gun-type/calibre, crew experience.

[Dirtweasle]

I've been playing the CM series for quite a while, played all sorts of folks, and have only come across one single time I thought a fellow had a cheat going. Never played the guy again, (I suspected roops "teleported").

Since generalizing from one person's experience is usually a bad idea, and at the risk of sidetracking the thread, are cheats in PBEM more common than I believe they are?

[hellfish]

I look at it this way - I paid $45 for CMBO five years ago. Did I get my moneys worth? Of course. $45 is equivalent to dinner and the movies for two people on a Wednesday night. By all rights, CMBO could have retailed for nearly $1000 and it still would have been worth it (if I could have forseen playing it five years later).

What the module system does is capitalize on that. If I buy a game at $45 and a module every few months for $20 to bring it to the width and beadth of CMBO (figure the game and three modules for $105 total to get to that level) and it'll still be worth it. By all mean, BF.com deserves that money. Everyone wins, still, though us players lose a steal of a deal.

[Yair Iny]

Steiner14,

If one has the opportunity to take unlimited clear text and encrypt it using a symmetric key based algorithm (i.e. not a one-time-pad type), and he knows the algorithm, then it is very possible to find the actual key.

Now since, BF would be wrong to base their security on hiding the algorithm (it is always easier to figure out the algorithm than the key), then if they are really concerned with people decrypting the files, they would indeed be wrong to allow people to create unlimited cleartext.

Seems to me, though, that there wouldn't be too many people with the will and the means to brute-force crack the key for the PBEM encryption, so if other benefits are seen by BF in keeping an open format, then they would be better off doing so.

[Dschugaschwili]

Originally posted by Steiner14:
It is very bad news to hear, that still no TXT-export option is planned.
First, the argument, that it would allow reverse engineering to hack the encryption is not valid at all, if the exported TXT-format has nothing in common with the encrypted one. The exported file would have to contain the same information as the encrypted file. This is already a security risk because cryptoanalysis is much easier if you know the plain text. And the exported file would contain information about both sides' units, which is obviously not acceptable in an ongoing PBEM game. So the argument is certainly valid.

Secondly, it is already very easily possible to cheat, Steve and it has nothing to do with encryption of the files: ammunition load and type, armor angle and thickness, gun-type/calibre, crew experience. How do you cheat that? By hacking either a savegame file or the game executable. If you know how to do it, fine. Remind me to not play against you in that case.

Dschugaschwili

[Battlefront.com]

We can't ever prevent hacking. We also can't ever prevent pirating. And we certainly can't prevent people from being weenies :D What we can make things more difficult for cheating, pirating, and being weenies. Having a clean, open source TXT file is like a hot chick going naked into a prison with all the doors open and the guards gone home to watch a ball game. If you think for a single second that that woman has a chance of coming out alive (not to mention with her dignity intact), think again. Putting out an open text file is about the same as this scenario.

Steve

[Gpig]

What if she had super powers?

Would you make a game like that?

smile.gif

Gpig

[Abbott]

Originally posted by Gpig:
What if she had super powers?

Would you make a game like that?

smile.gif

Gpig LOL! My wife read Steve's post and yours. She commented "and you guys are grown men?". LOL, Thanks G, your killen' me!

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Gpig:
What if she had super powers?

Would you make a game like that?

smile.gif

Gpig One can only hope Kwazy Dog's human 3D models improve appreciably in that case.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Odds on a Dieppe module with Canucks without hideous deformities have just gotten longer.

[Battlefront.com]

Abbott

LOL! My wife read Steve's post and yours. She commented "and you guys are grown men?"Tell her my wife wonders the same thing about you too :D

Steve

[dalem]

"CMx2: Blondes to Brunettes"

Bring it on! And it's a win-win for everyone - we get to act like 8 year-olds and Steve doesn't have to worry about any lip from us, 'cuz ain't no way any of us grogs or grog-lights know chicks like we know mantlets and shatter-gaps.

smile.gif

-dale

[Mace]

Originally posted by dalem:
And it's a win-win for everyone - we get to act like 8 year-oldsSeems like the same ol' same ol' to me. Neener neeeeener neeeeener!!! *razz*

[Steiner14]

Originally posted by Dschugaschwili:
The exported file would have to contain the same information as the encrypted file. This is already a security risk because cryptoanalysis is much easier if you know the plain text.That is not true. The exported file doesn't have to contain the same information. You simply don't know, what information the encrypted file with all data has. Additionally the format of the data can be completely different.

Secondly, if someone argues with cryptoanalysis-theory, i want to mention, that we already know, what information any PBEM-file contains. No one needs a plain TXT-file for that. The TXT-exportwould only summarize certain aspects of a finished battle.
If someone is really interested in hacking the encryption, it is not that hard, with all the information and with accessible computer's memory, which contains the encryption-algo.

And the exported file would contain information about both sides' units, which is obviously not acceptable in an ongoing PBEM game. So the argument is certainly valid.It is not valid, since the computer's memory contains ALL data unencrypted...

How do you cheat that? By hacking either a savegame file or the game executable. If you know how to do it, fine. Remind me to not play against you in that case.See above.
Don't worry. I don't cheat, because it's impossible, i don't cheat, because it's simply no fun to play in "god-mode".

[Kurtz]

Tom: Thanks for compiling all info.

I just want to say that I'm fully confident we'll get a good game. Battlefront brings us Combat Mission and we'll buy it and play it. If they don't come with anything new we'll continue to play the older titles.

If CMBO never had been released I would still play the beta demo! :D

[Panzer76]

Whatever we say doen't matter much, lets wait and see when we get the demo, and then we can whine or salute BFC smile.gif

[ExplodingMonkey]

How bout some screenies for a start? ;)

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by ExplodingMonkey:
How bout some screenies for a start? ;) there was another bone some time ago that said there would be nothing ready to look at until mid to late summer.

its still too early

if it is "still too early" by this September then I would expect to see some grumbling here on the board

for now it is still "officially" too early to expect to see anything...


ok?

smile.gif

-tom w

[jeffsmith]

Don't you mean INCREASED GRUMBLING ? :rolleyes:

[Dschugaschwili]

Originally posted by Steiner14:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />
And the exported file would contain information about both sides' units, which is obviously not acceptable in an ongoing PBEM game. So the argument is certainly valid.It is not valid, since the computer's memory contains ALL data unencrypted...
</font>[/QUOTE]I understood that you wanted the exported file to be human readable. The computer's memory is not human readable. This is a large difference at least from a practical standpoint.

Dschugaschwili

[Soddball]

New bone alert here - naughty Moon. (http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=30;t=004008)

[V]

Interesting. Maybe the reson why they are going to focus on "smaller" campaigns like Normandy as opposed to entire fronts and years of time is because of the possibility of an operational component?

The speculation drives me crazy!

What's the current community estimate for release?

(and don't anyone say 'when it's ready')

smile.gif

[flamingknives]

At the time at which it is done, and not a moment sooner.

[V]

non sequitur?

smile.gif

[Pvt. Ryan]

Either at the end of a year, or possibly the beginning of one.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Pvt. Ryan:
Either at the end of a year, or possibly the beginning of one. Calendar or fiscal?

[JonS]

yes

[Wubbits]

Chinese or Roman?

[Cogust]

Probably.

[flamingknives]

Originally posted by V:
non sequitur?

smile.gif Indeed. After having that for nearly a year, you're the first to point it out.

Fixed.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Wubbits:
Chinese or Roman? And if the latter, Julian or Gregorian?

Michael

[MikeyD]

Something i noticed on the T72 game site that *might* apply to upcoming CMx2. That game looks to be going to ship on double CDs and may take up a hefty 2 gig footprint. This may signal BFCs own willingness to expand beyond the single CD straightjacket that had caused such problems with the last two CM1 games.

...like reading tea leaves.

[Rupert_2]

Originally posted by MikeyD:
Something i noticed on the T72 game site that *might* apply to upcoming CMx2. That game looks to be going to ship on double CDs and may take up a hefty 2 gig footprint. This may signal BFCs own willingness to expand beyond the single CD straightjacket that had caused such problems with the last two CM1 games.

...like reading tea leaves. Or DVD instead of CD. smile.gif

[ExplodingMonkey]

Originally posted by MikeyD:
...like reading tea leaves. Really? I like throwing chicken entrails on the table myself.

[Battlefront.com]

Yes, two CDs or a single DVD is a must for CMx2. We barely fit CMAK onto one CD.

Steve

[flammenwerfer]

Will Madmatt's song lyrics be included?

[RobVarak]

Great work, Tom. I've been lurking intermittently for quite awhile, and this was one-stop shopping for a status report smile.gif

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:
Yes, two CDs or a single DVD is a must for CMx2. We barely fit CMAK onto one CD.

Steve If I can be permitted to be the first one to overanalyze this;

<font size=1>ahem</font>

Oh my God Steve that's GREAT news! My life has just changed! I can't believe how much CMX2 is going to ROCK, evidence of which is the fact you said it will be on TWO CD's!!!!! OMG!!!!! Does that mean it will feature the PACIFIC theatre?

Seriously, though, I hope the song lyrics will be printed on the jewel case rather than the pdf manual.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:
Oh my God Steve that's GREAT news! My life has just changed! I can't believe how much CMX2 is going to ROCK, evidence of which is the fact you said it will be on TWO CD's!!!!! OMG!!!!! Does that mean it will feature the PACIFIC theatre?Even more important, will there be pictures of nekkid wimmin now?

Michael

[Gpig]

Don't quit your Day-grog, Mr. Dorosh.

;)

Gpig

[Pvt. Ryan]

Did he say two DVDs??? The first CMx2 game will certainly cover the entire WTO!!! As in WOOT!

Will TASERS be hardcoded or moddable?

[Gromit]

Thanks for the compilation Tom, I was getting rather squinty-eyed trying to find all the "bones" hidden amongst the Peng-like rabble (or is it rubble?).

Gotta say, I feel a bit like a bear that just awoke from a 5 year hibernation... whew! I haven't exactly been on the ball (forum-wise) from CMBB to CMAK, although I do own a copy of BB. But like any savvy bear, when Steve, Moon and Co. start throwing more tasty CMx2 bones, you just have to take notice and starting sniffing the air.

So far things sound just fine to me. I am behind the narrower but deeper idea and figure these New England bums have probably learned a few things in the last 6 years plus. ;)

Hey Steve, I think we need to spice things up by having an official "CMx - Night of the Refresh Monkeys" sequel this fall!! Waddya say? tongue.gif Just for old times sake, ya know?
*Now, now, now Steve... put the gun down, it was just a joke- ha, ha funny?* (Gulp!)

Hell, I might just open up another "Scotch - the water of life" thread to reel in Charles and make him say "BOO!" once in a while. There are a lot of great drams out there to be enjoyed over an exciting, shiny new CM demo... :D

Waiting to catch the next bone... (Moon's last one hit me right on the noggin!) :eek:
...obviously it didn't knock any sense into me...
Gromit

[V]

Originally posted by flamingknives:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by V:
non sequitur?

smile.gif Indeed. After having that for nearly a year, you're the first to point it out.

Fixed. </font>[/QUOTE]I am not a speling Nazi...

smile.gif

[V]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:


Seriously, though, I hope the song lyrics will be printed on the jewel case rather than the pdf manual.:D

[flamingknives]

Originally posted by V:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by flamingknives:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by V:
non sequitur?

smile.gif Indeed. After having that for nearly a year, you're the first to point it out.

Fixed. </font>[/QUOTE]I am not a speling Nazi...

smile.gif </font>[/QUOTE]No, Dr. StrangeV, I'm sure that you were only obeying orders.

[aka_tom_w]

this is still a VERY significant bone:

"Battlefront.com
Administrator
Member # 42

posted May 29, 2005 05:16 PM

We do have to be quite careful in the subject matter and scope we choose for each title.

We want to make sure that you guys get something that is still fun to play by the time the next module or full title comes out.

If we start out with an idea for the subject and scope that later on in development seems to be too narrow... then we'll widen it out a bit.


But the days are gone when we'll release a game that people can play for 2-3 years without getting bored of it. Fortunately, with quicker release schedules the need for a game that has 36 months of playtime in it is made unnecessary.

As for the modules working with each other... yup, that is the thoght. Let's say you get a WWII ETO game that is limited to Battle of the Bulge, US vs. Germans (specific unit types). 6 months later we release a Normandy modlule that allows you to play US vs. Germans (specific unit types). The latter will simply add options to the game you already own, kinda like CMBO. Another module comes out that supports Commonwealth for both Normandy and Battle of the Bulge. Now it really is like CMBO. Yes, it took three releases to get it to that stage, but in the mean time other games have been released and others started."

[MikeyD]

A hIdden double-reverse bone?
Considering BFC's steadfast refusal to divulge where the next game's set, wouldn't their line "...let's say you get a WWII ETO game that's limited to the Bulge..." therefore preclude the chance the first game'll be an ETO Bulge game? Like if they had instead said "...let's say get a Vietnam game that's..." we'd assume that using this as an example means we WOULDN'T be getting a Vietnam game.

Next topic: How many angels could dance on the head of a pin, knowing what we know about angels.

[aka_tom_w]

I Wonder how many of these T72 Balkan's on Fire (Latest PC ONLY Gone Gold, game not shipping yet) features we will see in CMx2???

:D

•*More than 70 types of buildings and installations that can be damaged or destroyed

•Over 40 types of plants, trees and grass sway in the breeze
High-quality modeling of water surfaces and amphibious vehicle capabilities

•5000+ polygons per vehicle including detailed bump mapping
Scalable realism settings

•Powerful mission, map and structure editor available
Local Area Network (LAN) multiplayer capable

Advanced Physics and Environmental Game Engine

•Vast open spaces with draw distances of more than 2 km

•Topographic height differences on maps of up to 800 m

•Realistic passage of time transitions (day changes to night)

•Dynamic weather and environmental effects: smoke, fog, rain, rainbows, dust, wind effects (I am looking forward to Rainbows in CMx2! smile.gif )

•Deformable terrain - shell holes and trenches dug out in real time

•Destroyable structures, vehicles and vegetation

•Clouds cast shadows

•Optical lens flares and sun glare effects

•Realistic ballistics – wind effects, shell aerodynamics and flight characteristics, barrel wear and droop

•Shell impact angle calculations

•Detailed armor penetration results

•Post-penetration shell path and damage assessments

•High Explosive fragmentation dispersal calculations

•Realistic vehicle and structure collision detection and damage

•Individual internal and external vehicle system damage modeling including track damage, engine overheats, fuel leaks, turret jams, crew casualties, bailouts and more


QUESTION:

Did they are did they not say something about the possibility of a MAC version of this game?

wondering

:confused:

-tom w

[Gpig]

I think I read early on that there would be NO Mac version of T-72.

happy to be corrected, however. smile.gif

Gpig

[Panzer76]

Originally posted by Gpig:
I think I read early on that there would be NO Mac version of T-72.

happy to be corrected, however. smile.gif

Gpig Join the dark side, muhahaha!

[V]

Originally posted by flamingknives:
No, Dr. StrangeV, I'm sure that you were only obeying orders. :D

[Gpig]

Panzer76 wrote:

"Join the dark side, muhahaha!"


NNnnnoOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooo!

[hoolaman]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:
I Wonder how many of these T72 Balkan's on Fire (Latest PC ONLY Gone Gold, game not shipping yet) features we will see in CMx2???

[snip]

I really hope CMX2 gives a much better overall "impression" than T72. Some details like trees and lighting do not look "just-right" to me.

The most realistic and impressive feature in T72 is the destructable buildings, which I hope is in CMX2. Most of the rest of the terrain and environmental features have already been stated as being "in" for CMX2, but I really hope and expect BFC to do it better.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:
•Optical lens flares and sun glare effectsThis adds nothing to the game for me, and indeed, from the point of view of anyone not looking through an optical device isn't at all realistic. I make some exceptions for sun glare when a rising or setting sun behind enemy units would make them harder to see under many conditions.

•Realistic ballistics – wind effects, shell aerodynamics and flight characteristics, barrel wear and droopThis is a game factor only if the player is acting as a gunner. Not a game factor in a game such as CM. Should be one of those things calculated "under the hood".

Michael

[aka_tom_w]

OK to both of those points....

Good Thinking

-tom w

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by aka_tom_w:
•Optical lens flares and sun glare effectsThis adds nothing to the game for me, and indeed, from the point of view of anyone not looking through an optical device isn't at all realistic. I make some exceptions for sun glare when a rising or setting sun behind enemy units would make them harder to see under many conditions.

•Realistic ballistics – wind effects, shell aerodynamics and flight characteristics, barrel wear and droopThis is a game factor only if the player is acting as a gunner. Not a game factor in a game such as CM. Should be one of those things calculated "under the hood".

Michael </font>[/QUOTE]

[aka_tom_w]

OLD bones from Jan 2005 revisited and listed here


Battlefront.com
Administrator
Member # 42


posted January 31, 2005 04:05 PM

I have to close up this thread due to its size. Feel free to start up another one. However, keep in mind that we (Battlefront) need to design something that is pleasing to both the eye and the grog. We'll be torn to pieces if the 1:1 representation looks silly or woefully incomplete, even if eveything is neato mosquito under the hood. Likewise, grogs will tear us a new one if the important 1:1 simulation aspects aren't done well enough.

In other words... there is no one right answer to this debate you guys are having. We need to have a balance between the two, and that balance is in part determined by how easy/hard it is to program and/or how well it functions from a performance standpoint (eye candy and underlying sim stuff BOTH!). Not even we have the answers to all these questions at this point, so I might suggest that both sides of this debate keep that in mind. NOTHING is decided except for the fact that we are seeking a balance, which inherently means some grog stuff and some eye candy wish list items won't be happening.

Steve


Battlefront.com
Administrator
Member # 42


posted January 30, 2005 08:48 PM

The 3D environment of CM does offer us some challenges in terms of where to draw the line between a simulation of the individual soldier and larger groups of soldiers (i.e. units). It's something we've all be struggling with since the early days of CMBO's design.

Back in the old days of wargaming you'd have a cardboard chit with some numbers and a shape on it. Nobody called for more than that simply because the system was so abstract probably nobody thought of it (at least not thinking it possibly practical).

The first couple of generations of computerized wargames fell into the same category. As time went on and technology improved wargamers wanted better looking maps, more attractive looking units, and of course more under the hood. But again, for anything but the smallest scale wargames nobody thought about simulating the individual soldier to any significant degree. Until, that is, Close Combat came out.

CC was the first commercial wargame to model the individual soldier in detail and in substantial numbers. And for all its flaws, the game worked very well and people saw the value in having the 1:1 soldier simulation. Then CMBO came around...

Our problem, from the beginning, is our chosen scale. MUCH larger than CC's, yet not so much that individuals ceased to matter. But due to technical limiations we never once thought about doing 1:1 because it simply wasn't possible. However, the desire has always been there, at least to some extent. Now comes CMx2...

What we are doing now is giving the individual soldier a place on a larger scale battlefield (larger than FPS, CC, etc). That is the right thing to do. However, there are limits. We must make sure to not lose sight of the fact that this is a larger scale wargame and not a FPS of even Close Combat scale game. Therefore, when push comes to shove, decisions are made which favor the larger scale wargaming environment. Clutter, unnecessary development distractions, big hits to the CPU for little simulation gain, etc. are all bad things for CMx2.

In short... we know what CMx2 is supposed to be and what it isn't. We have this vision very clearly laid out and will not waiver from it. There will be no mission creep.

Steve

[aka_tom_w]

another old bone from the old 1:1

Battlefront.com
Administrator
Member # 42

posted January 21, 2005 12:15 AM
1:1 representation sure does open up a big can of worms. It's one of the reasons why we did not attempt it for CMx1 (though hardware wouldn't have allowed it anyway). However, as has already been pointed out one should not confuse 1:1 graphical represenation with 1:1 modeling or 1:1 control. Three different concepts.

From a GAME standpoint, 1:1 graphical representation is the most important. If I were to make a Top Ten list of complaints from general gamers about CMx1, this would probably be the #2 complaint (#1 is the lack of ridiculously detailed and textured models) constant throughout all three games.

From a REALISM standpoint the most important thing is the 1:1 modeling. Though it is very difficult to do this without the 1:1 graphical represenation, it is certainly possible to do. We could have had individuals run away from generic 3 man squads or more detailed soldier stats. But without 1:1 representation this all seemed kinda hollow so we kept the level of modeling in line with the degree of visual representation. Now that we are increasing the latter, we will also be increasing the modeling to stay in balance. There will still be abstractions, just not nearly as many as there are now.

The interesting thing is that most "gamers" and "grognards" is that they probably pretty much agree that 1:1 control is undesirable. There is already enough to pay attention to without having to get Pvt. Pyle to move 0.5 meters to the left of the tree he is behind so he can get a shot off. It also turns the focus to individual soldiers instead of units and the formations they belong to.

Obviously, if you are smart you'll see that we're not going to implement 1:1 control, but are going to do 1:1 visual and 1:1 modeling. The results should make the game more fun to play and also far more realistic. There will be issues we need to work through to make sure it all works happily together, but that's the sort of thing you guys pay us for when you buy the game

Steve

[aka_tom_w]

attlefront.com
Administrator
Member # 42

posted January 24, 2005 01:01 AM
Never confuse an implementation of something with what is possible or not. Meaning, just because you play Game X with Feature Y does not mean that Game Z will play exactly the same. If you want a dose of reality in that sense, pick up the other 3D tactical WWII game out there and see how closely it compares to CMBO What I mean by this is that nobody should judge what we can do, or not do, based on what some other group of guys did 10 years ago in a 2D enviroment that worked on a 486 (or a Mac IIci in my case ).

Now, as it so happens you guys that were painfully hoping to rearranging your CC men probably were wasting your time. While CC was certainly 1:1 Graphically, it was not 1:1 Modeled. Unless my memory is playing big tricks on me, much to the contrary of sycophant ramblings a CC unit was no different than a CMx1 unit in that all LOS, LOF, and location calcs were based on a single spot. That means 3 guys of a CC squad on the wrong side of the wall were likely in no danger if the system though of the center of the unit as being on the correct side of the wall. If the system thought the unit was on the incorrect side of the way, the 3 guys on the "protected" side were vulnerable even though they looked protected. I don't remember exactly how the CC system worked, but like I said... unless my memory is getting bad it worked pretty much like this and not like you guys think it did.

Having said that, it isn't as hard to control individual guys within a single unit as it is to control multiple units. The reason is that telling something like a rifle team (to use CC scale) to move to location X effectively defines where the 3, 4, or 6 guys should go to. Now, think of telling a platoon to "take x objective". The AI now has to move several pieces, which are inherently separate from each other, in a way that makes sense. In real life this could mean leaving one Squad (of two teams) behind, moving one Squad (of two teams) down a road 30m to the left, and telling the other Squad (of two teams) to do a zig-zag assault over an open field, but only after the second team arrives on target.

See the difference? If not, read this

The less variation there is in general location, type, and expected behavior, the easier it is for an AI to get it right. The more varried the locations, types, and behaviors the more complicated. Telling the AI to move 6 or 12 guys to "go to this wall and lay down suppressive fire" is a lot easier for the AI than "move these 34 guys in any one of a million ways to take that farmhouse".

Git it now?

Steve

Battlefront.com
Administrator
Member # 42

posted January 26, 2005 03:21 PM
As you guys have all fully grasped, the 1:1 representation is not as simple as blitting a few extra sprites onto the screen. This has been the most frustrating thing to explain to more general gamers. They think that if it appears, visually, in the game then everything is taken care of and we'll all live happily ever after. NOT!

One thing to keep in mind is the general philosophy we use when designing stuff. And that is, the closer we make the basic model relate to the real world, the easier it is to solve problems with making the simulation act realistically.

In CMx2 terms this means simulating each individual soldier and their function within the unit. We need to do this because each unit has some sort of unique mix of tasks for its individual members. For example, a mortar team might have the same number of men as a heavy MG team, but their "jobs" are totally different. A squad with a LMG and 10 riflemen behaves differently than a 6 man recon squad armed with SMGs. So on and so forth.

Once we have the guys individually pegged to different spots, then we can assign more individualized behaviors for the TacAI to use. For example, having a LMG team stay put while the rifle section moves forward on an assault. This is inherently possible because CMx2 already knows what a LMG team is and what a rilfeman is, if for no other reason than to get the animations correct.

Now comes the realism benefit. We have soldiers with individual tasks and individual animations. We also have a range of realistic orders to cover various types of functions. Terrain is also laid out in great detail, as are all the combat modeling that goes along with it (weather, LOS effects, etc.). Weapons and other things are obviously modeled in detail as well. This is a rich pallet of stuff to draw from.

What we need to do is make a TacAI that understands which soldiers should be doing what in one situation vs. another. While this is certainly no small task, it isn't as bad as it might appear to you guys. One reason is that we have all the realism elements to implement standardized military "drills" without much in the way of compromise.

For example, let us say that a Squad has two internal Teams, one of which is a LMG and the other is armed with rifle type weapons. The drill for that nation might state that the LMG team, on the assault, sets up and provides covering fire for the rifle team as it moves to its objective. This is fairly easy to code into the TacAI.

The problems come, as they often do, with fleshing this system out to cover "all" circumstances "all" the time "everytime". That's a challenge. We are confident enough that we can do this. In fact there is only one design for CMx2 and that design involves 1:1 representation. It will happen and we expect the results will be better than average

Steve

[Abbott]

When asked, "What do you want for Father's Day?" Of course I replied "Just you baby" NOT! I said "Get online and pre-order me T-72 Balkans on fire! Woot!

[aka_tom_w]

Posted in the CMx2 casualties thread....

re-post here as this is where some folks may be looking for all the latest news:

Battlefront.com
Administrator
Member # 42

posted June 23, 2005 04:17 PM
This is all very tough stuff for us, as you all (thankfully) seem to understand. Which is why so few games have even superficially dealt with these issues. It's kinda like asking why nobody has brought a flying car to the marketplace... great idea, but there are a "few" practical issues associated with this

As I said earlier, we aren't interested in making a medic/evac simulation, but we are hopefull we can make some improvements to the way things worked in CMx1.

What are we going to be able to do? I honestly don't know. We've pushed all the designs (and there are several) off our plates for now because there are more important things to focus on. After we get a bunch of those things done we'll dust off the designs and see what we have time/energy to do and (most importantly) what will fit in best with the rest of the game.

One thing to remember from earlier conversations... the CMx2 engine will be a work in progress for as long as we are using it before moving onto CMx3. We would have liked CMx1 to have been a work in progress, but unfortunately we found that it was too difficult to work on and therefore little progress was possible without inordinate investments of time and resources.

What this means is that for the first release of CMx2 there will be lots of stuff that can be improved upon for future releases. Some things will never be fully fleshed out (it is impossible to simulate EVERYTHING in minute detail, obviously), but the more important stuff will be improved upon as we move from product to product.

I'm going to guess that WIA/KIA issues will be one of these features that's improved over time. It's something that would be nice to do to the 10th degree in the first game, but based on the utter lack of it in wargames in general, it's clear it isn't something we MUST do for the game to be successful in everybody's eyes.

Steve

[aka_tom_w]

Old bones to chew on

(not new)

Battlefront
Administrator
Member # 35

posted January 03, 2005 04:38 PM
Hi guys,

I'll toss out a few more things for you.

First, the CMx2 engine is not some sort of universal simulator. Each game that comes from it will require coding, fresh designs, customized UI, etc. We are not doing the sort of "change the data and call it a new game" system that so many other wargame developers have done in the past. Instead, the CMx2 engine is more like a developer's toolbox that will allow us to create games quicker and with less reliance upon Charles than CMx1 ever could.

We are still shooting for a release about this time next year with another to follow about 6-8 months later. When we announce the first title we will also announce the second, but nothing beyond that.

While it is true that we don't have any direct competition, we do have competition. We also can not assume that there isn't someone we don't know about looking to copy us. That is one reason we're keeping tight lipped.

The other reason is that it doesn't do anybody any good to talk about stuff that may or may not happen three years from now. That's a long time away and much can change between now and then. All you guys should care about is that in three years time there will be more stuff to play with, and if you aren't crazy about it that something more will be coming soon after.

Oh, and the new graphics capabilities of CMx2 is on par, if not superior to, anything you guys have played thus far or are likely to in the next year. It's amazing what can be done with a fresh slate, radically more powerful hardware, and years of experience

Steve

[ January 03, 2005, 02:35 PM: Message edited by: Battlefront ]

Battlefront
Administrator
Member # 35

posted January 06, 2005 02:30 AM
Some more quick thoughts...

I'm not surprised nobody has risen to the challenge of toppling CM's standing. The teams that have more resources and good talent are run by big companies that have long ago written off our niche. The others tend to be focused on easier things to do. No slight on those guys, just a reflection that we're a hard act to follow.

Kip, there will be a much more involved campaign system. I won't say more than that, but the focus of the game is far more campaign oriented than Quick Battle or stand alone scenario (those options are of course still available). This is part of the evolution aspect of CM. We spent so much time getting the battle stuff right in CMx1 that we had to economize the campaign design. This time 'round we don't have to.

ASHBERY76 , those models are WAY more detailed than they need to be for a game. Having said that, CMx2's models will look far closer to those than to CMx1 models. In theory we COULD put in something that huge, but I don't think anybody would be too happy with the results.

GPIG, hehe... Finding Nemo 3 - Nemo Goes To War! I love it Seriously, the graphics capabilities of CMx2's engine are on a par with the best we've seen from games in development these days. We feel it beats games already released. So yeah, it will be pretty darn good. And when we start to expand our titles post CMx2's first release, perhaps we'll need to talk. I mean, if you aren't too busy making the underware renders for The Incredibles 2, perhaps we can use your services

We are also mindful of hardware demands. Current systems should be able to handle it OK. Stuff from before might have problems. Anything as old as my creaky G4 400GH or a 1GH Pentium will likely be in trouble. The good news is that with Game #2 following Game #1 so quickly one system upgrade should be good for at least 2 games, if not 3, since the core game technology won't be changing within that timeframe.

Steve

Battlefront
Administrator
Member # 35

posted January 06, 2005 04:23 PM
I need to wipe off some of the campaign drool that is hitting the keyboards. CMx2 will not, at least at first, have some sort of "meta-campaign" system. By that I meean something that would allow multiple people to do campaigns and have their results somehow matter. I am also not talking about campaigns where larger issues, which take place outside of the battle, somehow have an affect on the next tactical battle. Maybe someday, but not with the first release and perhaps not even with the second.

Instead the campaign will be somewhere inbetween a meta-campaign and CMx1's Operations. It will also be more focused and far more "story" oriented (i.e. giving meaning to the battles you fight instead of just fighting). More on this at a later date. Just didn't want you guys having your imagining going wild and then being disapointed when we outline how it works.

Yes we can do pre-gunpowder type environments. Might take a little more work in some respects, but in other ways it will be easier (no vehicles ).

Graphics will be as good if not better than the best of the 1st Person Shooters out there. We don't know of any likely wargame that can match even what CMAK looked like One game was mentioned in this thread, but we too aren't sure when (or if) it will be released. It also appears to be less of a wargame, as you guys would define it, and more RTS.

As for WeGo systems... don't forget TacOps Early Grigsby games also had WeGo. But like Jon said, there have been few and far inbetween since then. I can guess why this is for more mass market type wargames, but never understood it for ones which are designed to be realistic.

Steve


Fan Art by Gpig:
(not an employee of BFC)

http://142.55.90.22/~student/squadColumn.jpg

http://142.55.90.22/~student/DeploySkirmish.jpg
http://142.55.90.22/~student/defensivePosition.jpg
http://142.55.90.22/~student/TankTerrain.jpg
http://142.55.90.22/~student/BailingOut.jpg

[ June 24, 2005, 11:34 AM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[aka_tom_w]

Battlefront.com
Administrator
Member # 42

posted January 24, 2005 01:01 AM
Never confuse an implementation of something with what is possible or not. Meaning, just because you play Game X with Feature Y does not mean that Game Z will play exactly the same. If you want a dose of reality in that sense, pick up the other 3D tactical WWII game out there and see how closely it compares to CMBO What I mean by this is that nobody should judge what we can do, or not do, based on what some other group of guys did 10 years ago in a 2D enviroment that worked on a 486 (or a Mac IIci in my case ).

Now, as it so happens you guys that were painfully hoping to rearranging your CC men probably were wasting your time. While CC was certainly 1:1 Graphically, it was not 1:1 Modeled. Unless my memory is playing big tricks on me, much to the contrary of sycophant ramblings a CC unit was no different than a CMx1 unit in that all LOS, LOF, and location calcs were based on a single spot. That means 3 guys of a CC squad on the wrong side of the wall were likely in no danger if the system though of the center of the unit as being on the correct side of the wall. If the system thought the unit was on the incorrect side of the way, the 3 guys on the "protected" side were vulnerable even though they looked protected. I don't remember exactly how the CC system worked, but like I said... unless my memory is getting bad it worked pretty much like this and not like you guys think it did.

Having said that, it isn't as hard to control individual guys within a single unit as it is to control multiple units. The reason is that telling something like a rifle team (to use CC scale) to move to location X effectively defines where the 3, 4, or 6 guys should go to. Now, think of telling a platoon to "take x objective". The AI now has to move several pieces, which are inherently separate from each other, in a way that makes sense. In real life this could mean leaving one Squad (of two teams) behind, moving one Squad (of two teams) down a road 30m to the left, and telling the other Squad (of two teams) to do a zig-zag assault over an open field, but only after the second team arrives on target.

See the difference? If not, read this

The less variation there is in general location, type, and expected behavior, the easier it is for an AI to get it right. The more varried the locations, types, and behaviors the more complicated. Telling the AI to move 6 or 12 guys to "go to this wall and lay down suppressive fire" is a lot easier for the AI than "move these 34 guys in any one of a million ways to take that farmhouse".

Git it now?

Steve

Battlefront.com
Administrator
Member # 42

posted January 16, 2005 11:40 PM

Tom, I was pointing back to earlier comments I made to reassure people that we wouldn't be yanking away control of units for the simple sake of reduing Borg issues.

Here is an example of how reducing the Borg reduces certainty and introduces natural delays:

Let's say you are on the defensive and suddenly find a section of your line attacked by a bunch of enemy infantry. In CMx1 you could assign all sorts of assets to attack this enemy infantry without significant delays. If you felt the enemy was sufficently tied up you could then rush reserves into the spot to reinforce your defenses. All of this could be done within a turn or two because.

If all we did was simply make each unit capable of targeting only what it spotted on its own, the situation as described would likely play out very differently. Think about all the assumptions and reassurances one has with the current system. Step through the situation in your mind and picture all the things decisions you would make and note how many of them involve KNOWING something that shouldn't be known. Now think about the same situation assuming a more realistic knowledge and reaction system, then see how that might affect your decisions.

I expect you will find that you'd have to hesitate before making plans and then take longer to get plans moving. And if you don't, then think about the possible ramifications if your "rushed" plans fail. Can you afford to take that sort of risk? Sometimes yes, most of the times no.

Put another way... think of how many tried and true "gamey" tactics didn't work in CMBO. Then remember how many from CMBO didn't work with CMBB (oh boy do I remember those discussions ). It is very safe to assume that a good amount of what worked in CMx1 will not work in CMx2 for the same reason (i.e. that we are making the game more realistic).


Battlefront.com
Administrator
Member # 42

posted January 17, 2005 02:51 AM
Remember that 1:1 representation for a battalion level 3D wargame was simply impossible to do. Still is if you're talking about the average computer wargamers have in front of them. We're counting on the average wargamer having to finally bite the bullet and upgrade by the time CMx2's first game comes out. I know I'm long overdue for an upgrade! Cripes, Apple's new $500 buck book sized computer is nearly four times faster than my desktop

At the risk of causing people to ask for a lobotomy sooner rather than later, I've started up a new thread:

http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=30&t=003451

I am going to stay away from talking specifics about CMx2's design, but I thought it was time to refocus people on looking at the core problems with simulating command levels before thinking up ways to deal with this age old problem.

Steve

NOT a bone but worth repeating IMHO

Cpl Steiner
Member
Member # 11057

posted January 24, 2005 10:36 AM
"Full Spectrum Warrior" is a good example of the "template" idea mentioned above. When a team is ordered to move, each man's future position is shown graphically (with the AI positioning them close to the best cover) and the player has to confirm the order before they move. This way they move realistically and stack up behind car wrecks or around the corners of buildings. You can even order them to "bound" - i.e. half the team covering whilst the other half moves.

I don't see why this couldn't be implement in CMX2 with a slight reduction in graphical detail (i.e generic terrain rather than pre-designed levels). FSW is much lower level than CM but it does a good job of portraying realistic troop movements.


[ June 24, 2005, 11:28 AM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[aka_tom_w]

This is NOT a recent bone but it should be re-posted here as well Battlefront.com
Administrator
Member # 42

posted March 02, 2005 01:22 PM
Wartgamer said:

quote:
Combine this with even normal human intelligence and the AI stands no chance.
end quote
.
Steve says:

This is the crux of the problem. Nobody has made an AI that can think like a Human. Chess AIs are good, but they do not "think" in the way we're talking about in wargaming terms. A good chess AI is nothing more than a very good crunch clearly defined and extremely limited options until it finds the best pattern of them to use. Wargaming AI is, unfortunately, more like trying to simulate a CEO of company and everybody that works for him.

The upshot is that the more the player's actions are dictated by his thought process, the more difficult it is to create an AI that can do anything more than pose a small challenge. The opposite is also true since the less control the player has over the way the battle unfolds, the less the player's superior intellect comes into play. And that is realistic since in the real world no one person has the sort of control over his force that the Human player does in CM.

As for the Scenario Tools being "cup holders"... oh boy is that ever wrong One of the major problems for AI is coming up with a plan based on highly variable situations. CM has more variables than most HUMANS can handle, so to expect the AI to be able to grasp all of these things better than a Human is simply unreasonable. The solution is to allow the Scenario Designer to customize the AI to the scenario and therefore remove some of the need for the AI to "wing it". It is one of the only, and I mean only, ways to improve the AI's performance in a given scenario. Wishful thinkers need not respond

The topic of cheating is a very interesting one that we haven't discussed here since the old days of pre and post release CMBO. The current CMx1 AI does not cheat, and neither will the CMx2 AI. It is the wrong way to go about AI design. However, there is something which on the surface is "cheating" but when looked at philosophically it is more like "simulated intuition".

How does a Human decide what to do in a given situation? Does he simply look at the information in front of him and stop right there? Not a good player, that's for sure. Instead he imagines various possibilities and formulates predictions, which in turn he bases his plans on. The better the imagination and the more insightful the predictions, the better the plans are likely to be. (all else being equal). This sort of thinking is not something we can program into the AI. And I've said this before... if we could do this, we'd stop making wargames and instead make billions producing AI products that nobody else is currently capable of doing

Any ninny can see that this important part of "thinking" is critical to how well an AI can work in a chaotic, unpredictable, and highly variable virtual world. And since we can't recreate this thinking in code, the AI is inherently at a disadvantage so fundamental in nature that it is basically impossible to come up with an AI that will pose more than a passing challenge to the average gamer. That is, of course, if we don't work around this problem.

The work around is to allow the AI to "guess" like a Human would, but without having to write an AI that would win us a Nobel prize. One way to do this is to allow the AI some amount of information that the Human doesn't have in the strictest sense, but DOES have through intuition, experience, or an understanding of the game system's limitations. For example, if you are playing a 1500 point game where the enemy is on the offensive... when you see a company of infantry you can, roughly, figure out how much armor the guy has. The AI, in current CMx1, can not. But if the AI were allowed a certain, highly controlled method of "peeking" at the Human's units... well, that would even things up a bit. The Human's guess based on no peaking will probably be more useful, but it is still something that can boost the AI's decision making capabilities substantially without certain cheating.

By certain cheating I mean if the AI knows you have an unarmored HQ at coordinates 32,45. This is information that the Human player could never have through intuition, since even a good guess is still a guess whereas 32,45 is no guess at all. Therefore, allowing the AI that sort of information is not good at all. It is unrealistic and based on other games which do this VERY frustrating to the Human player. So we aren't talking about this sort of thing.

Instead the AI might know that the player has an unarmored HQ somewhere in the area of 32,45 after having legitimately spotted the rifle companies. This is something that a Human player would likely deduce, then from there check out the terrain and say "hmmm... if I were the other guy, where would I set up my HQ?". The player might then choose a spot and hit it with artillery, or perhaps utilize some sort of recon asset to see if the guess has merit, then act if there is confirmation.

In the end there is only so much we can do. AIs, contrary to hardcore Grog thinking, don't sell games. They don't even hold back sales of games when the AI is discovered to be horrible (like Warcraft II, for instance). But we don't like to avoid trying things simply because everybody else and their brother does. So we'll do the best we can and for sure produce a better AI than other games. But will it be the wet dream of perfection Grogs demand?

No.

That is impossible and therefore we'd be fools to say we can do it.

Steve The ONE sure thing Steve has avoided any commnent on is asymetrical FOW settings or asyemtrical realism settings to allow a player to give some form or "handicap" or simulated advantage to another weaker human player or the enemy AI. There should be a way in CMX2 to allow the human player to play the game on the most realistic FOW setting (the REAL real hard one like Extra Hard Enhanced Extreme Fog of War with all the hardest inter-unit communication protocols compromising and preventing intel between distant and isolated units, by this I mean the hard from or Relative Spotting setting) and then allow the computer AI to use something like Partial Fog of War or some limited "simulated intutition" or "hinted enhanced" computer Articial inteligence to play the game against, thus providing the player with a NON-cheating but decidedly "articifically enhanced" enemy AI to provide perhaps a slightly more challenging gaming experience.

Combine the possibility of asymetrical FOW settings with the possibility that scenario designers will be able to "program the AI" or somehow script AI or configure SOP settings for the AI player in a specialized scenario's designed to be played by human players against a specific set-up of enemy AL controled units (ESPECIALLY on defense) and you will see many new players to CMx2 complain that some scenario's are unwinable or too hard to "beat".

I for one hope the CMx2 game disk is released with at least one or two CMx2 scenarios that are so tightly organized or well scripted by the designer as to be nearly impossible (in a historically accurate way and setting of course) for the human player to have any chance of a victorious result no matter how well they play or how lucky they get. (not all scenario's on the disk just a couple of real good juicy challenging ones that are near impossible to win for the human player against a well scripted AI opponent and by that I am NOT looking for replayability I am just suggesting that with FULL FOW and playing the scenario BLIND for the FIRST time, the human player, no matter how skilled or how lucky will get smoked by the well scripted AI opponent, a scenario like that as a DEMO scenario for the release of the CMx2 engine would be greatly appreciated as well HINT HINT! smile.gif )

But now I guess I am just being an optimist....

smile.gif

-tom w

[ July 01, 2005, 08:44 PM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[aka_tom_w]

The ONE sure thing Steve has avoided any commnent on is asymetrical FOW settings or asyemtrical realism settings to allow a player to give some form or "handicap" or simulated advantage to another weaker human player or the enemy AI. There should be a way in CMX2 to allow the human player to play the game on the most realistic FOW setting (the REAL real hard one like Extra Hard Enhanced Extreme Fog of War with all the hardest inter-unit communication protocols compromising and preventing intel between distant and isolated units, by this I mean the hard form of Relative Spotting setting) and then allow the computer AI to use something like Partial Fog of War or some limited "simulated intutition" or "hinted enhanced" computer or simulated "situational awarness" (like I have ANY idea what that means Doh! smile.gif ) Artificial inteligence to play the game against, thus providing the player with a NON-cheating but decidedly "articifically enhanced" enemy AI to provide perhaps a slightly more challenging gaming experience.

Combine the possibility of asymetrical FOW settings with the possibility that scenario designers will be able to "program the AI" or somehow script AI or configure SOP settings for the AI player in a specialized scenario's designed to be played by human players against a specific set-up of enemy AL controled units (ESPECIALLY on defense) and you will see many new players to CMx2 complain that some scenario's are un-winable or too hard to "beat". (please smile.gif !!!)

I for one, hope the CMx2 game disk is released with at least one or two CMx2 scenarios that are so tightly organized or well scripted by the scneario designer as to be nearly impossible (in a historically accurate way and setting of course) for the human player to have any chance of a victorious result no matter how well they play or how lucky they get.

(Not all scenario's on the disk, just a couple of real good juicy challenging ones that are near impossible to win for the human player against a well scripted AI opponent and by that I am NOT looking for replayability I am just suggesting that with FULL FOW on, AND playing the scenario BLIND for the FIRST time, the human player, no matter how skilled or how lucky will get smoked by the well scripted AI opponent, a scenario like that as a DEMO scenario for the release of the CMx2 engine would be greatly appreciated as well HINT HINT! )

But now I guess I am just being an optimist....



-tom w

[ July 13, 2005, 07:58 PM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[Gpig]

Just in case you missed this wee bone, Tom:

Recent post by Steve of Battlefront, in the Wartgamer/Rexman "HE Effectiveness" thread.

The problem in CMx1 is that original coding did not allow small arms weapons and mortars to be distinct from crews. They are one and the same. It wasn't the best design decision we ever made, but it was a very early one that couldn't be undone without redoing core parts of the game system. So it remained in all three titles.

Abandoning crew served weapons or vehicles was deemed to be a tough thing for us to simualte without opening things up for abuse. With about 100000 other things not coded at the time, we decided to just go with the abstraction you guys are familiar with and move on to other things. A good decision at the time, but unfortunately it was not one we could undo later on.

CMx2 fixes both of these issues. Soldiers and weapons/vehicles (of all types) are not welded together. They are separate.

Steve

[hellfish]

Quick hypothetical question for Steve:

Would the CMX2 engine be able to handle Grand Tactical battles? For example, instead of handling individual tanks and squads, you'd maneuver platoons as single units. Basically something like at 1/10th the scale of the game now, where a terrain cell would be 100m instead of 10m.

Just asking.

[Battlefront.com]

fytinghellfish,

Yes, in theory the engine could be adpoted to do more Operational and Strategic type games. It wouldn't be a quick conversion since the game system would need massive changes, but it could be done. We currently have no plans to do this, but it is something we've thought about.

Steve

[hellfish]

Fab. Thanks. smile.gif

[aka_tom_w]

Thanks Gpig

sorry I missed that one....

if anyone else here finds any new juicy bones buried elsewhere and wants to add them to ths thread PLEASE feel free to go right ahead just like Gpig did.

smile.gif

-tom w

Originally posted by Gpig:
Just in case you missed this wee bone, Tom:

Recent post by Steve of Battlefront, in the Wartgamer/Rexman "HE Effectiveness" thread.

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> The problem in CMx1 is that original coding did not allow small arms weapons and mortars to be distinct from crews. They are one and the same. It wasn't the best design decision we ever made, but it was a very early one that couldn't be undone without redoing core parts of the game system. So it remained in all three titles.

Abandoning crew served weapons or vehicles was deemed to be a tough thing for us to simualte without opening things up for abuse. With about 100000 other things not coded at the time, we decided to just go with the abstraction you guys are familiar with and move on to other things. A good decision at the time, but unfortunately it was not one we could undo later on.

CMx2 fixes both of these issues. Soldiers and weapons/vehicles (of all types) are not welded together. They are separate.

Steve </font>[/QUOTE]

[jim crowley]

posted July 15, 2005 02:45 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We are many months away from having anything like a Demo to show you guys. I mean, even SCREENSHOTS of a Demo like environment. Unlike CMx1's development, the models and graphics are being implemented far more towards the end. For now we are using a very basic set just to test the engine's functionality. That means not so much to show until we get much closer to the game being done.

I know some of you guys will look at the above and think this is somehow a BAD thing. But really, it is the best thing possible. The whole point of CMx2's engine is to make adding models, textures, sounds, and soforth relatively easy. Therefore, instead of needing 1-2 years to flesh out a game's graphics we will only need a few months. Not so good for advanced screenshots, but a heck of a lot better in terms of getting the next game out quicker.

Don't worry... we'll show you something fairly soon. Just don't expect to see mouse holing and tons of varried terrain and models. That's a ways away still.

Steve Hmmm. Finished by the end of 2005? Doesn't seem very likely.

[hellfish]

I bet KwazyDog is plugging away on the models and textures now, they're probably just not implemented in-game yet. No biggie.

[Michael Dorosh]

http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=6;t=002784;p=2#0000 36

here is rune's latest bone re: Dan

In another thread, someone asked if Dan is working on objects. I will leak this...yes he is...and he far surpasses anything he has done earlier. You ain't seen nothing yet...

[hellfish]

I hate not knowing things. I consume rumor and innuendo to survive, it seems. Kinda like drinking Bud Light instead of Boddingtons to survive.

Damn my inferiority. :mad: :mad:

[Pzman]

Got to love those leaks we have been getting lately. smile.gif

[Jaska.]

Compliments for hte starter of this thread for his work on bringing up a lot of wee bones from Steve. smile.gif

Keep up hte good work ! smile.gif

And BFC have my full support on what they are doing with CMx2. Modules or no modules, I still would like to place my preorder, such is my faith in them. smile.gif

And especially] if it is about Space Lobsters of Doom. :D

[Battlefront.com]

Jim, never said it would be before the end of 2005, so no surprise to me ;) Last speculative date, posted last winter IIRC, was for a release next winter. We still hope to hit that target, but we'll only know better when we get into the winter itself.

fytinghellfish, mmmmmm.... Boddingtons.... garalarlarlarl...

:D

Steve

[Pvt. Ryan]

It's a chilly 98 degrees here. Winter is definitely approaching. Brrrrrrrrrrr!

[jim crowley]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:
Jim, never said it would be before the end of 2005, so no surprise to me ;) Last speculative date, posted last winter IIRC, was for a release next winter. We still hope to hit that target, but we'll only know better when we get into the winter itself.

Steve Steve

Sometime after the end of Janauary would be good.....I have an ongoing bet with Kip Anderson that it won't be ready until then, anyway. :D

Forget demos and screenshots, the only thing I (not to mention the rest of the world and his uncle) would like to know is: WW2 or no :confused:

[hellfish]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:
Jim, never said it would be before the end of 2005, so no surprise to me ;) Last speculative date, posted last winter IIRC, was for a release next winter. We still hope to hit that target, but we'll only know better when we get into the winter itself.

fytinghellfish, mmmmmm.... Boddingtons.... garalarlarlarl...

:D

Steve I've got a case of it sitting here for you if you'll tell me something about CMx2 I don't already know. ;)

[Wicky]

Moon wrote (posted July 21, 2005 07:58 AM)

"...Soon, we will announce a new insanely accurate historical wargame in the best tradition of CM (I am not talking about the new CM engine itself)..."

mmmm....

[juan_gigante]

Wouldn't it be funny if they announced a totally huge monster bone in, say, the "T-72 now shipping" thread, where no one would go to see it without knowing about it. In fact, maybe they already have...

[aka_tom_w]

"Follow command" to be looked at for CMx2 ...


Battlefront.com
Administrator
Member # 42

posted July 27, 2005 02:06 AM
There is an inherent difference between "user friendliness" and "realism" and "playability". Here they are...

Realism is what governs CM's overall character. We look to see what is realistic, and what is not, and simulate things accordingly. This is our Prime Directive

Next comes playability. How well does that feature work in the context of all other features in the game. Does one run into problems with another and reduce overall realism, or does it allow for a gamey cheat, etc. etc. etc. If so, then we try to fix it so that it is compliant with the Prime Directive.

Last comes useability. Is the feature, which is realistic and playable, present unreasonable user interface issues for the player. If so, we redesign the user interface so that playability and realism are not harmed.

Other games do things the other way around... the make the game simplistic to use, simplistic to play, and realism.... well, not even the remotest of concerns for most games. The ones that do care about realism to some degree usually stop short at graphics and names of weapons and so forth.

The issue being argued about here SHOULD be argued at the useability level. But that isn't the case. Instead it is being argued about at the realism level. People might THINK they are asking abtou useability or playability, but in fact they are asking for compromises to realism. Because the interface is dead simple to use (sorry folks, it really is) and not that hard to master (most people don't have a problem) WITHIN the confines of realistic behavior, I see absolutely no reason to change anything. It's working just fine.

Now, something like Follow... there we have a real issue. Units should be realistically able to coordinate their movement based on the unit directly in front of them. If the unit in front stops, so should the one behind it and the one behind that, etc, etc. That is not possible in CMx1, mostly because of the difficulty in programming such a thing from an AI standpoint (given the nature of the engine's existing code). The ramifications of no Follow command are unrealistic and do limit certain types of tactics and tactical scenarios from behaving the way they should. So the argument for the Follow command is primarily about realism, but it is also about playability (vehicles do crazy stuff that increases their chances of getting knocked out), and useability (there is no easy interface for a work around, not to mention to get the behavior directly). That means the Fix O Meter tilts strongly in favor of us doing something about this issue for CMx2.

Hopefully by illustrating these two side by side you can see there is a HUGE difference between the two and our reaction to them.

Steve

Here are a few notes/bones on LODs (level of detail in graphics zoom outs and zoom ins)

KwazyDog
Administrator
Member # 302

posted July 26, 2005 06:51 PM

Sirocco dont worry, we *should* be able to have detailed running gear with sus*****ion, etc.

Something to keep in mind is that its amazing just how quickly you can remove details from a model as it moves away from screen yet have the human eye not be able too tell the differnce in game.

Dan


Battlefront.com
Administrator
Member # 42


posted July 27, 2005 01:49 AM

I don't know what the LODs will be like in terms of reductions. But the furthest out LOD will likely be something like 4 or 6 polygons like in CMx1. When something takes up, literally, 2 pixels on screen any more than a few polygons is a complete and utter waste. I'm going to guess that detailed suspensions will go away on the third LOD out from the highest. Just a guess that is when we can get away with wiping it off the model without the eye detecting it. The most close and next to most clolse will likely both have working suspensions.

Steve

[ July 27, 2005, 06:35 AM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[aka_tom_w]

any NEW news?

-tom w

[ August 21, 2005, 09:59 AM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[Battlefront.com]

Not quite yet :D

Steve

[jim crowley]

Not even, for a game apparently scheduled for the end of winter, the subject matter :confused:

And whatever happened to the promised mid-summer news. According to my seasonal calender, it's pretty much the end of summer :(

[aka_tom_w]

he KNOWS we are ALL watching and waiting...

What else can we do :confused: ??

-tom w

[jim crowley]

Indeed, Tom. What else can we do? Begging is not on my list.......yet!

I fully understand BFC not wishing to give out details and screen shots of a project which still seems to be a work in progress, if this recent post is anything to go by:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Battlefront.com:
The short answer is... we still aren't sure what we will simulate. Oh sure, we have a design that says what will be in, but this is something that hasn't been coded yet ... --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

However, while I am quite happy to wait "for as long as it takes", I really would like to know what I am waiting for. It is really very difficult to root for something without knowing what it is :(

I don't understand what harm it can possibly do to tell us, if nothing else, what the first release is going to be; unless, of course, that hasn't been decided on either :eek:

In which case, allied to the above statement, a release in six or seven months seems massively unlikely.

[aka_tom_w]

"I don't understand what harm it can possibly do to tell us, if nothing else, what the first release is going to be; unless, of course, that hasn't been decided on either

In which case, allied to the above statement, a release in six or seven months seems massively unlikely."


TOTALLY!

-tom w

[Andreas]

Originally posted by jim crowley:
Forget demos and screenshots, the only thing I (not to mention the rest of the world and his uncle) would like to know is: WW2 or no :confused: Wouldn't demos and screenshots tell you that? :D

[Sergei]

Not necessarily, considering that even the post-WWIII game Fallout Tactics had rusty old Shermans in it... tongue.gif

[WineCape]

Originally posted by fytinghellfish:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Battlefront.com:
[qb] Jim, never said it would be before the end of 2005, so no surprise to me ;) Last speculative date, posted last winter IIRC, was for a release next winter. We still hope to hit that target, but we'll only know better when we get into the winter itself.

fytinghellfish, mmmmmm.... Boddingtons.... garalarlarlarl...

:D

Steve I've got a case of it sitting here for you if you'll tell me something about CMx2 I don't already know. ;) [/i]</font>[/QUOTE]AFAIK, Steve likes Belgian Beers. I'm sitting om 13 cases of Hoegaarden WitBier and 6c Bellevue Kriek Cherry....

PS: Andreas, it'll be a WWII "slice." ;)

[stikkypixie]

Bah, I live in belgium. I can get him any Belgian beer he wants.
What I want to know is, will the optics system be kept in CMX2?
Now German tanks seem to acquire targets faster than say Russian. If so, could you guys make it range depended, so that at short distances, the effects are neglible?

[Ace Pilot]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:
Jim, never said it would be before the end of 2005, so no surprise to me ;) Last speculative date, posted last winter IIRC, was for a release next winter. We still hope to hit that target, but we'll only know better when we get into the winter itself.

Steve Just to clarify - Steve never said end of 2005. Moon, however, said in this post (http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=30;t=003335;p=1#000 001):

"CMX2 is scheduled for, uhh, late 2005."

[jim crowley]

Originally posted by Andreas:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by jim crowley:
Forget demos and screenshots, the only thing I (not to mention the rest of the world and his uncle) would like to know is: WW2 or no :confused: Wouldn't demos and screenshots tell you that? :D </font>[/QUOTE]Andreas, you don't have time for this stuff.......less than three weeks of freedom remain to you :D

[Sergei]

And in another post, he said it'll be ready "2005, not a day later.

Steve, I think you should obey your boss... ;)