What is going on?

[sburke]

10 hours ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Then the setup followed, which was rather fun to do, but since I didn't have thought much about the AI plan, or the objectives, it wasn't much more than putting tanks and platoons on my gorgeous map. It looked great, but that was about it. Then, finally, I began to think about an AI plan and the objectives (and more important, why these objectives), to notice that my enthusiasm and energy was gone. I also began to doubt the quality of my scenario, which didn't help, although my comrades Kohlenklau and Earl of Grey assured me the scenario was worth finishing. So, I did ask for advice by the Master of all scenarios, George MC, who was kind enough to send me good advice and quite some documentation on AI plans and such. I've read it all, realized how little I knew and began to give more attention to my wife, garden and all other things I could think of that could keep me away from the editor. I still REALLY want to finish this scenario, because I really think it has potential, but simply don't know where to take up again.

 

To return to topic: a simpler scenario editor would be very welcome, but I also think that the present editor is not as complicated as some people might think. With some time and dedication (and keeping it simple at first) this editor is an excellent tool.

One of the things I learned from JonS, another master of the arcane art of scenarios, Start with knowing what is the story you are trying to tell in the scenario.  Cut out anything that isn't necessary to that.  The problem of going too big is I think a very standard mistake. (at least one I can totally relate to).

The other things is I think it is common to make the AI plan the last thing we think of.   I am trying to change that shortcoming on my part by just playing with that.  Trying different things then watching in the scenario editor mode as to what they do.  Still wrestling with triggers and timers to learn to judge movement flow etc.

Getting back to the editor.  I was just looking at the CMBN Campaign The Scottish Corridor.  Opened the first scenario and the map is just incredible.  If CM1 was like making a map with crayons, CM2 is like painting.

[Battlefront.com]

22 hours ago, FlammenwerferX said:

Just curious, if CM2 had the same amount of user made content that CM1 had in its heyday, with all the accompanying buzz and interest on this forum and other fan made websites, like the scenario depot and others, that were producing high quality battles, maps...etc, would that increase sales to any significant degree?

I doubt it.  For sure it wouldn't hurt, but you're still missing the point.  The point is everything we did for CM2 was engineered with quality over quantity in mind.  A significant reason for that, from a business side, is that we believed quality gave us what we needed for long term sustainability.  The 10 years of CM2 vs. the 4 years of CM1 has proven to us that we were right to believe that.

Remember, I've heard your line of argument for a decade.  When it was first made there was a chance that going for quality over quantity was a mistake because we hadn't gone long enough to see if it was smart of dumb.  Ten years later, however, we have ample evidence that we achieved the right balance for both ourselves and our intended audience.  It would be wise for you to simply accept that your perceptions don't match reality, because they don't

A final thing to consider... if our concept of quality vs. quantity didn't turn out as intended, do you really think you'd still be seeing CM2 games coming from us?  Of course not.  You'd either have seen us move onto something else or watched us go out of business.  It is absolutely impossible for us to have gone 10 years with a "failed" game engine and business model.  Ergo...

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

17 hours ago, ASL Veteran said:

I just say this so that we all know that I have 'extensive' experience with both editors.  Without question creating a scenario in CM1 was easier to do than it is for CM2 and for very obvious reasons.  This has nothing to do with the intended audience for the editor or any UI or design focus.

Yup!  As I said in one of my previous posts, I think it's actually easier to make a CM1 equivalent scenario in CM2 (head to head only).  However, it would be awful compared to even a mediocre CM2 scenario made with CM2 in mind.  To make a good CM2 map you need to put a lot more effort into it than a CM1 map.  However, the extra effort produces a vastly superior end product.  Likewise, you can just stick with "capture the flag" for your objectives, but that is like using a Porsche to pick up a quart of milk 3 blocks away instead of taking it out on the highway (and obeying the speed limit, of course!).

17 hours ago, ASL Veteran said:

Finally even the briefings are more difficult to create than in CM1.  I don't remember having to make all these briefing maps for CM1 as we did for CM2.

Yeah, IIRC people had to write stuff into an external text file if they wanted to convey information to the player beyond something really basic.

Now, before anybody thinks I'm saying that the CM2 scenario making has no room for improvement... I'm not saying that there's no room for improvement   Quite the contrary, over the past 10 years we've learned what does and doesn't work so well.  Unfortunately, though, some of those things are too fundamental to the CM2 system to be changed at this point.  However, the CM2 environment overall is vastly superior to the CM1 environment overall.   We're OK with that and apparently so are our customers.

Steve

[MikeyD]

A CMx1 scenario was typically made up of some tanks, some infantry, a road, some trees, a hill. There, all done. You can of course do the same thing in CMx2 also. Try it! Its easy and fun, and the results are just as enjoyable as CMx1. Nobody told you your first map attempt had to be a historical recreation of metro Antwerp. Scenario making in CMx2 is as difficult or as easy as you make it. The CM series is not a college thesis paper assignment that you're going to be graded on. Chillax, dudes. Just have fun.

[FlammenwerferX]

Do people still use saccharine, for their coffee, I mean?

[sburke]

2 minutes ago, FlammenwerferX said:

Do people still use saccharine, for their coffee, I mean?

Why does coffee need a sweetener?  BLASPHEMY!

[FlammenwerferX]

6 minutes ago, sburke said:

Why does coffee need a sweetener?  BLASPHEMY!

Exactly! And if someone pours you a cup of coffee that's not black - do not drink it. 

[rocketman]

8 minutes ago, FlammenwerferX said:

Exactly! And if someone pours you a cup of coffee that's not black - do not drink it. 

BLACK HOLE BLACK it should be - no light shall escape my mug of caffeine fluid. 

[Machor]

On 14/10/2017 at 11:03 AM, SLIM said:

Like, illumination flares?

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, SANTA CLAUS??

This was my dream as well until I realized it can't be done without dynamic lighting, which probably requires some major coding. Would love for Steve to tell me I'm wrong, but I've resigned myself to not having them until we get to CM3. In the meantime, only day battles for me for QB in WW2 titles.

[FlammenwerferX]

7 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

I doubt it.  For sure it wouldn't hurt, but you're still missing the point.  The point is everything we did for CM2 was engineered with quality over quantity in mind.  A significant reason for that, from a business side, is that we believed quality gave us what we needed for long term sustainability.  The 10 years of CM2 vs. the 4 years of CM1 has proven to us that we were right to believe that.

Remember, I've heard your line of argument for a decade.  When it was first made there was a chance that going for quality over quantity was a mistake because we hadn't gone long enough to see if it was smart of dumb.  Ten years later, however, we have ample evidence that we achieved the right balance for both ourselves and our intended audience.  It would be wise for you to simply accept that your perceptions don't match reality, because they don't

A final thing to consider... if our concept of quality vs. quantity didn't turn out as intended, do you really think you'd still be seeing CM2 games coming from us?  Of course not.  You'd either have seen us move onto something else or watched us go out of business.  It is absolutely impossible for us to have gone 10 years with a "failed" game engine and business model.  Ergo...

Steve

If your philosophy is Quality over Quantity, that's  fine, no problem. 

But, why not just say that, instead of saying,  you don't really need all those scenarios because they are just variations on  X, Y and Z or multitudes of well made scenarios are your father's Oldsmobile compared to the fancy new QB generator.  

I get it, not questioning or criticizing your business model or cm2 in general, just the editor and lack of content available. I'm not sure why you went off on that tangent, to be honest, but hey if you need to vent, fine by me. 

You mentioned Balance. All I can do is keep tossing my 2¢ pieces onto the scale. 

The fact that I'm still here after all this time is some proof that I care and root for yalls. 

Edited October 16, 2017 by FlammenwerferX

[Battlefront.com]

13 minutes ago, FlammenwerferX said:

If your philosophy is Quality over Quantity, that's  fine, no problem. 

But, why not just say that, instead of saying,  you don't really need all those scenarios because they are just variations on  X, Y and Z or multitudes of well made scenarios are your father's Oldsmobile compared to the fancy new QB generator.  

I've said this very clearly since the beginning and tried to do so repeatedly in this thread.  For whatever reason it seems to have gone over your head, but now you appear to get it.  Though one subtle correction.  It's not that CM2 doesn't need 10 different takes on 1 specific battle... that's just a side effect.  What CM2 needs is enough high quality scenarios to make the game enjoyable.  If we have that, then we're all set.  Doesn't matter if a CM1 game has three times more because that's not the metric to use..

13 minutes ago, FlammenwerferX said:

I get it, not questioning or criticizing your business model or cm2 in general, just the editor and lack of content available. I'm not sure why you went off on that tangent, to be honest, but hey if you need to vent, fine by me. 

No venting, explaining.  You clearly had the wrong idea about what was what and clung to it for a few rounds.  Which is understandable, because CM2 *does* have less scenarios than CM1 per title and CM2 *does* have fewer people making scenarios than CM1.  Usually when someone digs in about it there's an implicit, very often explicit, argument that the reason was because we screwed up something.  In this case you seemed to be blaming the Editor, but as others and I have stated it's not that simple. 

13 minutes ago, FlammenwerferX said:

The fact that I'm still here after all this time is some proof that I care and root for yalls. 

Which is why you got the educational responses you did.  If any of us suspected you were trolling for a thrill, things would have gone differently

Steve

[Sgt.Squarehead]

The CM2 editor really isn't that daunting, I picked it up in under a year and I'm a fifty year old computer numpty.....It is not rocket science FFS. 

There are a zillion tutorials, articles and vids out there, plus a whole community in here filled with talented, helpful people who will (in my experience) willingly help you out with any difficulties you might encounter.....Why not just give it a go? 

You might find you like it.....I did. 

Edited October 16, 2017 by Sgt.Squarehead

[Aragorn2002]

14 hours ago, Badger73 said:

@Aragorn2002 / @George MC

Would either of you be so kind as to make said documentation available to those who might ask via PM?  Thank you.

Badger, you will have to ask George for permission.

[George MC]

14 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Badger, you will have to ask George for permission.

Hi Guys

Cheers for the kudos! @Aragorn2002 if you still have that info I'm happy for you to share it. Bit strapped for time right now to go and dig the info out so would most likely take me a few days to fit in between baby care!

[Aragorn2002]

1 hour ago, George MC said:

Hi Guys

Cheers for the kudos! @Aragorn2002 if you still have that info I'm happy for you to share it. Bit strapped for time right now to go and dig the info out so would most likely take me a few days to fit in between baby care!

Hi George, okay, no problem. I will pm Badger. Good luck with your baby care.

[George MC]

2 hours ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Hi George, okay, no problem. I will pm Badger. Good luck with your baby care.

Cheers ta - maybe I should have said parenting!

[Ithikial_AU]

On 10/15/2017 at 1:09 AM, Battlefront.com said:

For future development we do have it on our agenda to make setting up an AI opponent easier than the way it is now.  Much easier, in fact.

Steve

Plotting AI plans in the 3D Editor?

[IICptMillerII]

17 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Now, before anybody thinks I'm saying that the CM2 scenario making has no room for improvement... I'm not saying that there's no room for improvement   Quite the contrary, over the past 10 years we've learned what does and doesn't work so well.  Unfortunately, though, some of those things are too fundamental to the CM2 system to be changed at this point.  However, the CM2 environment overall is vastly superior to the CM1 environment overall.   We're OK with that and apparently so are our customers.

Was wondering, are there any plans to add more features to the 3D preview part of the editor? For example placing buildings and other features (roads, terrain, etc) in this mode? I find one of the more tedious parts of using the editor is having to constantly go back and forth between the 2D map where I place everything, and the 3D view to look and see if it all looks right. Just being able to do that stuff in 3D would streamline the whole process and make it all much easier in my opinion. 

If there are no plans to do this, its not the end of the world. The fact that CM has a comprehensive editor as is is infinitely better than not having one at all. 

Edited October 16, 2017 by IICptMillerII

[Erwin]

Re the relative lack of content for the newer games, am happy that we are starting to be able to buy from BF professionally/well-made made scenarios and especially campaigns which are clearly a HUGE amount of work to develop. 

[A Canadian Cat]

3 hours ago, George MC said:

5 hours ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Hi George, okay, no problem. I will pm Badger. Good luck with your baby care.

Cheers ta - maybe I should have said parenting!

Any chance you could make that info publicly available? I bet lots of people would like to read it.

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, Ithikial_AU said:

Plotting AI plans in the 3D Editor?

Oh how I wish it could be done in the near term, but no.  See following comment.  However, I can promise you that someday it will happen.

3 hours ago, IICptMillerII said:

Was wondering, are there any plans to add more features to the 3D preview part of the editor? For example placing buildings and other features (roads, terrain, etc) in this mode? I find one of the more tedious parts of using the editor is having to constantly go back and forth between the 2D map where I place everything, and the 3D view to look and see if it all looks right. Just being able to do that stuff in 3D would streamline the whole process and make it all much easier in my opinion. 

If there are no plans to do this, its not the end of the world. The fact that CM has a comprehensive editor as is is infinitely better than not having one at all. 

When we developed CMSF there were some huge limitations with the video cards of the day (2006-2008).  Here's the short explanation...

When you are in 3D mode the entire screen is using VRAM and 3D drawing techniques.  When you're in 2D mode the entire screen is using DRAM and 2D drawing techniques.  That's just the way it works.  The problem, at the time, was nobody had enough VRAM or processing power to adequately handle everything in the game, so we broke out some things into 2D to take the load off of the 3D hardware.

3D video hardware has improved a lot since then, but the game code is not easily changed (to say the least).  Therefore, fundamentally we can't change things without a major amount of work.  Because what we have is functional, even though somewhat clumsy/inefficient, we're going to stick with it and spend our time on other things people want.

Steve

[IICptMillerII]

37 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Because what we have is functional, even though somewhat clumsy/inefficient, we're going to stick with it and spend our time on other things people want.

Quite understandable. Thanks for the reply!

[Glubokii Boy]

Plotting AI  in 3D wiew would have been nice._.

´the second best thing‘._.PLEASE ! give us 32 AI-groups.._

Combined with some increased variaty as to how reinforcements could be activated (triggers)._.

And finally.._a complete remake of the dreadful AI artillery programing interface wich is for the lack of a better word.._ plain STUPID!

Changes like these would make the editor far easier to work with imo.

Many thank for your continous improvments to the game

[General Jack Ripper]

14 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

The CM2 editor really isn't that daunting, I picked it up in under a year and I'm a fifty year old computer numpty.....It is not rocket science FFS. 

Find a very small scenario that's already been completed, and open it up in the editor to see how they did it.
I learned the editor, especially how to do AI plans, by messing around with "A Strange Awakening".

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Yup, that's more or less what I did too.....If there was something I wanted to figure out I'd find a scenario that featured it and look at in the editor.

Edited October 16, 2017 by Sgt.Squarehead