Scalable UI

[Erwin]

Haven't seen this mentioned in a while.  So here goes:

Hope that the next version gives us the ability to alter the UI size.  On a 30" 2760 x 1600 monitor I have to resize the game to 1920x1200 or lower just to read the text.  Soon UHD/4K monitors will become more widely used.   Shame to have to degrade the image just to read.

Edited October 31, 2017 by Erwin

[General Jack Ripper]

18 hours ago, Erwin said:

Hope that the next version gives us the ability to alter the UI size.  On a 30" 2760 x 1600 monitor I have to resize the game to 1920x1200 or lower just to read the text.  Soon UHD/4K monitors will become more widely used.   Shame to have to degrade the image just to read.

YES!! THIS!! FOR THE LOVE OF MY EYES!!

[Muzzleflash1990]

Yes, this is sorely needed. But I believe it has been said, it will not come before the next generation (not iteration) of Combat Mission. So we are probably looking at 5+ years.

[Erwin]

Dear god... why...?   

[HerrTom]

I think CM2's ui elements are built using bitmaps, so  any attempt to scale it will have potentially ugly results. But that's just speculation since when modding it you can edit bitmap elements...

[LukeFF]

9 hours ago, Erwin said:

Dear god... why...?   

The better question is, why are you getting yourself worked up over idle speculation?

[Wicky]

Possible solution could be if SVG files are used...

[Erwin]

7 hours ago, LukeFF said:

The better question is, why are you getting yourself worked up over idle speculation?

Worked up?  Am simply making a comment.   It's been 10+ years since CMSF and the tech of monitors has advanced to higher and higher resolutions.  It's odd that after all these years we have to run degraded resolutions to be able to read the UI.  In order to read the UI, I have to run CM2 1600x900 on a 30" monitor capable of approx. 2700x1600.   (Or is it that BF has found that most customers still have low resolution monitors?)

Have often said that the game itself is just fine the way it is.  The UI is the major problem now. 

[Battlefront.com]

Sorry, it's not going to change.  If it we were able to change it we would have done so years ago because it's obviously something that would be very beneficial to have.  Unfortunately, the core of the game's engine was written in 2004/2005 and would have to be significantly recoded to have the UI be scalable.  That's simply not feasible.  So either play at a lower resolution, invest in a magnifying glass, or lobby for us to stop supporting and making CM2 products.  Those are the options.

It's similar to the old days when DOS games were all coded to 320x240 because that's what the OS was set to handle, even though monitors at the time were more often than not 640x480.  If you had the money for a bigger monitor (my first 19" monitor cost $5,100 in today's money!) you didn't get higher resolution, just a blown up image.  Games had to be specifically coded to take advantage of the higher resolutions, but many of them were still fixed to something like 640x480 because the systems of the day weren't capable of pushing more pixels than that at one time. 

That's just the way it goes sometimes.

Steve

[Pak40]

28 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Sorry, it's not going to change.  If it we were able to change it we would have done so years ago because it's obviously something that would be very beneficial to have.  Unfortunately, the core of the game's engine was written in 2004/2005 and would have to be significantly recoded to have the UI be scalable.  That's simply not feasible.  So either play at a lower resolution, invest in a magnifying glass, or lobby for us to stop supporting and making CM2 products.  Those are the options.

It's similar to the old days when DOS games were all coded to 320x240 because that's what the OS was set to handle, even though monitors at the time were more often than not 640x480.  If you had the money for a bigger monitor (my first 19" monitor cost $5,100 in today's money!) you didn't get higher resolution, just a blown up image.  Games had to be specifically coded to take advantage of the higher resolutions, but many of them were still fixed to something like 640x480 because the systems of the day weren't capable of pushing more pixels than that at one time. 

That's just the way it goes sometimes.

Steve

I, for one, am ready for the next line of CM engine. My vote goes for stop making CM2 products, It's time for CM3.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

There's always one. 

[Erwin]

If we didn't have dissatisfied people we'd still be living in caves...  With no CM2 to play.    Isn't that how CM series came about?  

 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

No dissatisfied people nag others into changing it for them! 

[A Canadian Cat]

LOL actually I usually ignore disgruntled people and try to keep my head down and continue my work to improve the world in my own small way. Disgruntled people are a drag on progress and those of us doing the work are making things better in spite of them not because of them.

Edited November 6, 2017 by IanL
Totally srewed up grammar.

[Battlefront.com]

Issues like the scalable screen thing highlight the major difference between Battlefront and mass market game making models.  For the most part the mass market game companies remake their game engine with each release they put out.  The stiff competition and ever higher technical expectations pretty much require this sort of disposable game engine behavior.  And if they don't get sufficient sales to pay them back for such huge expenses, they abandon the game franchise (and often the studio that made it) and move onto something/somebody else.  Wargames simply can't afford this sort of disposable engineering approach.

Wargaming doesn't support an environment where we can put 3 years into a game engine, release a single game (plus DLC), and then start over with a fairly clean slate for the next game.  The economics simply don't work that way for niche games like ours, so a total (or near total) rewrite to take advantage of new hardware and what not is simply not possible.  Which means once we make a game engine we're "stuck" with certain basic elements for the life of that game engine.  That sucks, but it is what it is.

Steve

[Erwin]

That is completely understandable.  All us fans here do is throw out comments and suggestions with the full knowledge that most may not be implementable for the reasons stated. 

However, the hope is that with CM3...

[jonPhillips]

5 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Issues like the scalable screen thing highlight the major difference between Battlefront and mass market game making models.  For the most part the mass market game companies remake their game engine with each release they put out.  The stiff competition and ever higher technical expectations pretty much require this sort of disposable game engine behavior.  And if they don't get sufficient sales to pay them back for such huge expenses, they abandon the game franchise (and often the studio that made it) and move onto something/somebody else.  Wargames simply can't afford this sort of disposable engineering approach.

Wargaming doesn't support an environment where we can put 3 years into a game engine, release a single game (plus DLC), and then start over with a fairly clean slate for the next game.  The economics simply don't work that way for niche games like ours, so a total (or near total) rewrite to take advantage of new hardware and what not is simply not possible.  Which means once we make a game engine we're "stuck" with certain basic elements for the life of that game engine.  That sucks, but it is what it is.

Steve

This is a great point, well made.

The fact that Battlefront can remain financially viable to what is, let’s face it, a fairly small niche group of players is in itself astonishing. My 11 year old son and I play CM2 together. Whilst I'm slowly teaching him the application of real world tactics and we have some good small-scale games, he still marginally prefers the 'instant gratification' and fast-paced action of the Call Of Duty series on his X-Box.

I’ve been able to get him into playing CM2 through 11 years of sharing my passion for WW2 history (OK– indoctrinating a future opponent!) via museum visits, films like Battle Of Britain and series like Band Of Brothers. I reckon if I take it slowly, in another couple of years, he’ll be a very good player – but I wouldn’t have a hope of teaching some of his mates the nuances of CM2, because they don’t have the background interest.

I don’t consider myself a Battlefront 'fanboy', but I do appreciate the hard work and dedication that goes into producing an extraordinary series of games. I sincerely hope BF continue to develop them for as long as I’m around to play them.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

I'm doing similar with my ten year old nephew.....While claims FarCry Blood Dragon is his favourite PC game (it really is an absolute scream), it's almost always his on-going CM:BN campaign that he asks to play when he comes to stay overnight (he's reading the Osprey titles covering the Normandy landings at the same time).

Edited November 6, 2017 by Sgt.Squarehead

[jonPhillips]

1 hour ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

I'm doing similar with my ten year old nephew.....While claims FarCry Blood Dragon is his favourite PC game (it really is an absolute scream), it's almost always his on-going CM:BN campaign that he asks to play when he comes to stay overnight (he's reading the Osprey titles covering the Normandy landings at the same time).

Good work fella.

Maybe my son will still have some opponents when I'm gone...  

[SgtHatred]

14 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Issues like the scalable screen thing highlight the major difference between Battlefront and mass market game making models.  For the most part the mass market game companies remake their game engine with each release they put out.  The stiff competition and ever higher technical expectations pretty much require this sort of disposable game engine behavior.  And if they don't get sufficient sales to pay them back for such huge expenses, they abandon the game franchise (and often the studio that made it) and move onto something/somebody else.  Wargames simply can't afford this sort of disposable engineering approach.

Wargaming doesn't support an environment where we can put 3 years into a game engine, release a single game (plus DLC), and then start over with a fairly clean slate for the next game.  The economics simply don't work that way for niche games like ours, so a total (or near total) rewrite to take advantage of new hardware and what not is simply not possible.  Which means once we make a game engine we're "stuck" with certain basic elements for the life of that game engine.  That sucks, but it is what it is.

Steve

Oh come on, that isn't even remotely true. Game developers absolutely do not remake their game engine for every release. Hell, most don't even build their own but rather license them. The most popular game engines have decades of code behind them. They are absolutely not disposable.

Combat Mission finds itself comfortably in the majority of all software in that it didn't give a second thought to UI scalability.

[Battlefront.com]

1 minute ago, SgtHatred said:

Oh come on, that isn't even remotely true. Game developers absolutely do not remake their game engine for every release.

I suppose it depends on your definition of "remake" and which type of game developer we're talking about.  I'm talking about the AAA game makers and yes, they absolutely "remake" their game engine each release.  By that I mean they gut huge swaths of code that is functioning perfectly fine by today's standards so they can expand/enhance it for the next generation.

Do not confuse what you, the player, sees on the outside vs. what is going on inside.  Outwardly something can closely resemble something else, but internally be totally different.

1 minute ago, SgtHatred said:

Hell, most don't even build their own but rather license them.

Certainly true for FPS games.  And the game engine being licensed is constantly updated otherwise they'd not have new customers knocking at their door. 

1 minute ago, SgtHatred said:

The most popular game engines have decades of code behind them. They are absolutely not disposable.

Decades?  Name me one that fits that description in any meaningful way.

1 minute ago, SgtHatred said:

Combat Mission finds itself comfortably in the majority of all software in that it didn't give a second thought to UI scalability.

Er, no.  We gave it a lot of thought back when the game engine was made but technically it wasn't feasible to do.  Which is why so few games had it in the past and only more recently has it started to become the norm.  CM2, because it was coded so long ago, is "stuck" with the old paradigm.

As I said, we'd have changed the UI scalability years ago if it were feasible.  Hell, if you saw my wish list for the last three Upgrades guess what you'd see on that list?  "Scalable UI".  But Charles shot it down each time because it didn't magically get any easier to do since the last time I asked.  But I did ask

Steve

[Mord]

36 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

But Charles shot it down each time because it didn't magically get any easier to do since the last time I asked.  But I did ask

So, you're just like us, a PIA?

 

Mord.

[SgtHatred]

9 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

I suppose it depends on your definition of "remake" and which type of game developer we're talking about.  I'm talking about the AAA game makers and yes, they absolutely "remake" their game engine each release.  By that I mean they gut huge swaths of code that is functioning perfectly fine by today's standards so they can expand/enhance it for the next generation.

They absolutely do not gut huge swaths of code game by game. Hell, many AAA games these days have yearly release schedules, they do not get gutted and rebuilt every year. EA's Frostbite engine still smells like a game engine from 2008, no matter how many buckets of paint they've added to it.

9 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Do not confuse what you, the player, sees on the outside vs. what is going on inside.  Outwardly something can closely resemble something else, but internally be totally different.

Like all software.

9 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Certainly true for FPS games.  And the game engine being licensed is constantly updated otherwise they'd not have new customers knocking at their door. 

And many other types of games, and yes game engines get updated, not "gutted" and not "rewritten". Updates are a natural part of the game development cycle and any software. You've released 4 engine upgrades for CM2 after all...

9 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Decades?  Name me one that fits that description in any meaningful way.

You can still find code written by Carmack for Quake in Source 2. You can still find code for Unreal 98 in Unreal4. At no point do these organizations just delete and start from scratch on these projects.

9 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Er, no.  We gave it a lot of thought back when the game engine was made but technically it wasn't feasible to do.  Which is why so few games had it in the past and only more recently has it started to become the norm.  CM2, because it was coded so long ago, is "stuck" with the old paradigm.

As I said, we'd have changed the UI scalability years ago if it were feasible.  Hell, if you saw my wish list for the last three Upgrades guess what you'd see on that list?  "Scalable UI".  But Charles shot it down each time because it didn't magically get any easier to do since the last time I asked.  But I did ask

Steve

I can't fathom how something being rolled from scratch couldn't have at least had the easy 2x scaling option, but I remember when Chris posted an excerpt from one of your data files and I could tell that you guys like making things hard for yourselves, which is pretty natural for game developers. I do understand that now that it's done it can't be changed reasonably. A UI built in a way that cannot scale would be a pretty static thing and would require replacing.

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, SgtHatred said:

They absolutely do not gut huge swaths of code game by game. Hell, many AAA games these days have yearly release schedules, they do not get gutted and rebuilt every year. EA's Frostbite engine still smells like a game engine from 2008, no matter how many buckets of paint they've added to it.

I do think we're both making arguments that are a little more extreme than the point of this coversation.  You're right that the behemoths, at least, don't chuck everything out with each new release.  So I did overstate that.  However, I think you're being far to dismissive of how much rewriting and recoding work is routinely done to established code.  So let me restate my position...

When technology changes there's demand by customers (ALL customers) for their games to take advantage of those changes.  The big AAA companies have large budgets to work with and are playing for high stakes, therefore they are pretty much compelled to take advantage of even seemingly small improvements *if* they think it gives them an edge over the competition or is required to keep up with it.  If the new whiz-bang-whatever means established code has to be chucked and rewritten, in large part or in total, then so be it.  The programming bean counters make their calculations and they proceed accordingly.  Nothing is inherently sacrosanct.

Combat Mission's customers put the same expectations on us as the AAA companies, though most are willing to grudgingly accept that's unfair.  We do our best to improve the game engine as we go along, but rewriting fundamental portions of our game engine isn't feasible.  We have neither the time nor the money to do it because we don't have the same sort of financing (customers + investors). Even if a majority of our customers demand we do something that requires a major intrusion into critical established code, it's not going to happen.  It can't happen.

Which means that inherently the AAA game companies do have a disposable mentality when it comes to any one section of code *if* they feel there's a need to rewrite it.  We don't have the same luxury, which means even if we do see a need we usually can't address it if major sections of code have to be messed with.

Quote

And many other types of games, and yes game engines get updated, not "gutted" and not "rewritten". Updates are a natural part of the game development cycle and any software. You've released 4 engine upgrades for CM2 after all...

It depends on perspective.  What the AAA guys view as "rewritten" is not the way we would view it. Which is understandable since we're talking totally different scales of development.  The AAA games out there are playing for much bigger stakes, so if video game card company A comes out with a new whizbang graphics feature that requires a major portion of the game engine be rewritten, then they rewrite it either before the competition does or because the competition already has.

Quote

You can still find code written by Carmack for Quake in Source 2. You can still find code for Unreal 98 in Unreal4.

If you looked at CM2 Engine 4 code vs. CMSF you'd see more similar than dissimilar.  You'd also see major sections of code that are practically identical.  I highly doubt that can be said for the AAA game engines out there.  If for no other reason than dozens of programmers have worked on the code over the years.

Quote

I can't fathom how something being rolled from scratch couldn't have at least had the easy 2x scaling option, but I remember when Chris posted an excerpt from one of your data files and I could tell that you guys like making things hard for yourselves, which is pretty natural for game developers.

I don't know what Chris could have possibly posted that would have given you some insights into what was coded and how it was coded 10+ years ago.  There's always trade offs for doing something one way vs. another way and I think it's a bad idea for you to make a blanket statement about technical decisions without having been part of the development of the code at the time those decisions had to be made.

Quote

I do understand that now that it's done it can't be changed reasonably. A UI built in a way that cannot scale would be a pretty static thing and would require replacing.

Which gets us back to the primary point   In theory we could have a scalable UI now because technologically it's straight forward.  But we don't have the resources to do it and our customers (on the whole) are not willing to pay the cost for doing so.  The cost is not just financial, it's also opportunities lost for improvements to other parts of the game and speed of releases.

The other point is that the reason CM2 doesn't have scalable UI isn't because we "didn't give it a second thought".  Quite the contrary... we have given it at least 5 second thoughts that I know of    The problem is that wanting and doing aren't the same thing.  We want to have a scalable UI, but unfortunately we can't.

Steve

(as an aside, I've read more than one criticism that the AAA companies have slowed down their "innovation" over the past few years because they've been primarily interested in game boxes and not PCs.  Game boxes are more static and predictable environments, therefore the PC versions don't get as much attention as they once did.  I don't know how true or pervasive this is or not, but certainly there's a group out there that thinks the AAA companies are doing the minimum only, especially on PCs)

[Warts 'n' all]

I normally agree with everything Steve posts. Although I do have to point out that it should be ... "far too dismissive" and not "to". I only mention this slight error to avoid being accused of being a "Fanboi".